The water lunges for me, hungry, the ghosts of my dead reaching deadly arms of spray to snare me. Time, for so long the luxurious haunter pooled in every shadow, an excess coiled round and round upon itself, pulling me inch by inch through every endless loop, grating me down with the sickening weight of every second, like a slow nail stuttering down a blackboard, Time is suddenly pulled taut, the coils ahead washed away; the tight line trembles, recoils against me- lashing back, shatters. There is no time and all time as I twist, stagger a blind step back into the wall, watch helplessly as the water arcs down to me, slow, tender, for the last embrace of death.

Time- timing, is everything. I knew a girl who loved to say that once, with a toss of her gold curls. Now, the east is dark, the west is filled with fire. The water is a rainbow, violet through to red- only green is missing. Purple for love, indigo for bitter sorrow, blue for loneliness, yellow for laughter, orange for warmth, red for passion. Every emotion of my life has combined to bring me here, and now they will end what they have wrought. The water itself though, is passive, it reflects. I have avoided mirrors almost as much as water; together they will kill me, purity will reflect impurity and shatter it. I am looking at it, I am watching it fall, hoping for an absolution, hoping for an answer- what I have become, what I was, what I was meant to be. If I was ever meant to be at all.

He has made a liar of me. I told him I was not. I said 'I am not a woman', I said 'I am not a person' I said 'I am not' 'I am not'. And he… he did not listen. Idiocy, obstinacy, desire, whatever it was it deafened him to my words of truth and now he has stolen the truth from my words.

He makes a fool of me, every night as I sit shivering, still as stone and naked as a lie beneath the thin blanket. The air is not cool, I am cold only in anticipation of the heat to come, and the fear that it might not. I pretend to read; the words blur on the page, the letters spin, the lines arc against each other, entwine, dance; my hand shakes and the pages whisper together like schoolgirls, laughing at my shame.

That man makes a fool of me as I sit, unable to read, to do anything but wait, desperate for him to come, terrified he will not. He makes a fool of me as I hear his feet fast on the stairs and my heart clatters free of bonds to keep pace with them, as the door falls open under his hand while my heart falls open under his gaze as he is revealed in the doorway, as he comes to me in his beauty and makes me reach for him, as he forces moans of joy and wonder from lips never meant to make such sounds, express such sentiments, as he makes me wake to find myself warm in his arms and smiling, as he makes me lie sleepless to study his sleeping face, memorise it, learn it by heart.

When I told him I was not it was true, it was the most true thing I have ever said. He forced it from me, that absolute honesty, for his sake I opened myself, I broke, I confessed so he would see, understand, leave. But he did not leave. He refused my confession, he tossed my honesty aside. I stood wide open before him to save him and he tried to save me instead. He saw me break myself at his feet so I would not break him and he did not see that what was broken was a weapon, a dagger to stab him in the back- he simply saw something broken, something to fix, to hold in his hands, gently, to heal.

He saw a crack in my armour and rushed in like a wave to melt the armour right away so he could hold me. He did not understand that the armour is all there is. He did not notice that I had spoken my ultimate truth; by ignoring its truth he has eroded its truth. He has made a liar of me, a fool of me, a wreak of me.

I tried. I told him 'I am not'. I told him. I am not; I feel nothing, know nothing, am nothing. I tried to make him understand. I tried.

What kind of man is he, what kind of sorcerer, to call me into being at will? What spell is this that has snared me, what web am I caught in? Shackled by a smile, hamstrung by a pair of blue eyes. Someone is writing a fairy-tale half asleep or more than half mad. True the prince's kiss is meant to wake the girl after a hundred year beauty-sleep, true it's the only thing that breaks the curse. But the girl is a princess, gold hair, blue eyes, sweet smile, rosy blush. The girl has to be a princess or the kiss doesn't work, isn't real, she's just the serving girl the prince is getting off with in the royal stables to pass the time before he finds her. The princess. And I am no princess. And I am under no curse- I am the curse, I'm the witch, the wicked old witch who curses the girl in the first place. The princess. Who is beautiful, and therefore good, and the love of his life. The prince's. Life, that is. The love of his life. And he's faithful to her forever and the wicked old witch gets shoved in an oven and the servant girl is all forgotten and sits waiting in the prickling hay for someone who will never come.

I feel nothing, I know nothing, I am nothing. Unbecoming, he said, and I said; becoming Un. But there was never anything to un become from.

But he won't listen, he does not understand, he sees a person not a mechanism, not a tiny part of a machine, not nothing, he sees a woman and he sees me spilt apart and he comes to hold me together and to him, and somehow he wills the woman he sees into existence.

He makes me real.

"What do you want?"

"A soul…"

No I don't I don't! What else did he make, that man, that stupid, beautiful, wonderful man? What else did he make me?

I won't be a mother. I won't be fool, a liar. I won't be a lover, a woman, a person, real. I won't have a soul. I won't.

The water pours down and I am standing on the top of a tower at Kiamo Ko, I am in my room with my son at the door, wide-eyed, I am sitting beneath a black scarf with red roses staring blindly, breathlessly, at an upside-down page, I am beneath him, his name ripped from the back of my throat, from deep in my body, I am falling asleep in him arms, watching him dream, I am kissing him goodbye in the morning wondering if it's today's kiss that will be the last, I am grating out my deepest, most terrible truth and he silences my honesty with his lips, I am sitting in darkness beside the darker shape of his body in a pool of darkness deeper still, and I am burning, melting, dying. All these moments seem to be of living, they are simply parts of my death. He began my death by bringing me to life.

I was asleep. I was frozen. I was locked a million miles from life in an ivory tower. I was nothing. But then there was a prince, and a kiss, and I… I melted.

He bathed me in love, poured it over me, drowned me in it, in his blue, blue eyes. He touched my frozen body, woke it like the sun wakes the earth as it returns in spring. When the wicked old witch gets the prince you know there's a spell involved. You don't expect to find that she's the one under it. He made love to me, brought love to me, filled me with his love. I thawed; helpless, cracked, defenceless, I burned, yearned, melted. With him in me I felt, I knew, I was… something. I don't know what. Not quite real. Not quiet. But not nothing. Where he touched I came to life; under his hands, his eyes, his lips, his body, I was moulded, shaped, willed into existence. What kind of god was he to make a person?

What do you want?

A soul…

I don't. I don't. Do I? When he touched me, loved me, looked at me… It was true when I said I wasn't a person. It had been true all my life. The moment I admitted the truth was the moment it became true no longer.

Could it be that people don't find soul mates, they find souls? In entering the world things are divided, separated, the mind housed in one form, the soul in another? When he touched me, when he made me feel like- like not nothing- was it because he brought me back my own soul? Together did we make one whole person? Did we become real in each others' arms? Whole? True?

The feel of his hands, his lips, his body, loving me into existence, spelling me into becoming… Incredible, addictive, terrifying.

I loved him, feared him, wanted him, dreaded him, needed him, hated him. I was his. So shamefully, horrifyingly, completely his. Whatever it was he made me, whatever it was was his creation. His to hold for as long as he wanted, his to leave discarded and forgotten in the hay.

But oh, he was beautiful. Warm- so warm, his eyes, his voice, his smile, his skin, his smell. There was the heat of passion, but there was the warmth of just him. I basked in it, glowed in it, melted in it.

He killed me. He killed me by bringing me to life, by tearing me out of my armour and into existence, by dying.

His flood of love was a baptism, bringing me into the world; the water cascading around me is a mirror, a second baptism to leave it. I am everything and nothing, everywhere and nowhere. He is dead and alive and here and gone. I do not know whether the noise I feel erupting from my lips is a scream or a laugh or a prayer, a curse or a blessing, fury or thanks.

He made me real and made my reality hell. He brought me into the world and left me alone in it, clueless and floundering. He made me feel every emotion from love to hate. But knowledge… he never gave me that. What I am, what I mean, what is good, what is not, why there is choice, why there is inevitability...

What do I know? I don't even know what I want. A soul. A soul. I had one, for a moment. I tried to save him. I tried to set him free, make him leave. I failed. I killed him. By living I killed him, by dying he killed me. Were we tied? Were we part of one whole? Was there nothing I could have done- did we have to be together? Was he my soul? Warm, beautiful, generous, loving, open arms and an open heart- was he my soul? Was he my soul-mate? Or was I right all along- I have no soul, he was a young man caught in the web of my darkness, my ugliness gaping like a wound, and I was girl caught in the web of his light? Was it by chance we blundered into each other and became trapped- did he not have to die? Was there a fairytale ending waiting for him somewhere, that would have happened if he had not walked out of the fairytale and into my tragedy? Did I kill him? Did I?

His blood is black on my hands. It is cold as he never was, dark as he never could have been. I am colder, darker, more dead.

Is this what I have been asking for all these years? Is this what I came to Kiamo Ko for, not for Saramia- she had not given love, she could not give forgiveness, but for this girl to find me, answer my prayers, achieve retribution for Fiyero's death, take my life for his, justice, justice, and in justice forgiveness of a sort, an ending?

There is light everywhere, from the fireplace and the green and gold candles, blood-gold light dancing on plaster, from the torches reflecting on wet stone. I have thrown up my hands, and where his blood once pooled there are drops of water, sparkling like jewels, blue by some trick of the light. Everywhere there are blue diamonds moving on a green field, bringing it to life, to death, bringing love, absolution, forgiveness, the inevitable pattern of the world, the earth and its seasons, and everywhere I am burning, melting, living, dying, loving, becoming- everywhere I am a person, a woman- everywhere I am, and my soul is. And everywhere there is him.