Six’s near drowning at the juncture of Parts 4 and 5 marks a sharp shift in her character arc. As she wakes from her near-death experience, she notes, “And the pain, the pain I knew so well from drowning, from dreaming—Was now the pain of awakening” (258). Six drowned repeatedly at Aisling, pressed down into the spring by the abbess’s hands. Now, she barely avoids drowning in her crusade to destroy the Omens, finally pushing back against the hands that once pressed her down. Gillig explores the theme of The Powers of Fate and Free Will through Six’s drowning. While she previously felt that it was her fate to drown for what she thought was the greater good, she realizes that she has free will and can make her own decisions in her life. This shift in her thinking is further signified in Part 5 as she chooses to use her real name again, changing from Six to Sybil, and begins to reclaim her identity.

However, this free will does not come easily to Sybil, who finds herself still yearning for the past, even though it was painful: “‘I wish I was still a girl, made special for dreaming upon the tor.’ For the first time since before I could remember, I cried. It hurt more than drowning” (266). Sybil felt special when she was a Diviner because the abbess told her that she was; realizing that she’s a normal girl forced to drown is hard to reckon with. Sybil notes that her tears hurt more than drowning, specifically, illustrating how breaking free of the Diviner title hurts Sybil as much as the painful act of divination, highlighting how powerful The Influence of Faith can be.

Sybil’s grief is important to her character arc, as she realizes that her new relationships are based in actual love and respect, which is new to her. Sybil loved her fellow Diviners and viewed them as her sisters, but the abbess, though she presented herself as a mother figure, only loved Sybil when she was useful. However, as Sybil grieves her fellow Diviners, she notes, “Neither grief nor fury let go of me, but being tended by Maude and Rory and the gargoyle—even Benji—not simply because I was useful to them, but because they cared for me, tempered some of my sickness” (270). Sybil creates a family of her own in Rory, Maude, the gargoyle, and Benji, and this family treats her with kindness even when she’s feeling at her lowest, modeling the support and love she should have gotten, but never did, from the abbess.

In Part 5, the romance between Sybil and Rory blossoms, and Rory treats Sybil with the love and kindness of a healthy relationship dynamic. In the Chiming Wood, Sybil and Rory’s relationship turns physical, and the intimacy between them helps Sybil heal from her past. As Rory touches her, Sybil thinks, “But whatever my soul was made of was frail. Like birch bark, like gossamer, like the wings of a moth. When Rory brought his lips to my forehead, kissing it with unbearable softness, speaking the language of pain and reprieve into me, that frail little soul began to fortify” (301). Sybil’s use of the imagery of the moth in connection with her soul continues to illustrate her remaining connection to the abbess and Aisling. However, instead of remaining fragile like the wings of a moth, Sybil’s soul becomes stronger, no longer moth-like, demonstrating Sybil’s growing detachment from the abbess.

Sybil takes another key step in her character arc when she removes her shroud and looks at her stone eyes, the manifestation of The High Cost of Power, for the first time that she can remember. When she sees her stone eyes, she assumes that Rory will be disgusted by her, worried that “maybe he c[a]n’t believe, beneath gossamer, that a Diviner and an Omen [a]re not so different” (313). However, Sybil’s stone eyes do not make her an Omen, and Rory is not disgusted by her. Sybil hid from herself for years, afraid of what she would find if she looked in the mirror. In choosing to remove her shroud and face the unknown parts of herself, Sybil can move forward from her past and choose her own future—a future with Rory.