Chapter Text
This was a terrible, awful, stupid idea.
Who in their right mind would say yes to such a ridiculous, middle of nowhere trip to none other than miserable Cairnholm, an island off the coast of Wales.
It’s so nowhere that you have to go by ferry. Which is fine, except it’s an outside ferry. And it’s cold and raining. France is lovely and sunny compared to this but I’m rather lucky I thought to bring along a raincoat and several jumpers.
I’m to be staying for research purposes only; specifically to examine the ruins of a destroyed children’s home back from the nineteen-forties. It was hit by a bomb during an attack by the Germans. Apparently, the bomb wasn’t meant to be released on the home, and yet it was, destroying all traces of life and the home they all lived in.
Such a sad story. Something I myself couldn’t possibly relate to. However, there was one aspect of the home that I could.
I’d heard through my grandmother, a self-proclaimed ‘peculiar’ that the home housed many children with special abilities. At first I thought she meant that they were all disabled in some way, but I was quickly proven wrong.
According to her, the children’s abilities were not of this world. In fact, you’d think I was crazy if I told you that a girl could create fire from the touch of her hands, a boy that was entirely invisible, another girl who was lighter than air and could float away, only weighed down by the heavy lead of her boots.
At first, I thought mémé was absolutely full of shit. I was 20 when she told me, and I had no reason to believe her, until she showed me her own little special skill.
She could bend parts of her body that were not supposed to bend at all in different ways that were entirely unnatural.
“C’est fantastique!” I would say, and she’d laugh and tell me more. This time, I found no other reason for her to be lying.
When I thought about it, I assumed that she was probably heavily double-jointed, which isn’t really that rare or special by any means. But her medical records said no such thing. What they did say, however, was that she was riddled with dementia during the last few years of her life. She’d died a year ago.
I was devastated to see her go, she was my only friend besides my maman, who would recite tales I’d never heard from her lips that happened way before I was born.
“Your grandmother used to live in Wales, you see. She was curious by nature, like you, but less stubborn,” - I’d wrinkle my nose in faux annoyance - “there was a children’s home. The children rarely wandered outside, but she knew of their abilities, as she had her own. For some unknown reason, she was never sent to them. Probably because she was only in Wales for such a short while.”
It made sense, at the time, that mémé knew about these children, and never joined them. It made sense that she had this strange ability to bend her own body to her will, that she could string up these stories and get me - a twenty year old, naive woman - to believe her.
After she died and I read her records, I realised that they had noticed some… abnormality that could be passed as double-jointedness, but… that’s not what they had written. Instead of what you would probably write, they only gave one response to her defect.
‘???’
It got me thinking.
If mémé could bend, if maman told me these stories and… ‘abilities’ were really true and people really did float and create fire and bring people back to life, then I had no reason to discount the idea that I might have an ability too.
So I put myself to the test.
A month in trying to figure out my undoubtedly lame ability, I’d burned, broken, sliced and scratched my hands and fingers. Now, looking down at the offending things lying in my lap, I’m reminded of the ridiculous effort and pain I went through just to see if I could do something cool - something no one else could.
I gave it up as a bad job sometime later, until maman reminded me of a time back when I was small, too small for me to remember without some brain prodding.
“Oh darling, why didn’t you ask me if you had a peculiarity? Of course you do! It normally skips generations, and you might not remember and will probably have a hard time doing it now but when you were a baby, you’d conjure up the strangest little illusions.
“As a three year old you were running around the house, chasing a baby elephant that your mind - your mind had created! It was spectacular. You stopped at around four and… well… never did it again.”
Perplexed only for a moment, my mother’s words suddenly brought back a flood of heavy memories that had my head swimming. Grasping my hair, I could remember being so young and creating such… illusions, was the only way I could describe it.
And I’d realised that I’d been doing it all my life all along.
Imaginary friends, pets, different coloured shoes that would make my classmates ponder, make my teacher send me home only for me to walk through my front door and they went back from pink to normal black. As if unlocking a major upgrade for a character in a video game, the ability came back to me.
It started slow, piece by piece as I got used to this new power, and I’d trick my mother into thinking there was a burglar in the house in the middle of the day, that a wasps nest was in the kitchen, that a mouse as big as a size ten shoe was eating all our cat food.
Small tricks grew to full blown illusions.
I could make my outfit appear immaculate all day when I was really only wearing pyjamas - though no one would ever know. I would change my hair colour to red one day, have it as short as a boy’s the other, have it all gone the next. And then there would be the times of loneliness, where the ache in my heart became too much to bear and I’d fall asleep with the illusion of a body, warm against my back, cradling me to sleep.
Even now, as I sit here on the boat, I’m making my nails turn different colours and different lengths to suit my mood. Which is miserable and tired.
Without proper rest, I found that my talent was… limited, to put it simply.
I couldn’t change up my appearance too much without collapsing, and even changing my nails was making me break out in a sweat.
Anyway, I’ll have my own house to go to when I arrive at the island and I can nap as soon as I walk in the door.
The house is situated near the end of the village, just before a swamp. At first I was reluctant but then I thought - if I was going to be spending most of my time exploring and finding out about the peculiars then it wouldn’t even matter where my house was situated. It was only temporary, anyway.
Maman was paying for a year in Cairnholm. If I decide to stay - which is highly doubtful given the horror that is the weather - then I’ll have to find a job and keep my own house. Luckily, the cost of living is tremendously low on Cairnholm. I’m not surprised, given it’s only populated by some five-hundred or so people.
I look up at the sound of a bird, and realise it’s a peregrine falcon. She’s following the boat, and I take a moment to marvel at her beautiful, blue-tinted feathers.
“Bonjour,” I wave up at the bird, and she flies off to God knows where.
A few minutes later, we arrived at the dock. I gather my things, pay the ferryman and leave the boat.
This was already going to be the worst thing
ever.