Heavy is the Head

Anon - 3

Chapter 27

✧ "The best fire doesn't flare up the soonest." - George Eliot ✧

In order to not raise suspicion, from that moment forward, I only ever practiced spell-casting during the only time of the day that I was allowed to be alone which was whenever I went to the bathroom. In the years that followed, I managed to teach myself the art of hydrokinesis with nothing but bath water. Months spent failing over and over again and despairing that I would never truly be free. That I was useless and that I would be under my parents' watchful gaze forever. Until the impossible became possible and by the end of my second year of confinement, I didn't even need to say the incantations aloud anymore. The manipulation of water lay within my fingertips.

Since I had been staying out of trouble for so long, my parents decided that it was time for me to start attending science conferences. It was an extremely big deal as I would make my first public appearance in years. We were to start off small with two and the first was scheduled to take place at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, an illustrious university located in California.

"We have been personally invited by my associate, Professor Robert Callaghan who requested that we all be present, otherwise your first conference would have taken place here in Arendelle. So don't even think for a second of doing anything that could embarrass me or your mother." My father informed me when my invitation arrived. "This conference will be the first time that you will be meeting my business partners and I expect you to be on your best behaviour at all times. Do you understand? Yes or no?"

"I understand." I felt my fingertips tingle as I looked up into his stony cold gaze. 

✧

Before we set off, I was subjected to training of how to behave once we landed in San Fransokyo. From body language to diction, to what I would wear on each day of the conference. I spent hours practicing what my resting face should be, how to smile, how to laugh, how to shake people's hands.

My family's motto is as follows: "The world is governed more by appearance than realities."

It was first whispered into my ear when I was five years old. My mother sat me down at her dressing table and and told me the story of how she had smiled her way to success while she brushed my hair.

"No one likes an angry woman. They see mad women as madwomen." She said to me, through blood-red lips. I remember nodding, not having a clue what the hell she was on about. "They don't care who made her mad. They won't care about the reality of the situation. The only thing they pay attention to is the way you respond. So, if you ever feel yourself getting angry, do you remember what I told you to do?"

"Smile harder." I replied.

"Good girl." My mother said under her breath and when I looked up at her breathtakingly beautiful face in the mirror's reflection, she smiled down at me.

My feelings towards my mother were complicated. I felt sorry for her mostly to begin with. To become someone so horrific, so angry all of the time, I can only imagine what her childhood was like. She never talked about what life was like before she got married and I suppose there's a good reason for that. My existence caused her a lot of pain, I think. And she never came to terms with processing her feelings of hatred towards someone that she was supposed to love, according to all the laws of nature.

But anyway, I digress. By the time my parents and I were on the ten hour flight to San Fransokyo, you would never think that I had been locked away for two and a half years. The hours of training had turned me into a completely different person on the outside. But they failed to change what was inside.

✧

"It's a pleasure to meet you, young lady." Robert Callaghan smiled indulgently down at me.

"The pleasure is all mine sir. Your work is simply remarkable." I replied, just as I had been taught. "Your work in robotics is changing the world!"

"Haha, thank you, thank you." Professor Callaghan shook my hand and then continued on his way, two massive bodyguards on either side.

I had my parents on either side of me, each watching my every move. Every blink. Every swallow. Every breath. I glanced to the side and spotted a teenage boy laughing with a young man who wore a dark baseball cap. The young man noticed me looking at them curiously and offered a friendly wave so I immediately averted my eyes, swallowed the lump in my throat and followed my parents to greet Dr Liv Amara, the creator of the bio-tech company, Sycorax.

"I look forward to seeing you speak, whenever that will be." Dr Amara said to me after we had said our hellos. "I wish you the best of luck."

And so it continued until we approached a young woman around the same age as me. She had silvery hair as white as snow in a loose French braid swept over her shoulder at the time. She didn't say a single word to either of my parents - didn't even say her name - just nodded in recognition of them before accepting their handshakes gracefully with slender, manicured hands. I remember being awestruck at the way she carried herself. She was dressed casual in a teal, cashmere turtleneck and black trousers, but she had an aura, a self-assurance that I could tell hadn't been taught or drilled into her - it just existed within. When she glided in front of me to shake my hand, it was as though she could see right through my facade and saw inside me.

And it was absolutely terrifying.

Her hands were as cold as ice when she clasped my hand, in hers almost causing me to jolt back in surprise and when I looked down, her hand was a perfect ice sculpture, with tinges of blue streaking through it right up to her wrist. I stammered my greetings but she still didn't speak, her only acknowledgement of me was that the corner of her pale pink lips quirked upwards as though I had just cracked an inside joke. Then she swayed past, her head held high; her strides long and purposeful.

My hand was left tingling in a manner that I have always found incredibly difficult to describe. It stung as though thorns were being pressed into my fingertips but at the same time, across my palm, there was a sensation that I can only think to compare to a handful of golden glitter being sprinkled across it and then it sinking down inside my skin. It was similar to the feeling I got whenever I was practising my hydrokinesis, except on a scale far more... Far more of everything.