⚠ <i>For my Lady, as I promised:⚠ </i>
The scene is seen through Capt. Pura Boots’s eyes, but it is not only seen. It is heard through her, smelled through her, her thoughts and feelings are as much a part of the record as the words and actions she witnessed:
Rosalinde, her sword on her back, dressed in armor grown from roses and her hair tied back away from her face, stands impossibly beautiful. She looks adamant about something difficult. Pura loves her in a way that makes her forget herself.
Pura’s voice: “I cannay do that, Rose, not even for you. You oughtn’t talk so, besides; your armies will win this war for you, you will see.” The words are more prayer than statement.
Rosalinde becomes suddenly, startlingly more beautiful. Not one hair on her head changes place, but she becomes all at once the most terrible thing that Pura has ever seen. When she speaks, her voice carves out a place in Pura’s soul for her words to rest in forever. “I chose you for this burden because I know you are fit to carry it. The Oracles may ⚠ <i>detest⚠ </i> me but they cannot ⚠ <i>deceive⚠ </i> me. If you do not resign yourself to the letter of the tale, you shall be slain by it, and all hope for the Rose Banner will die with you. When I am gone, my mother will know my friends by Lysander’s trust. I charge you now to be my public betrayer and my secret servant. You may honor your oath only by the seeming of breaking it. Be my agent in my father’s stolen house, and when the time is right, be my reminder of who I am.”
The vision closes with Pura’s sense of overwhelming grief and final acceptance.
Seeing herself as she once was awakens something in Rosalinde. Her memory is still constrained, but she knows again the purpose she had before she was born into the World of Fixed Shape. She can feel old feelings – just how much she loved and trusted her father, Lysander, Pura and Thadeus. Just how much she hated Mab. Just how confident she felt in her role as the righteous heir and the star-crossed love. It doesn’t give her any new ⚠ <i>facts⚠ </i>, but it does provide a sort of new ⚠ <i>understanding⚠ </i>.
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