Dreamscape

Chapter One - Failed Projects and Unwanted Memories

Every human life is a series of failed projects. Some of them are more successful than others, of course - for life has its twists and turns just like anything else does.

But in the end, they are all failed.

Some disagree, of course. And that is something we all must learn: Someone will always disagree. The disagreements drive us apart, yes, sliding their fingers through the cracks of the world and pushing, but somehow they are also the slippery slender strands that hold the world together, for who would we be without our opinions?

When you exit this world, when you take your final breaths, all anyone will remember are your completed projects.

But your dying thoughts will be of all the things you began and never finished, of all the ruined and broken things you leave behind, of all the ideas that were never used, rosebuds crumpling before they get their chance to bloom.

Of all the things you could’ve done.

But you never did.

All of the lives you could have saved, all of the things you could’ve gone on to do.

All of the sisters you could have stayed with, had only this or that been different, had you chosen to stay home rather than venture out into the rain, had you told her your premonitions.

Maybe then I wouldn’t regret it so much, had I told her everything.

Had I been completely honest, because with a sister, honesty is a promise you shouldn’t have to make, you shouldn’t have to ask.

But in the end, I would have found a way to blame myself. I always do.

It wasn’t anyone else’s fault. It couldn’t have been; I was the one who had dragged her along with me, I was the one who had chosen to continue against my better judgment, I was the one to blame.

I was the one.

And Kalia was gone.

“She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone.”

I repeated this to myself as I stood, chilled by the salty wind, my faded dress billowing around my knees. My mind balanced precariously on the border to insanity, nearly blank, with my back turned on my old life, if my old life could simply be a direction. The events from barely a week before replayed in my head, Kalia’s screams echoing off the walls - the confusion, the hope, the worry. The waves of grief and the smaller ripples of luck that had lapped up on our little island, just the two of us, bringing fortune or misfortune with them.

I steadied myself, leaning against a spindly tree, as I began to sway. Remembering upsetting events caused me to feel dizzy, I reminded myself. So just don’t.

The unnecessary things bother us the most.

And that was behind me, both physically and metaphorically. I took a deep breath, ducked my head. I picked up my bag, my slender fingers curling around the handle, opened the door to the fence with one hand, and soldiered through the jasmine-covered archway.

Our faith in fingers has always confounded me, and I thought about this suddenly immensely important issue right then, trying to fill the looming emptiness in my head. How do we, vaguely intelligent creatures plagued by paranoia and trust issues, trust spindly little sticks attached to balls of flesh with the tasks of carrying things so important to us? But I was only stalling, and I knew it all too well, so I pressed the finger issue out of my brain as I pushed myself forwards.

The speckled Kalian wood pigeons - common birds in these parts, despite how remote Kali was - cooed in the background. Their voices filled the otherwise eerie silence, echoing off desolate stone walls in the distance, but I had never felt so completely and utterly alone.

Chapter Two - The Meaning of a Suitcase and a Lost Black Ribbon

The scent of honey-sweet flowers wafted around me, causing my stomach to turn. The fuchsia blossoms reminded me of the ones Nola Malkhurst would wear, her nose turned up to the sky, peeking out from beneath her Parlinheart hat and silver blond hair. It was not the time to think of Nola, I was well aware, but your mind simply does not obey you when you believe it is better not to think at all.

I moved numbly, somehow managing to put one foot in front of the other, stepping delicately as Kalia and I had done when leaping from rock to rock as we crossed the Vilmore Creek that bordered our house. We would step gracefully and majestically (or so we believed), letting the balls of our bare feet touch the ground before the heel. Unnatural, yes, but that was how we thought royalty would act.

The memories are there, all the time. Weighing you down, of course, crowding you from all sides, but in some twisted way they were also lifting you up.

It isn’t so difficult to rise above the memories.

You just have to find the courage to do it.

But courage was something I didn’t have, and remembering Kalia brought fresh tears to my already misty eyes, and as I reached up a hand to brush them away, I realized that now that she was gone and every other motherly figure in my life was gone, I would have to carry the burden of comforting myself. I would be the one to wipe away the tears, to kiss my own scraped knees, to murmur soothing words as I cried myself to sleep.

There are so many things that people do that you don’t even realize until they’re gone.

I felt numb and cold, like I would or could never get warm again. My hands trembled as I fingered my silver necklace. Was that the end? The end of my happiness, of my childhood naivety? The end of the comfort of the shadows of the night, the beginning of the bright hostile day ahead, because I knew I could never smile and truly enjoy the daytime without my sister there to experience it with me?

I never really liked the daytime.

Kalia liked the light, and I liked the pure absence of it, preserved in a vulnerable state. I only put up with the daytime for Kalia.

Though it felt wrong to admit it, now that she was gone. Like I was being disloyal to her.

In Catrine, it was considered disrespectful to speak ill of the dead. You were supposed to remember them in their fullest state, at their happiest. You were supposed to remember them for their joy, and for the joy they brought others.

But Kalia’s happiness, the peak years of her life, was so tangled up with the memories that I wanted to forget that it was easier to pretend she never existed. To block her out of my world and to stay out of hers, because she had left mine.

I glanced up, noticing how far I’d come. Down the pathway in the garden, I meant, but in life too, I supposed, though I tend to avoid thinking thoughts like that. It never seemed real when characters mention that in the stories I’ve heard.

As I traveled down the path, around a curve, my trunk rolling and thumping unsteadily over the gravel, I came upon a woman sitting majestically on a stone bench. Her dress was pulled tight around her waist, her skirt flaring out at the knees. I only saw parts of her at a time, segments of a person that told you next to nothing on their own: Her legs, crossed gracefully at the ankles; stockinged feet dressed up in boots; long, slender fingers balancing in her lap; a few tresses of hair cascading down her back. I took a moment to look her up and down, realizing far too late how unprofessional I looked. With locks of my wavy brown hair coming loose from its blue ribbon, my cheeks flushed and sweaty, I was the complete opposite of her pristine figure.

She was much younger and prettier than I had expected, with rosy cheeks and curly caramel hair piled up on the back of her head. Her eyes were a piercing blue, intelligent and determined. I hated her instantly, although I am not one to turn to hate. Hate is the emotion that clouds us when we aren’t creative enough to evade it.

This was surely Cressinda Jamille, the woman who would decide my life, my future, from that point on. A bit of a terrifying thought, but I could not afford to be terrified. Not if I wanted to live.

Not if I wanted to have joy for people to remember me by.

I didn’t want to be remembered for my fourteen short years, I wanted to live my life, long and comfortable. I wanted it to be so that when they spoke of me, after my passing, there would be so many moments of joy to remember me by that it spilled over and filled everyone else up, too.

I wanted happiness, clear and soft and pure.

“Merritt Hart,” she said in a lower voice than I expected, a rich caramel sound the same color as her hair.

I dipped my head respectfully, dropping into a hasty curtsy while trying to keep my suitcase standing upright. The woman eyed me reproachfully. Finding me adequate to suit her needs, she continued, “Well, then. Come along now, girl.”

I followed her through a doorway with vines reaching and weaving up over it, ducking my head to avoid knocking into a potted plant and appearing clumsier than she surely already thought I was.

She gestured majestically as she spoke, articulating every word with surely practiced precision. “Esia will deal with the introductions soon enough; I want no part in that. My children must and will be raised well; you will be responsible for seeing that that happens. You, girl, will watch them and entertain them, put them to bed and read to them. You will teach them. Be a governess of sorts.”

At the pause in her monologue, I nodded, lips tight, but then boldly blurted out, “Pardon me, ma’am, but I am just fourteen, not yet out of school myself. I can watch children, yes, but I most certainly cannot teach them.” I regretted it instantly, then regretted my regret.

Guilt is a powerful thing, and it should not be wasted on powerful people, for oftentimes they do not matter.

A spooky, chilly breeze tickled the back of my neck as Cressinda Jamille stopped suddenly and turned to face me, petite nose wrinkled. Her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed as her lovely voice got dangerously low. “You are not permitted to speak to me in that way, Merritt Hart,” she whispered at last, her voice cutting through me like a sword made of ice, freezing my insides.

I curtsied quickly again, forcing respectfulness, desperately trying to hide the fact that I was trembling. When Kalia… was around, it took much more to frighten me. We had each other. I was naive, I was ignorant, I thought that as long as we were together nothing bad could happen.

How wrong I was.

“My apologies, ma’am,” I managed.

“They must be taught, and you will be the one to teach them, Merritt Hart.” She blinked, eyelashes fluttering in a way that she most likely believed was attractive, and, holding her head high, as if talking to me had made it necessary for her to prove her status, continued her journey through the garden.

She led me to a small paved patio that guarded a back door to the house. A tiny girl, maybe seven or eight, who I presumed was Esia, stood there. She was wearing black shoes that looked like they had been loved by someone else before she received them, and, although her pressed white apron was clean, there was a smudge of dirt or grease on her face.

“Esia, you are hardly looking presentable,” my mistress complained. “Go to your bathroom and wash your face well, and then you must come back and introduce the girl to my children.”

Esia nodded quickly but didn’t bother to say anything that I might’ve in her position, such as wondering out loud why Cressinda Jamille couldn’t do it herself. I desperately wanted to. Although she was an imposing figure, she really had no more power over me than the Council of Parlin in Catrine. Which, admittedly, did have a lot of power, but no one was scared of them. No one spent their lives in fear of them or was afraid to speak out against them.

They had power, but that didn’t mean they would use it.

Esia scurried away, not into the house as I had expected, but further into the garden, where she entered a small house-like structure.

Cressinda Jamille looked at me more carefully, scrutinizing my necklace disapprovingly. “Where did you get that, Merritt Hart?” she asked sweetly, in a falsely curious voice meant to twist the secrets out of me.

No reason to lie, no reason to refuse to tell her. “My aunt gave it to me, ma’am.”

She squinted at it for a moment, then decided it wasn’t worth her trouble. “Well, Merritt, it’s nowhere near fine enough for you to wear here. We are a respectable family, and I won’t have anyone thinking any… thoughts that shouldn’t be thought.” The woman extended her long, nimble fingers, reaching for my neck.

I clutched my necklace and glared up at her silently. I knew one thing then: I couldn’t let her get to me, couldn’t let her know how much she terrified me. I was not an easily scared girl, braver than Kalia in the night, but something about Cressinda Jamille did it. Perhaps it was the fact that she was a respectable woman from Aleika, a region not at all similar to Catrine, where I had grown up, but it seemed to be more than that.

Catrine was rolling golden hills and grassy mountains that were gorgeous when hit by the summer evening light; it was beautiful forests with just the right amount of spooky, filled with tiny creeks and little paths through the lush plants; it was small, cozy, comfortable houses. It was home. School was taught outside, and children would often run around barefoot, our feet dusty by the end of the day.

Aleika, on the other hand, was a much more urban region. From what I could tell, the houses were large, the citizens were snooty, and the children all attended one or another prestigious academy or were taught by private tutors or nannies.

After a few minutes, the woman gave up, moving gracefully past me, turning up her nose as I tried to move the suitcase out of her way. “If you’re to live here, girl, you’d better get used to being more careful with your belongings.”

I nodded. Of course I would be careful. Protect my suitcase with my life. It had been my father’s suitcase, before he left to fight in the war, which made it special no matter what rested in its belly. It carried my few belongings, as well as my sister’s black hair ribbon.

It carried my life.

Mama preferred for everything to be neat and tidy, and colorful, if possible. She despised Kalia’s black hair ribbon, saying that as we were from a well-off family, at least compared to the other houses in our village, we had to show it.

Aunt Amalia, our father’s sister, had given Kalia the ribbon when our father left for the war. She believed the tales that the children told about the witches, like Katharine of the North, women who could control the magic that surrounds us all. “It’s there,” she would say. “You only have to look for it.” Our aunt told us that as long as Kalia wore the ribbon every day, our father would stay safe.

Mama dismissed Aunt Amalia as just being superstitious. There was no connection between the ribbon and our father’s life, she claimed. But Kalia continued to wear the ribbon. Every day.

One day she lost it, abandoned it in the forest and couldn’t remember where. We searched everywhere, desperate and devastated, crossing the frigid creek in our bare feet so that our shoes wouldn’t be caked with mud and Mama wouldn’t know we’d gone out. Our feet and legs got scratched up from the thorns on the wild side of the forest, but the pain motivated us, pushed us on. When we finally turned to go home, tears trickled down our faces as blood trickled down our legs.

We didn’t tell Mama about the missing ribbon. We knew she would just be frustrated that we had lost our belongings, and annoyed that we cared so much about it.

Because after our father left, the only Mama we saw was frustrated and annoyed. And scared. Our brave, sweet mother, a comforting, solid jar, reduced to shards without him to balance her out.

The next day we received the news that our father had died in the war.

After the… incident, with Kalia and the screams and everything I wanted to forget, I ran to the forest. I searched day and night, now that there was no one to make me stop - no mother to call me to come in for supper, no sister to comfort me and make me tell her what was wrong - and eventually found it, buried under mud and wet, fallen leaves and all the things we used to love.

I had kept it near to me ever since.

“Merritt? Merritt, are you all right?” The voice sounded genuinely concerned, and I was pleasantly surprised at Cressinda Jamille’s sudden change of heart. I turned to tell her that yes, I was fine, just a bit homesick, when I realized that it was not my employer speaking to me, it was little Esia.

I opened my mouth to tell her I was alright, slightly less enthusiastic than I had been when I thought it was my cold, unkind superior, but the woman interrupted before I could respond. To me, she said, “We do not make a habit of associating with the maid, Merritt Hart. Esia is there only to clean, not for entertainment or socializing. Now that you are a member of this family, as a governess, you must make our habits your own.”

Normally hate can not find me as it finds other people. I run from it, evade it, escape it. Normally I don’t stop long enough for the hate to catch me. For it to poison me, turn me into a monster with feelings as brittle as ice.

But none of these recent events had been anything resembling normal.

And maybe it wasn’t my stubbornness, my running, that had kept the hate away. Maybe I just hadn’t been exposed to someone or something horrible enough to warrant it. Maybe I had been saving my hate, all this time, for when I really needed it, really meant it.

I meant it then.

Cressinda Jamille nodded to Esia, who scampered inside to fetch the Jamille children. She was back barely a minute later with three children, a boy and two girls. Their mother gave them a curt nod as a greeting, then walked purposefully away, back around to the front entrance of the house. Esia nodded a goodbye too and headed inside the main house, and I was left alone with the children.

They stared at me solemnly, watchfully, warily. One of the girls held the little boy in her arms; the other stood next to her, her arms crossed. I couldn’t think of anything to say. If that was what their mother was like, I couldn’t begin to imagine how spoiled the children would be.

I cleared my throat. The silence was making me uncomfortable, and though I doubted that I could make it any less so, I had to try. “Hello,” I said at last. “My name is Merritt Hart, and I am going to be your governess.”

Almost at once smiles spread across their little faces. I realized that they probably didn’t have anyone to talk to, other than each other, and chances were their parents mainly ignored them. Unfortunate, but maybe it was for the best. Maybe the influence of their parents wouldn’t poison them as it did so many others.

Although they hadn’t yet spoken to me, I could see intelligence in their dark gazes, in the little boy’s eyes especially. He looked to be about three, much younger than I was used to dealing with.

“I’m Scarlett,” murmured the girl carrying him, who wouldn’t meet my eyes (though I was certain it wasn’t from shyness), “and this is Benjamin.”

I offered her a warm smile, trying to funnel the flame of my hatred into a steady, soft warmth. “How old are you, Scarlett?”

“Nine. Benjamin is three. And Mabel is eleven.”

Mabel nodded, her gold-flecked eyes large and completely unafraid, though they held the shyness of a deer’s eyes. Her braided hair was dark, streaked with thin natural strands of gold, which created a pretty effect as a few loose bits framed the sides of her face.

Untamed fires burned in Scarlett’s eyes as she stood, cradling Benjamin with impossible tenderness and care. As I looked closer, I noticed her fingers curling around him, impossibly tense. Protecting him. As if she thought I would take him away from her.

And then Benjamin, innocent and bright-eyed, with soft thick brown hair and chubby cheeks. Although he appeared calm on the surface, like a lake, it was a murky one, mysterious, and I could tell something was lurking beneath the water’s surface, a fish or something more dangerous. There, but not a threat. Not yet.

I dipped my head to each of them in turn, starting with Scarlett and working my way to Mabel. “Well, then,” I murmured finally. “Shall we go inside?”

Click here for Chapter Three