Day Three: Trio – by Amber Averay
After the arrival of her twin boys, and the immediate death of the younger, Mother cherished the remaining child. Stanford was her pride and joy, for it is no secret here that males are the preferred gender. I am tolerated for my beauty – blonde, blue-eyed, slender – and my subservient nature. When they host parties, Mother and Father often parade me before their guests as some sort of trophy the others should be jealous of. If that sounds as if I am treated as property, I can assure you – I am, but only when they deign to notice me.
Growing up, I often wished that I possessed some sort of fire, a rebelliousness that would add colour to my life and make people realise I was more than just a lovely face. But I hadn’t the courage to push boundaries and press buttons. More than anything, I preferred to retreat to my little garden sanctuary and bask in the peace and quiet; for there I wasn’t a failure, or a possession to be displayed, or a big sister who meant less than her little brother. There, I was just me – Jeanette, eldest child of Halnar and Messina, who sought a peaceful life of tranquillity, love, and genuine affection.
Yet the Fates have an interesting sense of humour, don’t they? For many years Mother and Father desperately tried for another child, a son to replace the one who’d been snatched so cruelly from them. Too many daughters was an insult to the family; but there was no such thing as ‘too many sons’ – only too few.
I was well beyond my two thousandth birthday, and Stanford long past his one thousandth, when Father smugly announced they were having their much-desired child. ‘Another son,’ Father declared confidently, while Mother, oddly, hid herself away and constantly complained of sickness, headaches, pains, discomfort. So different from when she was expecting Stanford – and, from stories told, myself. Then, she was beaming, proud, excited. Floating through each pregnancy as if growing another person was no more taxing than breathing.
She almost seemed ashamed of this one, as if she was disgusted in herself and resented the child.
That should have been the first warning, but nobody really considered it as such. We all simply assumed it was Mother exploiting her condition for attention. A peculiar way of ensuring she was the centre of everyone’s awareness.
Yet when it came time to deliver the child, it was no simple, easy matter as it usually was for the witchwomen of Zircondia. The child wasn’t born in a few moments of light discomfort, but a gruelling labour lasting some hours and causing Mother grievous pain. Nor was the infant born smiling, as Zircondian offspring were wont to do; this one came out screaming, as if repulsed by the indignity of its own birth and furious that the first face it saw was Mother’s.
For her part, Mother was equally horrified – for the child was a girl. She summoned me to her bedchamber, where the baby lay on bloodied sheets, Mother at the window – as far from the screaming, red-faced, bad-tempered thing as possible – and I heard her complain to Father, ‘This is not what I wanted, Halnar! A son, we were supposed to have a son! Not this…’ and she flapped her hand toward the baby behind her, ‘not this ugly, sullen little monster.’ She caught sight of me, paused in horror upon the threshold, and jerked her head toward the bed. ‘Jeanette, dear, remove the…baby…’ she spat the word as if it were a foul taste upon her tongue ‘…and do with it what you will. I have no wish to see it again.’
I crept toward the bed, nervous and fascinated equally. I’d not been allowed near Stanford much as a baby, so cherished was he and fussed over by his proud parents. I was permitted to hold him briefly when he was almost upon his first birthday, but he seemed a placid, sweet, charming little boy who smiled easily and laughed often.
This newborn was…well, she was rather small. Chunky of limb, red of face, strong of lung! She roared her displeasure, almost shaking her little fists in rage that she’d been abandoned to sweaty, dirty sheets in a world that didn’t want her.
I surreptitiously summoned a clean sheet, knowing my parents wouldn’t notice my little use of magic, and awkwardly scooped the slimy baby into my arms. Carefully, slowly, I made sure she was swaddled until I could get her to the bathing chamber, and stared with awe at the squished little face. After a few moments she began to settle, her lusty cries becoming disgruntled little snuffles, that faded to the silence of curiosity. She opened her startling eyes – a green both bright and dark, glittering with knowledge and intelligence, flecked with silver flakes – and regarded me as closely as I did her.
I breathed with amazement, ‘She has green eyes!’
Mother swung around and fixed me with a glare so fierce I thought my flesh would burn. ‘Take that child out of here and never bother me with her again!’
I looked helplessly toward Father, hoping for assistance of any sort. But he refused to even look our way. ‘Jeanette, do as your mother says and leave us. She is distraught and needs to rest.’ He never acknowledged his baby, seemed content to pretend she did not exist.
Poor child! My heart filled with love for her and, ducking my head, hurried from the hostile bedchamber cradling the new sister I could only think of as ‘interesting’. Already she seemed content to just study me, assured that she was with someone who loved her and would keep her safe.
And I tried. With everything I had, I tried. But as she grew, the child – who was at last named with great indifference at six months old, only after my friend Merelandia, princess of the mer-folk, suggested the moniker ‘Sigrid’ as we could not continue to call her ‘the Baby’ – revealed herself to be strong, impetuous, reckless, brave, curious, thirsty for knowledge – whether it was acceptable or no – and bore a natural gift for causing trouble and outrage almost every day of her life. Her very existence seemed to offend most, and yet I could not truly reprimand the child who brought me so much joy and contentment. She was a bright, bubbly girl whose smile ever hinted at mischief but was also filled with absolute confidence. She knew she was loved by her sister and brother, and we tried to give her the best life – the life she deserved.
She never seemed to regret or resent our parents’ disinterest in her; never noticed they were absent from her life. And she trusted that Stanford and I would always do right by her, which we did.
Perhaps too well.
Perhaps I encouraged in her the strength and adventure I’d always dreamt of possessing, but didn’t. Perhaps I subconsciously wanted her to live a life better than the constricted, ‘proper’ existence impressed onto and expected of all other Zircondian women.
Perhaps I sought to live vicariously through her, but couldn’t admit it.
I watched her grow, watched her intelligence expand, saw her hunt out challenges as a predator seeks its prey. She was fearless; she was amazing. She had an innate talent for languages, often spouting words and phrases from other realms and kingdoms she couldn’t possibly know. She would tell me stories of alien wars churning the skies over one of the planets in our galaxy, and guilelessly translate the tongues used by each race.
She was headstrong: whenever told the word ‘no’, she took it as invitation to change it to a ‘yes’.
Her favourite bedtime story was ‘The Tale of the Banished Trolls’, and I became accustomed to reading it to her at the end of each day – feigning weariness at the endless repetition, yet privately loving her enthusiasm for the story, amused by her indignation for the Trolls, unconcerned by her declarations that ‘one day’ she would learn the truth.
She would vanish into the forests – forbidden places – and come bounding out hours later, smiling and unaffected as if she’d had a great adventure and not put her siblings through a terrifying ordeal.
So often was I told to distance myself from Sigrid as she grew: ‘She will bring upon you nothing but trouble!’ ‘She is evil – only the Devil’s Spawn could do as she does and get away with it!’ ‘Those green eyes prove she is the child of Satan – why was she not destroyed at birth?’
I would retreat with Sigrid to my little garden and hold her tighter to me; though she was not a great one for affection, she would tolerate my embraces as best she could, knowing they were necessary. For me, at least.
Stanford and I, we supported her. We raised her. We loved her. We tried to teach her circumspection, subtlety, prudence; but she was who she was, and could be both cautious while flaunting her arrogance as if it were a garment she was most proud to don.
The people of our world feared her; they hated her; they were fascinated by her.
Nothing could stop me loving my baby sister; not even when her ‘malevolence’ ensured she was caught out after a cunning caterpede played her at her own game. Stanford and I, as her champions, friends, siblings – were included in her punishment, and we became forever known as a trio of legend, a story read to children in warning against misbehaving.
I miss seeing those startling green eyes glittering with wicked amusement, hearing Stanford’s surprised bark of laughter whenever she said something we’d not anticipated yet which made sense.
I miss them. And I know we will be together again.
- A short story from Jeanette of the Enchantment Series’ perspective.
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