The admonition sharpens Laertes's focus. He has learned swordplay by the same principle--repetition until his muscles remember each position innately, until he can snap into sixte without conscious thought. Banishing the werelight, he imagines it in its purest form, like a single pure note of unvarying pitch. He pictures the link between that note and the spindle, until the note becomes the sound that the spindle makes as it winds spring and summer into light. "Lux," he says. The light of it is cool, clear.

"Lux," again: the same note, the same pitch, the same image of the spindle winding up. It comes more swiftly, this time. Still not easy, and a long way from instinctive, but his heart thrills to feel the same cold, clear light. The act can be repeated. It isn't a fluke; it isn't a miracle. It's an act of will.

"Lux." The werelight illuminates his smile, the shattering gladness of it.