“That’s it?” Cairn narrowed her eyes. “You want me to just lay back on a sofa and spill my guts to you.”
Dr. Themis shook her head and rose from her chair. “I prefer more unconventional forms of therapy.” She beckoned toward the door.
Cairn reluctantly followed the doctor down the hall and into a windowless, unfurnished room. The walls consisted of rice paper panels over cherry wood frames. Faded mats covered every inch of the floor. A series of glowing lanterns provided the room’s only light.
“What is this?” Cairn asked.
“The dojo.” Dr. Themis shut the door behind them. “And the site of your rebirth.”
The hairs on the nape of Cairn’s neck bristled. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Dr. Themis produced a remote from her pocket and pressed a button. Projectors hidden in the ceiling cast a flickering image onto all four walls, a home movie shot on a handheld camcorder. The timestamp in the corner of the grainy image was dated sixteen years ago. A little girl with dark hair and a puffy fur-lined coat played along a rocky beach. The tide lapped against the shore, causing the child, no older than two, to shriek with glee every time a jet of cold water sprayed in her direction.
If Cairn had any doubts that she was watching a video of herself, they evaporated the moment she heard her mother’s carefree laughter.
Sure enough, the camera operator—her father—panned over to Ahna, elegant and beautiful as Cairn remembered, though much younger. Ahna cupped a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter, the skin by her eyes crinkling with joy as she watched her daughter frolic with the kind of amazed innocence you never get back.
Her parents had told her about this trip to Canada, the first time they took her to visit her grandparents in the small seaside community where Ahna was born.
Cairn, who had been transfixed, finally broke the spell, desperate to be free of this deceivingly happy memory and all the pain it brought rushing back. “Stop this,” she ordered quietly, then again more assertively, “Stop this!”
Dr. Themis ignored her pleas. The video continued to play on all four walls, an inescapable 360-degree spectacle of agony. “The girl who dove into the Atlantic to save her mother never resurfaced,” the doctor said. “She’s still down there in her own personal underworld, trapped within the papier-mâché fortress she constructed around herself.”
“Shut up!” Cairn frantically groped the walls, searching for the exit, but the door was a panel identical to the others, and she had gotten all turned around since the movie started. “Let me out, you psycho!”
Dr. Themis stripped off her blazer and rolled up her shirt sleeves, revealing ropy, taut forearms. “We’re going to break down the barricades you’ve used to push away your loved ones, cast off the anchors that have been dragging you down. I’m here to free you—but first I’m going to have to break you. Emotionally. Spiritually. Physically.” She began to circle Cairn. Despite her blindness, she demonstrated an uncanny sense of her surroundings. “You see, when your brain detects danger and shifts into fight-or-flight mode, you lose the concentration it takes to prop up your flimsy emotional defenses. Pain is the quickest path to enlightenment.”
“This is insane.” Cairn backed away. “This is kidnapping. I’m not playing your twisted therapist games.”
“You can stop this at any point,” Themis said. “All you have to do is answer one question: why are you so angry with your mother?”
“Fuck you,” Cairn spat.
Themis rolled her shoulders and cricked her neck. “Then let’s begin.”
The blind woman darted forward like a viper, so quick Cairn barely raised her arms to defend herself. With shocking, bestial strength, Themis seized Cairn by the lapel and hurled her against the wall. Cairn collided with one of the cherrywood beams. Pain lanced up her spine like lightning.
She dropped to the mats, too stunned to speak. The crazy woman had attacked her.
Dr. Themis loomed over her, face as sedate as ever, pewter irises peering unseeingly down at her. “Why are you so angry with your mother?” she asked again.
“Go to hell,” Cairn wheezed.
“I have,” Themis replied. She grabbed a handful of Cairn’s hair and wrenched her back up to her feet. Cairn screamed and tried to claw free, but Themis once again hoisted and threw her.
Cairn tumbled across the mats and struck the ground chin-first. She tasted blood where her teeth bit the inside of her lip.
“Why are you so angry with your mother?” Themis asked.
Never in her lifetime had Cairn thought she would attack a blind woman, but fury took the wheel. She clambered to her feet and charged at Dr. Themis, determined to tackle her to the ground.
At the last moment, Themis pivoted. She seized Cairn by both shoulders, wrapped a leg behind her, and viciously cast her to the mats.
Before Cairn could recover this time, the doctor knelt on her spine and wrenched Cairn’s arm back. “Why are you so angry with your mother?”
As Cairn lay there, struggling to breathe under Themis’s weight, her cheek pressed into the mat, her elbow gradually being hyperextended, she stared forlornly through watery eyes at the projection of her mother smiling ear to ear, and that was the moment she shattered.
“Why are you so angry with your—?”
“Because she was my best friend,” Cairn screamed, “and she should have told me she was hurting that bad!” The second the words left her, she collapsed into tears. A sob escaped her in a nearly soundless wheeze.
Dr. Themis relaxed the tension on her arm. “And why are you so angry with yourself?”
“Because I was her best friend,” Cairn hiccuped between sobs, “and she shouldn’t have had to tell me.”
The weight came off her back. Cairn remained sprawled on her stomach, quaking.
Mercifully, Themis powered down the home movie. Ahna’s laughter still echoed in Cairn’s ears even after the walls went dark.
“I have just one more question,” Themis said. “How long have you known that your mother was the Inuit goddess known as Sedna?”
Cairn instantly stopped crying. As far as she’d known, her mother’s true identity was a closely guarded secret known only to a handful of people: her father, her grandparents, Delphine, and herself. Many gods had publicly revealed their identities in the past few years, but not Ahna.
But Cairn was exhausted, and her mother no longer needed protection, so what was the use in playing dumb with this strange, omniscient woman? “Two years,” Cairn said. She imagined that day at the aquarium, watching in awe as Ahna pressed a hand to the tank and worked her magic. The way the fish had formed into rows, staring sentiently through the glass at her mother as they awaited further instruction. “I’m surprised my mother even trusted her shrink with the truth.”
Themis had opened the dojo door—a different one that led directly out into the backyard. As she lingered in the doorframe, the early morning sunlight backlit her dramatically. “Your mother trusted me because, until her death, she had been working for me for twenty years,” Themis said. “And because I’m a god, too.”
The Arboretum