In my last two years on the island, I saw very little of the guard I had come to know so well. My time was spent in contemplation and preparation, even though I wasn't sure exactly what I was preparing for.
My conversations with Tong continued to the end. Though even when the trouble had passed I never mentioned the guard. Neither did I mention the monster that had poured out of me over three days, or the fear I had felt, the profound shame at realizing that this monster was something I
had called forward from myself, that it was, in fact something I had created.
In the absence of that hideous being, I felt an emptiness where most of my old feelings of self had lived, and it took all my mental effort to maintain my equilibrium day to day. I felt as if I had been opened up-as a great tide of muddy water flowed out of me, and the organs that had held that force within them were like sponges being slowly drained of what was left.
As that darkness faded over the months that followed, the skies grew brighter.The sun seemed to ring like a golden bell. That was a strange feeling, because I heard no
sound . . . yet I could sense it as if it were ringing nonetheless. One night I had a dream of the old man from long ago. He turned to me and said simply, “It won’t be long now.”
On waking I had the sense that I might soon leave the island. The next day I spoke to Tong and asked him how long he had been sentenced to stay. He said there had been no set length, but that he had been assured at his sentencing that if he ever returned to the City he would be killed.
Smiling I told him that I too had not been told the length of my sentence, then I related my dream to him, and we both chuckled at the thought of our freedom, speaking of what we would do. Tong said he would miss only one thing from the City of Sorrow. It was a cold confection that they
called ice cream. He said it was almost worth risking death for, and we laughed in that giddy way that lost men do.
That night I looked up at the stars above my roof. I heard a deep resonance inside the silence and felt the stars shining into my heart at the same time my heart lifted up to meet them.