Siege and Storm

As she recovers from her nichevo’ya bite, Alina slips in and out of dreams. She sees herself in childhood, riding in a cart that passes a “woman [who] trudges along, head bent, a block of salt strapped to her back” (25), symbolizing the heavy burden of Alina’s powers.

Each time the dream shifts, its symbolic message alters. In one variant, the woman “struggling against the weight of the salt block has [Alina’s] face” (26), while Baghra, the Darkling’s mother, cryptically tells Alina that while the “ox feels the yoke,” she should be grateful a bird doesn’t feel the weight of its own wings (26). This dream is about the Darkling, Morozova’s collar, and how Alina should use her new strength: Will she be weighed down by her power or use it to fly?

In the last incarnation of the dream, the “salt slips from [her] shoulders” (27), and, to her surprise, Alina becomes “the black shape of a girl, borne high by her own unfurling wings” (28)—a premonition of her eventual harnessing the darker side of magic. These shifting dreams show that Alina must stop looking at her power as something abhorrent but rather as a tool for Ravka’s freedom.