Chapter 15
I might be walking home. Perhaps I’ve already reached home, and I’m lying on my bed. I think I’ve closed the door. All is blurred though, and what has happened, what is happening now, what I will do next seems beyond my control.
The potion. I remember the potion.
And I was with…Kathrine.
Mother.
Kathrine is mother.
“You finally recognize me, my child,” mother says.
Mother is dressed in a long black dress. She is smiling, but her traits are tired, her eyes filled with sadness.
“Mother…” I say, and motion towards her, arms open, needing her long lost embrace.
I am small now, and when we hug my face plunges into the softness of her belly. That’s how small I am.
Mother smells of lavender, and I wish I could melt away into her pacifying aura, losing my identity.
And yet I can’t. Mother pulls me away from her and says, “You must listen now, child, and you must remember.”
I nod, tears suddenly pooling in my eyes.
“Tragedy haunted the royal family to which you belong. Your father the King once came to me to seek remedy, and I gave him the very best of me. I gave him you, my child. For nine months the Queen remained hidden to conceal the truth about your birth to the world,” she starts and pauses.
“Will you remember?” she asks, holding my shoulders, and I nod yes.
“Tragedy kept haunting your family, is still does,” she continues.
I frown, I do not understand.
“Tragedy is haunting my family…now?” I ask anguished.
“Yes tragedy keeps haunting the royal family, which will always be your family, even when you will no longer know,” mother tells me.
I still don’t understand.
“You must go back to the monastery, that’s where the key is,” she says.
“But-” I try to object.
“You must find the key, child. Remember me, child, I will visit you again,” she tells me.
I want to ask what she means, seek guidance, but as soon as mother ends her sentence she starts to dissolve and at once she’s gone.
I stare at the point in space where she was, unable to move, chocked by the lump in my throat.
I am still immobile when suddenly a hand grabs me, shakes me, and I scream, the hands shakes me harder and someone calls my name over and again, with desperate intensity.
Iris, Iris, Iris…