Chapter Text
My mother didn't want to have any children. She didn't want the power hidden in her blood to pass on to anyone else, didn't want anyone to have to suffer through the hardships she'd had to. It wasn't that she regretted those things, or wished that she hadn't been born, but at the same time, she didn't feel it was fair to pass them on to someone who had no choice in the matter. That's why she never dated, even when she was in high school and college. (Although Baba says it wasn't due to any lack of attention.)
But my mother's heart was too big to give up on loving someone, so, almost as soon as she graduated and got a job, she adopted me. All her friends were shocked, and told her she couldn't do it-- all except my grandmother. After all, Baba was someone who knew all about being a single twenty-something raising children. She told my mother, "if this is something you want to do, then do it, and forget what everyone else says. And don't forget to bring the child to see me!" And so it was that I, a tiny child not yet old enough to lift up my head, was taken to live in my mother's apartment in the city.
It wasn't until many years later that my mother would sit down and tell me her story-- the reason why she had decided not to have children, and of how she became the woman I knew. But, it wasn't just her story. The story belonged to the three of them-- my grandmother, my mother and… Well, for that, I have to explain how my mother ended up telling me the story she had thought she would carry to her grave.
The first time my mother took me to that house in the mountains, I couldn’t have been more than one or two. I don’t remember it. But from that point on, summers with Baba in the mountains were a staple in my life. My mother often couldn’t stay for more than a week or so before heading back to the city, but I’d spend the whole summer with Baba, visiting the other people who lived in this rural area, playing in my mother’s old stomping grounds.
“You know," Baba said one summer, when I was probably around four, “when your mother was your age, she used to be quite a wild child. She would wrap snakes around her arm and fill her treasure box with dead bugs.”
“Nu-uh,” I said, crossing my arms. “Mamma didn’t do that! Mamma likes pretty things!”
“Of course she does,” said Baba. “But she didn’t always.” I didn’t believe her, of course. My pretty, hardworking mother could never have been that kind of tomboy-- could she?
I’d forgotten about it by summer’s end, and never thought to ask my mother about it. But the next summer, Baba took me into the woods where my mother had once played, and I got a little lost.
"Baba? Mamma? Where are you?” But it was no use. A bush rustled behind me. I turned around, and I thought I saw a flash of fur. I walked over to where I had seen it, but there was nothing there-- or so I thought. The next thing I knew, a kid around my age fell out of a tree and landed on top of me.
“Hey, are you lost too?”
The kid didn't say anything, just ran, and I followed. Next thing I knew, I was in the woods right near Baba's house.
“Thank you,” I called, but the mysterious child was long gone.