The Letter Left at the Harbormaster’s Office

Brother, if you’re reading this, it means you came to the Harbourmaster’s Office asking after me, and they gave you this letter instead of telling you I sailed on the third day of Harvestmonth.

I cannot tell you this in your face, so I am telling it to a piece of paper that will rest in an office until you think to look for me there. This is cowardly. I know it is cowardly. I am doing it anyway.

Three years ago I came to this city because you said it was a place where if you entered a thing into the record, it stayed entered. You said the Archive holds what matters. You said I could trust a ledger more than a voice. You said there was safety in writing. I believed you, and I stayed because of that belief.

This week I understood that I was wrong about what safety means. The city I came to find does not exist anymore — or it never existed, and I simply did not yet know it. The city that actually stands here is different. It holds its truths in the margins. It records what it needs to keep and forgets what is stronger for being forgotten. It has learned that the page is less powerful than the silence, and the silence is less powerful than the choice to write anyway, knowing.

You will come looking for me because you believed what I believed. You will think I have abandoned the safety we both came searching for. I am abandoning it. But I am not abandoning you. I am leaving because I cannot watch you discover what I have discovered — that the page does not hold you. No page holds anyone. You hold yourself, and the page is just the mark you leave behind to say you were here.

I have booked passage to Serevan. I am taking with me the weaving frame you gave me, and the letters from Grandmother that you said were worth more than the Guild’s own records. Those letters are worth more because no one will check them against a ledger. They will matter forever because they matter only to us.

The Harbourmaster can tell you the sailing day. Come to the harbor if you want to see me before I leave. I have not decided whether I want you to come. I will know when I see you standing on the dock.

Yours — whether you believe it or not, Lysa Kavin