Katy woke up as Deen jumped on her bed and yelled to get up. “I am up.” Katy said and sat up.
“Happy Birthday, Katy!” Deen said with a smile. “What do you want to do?” Deen asked as he thought of the donuts that his mom and Sandra had made for breakfast.
“I have something to tell you first.” Katy said then started a silent conversation. “My aunt broke out of prison!”
“What? How? How do you know?”
“She came to see me.” Katy told him as she pulled on her robe to walk downstairs to get breakfast. “She is innocent. My mother isn’t dead.”
“WHAT!?”
“My mother is Darkness. And I think that your father is right. I am Goodness, but I don’t want that. I am still hoping it is not true. After all, that means we are all in for a lot of pain. There is still doubt right?”
“Well, it isn’t so bad if you are Goodness. Your aunt really stated that your mother lived? And of course, this can’t be happening; I mean we are mature children and all. But we are children.”
“Aaliyah said that the only reason she was caught for murder was mother faked her death. Mother caused the explosion. Aaliyah was knocked out cold.” Katy told him as they walked into the kitchen. “Good morning!” Katy said to Edgar, Jane, Antonio, and Sandra.
They all smiled back and said happy birthday. But Katy could tell there was something they wanted to tell her. But they all went back to their papers and coffee, as Katy and Deen sat down, and each grabbed a donut.
“Jerome and Riley went to Marcus’s Valley; they will be back soon.” Jane stated as she gave them a displeased look at the fact, they grabbed the donuts and none of the other breakfast food. “Now you both have to eat something other than sugar.”
“May I have some orange juice, please?” Katy asked.
“Me too mom! Oh, and is there any bacon left?” Deen asked as he turned back toward Katy. “Go on!”
“Okay, well the blast knocked me against the wall, and Aaliyah was knocked out as well, so when the Guardians got there, they took her. They didn’t see me I guess… Wait if they were first on the scene why didn’t they see me?”
“Katy… I don’t know! Oh goodness, do you think they are lying?”
“No, I don’t see that… They wouldn’t let a kid live on the streets alone, would they?” Katy thought with a hurt sadness.
“No, I don’t think so.” Deen thought firmly.
“Will you two stop doing that? It is kind of rude. Having a mental conversation when we are all at the table.” Edgar stated, as he sat down his coffee and papers.
“Katy was just telling me about a dream of hers.” Deen said and went back to Katy. “Ignore him go on!”
“Well, anyway, she said she was branded and thrown in prison without a trial. Oh, and get this! Rob, the brownie keeper, was her fiancé! And Headmaster O’Cuinn as you know is my uncle; but he is my mother’s half-brother. Oh, and my other aunt is Assistant Headmistress Lua Notte-Preto and Aaliyah thought it was strange that Lua would not be visiting us. I saw in her silent thoughts. She thinks something is preventing Lua from visiting.”
“OH, MY GOODNESS!”
“I know right! Now I know I have more blood family other than the Solomons! And one of them is willing to risk death to just say Happy Birthday to me! And the headmaster is avoiding even being alone with me, and of course Lua said she was going to make more of an effort, but she is not here today.”
“WOW! I wonder why they didn’t tell you. Or why they didn’t take you in… Dad could easily stop in over there anytime. Katy they are hiding something aren’t they?”
“Yes.” But that is all Katy got out before Edgar interrupted them again.
“Okay you two, please stop. We have something to tell you.” Edgar stated, as he cleared his throat. “Katy Lily, your aunt, she…umm… escaped from prison yesterday.”
Katy looked him in the eyes for a moment then said something that shocked even herself. “I know; she came to see me this morning. She told me that she was put in prison without a trial. She told me that my mother is evil, that she faked her death. But the most interesting piece of information is that the Guardians were on the scene first. That is why my aunt was arrested. If you all were on the scene first, why wasn’t I found?” Katy demanded, she was thirteen, she was not a child any longer, she never had been, and she wanted answers, now.
Edgar looked her in the eyes, he knew he was bound by an oath, but at this moment he did not care. “I was under orders to leave you. My boss told me to leave you. I felt so bad about it. I thought they moved you from New York City. I had gone back trying to find you. My guilt eating at me. But I couldn’t find you.” Edgar gave the truth.
Katy looked at him and stood up. She said nothing, she would have sat back down but Deen said something.
“You left her? How could you leave her to fend for herself?” Deen yelled at his father.
“I didn’t want to; my boss said that she would be put in the system, that she had a mortal birth certificate, of course we found out later she did not have a birth certificate at all. But at the time I was told that she couldn’t just disappear.”
“She lived alone on the streets! The normal mortals did not care! They hurt her; they left her on the streets! She stole, she fought to survive and her own people, her own kind left her there!” Deen would have continued to yell but Katy ran out of the room. “Katy!” Deen moved to follow her, but Jane grabbed him.
“No.” Jane said simply, as Edgar stood up to go and get Katy. “Let your father.”
“He just left her.” Deen said simply.
“And he has regretted that choice from the moment he made it.”
Katy ran outside, she could not take the yelling. She did not care. She knew she should, but she just did not care! She sat down on the swing, which had long been unused and was deep in thought when Edgar came and crouched in front of her.
“Katy, I am sorry.”
“I am not mad.”
“Why?”
“I know I should be, logically I should be. If this was even a year ago, I would have been. I would have teleported from the scene, but now, I just don’t have the energy to fight my family. I don’t have enough energy to be mad, it is so much easier to forgive you, and understand you regretted it, rather than fight about it.” Katy stated simply.
“You know sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if we had taken you that day.” Edgar stated. “I went back.”
“I heard that. So, you had been lying, telling everybody that I was dead.” Katy did not bother to form it as a question.
“Yes. We kept the lie up, even after we knew otherwise. The Solomons would have put their claim in, and they would have won five years ago. You hadn’t had a chance to be with Antonio and Sandra. There was nobody to fight for you.”
“Why not my uncle and other aunt?”
“Oeric thought it was better you stay away from him. He couldn’t see the darkness in your mother, or, as everybody thought, Aaliyah. He felt that he let you down, let down Riley and the rest of the family. Lua married and pretended to go on with her life, but it ate at her insides that she didn’t know how dark her sister was, that she was dark enough to kill her own child. However, we did finally tell her. She begged us to find you. She didn’t give up the search. Then the trace picked up. We forgot the trace location went right to Lua, she, after all, sends out the acceptance letters. She saw your name and the location that they gave, and she was furious. She went and had a huge fight with Oeric. Oeric stopped her from getting you herself. We don’t know how but he also convinced her not to tell the truth when you came to school. She was forced to stay at a distance from you. We were trying to draw out the Solomons; we thought if nobody claimed you then they would make their move.”
“They did. Why not claim me now? Why keep it a secret.”
“Because they were the ones to discover your mother was still alive, or they do think that she is, but we do not have proof. If she is, they don’t want her trying to get to you. So, by having you live with us or the MacCathmhaoils they think that they are protecting you. Well, that is Oeric’s thoughts, Lua fights them every day. But she stays away in case he is right that someone else will try to take your life.”
“Edgar, I love it here and I love it with the MacCathmhaoils, you all are my family. But I don’t get why the secrets. I guess I will understand some day. I wouldn’t change the fact I live with Sandra and Antonio, but it would have been nice to know what other people know about me. I hate finding out about myself secondhand. Deen got mad for me… I didn’t expect that. He has been a little cold, he doesn’t think I notice but I do, since the whole Raven Ebony thing. I think there are only two outcomes to the things I have done in concern with my friendship with Deen. Either he is going put an end to the friendship or we become closer. I don’t like the way it is going. I know that darkness is in all of us. But why did I feel the best way to deal with Raven was to throw the dagger at her heart?”
“I don’t know. We might never know the inner workings of a person’s mind. But you did what you had to do. I thank you for that, I couldn’t lose Deen. Deen will come around, you will see.” Edgar said and stood up. “Now let’s get back to breakfast before Deen comes out waving those spells you keep having him learn at me.” Edgar said with a wink.
The day ended up being very somber, Katy did not really want to do much, she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts and, of course, the file with a lot of black marks. The only time she really was away from the file was when Deen, Jerome, and Riley dragged her outside for a snowball fight. She, for a few minutes, forgot about the pain that was sure to come into her life. Maybe she should not have begged for her life, but then again, she knew she could not leave her family to fight this war alone.
Kris Charles - Author 