“And I don’t want people to look away from your eye patch because you’ve been wounded. I want them to see it and be reminded of what you sacrificed for them.” She took out a white silk eye patch with subtle embroidery, white on white. “I’m having others made. Jeweled ones nearly as prismatic as your eyes used to be. Different expressions. I figured I can play dress-up with you every day.” She looked up at him, nervous. “I’m kidding. I mean, I am having some made, but you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it. You don’t have to wear any of them if you don’t like.”
“I love it.” He took off his black eye patch and closed his eye, ducking his head while she put the white eye patch in place.
“Ready?” she asked.
The great doors opened. They processed forward together, but the cheers and the music and the voices were all hushed to Dazen’s ears. These first days with her had been full of such wonder he could hardly believe it. He felt like he was continually being reminded of things he adored about her that he’d somehow forgotten in the time they’d been apart. He felt so united, so whole.
They’d wanted to stay up late last night, just talking—so they did. Talking, connected, they wanted to make love—so they did. Resting safe in each other’s arms, they wanted to tell each other everything, so they did.
In these first days, conflicts seemed but trifles easily overcome, and all the demands on their time were somehow met, and only heightened their joy of reunion at the end of the day.
They weren’t children; they knew this was a special time and a fleeting one, but there was nothing cynical in that recognition, nor at all resigned to eventual stagnation: they were, simply, in the first great thaw of spring, and they were enjoying the warmth of the sun, without demanding that it never rain or snow again.
The ceremony went on, with more speakers and more prayers than Dazen would have liked (one of the trifling conflicts), and he kept stealing glances at her as if to memorize every detail of her irrepressible smile.
Then they faced each other, held each other’s hands, and renewed their vows.
As they finished, he said, “Do you mind if I maybe show off a little?”
“Dazen Guile,” she said. “If I was bothered by you showing off, I wouldn’t have married you. Twice.”
“So I had this dream last night,” he said.
“You’re telling me about this now? We’re supposed to process out.”
“They’ll wait,” Dazen said. As if twenty thousand people weren’t watching. “So this dream . . . Orholam was talking to me and He said, He said that because I asked a boon for others and not for myself, that He wanted me to carry a new message for Him in a special way for all those wounded and left bereft by this war. He said with Him, sometimes the healing is fast and sometimes it’s slow, and oftentimes it’s not finished while we still live. But with Him, it’s never, ever partial.”
“That’s a good message, honey.” She smiled and squeezed his hand. His maimed hand.
First her expression flashed apologetic, then she looked down, confused. That was the hand whose fingers were illusions.
But the illusions had held.
“So yeah,” he said. “I kind of lied? I didn’t really forget my wedding gift to you. Orholam’s really?”
“What!?”
He locked his gaze with hers, and as if they were all alone, not in front of thousands, he pulled off his eye patch.
He’d thought this moment was going to be a gift for her, but instead he was awestruck anew by the unmerited favor he’d been shown. For he didn’t simply see his bride through the new eye as well as he would have seen her through the old eye he’d lost. He saw his bride through eyes made new. He saw her truly, lit by an unstinting compassionate light, and he knew her every strength and every fight and every wound as he had never known them before, and his heart swelled as if to cover every hurt and rejoice in every joy.
His feelings for her had smoldered for most of his life, banked patiently as if against his will, a stubborn affliction almost, a strong but by now unsurprising love—but now it surprised him, after all, as his love leapt up at seeing this divine creation before him, a jewel with more facets and color and depth than he’d ever imagined, and his love was suddenly burning white-hot, as when they were young, but with an abiding strength beneath it like old oak, tested and true.
Her eyes went wide with wonder and alight with such joy as he would have never dared hope for her.
Finally, he rejoined the stream of time, and took a breath, and realized it was his first breath in some time. And he squeezed her hand with the hand Orholam had made whole.
“Now, for the fun part,” he said, grinning reckless foolishness. His body felt so full of hope and light he couldn’t contain it. “I’m not sure how this is gonna go. Or if, honestly. You ready?” he asked.
She didn’t know what he was talking about, but her grip was as strong as iron and her face was radiant.
“Whatever it is . . . Hell yeah!” she said.
The high drapes opened and bathed them in Orholam’s light.
Dazen raised his hands and it was as if all the goodness that had been pouring into him through these days came bubbling out to bless everyone he loved here—and his love had grown a dozen times over—and with skill and brilliance and no small amount of audacity, never stopping to consider whether he could really do what he was about to attempt, without giving it a little test first just in case, but simply believing, as if he were Prism once more, about to dazzle the thousands with spectacle and wonder, he called the colors to him.
He called. And they came.
Epilogue 1
An hour before his second wedding, Kip looked in the full-length mirror on the wall of the small parlor and marveled: part of him supposed that most anyone could look presentable if they were worked on by the most tenacious hairdressers and personal stylists, and he certainly had been thrown upon the untender mercies of those predators as they dug for any shaking sliver of attractiveness to drag out of its den and into the light to be devoured—but instead his wonder was directed at how he himself saw that schlub.
Seeing himself now, somehow he felt like he saw better than he ever had.
The cosmetics, the clothes, the hair, the shaved and lotioned skin, the anointing oils, the posture, the dazzling bright colors and pleasing patterns: these were all the lampshades we settle over our light hoping to cast a hue and color others will find acceptable. We hope we’ll find it acceptable, too.
But others don’t even see that color, for they view us through their own lenses, filtering our already-filtered light in ways we can only guess. Nor do we see ourselves true, for we wear our own lenses, and sometimes the eye itself is dark, and how great the darkness!
Kip had been so certain for so long that there was nothing he could do to make himself acceptable that he’d hidden his light altogether. The mirror had been an enemy who, overwhelming in his might, had simply needed to be avoided. But the mirror is ever a liar: when you yourself cut out half the light by which you see, how can the mirror be anything but?
‘Let me see my skin, but with no pink tones.’ . . . ‘Oh, how awfully pale and ugly I am.’