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At first I was bewildered, but I returned my focus to my breath, as she instructed. The physical sensation of it, then the side of it that was not so physical, but more energetic. I felt the energy ebb and flow, the edges of my own awareness, my own core. Like looking into the expansive depths of a dark ocean from the top of a sea cliff. So much beneath that I could not see but could feel. That I knew was there, but hidden. So, so much was hidden. So much darkness. Cold, deep mystery.

“What does it feel like?” Eilith asked.

I exhaled a long breath. “Shadowy, dark, but powerful. Secretive. It’s deep, and I can’t see the bottom. It’s… frightening.”

“Yes, yes. Scary, big, dark. Wild and unexplored. Everyone thinks this at first, that it must be wrong or bad, frightening or deceptive. It feels so large and unruly. ‘Ooh,’ people say, ‘it is so dark and bad, I am so strange and spooky, how could this be right? How could this be good? Nobody else must ever feel this way, there must be something wrong with me.’ But they are incorrect. There’s nothing wrong with them. This is our spirit, our nature. We are nature, you see? You are nature. And because you yourself are nature, are part of all this grand Source, you could not possibly be bad.”

“So there is nothing scary beneath?” I asked.

“Oh yes, there is. Plenty, at first. All the shadows you avoided, all the monsters you hid from. They’re there.” Eilith’s voice was soft, but tinged with excitement. “But there lies your practice, Halja. Get to know this place inside yourself. Make peace with it, make a home there. It is you, at your most energetically simple, most pure. This is the wild part of you that connects with nature, with Source. This is the wellspring of your innate power. What is on your surface is only a single drop ofyour true depths. You must not let the fear stop you from your explorations, from knowing your own nature. Do not be afraid.”

But I was afraid. Intimidated, to say the least. Looking at the depths within me, feeling the power they held, was like walking a familiar path only to find it had suddenly collapsed into the raging sea beneath. Like finding that there was a wild beast lurking beneath my own skin that I had never known, crouched in the dark, waiting to run rampant.

I trusted Eilith in this though, somehow. I wanted to believe her, or at least believe that there was more power in looking, in feeling, in experiencing the truth, than there was in running away. I wanted so badly to feel that there was nothing innately wrong with me, nothing integrally bad inside me after all.

So I waded into the dark.

As I sat and breathed, I was met with a rising tide of emotion. It rose and rose, waves pushing and pulling. It filled my lungs like seawater, threatening to drown me. My breathing quickened, deepened, and suddenly I was crying. Then sobbing. All the pain of leaving my home. All the heartbreak of Sigurd’s rejection, my father’s words, my mother’s passivity. The shame I felt for my eyes, my appearance, my very being. I had been born wrong, born a lie. I felt a deep, helpless, overwhelming sense that I had never and would never fit in, was never meant to be here. My own family wasn’t even mine.

I cried and cried, eyes closed, rocking back and forth. My chest heaved in rattling breaths. It just kept coming: The pain and the sorrow, the nostalgia and grief for a life I could never return to. For I could not unknow the truth, I couldn’t unsee what I had seen. There would be no going back, and so I grieved all that was lost.

Eilith remained quiet as I sobbed. Just a gentle, accepting presence. I felt no judgment from her, no expectations. No, thiswas her expectation of me in this moment. Like she had been waiting for this near maniacal torrent of emotion.

Slowly, slowly, the tears faded. Slowly, my breath began to lengthen and shallow on its own, returning to its usual pace. The rocking stopped, the sobs subsided, and I was left sitting still, empty. I wiped my face on my sleeve, then opened my eyes. Eilith was seated across from me in the circle, a melancholic smile on her face. As if she had been through what I’d just experienced many times.

I felt cleared, like I had purged some poison inside me. Although I also sensed that there was far more where it came from.

I was to practice this way each morning to expand my awareness, my knowing of my own self. At first, I spent my time sitting on the shore of that inner ocean, dipping a toe into the lapping waves. Even that was enough to make me sob most days. But the crying became shorter, visited less and less often.

Despite the painful start, my curiosity and desire to learn overcame my trepidations. Soon I was wading into frigid waters, taking deep, controlled breaths against the cold. Then I was diving in, exploring the depths. And as I explored, I found there was little there to fear. The shadows held only me, only sides of me I had always known but had forgotten, or hidden away intentionally. The monsters I had been afraid to discover greeted me with familiarity after a few visits. Sometimes with an embrace, sometimes with only a passing look and the memory of a hard lesson.

As I advanced, Eilith added another layer to the practice. She taught me severalan fonn, rhythmic repetitions or chants. Blessings, she said they were. Ancient fae calls for peace and wisdom that would help me clear my mind.

I repeated them with my practice, but soon found myself repeating them as I went about my day as well. I enjoyed thecomfort and simplicity they brought to me at any time I called on them. I often said them as I did chores, when I rode Anam through the woods and hills, or while I cooked. They became the backdrop to my inner monologue, sometimes emptying me of thought entirely. At any time, I could use thean fonnto slip beneath the surface and touch the depths. It became my way of keeping my magic, my wildness, within arm’s reach.

With time, those expansive, dark waters became a comfort, a home. Where they had once been unknown and shadowed, now they were healing, concealing, safe.

One morning, as I sat upon my usual rock, drifting peacefully in my inner ocean, Eilith’s footsteps approached. I felt her take a seat on a rock across the circle from me, but did not open my eyes. I waited.

“Have you been looking?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, and smiled.

“And what have you found?”

“Myself, in an ocean. Cold, dim, and steady. Steady, but wild. Untamed. It’s huge, and most of what it contains is hidden far, far beneath the surface. But there is so much there, Eilith. So much I never knew.” I opened my eyes and saw a small smile tug at the corner of her mouth.

“Beautiful,” she said. “All of that ocean is you, Hal. Your own self, as you said. All of that power is yours, all that potential can be accessed, controlled, woven into whatever shape you choose, should you will it. All you have to do is bring it to the surface. Let that power meet the force of nature, let it hold hands with the land, the sea, the realm. Let it connect, and with you as its conduit, its conductor, you will move mountains.”

She sat facing me, her long gray hair blowing with the early spring breeze, an empty bucket next to her feet. My next lesson began.

“The way you use thean fonnI taught you is the same way you’ll use incantations. They’re conscious at first. Intentional, requiring focus. They’ll draw up the power from within you while summoning the magic from outside. Sometimes you will say them just once, for a quick, single response. Other times you will repeat them over and over. Their power will intensify. Eventually, when you begin to master your Sourcery, you can keep one incantation going in the back of your mind, just in the same way you repeat youran fonnas you focus on your work. Then you can add another on top of it, in the forefront of your awareness. Two different spells working at the same time.

“But that is for another day. For now, we start with something simple. Today, we will fill this bucket with water. All you need to do is summon it, and direct it.”

She spoke the incantation to me, ancient Senuan words long lost to our human tongues. I repeated it until it flowed smoothly, and even with the slow speaking of it, I felt the air shimmer around me. Something was ready to answer my call.

Eilith set the bucket in the center of the circle and took a few paces away from it.