17. Amelie
Amelie
I was feeling about one thousand different things right now.
The butterflies from kissing Kiaran were still fluttering, the new advancement of being able to hear his thoughts back was unnerving, my dinner guests and Kiaran’s having silent conversations across the table was frustrating me and now I was holding an old, gold locket with a picture of me in it.
Kiaran blocked my view of Al and it was the only thing keeping me from crumbling right now.
“Let’s sit down. I’m happy to answer any of Amelie’s questions.” Al replied to Kiaran. Ethel came to my side and though I was not happy that she tried to keep something from me, she made me feel safe.
Kiaran’s fists were balled at his side, trying to keep his composure. He turned slightly to look at me for permission to return to the table, I nodded.
We all reclaimed our seats while Kiaran’s friends kept a very watchful eye on the necklace in my hands. Kiaran was on my left, resting a hand on my bouncing leg under the table. Ethel was on my right and wrapped her short arm as far as it could go around my shoulders .
“That’s your great grandmother, Niklaus’s wife.”
Staring back at the photo, there were slight, barely noticeable differences between me and the girl’s face, but her hair was lighter. Blonde I’d guess, but the black and white photo made it hair to tell exactly. It was blatantly obvious that she was family.
“Orla?”
“Orla.” Niklaus affirmed, his voice trembling as he looked at me.
A knife stabbed through my chest at the memory of my first few days here.
Of the name that meant princess of gold and how it felt so fitting for Fern.
How I’d always loved the name despite knowing nothing about my grandmother’s mother.
“So you’re my great grandfather?” I took slow, sharp breaths, trying to keep my heart calm.
“I am. Our daughter, Amelia, must have made it out of the Forest.” A tear slipped from his eyes as his lip quivered.
“She must’ve had a family,” he choked out, heaving forward onto the table as the emotion spilled from him.
Al rubbed his friends shoulders but he didn’t look sad for him.
He looked almost…thrilled? Too excited for somebody who was watching his friend break to pieces.
“Why isn’t she with you in the Forest? Orla, I mean.”
Niklaus looked to his friend and Al answered for him.
“I’m sure Ethel told you at least some of our family’s history.”
She had. But not that I had a grandfather wandering this Forest still.
I looked to Ethel, unsure of what I was supposed to know. She spoke very highly of Evari and Orla, even the Bloch family. But I knew nothing about Niklaus, or the other three Lost Souls at the table for that matter. Ethel and Al seemed to not get along in the slightest.
“Was this your plan? To come here and bombard the poor girl with her tragic lineage?” She scolded the men, Josef was the only one who looked apologetic. He hadn’t said a word since they’d arrived and it looked like he wanted to jump out of his skin.
“We wanted to know if the prophecy...” Al cleared his throat. “If the stars were finally aligned.”
“Prophecy?” I looked to Ethel. As far as anyone knew, Orla was the last of the Morgenstern bloodline. “Who’s they ?”
Kiaran was strumming his fingers against my leg now. He usually hid his worry on his own body but in his attempt to calm me down, he gave himself away.
“The Witches. I’m sure when Orla’s star appeared, the boy’s coven realized the Morgenstern’s lived on. They have crossed stars hundreds of times over many, many years trying to satisfy their agenda,” Niklaus explained with a determined tone shining through his shaking voice.
“My High Priestess took out the Morgensterns long, long ago. That’s not possible,” Kiaran interjected. His mind was racing.
Al gestured to me. “Clearly not.”
“Amelie can’t be a Morgenstern, she’s human. Witches cannot cross the human fates,” Kiaran argued. I knew I was a Morgenstern simply because I knew my mother’s maiden name, it wasn’t until arriving here that I learned how thick that blood ran. But why was Kiaran denying that?
“You’re right, Kiaran. But Amelie has awoken her magic, she’s no longer human. As she was before that is.”
“But she’s mortal…” He tried again, his voice a whisper.
“For now.” Friedrich sounded bored at Kiaran’s spiral.
My heartbeat picked up its pace, competing with my lungs at which could expand and contract faster.
“She can’t be…” We all leaned in a bit closer to the Witch next to me who seemed to be having a conversation with himself .
“How did you leave the cottage?” Friedrich asked Kiaran.
“She…no…” Kiaran stumbled over his words, looking to me for an answer I didn’t have.
“It’s not magic, she uses the elements. It’s a cousin to baking a cake really.
Right, Amelie? Tell them about how alchemy works.
” He was panicking. He absolutely knew something that I didn’t, something changed in him when we kissed and I was fearful that it had something to do with the information we were being given right now.
“It’s not magic in its purest form.” I reassured Kiaran.
“But after I told Ethel about it, she explained that I held the magic of gold. That any thought I manifested could become as valuable to the Earth as the precious metal itself.” Kiaran stared at me with pleading eyes.
Like he wanted me to take back my admission and make it untrue.
“You told me it was hardly magic.” His voice was pained as it trailed off, but he held my leg in his hand like I might vanish underneath it.
“She doesn’t have magic like yours, boy.
She is half Morgenstern. Her magic, that she has unknowingly awoken, is one that can create mass chaos in any realm.
Even yours. It doesn’t require the balance and her will is enough to end bloodlines.
” Josef spoke. For the first time since being here, he spoke and it was with such conviction that the table went completely silent.
Kiaran shifted in his seat and burst into a fit of laughter.
“You mean to tell me that Amelie is a descendant of the most notoriously powerful Witches known to my realm?” He shook his head. “You’re crazy.”
Since Ethel told me what she knew about the Morgensterns, there was an ever present sting in my heart. That sting was present in Josef’s deep blue eyes as he continued.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, son. Evari Morgenstern was the first to try to fight back against your High Priestess.
She was bold and brave. She said the only chance her family had in breaking the orders was crossing their bloodlines with less powerful ones.
Eventually finding more human blood than celestial.
” Josef continued, folding his hands together on the table and not taking his eyes away from them .
Al stared at his friend. He had something to add but I gathered that Josef speaking wasn’t something you ever took away from him.
He looked up at me now. “I never got to meet her,” utter despair was etched into his voice, “Orla, that is. My daughter.” Josef straightened his wobbling voice, “I heard the stories about her years later when I came back after my death looking for Evari. She sent me away when we found out she was pregnant. Said it would be too dangerous for me here so I went home to farm with my family.”
“Where did Evari go?” Ethel wouldn’t tell me the first time I asked. My heart broke for both Josef and Niklaus who seemed to have lost more in the Forest than just their souls.
Ethel took over the story, adding more details to what she told me by the pond yesterday.
“I heard Orla being born. Evari wanted to be alone so I listened to her manifestations as she gave her baby girl the elixirs, then herself. We were all so scared of the Witches coming to find out what Evari had done.” Ethel was tugged back from her spot by me to meet Edgar.
He held her close, giving her the strength to continue as her tears began to fall.
“I thought she was dead when I found her. Orla had been crying for much longer than a newborn should cry for, so I let myself in and Evari was laying on the couch with her baby girl in her arms. There was a note on the end table explaining what she did. She said she could live in that restful state under the veil forever, but if her heart stopped, so would Orla’s. ”
Edgar held her tighter. I laced my fingers through Kiaran’s. The men were listening to Ethel’s admission with such fervor, needing to know what happened to their beloved Evari.
“So she’s alive?” I asked.
“She is veiled. Frea helped me with the invisibility veil and she will remain that way until the Earth goes black.”
Josef appeared to have replayed years of memories all to end at the same fate every time. Lost in the Forest forever, looking for a woman who could never be found and a daughter he’d never know.
“So let me get this straight, You and Evari were expecting, she made you leave. She then had a baby girl, Orla, who lived here until she disappeared?” Josef nodded, “After delivery, Ethel, you somehow hid Evari’s body and have kept her veiled for what, three hundred years?
” Ethel twiddled her thumbs and concurred, “Niklaus, you and Orla had a baby girl, my grandma Amelia? How did Amelia end up in Holleberg? And where do you two fit into all of this?” I finished by asking Al and Friedrich.
Niklaus took the first answer, “Amelia would’ve been two or three when Orla disappeared.
We didn’t know where she went, the fact that you’re here and have believed yourself to be human and come from the village outside of the Forest would suggest she somehow ended up there.
I died only a few days after Orla disappeared. My heart was too broken to continue.”
Al placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder and answered the second half of my question. “I am your Father’s grandfather.” Al said with nothing but joy in his voice. Like he’d been waiting to shout from the rooftop that the great artist from Holleberg was of his blood.
“I am Alfred Bloch Senior. My son was Alfred Bloch Junior, his mother and I allowed him to leave for Holleberg to marry a human. Your father was Alfred Bloch III. As Ethel I’m sure has told you, we arrived to this Forest around the same time as your mother’s family, though with a much less sinister agenda. ”
It was impossible now not to notice the uncanny resemblance between Al and my father. Friedrich looked like a replica of my Uncle Arthur.
The way he’d looked at me all night made sense.
Who knows how long it had been since he’d seen someone from his family.
Even though I looked like a dead ringer for the long lost spirit of Orla, I wondered if any part of me looked like the bright, creative creature that was my father.
Maybe I only hoped for that so that I could look in the mirror and see past the magic of gold and the fates that had been at work in my blood long before I was born.
“And you?” I asked Friedrich.
“I am your father’s great uncle.” I already knew that, I could see it so clearly. That must be all there was to his story as he didn’t have any notion to continue.
I took a moment to gaze around the room at my family, Kiaran was stone at my side. He had been crawling out of his skin since our guests arrived, but now, amongst my ancestors, he was strong, a pillar.
“And the Bloch’s? They’re celestial too?” I might have a stroke if the answer was yes. And the look of pride on Al’s face was enough of an answer. My stomach rolled. Why didn’t Ethel tell me that?
“We are in a way, celestial. But not in the way of the Morgensterns nor like your boy over here.”
The similarity between him and Ethel only giving me just enough of an answer was incredible.
“So in what way are you…we…celestial?” I prodded, not letting him get away with half an answer.
Friedrich adjusted in his chair, leaning forward on the table with laced fingers. “The only way for a Bloch to find true enlightenment as to what we are, is to figure it out for yourself.”
The gold in my eyes lit on fire. This time, it was obvious. Before, it was a heaviness. A weight that felt like a wave was taking me under, but now the rage coursing through my blood made the magic that I held in my eyes an inferno.
“And how do I do that?”
Al and Friedrich laughed to each other, “It is a right of passage for every Bloch child to ask that. But don’t worry, with all that is happening, I’m sure it will come to you soon.
” Al said, reaching across the table to hold my hand in his.
I wanted to take it back from him but it was in that moment that I felt a thrumming sensation expelling from my skin.
No one else at the table seemed to notice it but when I looked at Kiaran, I saw the reason for it.
Whatever happened during our kiss was alive between us now.
I could see the connection flowing between us in every color under the sun.
Reds tied our hearts, yellows tied our bodies, blues tied our souls, greens to our feet and the rest of the colors blending it all together seamlessly into a perfect rainbow.
It’s said that you could never find the end of a rainbow, you could search forever but never find it. However, in front of me, the beginning and the end was Kiaran and me.
This kitchen was filled with those who shared my blood, originated it, created the very essence of my existence with years of crossed stars.
Ethel, she knew every one of them. The day we met she looked at me like she was dreaming of days past. Old friends she’d never see again, stories she’d never be able to tell, all on display in front of her.
“Why are you lost here?” I asked to no one in particular.
Josef answered, “We are not with our soulmates. Until we can cross into the eternal afterlife together, we will wait here for them.”
His eyes sparkled like it wasn’t sad to be waiting for an unknown frame of time to be released from purgatory. He said it as if it was a privilege to wait here for the love of his life.
Niklaus was next to speak, “I may not have been Orla’s soul mate, but she was mine. That girl didn’t need anyone, so damn independent. I loved her more than my heart could stand to feel. On my way to death, I only hoped I could stay in this Forest and wait for her.”
Celestial love sounded so powerful. Apparently so shattering it made you pray to remain in purgatory just to wait for your person to enter into eternal darkness together.
I might never feel that kind of love, by the looks of it my fate was as fucked up as my life in Holleberg was, but at least I knew now that a love like that existed in this world.
That kind of love was real.