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Daughter of Evil
Pulling herself back from contact with the goddess, Eliza took a deep breath.
“Well, that’s tough to come back from,” Eliza exhaled. Pal waited patiently at her side for her to filter the information to him. “My mother was a murderer.” Pal looked surprised at first but recovered quickly. He brushed himself heartily against Eliza’s back in sympathy while she told him the rest.
“Your mother committed crimes and hid you here to protect you from the backlash of her actions?”
“That’s what I’m interpreting, yeah,” said Eliza. “She murdered nine people, and some of them were children.”
Pal sat looking down at the runes. He pawed at the one that meant justice (Nied in reversed position), “She died in prison, that’s sad.”
“The goddess thinks it was just,” shrugged Eliza, though it bothered her more than she cared to admit.
“Yes, well, what is clear is that your mother was not a very good person. I know you’ve often felt guilty for not mourning her.”
Eliza chewed the edge of her lip before speaking, “I did feel guilty sometimes. In movies kids are always trying to find out who they are and for some reason they always think finding their birth parents will give them that. I’ve thought about my birth parents, sure, but I’ve never thought about their identity defining me in any way.” She sat quietly for a moment, “Maybe I didn’t mourn her enough, but now I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”
Pal’s tail flicked lightly, “Your birth mother’s identity does define you. She was a witch and so are you. Her being a murderer has defined your whole life: where you grew up, with who, and not knowing what you were capable of. But it doesn’t have to affect who you become. You can choose who you want to be.”
“She was clearly deranged,” Eliza felt more disconnected from her birth mother than she ever had before. “I wish I could go back to not knowing anything about her.”
Pal head bumped her thigh affectionately, “Not so deranged that she didn’t think to protect you. She journeyed all the way here, put protection spells on you and left you with a Mundunce family to live a life outside of magical society. Say what you will about your mother, but she cared about you. Imagine if she had let you grow up among the families of her victims. Who would trust you? Who might decide to take their revenge out on you?”
Eliza stroked the cat. “I wonder who she was,” she whispered, “I wonder who she hurt, and why.”
“Do you really want to know?” asked the cat.
“Not knowing my whole life didn’t help much. Everything leading up to today has been directly affected by things that happened before I was even born. I’ve been entirely shaped by decisions that were made without me even being conscious. I’m from somewhere else, living here because someone decided it should be so. I want to know, so I can understand why I was treated like a Mundunce for twenty-eight years! Twenty-eight years of feeling like I could be something more, do more. But I couldn’t, I was shielded from what my heart felt was possible. All because my mother decided that I should miserably sell my hours in a nine-to-five with Mundunces rather than live a life of danger and prejudice.”
“You disagree?” asked Pal.
“Prejudice and danger sound a lot more fun, to be honest,” Eliza started to laugh. It was a nervous sort of laugh. She knew there was nothing funny about what she’d learned but the tension and frustration needed to be released and laughing about murders and judgment helped a little.