Golden Child | ✓

5. Finding Rest

Despite feeling sick every time she used her luck, Aurelie found she couldn't help it anymore. It responded to requests she didn't mean to grant.

Her best friend in school, the mayor's daughter, asked for good luck with an important exam. Aurelie felt the shift in the air and she scored well—better even, than Gin—but then the teacher suspended her for cheating. Aurelie's father made an offhand wish that axe blades would never dull. He didn't need to sharpen his axe, but the blade sliced his hand open.

Aurelie tried to focus on her homework, pencil scribbling meaningless words on paper for an essay. Hopefully her teacher wouldn't notice she was only pretending to know what she wrote about.

Gin skipped in through the door—some days she stayed behind for extra classes—and dropped a parcel on the table.

"What's this?" Aurelie asked peeking at it.

"Sesame buns," Gin replied with a smile. She unwrapped the cloth and handed one to Aurelie. A golden ball of dough dotted with seeds; sweet bean paste at the center. Gin popped the second bun into her mouth. She closed her eyes and groaned. "Ugh, so good."

"I'm not really hungry," Aurelie said, trying to hand hers back. Gin loved sesame buns, but the foreign pastries, or even the ingredients, were hard to come by.

"I'm not a pig, Aurelie," Gin scolded. She took her books out and set to work.

Aurelie chewed on her sesame bun thoughtfully, waiting.

"His name is Connor," Gin finally said. "He's the one who gave me the ribbons too."

"I know of him." Aurelie punched Gin with her elbow. "So, do you like him back?"

Gin closed her books. "I think I do. It's kind of scary. That and I'm so busy I wonder if it's wise and if I have the time for this." She gave a shy laugh. "It makes me wish he didn't like me."

Aurelie's skin prickled like gooseflesh and a weight escaped from within her. Her mouth opened in horror. "Take it back, Gin!" she screamed. In her haste to grab Gin's sleeve, she knocked their books off the table. They landed with heavy thumps—like the stones sinking in her stomach—or maybe that was the sound of her heart.

"What is wrong with you?" Gin picked up the fallen books. "Aurelie, I know things haven't been easy with the house and all, but you've been acting odd. I can't take back the pastries, not when I've already eaten some. You need to set yourself straight and stop acting up."

Aurelie watched as her sister swept her things into her bag and headed up the stairs. Gin never yelled at her. Never got angry. She always laughed things off or made a witty comment.

Only when Gin had left did Aurelie rest her forehead on the table to cry.

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"How was school?" Aurelie's mother asked when Gin arrived home the next day.

Aurelie looked away. She'd pleaded sick and escaped going, if at the price of swallowing down her mother's nasty ginseng concoction.

"Horrible," Gin answered, "Some boy told me he hated my guts." Her tone held a false bravado Aurelie recognized all too well, as if Gin wasn't affected by anything. When she sprinted up the stairs, Aurelie waited a few minutes before following her.

Their door was shut, but on the other side, Aurelie heard Gin's heaving sobs. They were desperate and raw—the crying of some innocent who doesn't know what they did wrong—muffled by a pillow.

Aurelie backed away. Downstairs, her father had come in. He clutched the table and hissed as her mother poured ointment over his hand wound. "Hello, sunshine," he said through gritted teeth as she hugged first him, then her mother.

Neither of them noticed her crestfallen expression, or when she sneaked out the door.

Aurelie raced to the shrine, the last place she'd seen the wisps. Everything had gone wrong since her first encounter with them, so maybe here she'd be able to set things right again.

Dusk had fallen—the sky a tapestry of midnight purple and silver stars. Aurelie shivered in the night air as she approached the forest shrine. She wished she'd brought her coat.

The moss embraced her in its cushion when she knelt. She didn't know how to pray, not like her mother. Somehow she didn't think the wisps cared for incense sticks or rice cakes.

While she waited for the blue wisps to appear, her eyelids drooped. Her cushion of moss was soft—softer than a bed and she couldn't resist lowering her head down to rest on it.

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