by O. Rose
She gulped. “He didn’t tell me everything.”
“What did he leave out?” A gentle, coaxing tone.
It took her a moment to answer,“He has a brother. A twin, identical.”
Olwen was nothing short of shocked. “He what? I will admit I know little about him, not even his name, but he didn’t say a word? Nothing? No hint?” Holly’s shaking head was met with an exasperated sigh. “How many times have I told him to be more open, and I meant only in a general sense! And now when it truly mattered,” she passed a hand over her face. “Well, explain the rest. It can’t be more shocking than that.” She noticed the tome. “Tell me of that book. Where did you get it?”
Holly took in a calming breath. “It’s from the island I came from. I took it on a whim. I was with him, he brought me there when I wanted to go.”
When her pause hung on the air Olwen added, “He can be generous. For all his many, many faults he does care.”
“Hm,” a short nod and Holly scooted to the edge of the cushion. “But he didn’t tell me anything! Not even when his brother was coming to us. I felt something getting closer, but I didn’t know what it was, didn’t ask either.”
“He should have told you,” the older woman said. “Why would you ask?”
“Right?” The confirmation eased her mind. “I don’t know anything about anything. Why can’t he tell me things? I don’t even know what this book is.” She looked to her lap sadly. “I’ve never known anything, even less than I thought.”
She’d gotten lost in her thoughts when Olwen sat beside her. “If there’s one thing he’s told you, I know it will be about words. About speaking and the importance of what you say. He’s said that to you, hasn’t he?”
A nod.
“Then tell me, what kinds of things have you been saying to yourself? About you, about him, about your life. What have you been saying?”
“Nothing really good, I guess. Neutral.”
“It’s easier to be negative, to expect the worst or to anticipate something less than wondrous. We don’t want to get our hopes up,” Olwen affirmed. “But take what he’s said seriously. It’s one of the reasons he keeps all those secrets. He’s being careful with you and he’s been alone for a long time. It’ll be hard for him to start speaking and it’s hard for you, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think I’ve talked this much in my life,” she revealed.
“This is a good exercise then,” Olwen stood. “And we shouldn’t push it,” her hand came to rest atop Holly’s head. “You can stay for a while, let him miss you. I’ll contact him so he doesn’t worry too much, but think about what I said, about your words. About him and why he might stay quiet, alright? Try to understand him a little, if you can.” She rolled her eyes, “I have a hard time with it,” and left Holly to her thinking.
She did take Olwen’s insight to heart. When it came to Levi she didn’t know much, but she did have a few hints to his character.
Even when he was unhappy, on the day she met Olwen, he still noticed the shoes she liked. He copied them for her, a gift. He wasn’t forthcoming when it came to information, but he warned her to be careful, tried to explain things and didn’t grow impatient when she couldn’t understand.
He wasn’t a bad person, but she didn’t know what it all meant. He and his brother created a companion, a third for their company of two. Did that mean she owed them her life? If not for them she wouldn’t have existed at all; the queen was not destined to be a mother!
That brought her back to another realization, the one that she wasn’t real. It might have been a simplification, but she wasn’t supposed to Be. By the natural order of things there would never have been a princess, the civilization would have gone on, and long before any of that the two brothers would have passed away.
It was all unnatural and she felt sure there were consequences. She’d faced many already and maybe the brothers had, too.
Her mind was stuck though, stuck on a refrain. She hadn’t asked for any of this. She hadn’t asked to be born or to be wanted by them. She hadn’t asked to see otherworldly inhabitants most people had no idea existed, things others saw differently and accepted as benign.
Yet, that didn’t make her so different from everyone else. How many people faced situations they didn’t want any part of? In the end, her position was no different. Like all the rest she had to react and make her choices.
She’d run from him, from them. Decided she couldn’t handle what was in front of her and fled.
Holly’s sigh was long as she bent forward and rested her head on her hands. A cowardly decision.
“...what kinds of things have you been saying to yourself? About you, about him, about your life.”
She was always thinking about how difficult her life was, about the way she could never fit within society. When it came to Levi she was in awe of him, but she didn’t know him and she hadn’t really tried to learn more. She could have asked questions, yet hadn’t so far. Everything remained within her mind and that was cause for berating; telling herself she was stupid and too timid.
The words she spoke to herself weren’t uplifting to say the least. Was she sabotaging herself?
The answer was instinctual. Yes. She’d placed herself on a path and stayed there. She was forever the wallflower, fading into the background; she’d decided to give up before she even started.
She didn’t decide to be born. She didn’t decide to die. She didn’t decide to meet Levi or his brother.
But, she still had decisions to make and she was tired of letting the world spin on without participating. She’d always had the option of making a move, she’d just never done it. It was easier to feel sorry for herself.
Holly came back to the fundamental question then, who was she? She was more than a girl who made people nervous, she was more than the beings she saw on the streets. There was more to her than those things; she had an identity, multifaceted, and she could embrace it, but she had to choose to.
A princess born of death. The last of a lost civilization. A person who should have respect for life because she’d lost hers more than once.
Why was it that she’d never thought of herself that way before? Why was it so easy to dismiss the unique and wish to blend in? Even in that moment, part of her wanted to push back and try again, try to be like everyone else.
Yet, that didn’t work. She knew it didn’t. It never had and it never would.
It was time to try something different.
Holly decided to try being herself.
Without excuses, without worries, without hiding she would finally live.
Chapter Seventeen
The brothers stood in silence for a long moment, as the glowing glyphs faded and the entrance in the ground shuddered to a close. Listening for her return.
Levi was the one to break it. “Go back to your companion. Did you leave her without a word?” He turned without waiting for an answer, but Adam followed.
“I did not. She knows of you, of course. She knows everything. I never lied to her or kept parts of this life hidden. What else did you fail to tell Holly, brother? Did you tell her that we never knew what would happen? That she was born with only one purpose?”
His lack of response spoke volumes.
“You are the secret keeper, Levi, not I. I’ll admit I have my own faults, but hiding truths is not one of them.”
“No, you speak even things you should keep to yourself.” Bitter. How many times had he caused problems with his bragging?
“In any case,” Adam dashed ahead and forced Levi to stop. “What do we do with her now?” Dark eyes shone brightly, excitement crept into his voice. He was quick to forget offenses. “Will we travel with her?”
“Oh?” An eyebrow raised. “What is this ‘we’? I was the one offered in a marriage that was never dissolved.”
Irritation bloomed, “I thought we would share her.”
“Perhaps many years ago that would have been possible. Since then
, you killed her people and made known very strongly the differences between us. And, if you ever thought I would play a game like that than you were sorely mistaken.”
“It wouldn’t be a game, brother, and not without her consent!”
“Then you may try to gain her consent because I have no interest in that.” His tone took on a rough edge. “I have accepted the fate we brought on ourselves.”
“What fate is that?” Once more danger crept into his eyes, it was a look Levi’d seen on his brother many times before.
“The fate of never dying, brother. The fate of forever living. Of growing tired and never resting. Of being rejected or watching those who did not reject die.”
“She will not die again,” Adam spoke harshly.
“But she may have rejected,” he was quietly insistent. “Even if she’d never died she may have done it. You are too optimistic.”
“And you are too pessimistic! She said she would return and you of all people should know how strong a pledge is.”
Levi didn’t deny it, but even if she came back it could be to deliver the final blow. “My pessimism is realistic. The truth is there was never a guarantee she would accept us, either or one. Why would she thank us? For giving her a curse?”
“That is a difference between you and I,” Adam stepped forward. “I don’t believe it is a curse. Like all things there are negatives, however we have time for everything and because of us so does she.”
Levi was shaking his head before his brother finished speaking. “Time to experience and then grow bored. Time to realize that death makes life worth living and then to realize she can never get out of this game we play. We can run for awhile, spend decades in a dark house and then emerge to see where the world has gone, but we can never truly participate. There’s too much at risk, exposure and then what? They all want to live forever, then they want to die, then they can’t and they despair for what they threw away.” He spat the prediction at the ground. “That is what we gave her! But she did not throw it away herself,” his voice dropped, seethed with ire and he grabbed his brother by the collar of his t-shirt. Balled the fabric up and pulled him close. “We did it for her.”
∞
Olwen set aside her scrying bowl, one made of crystal and full of natural spring water. It made for an easier connection and for all she could do, this would take a lot out of her. Potions to change one thing to another? Simple enough. Anything that required individual power? Not so effortless.
She wasn’t strong that way, few were. Holly’s unexpected arrival would require more explanation in days to come because it was clear the girl suffered no ill effects and had no concept of the power, the talent, she displayed.
There were many things Olwen didn’t know and she’d long ago accepted that living, forever, wouldn’t allow her to find all the answers.
Even ones she desperately wanted to find.
She pushed thoughts aside in favor of focusing on a new task. Finding Levi.
Levi.
She’d never called him anything at all! He was ‘him’ or ‘hey, you’! The one who warned her against living beyond natural limits when she was on her deathbed and then allowed her to make the choice that sealed her fate.
She didn’t remember when that was or the specific circumstances surrounding it. Somedays that was hard, not knowing. Wondering where her life began and being aware of things forgotten, memories that could never be recovered. She wanted to know, sometimes, why she was so desperate to keep living.
What was her name? ‘Olwen’ was chosen later and often changed through the years; her fallback during off times when she didn’t feel like being called by something popular.
These days she was mostly ‘Mom’ and that was her favorite. A name with deep meaning and purpose. She craved that.
In the absence of death life easily became drudgery, but days with children were never boring. She could see the fruits of her labor on a daily basis. It was a product of her many years, but she’d largely shed the fear that she wasn’t doing enough, that she might be somehow ruining her children through too much action or too little. In all her days she’d seen outcomes as unique as each child and something she’d needed to learn was to let them make their choices. She would always be a guide, for as long as they needed her, and over the years she’d stepped back into their lives, secretly, when the situation called for it.
It was a blessing to be with them their entire lives, even if they didn’t know she was there, even when they did things that hurt her heart and some of them did.
In the end it was an appreciation for life she found through them, something she’d lost. Appreciation for all people and who they could be.
It was better to focus on that.
With a sigh she considered Levi and Holly. The brother she’d not known he had. Who could they be and would they reach their potentials?
She gazed into the sparkling vessel, set her mind on Levi. Right away she knew she wouldn’t fully reach him, he didn’t want to be found, yet she pushed her thoughts of Holly through. He wouldn’t be able to ignore the girl and he could do as he wished with that knowledge.
As with any person, she couldn’t force her will on him. He would be the one to make choices for himself and Holly would have to make hers.
She sat back, folded her arms across her chest and said, “At least it will be interesting for a while.”
Chapter Eighteen
Charity Holland was going to live forever. It’d been fifteen years and she didn’t look a day over eighteen.
A discarded child, kicked out when a new boyfriend entered her mother’s life and left to the streets. She’d done what she had to do to survive and most of it wasn’t pretty. Sixteen and selling herself, drugs, and anything else she could get her hands on.
That was no fairy-tale life.
When a man came to her, a beautiful man, asking if she wanted to get out of the warehouse and into the world, asking her if she believed in miracles, she said she didn’t, but she would go with him anyway. Two years of the worst darkness she’d ever experienced and she was ready to end it. It didn’t matter what came next, who he was or what he wanted.
He brought her to a world she’d never known existed.
Adam. She was sure that wasn’t his real name, but she didn’t care. She’d been by his side longer than she was at her own mother’s. Counting all the times the woman skipped town for where-the-hell-ever, all the times she was out of it, and they spent maybe a few years together.
There was no love lost.
“How many years?” she murmured, staring out a wall of floor-to-ceiling length windows. From an abandoned warehouse to a high-rise. From stolen sneakers to couture pumps.
She still wasn’t used to it and it was amazing, he was amazing. Everything about his world was amazing, even if he told her hardly anything.
Charity wasn’t one to pry, she’d never wanted anyone digging into her background and she didn’t do it to anyone else, but all those years and she still knew jack about Adam. For a decade she didn’t care at all, then she grew curious. Now he’d disappeared and she wanted to follow, but she didn’t know how to track him.
He could do impossible things and refused to teach her. That was a whole blind spot and daily she longed for more. To be closer to him, to have him open up about things he’d kept secret.
It wasn’t that he told her nothing, she knew he had a brother he’d not seen in many, many years and that to them time was nothing. That they were twins. She knew they both had immense power and that she should never underestimate what they could do.
She knew he offered her immortality for his own purposes, that her role was to fill a gap and act as traveling companion. Or staying companion, wherever his mood took them.
All of the places she never dreamed of seeing, places she didn’t even know existed, and he took her there. She’d seen the aurora borealis and the pyramids. The Great Wall of China. Sakura blossoming in Japan.
Yet thro
ugh all of it she’d never once seen a smile reach his eyes.
Charity was never an affectionate person, anything she pretended to feel was forced for cash and food. It was different with Adam, but her feelings didn’t connect with him. She’d told him, more than once, but she could see it was a burden more than anything else.
She kept hoping one day that would change. Hadn’t he chosen her for a reason? There had to be something more between them.
There had to be.
∞
Adam did not follow his brother when he departed the island to return to the villa. He went back to the standing stone and crossed inside, the energy field was gone with ‘Holly’.
The hopes he’d had for her. The hopes they both had for her.
What would come of that?
He could look back on his actions, his haste to be enraged, but there was no changing it. She knew now that he ended the civilization she hailed from. That he was the reason all their knowledge was lost, never to be regained. He’d tried.
In the years that followed guilt near ruined him and he tried to piece those lives back together, but it couldn’t be done. The dead kept their secrets and with each passing year more was lost. Structures crumbled, papers turned to dust. He stole hoards of things and had them still, hidden in a vault, yet they were unreadable and he continued to keep them in passable condition, but he wondered if it was worth the effort.
At the least he could give her those things; he supposed they were more hers than his.
It was like seeing a ghost. She looked exactly the same and he remembered the foolish ideas in his mind. The romantic future he concocted. Thinking of her with them always and never being lonely again. Passing eternity together.
He’d had no way of knowing what consequences she would face and, as his brother pointed out, never considered them at all.
Recently he’d replaced the dark-haired princess with Charity and with everyday he regretted it more. She was not the one he’d wanted, the one he missed, though he could admit that his longing was for an idealistic dream and not reality.
