14.2
The Bloody Key-
My dorm is empty for the night, and Adair is out somewhere I don't care about. The room is illuminated by a single candle on my desk on the side. Sitting at my desk, I continue to read my grandmother's diary. I read about how she fought with her Mother before being put into dealing with the laundry for the family. I've seen into life of Maeve and related to it somewhat, but our lives are also very different at the same time. There's a sharp sting before I see the red blot on the pages.
My sight goes dark before I see the desk again. I blink the spots away from my vision, looking down at the desk. I don't see anything wrong at first until something catches my eye. The now familiar elaborate writing has changed from what I was reading to words.
-My sixteenth birthday was queer,
The day after, I felt something shift in me. My Mother and father started to treat me differently as well. Father wouldn't look me in the eye, while Mother paid more attention to me than before. My birthday was the day before the Winter Solstice.
Mother always told me of what was to happen when I hit sixteen. She taught me the best she could as she raised me. It was the family secret. Banshees. That's what we are as the women of my family. It's been this way for generations. No one knows why we are the way we are.-
It goes on to read about how Grandma Maeve's life changed after the solstice. She tells me of the slow changes in herself. She talks about how she could now hear much further than even her Mother, who I have come to learn is also a banshee. I take notes of any dates, events, or small details that seem essential to show John tomorrow. I won't stop until my vanilla candle goes out. Only then do I choose to put down the journal and head to bed.
—
I show up at John's office before breakfast to find him planning his lessons for the week. When I open the door, he looks up at me. He welcomes me in and asks me why I am in his office so early.
"Let me show you." I pulled out the diary and placed it on the papers he was working on. I opened the leather journal to see where I started last night. But it's returned to how it was before I bled on it. He looks at me like I'm crazy as I pick up his letter opener and pierce my fingertip, smearing the few droplets onto the yellow pages. My vision blacks out again as I hear John react to it with me. As I blink the black away, I see the new pages once more. John leans forward to look at it further.
"How did you find this?" John leans his elbows on his desk and starts to pay more attention to what I found.
"Papercut." He hums before starting to skim the pages once again. I watch him thumb through the diary.
"This could be what helps us the most." The older man leans back, looking back at the bound journal. "We now have a personal diary about being a banshee from one of your ancestors. There's nothing that would help us more without contacting your parents again." We maintain eye contact, as he says in the latter part. Both knew that I would rather slit my own throat than send any more letters to my parents.
"Let me stay here." I lean my hip on his desk and look back at the journal. I need more time to investigate. You could dismiss me from my classes for this. Dumbledor would let it slide." I grin at the man, rolling his eyes at my smug accent.
"What would you tell the girls?" Is his shot back at me.
"Eh, Jo has most classes with her today. Elle only has one class with me, and it's one she's comfortable in." My grin grows as his face tells me he will allow it. We ate breakfast together that morning, and afterward, I sent a text to the group chat telling them that I was busy for the day.
—
I spend the entire school day in John's office, sitting in his chair and taking notes. My notes are many pages long and numbered, and I categorize the different pieces of knowledge. John brings me lunch after failing to get me out of his chair and out of the room. He also provides me with coffee in between his classes.
I've learned things from little things that Grandma Maeve was able to do in the time after the solstice, things like being able to levitate multiple centimeters off the ground, to things like she could now hear the ghosts that walked the earth around her. Telling her of their lives before meeting their brutal ends. She wrote in depth about every part of her life. I find myself laughing at the rants about getting into fights with her brothers before getting her Mother onto them for letting the dogs out.
I found feathers in my bed this morning—black ones, that is. They were clearly of the raven sort. I told my Mother this, and she shunned me, telling me to keep this to myself.
-
I wake from dreams of flying through the skies as a large black raven in the morning to find feathers in my sheets again. I tried to bring it to my Mother's attention again as we made breakfast. She grabbed me and pulled me to the side of the kitchen.
"Don't let your brothers hear about this from you. Leave the raven in your dreams and not in words, " she said. I never told her about the dreams.
-
Ravens? I don't get those dreams. Could she be confused? Is it not a banshee thing? If it weren't, then she wouldn't feel the need to hide it. I write it down either way. John enters the office and falls back into the chair in front of the desk where I usually sit myself. He told me that classes were over for the day before, asking me what I had learned.
"Many, many things." I lean back in the plush oak chair. "Grandma Maeve could levitate multiple centimeters, in fact." The conversation shifts to talk about his classes of the day. Telling me of the woes of being a teacher of young students.
"She had dreams of being a raven." Comes up naturally in the conversation. John stops at this, questioning me further. "Yeah, she wrote that her mother wouldn't talk to her about it." I shrug it off.
"Did she now?" His voice fades off at the end. "Have you had any of these dreams?" His tone is unsure. I give a shake of my head before he continues to explain his thoughts. "That's one of the powers that most banshees have, Leon." I stop twisting the ring on my finger and look back at him with furrowed brows.
"How have you never told me this? " I ask, leaning forward towards him as I gaze at him hard.
"I thought you would find it eventually." His tone is still uneven as he escapes eye contact. John purses his lips while finding interest in the wall behind me.
We then continue to spend the next many hours trying to get me to shift not to a cat but to a raven. It's twelve am when we succeed. There I sit, in John's chair, on two feet and extend my wings to their full length. I blink at him from my position on the velvet. I can see the entire room from where I sit.
Trying to fly, I fall off the chair from the side. I guess we'll have to work on that. I get myself back on my feet before trying to shift back into my human body. It takes longer than it should have to do so, but we get there. John seems happier than I am to see myself back to normal. He claps his hands a few times as I sit back on his chair.
"When can we stop?" I groan out as I try to rub the headache from my mind.
-1,402 Words-