We pulled into the parking lot outside of the university library. Even though we were the only car there, we parked far away from the building, several yards away from the nearest streetlight. Aiden took my hand in his as we quickly strode across the parking lot.
“Are we allowed to be here so late?” I asked.
“It’s closed, but I have a badge to get in after-hours,” Aiden replied. “And no – no one here will torture us in the basement if they find us.” He chuckled, then suppressed a cough. In the light of the overhead streetlamp, I could see him wince.
“Too soon for jokes,” I muttered.
“Hey,” he stopped for a moment, looking at my face strangely. “Your eye…”
I raised my hand to my cheek, self-conscious. “What is it?”
“It’s just… I could have just sworn your right eye was… glowing…” he trailed off, scoffing at himself. “That was a ridiculous thing to say. Perhaps I unknowingly hit my head in there.”
“I think I’m the only one between the two of us with a concussion…” I started to reply, but quickly stopped when I saw his eyes widen in alarm. “Anyway, uh, forget that… All I wanted to say is that I’ve noticed that eye doing strange things before, too. It flashed bright purple for a split-second, almost like a black light was shined on it, right?”
“That’s very strange,” Aiden replied, almost to himself. “It’s not something I’ve heard reported by any other Elementalists…”
We got to the front doors then. Aiden swiped his badge and the reader beeped as the door clicked open. The library was dark; the fluorescent lights had been switched off, leaving only a handful of softly-illuminated sconce lights on the walls. It smelled musty, like old books and yellowed pages. I breathed in deeply. I loved the comforting smell of libraries.
“This way,” Aiden said, leading me to the elevator. “We’ve gotta head up to the stacks.”
“What was it Robert – uh, Professor Borstein – was saying about this meeting place?” I asked as we stepped into the elevator. “That the two of you had some sort of argument here over bacon?”
Aiden suppressed a snicker as he hit the button for the top floor. “Yeah – Roger Bacon, a medieval philosopher.”
“Oh. I assumed it had to do with preferred crispiness, or whether it’s best served as an accompaniment to eggs or open-faced on toast with lettuce and tomato.”
“That would have been a much more interesting conversation,” Aiden laughed, again wincing slightly as he did. My stomach knotted; every time he cringed in pain, I was filled with overwhelming guilt.
The elevator doors slid open and we entered the stacks – the top floor of the library, that is, which was filled with towering shelves upon shelves, each loaded with heavy, scholarly textbooks and antediluvian tomes of ages past. Aiden started to head towards the meeting area, but I gently pulled him back.
“Aiden…” I started, the corners of my eyes wet from the dust as well as my remorse, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” He immediately started to shush me, but I shook my head firmly. “Everything that happened tonight was my fault. You told me to stay away from them. You warned me that they would try to use me. But I was so consumed with the thought of finding my parents that I didn’t listen to you. And now, I’ve gotten you hurt – and who knows what they might try to do to us next…” I trailed off, my emotions rising in my throat. With a gulp, I tried my best to force them back down but instead let out a quiet sob.
“Hey… hey,” he said softly, gently tucking a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “It’s okay. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to go years without any idea of who you are or what happened to you… To feel like your only option is to remain alone, isolated from the rest of the world.” My eyes were brimming with tears. He cupped my face gently, wiping a stray tear away with his thumb. “I told you – coming with you tonight was my choice. There was no way I was going to let you go alone. And you know what? I frankly owe you an apology.”
I looked up at him, confused. “How could you possibly owe me an apology?”
“I didn’t realize the gravity of what we were getting into. I was naïve, allowing us to break in there together in some half-witted attempt to protect you. I underestimated them. And because of that, you got hurt,” he said, gently touching my bandaged shoulder. “Worse,” he added darkly, “They know what you are now, which is what I had hoped they would never find out.”
“I’m too angry to be afraid,” I whispered, bowing my head. “They killed my parents.”
Aiden started to speak, but a shrill voice interrupted him.
“Aspen!” Evelyn cried from behind us.
I whipped around to see Evelyn run towards me as she and Professor Borstein stepped out of the stairwell. She approached me breathlessly, throwing her arms around me in a tight embrace. I stiffened.
She pulled away to look at me, her hands still clenching my jacket sleeves. “I can’t imagine how angry you must be with me right now,” she said, her face creased with pain, “but I hope you’ll at least give me the chance to explain.”
“Hello, Aspen… or do you prefer ‘Rowan’?” Professor Borstein greeted me as he clasped Aiden on the shoulder. “Well, either way, it’s very nice to meet you officially.”
“Professor Borstein,” I nodded. “‘Aspen’ is fine.”
“Very well! And you may call me Robert!” He smiled, then glanced at Evelyn, shifting awkwardly. “Aiden and I will just, ah, give you and Evelyn a moment… It sounds like he and I have some catching up to do, anyway…”
Aiden gave me a fleeting look over his shoulder as he and Robert walked away, heading into the stacks.
“What did they do to you?” Evelyn asked, her eyes wide. She was regarding my bandages through the singed hole in my jacket.
I crossed my arms in front of me, grimacing as the burnt skin on my shoulder tugged. “Fulman?” I asked bluntly. “Who are you, exactly? Why didn’t you tell me we were related somehow?”
Evelyn sighed, taking a seat at a nearby table. She looked exhausted. She patted the chair next to her for me to sit, then unknotted the pale blue scarf from atop her head as I sat down.
“Please know that I have not been intentionally misleading you by using the name Messner. That was my maiden name, which I reverted back to shortly after my husband, your grandfather, died.”
“So, it’s true,” I uttered in amazement. “You’re… you’re my grandmother?”
“If we are to be perfectly precise, I’m your ‘step-grandmother’, though I loathe that term. I was married to your grandfather, Donald, for nearly twenty years before he passed away eight years ago. I was there when you were born. Rowan Elizabeth Fulman. You were the most beautiful baby any of us had ever seen. I loved you instantly. Just as I loved your mother and father as though they were my own flesh and blood.”
My heart caught in my throat. I didn’t know what to say, so instead I just listened intently, doing my best to absorb every word. It wasn’t easy; the painkillers Dr. Chen had administered were wearing off, and my head was beginning to throb.
“For the first few years of your life, your grandfather and I saw you and your parents every summer and Christmas… and found any excuse we could to visit in-between. But by the time you were three or four years old, the visits became less frequent, as your parents’ jobs in Washington, D.C. became more and more demanding, plainly isolating your family from the rest of the world. Both of them were involved in some sort of government work, or so I thought at the time, and had been promoted to classified positions, working on top-secret projects that they weren’t at liberty to discuss with either Donald or me. What I didn’t know – what they and your grandfather kept from me for all those years – is that they were not government employees. They were members of an organization, the same one who apparently did this to you,” she said grimly, gesturing to my shoulder.
“It wasn’t until your grandfather was on his deathbed that he admitted to me that he was never a member of the ‘Freemasons,’ a story he had fabricated all those years we were married. All those days ‘playing golf’… overnight camping trips, weekly meetings… it was all just a front to hide his actual membership with the Asterian Order. You see, until just days before he passed, I had never known that your grandfather was a… a…”
“Pyromancer?” I offered.
Evelyn nodded. “Therefore, I didn't know until the very end that he was strongly discouraged from marrying a non, um… well, a ‘non-Elementalist’ I suppose I’m called there. Or that he was forbidden from telling me about his abilities, or the organization he and your parents were a part of. I guess it made his life very complicated to try to keep those secrets from me all those years…” She trailed off, lost in thought for a moment.
“So… you were married to my grandfather for twenty years, and he never told you what he was?” I asked.
She shook her head sadly.
“And my parents?” I pressed. “You said visits became more and more infrequent… But, at the end, did you see them before…? I mean… Did they ever explain what happened, why they…” I swallowed, struggling to find the words.
“Why they left you?” Evelyn finished. I mustered a nod.
She sighed wearily. “After Donald died, I almost never heard from your parents anymore, save for a photo of you here and there, always sent with a P.O. Box listed instead of a return address. It was heart-breaking at the time, but in my grief, I just glumly chalked it up to the fact that I was only a step-mother to your father. In years prior, I had thought that David and I had grown very close, but when I stopped hearing from him and your mother, I conceded to the cynical idea that while I had always thought of him as my own son, I was not, in fact, his biological mother. I thought that might have been the reason why they fell out of touch. But I was terribly mistaken.”
Evelyn’s eyes were red. I reached across the table to take her hand and she smiled, gripping mine tightly.
“I’m sorry, I know you must be anxious for me to get to the point,” she sighed, taking a tissue from her purse to blot her eyes. “Aiden already explained to us on the way here that you found a file about your father tonight, so I’ll try to skip to the part you may not yet know. Your parents, obviously, never worked for the government. They were members of that society, which they didn’t fully gather was a cult, and a rather malevolent one at that, until after you were born. Once they realized they were in too deep – and that your very livelihood might be at risk – they fled with you to California. I didn’t know at the time, but that’s the real reason why I heard from them so infrequently. They were trying to do everything they could to keep low profiles, to avoid advertising their whereabouts in order to protect you. But, after years of hiding, they were eventually found, and for reasons I don’t fully understand, they feared for their lives.”
My breath stopped. At this point in the story, Evelyn’s voice was shaking and she had to stop a few times to collect herself as she spoke.
“The three of you showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night in February, just over three years ago. Your mother took you to the guestroom while your father explained everything to me as quickly as he could. I have to confess, I didn’t understand everything he said, but I’ll do my best to tell you everything as he told me.” She closed her eyes, as if trying very hard to remember his words exactly. “He said that… that the three of you were in danger… that he and your mother didn’t think there was much chance for them to escape, but that they had an idea for how to best keep you safe – right under the enemy’s nose.” Her eyes were brimming over with tears as she spoke; I realized tears were pouring down my own cheeks as well. I felt a gentle hand on my left shoulder as Aiden came to stand behind me. Robert pulled up a close chair next to Evelyn and patted her hand as she struggled to speak through her tears.
“Your father said that you, Rowan, were very special… something not seen in hundreds of years. He told me that if you were found by this group, that they would use you as a weapon and keep you against your will. He said that the only way to give you a chance would be to…” she trailed off, wiping her tears with a crumpled tissue. Robert handed her a purple handkerchief from his coat pocket and she appreciatively took it, blowing her nose into it loudly. “I’m sorry, it’s just very difficult for me to have to recall that day…”
She dropped the damp handkerchief on the table and began fumbling around her purse. A moment later, she retrieved a sealed manila envelope.
“David asked me if you could stay in the nearby cabin his father and I had maintained over the years, and of course I said yes. He said that you had to be kept in the dark for your own safety, and that they hoped it would only be for a few months at the most, but just in case things went south…” She cleared her throat, closing her eyes tightly. A moment later, she spoke again, changing the subject.
“Aspen, your mother asked me to give this to you if they hadn’t come back yet and your memories or abilities returned in any capacity. I’m so sorry I didn’t realize what was happening just a little sooner,” she said, handing it to me. “I’ve clearly been distracted. I was so naïve to think that man was who he said he was… I guess I just wanted so badly to believe that someone could help make your life better, since I wasn’t able to…” she took up the handkerchief again as she handed me the tan envelope.
“You’ve done nothing but make my life better,” I told her firmly. She nodded, blowing her nose into the handkerchief again. I looked down at the letter in my hands; the front of the envelope simply said Rowan. I traced my fingers over my mother’s handwriting lightly. Gently, I opened the envelope, pulling out a folded, handwritten letter, written on lined yellow paper.
2/7/15
My Sweet Rowan,
If you are reading this, it means that we have failed you. I am so sorry.
I cannot imagine the questions you must have, and my only wish at this moment is that I had more time to answer them. My greatest hope is that we’ll be together again one day, and that I will have the chance to explain everything – including the memories I took from you.
The gravest mistake your father and I ever made was selling our souls to the Asterian Order. But it was all we had ever known, having both come from Elementalist families. We met through the Order, our friends and family and teachers were in the Order, and we were young and ambitious when we became Officers, dazzled by the allure and the prestige of what we thought we had accomplished to achieve such a status.
You spent the first few years of your life under the watchful eye of the Asterian Order while your father and I continued to rise through the ranks. We thought the walls of the Order would be a sanctuary from the world outside, a safe place for our young, bright Elementalist daughter to learn, grow, and be protected; what we didn’t realize was that we, along with the rest of the Community, were being brainwashed. In truth, the Order has a much more sinister agenda than most members will ever come to realize. Your father and I, while we ascended higher up the pyramid, began to get glimpses of that troubling reality. But we were carefully-indoctrinated, blinded, and ignorant to the true meaning of our own actions. I am ashamed of those transgressions I carried out before we deserted. If you ever learn of them, I pray you’ll forgive me.
It wasn’t until you started getting older, and your powers began to manifest more visibly, that we realized what you were – and what the Asterian Order would do with you if they ever learned your true potential. We knew we had to keep you from them. You alone, Rowan, gave us the courage to leave.
When we moved to the west coast, we severed all ties with anyone from the Order, save for a very select handful of people. For years, the three of us lived a happy, quiet life in California. We assumed new aliases to avoid being detected by the Order. But apart from that, and your special abilities, you led a relatively-normal life – we homeschooled you, but you had many friends. You loved hiking, painting, climbing, writing, playing. You thrived, excelling at everything you did. We watched you grow up so fast, along with your Pentamantic gifts.
Your father and I knew we had to nurture those talents; as the first known Pentamancer in three centuries, we recognized that you would be destined for great things. We trained you as best as we could, very careful about how and where we practiced with the Elements to avoid detection. One of the few Elementalists we stayed in touch with, Ted Nichols, was a powerful Pyromancer with a strong secondary ability in Terramancy. He helped us train you for many years and remained a close friend. But by the time you were 14, your abilities had far outgrown what any of us were able to teach you. You went to college when you were just 17, staying at the dorms just a half hour from us. You told us you wanted to be a doctor and had straight A’s every semester. We were so proud of you.
But one day everything fell apart – someone had reported your father’s and my whereabouts to the Order. We knew then that we needed to leave, but the thought of uprooting you again was too much to bear; the Asterian Order had already taken so much from you. Foolishly, we decided to move across town, to live off the grid thinking we could elude detection until you had graduated. We told you it was to downsize to a smaller house to avoid worrying you. Had we only left then, we might have escaped.
They came again a month later, but we caught wind of it just before they got to us. We piled the things we couldn’t live without in the van and came straight to get you. You were so upset to leave college so abruptly – we didn’t even let you say goodbye to your friends. You didn’t speak to us for the entire ride to Colorado. I couldn’t blame you.
We left you close to family, but made Grandma Evelyn swear she’d avoid interacting with you to avoid jarring your memories. Please forgive her for that. I know it must sound heartless to you, that we would leave you utterly in the dark, but I swear it was for your own safety. We knew that if we could keep you from remembering your past and, most importantly, accessing your abilities, the Order would leave you in peace. (As a minor when we fled D.C., you have no culpability with respect to your parents’ actions; furthermore, the Order has no interest in non-Elementalists.) I will always question our decision to erase your memories, but even now I cannot think of another way to have ensured your safety.
Rowan, there’s so much more I want to tell you, but my time to write is drawing short. I wish I could say for sure that we’ll see you again; the Order does not take disloyalty lightly. I tell you this not to cause you distress, but to ensure that you do not cling to false hope in the event that we do not come for you within a few months.
My darling, if your abilities have resurfaced, you must keep them hidden from the Order. Do not, under any circumstance, let them manipulate you into joining them. Seek the truth wherever you can find it – your place in this world is meant to be a great one, but you must achieve that without their influence.
I am so sorry we were not able to leave you more mementos, but I hope you’ll wear the necklace we left you every day, so a part of us can stay with you always. If we do not meet again in this world, please know that leaving you was the hardest decision your father and I have ever had to make. We love you more than life itself.
With all our hearts, forever and always,
Mom and Dad