Midnight Solstice

Chapter 23

Photo: Hunter
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The training that began to progress was as difficult as it was mind boggling. Between Lorne and Katerina, they made their ways around the room, telling each of us to look inside of our selves to recognize our darkest moments and worst fears. The fears part was easy; I could name mine of the top of my head.
Fire, spiders, and loosing Katerina or my sister.
But it was my darkest moments that I had a hard time getting to. The truth is, my life has been so full of dark moments that it's hard for me to choose the darkest ones. Although, the first one that my mind wandered to was from when I was human. Unfortunately I remember it as if it were yesterday.
   I was sitting in my residence with my mother and sister, awaiting my father's arrival. Today was the day that he was coming back from the terrible war that was raging in some other country. He never told us the specifics. His name was Lyre Rosewood; a man "honored by all armies" is what we were told about him...they wouldn't honor him if they knew what he was like when he was with us at home.
  The house was stiff with tension. My mother, Ester, sat on a small wooden stool in the kitchen, her hand tracing the edge of the dining table. The room was open so she could see Jane and I sitting on the floor in front of father's chair. It was a big thing, covered in the finest fur from a bear that he killed one afternoon while he was hunting. He didn't let us sit in it often, but mother let us while he was gone. We don't dare defy him if he is in close proximity to where we are.
   Jane had her long hair down in front of her face as she stared at the tiny straw doll I made her when we were younger. We were on our sixteenth year of life at this point and it was just starting to get complicated. I'm certain my father would be bringing home news of one of us, or maybe both, entering an arranged marriage. Whatever it was, it would surely be awful. I tucked her dark golden locks behind her ears, shaking those thoughts away. She looked up at me and smiled.
  "I was just about to do that myself, Aleczander." She said, rolling her eyes jokingly.
  "Well if you weren't so slow about it, maybe I would not have beat you to it."
  "Mother! Did you hear that! Aleczander is being rather nasty to me right now."
  "Alec, be nice to your sister, would you?" Mother told me in an anxious voice. I got up from my spot on the floor and straightened out my dark colored clothing before I walked over to her.
  "I am being nice mother." I said with a sly smile. She nodded sarcastically and rested her chin on her hands, making her long wavy brown hair fall onto the table. My mother was beautiful, really. Her blue eyes complimented her delicate face and her short body didn't look as if she had bared children. If I had to guess about what an angel could look like, my mother's looks and disposition would fit the mark.
   "Well I suggest you tuck your smart-Alec comments away before your father arrives. I don't want him to hurt you because you said something he thought was wrong." I put my hand palm up in the air before dramatically shoving my hand in my pocket. I heard a small giggle from Jane that caused my mother to laugh as well.
  "My comments are away mother, I will be as boring as the priest from now until he leaves again."
  "Alec! You cannot just insult the priest like that!" My mother scolded, trying to hide her smile.
  "Well, we all know it's true. He speaks in the most monotone voice I have ever heard, it's not wonder that at least half the congregation gets a bonk on the head by the rod every service. He dislikes Jane and I anyway..."
  "Which is exactly why you need to keep your mouth shut brother! You don't need to give him another reason to hate us!" Jane shouted, appearing by my side.
  "He doesn't hate you two, Jane." Mother responded. "He just doesn't understand you both like I do."
  "I realize that but..." I cut myself short at the sight of my father's tall body walking towards the cottage.
  "Father's here..." Jane whispered, her face filled with fear. Mother quickly stood up and walked over to the door. She opened it up, letting the warm spring air enter the small space of our home. Jane and I moved towards the door. We didn't go as close as mother did but close enough to probably smell the alcohol from the pub on him.
   Father entered the cottage and placed his small sack down in his chair as mother closed the door. His dirty blonde hair was tousled around on his head, in a similar cut to mine, and the usual stench of alcohol didn't cover him as strongly, but it was still present in the air around us.
  Jane looked a lot more like our father than I did; with the same dirty blonde hair and great big eyes. But both of us shared the looks of my mother, only except I got my tall height from my father. He walked back over to mother and kissed her forehead.
"Ester..." He murmured.
"Lyre..." She responded. His eyes landed on Jane and I. For a moment, he looked at us in an almost kind way, as though to say that he had missed us. But that was gone just as quickly as it appeared and in its place, the fire of anger burned through him.
"What have you two been up to whilst I was gone?! Your actions affect all of us! You should have seen the looks I got on my way back!" He began walking forward, causing Jane and I to slowly move backwards. I knew that there would be awful news.
"So what was it that you two did now?! Did you terrorize the children of the village? Or did you perhaps curse us all so that the crops don't grow this growing season?!"
"LEAVE THEM ALONE LYRE, THEY ARE JUST CHILDREN!" Mother shouted angrily. This was one of the rare situations where she would stand up against him instead of letting him do as he pleased and apologizing over and over afterwards and telling us how what none of what he tells us is true. She normally suffered in silence because the punishments for her were worse if she defied my father in any way.
His attention snapped to her; an angry scowl spreading across his face as he turned. He stalked towards her like a predator hunting its prey. Her eyes widened in fear as she too moved backwards. Seconds later the sound of his hand hitting her tender flesh filled the silence. I looked over at Jane, who had that same look of terror on her face that mother had.
"Go..." I whispered to her.
"What?" She whispered back.
"I said go..."
"No..."
"Jane, I don't want father to beat you again, go to our clearing in the woods, I will meet you there when it's safe." I squeezed her hand before ushering her out of the back door while father continued to beat mother. Her shrieks of pain came out as short little squeaks every time he made contact with her.
That day, something awoke inside of me. My mind was snapping in so many directions and I couldn't think straight. My body was moving from the impulses my mind gave me and I wasn't in control of that at all. And the feeling itself was the greatest rush I have every felt in my life. The monster inside came out for the very first time and took over my soul...and I enjoyed it.
I walked over to the spot where my mother was being beaten and I ripped my father's body off of hers and threw him across the room, which wasn't very hard to do considering the size of my home.
"Jane and I did not do anything! You do NOT need to hurt your own wife because she told you that! Maybe the other villagers were giving you looks because they know how much of a drunken coward you are! You have to come back home every day just beat your own family! And for what? So that your masculine pride façade stays up?"
  "Don't you talk to me like that boy!"
  "What are you going to do, hurt me? You already have...multiple times!"
  "I will give you one more chance to shut your filthy mouth or else I will beat you senseless!"
  "Lyre leave him alone!" Mother shouted from behind me.
  "THIS DOES NOT CONCERN YOU ESTER!" Father shouted. "IT'S JUST ALECZANDER AND I NOW!"
   I began to laugh. I have no clue as to why, but I did. I must have been going mad. But that was okay. If I was going crazy, maybe the villagers would send me away somewhere so I could "heal" as they would call it. But that would leave my mother and sister alone with this monster with no one to protect them. I guess he will have to go before I leave.
   My father's firm features contorted into confused expressions as I continued to laugh. I laughed so hard that it felt as though my lungs would burst if I laughed any harder. Even though mother was behind me, I could sense that she was confused as well, and afraid...AFRAID OF HIM!
  "What is your your issue, boy!"
  "You." I stated in between laughs. "That you believe that it's "alright" to hurt us! Well you are never going to; never again!" He smacked me across the face. I stumbled a couple of steps to the side and clung to my face out of habit. The stinging sensation hurt, but it didn't bother me. I straightened up and went after him.
  The struggle for control began. I ran at him and punched him across the face, causing his jaw to making a cracking sound. He spit blood out onto the floor. He growled and sent another punch to my face, one to my stomach and a kick to my legs which caused me to fall hard onto the dirty ground. I landed close enough to the kitchen table that I could pull myself around it so it would give me a couple of extra seconds.
   Those few hits were brutal since he was such a big man to begin with, not to mention he is a soldier trained in combat. He's taught me a couple things about fighting that he had learn while he was gone fighting in wars, which was the first mistake. The second was the fact that for the past year, I have been training to become stronger, so that someday, I could join the army too. Then father would finally be proud of me. But he'll never be proud of me, he just sees me as the "horrible result of him falling in love" which he has called me on several occasions. But what he feels for my mother isn't love.
   Those thoughts only fueled the fire burning within me more and I came up with a plan. I continued to pull myself farther behind the table, as if he had hurt me so bad that I couldn't stand up. I could now if I wanted to. But for my plan to work, I need him to think he was just about able to finish me off. I saw a bottle on the counter top and reached up, as if to pull myself up, but I knocked the bottle off onto the floor instead, causing it to break into sharp shards of glass. To add an extra little flare to my act, I let my body collapse to the ground.
  "What? Are you already too weak to face me? After a couple of blows, you are already running from me?!"
  "Actually I'm more on the crawling side of that father." I responded sarcastically.
  "ENOUGH WITH THOSE SMART ALEC COMMENTS OF YOURS!"
  "Did you make that one up off the top of your head? Because if so, I'm impressed you could even think of somethings that. Oh wait, you didn't, that's always what mother says." I said as I grabbed the sharpest shard of glass that I could find. I gripped it in my hand so hard that the duller edges of the glass cut into my skin.
  "YOU BETTER WATCH YOURSELF BOY! YOU ARE WEAK! YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A SCARED LITTLE BOY WHO DESERVES NOTHING MORE THAN TO BE LOCKED IN A CELL SO YOU CAN ROT WHILE YOU THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO OUR VILLAGE AND THIS FAMILY." I heard his foot steps approach me. I began to stand up put he pushed me back down with his foot on my back. He pulled me up by my hair.
  "DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY BEFORE YOU GET PUNISHED FOR YOUR ACTIONS?!"
  "I have one more thing." I broke out of his grasp and sent a knee to his lower regions, causing him to collapse with pain. I bent down to his level. He was in too much pain to move. Good.
  "Goodbye, father." I spat as I sank the sharp end of the glass into his stomach. I watched as tears formed in his eyes when he cried out in pain. I continued to stab him with the broken glass, feeling a rush of relief every time I did.
   I didn't hear my mother scream for me to stop, nor did I hear Jane come back into the house crying as she watched the scene unfold. The only thing I was focused on was the blood on my hands and the light the leaving my father's eyes.
   It wasn't until I knew he was dead that I realized what I had done. My whole body collapsed on the ground as I began to cry. I had just KILLED someone. I ended a life; the life of my own father. But he hurt us! He shouldn't have hurt us! It was either us or him, for he would have killed us eventually if he got angry enough, or hit us too hard.
  "Alec?" My mother's voice said as she placed a hand on my shoulder. I didn't answer. I couldn't stop sobbing.
  "Alec, we have to get rid of him!" Jane shouted.
  "Jane!" Mother scolded.
  "Would you rather the townspeople come and see this now and throw Alec in jail?! No one has to know what happened." She sniffed.
  "Jane is right Alec, we can't have anyone see this. Why don't you stay here and clean yourself up?" Mother suggested. She knew that Jane was right. I was glad that they wanted to protect me. That's all I really wanted right now; to feel protected. This violence has been going on for too long.
  My mother's voice wavered as she attempted to soothe me. I know that even though my father hurt her, she still loves him. My mother had a big heart, but he didn't deserve it. She deserved someone better than him.
  I sat up and wiped the tears from my face. I wasn't sobbing anymore, but the tears still fell. My mother was crying as well, and so was Jane. They tried their best to comfort me before they left, pulling the corpse of my father by his feet out of the back door. Mother carried a shovel as well. I went into the bathroom which just happened to be the farthest room away from the accident that had just occurred.
  I took a bunch of cloths off of the shelf and dunked them in the bathtub that we hadn't yet emptied today before going back out to the scene of the crime. I put the pile of wet cloths on the table and took a couple of the cloths before I began scrubbing all the blood away. It was easy to clean because the blood hadn't soaked into anything yet. That was done within a few minutes. I took the bloody cloths back into the bathroom and washed them with the bath water, causing the water to turn red.
   I stripped off my bloody clothes and washed myself off with some of the clean cloths I had left over and washed those as well. I grabbed a set of my clean clothes. These ones were a lighter brown color than the other clothes I was wearing before. I stared at myself in the small mirror we had. 
   My body was covered in scars and bruises that my father gave to me. I was bleeding in some spots. There was a cut across my forehead that went from the middle of the left side, to the corner of the left eye, but just missed the eye itself, so it wouldn't need stitches. I also had a cut on my upper right arm. But underneath those scars, the man I saw in the mirror was muscular from head to toe. I could easily see the lines of muscles on my arms and the six pack of abdominal muscles that were a result of training to be a soldier, to make my...
  "Don't think about him..." I said to myself. "He's gone now, he is not coming back! There is no need to think of him ever again."
   I walked over to wear my clean clothes were and put them on. I quickly walked out of the room and went back to the kitchen. I picked up the remaining shards of glass, including the murder weapon and walked into the woods. I dug a hole in the ground with a stick and buried the broken pieces along with my innocence. When I got back to the cottage, Mother and Jane were already back. Mother was holding Jane in an embrace as I walked in. I slid down the wall and sat with my head in my hands.
  "Alec?" Jane said, coming over to me.
  "Alec, are you alright?" Mother asked me, rubbing my arm.
  "Alec..."
  "Alec! Hey Alec, are you okay?" Katerina asked me, breaking me from my painful memory. I nodded and smiled.
  "I'm fine, pet. I just got distracted, that's all." She smiled.
  "That's good. I was starting to get worried. You haven't moved in twenty minutes."
  "Don't worry about me, love. I'm fine. Would you care to fill me in on what we are doing now?"
  "Well now, you are supposed to tell me your happiest moment. Everyone else partnered up already."
  "You first."
  "Nope. I'm the teacher, you are the the student!" She smiled triumphantly.
  "Fine, if I tell you mine, you have to tell me yours."
  "Deal." I took a moment to think even though I already had my moment in mind. The moment itself was quite obvious actually.
   "My happiest moment was meeting you."
   "Really?" She questioned skeptically. I nodded.
  "Yes. I mean after all, you are my soulmate. The day I met you was the day I was finally complete." She smiled.
"Aw, your so sweet."
"Only to you." She scoffed and rolled her eyes.
"Nuh uh!"
"You're stalling. You have to tell me your happiest moment now." She thought for a moment before smiling.
  "The first time we said I love you; well technically, it was the second time because the first time you were dying from werewolf saliva in your bloodstream."
  "And why is that your happiest moment?" I questioned her.
  "Because it showed me that someone other than my Mother, Uncle Lorne, and Gracie could love me."
  With that statement, my heart broke for her. This sweet and caring girl who loves with all of her heart told me that her happiest moment was when someone outside of her family told her that she was loved. Out of all of the awful things that I have ever heard, that may have been one of the worst.
  "Look at me..." I said. Her big teary eyes stared back at me. "Don't ever think for a minute that people outside your own family won't love you. That isn't true. I love you, more than anything else in the world and I promise you that I will never stop and that anyone who says otherwise is going to get a good beating, alright?"
  "I don't want you to beat up people for me."
  "Then I won't. But you are capable of being loved, Katerina. I don't want you to think that you aren't. Whoever told you that is wrong." I pulled her into my arms and kissed the top of her head.
   All of a sudden, a large crack filled the air. The room became silent and we turned around to find Demetri slumped against a broken mirror. Felix was standing across from him on the other side of the room with a look of shock on his face. He ran forward.
  "Oh my God! Demetri are you alright?! What happened?!" Demetri groaned and sat up. A small crack ran down the side of his face. That would shortly heal.
  "I think you just found your inner ability. Uh, congratulations...I think."
  "Dude I have no idea what just happened! I went to high five you and then you flew across the room! Are you sure you aren't possessed or something?!"
  "If I were possessed, I think I would know about it. You shouldn't doubt yourself. This whole seminar thing is supposed to be about harnessing your inner abilities, and you just did."
  "Did I really?"
  "Yes Felix, you absolutely did!" Lorne exclaimed, limping over to him.
  "Good work Felix!" Aro praised as he appeared on the other side of him.
  "Uh can somebody help Demetri maybe?!" Brynn exclaimed. "I mean he just got flung in midair across the room!"
  "Don't worry Brynnlee, I'm fine." Demetri assured her as he stood up. Fred and George snickered quietly.
  "Okay Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dumb, laugh it up! Brynnlee's my name, don't wear it out. Besides, I have plenty of embarrassing things about you two up my sleeve." She said, blowing a stray piece of copper hair out of her face.
  "Oh yeah..." George said.
  "Like what?" Fred finished.
  "Well you two are named after Fred and George Weasley from the Harry Potter series."
  "Wow, that's the best you've got?" Fred asked.
   "We've already gotten over that." George added.
   "Anyway, I think that's enough training on that subject for today, I'm sure everyone wants to rest." Lorne told everyone. No one moved.
  "That means you can leave!" Gracie shouted from her spot in the back of the crowd. Lorne rolled his eyes at his daughter's comment before everyone began moving out of the room. Jane ran up to me and hit me on the arm.
  "Are you going to keep your girlfriend hostage all day, or are we going to go see Aro about getting her away from here for a couple of days?" She asked impatiently. I (sadly) let go of Katerina.
  "You're right. We should go do that now."
  "Thank you." Katerina said to the two of us. Jane scoffed.
  "Don't thank us until he says yes. We have no clue what he'll say."
  "I know, but thanks for trying anyway." She gave me a peck on the cheek before walking over to where the other newborns were with Felix and Demetri.
   All of them were surrounding Felix talking about what had happened. I was happy for the guy though, he was the first one of us to figure this whole inner ability thing out. I watched as Katerina started talking to Felix about what he did. He looked so amazed with himself as he told her everything. She laughed as he pantomimed the events to her.
  "She's something isn't she..." I said.
  "As long as she makes you happy, I don't care what she is." Jane turned on her heel and began walking towards Aro. This was going to be an interesting conversation.