It went much better than it sounds.
I loved my life in Laandia, but I was always curious about England. After much discussion, Dad agreed that I could go to boarding school outside London. I stayed for six years, returning to Battle Harbour for holidays and vacations, and ended up with a cordial and affectionate relationship with my aunt that I still have to this day.
I returned to Laandia for high school and moved into the castle with my father when he divorced Signe. I stayed in the country for university but went to Toronto to law school, and had a brief stint in Ottawa working for the Canadian government. But I’ve always felt like Battle Harbour was home, and that had more to do with family than any length of time I’ve spent in the town.
My family, as well as the royal family.
After work that night, instead of sitting with my laptop and responding to emails, I head straight to my bedroom. As well as a suite of rooms in the castle, I keep an apartment in Battle Harbour,a few streets back from the square, in an old Victorian house that was made into a tri-plex.
There are no apartment buildings in Battle Harbour, only converted houses and the second floors above the stores.
There’s never been a need. The age group that would move out of their family’s home for independence often moves straight out of Battle Harbour. The younger population has been decreasing for years as the lack of opportunities becomes apparent.
I’ve been working with the king to stop the flow, and we’re beginning to see some improvement, but not enough. There’s more work to be done, especially to bring in new families.
Having Fenella Carrington move to Laandia was a big help.
But I don’t want to think about what else needs to be done tonight because I want to focus on something other than the fate of the town right now.
At the bottom of my tiny closet is a shoe box, and I pull it out.
Doc Martens. It’s funny that I’ve never owned a pair in my life, but it’s the box of the brand of shoes that holds my memories.
I’ve never been one to keep sentimental things, but there are a few items that matter. Inside the box is a tattered stuffed rabbit, missing an eye. A colourful Swatch that has long stopped telling the time. A handful of guitar picks. A CD Stella burned for me, full of music she insisted I listen to. A bright, chaotic painting on a tiny canvas, a cork, and a handful of letters.
The letters are from Lyra.
I pull out the bundle. It’s been years since I’ve read them. They were written in a different time, when I was a different person, but I’ve still kept them.
They show a different side of Lyra, one that she hides from the rest of the world. If it’s even still part of her.
She wrote to me every week for the six years I went to boarding school. She started up again when I went to university, even though email would have been easier. At least a few times a month, I would receive the cream-coloured envelopes embossed with the castle address, but with my name scrawled in purple ink. There are some from the two years I lived in Ottawa.
I’ve kept them all.
And now I sit on my bed and reread them all.
Most make me laugh—a younger Lyra with her random thoughts and comments about her brothers and life living in a castle. But it’s the longer letters that I pay the most attention to—the ones she wrote a few months after the death of Queen Selene.
Eight pages of solid pain and guilt, and Lyra never hesitated, sharing every single thing she was feeling about her mother, the accident, and what she was afraid of. She toldme. Not Kate, not her brothers, but me. Her brothers’ best friend. The person who has known her the longest.
A friend who isn’t really a friend because it’s more than friendship that binds us.
Only I don’t know how much more.
There’s always been a connection between Lyra and me. There is a lot of frivolous garbage on the pages of the letters—here is one where she detailed a concert Bo took her to, giving me comments on every song in the playlist. There’s another where she shared the plot of several movies. But there’s a lot of Lyra in here.
And there’s a lot of me. Things I never told anyone.
Thoughts about my mother. What I remember about living with my aunt. Missing my sisters when I was away.
Missing her.
Lyra always signed off with a scrawled pink heart and an L. There was never any mention of what we felt for each other, just that the connection was real and we both acknowledged and appreciated it.
It was friendship, but it was more. I’ve never tried to figure out the words to describe it, other than a friendship.
Sitting on my bed, letters in a clumsy pile beside me, I can see the ocean from my window, a sliver of dark blue under a moonlit sky.
