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Description
1~*~1

My parents have always had high expectations of me, and for my mother, if not my father, I was a huge disappointment.

I was born last of their four children, which, as you know, meant everything to the valley.

There are not many of us here as there never have been, just us the sorcerer's family and about fifty other families who live on the Street of Mansions in front of the palace. If our total population is over two hundred, I would be amazed.

The story that the parents teach their children is that about one hundred fifty years ago, a small party of settlers found the valley and moved in, and no one has come or gone since. Most people accept this story without question, but I at least was unsatisfied with the gaping holes. Who built the palace? It is much older than a hundred fifty years. How did the settlers get into the valley? Huge cliffs twice as high as the top spire of the palace surround us on all sides. I had many other questions too, and I once tried to ask Grandpa some of them, but he did not know the answers either.

Because there were so few original settlers and none of them liked the idea of having more children than they could manage, they began to die out when disease came to the valley. After a few months, Lapis, the dwarfish sorcerer who had accompanied the settlers, took matters into her own hands. She married my great-grandfather, Joseph, and they had twin boys, my Grandfather and Grandpa. I have always wondered whether Joseph had any say in this marriage. He avoids Lapis whenever they are in the same room, which is only on important occasions, and he has never lived in the same house.

And so the settlement was saved, and a now-important factor of our society emerged...magic.

Anyone who crosses roots with the sorcerer is a potential victim of the Gifts. Gifts always reflect a person's personality, but it sometimes seems as though the magic that allots them has a sense of humor. (Just a quick note that Dad's father is dead and his mother still works in the fields, but I won't mention her much because she refuses to set foot on the middle island, never mind the palace. She was furious that Dad agreed to marry Mom.)

Grandpa's Gift fits him like a shoe that is a size too small. Grandpa almost always has a smile on his face. He wears bright colors, cracks jokes, and gives gifts just to see people smile. His bizarre Gift is the ability to change the features of his face, which is how he keeps his hair the same old Fairy red. He can keep a whole roomful of people entertained for hours!

Grandpa's wife is Caroline. She was a plain little girl, dwarfish in most respects, and her wedding announcement rocked the valley. Grandpa and Grandma were such an odd couple! She was quiet and responsible and had a knack for writing poems, while he was reckless and rowdy and loved to use his gift. Everyone expected them to have strange children.

Most of their children turned out to be almost normal, but of course, 'most' does not mean 'all.' My mother was the odd one out.

Her temper is incredible when sparked, and in fact, her Gift has a great deal to do with that. When she was just five years old, one of her brothers teased her, called to her, "Wanna Danna with me tonight?" (It took me several years of retellings to figure out that what he would have meant was, "Want to dine with me tonight?" It is not remotely insulting, or even a real sentence. Anyway...) This made my mom furious. Her name was Dana ("dah-nah" for the record) and she did not tolerate any variations. For months, she had waged a mini war on anyone who gave her nicknames. People were kicked in the shins for calling her Dan, bitten for calling her Danny, and pummeled with tiny fists for calling her Dana with the first 'a' sounded just like the letter of the alphabet. Her brother's taunt was the last straw. She screamed and everyone in the valley came running, but by the time they got there, she had turned my uncle into stone. Lapis was able to sort things out right away and everyone had a good laugh, but the sorcerer always kept my mother near the palace so that Grandpa and Grandma could keep an eye on her. I guess Mom never left, because that is where we live today.

I suspect that my parent's marriage was very much like the sorcerer's in that one person forced the other into it. My father is terrified of my mother and as far as I know, he always has been. For his whole life, especially after he was married, he lived behind the reputations of others, just a shadow in the background. I always felt more attached to him than to Mom as he never vented his wrath on me. He is quiet, always more willing to listen than to give his own opinions, and my sisters and I found in him a safe harbor for our secrets, fears, and dreams.

My sisters are...uh...interesting. I have three, all older than I am, and all with different Gifts. On any given day, my sisters could be my best friends or my worst enemies, or they could be waging a mini-war among themselves in which case they would ask me to take sides. Like a faithful dog, I would bow to their wishes and be rewarded or punished, depending on which side triumphed over the other. My sisters were always supporting me and destroying me at the same time, and it was many years before I pulled myself out of their palms.

Victoria is the oldest. I could write volumes about her 'Gift' and all the ways that she has abused it. Victoria looks like a fairy but a little shorter and with light-colored skin (which is an interesting combination) and she is beautiful, there is no way around it. Her long red hair falls into perfect curls, she never has circles under her eyes, and she is just 'all-around perfect' as her victim once told someone. Her Gift is enchantment by singing. Just a few notes can make all who hear or one solitary person fall under her spell, but she has only used her Gift once, on a boy she had had her eyes on for years. She enchanted him one day, keeping him immersed in her spell for so long that it drove him mad and, upon release, he killed himself. Thanks to some binding magic done by Lapis, Victoria has never been able to take her Gift to such extremes since, although most of her free time is devoted to finding ways around this magic.

Tammatha comes next, and while Mom is always saying that she is a bad influence on me with her swearing and fighting, she is still the best friend I have in my family. Her hair is as fiery as her temper, although she has the latter far more under control than Mom does. She inherited Grandpa's love of combat and showed as much passion for learning as he did for teaching, but that is about all she inherited from anyone. With her thick eyebrows, sharp features, and serious face, you would not think that she was a member of our family at all. Tam's Gift caused quite the uproar when it first appeared. One day she just vanished, and though everyone combed the valley in search of her, they could not find her anywhere. Several days later, a squirrel got into the palace and ran to the fireplace where it hid behind the old sword on the mantle, refusing to budge. While we were trying to coax it out, Lapis walked in to tell us about another child with a Gift, and as soon as she understood the situation, there was a flash of blue light, the squirrel leapt through the air, and landed with a heavy thud on the floor. It was Tam. She fumed and fussed over her awful Gift for days, not helped at all by Grandpa's jokes about going squirrel hunting. Then Nelson made a big mistake and pointed out that Tam could use her Gift to spy on people, and she has not minded Grandpa's teasing since.

Nellie is next, and she is another reason my mother thought long and hard before naming me. Nellie is not the kind of person you would expect to have a name like 'Nellie', and in fact, she insists that everyone call her Nelson instead. Nelson is obsessed with death and dying for reasons I cannot fathom. She only wears black, grey, brown and white – the few colors she can see in death – and her room looks like a funeral just took place, complete with a coffin-shaped bookshelf. She is mostly dwarfish, but she is not my blood sister, she is my cousin (and the daughter of the Fairy cloth makers, which makes her color preference even more amusing), but we adopted her when she got her Gift because no one else would have kept her under their roof. Nelson can talk to and summon the dead, though I have never seen her do it. She says that people get miffed when you disturb them so she saves herself for important situations (that means never). Most people avoid Nelson, but when she is not talking about death, she is a completely normal person.

Then there is me. What more can I say? As I said before, I am a huge disappointment for my mother, because even though I was born last in a long line of magic, I have no Gift. I am long past the age at which Gifts normally come and still unremarkable. Short with plain pale skin, plain mud-brown hair, plain face…just plain in all respects, and with bad eyesight. Lapis used magic on me once, not to reverse the effects of a Gift, but to allow me to be able to see, so now I always have a light blue glow in front of my eyes, which makes me look tired all the time. I talked to Tam about my lack of interesting talents once while we were in the fields, and she was as helpful as she always is in the best of situations.

"Not my fault you're boring."

I stared at my work, determined not to show her the tears that by that time were streaming down my face.

"You're as boring as a full-blooded human."

Nelson was working on Tam's other side, so she hear everything, and then, because we were working with the vegetable at the time, said, "Or an eggplant."

They both laughed at my stricken face, and of course, Tam had to drag it out further.

"We'll just call you Eggwina the eggplant from now on, OK?"

"OF COURSE NOT!" I threw my basket and my knife to the ground. "I'm sick of it! It's not my fault that I can't do anything! Why do you have to pick on me?"

"You're the one who brought it up."

"FINE!" I stomped off.

That was a while ago, when I was about twelve. Later, Mom punished me for ruining the eggplants and failing to finish my chores and work. I thought that I would remember the injustice of it forever, but after my fifteenth birthday, a lot of things changed.

Description
1~*~1

My parents have always had high expectations of me, and for my mother, if not my father, I was a huge disappointment.

I was born last of their four children, which, as you know, meant everything to the valley.

There are not many of us here as there never have been, just us the sorcerer's family and about fifty other families who live on the Street of Mansions in front of the palace. If our total population is over two hundred, I would be amazed.

The story that the parents teach their children is that about one hundred fifty years ago, a small party of settlers found the valley and moved in, and no one has come or gone since. Most people accept this story without question, but I at least was unsatisfied with the gaping holes. Who built the palace? It is much older than a hundred fifty years. How did the settlers get into the valley? Huge cliffs twice as high as the top spire of the palace surround us on all sides. I had many other questions too, and I once tried to ask Grandpa some of them, but he did not know the answers either.

Because there were so few original settlers and none of them liked the idea of having more children than they could manage, they began to die out when disease came to the valley. After a few months, Lapis, the dwarfish sorcerer who had accompanied the settlers, took matters into her own hands. She married my great-grandfather, Joseph, and they had twin boys, my Grandfather and Grandpa. I have always wondered whether Joseph had any say in this marriage. He avoids Lapis whenever they are in the same room, which is only on important occasions, and he has never lived in the same house.

And so the settlement was saved, and a now-important factor of our society emerged...magic.

Anyone who crosses roots with the sorcerer is a potential victim of the Gifts. Gifts always reflect a person's personality, but it sometimes seems as though the magic that allots them has a sense of humor. (Just a quick note that Dad's father is dead and his mother still works in the fields, but I won't mention her much because she refuses to set foot on the middle island, never mind the palace. She was furious that Dad agreed to marry Mom.)

Grandpa's Gift fits him like a shoe that is a size too small. Grandpa almost always has a smile on his face. He wears bright colors, cracks jokes, and gives gifts just to see people smile. His bizarre Gift is the ability to change the features of his face, which is how he keeps his hair the same old Fairy red. He can keep a whole roomful of people entertained for hours!

Grandpa's wife is Caroline. She was a plain little girl, dwarfish in most respects, and her wedding announcement rocked the valley. Grandpa and Grandma were such an odd couple! She was quiet and responsible and had a knack for writing poems, while he was reckless and rowdy and loved to use his gift. Everyone expected them to have strange children.

Most of their children turned out to be almost normal, but of course, 'most' does not mean 'all.' My mother was the odd one out.

Her temper is incredible when sparked, and in fact, her Gift has a great deal to do with that. When she was just five years old, one of her brothers teased her, called to her, "Wanna Danna with me tonight?" (It took me several years of retellings to figure out that what he would have meant was, "Want to dine with me tonight?" It is not remotely insulting, or even a real sentence. Anyway...) This made my mom furious. Her name was Dana ("dah-nah" for the record) and she did not tolerate any variations. For months, she had waged a mini war on anyone who gave her nicknames. People were kicked in the shins for calling her Dan, bitten for calling her Danny, and pummeled with tiny fists for calling her Dana with the first 'a' sounded just like the letter of the alphabet. Her brother's taunt was the last straw. She screamed and everyone in the valley came running, but by the time they got there, she had turned my uncle into stone. Lapis was able to sort things out right away and everyone had a good laugh, but the sorcerer always kept my mother near the palace so that Grandpa and Grandma could keep an eye on her. I guess Mom never left, because that is where we live today.

I suspect that my parent's marriage was very much like the sorcerer's in that one person forced the other into it. My father is terrified of my mother and as far as I know, he always has been. For his whole life, especially after he was married, he lived behind the reputations of others, just a shadow in the background. I always felt more attached to him than to Mom as he never vented his wrath on me. He is quiet, always more willing to listen than to give his own opinions, and my sisters and I found in him a safe harbor for our secrets, fears, and dreams.

My sisters are...uh...interesting. I have three, all older than I am, and all with different Gifts. On any given day, my sisters could be my best friends or my worst enemies, or they could be waging a mini-war among themselves in which case they would ask me to take sides. Like a faithful dog, I would bow to their wishes and be rewarded or punished, depending on which side triumphed over the other. My sisters were always supporting me and destroying me at the same time, and it was many years before I pulled myself out of their palms.

Victoria is the oldest. I could write volumes about her 'Gift' and all the ways that she has abused it. Victoria looks like a fairy but a little shorter and with light-colored skin (which is an interesting combination) and she is beautiful, there is no way around it. Her long red hair falls into perfect curls, she never has circles under her eyes, and she is just 'all-around perfect' as her victim once told someone. Her Gift is enchantment by singing. Just a few notes can make all who hear or one solitary person fall under her spell, but she has only used her Gift once, on a boy she had had her eyes on for years. She enchanted him one day, keeping him immersed in her spell for so long that it drove him mad and, upon release, he killed himself. Thanks to some binding magic done by Lapis, Victoria has never been able to take her Gift to such extremes since, although most of her free time is devoted to finding ways around this magic.

Tammatha comes next, and while Mom is always saying that she is a bad influence on me with her swearing and fighting, she is still the best friend I have in my family. Her hair is as fiery as her temper, although she has the latter far more under control than Mom does. She inherited Grandpa's love of combat and showed as much passion for learning as he did for teaching, but that is about all she inherited from anyone. With her thick eyebrows, sharp features, and serious face, you would not think that she was a member of our family at all. Tam's Gift caused quite the uproar when it first appeared. One day she just vanished, and though everyone combed the valley in search of her, they could not find her anywhere. Several days later, a squirrel got into the palace and ran to the fireplace where it hid behind the old sword on the mantle, refusing to budge. While we were trying to coax it out, Lapis walked in to tell us about another child with a Gift, and as soon as she understood the situation, there was a flash of blue light, the squirrel leapt through the air, and landed with a heavy thud on the floor. It was Tam. She fumed and fussed over her awful Gift for days, not helped at all by Grandpa's jokes about going squirrel hunting. Then Nelson made a big mistake and pointed out that Tam could use her Gift to spy on people, and she has not minded Grandpa's teasing since.

Nellie is next, and she is another reason my mother thought long and hard before naming me. Nellie is not the kind of person you would expect to have a name like 'Nellie', and in fact, she insists that everyone call her Nelson instead. Nelson is obsessed with death and dying for reasons I cannot fathom. She only wears black, grey, brown and white – the few colors she can see in death – and her room looks like a funeral just took place, complete with a coffin-shaped bookshelf. She is mostly dwarfish, but she is not my blood sister, she is my cousin (and the daughter of the Fairy cloth makers, which makes her color preference even more amusing), but we adopted her when she got her Gift because no one else would have kept her under their roof. Nelson can talk to and summon the dead, though I have never seen her do it. She says that people get miffed when you disturb them so she saves herself for important situations (that means never). Most people avoid Nelson, but when she is not talking about death, she is a completely normal person.

Then there is me. What more can I say? As I said before, I am a huge disappointment for my mother, because even though I was born last in a long line of magic, I have no Gift. I am long past the age at which Gifts normally come and still unremarkable. Short with plain pale skin, plain mud-brown hair, plain face…just plain in all respects, and with bad eyesight. Lapis used magic on me once, not to reverse the effects of a Gift, but to allow me to be able to see, so now I always have a light blue glow in front of my eyes, which makes me look tired all the time. I talked to Tam about my lack of interesting talents once while we were in the fields, and she was as helpful as she always is in the best of situations.

"Not my fault you're boring."

I stared at my work, determined not to show her the tears that by that time were streaming down my face.

"You're as boring as a full-blooded human."

Nelson was working on Tam's other side, so she hear everything, and then, because we were working with the vegetable at the time, said, "Or an eggplant."

They both laughed at my stricken face, and of course, Tam had to drag it out further.

"We'll just call you Eggwina the eggplant from now on, OK?"

"OF COURSE NOT!" I threw my basket and my knife to the ground. "I'm sick of it! It's not my fault that I can't do anything! Why do you have to pick on me?"

"You're the one who brought it up."

"FINE!" I stomped off.

That was a while ago, when I was about twelve. Later, Mom punished me for ruining the eggplants and failing to finish my chores and work. I thought that I would remember the injustice of it forever, but after my fifteenth birthday, a lot of things changed.