Three mornings had overturned since Kendra escaped the confines of the school carriage, allowing herself to find consolation within the feelings of nostalgia that striked her as she stepped foot upon the lustreless pastures of Mashpee, her quaint town.
Three mornings that was, since she walked a meter, and another before embracing the easing demeanour of her mother, so startlingly overthrown in a woeful vigour that Kendra had to enquire, ’Mama, are you well?’
Three mornings that gouged her with cruelty and nausea since her Mother’s response sounded in her ears,
‘Your father is dead.’
It had all played out with such vigor that Kendra could have been certain that it was only the manners of a jest, if not for the muses of compassion from her people and the startling realisation that her father was not here, there or anywhere. But could she be criticised for erasing such a tragedy? After all, she was not present at the calamity; the disastrous tribulation that had been concluded by her father’s unfair death from which three months had since passed, but for Kendra, only three mornings.
And what had she been doing back then?
Perhaps, Kendra mused to herself, she had been consumed by the jests of her friends or concealed within a classroom; flourishing her wand to transfigure a toad or writing lines on parchment about pukwudgies, (that she could have sworn her mother told her of once) all whilst her father bled to his death.
These torturous thoughts are what consume her as the the moon lingers above in the wake of the midsummer night, sown between the swathes of cosmos and stars whilst threads of silver moonlight entangle themselves within the foliage of the reservation. Perhaps, to any other they are self-sabotaging ponderings, heightened by her feelings of guilt, grief and gloom. But how could she have known? After all, she had only been given three mornings to mourn the death that everyone else had been given three months to confront.
“You okay?” Comes the voice of her younger brother, Ronan, drawing Kendra away from the ridiculous notions of her mind as his body leans against hers.
Whilst in the previous years of her attendance at Ilvermorny, the sable haired girl could have recollected with a boastful humour the staggering contrasts of her height against her brother’s. However their three years of difference have since been overturned by Ronan’s spurts of growth as he pivots at shoulder-length to her, (much to Kendra’s dismay).
“I’m only thinking.” She responds.
“About?”
They both know that the question is a futile one, since what else could the girl muse of if not her father’s scandalous passing? The night toils on and even in the jubilance of summer does a gale arise across the quarters of the Cape; traversing across the twilight in tumultuous fists, threatening the solace of the two siblings as they converse. Despite her persistent enquiries in the nature of her father’s tribulation, a desperate curiosity for understanding and consolation gnaws at the innards of the sister and thus, Kendra finds herself guiltily turning to her younger brother.
“What was it like… when it happened?”
“Oh.” Ronan responds.
His face is framed by drapes of black hair; jagged and coarse, resting only to the length of his ears as a manner of shock contorts across his dark features. It was a mourning tradition of her people, Kendra recalled; to cut one’s hair after the passing of a loved one, a practice she came to realise had been carried out by both her brother and her mother’s brother- her uncle, upon her return home. “He was, um, laughing, I suppose.”
“Laughing?” Kendra remarks.
“Mm-hm.” The sudden overturn of her brother’s syllables did not come as a surprise to her as his utterances lapsed into soft murmurs, “Niwot was the one who told us all first, it was frightening, I remember… watching him run in like that.”
“A couple of the men returned with father soon after.” Ronan recalled; his face darkening upon the notion of recollection.
“Both Ahun and Niwot were assisting them, horrified. Niwot the most, although Mother kept weeping and pleaded with father for him to sit down and tell us what had happened. But he only smiled; it wasn’t until I followed after them to see what had happened when I came to realise how bad it truly was.”
Her brother’s words coursed into an interval of silence. Even in the obscurity of the perpetual night, Kendra was still able to address the distortion of fright that tugged upon her brother’s vessel as he spoke onwards,
“Blood. Blood, all over,” He whispered in a nauseating manner. “I reckon he wanted to reassure us, to tell mother and I that everything was okay even though both Niwot’s and Mother’s hands were drenched in blood. I thought Ahun was the injured one with the amount of blood soaking his shirt until I came to realise just how pale Father looked.”
“He wouldn’t have wanted either of you to worry.” She offered remarking upon the philanthropic spirit that her father often possessed.
“I suppose. Even though he had lost so much blood, he kept grinning and laughing.” With this, Ronan choked with a fracture of a laugh himself, “Much to Mother’s dismay of course. He kept asking us why we were fussing so much, that we had no reason to worry, he would be fine; they had missed his heart. I even began to believe things would be okay myself…”
“But they weren't,” Kendra thought to herself.
“But they weren’t. Mother and I stayed by him, she wept through it all… I- I didn’t know what to do. I could have helped; but I didn’t know how to…”
Her brother’s figure crumpled with a mournful heave and Kendra felt an abrupt overturn of guilt for having even prompted Ronan to relay the devastation of their father’s passing. Were her soughtings selfish? Was it wrong for her to interrogate in desperate lengths the nature of her father’s death to her Mother, Niwot, and now, her thirteen year old brother?
Her Mother’s vocations had been brusque and churned only by a deliberate clipping of the events, Kanti had not mentioned in detail to her dear daughter the nauseating pools of crimson that stained her shawl hereafter, nor the guttural soundings of her husband’s laughter as he took his final breath. Similarly, Niwot; her mother’s brother, had too been candid with his retelling and only lifted a finger in blame to the stubborn languages of the Mashpee residents whose presence upon their reservation had prompted such a disastrous tale. Amongst each individual of her tribe, it was only her younger brother, Ronan, whom had offered Kendra an elaborate and upfront confrontation of the events.
“You wouldn’t have known what to do, Ronan.” She murmured in a futile attempt at easement.
“Perhaps, but…”
“I doubt I would have known myself.”
It is at this that the two of them find themselves stifled to an interlude of silence; marred only by a distinct, too-too, a precarious vocation that Kendra notes as a Saw-whet owl on the reservation; a native species of the Cape, concealed from her by the obscurity of twilight. Even amongst her brother’s embrace and the prowling chorales of the midnight wildlife, a notion of guilt proceeds her and Kendra can’t help but confess her musing of regret: “I should have been there. I should have been beside you and mother. I’m so sorry, Ronan.”
When her brother speaks again, it is with a bitter tone that Kendra can’t help but interpret as a prolonging resentment, “Father was always so keen about you going to that school.”
“And now I wish I had never gone.”
“Maybe. But... I think he would be glad that you did. He was proud of you, though I don’t think he ever understood what it means to have you there. I don’t think any of us actually do.” Her brother added in addition to a languid laugh.
Ever since the startling arrival of a ministry employee upon the soil of Mashpee, Kendra had been forced to confront the peculiarity of her nature as a bewildering aspect of, ‘magic.’ Sure, she was no foreigner to the hums of fiction and fairytale, proclaimed to her through her tribe’s folklore. Confessions of Nikommos, benevolent and magnanimous entities that inhabited the forest regions of Massachusetts or tales of Hobbomock, whose cynical prowls tortured the Wampanoag people through the molars of horned serpents. These were all vivacious legends that had been addressed to her from a young age. It would have all been bearable, Kendra mused in recollection; if the deliverance of her magical abilities had not led to her forceful detachment from her home in order to attend Ilvermorny, the North American school that taught its attendees witchcraft and wizardry from the heights of Mount Greylock.
‘But I should have been here.’ She muttered only to herself, ‘I should have seen him go too, not sat in a classroom learning about some pukwudgies.’
“I don’t blame you.” Ronan interrupts and it occurs to Kendra if he knew of her ponderings, if he too knew of the treacherous guilt that had consumed her very being for the last three mornings and thus ran to identify it through his own words of reassurance. “I don’t think he would either. I mean, Mother is upset… but I think that’s her worry.”
“Her worry?”
Her brother came to pause momentarily as though he thought it best to address his words within the confinement of his mind before confessing them outwardly to his sister.
“I think letting you attend that school of yours unnerved her, led her to think that she would be losing you if she let you go…” Ronan murmured with an exhale of sympathy, “And now that father’s gone and you’re suddenly back again, she doesn’t want to see you leave again.”
Kendra knew this and felt it too.
The rupture of her absence had only enhanced her mother’s propelling worry that dispelled itself through unprompted lectures or gushes of affection towards Kanti’s eldest child and only daughter. Still, Kendra’s position at Ilvermorny was not of her own accord and never would be. Soon after the exposure of her magical abilities; Kendra had learnt of the dictatorial confinements that the American ministry of magic imposed upon its people. Fraternisation with whom they bestowed as, ‘No-Majs’ (but to Kendra, were the abilities of the people she had been surrounded with for the entirety of her adolescence), was strictly prohibited and thus she found herself restricted to letters to only her magical peers, rather than to her mother and father.
“...Neither do I.” Ronan added and Kendra uprooted herself from her thoughts, addressing him once more.
“And you won’t.” She assured him. “I promise you, Ronan. I have no intention to leave you or Mother again.”
Although her vocations are no less genuine than her other confessions of assurance made to her younger brother, Ronan’s expression falters and Kendra observes how her brother descended to a prolonged silence. The midsummer gale, having drifted from the haven of their climate, has since been overturned by a set of warmth which sets to soothe the brother and sister as they lean in an embrace. As it does, a sigh slips from the deflation of Kendra’s figure as she intertwines her fingers, soft and smooth, against the callousness of her brother’s. “I’ve done as they wished by attending the school and once my examinations are complete, I’ll be back here again. Home, with you.”
“Well, it’s Mother you’ll have to convince.” He admitted,
“It’s been difficult for her since Father left; I suppose she’s angry that the incident ever occurred, that there wasn’t any more that any of us could have done… more so that we couldn’t even tell you about it.”
She came to a standstill at this. “I know, I’m sorry.” Kendra relayed with a tune of defense that only faltered as she crumpled in defeat. What a matter it was, to be sent from her family with no means of communication at all as a result of Rappaport’s whines and wails.
However, her brother does not meet her with a lapse into quietude and instead remarks with a contortion of humour reflected on the dark nature of his features.
“I reckon Father would be grinning at us.” Ronan smiled, “Sat here, moping over his death. In the dark too; he always despised it when we stayed up too late.”
“Of course.” His sister responded and Kendra couldn’t help but lapse into a grin of her own. It was a relief, to traverse through memories as an erosion of their melancholic confessions that they had uttered only moments before.
“He saw nothing worse than being tired the next morning.”
“Look, I can see Mother.”
Kendra adjusted her demeanour against her brother’s so that the horizon fell to her peripheral vision, and there; overcoming the verdant pastures with a triage of steps, Kendra was able to identify their Mother’s figure as she made her way towards her two children. Behind their Mother simmered an illuminating carmine, striking the sky with a jubilee of sparks, no doubt a result of the fire, Kendra mused to herself as their Mother beckoned them back home from afar.
Perhaps it was the consolation of the warmth of the night that dismissed the feelings of unease that had become a point of familiarity for the girl these following three mornings upon the appearance of her mother. But as Kendra reinforced her clasp on her brother’s own palm, encouraging their descent from the hilltop where the two siblings had conversed. She realised that she dreaded less to be beside her Mother than she had the morning she awoke in her father’s absence and instead could find herself yearning to embrace her instead.
“Come on, Ronan. Let’s go back home.”