Letha Wants to Move
Letha Champagne stayed at home with her only child, Nerine, her husband, Nolan, and the house they lived in Nice, France. Their yard was open and majestic, their house bright and colorful, and their furniture comfortable enough for her only daughter to enjoy when she took naps in the heat of the summer.
Letha and her parents moved to France after she finished secondary school in Wales. She got married to Nolan and he decided to move in with her, bought them a house (his parents could afford it) and started working at a different branch of his father's company in France.
Letha's parents died when Nerine turned seven and caused her to reconsider where she lived. While she enjoys Nice’s laid back beauty, she misses the awe-inspiring and majestical hills of her home country. The ancient air, its ruins and forests, it was a song she would never stop humming.
Nolan figured it out before she did. He came home from work and rubbed her shoulders and she wouldn’t react like she used to. Her ears wouldn’t pull back, she wouldn’t grin and tilt her head, she would just continue to read “The Chronicles of Narnia”, for the umpteenth time, staring at the page.
She would acknowledge him of course, ask what they should make for dinner, tell him what Nerine did that day, but her face wouldn’t crinkle up when she talked about it. Letha wouldn’t describe it like it was a story from one of her childhood books or get excited about what kind of coffee he got at the office.
So, like any good husband, Nolan brought it up and they talked about it. They talked about it for weeks, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Summer turned to fall and Nerine’s last year of primary school had begun.
When late fall came, Nerine started acting the same way. She would do her homework and go to bed without asking for her mother to read to her. Eventually, Letha put her Narnia collection back on its shelf, and that was his final straw, he told Letha they had to move.
–
Soon, they will have a new house, a new dining room, and a new table to sit at instead of this one and Nerine was determined for it to be in “Helena’s Haven” in Wales, the address read:
‘The Fireplace in the Drawing Room
Castle Hill
Tongwynlais, Cardiff’
Nerine’s parents Letha and Nolan Champagne already decided they would be moving to Wales, they wanted Nerine to grow up where they did, wanted her to learn English there and go to secondary school there. Leaving everyone and everything behind, they thought, would help her grow.
Nerine was dreading it leaving her friends, her family, and her language behind. That was all until she decided to look in the ragged magazine her parents used to look for a neighborhood. A couple times they had urged Nerine to help choose, to give her opinion, the ones they pointed out looked drab, urban, and cloudy.
Nice, France was quite the opposite, colorful, beachy, and sunny. Nerine wouldn't even pick up the magazine to help, she pushed it off, put up a fit about it.
Until the moment she looked for herself on the dining room table, at one blink it was fully crinkled and ripped with the well use of her parents hands, the next, a clean and crisp page jutted out behind the shriveled pages. Curious, Nerine flipped straight to it. It was unlike anything she had seen before.
It was the perfect hollow in the perfect place, in upper Cardiff, Wales. A secret wonderland, a special solitude, the place where Nerine will grow into a woman. It looked like the stories her mother stopped reading to her each night. There was ornate stone work, strange statues, golden embellishments, manors, small castles, mansions.
“Mama!” the little girl called, her long black ringlets flowed behind her as she pounced off the dining chair.
Letha was laying on the couch like she did in the evening, a glass of red liquid in her hand. “Mama! I found what I want, exactly what I want.” She had been learning English with her parents since the past fall.
“Oh you did?” her mothers voice sounded genuine and relieved, but her slumped frame and facial expression was an extraordinary contradiction.
Nerine sat in front of her mothers legs that sprawled along the couch. “Here,” she handed her the magazine, it was folded backwards on Helena’s Haven.
When Letha saw the untouched clean page, its magnificent colors, and the Castelle Coch's fantastical frame, she sat up. Her head spun a little, she put her hand against it. Nerine shifted closer as her mothers legs moved.
Letha’s immediate thought was that the child glued it in, somehow she got a hold of the computer and glued in a page from her fantasy novel. Then she remembered Nerine doesn’t read those anymore. Her second thought was to call Nolan.
“Nolan!” He was down the hall at his office, on a call, but this was more important.
Nerine could hear a mumble and a couple of shifting objects coming from the room her father was in.
Letha didn’t say anything as she flipped through the pages again and examined the magazine’s spine, “Coming sweety.” Nolan called, his voice got louder, Nerine could tell he wasn’t lying.
“Look at what Nerine found.” Her voice sounded apprehensive, Nerine almost thought she sounded scared.
Nolan reached from behind the couch and grabbed the magazine, his eyebrows raised in surprise, then he looked at the little girl and then back at the magazine.
“What is this?” his voice was breathy, taken aback.
“Helena’s Haven,” Nerine pointed at the magazine page, reaching over her mother’s head and her father’s arm that held the paper. “It's so colorful, look at the statues!”
She looked at her parents, their facial expressions were not as excited as she expected.
“Honey,” Nolan said, then looked at his watch, “I think it's your bedtime, head to your room.”
It was not Nerine’s bedtime, in fact she didn’t have a bedtime.
“What? Why?” She was disappointed.
“Just go.” Letha said, gently pushing her daughter's arm off the couch.
Nerine went, but she didn’t go all the way to her room, she walked up the stairs and hid behind the corner of the hallway to listen. When she was out of their sight, her parents waited a couple more seconds to start talking.
“She did it again,” Letha said.
The pages flipped again as Nolan replied, “I know, I know, I have been looking into it-”
Letha cut him off, Nerine noticed her voice slurring more than usual, “I told you to stop that, this is impossible, there is nothing to look into.”
“No, Letha listen, there are parents on reddit, they talk about their kids doing these impossible things, they are always under 11, right at Letha’s age, all around the world. The users stop talking about it, saying it was a trick of the light, or they were just being anxious parents.”
Letha murmured something unintelligible before Nolan continued.
“Letha, we won't get answers until we investigate, we have to go to this… ‘Helena’s Haven’. It isn't just the trick of the light anymore, look at this Letha, you can touch this page.”
There was more rustling of papers before Letha’s slow voice said, “Okay, you’re right, go and talk to your daughter about it, it really isn’t her bedtime.”
At this, Nerine flinched, she had to get to her room before he found her listening. She quietly padded over to her room and slowly opened and closed her bedroom door. A few seconds later, her father knocked.
“Hey sweetie,” He said, and walked over to sit on the edge of her bed, he was still holding the magazine.
“I’m not tired.” nerine pouted.
“I know, but your mom and I are… we really like the village you picked out for us.”
“Vraiment? nous pouvons aller?”
“Try to speak English, honey.” he said, this reminded Nerine how upset she was about leaving, but the conflicting joy for the neighborhood and sadness for her language was confusing.
She decided to look away and say, “Sorry,” with a frown.
“Yes, we were going to go on vacation next week for Spring break, to Wales. We’re going to look at our favorite Neighborhoods there.”
“And we’ll go to Helena’s Haven?” She couldn’t help but smile even when she tried to be sad.
Nolan gave a grin, “Yes we’ll go,” He looked at the page and flipped it towards Nerine. “The Fireplace in the Drawing Room?” he asked her like she would maybe know what the address meant.
Nerine thought he would know, adults know directions to things, with a couple buttons on the mapping app, she was sure they would know where to go.
“Yes, that’s where it says to go.”
Nolan raised an eyebrow and looked at the page again, “An odd street name don’t you think?” It was like he was testing her.
“It's not a street name,” she sat up from the bed and reached over to point at ‘Castle Hill’, “That’s the street name, we go to the Castle and then ‘The Fireplace in the Drawing Room’.” She sat back against her pillow when she finished pointing.
“Like Narnia? Is the fireplace the wardrobe?” It was another test.
“I guess so,” She thought he would know this.
“Alright,” He gave her a smile again and stood up, “Goodnight honey, love you” he said before patting her shoulder and walking to the door.
“Love you,” Nerine replied.
She fell asleep that night with the feeling that her parents were hiding something from her, or that they didn’t trust her about something. She dreamed of the statues and the bright colors in Helena’s Haven.
While Nerine and her mother drifted off fast asleep, Nolan stayed up with the light of his computer in his eyes. He had helped his wife into bed after putting Nerine to sleep, Letha forgot her tolerance sometimes. He began his nightly research by watching tours of the castle, zooming in on the drawing room, and reading about the lore of Castelle Coche.
Then he remembered the subreddit, ‘r/mymagicchild’ had about 15 posts in total, each varying in years. The most recent post told the anonymous story of someone’s boy that had made a plate of lasagna disappear, without eating it.
“I know I sound crazy, but I won’t be gaslit into thinking something unnatural is not happening with my sons. I am a single mother of two 10 year old twin boys, I'll call them Bob and Joe. Joe loves lasagna but Bob hates it. However, I don't have time to make two dinners to appeal to both and I thought I could convince Bob into liking it.
I made it a competition, they're both always so competitive, whoever can eat the lasagna first gets an extra dessert. Sure, it probably wasn’t fair for Bob but it was the only way I could get him to eat that night, I didn’t want him going hungry. Recently they have been freaking me out a little bit though, and it’s not because of some identical twin connection. I was in the kitchen after I had served them the lasagna and Joe started throwing a fit,
‘Mom! He did it, I told you he did!’
He kept going on and on, yelling for me to do something. When I walked over, Bob’s plate was clean, Joe was only a bite in. At first I was excited that I had gotten Bob to eat, then I realized the plate was cleaned, licked clean. There was no way he would have licked the plate clean even to show off he had beat his brother. He hated lasagna.
‘Mom it’s not fair, he used his powers.’ Joe had said. I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t validate that Bob had powers, I couldn't acknowledge magic is real, it isn't! Is it?
I told them powers aren't real and didn’t talk about it. I gave them both two desserts, but I’m afraid it wasn’t fair for Joe. Can anyone help me figure out what happened?”
That was the user’s only post, in the replies a couple people were flabbergasted at the woman.
“I’m concerned that people really think like this, how could you have been tricked by two nine year olds?” one replied.
“How is this subreddit a thing?” another said.
“Is this from a novel?” The third reply said.
The woman never replied again, it was one year ago, her boys would be a year older than Nerine. Nolan decided to reply to the post a couple days ago. He wrote:
“You’re not crazy, my daughter is ten now, turning eleven soon, about as old as your boys. She had once come down stairs to my office when she was seven, saying she walked into a room full of candy through her mirror. I didn’t believe her until she showed me her room. She had taken a bag and stuffed it with candy, the room was littered in wrappers.
We took her to the A&E, horrified that someone had tried to poison her. Maybe she had gotten the candy from a stranger. We called the police, they searched our house and found nothing, saying she probably just found the candy jar, but my wife and I knew that it wasn’t ours. Luckily, she was okay, the doctor told us it was just a lot of sugar. We theorized she had gotten the candy from a friend, our daughter was already so shaken up over the police and the doctor we didn’t interrogate her too much.
We kind of forgot about it, until she threw a fit once, at 8 years old, in the car about not being able to go to her friend’s birthday party. She locked herself in the car, crying. We had the key but none of the doors would unlock, thinking it was faulty wiring, we called the police again. Seeing them I guess scared her and the doors unlocked.
At nine, she refilled her ice cream bowl when we told her she couldn’t have any more than she got, she thought we wouldn’t notice. I think she was just as surprised as we were, she hid it from us and took it to her room. I couldn’t acknowledge it either.
Now we are moving to Wales, my wife and I miss it, my daughter was against it at first until she decided to look in the magazine we had been looking at for neighborhoods. We have been looking at it for weeks, seeing every page, each one wrinkled. Except when my daughter looked, she found a clean, unwrinkled page for “Helena’s Haven,”. It looks like a wonderland, like it was out of one of her fantasy novels. The address reads:
‘The fireplace in the Drawing Room
Castle Hill
Tongwynlais, Cardiff’
I thought maybe she glued it in, maybe it was from a comic book. Why is it addressed to ‘The Fireplace in the Drawing Room’. How can a whole neighborhood be inside a castle? I won’t call the police this time, but I will find out what is going on with my child and how she is doing these unexplainable things.”