Elizabeth had thought it would get easier after a few weeks, but it hadn’t. Every time she wanted to laugh or smile, she was overcome with guilt, as if it would dishonour their memory to find joy when her parents were buried.
This was her fault, she did not deserve happiness.
Hours passed, but sleep refused to come.
Elizabeth threw off the covers and stepped onto the cold flagstones, lighting a candle with the hearth’s flame. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well read. Her eyes lit on her father’s journal, and she brought it with her to read in bed.
She curled up with the covers around her shoulders and opened her father’s journal, feeling a sense of unease at what she would find.
Flipping the pages, her eyes widened in surprise. Hidden on the journal’s endpage was a poem scrawled in red ink—different from the inky black writing in the rest of the journal.
She read the words aloud, sounding them out, trying to picture her father sayingthem as he wrote them.
What a strange poem. It didn’t make any sense at all.
The next five pages were a description of her father’s early business ventures, and him droning on about his life with his family before he had met his wife. She was nearly bored to tears, and if she had not been invested in the man behind the words, she would have stopped reading several times. Being an eloquent speaker, he wrote much better and more interestingly than this when he travelled over the years. It was almost comical that this had been written so dully.
She yawned several times while reading her father recount business ventures related to the import and export of coloured yarn and different-sized barrels they had used for grain export from Faina.
She rubbed her eyes.
She read the following thirty pages or so and had almost fallen asleep when she noticed something strange. After the first thirty pages, the tone of the journal changed completely.
The actual journal began, and how like her father to conceal his secrets in such a way. The true journal began with … her.
She bent to read further.
In my early life, I had never wanted to be a father, but when I held my daughter, I knew this precious thing was of my blood. She looked up at me with my eyes, eyes that were exactly the same colour as mine. My father’s eyes. My newborn daughter grabbed my finger in her chubby little hand, squeezed it, and smiled at me. A happy, healthy baby, and more than I ever deserved to have in this life. I had never felt so proud or grateful to be alive and be gifted my beautiful family. We had hoped for a son, someone to carry on our name and our legacy, but this baby was so small and looked at me and my wife as if we were her greatest protectors.
It hit me that I had to change and become the man that my wife needed to make sure this child wanted for nothing. That I would have to conceal part of my history, from everyone, including my lovely wife, so my child could grow to adulthood without being hunted.
I knew then that I needed to write down a true account of my life in case my child turned out to be gifted, like my father was. There would come a time when I would need to tell my daughter what her grandfather had done, and the lengths I had gone in my youth tounravel his secrets.
Tears slipped down her face as she realized that her birth was her father’s happiest and most meaningful memory.
She had always thought her father was a bit cold—a practical and decent person, but not someone she would have ever described as warm and loving. Sometimes, she found herself wondering if he had resented her for remaining unwed, or if he wished she had been born a boy so that she could inherit his estate. Reading her father’s journal, where he spoke with so much joy about being given a daughter, helped her find some comfort.
Her grief was not lessened, nor did it disappear, but her fatherhadloved her, and that meant something.
And how had her father known she would be gifted?
He hadn’t used the word magic—he’d used “gifted,” the exact term that Risna and Nasera used to describe someone with magical ability. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
In case my child turned out to be gifted, like my father was.
She re-read the line several times, her heart hammering. Her grandfather had been gifted—had magic. And her father had known she might inherit it.
And what secrets? What had her grandfather done that required unraveling?
She leaned back against the pillows, trying to process what she had just read. Her entire life, she had felt like there was some piece that didn’t quite fit and didn’t seem to make sense. The headaches she complained of, which her father always brushed off as nothing to worry about. How she had a sense that there was something different about her—that something was wrong with her, for not being like everyone else.
Her grandfather had magic too.
The thought was a strangely comforting one, and somehow, it made her feel a little less alone.
Elizabeth blew out the candle and drifted off to sleep, the thought of her grandfather wielding magic and sailing off on a ship in search of a grand adventure bringing a smile to her lips for the first time in weeks.
***
