Do you think that’s awful of me, the creature asks, and Cordis doesn’t know how to answer. She herself does not know how to process other’s pain, outside of a small circle. She cares – cared – for Spyndle, of course, though she had hurt her, too. She cares for her children, though they are scattered to the winds and do not seek her out, and she does not blame them for this, for motherhood was never her strong suit.
Is it awful, then, that the creature knows of broken hearts, that it sees hers, too, whether it’s written on her face or simply intuited, and loves it only for the bitterness? Cordis thinks, unprompted, of the poem she’d heard somewhere - I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.
“I don’t know,” she says. She is not the one to pass judgement on how the creature values secrets and misfortune. She has too much of her own, and yes, they are uninteresting – what’s another doomed love story in a world full of them? – but they are hers, and to her, they are sweet and terrible, and they are what’s shaped her.
“What’s your name?” she asks them, pulled by some curiosity she doesn’t understand. Or maybe she simply wants to change the topic, does not want to dwell too long on thoughts of broken hearts.
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me