Through the Glass, Darkly

Sophia stands at the window looking out at the garden, a prisoner of her own imperfections. She watches the world go by, rarely wading into the eddies and tidal pulls which daily living amidst others brings. Isolated in her work, solitary in her sleep, she is an island ... as much as any of us can be.

I have stood here, watching her, for many years. Even before she came to Amber, carried in her father's arms, terrified and in pain, I watched her. Everyone has a polestar in their lives, some ideal they hold to, keep to, believe is sacred. Sophia is mine. If I were to speak of it, it would most likely be called an obsession. Perhaps. She is simply Sophia, and my life is now tangled with hers ... even though to her that fact is wholly unknown.

I first stumbled upon Sophia when she was a child. Her father had been traveling between Shadows fairly regularly, and I was curious as to where he was going. I followed him to a village by a seaside in one of the Golden Circle kingdoms. White huts roofed with blue tiles lined the dusty roadway, and fig trees and melons vines heavy with fruit grew in sheltered gardens - oasis of lush beauty amid the hot dirt and squalor. The ocean met the road at the bottom of the hill, as deep a blue as any gem. The water's sparkling brilliance turned the squalor of the surroundings into something charming, rustic, more agreeable ... less utterly plebe. Children's playful shouts sounded out as some game with rocks and coins commenced, the laughter ringing bright and cheerful in the afternoon air. Their clothing was as plain and well-used as the houses which surrounded them, but no one seemed to mind.

My quarry, Bleys, was around here somewhere, I knew. It was hard to miss the traces of Pattern which followed him everywhere. I had decided to try my luck farther up the road, when I heard a joyful, youthful shout of, "Papa!" Turning around I saw a little girl being swung into the air then held close by the man I had been seeking. Interesting. Who would have thought Bleys would have chosen to have a liaison and progeny in a little backwater such as this? I rescinded the thought when I saw the woman who stepped through the open doorway. To say she was beautiful would have been a misrepresentation -- she was glorious.

Bleys put the girl down, and she was led towards the house by her mother. I saw it then ... that first glimpse of a purity of heart which shines from the eyes, a smile that is filled with unconscious radiance. The child turned back to Bleys, touched his cheek with her small, delicate hand and offered him that genuinely pure smile.

"Sophia, come into the house. It is time for dinner," coaxed her mother.

Sophia. The child was Sophia.

When Bleys left several hours later, I followed him out of the village and back to Amber. He resumed the public part of life and I left him then, the curiosity of what he did with his "off" hours satisfied. I, too, resumed my daily living, but the flash of intensity I saw in the wide brown eyes of the little girl stayed with me. I fell to thinking about her during odd moments of my day -- wondered what the little one was doing, what she was thinking, how she lived. As it turned out, I didn't go back to watch her for several months. I was, in truth, afraid to do so. I'm not a person given to obsessive behavior, and my inability to remove this "Sophia" from my mind was ... disquieting. She was a child, only a child. Nothing more than a child.

In the end, I convinced myself that it would be better to see, to watch, and so get it out of my system. It proved to be an unwise choice.

I came into the habit of spending one day each month watching Sophia's house. Watching her family. Watching her. That was all I would allow myself, one day a month, doling out these visits as an ordinary man trapped on an desert island would dole out fresh water - enough to keep one's spark alive, but not enough to where one would be sated.

The child's family was a rough-and-tumble one. The mother was the local midwife, and from what was said at the local shops and tavern, I gathered that she had been widowed many years back. Now she had a regular man, Bleys, and was happy though his visits were infrequent. They'd had one child, Sophia, and had lost one. The woman also had a daughter and two sons by her first husband. The most notable (not to say best) of these children was the teen-aged daughter, Sara.

Sara possessed her mothers looks, as would Sophia in time, but the comparison stopped there. She seemed to lack conscience. Sara would have been a natural in Amber. She knew she was attractive and wielded it as a weapon. The local boys fetched and carried for this little village empress, and she ate the attention up as if it were candy. The only man she didn't seem to have a hold over was Sophia's father. She never understood why her wiles wouldn't work on him ... if she could have only understood that Bleys was from a place where the game is played every day, and played much more subtly, it may have seemed less of a failure to her.

Of course, she took her thwarted ambitions out on Sophia -- the apple of her father's eye. The brothers stood up for their little sister, but malice always finds a way through defenses. Such is the way in large families where attention is infrequent ... even those not of royal blood.

Many months passed, and I watched. Unseen, unnoticed, I watched my little Sophia, my diamond in the rough. Already I was calling her mine, though she never has been, and most likely never will be "mine". Possessiveness comes in many forms, I have found. Not all of them to be shunned.

I had discovered during my many visits to the village that it had been plagued by thieves for a long while. The exploits of these bandits were daily meat and drink for the local men's conversations, and at the tavern hardly an hour went by without someone bringing up the topic. The thieves would come down from the hills, raiding the village's poultry, livestock and whatever else seemed available at the time. The village was not without it's own defense, however. They had a substance, an acid which would burn through almost anything. It was easily made by the artificers who used it for the purpose of etching elaborate designs on weaponry and other fine metalwork (which was, incidentally, this Shadow's claim-to-fame in the Golden Circle). The acid also worked quite well on flesh, and the horses the bandits rode were fair game. I thought it a waste of good horses, but then, I would.

Late in the afternoon on one winter's day, I was starting to head up the road, thinking about making my way back to Amber. The sun was making a hasty decline into the ocean, masking the world with a pale, purple haze when an alarum was sounded from the opposite direction. Word spread rapidly up the road that the raiders were headed into the village. I decided to stay my return to Amber for the moment and see the excitement. Village fights are often the most amusing things to watch.

Everyone had a job to do, a position to fill, even the little ones. Sophia was standing at the door to her house, a palm frond in hand, at the ready to wave it at the passing horses. Her mother stood behind her with a curved dagger in hand, ready to pull the child to safety if one of the marauders was to head that direction and defend her home.

They did, in fact, ride down the street, but they didn't stop there. They had already been caught earlier by someone wielding the acid, and were riding hell-bent-for-leather out of town, taking their injured party member with them. Everyone around us was focused on the thieves, so only I saw what happened next.

As the horsemen rode by, a cloaked figure stepped out from between the houses and threw a cup of the acid. Only it was not aimed at the riders ... it was thrown at Sophia.

She must have seen something coming at her, for the frond was dropped as she flung up her arm and turned away ... not quickly enough, as it happened. Sophia's screams ripped through the air. Everyone turned to the child, now writhing on the ground, including me and the figure slipped away.

They did their best with Sophia, but even her half-Amber heritage wouldn't stop the acid's alteration of her flesh. Her cries went on and on into that cold night.

And I watched. Perhaps I watched as penance for somehow not stopping the attack. Perhaps I watched because the only pure soul I've ever encountered was being crushed by pain and someone else's malice. Perhaps I watched because I didn't know what else to do. In the end, I did the only thing I could.

Towards the early morning hours I returned to Amber and had a note delivered to Bleys. It was a simple note, an anonymous note saying only that his daughter, Sophia, had been gravely injured, and if he had any desire of seeing her again, he had better go now. To his credit, Bleys did go. And when he returned, he brought Sophia with him.

The healers here were able to stop the physical pain, but the scarring remained ... nor do I think the emotional trauma of the attack, and the subsequent shunning she received here in Amber ever was assuaged. How could it, when even now, when she is in town or in the Castle, people look then quickly turn away? My poor little Sophia took on isolation as an armor, if for no other reason than to avoid the averted eyes. She was all of nine years old when it happened, and childhood was over in a blink of an eye.

She is not so little now. At twenty-nine, she is a very womanly woman, and her wide brown eyes still register the world's wonder, despite the shiny, flat, puckering tissue which covers half of her face and neck. Her reclusive shell is so firmly in place, however, that it is rare for anyone to see her -- save for her companion, Louisa, and her business agent. Her father has mostly been absent, a trend which began near the time of the PatternFall war. I know he communicates with her, but it is rare that he makes an appearance.

And then there is myself.

Sophia views her world through the glass, darkly. I view mine in other ways, it's true, but she remains my polestar. Perhaps someday she will know that I am here. Perhaps. Perhaps not. I live with her so intimately that she may never forgive the intrusion into her privacy, if it becomes known. I have been a witness to her black moods, to her tears, to the oh-so-rare smile which comes when her work is done and done well, and to the consideration she gives to the smallest of flowers in the garden ... a silent witness to her daily standing at the window, watching the world go by while she waits for someone to see past the scars into a soul which still shines.

And still I watch.