Side A – Yasgrid
It was lovely that Kyra thought there was something special in Yasgrid which had allowed her and Nia to swap bodies, but there was a fundamental problem with that idea.
“It can’t have been us,” Yasgrid said, not bothering to hide the sadness in her voice. “I never had any special talent or power. Even if the Darkwood does feel like home, there wasn’t any magic in me that could have brought me here, or reached out to Nia from Frost Harbor.”
“I think she’s right,” Nia said. “My mother made sure Kayelle and I were tutored in and tested for everything we showed any interest in or that could help us later in life. If I’d had any special magical talent I would have found it in one of those classes. I mean, I wanted to have something I could be better at than Kayelle and you can ask her how hard that made me work, but I didn’t really have the knack for most of the stuff I was interested in.”
“Did they ever give you a drum?” Margrada asked, “Because I can’t imagine anyone would have missed how good you are with those.”
“No. I never tried drumming,” Nia said. “It didn’t…well, I didn’t think it was something my mother would let me do. Or, no, she totally would have. It just wouldn’t be something she ever would have done.”
“And you?” Kyra asked. “Did you ever try the kind of quiet, inner weavings and songs that you’ve discovered since you changed places with Nia?”
“That’s not the kind of magic Stonelings work,” Yasgrid said. “Which confirms what I said right? Neither Nia nor I had any chance to practice the sort of craft which would have allowed us to do this. Something else must have been responsible.”
“I’m not sure of that.” Margrada’s lips were pursed in concentration as she worked through an idea which seemed to be outside of Yasgrid’s grasp.
“Could I have run into a broken Trouble?” Nia asked. “Or made one? We know the gods did kinda shoddy work when the put the Darkwood together or there wouldn’t have been Troubles in the first place. Are we sure one couldn’t have been sort of the opposite of what the Darkwood wanted it to be?”
“Interesting idea, but no, I don’t think that’s it,” Margrada said. “The problem is, and Kyra might be able to speak to this, in fact I think she’s probably the best one to speak to it, yeah, okay this is making more sense the more I think about it.”
“Uh, care to share with us non-geniuses?” Nia asked.
“Oh, right, sorry,” Margrada said. “Let me ask you this; if it was some external thing, a trouble, or a spectre like Elshira, or one of our idiot gods, why would they have picked you two? Who, in all the world, would have known each you well enough to understand the scope of your lives and how well you’d fit in each other’s skins?”
Side B – Nia
Who would have known Nia and Yasgrid well enough to know how well they fit together? It was an interesting question, but a better one occurred to Nia.
“Who would have even known me that well?” she asked.
“Or me?” Yasgrid asked.
“You’ve both learned a lot more about yourselves than most people can because most of us never get the kind of perspective on the lives we’ve led and the ones we can live,” Kyra said.
“That’s why I think Kyra is right,” Margrada said. “Leave aside the ‘how’ for a moment and think about the who? There’s really only one answer, right? It had to be the two of you.”
“But we didn’t know any of the things we know now when this happened,” Yasgrid said.
“Your hearts, both your hearts, yearned for something beyond your reach,” Kyra said.
“That’s embarrassingly true in my case,” Nia said.
“Marianne?” Margrada asked.
Nia nodded.
“That wasn’t all that you yearned for though, was it?” Yasgrid asked, leaning forward to follow an idea which she seemed to have caught the tail of at last.
“Nope. I was one big pile of yearning. I wanted a lot of thing. I still want a lot of things,” Nia said and gave Margrada a quick hug.
“And now you’re wanted back,” Margrada said and kissed Nia on the top of the head.
“That’s what it was,” Yasgrid said, blinking in surprise.
“Okay, it’s not fair that you’re all smarter than me,” Nia said.
“What’s my dear Yasgrid is saying is that you two weren’t just joined in yearning for the life the other had. It you’d just wanted what each other possessed, maybe you would have switched and had no further connection. People becoming ‘Trouble-touched’ is hardly unheard of in the Darkwood after all, and who’s to say they can’t remember their pasts because they didn’t live those days in the body they found themselves walking around in.”
“It happens to Shatter Drummers too,” Margrada said. “There are people who have accidents and wind up in Fugue States for years, or even the rest of their lives. I’m not saying they were all body swaps like you two, but we can’t rule out that being what happened to some of them.”
“Wait, okay, oh, I see!” Nia said finally grasping what Yasgrid had seen. “I wanted this life that I have now, but I couldn’t have given my old one to anyone but Yasgrid. It had to be…”
She struggled to find the words that could capture an idea that felt far too big to fit within her.
“It had to be someone who needed the life you were leaving behind. Someone who would take care of it,” Yasgrid said.
“Someone who would love it,” Nia said. “Like I loved it.”
“So, Kyra,” Margrada asked, an amused smile on her face, “there’s a connection between these two which was enough for you to make this happen. A strong one. Maybe even the strongest. Is there any name for that other than love?”