Anne Bishop: The Voice

For the first six months, news about the village trickled in to me. After that, I never heard about the village or its people again.

The night we ran away, the Elders’ Hall was set on fire, and while the caretaker managed to get out unharmed, the building itself burned to the ground. The other building that burned that night was Chayne’s house.

As for Chayne, he screamed himself awake for a week. Then he stood in front of the ruins of the Elders’ Hall and confessed his offenses against all living things. He disappeared shortly after that, but Dariden claimed to have seen him behind the orphan’s house, looking bloated and hobbling around as if crippled while the caretakers watched him. Dariden also claimed Chayne must have been in a horrific accident that no one wanted to talk about, because in that moment before the caretakers noticed him and hurried to block his view, Dariden saw terrible scars on Chayne’s neck.

Tahnee and her lover reached Vision. While his parents were not pleased to have a son make a hasty marriage to a girl who feared being found by her own family, they stood witness at the marriage and helped the young couple set up housekeeping.

I haven’t seen Tahnee since the night we ran away. Despite having mutual friends, our paths never cross. Maybe we aren’t meant to meet. At least, not yet.

I don’t know what became of Kobrah. I don’t know if she reached Vision or even tried. The horse, however, was returned to the merchant’s booth in the bazaar by a grateful young man who had needed a ride in order to reach the city. By all accounts, the horse had been handed over to several riders during those months, each person needing a mount for a little while—and each one promising to assist in getting the horse back to its owner in Vision.

I sent one letter to my parents, assuring them that I was safe and well but not telling them enough that they would be able to find me. I cannot change the customs of our village because our village does not want to change. Until the magic dies that allows one person to become the well of sorrow for so many, the village will look away while the Elders maim someone in order to make that person’s flesh a vessel.

I cannot change the village. But I saved the people I could.

Two years to the day, I stood on the bottom step of the Temple of Sorrow. I had a letter to deliver—and a teasing scold to deliver as well, if I had the courage. I now knew why the Shaman had blushed the day he told me about the community in the north. My lover’s eyes are not quite as beautiful as his uncle’s, and while he has a fine sense of the world, Kanzi is not a Shaman. Despite those “flaws,” he is a talented artist and a good man.

Our marriage was arranged to take place at the end of harvest, and the letter I was delivering was a nephew’s enthusiastic invitation and plea for his uncle to attend the wedding and stand as a witness.

So I stood on the steps, wondering if it was a Shaman or an uncle who had been playing matchmaker the day he sent me north, when the sound of finger cymbals caught my attention and I wandered over to a temple that was a little farther down the street.

A woman, dressed in the wheat-colored robes of a Shaman’s apprentice, was playing the finger cymbals in a happy little rhythm while a dozen children stood on the steps below, swaying to the rhythm and then freezing when the cymbals stopped.

A game, I decided, smiling as I moved closer, because there was something about the woman . . . She turned and looked at me. I didn’t recognize her face, but I knew her eyes. She wore a hood that covered the hideous scars on her neck, but the robes covered a slimmer body that no longer carried sorrow.

She looked at me and smiled. And in her eyes I saw warmth, compassion, gratitude. Love.

Raising my hand in a small salute, I walked back to the Temple of Sorrow. A moment later, the finger cymbals picked up their rhythm.

I rang the bell, and he answered. His look of delight faded when he saw my face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, stepping back to let me enter. “What’s happened?”

“I need . . .” What did I need? I hurt so much, but I didn’t know why. “She’s . . .”

Understanding. “She’s not here anymore,” he said gently.

“I know. I s-saw . . .”

“I see.” His warm hand cupped my elbow as he led me toward the sorrows room.

“No,” I said, pulling back. “Wrong . . . sound.” I knew that much.

He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they were shiny from tears. “Of course. I understand now.”

He led me to a room on the other side of the building. It was set up the same way as the room of sorrows, but instead of gongs set before each placement of cushions, there was a wind chime hanging from a stand.

The Shaman stepped out of the room and closed the door.

I stepped over to the nearest wind chime and jostled it. Bright notes filled the room. Bright notes . . . like the radiant face that had been hidden for so many years.

Stepping into the center of the room, I brushed a finger against each wind chime, moving from place to place, faster and faster, until the room was awash in sparkling sound that squeezed my heart until the tears flowed, faster and faster. Until I collapsed on the floor in the center of that room and shed tears that were a bright, sharp, cleansing pain.

They were the last tears I ever shed for The Voice, and they were not tears of sorrow. They were tears of joy.