surprise, dropping back to the ground. Surprised again because she hadn’t realized she had been flying, she stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, trying to calm herself. She took deep breaths, filling her lungs with cold air. It cooled her from the inside out, slowly calming her racing thoughts and pounding heart. That had probably not been the best way to handle things, but there was something about that Kira girl that made her crazy.
Something stirred at the back of her mind. A memory buried beneath the anger. She pushed it away quickly. Some things were best left unremembered.
She made herself think, instead, about the stupidity of the school board, holding a meeting about the door and inviting Kira instead of her. Didn’t they understand who she was?
No. They probably didn’t, she pointed out to herself.
How could they? She had kept away from people since her memories had returned. She hadn’t gone to go school or talked to the principle, the mayor, or the local paper when they called to find out what was going on. She had stayed holed up in her room, trying to decide how she was going to fix the mess that Kira had created.
Of course, they had asked Kira to come. She might not know anything, but at least she would talk to them.
Leena began to walk down the sidewalk, away from the building. Maybe she would go to the pub and talk to Shanachie and the Giant. Or better yet, she could go up to the school where Shannon Berne, another of the Five, was guarding the door. Sionann, as Leena remembered her from so many of her lifetimes, was a soothing sort of person. She would help Leena calm down and decide what to do.
“Leena?”
She turned and saw Kira coming out of the building. Instantly, the anger that had begun to fade away was back again, making her cheeks flush hot.
“I told you to leave me alone,” Leena found herself saying without thinking. Part of her, a tiny center of calm in her whirling brain, told her that it was ridiculous to keep shouting at the poor child.
Another part said, She’s not a child! She’s a nuisance!
“Yeah, I know,” Kira said. She kept walking, however, stopping only when she was just a few feet from Leena. “You keep telling me that, but I want to know why.”
The two girls stared at each in silence for several heartbeats before Leena said, “You know why. You opened the door. You made this whole mess.”
“No, I didn’t!” Kira snapped. “Everyone keeps blaming me, but how was I to know it was a real, magic door? Up until a week ago, I thought magic was only make believe and illusions. I thought the door was just a picture in the ground. I only touched it because Aislin was all weird and kept telling me to do it.”
She stopped and took a deep breath. Then she said, “Have you ever seen Aislin when she’s having a vision? It’s totally creepy. I was just trying to prove that it wasn’t real so that she would shut up.”
Leena hadn’t ever seen Aislin Donaghue having a vision, but she had seen other seers in the thrall of prophecy. It was creepy and strangely compelling. And a week ago, in the situation that Kira had just described, Leena might well have done exactly the same thing—she might have tried to open the door just to prove that it wasn’t possible.
Her wings drooped behind her and her anger drained away.
“Look, I promise I’ll leave you alone,” Kira said. “But first I want to know why you hate me so much. And don’t say it’s because of the door. It’s something else.”
She was staring at Leena with a fierce expression in her green-brown eyes. Aidan’s eyes, reminding Leena of the thing she had been trying so hard not to remember. That’s what the anger was for. It kept her mind focused away from the thing. As long as she was angry, she didn’t have any space in her head to remember it.
“It has something to do with Aidan, doesn’t it?” Kira asked. She was still looking fierce, but her voice was calmer now, almost gentle. “I’ve been reading The Annals of the Blessed. There’s not a whole lot in there that talks about Aidan, but there’s a poem that says he was cast out for ‘trust betrayed.’ It also says that a fairy called Riona cast a spell on him to keep him away from the door. That was you, wasn’t it? You were Riona. In another life, or whatever. I heard people talking about it at school. They were saying that when you die, you get reborn as someone else. Reincarnation, right?”
Leena turned away from Kira and walked to the edge of the sidewalk, where she sat down on the curb. The river of memories that she had been keeping at bay since the episode in her bedroom earlier that evening began to surge up again. Some things wanted to be remembered, even if she would rather forget them.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, I was Riona. I cast the spell. When I hid the door, I made Aidan part of the protection. The spell was supposed to keep him and all of his descendants away from New Elphame. Only someone of Aidan’s blood could have broken the spell and opened the door.”
Kira came and sat down on the curb next to Leena. Several feet away from her actually.
She’s a little afraid of me, Leena thought in amusement. Well, she should be.
“Please tell me more,” Kira said. “I wanted to just leave town, but Mom says we have to stay and face our problems. So I guess I’m stuck here. Hardly anyone at school will talk to me. Well, except Daphne and Aislin. And Fin sometimes, although I don’t think he talks much to anyone. Even most of the teachers ignore me as much as they can. Just about everyone is afraid of me except you and you hate me. At least tell me why I’m mixed up in all of this. What did Aidan do?”
Sighing, Leena rested her folded arms on her knees and stared out across the parking lot. The sun was starting to set and it was getting dark. Her toes were starting to get cold as well. She should have changed out of the glittery flip flops when her mother told her to.
“Aidan was…my friend. He wasn’t a bad person, but he told someone something they weren’t supposed to know. It was back in Ireland. Before we came here. Aidan wasn’t one of my people. He was just a human who accidentally found out what we were. He promised he would protect us, but he told someone about us.”
Pain rose up in Leena’s chest as she spoke. She was still trying so hard not to remember the thing, but once she started, the words just kept coming. Tears filled her green eyes and slipped down her cheeks as she continued. “He might not have intended to harm us, but because of his treachery, we were forced to flee our homes. That’s when we decided to come here, to the New World. But Aidan followed us and others followed him.”
There it was. The thing that she had buried beneath all that anger was out in the open now. The memory filled her up until every inch of her ached, from the tip of her wings to the soles of her feet.
“Because of Aidan someone very important to me died,” Leena heard herself saying. Her voice sounded far away, as if she were hearing someone else speak from a great distance. The memory was all around her now. She was drowning in the pain of it.
As she struggled to breathe, she was vaguely aware that Kira was moving, inching closer to her on the curb.
“I’m so sor—” Kira began to say as she hesitantly reached out toward Leena.
But at the touch of Kira’s hand on her skin, Leena shot to her feet. Her wings flared open behind her, catching the last of the fading sunlight and flashing brilliantly for a moment.
The anger was back. Gratefully, Leena drank it in and used it to push the pain away once more.
“No. Don’t say it. Sorry does not erase the past. Sorry does not undo what Aidan did. Just stay away from me, Kira. I don’t want apologies or sympathy. Not from you. Not ever from you.”
With that, Leena turned and ran across the parking lot, her wings beating behind her. After a few steps, she rose into the air and flew away into the growing darkness.
Kira
12 September 2014
After Mom and I get home, I head to my room and flop down on my bed. The copy of The Annals of the Blessed is lying open on my nightstand. I pick it up and flip to the poem that talks about Aidan being cast out of New El
phame.
For trust betrayed was Aidan cursed.
A spell of banishing did Riona fashion
To forever keep the tinker and his kin
From reopening the final doorway home.
Thus was the Lost One exiled
To wander without home
Until the curse was broken
And the way made open once again.
It makes more sense now that I’ve heard Leena’s side of the story. Sort of. I still wonder exactly what happened. Who did Aidan tell about the fairies? And who died?
I doubt I will be able to get any more information out of Leena. Especially since I promised that I would stay away from her from now on. Maybe someone else in town knows the whole story.
I’m just about to close the book and give up on the mystery for the night when a thought hits me. I read through the passage again. And then again. The thought is spinning circles in my brain. Why didn’t I think of that before?
“Mom!” I shout, jumping off my bed and racing to my bedroom door.
Mom comes out of her room as I poke my head into the hallway. Worried, she asks, “What’s wrong, honey?”
“Dad doesn’t have to run away anymore,” I say.
“What?” Now she’s confused.
“You said Dad has been running his whole life, but he doesn’t have to run anymore. I already did what the spell was supposed to keep him from doing. So that means he can stop running. He could come here, to New Elphame, and stay with