Silent Souls

They say that thieves are quiet. That the soles of their shoes are soundless, that they are soft as candle-smoke at midnight. You don't hear them, see them, know them – though perhaps their actions will be felt. Thieves are quiet, then?

Gen wasn’t quiet, not in a soft, conniving way. He was loud and brash and full of colour, even if he was grey as a rat when they took him from prison. Gen was so loud, they constantly had to warn him to silence. Gen spoke with his mouth full, threw curses at everyone, and shouted up a storm when things didn’t go his way.

But he was quiet when it mattered, and he was quiet when he stole my heart. I picked him up in the library, an innocent and unassuming cover, a book found by chance between a hundred others. He was quiet when his fingers closed around my pulse and gripped it tightly. He never put it down again, though the years passed and changed me under his grasp. They didn’t alter him, but he was different every time I met him, a shapeshifter that was never the same thing twice, and yet stayed as constant as the sun.

Gen was the imperfect thief, and the more imperfect king, and he taught me that imperfection is good. Loud and lively, energetic and enigmatic, and relentless in the face of disability and death. He was multifaceted. When I wanted to be flawless and to have everybody love me, he didn’t care, as long as he could protect.

And then Gen lost something so important, his whole sense of self fell away. His retreat into despair and depression changed him, and showed me something that mattered so much more: it takes the broken to heal the world, because only by having your shell cracked do you learn how to make repairs. Only by standing in the shadows do you see the people crumpled there, and then maybe, if you’re lucky, you can carry in a candle.

Gen told me it was okay to be bitter and hurt by the loss of who you were. It was okay to fear judgement, to need space, to show your anger, and to make mistakes. It was okay to be a different person afterwards, rather than fighting to get back to someone you could never be again. It was okay to be untethered by a loss, and to have to remake yourself around that loss, to leave the gap gasping open, rather than trying to fill it with what had been. It was okay to have a scar or two on show, even if you hated them.

You could hate the word loss too, for all its softness and gentility – a sweet sighing of waves that is utterly insufficient for the sharp, gnawing, shattering sensation that comes when something that matters is taken away. Loss sounds quiet and unassuming, slipping into silence easily, calmly, when it should be white-hot sparks and flaring fire.

I needed to hear these things. We all need to hear these things. Those of us who take up the corner spaces, the unwanted stools at the dinner table in between the real seats – but take care that your elbow doesn’t knock against one of the proper diners – we need to know that it is okay. We don’t have to walk in silence. Gen wasn’t quiet in his loss, not in the end. He was damaged and hurt and fuming, and he let people know.

Disability didn’t make Gen quiet, and though it stole from him, it didn’t steal him. It changed what he could do and told him to adapt, so he did. He improvised. He failed sometimes, and improvised more. Imperfect still, having to learn anew, having to make do in a world set up for others to succeed. Having to reteach silence to his boot soles, train new muscles to take over old tasks, rebuild himself from the splinters that had been left. He almost lost, many times.

He did lose, repeatedly. His feet slipped on the parapets, and he failed to block a few sword strokes. He was frustrated, he was embarrassed, and he was irrepressible. I loved broken Gen more than I had ever loved him whole and complete. Cracked and bleeding, betrayed by his Gods, but still climbing and still bright with unstoppable sound. So loud he broke the windows to give his grief space to breathe.

Gen wasn’t perfect, and because of that, I let imperfection have me too. I allow it, invite it, acknowledge it in the edges of everything I do, in writing, in speaking, in existing. Dis – ability. The sundering, the awayness, the reversal of capacity. Alienating word, underscoring every action with inaction, with caveats, with addendums. A litany of “can’t”s and “but”s and limits is held back only by the knowledge that they apply to us all in different ways, implacable restrictions that are sometimes obvious and sometimes not. The ropes on what we can, can’t, can do, giving and pulling, slackening in strange moments, and tightening in others.

And behind them all, Gen, laughing at us, and reminding us that his greatest thefts came after his fall: a queen, three countries, and the immortality of readers’ love. Gen isn’t a quiet thief, or a perfect thief, and his fate will come in a fall – as is the fate of all thieves – but for now, he walks along the parapets, winks, and reminds us all of the fragility and permanence of human imperfection. And I hand him my heart, time after time, and try to remember to laugh with him, so the silence can’t swallow me whole.