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Bloody hell. I feel Daniel’s eyes bounce back and forth between us.
“I’m . . . going to go make something to eat,” he says, backing slowly out of the room. “Come down if you’re hungry?”
Jamie waves at him without looking up. Mara says yes.
I finally, reluctantly take the letter from her. I owe her at least that.
There’s another envelope inside it, addressed to no one. Sealed. I unfold the note and begin to read.
Noah,
Enclosed is a letter from your mother. I managed to find it before your father did. She left it in an old jewelry box she never used, along with her necklace, which you now wear. If you take it off, I will know of your decision.
A.L.
I want to be strong enough not to read it, but I’m not. Of course I’m not.
Noah, my son,
I’m practically crying already. Jesus.
Most parents, when asked why they want to have children, say that they want to raise a child to be happy. To be healthy. To be wanted. To be loved.
That is not why I had you. I want more for you than that.
I want you to topple dictatorships. To end world hunger. To save the whales. To make sure that your great-grandchildren will know what gorillas look like, not because they have seen them behind a moat, playing with dog toys in a zoo, but because they have tracked them in the mountains of Uganda with sweat bees in their eyes and leeches in their socks. You will see children with bellies fat with worms instead of food. Y ou will sit down to meals, only to find that endangered animals are on the menu. Happiness will elude you, and there will be no rest—you will have to fight every day because there is so much injustice and horror to fight against.
But if you don’t fight, you will grow lazy and discontent under the guise of wanting peace. You will acquire money to acquire toys, but the biggest ones will never be big enough. You will fill your mind with trash because the truth is too ugly to look at. And maybe, if you were another child, someone else’s child, maybe that would be all right. But you aren’t. You are mine. You are strong enough and smart enough and you are destined for greatness. You can change the world. So I leave you with these words:
Do not find peace. Find passion. Find something you want to die for more than something you want to live for. If it is your children, then fight not just for your own but for orphans who have no one else. If it is for medicine, then do not just seek out a cure for cancer but search for a cure for AIDS as well. Fight for those who ca
I love you. I believe in you. More than you will ever, ever know.
P.S. when you find someone to fight with, give her or him this.
69
I WATCHED NOAH WALK OUT of the room as he read his letters. I didn’t stop him. He deserved privacy. I owed him that.
I opened my letter instead. As I began to read, I pictured the professor in his office, my mind filling in details from memories that weren’t mine.
Mara,
When I first caught sight of you in Miami, I did not know who you were. I was expecting someone Gifted to walk into the botanica that day, but you? You were quite a surprise.
You have been wondering who I am and what I want from you, but you should have been wondering who you are. I had hoped you would discover yourself on your own; knowledge acquired on your own means that you are responsible for it, no one else. What you know determines what you do and I ca
You do, though, and you have. Your will has cleansed the world of some people it is better off without, and others who have harmed no one, not even you. I will not patronize you by absolving you of responsibility—we are responsible for everything we do and do not do. But I will say that you b elong to a legacy of others who have faced similar chal lenges.
Euhemerus wrote that the gods of ancient myths were simply people with greater abilities than most, deified by those around them. Then came Jung, and we, the Gifted, became archetypes. Normal men became gods. Plain women, monsters. We are none of those things. We are simply people, blessed and cursed.
Our abilities could not be explained by science. But these abilities weren’t without a cost. We harm ourselves. Ignore wisdom. Throw ourselves into danger. Attempt and commit suicide. We have no greater enemies than ourselves. Fo r most of our history we did not know what was wrong with us, or right—why some of us manifested painfully, others without consequence, why some were ignorant of their origins while others relived moments we had never personally experienced. I have spent more than one lifetime trying to answer these questions and many others, and I am not sure whether my answers have done more harm than good. Without my work the boy you call Jude would never have been polluted. But the boy you love, Noah, would also never have been born.
I believe that every person has a responsibility to leave the world a better place than he found it. My particular Gift allows me to draft a vision for that better world—but my curse is that I lack the tools to build it. I have tried and failed to alter the course of history myself, and have learned that my Gift is useless on its own. And so I have found others to help me, your grandmother among them.
Noah was destined for greatness, until you were born. I had hoped that the ma
Noah’s Gift is that he could live forever and help others to as well, but his curse is that he only wants to die. You, Mara, are Gifted with the ability to protect those you love, but only in a way that hurts them and others. You can reward with life, but you must punish to do it.
It has been said that there must be a villain for every hero, a demon for every angel, a monster for every god. Despite what we are, I do not believe this. I have seen the villainous act heroic, and men called heroes act villainous. The ability to heal does not make one good any more than the ability to kill makes one evil. Kill the right people, and you become a hero. Heal the wrong ones, and you become a villain. It is our choices that define us, not our abilities.
Do you know why it is that, even today, women are counseled to scream “fire” instead of “rape”? Because the fun damental truth about humanity is that most people would rather look away.
Whatever your faults—and you have many, Mara, challenges no one else will ever face—you have never looked away. When evil smiles at you, you smile back.
The pendant your grandmother left you represents two symbols of justice—the feather and the sword. Those of us who choose to make a difference in the world have adopted it as a way to recognize one another. Your grandmother wore it. Noah’s mother wore it. Whatever you decide will not be the end for you but a new begi