Weaving Destinies

After leading me through a quaint little town full of wooden huts and thatched roofs and people that all knew each other, Alec took me to a large mansion. Entrance to the mansion was through a tall turret in the center of the house, and the outside was painted a plain beige color with a gray roof. The entire mansion was surrounded by a large, magnificent garden. The moment we walked in the door into entryway (which was entirely made of oak from the floor to the carved walls to the ceiling), we were nearly squashed by the number of servants that greeted us. They all seemed overjoyed. It was nice to finally be in a completely different world where no one knew about me.

I didn’t blame my parents for making me stay in Louisville. They had seemed really distraught about it.

“We can’t move,” Mom said, her face looking unusually gaunt. “I’m sorry, but your father and I can’t find new jobs. We’ve been looking and looking, but we’ll be in a lot of financial trouble if we try to move. Maybe you could transfer to another high school at least…”

I shook my head. Everyone knew about it anyways. I should just save everyone the trouble of filling out paperwork and stay in the same high school. It would only be two more years, anyways. That wasn’t so long.

I pretended that I was completely fine with it. I knew that this was hard on my parents. They really were trying to do everything they could to help me.

“We don’t have enough money for this,” I heard Mom whispering one night. I sat on the stairs listening.

“I know, honey. I know,” Dad sighed, sounding stressed.

“After remortgaging the house last year…”

“Look on the bright side. We could have paid a lot more than we did.”

“We didn’t plan for this! How are we going to retire? How is Livvy going to afford college?”

“I don’t think Livvy is going to college.”

They fell silent, and soon I could hear Mom’s muffled sobs.

“Is it our fault?” she asked shakily, so quietly that I had to struggle to hear her words.

“No, Marilyn. You can’t blame yourself,” Dad assured her.

“Then who are we going to blame? Everyone blames her! But she’s a good girl! She never meant to hurt anyone! She’s my baby girl!” Mom’s crying grew more agitated. I heard Dad shushing her and trying to calm her down.

“Give it time. People will forget. People will move on,” Dad murmured.

“Livvy won’t,” Mom whispered. “Scott, I don’t think we’ll ever see our little girl smile again.”

I hated that I had done this to them. Just like everything else, it was my fault.

“Welcome to Porta, your Highnesses,” a man stepped forward and bowed.

“Thank you, Walter,” Alec smiled at him.

“It’s the High Prince and his fiancée!” a steady whisper worked its way through the crowd of maids, butlers, cooks, and other servants.

“Not getting married!” I managed to yell back at them as a group of young maids pull me away up a staircase and into a huge bathroom. Alec, of course, followed close behind and entered another bathroom that was close enough for the spell to allow it. As they stripped me of my dirty clothes and pushed me into a bath of warm, lavender smelling water, I noticed something.

“Hey, you’re the same maids who helped me back at the main palace!” I exclaimed. “How did you get here?” They put fingers to their lips, hushing me.

“We’re not supposed to be here!” Genevieve whispered as if someone might be eavesdropping.

“We followed you because we didn’t want to stay at the castle doing nothing!” Danielle explained.

“Followed me? You were there the whole time?” I asked.

“Not exactly. We figured out that you would be most likely to stop at Porta next, so we came here,” Katherine responded, rubbing something white that smelled strongly of coconuts in my hair.

“And your spell helped too,” Nicole said as she got out another bottle of shampoo.

“What spell?” I asked, feeling dumb. They stopped and stared at me.

“The one you put on the necklaces!” Cecilia said. “It lets us somehow know where you are. It’s hard to explain.”

“But I didn’t put any spell on those necklaces!” I exclaimed. “They’re just plain necklaces, nothing else! Unless Julia…”

They suddenly gasped.

“What? Now what did I say?” I sighed, feeling very confused.

“Would you perhaps be speaking of the Julia?” Clarissa asked timidly.

“Of course not, stupid,” Lucia scolded. “She died a long time ago! It couldn’t have been her!”

“How do you know she died?” Rowena argued. “She disappeared. That doesn’t mean she died!” They started to fight amongst themselves as they scrubbed and applied more perfumes and soaps to my body. I sighed and tried to relax, staring at my own necklace that hung around my neck. It seemed that there was a lot more to Julia than I had realized. Had she known all along that this would happen?

“I won’t be here forever, you know,” she had often told me, but I hadn’t thought anything of it.

She had a framed Shakespeare quote on the wall. I often stared at it during our sessions until I had it memorized.

Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.

Julia loved this quote, and I had to admit that there was a certain truth to it. I had once heard her explaining to my parents, “She’ll heal when she’s ready. She must first accept that she is worthy of joy before she can move on. She has to forgive herself, and she must learn to let go of the pain and sadness.”

“Why wouldn’t she want to?” Dad had asked.

“It’s a place of comfort for some,” Julia calmly explained. “Misery can be safer than change. For others, it’s a matter of guilt. It’s highly probable that she doesn’t believe she deserves to ever be happy again.”

Suddenly, I felt the magical push of the wall on one side of my body. Alec was on the move. It pushed me underwater, and I slid along at the bottom of the tub until someone reached in and pulled me up again.

“What’s going on?”

“Faith?”

“Your Serene Highness?”

“Where are you going?”

They all started asking questions at the same time as I was forced to walk towards the door.

“Um… great bath, guys. Really! I just remembered that I had to, uh…” The spell didn’t give me any more time to speak as I hurriedly grabbed a towel and wrapped it around myself. I stumbled out the door and into the corridor, going wherever the spell pushed me.

“What’s going on?” I wondered. “Something is weird happening to Alec!”