Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,273

down in her nest of blankets, wanting to curl up and cry. “I’ll stop eating,” she said. “That’ll stunt my growth.”

“You?” Wyndle said. “Stop eating.”

Storming spren. She pulled off her shirt, redid the wrap tighter—although it pinched her skin—then replaced her shirt. After that, she lay and stared up at the marks on the wall, which showed the progress of her height over the last year.

“Mistress,” Wyndle said, curling up like an eel and raising a vine head beside her. He was getting better at making faces, and this one was one of her favorites—it had vines that looked like little mustaches. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what exactly it was you asked the Nightwatcher?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “It was all lies. The boon. The promises. Lies, lies, lies.”

“I have met the Nightwatcher,” Wyndle said. “She does not … think the same way the rest of us do. Cultivation created her to be apart, separated from humankind, un-Connected. Mortal perception of the Nightwatcher does not influence her like it does other spren. Mother wanted a daughter whose shape and personality would grow organically.

“This makes the Nightwatcher less … well, human … than a spren like me. Still, I don’t believe her capable of lying. It isn’t something she could conceive of, I believe.”

“She’s not the liar,” Lift said, closing her eyes. Storms. She’d made the wrap too tight. She could barely breathe. “It’s the other one. The one with a dress like leaves, merging into the underbrush. Hair like twigs. Skin the color of deep brown stone.”

“So you did see Cultivation herself. Both you and Dalinar … Mother has been intervening far more than we assumed, but behind a cloud of subterfuge. She uses tales of the Old Magic to distract, and to make it less obvious the specific ones she is drawing to her.…”

Lift shrugged.

“I had suspected it was true. Your … situation is unique. Why, seeing into the Cognitive Realm—even a little—is an uncommon feature in a human! And turning food into Light. Why … if Mother is involved … perhaps this isn’t Stormlight you use at all. Hmm … You realize how special you are, Lift.”

“I didn’t want to be special.”

“Says the girl who was comparing herself so dramatically to a shadow earlier.”

“I just wanted what I asked for.”

“Which was?” Wyndle asked.

“Not important now.”

“I rather think it is.”

“I asked not to change,” Lift whispered, opening her eyes. “I said, when everything else is going wrong, I want to be the same. I want to stay me. Not become someone else.”

“Those are the exact words?” Wyndle asked.

“Best I can remember.”

“Hmm…” Wyndle said, snuggling down into his vines. “I believe that is too vague.”

“I wasn’t! I told her. Make me so I don’t grow up.”

“That is not what you said, mistress. And if I might be so bold—having spent a great deal of time around you—you are not an easy person to understand.”

“I asked not to change! So why am I changing?”

“You’re still you. Merely a bigger version.”

She squeezed her eyes shut again.

“Mistress,” Wyndle said. “Lift. Will you tell me why this bothers you so much? Everyone grows. Everyone changes.”

“But I’m … I’m her little girl.”

“Whose little girl?” he asked gently. “Your mother’s?”

Lift nodded. Stupid. It sounded stupid and she was stupid. Mother was dead. That was that.

Why hadn’t she said the correct words? Why hadn’t Cultivation just understood? Cultivation was supposed to be some sort of starvin’ god. It was her fault if a little girl came and begged for a promise, and the god deliberately misinterpreted and …

And Lift liked who she was. Who she had been. She wouldn’t be the same when she got older.

Crawl through dark tunnels? Sure. Fight against Fused? Eh, why not.

But feel your own body changing you into someone else, and not be able to stop it?

Every human being lived with a terrible terror, and they all ignored it. Their own bodies mutated, and elongated, and started bleeding, and became all wrong. Nobody talked about it? Nobody was scared of it? What was wrong with them?

The last time things felt right, Lift thought, I was with her. Before she got sick. And I was her little girl.

If she saw me now, she wouldn’t recognize me.

A few strange spren, like faces mocking her, faded in nearby. Wyndle slowly wrapped his vines around her. Gentle, like an embrace. Though others could barely feel the touch of their spren, Wyndle felt solid to her. He wasn’t warm. But … it was comforting