Growing up, I didn’t believe that magic existed. I believed that it was something from myths and stories, something that had existed in the world long ago, but didn’t anymore. In my defence, I was not alone in this belief. When you grow up in a village as isolated as mine, you adopt the beliefs of those around you. And you would be hard-pressed to find a person in Rout who believed that it still existed.
She was the exception. Leia. Bright and brilliant, and far too curious for her own good. We have been best friends since we were little girls, and I have always loved her like a sister. She was certain that magic was still out there somewhere and would make me stay quiet when she went into the forest to explore. I was always too afraid to come with her, but I never told.
We grew up alongside each other, got married, and had children. We stayed close, raising her son and my daughter alongside each other like a big family. But I could see the longing looks she gave the tree line when she thought that no one was looking.
She was the one I talked to when my husband died from illness during a particularly harsh winter, the one who got me through the emptiness left behind. And I was the one she came to when her husband started drinking. She never said that he laid his hands on her, but I could see it in the way she moved some days, in the ways she covered her arms even on sunny days. So when she told me that she was going for a walk in the forest and asked me to look after her little boy, I didn’t stop her.
She was gone for three weeks. People started noticing after a few days, but I didn’t tell. I only said that she had needed some time to herself, but didn’t tell me where she was going. They believed me. When she came back, something was different.
People saw her coming from the trees, barefoot and with leaves in her hair. She looked like she had been crying. The whispers started almost immediately.
I was the only one she told. About the magic and the man she had met. She claimed that he was a Faerie, a magical race, and that he wanted to bring her away from the village. She had only declined because of her son and me. She wouldn’t have been able to bring us with her. I silently thought that she had been fooled by someone, but didn’t want to take the joy and wonder from her eyes.
When she started showing signs of pregnancy, the rumours started flying again, and when she gave birth to a baby girl unlike any I had ever seen, I could feel the first stirrings of fear. Because what if she was right? What if magic were real? Looking down at the tiny baby in my best friend’s loving arms, I was, for the first time, afraid of the idea of magic.
Leia was strong. She ignored the talk of the village people, talk about how she had been abducted and violated by a madman in the forest. They spoke about how the child was cursed and that was why she was so different. But Leia never told them. She kept her silence and raised her daughter while ignoring the whispers around them. The only one she told was me, and I was deadly afraid that she was right.
Her husband died shortly after the birth, by his own hand. People said that he couldn’t handle raising a child not his own, a child born from violation, but I suspect he knew the truth. I think he knew that he had lost his wife long before this, and his pride could not allow it. It was a coward’s way out, and I never saw Leia shed a single tear at his loss. But I saw the change in her son.
His eyes became cold as ice whenever they would land on his baby sister, and a lot of the bullying she endured during her younger years were started by him. It was clear that he blamed her, and while Leia tried to shield the girl, I suspected that he took after his father in ways you wouldn’t wish a child to.
She was five when my fear spiked. She had grown comfortable with my presence, since I was often at their house, two widowed mothers helping each other where they could. With childlike innocence and glee, she tugged on my sleeve and grinned conspiratorially up at me.
“Auntie Cynthia, do you believe in magic?”
And I knew, at that point, that whatever would follow would change my worldview forever. And it terrified me. What I did at that time was unforgivable. You should never snap that way at a child, and I could see in real time how she flinched back from my sharp tone and harsh words. She never tried to approach me again. And for the time I thought that best.
I was wary of her from that point on, sure that she was a threat that just hadn’t been realized yet. I did nothing when I saw her being bullied in the village, but while I cautioned my daughter against getting involved, I knew that she sometimes stepped in to defend the child.
A few years later, the young girl disappeared. She vanished in the night like smoke, and while I held her crying mother, I thought secretly that it was for the best. That little girl didn’t belong in Rout.
The years passed, and I was sure that the child I had feared was dead. Leia recovered, and while her son never seemed to find his softness again, they lived on. When Leia told me that she was involved with the blacksmith who had moved to the village fifteen years ago, and that they were moving to his home village to get married, I didn’t follow her. I just hugged her and wished her the best, with promises to keep in touch. In hindsight, I really should have taken my daughter with me and gone.
Her son, now a grown man, left the village as well, telling no one where he was heading. But he came back one day. And he wasn’t alone. The fury on his face was more terrible than anything I could have imagined, and the destruction that followed held no mercy. And that is when everything changed.
I was prepared to die. I was huddled in the remains of my basement, somehow hidden from the attackers, and stayed there long after they were gone. A quick look around showed me that there was nothing left. My village was in ruins, and people were scattered everywhere. I couldn’t see my daughter, but I knew. Grief tore at me, but I tried to stay silent as voices floated to me on the wind. I must have made some noise, though, because suddenly I heard a voice that I never thought I would hear again.
“Cynthia?”
I looked up into eyes that had once held fear for me, and the only thing I could feel was relief. She was grown now, the little girl that had never fit in, and against all odds, she held a hand out to me. I am not ashamed to admit that I clung to her like a child, and she gathered me up as if all the hurt I caused her didn’t exist. That was the moment that changed everything.
I had been afraid of the magical child, the one who had never done any harm. But the real threat had been from the one I never suspected. In hindsight, I should have, he was too much his father’s son for anything else, but I didn’t. Because he was ‘normal’. He fit in with my worldview; she didn’t, and that made her the threat. But in the end, she was my salvation.
