42. Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Two
Calliope
I’d remained silent as everyone talked around me. For once in my life I didn’t feel like talking, but listening and taking in the worried glances, and the anger my dad and uncle were radiating. They all really cared, and I really fudged up.
It was a split-second decision and, at the time, I knew I just had to save Simon. I didn’t think of anything else. I didn’t think it would all blow up in my face this badly. I just jumped at the opportunity of saving my bestie, without thinking of others.
Simon would have done the same, heckers, he did the same.
Simon beamed up at me, chewing on the rope he had somehow chewed off from the tree, to free himself. He was one smart kid.
Ha—kid, because he was a goat baby!
I leaned my head on Valpar’s chest while he explained what happened. I couldn’t bear to tell the story again, so I was glad he took over. The one thing I didn’t tell him was that Karma said my mother was pregnant. I glanced over at her and Dad has his hand on Mom’s hip. I noticed how his thumb grazed over to the soft part of her stomach.
For humans, it would be impossible to know this early if she was with child yet, but supernaturals knew. They probably knew right when sperm meets egg, but I didn’t know the details.
Ew, I didn’t need to know how they knew.
“Um, Mom, can I ask you a question?” I blurted before I realized what I had said.
Everyone paused and stared at me and Mom stepped forward out of Dad’s grasp. Her eyes were soft and red-rimmed from crying, and I knew she cared about me. The doubt that seeped into me earlier had already washed away.
Wow, I was stupid to even doubt her care for me.
Ugh, Karma was such a bug.
“Are you—are you going to have a baby?” I smiled brightly to lift the mood because I didn’t want to see her sad any-more. She should be happy, and should celebrate the moment, not worry about me anymore. She had worried about me for as long as I could remember.
“Calliope, sweetheart.” She came closer to cup my face and Valpar stiffened. His hold on me grew tight, like my mom was going to take me away.
He let her near, and she rubbed her nose against mine. “I wanted to tell you sooner, but I was so upset about finding an orc in your bed.” She laughed loudly. “Then, I had to come to terms with the fact you won’t be living with us anymore. I didn’t get to wake up to you and your bright smile, causing mischief with the skunks.” She pressed a kiss to my cheek.
“You mean the fart squirrels,” I corrected.
She snickered and sighed. “Right, the fart squirrels. Then, with Simon gone missing, I forgot to tell you about the baby. I’m so sorry. Are you angry with me?”
I shook my head. “No. I could never be mad. Things have been really exciting the past few days. And you will always be my Mom. We will come to visit lots and you can come visit us, too!
Valpar grunted.
“Besides, you shouldn’t worry about me. I have Valpar, remember? It’s his job to worry about me now.” I tugged on his hair, and he let out a deep sigh.
“It is my honor to worry about my female. She’s my to protect and I will hold her to keep her in place,” he growled.
I giggled, slapping his chest. “You are so funny, can’t hold on to me forever. I need to walk sometimes. What if I have to go pee?”
Valpar huffed in annoyance. “No, even on a leash, you evade me. You will no longer be out of my grasp. You can relieve yourself in my arms.”
Aunt Melina dry heaved in the background. “That’s so sweet.”
Mom pushed back some hair behind my ear, taking out some of the dead leaves. “And even though Valpar is your mate and he will protect you, I will, to some degree, worry about you. You will always be my first daughter, my first child. Even if you didn’t come out of my body, you live in my heart.”
My lip wobbled, and I dropped the potion in my lap to lean forward to give her a hug. When I wrapped my arms around her, she asked, “How did you know I was pregnant? I won’t be showing for at least a few more weeks.”
I went to open my mouth and I felt the bottle lifting from my lap and the loud pop of a cork. My body must have obscured Valpar’s vision because all of a sudden, I felt liquid dropping onto my skin. I gasped at the cold liquid and Simon bleated in terror.
My eyes grew heavy and Valpar screamed in rage, pulling me away and covering my body with his.
“Calliope don’t go to sleep! Don’t! Simon! What’s wrong with him?”
Uncle Osirus’s booming voice hit my ears, demanding the area to be cleared. The urgency in his tone created tension. I could feel it in how Valpar held me and the sounds of scuffling feet.
I could hear Simon whimper as everyone scrambled around me. They sounded like they were underwater. My body felt heavy and when I tried to speak, no words came out.
Where was Simon?
Valpar cried out. “Fuck! Calliope, stay with me!” His panicked face was the last thing I saw as my eyes became too heavy and they finally closed.
The gentle flickering of light danced behind my closed eyelids, resembling a torch playfully waving before my face, and coaxing me awake.
My mind reeled as I struggled to piece together what happened. Was I really on a mountain, surrounded by fierce dragons spewing their fire? It took a moment for my consciousness to fully return, and my eyelids were heavy as if weighed down by a heavy fog. Memories flooded back to the first time I woke up in Uncle Osirus and Aunt Melina’s grand palace, feeling groggy, disoriented, and weighed down by a sense of confusion.
As I sat up and vigorously rubbed my tired eyes. Slowly, my eyelids fluttered open, revealing a solitary lightbulb suspended from the ceiling in the dimly lit basement. It swung back and forth, its feeble glow casting eerie shadows against the cold cement walls. Faint echoes of thumping bass from the music playing upstairs reverberated through the air, creating a pulsating rhythm that seemed to echo in the space. The unmistakable scent of dampness and mustiness clung to the air and intermingled with the metallic tang of exposed pipes. In the far corner, a washer and dryer stood, silently waiting to serve their purpose.
I…remembered this place. It was a distant memory, more so a dream than real life, but I was remembering. This was who I was before—before I was saved.
I put my hand over my mouth and my eyes widened in shock.
I’m on Earth with her. My real mother.
No, she isn’t my mother. Theresa, my aunt, is my real mother. She was the one that knew how to be more a mother than this woman. The woman upstairs is just the person who gave birth to me, nothing more.
Goddess, please, I didn’t come back to live here, did I? Valpar wasn’t a dream, was he? My breathing came in heavy pants and my head dizzy with panicking thoughts.
I couldn’t stay in this basement. I couldn’t live down here another minute.
I made to rise from my cot but a hand stopped me and pulled me back down. I screamed and that hand covered my mouth.
“Shh, I got you.”
I instantly recognized her voice, but my heart still raced, and my breath still heaved.
I was going to pass out.
“None of this is real. It’s just a memory.” My fairy godmother patted my long, dark hair until she had me lean on her.
My fingers dug into the cot. I could feel the cold metal beneath it.
“Fairy Godmother,” I whispered, trying to calm down as her familiar scent washed over me, filling me with a sense of safety.
She stroked my hair softly, her touch soothing the racing of my heart. “You’re safe, Calliope. You’re not back there, you’re here with me,” she reassured me with her gentle voice. “It was just a memory, a flashback. You are in your mate’s arms, surrounded by those who care for you. Who will always be there for you.”
“My Valpar?”
Fairy Godmother chuckled and squeezed my shoulder. “Yup, he’s having a hissy fit, you being asleep and all. He doesn’t want you remembering this alone. He’s beating himself up that Karma snuck past him while he was holding you.”
I gave her a sad smile. Yes, he would be upset. He didn’t get to kill the witch, or Ivy. I hope he gets some revenge on Karma for blind-siding the both of us. But—the way I’m dealing with this sudden remembrance of my past, it may be for the best.
I won’t remember these memories right after our mating and I won’t have to draw out my memories. Perhaps the potion spilling on to me was for the better.
“You should comfort Valpar, not me. I don’t want him to be upset.”
Fairy Godmother blew a raspberry. “Are you kidding? The dufus is fine. He wouldn’t like me, anyway. He would want me to be here with you. You are such a selfless little thing, aren’t you?” She hummed and placed her cheek on top of my head.
I didn’t reply—all I could feel was the deep, heaviness of depression overtaking me.
I disliked this place, and I now remembered why I wanted to have my memories erased.
You’re such a waste of space.
He wouldn’t have left if you didn’t come along.
No one will ever love you.
Such a klutz, can’t you do anything right?
This place, this hellhole I used to call home, was my torture chamber for years. Words hurt more than my stomach shrinking, the sleepless nights and the nightmares that came. I was scared of everything, with no one to hold me in the night and no one to tell me everything was okay.
School was my only reprieve. I got a free lunch for those who needed it, but the cruel children who saw me as nothing more than poor trash still tormented me. All I wanted to do was make friends and enjoy the sunshine. Instead, from a young age I was dubbed the ‘weird one,’ when I was so fascinated with dandelions, watching the birds, making flowered crowns and lying in the grass.
She’s so weird.
I heard her mom never wanted her.
Do you see the way she dresses?
That girl tries to fit in, it’s just pathetic.
I always wore tattered and oversized clothes. They were nothing like what the other kids wore, even though Theresa did her best to sneak me clothes in the basement window. The woman upstairs would take them for herself when she saw me wear them.
When summer arrived, I found myself trapped in the stifling basement. I couldn’t escape unless I took the risk of slipping out through a small window, while my mother was comatose from drugs or drowning in her own hangover.
Survival was a constant struggle in this suffocating prison.
I was a depressed, lonely outsider that just craved human contact.
I never fully understood why my mother didn’t love me. She loved her drugs more, and spent every bit of money of those welfare checks on it. That woman wouldn’t let me go, either. I remembered her sister, my aunt, try to take me away so many times, to save me.
Theresa was the only one that saw me, tried to save me, but that woman who birthed me wanted that check for her minute of a high.
Not to protect her daughter.
I worked to the bone some nights, cleaning, doing her laundry, cooking. That woman would even make me come upstairs for her parties and make food for the people she would bring over.
I closed my eyes, and felt the tears run down my cheeks when I remembered one night the people started throwing bottles on the floor. Someone ordered me to clean up the shattered glass and as I was doing so, I somehow fell forward, and glass buried deep into my skin.
I didn’t have any way to keep the infection out, no way to clean it. It healed horribly and left nasty scars.
I pulled up the black t-shirt I was wearing and looked down. The tiny scars were there, in the dream. Now that I was awake from the magic that Uncle Osirus and the sorceress put on me, would they be there when I woke up?
What would Valpar think of me now? Would he still think of me as his little fairy? All those haunting memories were here now. The darkness was here to stay. I didn’t have one ounce of happiness in my childhood. I could feel the fog surrounding me, suffocating me.
You’re worthless.
My Fairy Godmother’s touch calmed my racing heart. It was her magic. I could feel it flowing through my body. I could feel the rush come in like a giant wave off the shores of the Golden Light Kingdom. The warm waters made it up my ankles and to my knees until it reached up my neck.
“Shh,” she cooed. “Shh,” she whispered, “You are loved now.” Her fingers threaded through my dark hair. “Think of the wonderful memories you have made in your new life, what has become of you in Bergarian.”
I hummed, my hands balling into fists. I concentrated on warm waters, the light sources wrapping around me.
“You will never have to return to that life, Calliope,” Fairy Godmother said firmly, her eyes full of unwavering determination. “I want you to close your eyes and concentrate on your new memories. The ones when you first woke up in Bergarian for the first time.”
I bit my lip, not wanting to listen.
She nudged me and tickled my cheek with my hair. “Go on, or you’ll get spanked later.”
I let out a giggle and closed them.
“Remember your family. Theresa and Birch, they are your parents. Your real family. Osirus and Melina too, hmm?”
I nodded and thought of them. They were my family. They alone already outweighed a lot of my darkness, my torment of the past. My heart did not feel heavy or empty. It was becoming full and light again.
“Oh yes, don’t forget Simon,” she added, playfully.
“Never, I would never forget Simon.” I shook my head.
She tsked. “And someone else. Who else is important to you?”
My heart felt so full it almost exploded. Valpar. For the first time in my life, I knew what love was when I was with him. Romantic love, the love where you feel so deep you know that when you are with a person, no matter the past, they are your future.
Valpar found me half-way across Bergarian and fought a witch for me. He put up with me running away and claimed me over and over again.
Valpar was my new home. He was my light.
I opened my eyes and Fairy Godmother nodded with a smile as I recounted the memories of my new life in Bergarian. She watched me intently, her eyes reflecting pride and reassurance.
“You have come so far, Calliope,” she said softly, her voice filled with warmth. “You have found love and family, in a world far away from the darkness of your past. Hold on to those memories. Let them guide you.”
Valpar was my anchor to this new world, where magic existed and love wasn’t a foreign concept. He saw me, truly saw me, and loved me despite my past scars and the darkness that threatened to consume me before I even remembered it. His love was a beacon of hope in the shadows of my past, guiding me towards a future filled with light and happiness.
As I focused on the new memories that I had experienced since coming to Bergarian the memories of my past didn’t seem so dark. Looking forward, I only focused on happy times with my extensive family, and a mate waiting for me for when I wake.