*Isla*
Ginger.
The story of my cat gave me pause to think about everything that I’d learned about myself. I distinctly remembered that cat now that my parents had reminded me. I didn’t have many memories at all from my childhood, and most of the ones I did have were vague. A flicker of a face, laughing on a swing, standing outside and staring up at a large tree, opening a present. Those types of memories didn’t give me much context for where I was, who I was, or what I was doing.
But seeing this picture had jarred memories in me that hadn’t entered my mind for so long. They were still there, though. I remembered the cat. I remembered playing with her, how sweet she was, how her fur felt beneath my fingers.
I didn’t remember her dying, though. And I certainly didn’t remember her coming back to life.
“After that,” Mom continues, tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. “After that, everything sort of fell apart.”
My dad reaches over and squeezes her hand, and I can see that he is emotional, too.
“What do you mean?” I have to ask. “After the cat came back to life, everything fell apart?”
I see the look my parents are exchanging, and it makes me confused. I can see that they are discussing whether or not they want to tell Ben and me the truth about what happened.
We are into this story deep now. They need to tell us everything. And they need to tell us now.
“What happened after Ginger came back to life?” I ask, my tone more demanding now. I lean forward in my chair, making my stance more pointed.
“The cat ran away,” my father says. “I have no idea what happened to the cat herself.”
“But… it was the miracle that had occurred with the cat that started everything in a downward spiral,” Mom says.
“We don’t want you to feel like any of this was your fault.” Dad looks right into my eyes and shakes his hands back and forth over the top of one another, stressing his words. “It wasn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong, Isla.”
My brow wrinkles in confusion as I try to guess what they might be talking about. “Oookay,” I say. “What is it that you think I might infer is my fault?”
“The war,” my mom says. “The war and the deaths that preceded them.”
“Deaths?” I wasn’t sure if I should continue to lean forward to let them know I was serious about them telling me what they were talking about or lean back in my chair because I was beginning to feel nauseated.
My father didn’t even bother to look at mom this time. He just launched into telling us what had happened, all the while staring at a spot on the floor, only sparing a few glances up at me or Ben from time to time.
“After the cat came back to life, we tried not to tell anyone what had happened. We hadn’t told many people about the incident at the pool to begin with, and we certainly didn’t want people to think that the pool was capable of working miracles. We were aware that other people had had similar incidents happen there, but we didn’t know of anyone who had had the experience of bringing something else back to life after their resurrection.”
Dad pauses to take a breath. “We told the staff that the cat must not have been dead, that it must’ve just been in a coma or something, and most everyone believed that because the alternative was impossible to accept. Everyone except for the healer. She was certain that the cat had been dead, so we told her about the incident with the snake and the pool. She called it a miracle of the Moon Goddess, and she was probably right.”
Mom sniffles a bit and wipes at her eyes, and I am still lost, not understanding what the healer has to do with the war.
“We knew that the story was safe with the healer, but there was someone else who had been there when the cat came back to life that was full of questions, and I couldn’t do anything to dissuade him from discovering the full truth of the matter.”
Taking a deep breath, my father meets my eyes for just a moment, and I so even without knowing where he’s going with the story, I have enough pieces of the puzzle to put together to know what he’s going to say before he begins talking again.
“My brother, your uncle, was there when the cat came back to life. Tony was always hanging around you kids. He loved you all like you were his own, or at least, I thought he did….” He has a vacant look in his eyes for a moment before he shakes his head and drags a hand down his face. “But it was from that moment on that we lost all chance of having any peace in the kingdom.”
“Why is that?” I can’t help the question that comes from my mouth, even though I’m trying to keep Dad talking before he clams up, and I end up without the entire story.
“Because… he saw what you could do, the power that you had, and he wanted it for himself,” Dad explains. “He began to ask me questions about what had happened at the pool, and at first, I was honest with him. I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t tell him. He was my younger brother, and he obviously cared about you. But… the more questions he asked, the more I realized a storm was brewing.”
“Then… he did the unthinkable.” Mom’s tears are flowing thicker now. Ben pulls some tissues from the box next to him on the nightstand and hands them to her, and Mom dabs at her cheeks.
“Tony wanted to have the power of granting life. He thought that he could create an army of people that wouldn’t be able to die. For some reason, he thought that you wouldn’t be able to die because your tears could bring you back to life. He thought that anyone who died and came back to life in the pool was indestructible, but we have no reason to suspect that.”
“I believe you’re right to think that I can die. I’m pretty sure I was very close to dying, if I didn’t actually die and come back thanks to the healer, when I was poisoned,” I explain.
“Yes, well, he also thought that having someone who could bring others back to life at his beck and call would bring him immense power,” Mom explains, shaking her head. “I never knew how power hungry that man was until I saw his eyes enlarge thinking of what he could do if he could gain some sort of influence over a person who had been brought back from the dead.”
My mind was boggled. I couldn’t quite grasp why Uncle Tony would think that having someone like me close to him would bring him power. But then, from the sounds of it, the man was clearly mentally unbalanced in some ways to even go that far to begin with.
“The first person he decided to try was his best friend, a guy I grew up with, named Will. That guy would’ve done anything for Tony. We were all very close. Tony went to great lengths to hide what he had done from all of us at first, and if he had done all of it in secret, perhaps we never would’ve found out, but he had to make a big production out of it, and that’s where the true horror began.”
“What do you mean?” I ask my dad.
“I mean, he killed Will one evening. No one knew it. He rolled him up in a carpet and put him in the trunk. The next day, he took his wife on a picnic. Your Aunt Mary, do you remember her?”
He pauses, and I realize that I do. The face of a beautiful woman with dark hair and big blue eyes comes to mind. “Aunt Mary….” I nod. “It’s been so long since I even thought of her. Wh-what happened to her?”
Dad sucks in a deep breath and continues. “Well, he took her out there to the pool on this alleged picnic because he wanted her to see what he was capable of, that he could bring the dead back to life or some bullshit. He drags Will out and dumps him in the pool, and Mary is mortified, screaming and crying, but Tony assures her, if they just give it time, Will’s heart will start beating again, and he’d come back to life.”
I can hardly believe what my dad is saying. My own uncle would do something so harsh? Kill his best friend and take his body out to the jungle just to show his wife he was powerful?
“What happened to the guy?” Ben asks.
Dad shakes his head. “Nothing. He just… floated. Tony waited and waited, but Will was dead. The pool wasn’t bringing him back to life.”
“Why not?” I ask, wondering how the pool decides who to save and who not to.
“Too much time had passed,” Mom says. “We had gathered enough information from other people who knew of the pool’s power and had tried to revive people there to know that there was a limit on how much time could’ve passed before the person was put into the water. If it was more than a couple of hours, the pool didn’t work.”
“It had to be almost instantaneous,” my father agrees. “So Will was dead, and Tony had been the one to kill him.”
“And that did not impress his wife?” I say, assuming that had to be the case. I couldn’t remember Aunt Mary much, but I knew she was not the type of person who would be happy about that.
“No, she wasn’t, but she didn’t have a lot of time to think about it,” Dad explains.
My brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Mary tried to tell Tony that what he had done was awful and that he should’ve known it would never work because too much time had passed. She told him that it had to be sooner, that not so much time could have passed, but she also told him that what he was doing was madness. He had to let that notion go. He would have to come back to the castle and tell me what he had done and pay for his crimes.”
A chill goes down my spine as I think about my beautiful aunt telling Uncle Tony exactly what my father has just said. “I’m guessing he didn’t listen?” I ask.
My mom is crying again, harder this time. “No, he didn’t listen.”
“He decided to try again.” My father’s teeth are gritted together as he speaks, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry before in my life. “With your aunt.”
“What?” All of the blood seems to leave my face as I realize what my dad is saying. “He killed Aunt Mary?”
Dad nods. “Shoved a knife right through her heart, watched her die, and then pulled her body into the water.”