Happy Birthday

Marie's Birthday

Almost three months had passed. Today was Marie's birthday. Today she was thirteen. But would she remember? I was laying in the cot we shared, my fingers crossed tightly. It was early in the morning, before dawn. She was still asleep. I poked her gently. If she remembered, she would get up with me to make a fort and celebrate. For hope's sake, I had even made her a gift. It was a small flower I had tried to shape out of the clay behind our little house.

"Unghhhh," Marie mumbled, still mostly asleep. Her eyelids fluttered open.

Please, I thought desperately, remember. Please. Please.

"What is it, Ella? It's really early," she grumbled.

"Don't you remember?" I whispered frantically. She had to. "It's your birthday"

"No, it's not. There are no birthdays. Birthdays are nonexistent. I've never had one. No one has," she assured me. The fatigue was gone from her voice. Marie said this clearly, but at the same time in a dark monotone. Something in her voice scared me.

"But it is," I argued, my last attempt to make her remember,"You have a birthday, and it's today! On this day, you were born!"

She sat straight up in our bed, and turned to look at me with cold, blank eyes. And speaking in a voice I had never heard before, growled "You shouldn't remember birthdays. Birthdays are not for plebeians like you. They are for only our Lords. And they will make it so you forget." Then her eyes rolled back into her head and she fell asleep, snoring.

I was shocked, terrified, and confused at what Marie had just told me. Certainly, the voice she had spoken in wasn't her own. It was deeper, darker, and evil. And the Lords- they were making us forget? Who was talking through Marie? What was happening to her?

The next few days I spent living in fear. I was afraid of the Lords. I was afraid of Marie, afraid that voice would come out of her again. Constantly, I avoided her. Constantly, she asked me what was wrong.

"Nothing," I would lie.

When a week had passed and nothing worse had happened, I relaxed. Things returned to an odd sort of normal. I didn't dare say anything about birthdays to anybody, but inside I was bursting with curiosity.

Were the Lords really the ones making us forget? It made sense. They were rich, we were poor. Anything valuable automatically went to them. Birthdays were valuable, so they were taking them away from us too. If only there was a way I could know for sure.

And one day a few weeks later, my parents said we were going to the library. This was a real treat. I had only been once before, when I was six years old. I couldn't help thinking that maybe this was my chance. Surely there was a book somewhere on birthdays. Even if I couldn't read super well, I could read enough to understand a basic book.