Shayera

6-9 years old

“Shayera!” Mama called my name; her voice had gone tight and shrill.

I cringed. I might have been in trouble. And I didn’t like that. I loved Mama and Papa and didn’t want them worrying. But they kept me trapped inside.

All.

The.

Time.

It was sooo boring. It was sunny, and the birds were singing in the trees. My friend, Mr. Gobletter Squirrel, was hopping from branch to branch in the big apple tree behind my house and waving his fat red tail at me, almost like a greeting.

I liked climbing trees too. And exploring, just like Alice in my favorite book in the world. I wanted to fall down a rabbit hole and find that silly, hairy white rabbit someday.

Mama always told me my book of stories wasn’t real. In fact, Alice—the real one—lived in Wonderland. She was married to the Hatter, who was also real, and they had a baby girl. She had pretty hair that curved into a sharp V on her forehead. But she was nice, and she smiled at me a lot, and even though she was much older than me—she was ten—we were friends, so she was okay, I guess.

She said she liked me because I had a smart brain and she didn’t feel like she was talking to a baby when she was with me. I told her to keep that secret just between us.

The real Alice and Hatter were nice people. But I liked the Alice and Hatter from my book better. I didn’t tell Mama that, though, because she and the real Alice were friends, and I didn’t want to hurt Mama’s heart by being mean. But in my book, Alice was my age... Well, a little bit older, I guess. But she liked to explore. And I did too. It was my all-time favorite thing to do.

Mama, Papa, Uncle Kelly, Briley, Uncle Kelly’s girlfriend, Claudette, and I all lived in a big, two-story house that had fireplaces in every room and roses growing everywhere.

And even though our house was big enough to hold us all comfortably, sometimes it also felt really small, and I had to sneak out by myself for a chance to be alone so that I could think and remember my dreams. There was a cool, big, green lake behind our house. It was about a mile back, but I loved playing there. Mama and Papa didn’t like me going if they weren’t able to come with me, though, unless I was with Briley or Uncle Kelly.

I’d only snuck out there once but got scared when I saw a ripple shiver in the water, and I never went back. Papa had told me there was a water siren that lived in that water and that sirens were mean, tricky, ugly creatures, and to run away if I ever saw one. So I’d run, but I did sometimes get curious if it’d just been a big fish making all that fuss down there and Papa had just told me a fib to keep me safe.

One day, I was twisting around the thick trunk of a whomping apple-willow tree—which was exactly like what it sounded like, but the tree liked me, so it never gave me a whomping. But it hated Uncle Kelly, and when he got too close, it thwacked him hard on his petunia as he walked by. Briley and I thought it was funny, but Uncle Kelly did not.

A strong pair of hands hefted me high into the air, causing me to squeal and scream. Then Papa’s deep rumble called out, “Found her, pigêon!” to Mama, who came clomping down the steps with a stern mouth and twinkling eyes.

She was angry with me.

I sighed, feeling as though I might cry. I’d barely even gotten to play ten minutes. Briley must have tattled on me again. But then Papa was cuddling me close and tickling my ribs until I started giggling.

“My little butterfly, my little papillon,” he whispered in his gravelly voice, “why do you always run so? Don’t you know it’s not safe out here alone?”

I grumped, crossing my arms. I never saw all the other mommies and papas of the village being as grumpy with their kids like Mama and Papa were with me. “But I just want to play.”

Papa’s lips pulled up into a loose smile. Mama was still marching toward us, but she didn’t seem quite so frazzled anymore. Her face was only a little bit red and splotchy. I hated to make them worry. I frowned.

Papa tipped my jaw up. “Why do you always look so sullen, my pretty one? Do you not love us? Is that what it is? You wish to run away and join the circus?”

I giggled. “Oh, Papa.” I slapped at his chest and plopped a loud, smacking kiss to his bristled cheek. “You know I don’t.”

His dark brows lifted. “Then why do you not listen to your maman when she tells you to stay inside, hmm? It breaks her heart, papillon.”

My shoulders slumped. “I don’t want to break Mommy’s heart. I just... I just want to...” Fly.

Somehow I knew deep down that I should never tell them, that I should never let them know just how unhappy I was sometimes. So I bit my tongue and said nothing instead. Mama finally reached our side and wrapped me up tightly, giving my forehead a hard kiss before leaning back and wagging her finger beneath my nose. She smelled like roses. She always smelled like roses. “I should spank your little butt for running off again. If it hadn’t been for Briley, I don’t know what I would have—”

I cried. And I wasn’t even sure why. I only knew it hurt. Something deep inside of me hurt sometimes, so, so badly. I wasn’t even really sure why because I loved my family. I had friends. People liked me, and I liked people. But...

“Ah, ma petite,” Papa whispered, hugging me close while Mama put her arms around me from behind. The sun shone down on us, and the wind was full of the scent of flowers. We stood like that for a little while, alone in the middle of a large field full of wildflowers and a lone whomping apple-willow that seemed to understand it wasn’t the time to go a’whompin’. Instead, it did something it had never done before. Large, willowy limbs full of apples and white flowers wrapped around the three of us like a thick band of snakes. The touch was soft and gentle, almost like it was giving us a hug. I trembled.

Papa continued to stroke my back but now that the tears had started they just wouldn’t seem to stop. “Do not cry, my beautiful papillon. This will not always be, my darling. You will see.”

Through my sobs, I heard them start talking in low voices to each other and Mama saying things like, “Maybe we should...”

Then Papa growled and whispered a sharp, “Non!” back.

I made them sad. I didn’t like that. But I didn’t know how to stop it, either. Sometimes when they thought I wasn’t looking, I would see Papa wearing a tight scowl and Mama looking worried, as though she might cry. It always happened after they would look at me.

Usually at that point, Mama would nod and walk away, but not that day. She walked around to the front of me, where I could see her face, and I finally noticed that she was crying.

I never wanted to see Mama cry. I reached out my arms to her, and she pulled me close to her. I buried my face in her shoulder, sniffing her scent of roses and trembling because I loved her so much, and I knew that someday Mama would save me from this hurt.

I didn’t turn my face up when Mama started speaking again. “Gerard, I love you. But we can’t hide her forever. She has to learn independence. She has to grow up sometime, sweetheart.” As she spoke, she rubbed my back, and my heart started to bang hard in my chest. I wondered if it was possible. Could it be true? Would they finally let me play?

I sucked in my breath, afraid to move.

“Betty, you know... you know what might—”

“Yes,” she hissed. “I know very well. But what we’re doing to her is no better than what he’s done to us. The deal was struck, and he’ll have no choice but to stick to his end of the bargain. You know that. She has until she’s twenty-one, but maybe she could meet someone before then. We’ll never know if we don’t let her spread her wings. She’s a child, my love.”

I had no idea what they were talking about. But I dared to chance a peek at Papa’s face through my tear-stained lashes, and I noted the hard clench of his jaw and the way he ran his fingers through his hair so many times that it stood up stiff at his forehead, as if he’d shocked himself.

I licked my lips, my tiny heart banging hard in my chest, because deep down I sensed that maybe something big was about to happen.

Finally, Papa sighed. “But my past, Betty, what if—”

She leaned toward him and moved her mouth to his ear, whispering loudly enough that I could hear her even through the sounds of my crying. “That was a past that does not exist in this time. It can’t happen to her now. You never wronged that siren, you see. How could it possibly be?”

His long lashes fluttered, and I caught him glancing at me with another one of his penetrating, worried frowns. For years, I’d heard them talk of a siren and a curse, but anytime I’d asked, they would just tell me, “Oh, nothing, love. Just grown-up stuff.” I was young, but I wasn’t dumb. There was a reason Mommy and Papa didn’t want me around others. I just wished I knew why.

“It’s the only way to keep her childhood normal, Gerard. You know I’m right,” Mama pressed on.

Papa looked at me with his dark-blue eyes, and suddenly I couldn’t seem to breathe right. My head felt spinny and weird, and my pulse fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings on the back of my tongue. I swallowed hard. My hands were all wet and tingly.

“Papillon.” Papa looked at me, waiting for me to reply.

“Oui, Papa?” I answered him back in his own tongue. I knew Papa was nervous when he started to speak so much French.

“You will be safe, my love? Always, right? You know what not to do. Who not to follow.”

I nodded. “The strange man dressed all in black.”

“Oui.” He nodded back. “If you ever see him, you run away. He is a very bad man, Shayera. A bad man. He would seek to—”

Mama pressed a hand against Papa’s chest once I started trembling. Almost from the moment I knew how to talk, Papa had told me about the man in black, with red eyes and blond hair and a smile like the devil. He was terrible, Papa said—the man had tried to kill him once. The dark man was a trickster and a thief. He would try to hurt me and take me away from my family forever.

The man in black scared me. I would never go with him.

“What Papa is trying to say,” Mama interrupted, “is that you must be careful. Do not speak with men you do not know. Not ever. You are young, honey, but you are bright. Can we trust that if we let you outside to play, you will not wander beyond our bounds?”

“You can trust me, Mama.”

“Promise us, papillon. Promise me with all your heart and soul.”

“I promise, Papa.”

The worry didn’t leave his eyes, but his chest visibly rose and fell with his swift inhale and exhale. His long, dark lashes fluttered again, and I couldn’t help but wish I knew the real reason why my parents worried so much about me. Who was this man in black, and was he connected to a cursed siren?

“Then you may play in the backyard,” Mama said.

I gasped and clapped my hands. “Really?”

Papa stuck up a finger. “Yes, but only here. Nowhere else. Never wander beyond our fence. No more sneaking off to the lake. Ever.”

I felt a momentary flash of irritation because the backyard wasn’t where the real adventures were. Papa set his mouth into a thin line, and I knew that if I protested, they would snatch the gift away and tell me I was too young to understand this responsibility.

I wasn’t dumb. Mama had a very smart brain, and she didn’t know it yet, but I did too. At times, I would wake up from a dream in the morning, remembering fantastical and wonderful things about a world that didn’t exist but that felt as real as the world I lived in, if just for a moment.

In my dreams was a world where I read a lot, where I was tall and pretty and nice. And a man with kind blue eyes smiled down at me all the time. I was never scared because he was always right there with me. But when he left me, I was terrified.

I dreamt of fire and magic, of talking about things that I was too young to understand, such as the theory of dark and light matter and why it was that he manipulated the darkness instead of the light.

The ghostly echoes of our conversations didn’t always make sense to me. I couldn’t explain what dark and light manipulation was, only that he knew how to do it and that I liked it a lot, as the woman in those dreams.

The tenor of his voice was deep, throaty, and rumbly, different than my papa’s scratchy one. It sounded as if he’d swallowed lots of rocks whenever he talked, but there was also a pretty lilting quality to his accent too. It was like no one else’s in the village. I liked it much more than anything I had ever heard around me.

Once, several months before, I’d tried to tell Mommy about my dreams. Her eyes had grown big and wide and had filled up with tears. She’d quickly slapped a hand over my mouth and said in a whispered rush, “Never, never speak of this again, my Shay. Not in this house, where the walls have ears.”

Her reaction scared me so badly that I never tried talking to her about them again.

I licked my lips, staring between my parents as Mommy continued to hang on tightly to me and look up at Papa’s dark-blue eyes.

Papa finally pried Mommy’s hands off of me and set me down, barefoot, on the plush carpet of verdant grass. I looked up at his handsome face, smiling but feeling a little sick to my stomach.

After less than a minute, he leaned down and hugged me hard. “Remember I love you, papillon.”

Then he turned on his heel and walked toward the house, but not before I saw the sheen of tears in his eyes. Mama looked at him as he walked away, and only once he’d gone back in the house did she look back at me.

Her smile was soft but sad. And without saying anything else to me, she followed in my father’s footsteps. The thrill of adventure now completely gone, I sat down in the middle of the field, staring out at the expansive blue sky, feeling melancholy.

And that was how he found me.

A big dog came loping through the trees, wearing what looked like an impossible smile on his face, its long pink tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth. He ran to me, making me shriek at first. He was so huge that I was terrified he was going to grab me by my throat and drag me off.

But he didn’t do that. Instead, he whined when he got to my side, with his bushy tail thumping the ground over and over as he licked my face. He acted as though he’d lost me but had found me again, and he was over the moon with joy.

Truth was, the second he licked my cheek, I felt that same kind of happy joy to be with him too. I had my best friend that I’d always wished for, though I didn’t know it then. He was large and friendly, with shaggy black hair and dark-brown eyes rimmed in deep red, and I called him Prince. I wasn’t sure why, but he seemed to like the name the second I said it.

His thick tail struck the earth twice, as though telling me, “Perfect.”

We became inseparable after that. At first, Mommy and Papa had been scared to see that big animal shadowing my footsteps, but eventually even Papa began to tolerate the beast. Then he would only ever let me leave the house if Prince was with me. Soon, I graduated from getting to play only in the backyard to being able to roam my hamlet if the mood struck me.

Prince once ran off a group of boys who’d thrown rocks at me and had begun to call me names, telling me I was an ugly witch because of my bright-red hair. Prince attacked the one nearest us, biting his hand so hard that he split it open. The rest of the boys ran off after that, screaming about my demon dog.

I didn’t really make many human friends because no one wanted to get that close to Prince. But I didn’t mind. Prince was nice to Briley, Mommy and Papa. Even Uncle Kelly only got growled at once or twice. I loved Prince, and he loved me. He always slept outside my window, and when the nights got really cold, Mommy would even leave the front door open for him.

Prince never moved into the house, though I tried to sneak him into my room all the time. He would just whine and cry and pace underneath my window until I came out to him. So I stopped trying to sneak him in.

For three years I loved Prince with all of my heart and soul. He was my pal, my buddy, and my very dearest love. “I never want anyone else but you, Prince,” I whispered to him just as the sun was beginning to set on the night before my ninth birthday. The apple-willow tree sat very still tonight, only lazily drawing the tips of its leafy limbs over my belly and tickling me.

Prince licked my cheek, huffing his stinky doggy breath in my face, and I smiled. My ninth birthday was going to be a great day.