Dear May

Part One: Chapter One - I wanted to be special

The town had, mercifully, been left behind in the reformation. It lay mainly untouched in the vastness of the country. The townspeople were private anyhow; they liked to go unnoticed, comfortable with each other and unconcerned with the rest of Euria. For this Euria, for the most part, left the town alone.

I was lucky; I wasn't born to one of those families. I was born in a cottage at the edge of the forest, it was a funny cottage, and I remember it so clearly. Its slate roof was neglected so that its scales had come away in patched bearing its ribcage to the sky. The cottage leaned lopsided towards the trees, so close to it seemed to skulking out of or into the forest.

Perhaps because of the house, my grandmother was rumoured to be magick and her fatherless child a faerie child, my mother.

Nobody spoke these tales out loud but they were my history. I was aware of it just as you are aware of the hum of machines in the background of your everyday. I loved that my family were different because therefore I was different. And it was surprisingly easy or me to stand out even from my twelve siblings. I was my grandmother's favourite. She asked my parents for naming rights and reluctantly they gave it to her. She had felt I would be special (something to do with water pooled in the roots of an oak tree) however, when the time came there was no name ready for me.

I was three-years-old when it came to her. In time for a census that Euria had remembered this time to ask the town, scrawled in the fourteenth box in her intelligible writing; Ottilie Arch 3 y/o.

My mother hated my name as it wasn't standard. My grandmother said it was safer to appease whatever force had brought me here. You see I was special. My grandmother was special, she told me things I was too young to understand, but they were beautiful things. My name comes from my home country but long forgotten. The short time I was with her was the best time of my life. Sometimes, her hoarse voice like the wind rattling the branches of the forest comes blowing into my head. 

With this terrible hindsight, I can't understand my mother. She knew what that sound of thunder meant, as it rumbled over the gravel path and shook the hills towards our home.

If it were me, I would have grabbed the child and pulled out into the shelter of the forest. The wind howling in contest with the metal thunder. I would have hushed her cries almost smothering her, dragging her farther and farther into the dark. Until, I come to the already dug hole, I put her in tucking her little red coat around her, tell her not to say a word, not to breath; it's better dead than to give yourself up to the thunder. I put the planks of wood over her scared shaking body, gasping through the slates how I loved her. Then cover her up with leaves of oaks and ash.

Of course there was no hiding for me. My mother crouched over her youngest. The thunder had never been heard in our town before but it was unmistakeable. Another superstition and people weren't supposed those, not since the glorious regime. This nightmare was real, more real than my grandmother's magick. My mother with a calm voice told the oldest to fetch my coat and scarf. I didn't think to protest or ask why; perhaps, I knew it was the recognition I had always been destined for. Tomas, my brother, buttoned up the brown toggles on my red coat, he pulled me closer than he had to and he put my flannel rabbit with the chewed ears into my pocket.

The thunder had stopped and there was hammering at the unlocked door, the wood bounced back and forth in its frame. My mother took my hand and opened the door. I didn't even think to scream then. The automaton was huge and its cruel silver seemed unreal in the green surroundings, it had one red unblinking eye. Behind it were a dozen more and a long bus. My mother pushed me forward, I shook then. It closed a metal claw around my wrist with a hiss of air. I started to struggle when it was too late. My mother sighed, once, and closed the door. This rejection threw me into a frenzy; I screamed for her and then to my brother. Tomas stood at the small window, he began to cry at his name. The curtains were drawn between us. So I screamed and screamed for my grandmother. Sometimes, I see her stumbling towards me out of the forest. I screamed myself into silence as the monster swung me up off my feet. No one was coming to save me, this was my special ceremony which marked me out as different. What I had always wanted, a silly little girl's desire turned against me.