by O. Rose
They gave up their futures, hopes, and dreams. They kept living with nowhere to go and nothing to do and she was at the center of their lives.
“Did they make me to give themselves purpose?”
They didn’t think of it like that, but it made sense to her. She was supposed to be theirs to keep, to raise. They wanted to see her future, something they didn’t have, but didn’t realize they’d doomed her to a similar fate.
She wasn’t the same as them and that was why she could understand more, do more. She’d died. She knew the value of life. It also stood to reason that because her own immortality was pushed on her, not asked for, that made a difference.
“Still theory,” she grumbled. Would she ever know the truth? She could think about it forever and never be sure.
Or she could be afraid to know.
What would she find out if she looked into the mirrors? If she put the crown back on her head despite not knowing what would come with it?
She didn’t know what it meant!
If the brothers gave up their destinies, would she be accepting one?
∞
“I’ve got a school reunion,” Olwen announced at the breakfast table. “On Friday.”
Three children now, one older but no less cherished. In all of a day the choice to adopt again was made, it wasn’t hard and she was sick at the thought of others passing it over. How many beds did she sleep in? How many hopeless summers did she spend?
No more.
The single thing Olwen found purpose in was this and that was a stretch. She knew her feelings weren’t the same as those of others, the strength of emotion wasn’t in her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try. She knew what she wanted to do for them and she did it. Her motivation wasn’t so pure, but that didn’t make it wrong.
It was the fate she gave herself. Watching people come and go. What she’d learned to do was help the helpless when possible, to give a stable, safe home to children.
Really, she was tired of seeing humans ruin their own lives; sending a few out with a better moral backing couldn’t hurt.
“It’s just for the weekend, I’ll be back by Sunday at the latest, but you’ll be going to bed without me. I’ll leave pizza money-”
“Pizza!” a two child chorus sang, the elder third smiled at the thought.
“Chances are I’ll return sooner rather than later and if I do you’d better be asleep when I get back!” She wasn’t counting on that; they may well be found sleeping in front of the television. In any case, one Friday late-night wouldn’t harm them and this was a chance to help them understand a benefit of bringing education home.
She’d made that choice, but the biggest hurdle wasn’t the withdrawal paperwork, it was the children.
She shook her head at the thought. She knew where the younger ones anxieties would lay and the older was already on board.
Olwen was looking forward to a little something new for once.
Chapter Thirty
Jade was noticing things about her mother; it was easy to call her that. The adoption wasn’t final, but court filings didn’t matter to her.
Still, what she noticed was strange. Small things that reminded her of Emma, the girl she’d once known. A distant expression, words of understanding that lacked inflection. There was something different about Olwen Meyer. The woman was nothing but caring, unlike anyone she’d ever met before, but there was something.
Olwen was happy to be called ‘Mom’, Jade knew that, yet she could feel a difference. There was no pinpointing it. It wasn’t that it concerned her, she was more curious than anything.
She’d noticed there was a basement that morning. A door she didn’t see before was beneath the stairs, locked when she tried the knob. The outside of the house did show telltale cellar windows, yet she’d never thought of them before.
Jade was a good student, her affinity for fire wasn’t rare, but not as popular as glass either. Fire burned, shown bright in darkness. It could be powerful and wild and, if wielded by the right person, could bring secrets to light.
Yet she’d never noticed the basement.
“I didn’t know you could see the door.”
Jade jumped, hand flying to her chest where her heart pounded.
Olwen patted her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you. Ella and Jax haven’t noticed it and I need to ask you not to try to go down there. I won’t stop you, if you really must, but I believe it’s better if you don’t.”
Jade nodded and asked, “Why?”
“It’s not that there’s anything dangerous down there, well, one thing possibly, but it’s opening a can of worms. If you do want to know, try to wait until I’m back. We can talk about it then if you want to.”
Jade was left to stare at the door; first Holly, now this?
What was going on?
∞
For Holly, days slid by and she couldn’t find her bearings. Each morning brought a renewed pressure, inborn, to lower the crown atop her head. She held it daily, debating, yet everyday she put it back on the mannequin, afraid of what it might do.
As the Assembly loomed she fought to put fear aside. She knew it would be a turning point and despite Levi saying it was better to wait, she didn’t think so. She had to know.
But first, there was something else to learn.
Holly called for Hazel, who’d been largely absent and explained she was busy examining the worldscapes outside the windows.
She took a different form, gone was fey replaced by blond hair and blue eyes. A living doll in all perfection. Hazel gave no explanation for the change and Levi said it happened often, “She’s easily bored.”
That wasn’t what Holly needed to know, though. Hazel’s habits, while interesting, wouldn’t be helpful at the moment. What she wanted to do was learn how to behave; it was a serious source of anxiety. The Assembly was full of immortals and her arrival would spur gossip, but it would be far worse if she committed a faux pas.
“Is there anyway for me to see what could have been? I mean, like,” Holly searched for the right explanation. “If I’d always known? If I was born and they had me from the start? Can I see that?”
Hazel frowned. “Hm, I mean, I can show you just about anything and I do know what they intended, but are you asking for a best or worst case scenario?”
“Best!” she exclaimed. “I want to see what I could have been like. If I see that I can at least base my behavior on it.”
Hazel nodded. “I understand what you’re asking, but I don’t think you understand what you’re asking. That’s an impossible future, one that didn’t happen. I can do it, but it’s been done before with bad results. It’s easy for people to fixate on what they can’t have, let alone seeing something that might have been, but never will.” She placed her hands on Holly’s shoulders. “Can you handle that? Will you keep wanting it, even though you can’t have it?”
The younger girl paused in thought. Her plan sounded foolproof a moment ago, but she understood Hazel’s concern. It would be easy to obsess over things that could have been, it happened all the time. That kind of thinking ruined relationships daily. To see a future that wouldn’t ever be hers, idealized yet impossible, would she be able to stop herself from wishing for it?
Still, she had to know; otherwise their whole arrangement was worthless. The brothers claimed they would take care of everything and maybe years ago that would have worked, but not now. She was too grown up and even if she stayed by their sides the entire time someone could still attempt to get closer.
“I’ll never forget what you’ve shown me,” she said, choosing her words as she spoke. “But I won’t let myself fixate on it. I know it’s not possible to have that. I’ve learned so much about how I need to guard my own mind and take control of my thoughts and words and actions. I think I’ve accepted the past. Even though I don’t like all of it, it can’t be changed. All I can do is keep moving forward.”
Hazel’s smile was incandesc
ent. “Well, with that you’ll surely be alright, but don’t think it’s so simple. You have to put those words into practice.”
“I know,” Holly said with determination. “So, will you show me? The future that didn’t happen?”
“Yes,” a decisive nod. “I will show you what they wanted, but couldn’t have.”
∞
It was fuzzy, the future that didn’t happen.
They planned to raise her in a house and Hazel would be her mother. On this land, they’d staked a claim but it stood undeveloped wilds. Overgrown and incredible.
Holly wiped away the tears before they could leave tracks.
She would always be royalty.
The future they’d wanted was glorious. One where she was loved by both of them and she loved them in return; a future where they were always, always together. She would never be alone or afraid. She would never suffer illness or poverty.
Even then, something was missing.
The house was different, they were different, but one thing didn’t change and she better understood.
What they gave away to gain life everlasting blurred all they touched. They would never be whole and neither would she.
They couldn’t fix each other because they were all broken.
She could see more, that she was less damaged than they. Dying, despite it’s horrors, gave her something they could never have. She knew the value of life, even if she couldn’t experience it fully. They would never understand.
“Hazel,” she said as she came out of the vision. “I won’t be able to stop the Assembly attendees from talking about me.”
“No? Why not?” Her curiosity was genuine. “Didn’t you want to learn how to keep that from happening?”
She nodded and answered, “Because I’m different. All of them,” she sat up on the couch, “have kept on living. They never died. Even if they feared it once that’s long forgotten. I’ve noticed this before, and I was thinking about it, but Adam and Levi, they’re stuck and the rest must be too.”
“What do you mean?” The blond headed doll blinked in confusion.
“They’ll always live and that takes something away from them. They don’t have dreams for the future, they go along watching and waiting. Some of them lose their minds,” she remembered what Adam told her of serial killers. “It’s hard to describe, but I think they all lack direction and they can’t get it back. People work hard to make tomorrow better for themselves, or someone else, the immortals don’t do that. Tomorrow doesn’t matter to them.”
Hazel drew a deep breath. “I never thought of it that way,” she admitted. “Then again, I’m not human either. I see what you mean, but it doesn’t have much impact on me,” she shrugged and bounced away, toward the door. “It’s good if you learned something though.”
With Hazel’s disappearance Holly was left alone.
Thinking of what they didn’t have was sad and difficult to accept. This was a thing she could do nothing about. A decision she didn’t get to make and they gave up their right; sold the future for an unending present.
No matter how much she knew it wouldn’t change what they’d done and there she was, afraid to take the step that would make change for herself.
“Fear,” she said as she stood and moved to the door. “Is normal.” That was true. Fear was normal. It was normal to be afraid of the future. That was a big difference between herself and them; they had no feelings about what would come, not in that respect. They worried for her, but not themselves.
She was led into her bedroom; the crown glinted in sunlight and the dress hung light.
“I need to know,” she stepped up to the mannequin, shaking. “I can’t wait any longer.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Every step Holly took was a struggle with herself. She’d not put on the crown yet and instead was forcing her feet to walk into the forest once more, to the crystal grove where the mirror contraption still stood.
She could see herself within, but nothing about her was remarkable. She looked a frightened child, holding onto the last normal thing in her world. Wearing the crown would give that away.
If it weren’t for the brothers, for the sense of duty she felt toward them, she wouldn’t have gone back to the woods at all. She knew they couldn’t help themselves, they didn’t know anything was wrong. They didn’t realize they were missing parts of life, never to gain them back. She had things they lacked, but she couldn’t make any progress unless she was willing to step up.
That required bravery, something she never needed before. Everyday life was mundane at best and the dread of dying again had nothing to do with being brave; in fact, she was a coward about that. Resigned. She’d never considered fighting back, not since her first life.
Her four year-old self was bold.
Could she reclaim that? The fearless impulsivity of childhood, that was what she wanted. No worry for what came next, living in the moment.
Holly, channeling her inner child, didn’t stop to think as she jammed the crown on her head, eyes shut tight.
She felt nothing, no rush of power or sparking of magic, and opened her eyes.
Nothing felt different, but everything looked different. She was no longer in the same wooded area, dark as the house was before she made the ceiling glass. She stood in the center of a bright, grassy round, before her was the mirror and it no longer reflected what was around her, but showed the forest of Levi’s house instead.
The flora grew tall here, weeds she thought, and trees were tall and spindly. The sunlight here was muted.
“Where is this?” she asked aloud.
“Somewhere you weren’t before.”
Holly flew around to see who spoke. Saw the old woman she’d recalled from her first life, when she visited her mother’s grave. Just as she remembered her.
“Did you think you were the only one left? I suppose you are, in a way. This will be the only time you come here.”
“Well, what are you doing here?” Holly asked. “And why am I here?”
“This is where our people go upon death, you are here for a confidential briefing. Some of the things you learn, you won’t be able to talk about. You’ll be allowed to act. Or not. That will be your choice.”
Holly wondered, in vague wandering fashion, at how she could accept the woman’s words so easily. But, what gain was there in questioning?
“There is so much more to do in this world than you know, far more than they know. You’ve caught an edge they never noticed.”
“What do you know about them?” she asked quickly. “And how? How am I even here right now?!”
A sympathetic expression. “You have nothing to gain with questions, didn’t you just realize that?”
It was true and Holly stood silent.
“This is bigger than you know and that can’t be explained, you must experience. I will tell you what I can and the rest you will have to find out in time. Those brothers, they’ve given you a foundation, a strong one. They aren’t wrong to hang onto the importance of spoken charms and curses and you learned of the power your thoughts contain. However, there is more to the world than that. Not for the bulk of humanity, but the ones who traded that to live forever could find it. The people you were born to, our people, knew things that others would call secret. What they knew was innocence of belief.”
“I don’t understand,” Holly spoke frankly. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“Something else I can’t explain to you, you’ll have to find it on your own, but consider what could be and what is. What you remember of the life you lived and the people of the island and ways people live around you now. Understand the island peoples abilities were not learned, but as natural as breathing. It had nothing to do with the environment or special books.”
“Innocence? You said ‘innocence of belief’. What was innocent about the way I was treated like a disease? All the things you say you knew, that our people knew, and-!”
“We sho
uld have had the decency to be different, but even our people lacked and don’t be mistaken, perfection will never be achieved. There will always be something in the way, some irrationality, because that world is broken and it cannot be fixed by the broken ones living within it. What was done to you, the way you were treated, can never be undone, as it can’t be changed for hundreds of thousands, millions of other souls.
“I am sorry to interrupt you, but you must understand this. No matter how hard you try you will never reach that lofty goal of perfection, that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to better yourself, but many have wasted their lives in the pursuit of changing those around them. You will never force someone to change, they must make that determination for themselves. You came to this place looking for a way to change them, but you will not find it.
“Instead, I will offer you a way to change yourself.”
That put Holly on alert. The one thing she’d realized the brothers lacked was the ability to change. She’d thought herself mostly incapable, too.
“You’ve forgotten many things because, like others before, you held onto the troubled past, lost the luminosity of other lives.”
“Other lives?” Holly questioned. “I remember all of them! Dying, in all of them!”
“Believing you know everything is another failure of humans. You do not remember all of them, as no one remembers all the moments of their one life. In fact, all that you remember is not of you alone. They led to you. What you will see led to you. You are truly one-of-a-kind, like everyone else, but your destiny is different. I told you that this is a place to which you will never return. That piece of your fate was decided at conception, the rest of it is up to you.”
“What is? What about them, Levi and Adam?”
“They sealed their own fates as well, they will never come here or anywhere like it.” The woman paused, gazed deeply into Holly’s eyes and said, “You fear a destiny of emptiness. In a way they will experience that, it is what they chose, but don’t be mistaken he is not cruel.”
