Curse And Craving

49

Chapter Twenty-One THE NEXT EVENING, I OPENED UP MY LAPTOP TO CHECK MY PERSONAL EMAIL and discovered a message from my mom. She generally stuck to phone conversations, which made me curious about what she might have sent. HEY BEC, HOW HAVE YOU BEEN SLEEPING? My friend said she could make some of that incense if you want, and I can get it shipped to you. Just let me know. After we talked about your necklace, I went through all of our old pictures. I should do that more often. It was wonderful pulling up so many happy memories. Anyway, I found a picture of you with the lovely man who sold us the necklace! With you in Ireland, I should have remembered that you got the necklace on our trip to the UK. The old memory isn’t what it used to be. Dad helped me scan and attach the picture. You know how bad I am with technology. ? LOVE YOU LOTS, Mom I DOUBLE-CLICKED on the attachment and enlarged the photo taken at some kind of outdoor market. It was me around three or four years old—back when I’d still had blond hair, held up in pigtails. I was talking to a man. He was smiling, squatting down low in a friendly manner. Recognition soured the food in my stomach into a heavy lump. Merlin gave me the necklace. He looked no different than when I’d seen him at the museum. It was unsettling. As though the photo had been doctored, but I knew it hadn’t. The man in the photo didn’t age because he wasn’t human. Merlin gave me the necklace. I hadn’t stumbled upon some cursed talisman as a child. This whole thing had been engineered. He’d intentionally given me a Fae object of power, knowing it would change my life forever. Merlin thinks there's a war coming, and he gave me the necklace. What exactly were his plans for me? Had he known I would become Fae? If he’d done this on purpose and knew I was here, why hadn’t he come to me and explained himself? As my questions grew, so did my outrage. This was never my fight. My life was derailed as a child before I ever had any say in the matter. And now, I was expected to stop a war I knew nothing about. Bullshit! Merlin had no right to drag me into his fight and force these changes in my life. I stared helplessly at the little girl and wondered what my life would have been like had he not intervened. I thought of my black eyes and the dark magic I’d been subjected to. The glass of wine I’d been holding slid from my fingers and shattered on the floor. A blond little girl with light-complected parents. A necklace from the Shadow Lands. “She must be the milkman’s daughter!” “Look at how dark her hair’s gotten.” “Are you of Native American descent?” Years of teasing and wondering why I looked so different from my parents smacked me in the face. The changes didn’t start when I’d arrived in Belfast. They’d begun the moment Merlin locked that clasp around my neck. That son of a b***h. What other fundamental changes had the magic caused? Had it changed who I was as a person? I dropped to my knees and gathered the shards of glass as tears streamed down my heated cheeks. I wasn't sure if I was angrier at my helplessness or sad for the child who had her choices stripped away from her. Before I knew what I was doing, I walked numbly upstairs and pulled out a small photo album. It didn’t look like much, but it was my most prized possession. I sank to the floor and flipped open the cover. Each page was a single four-by-six photo behind clear plastic. The first showed a screaming newborn, still covered in blond fuzz. More tears blurred my vision as my fingers reached longingly for the image. I hadn’t opened the album in years. When I was younger, I used to flip through the pages daily. I would talk to my little brother, tell him how sorry I was, and do everything I could to keep his memory alive. The pain lessened as the years went on, but I never forgot. I flipped to the next page. A photo of me, the proud big sister, holding my newborn brother. I’d been five when he was born. Old enough to be gentle and understand the importance of protecting the newest member of our family. I only suffered minor bouts of jealousy. For the most part, I adored my little brother. Callum became the center of my world. I lived to make him giggle and talked to him endlessly, though he couldn’t talk back. Every photo in the album was another frozen moment in time when life was simple and full and effervescent. A year’s worth of love chronicled in smiles and silly faces. But a year was all we had with Callum, and it was all my fault. I’d only ever wanted to make him happy. My job as his big sister was to help, especially after I started school and was officially a big girl. One evening, he and I sat at the kitchen table together while Mom got dinner ready. She’d given us grapes as a snack to tide us over. I colored in a coloring book, and Callum watched. He was still at the age when he tried to eat crayons, so he didn’t get to color unless Mom was helping him. He put everything in his mouth. Rocks and sticks and anything he could get his hands on. We had to be very careful to watch him. I’d always tried to be so cautious. After only a few minutes, he’d either eaten or thrown all his grapes on the floor and began to fuss. Mom had gone out front to talk to a neighbor, so I decided to give Callum a few from my bowl until she got back. I placed three purple grapes on his tray and went back to coloring. It worked. He was instantly quieted by my offering, allowing me to focus on making sure not to scribble outside the lines of the crown I was coloring. I didn’t notice how much time had passed. All I knew was that when Mom came back into the kitchen, she started shrieking. She snatched Callum out of his high chair and began to smack his back and shake him about. I’d never seen her so terrified. She demanded to know what had happened. I told her what I’d done, and she lay Callum on the counter and tried to free his airway. She worked frantically, becoming more and more hysterical with each second that passed. I retreated in fear until I’d backed myself into the far corner, horrified at what I’d done. I hadn’t known babies could choke on whole grapes. I hadn’t realized the importance of Mom always quartering his grapes when she left mine whole. But that didn’t change the fact that I’d been the one to give him the grapes. My brother would still be alive if I hadn’t done that. Mom was never the same after that day. She never blamed me. In fact, she insisted it was her own fault, but I knew better. I’d stolen the light in her eyes. I’d forced Dad to hide in his books, too hurt to face reality. I’d broken my family irrevocably, and there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing except ensure my parents never faced that kind of heartbreak again. My chest ached with a hollowness that could never be filled. Not fully. There would always be an abscess where Callum should have been.