Chapter Text
I do not know why I am writing this, but I think it has to do with the fact so many other people are talking about us. Telling their stories. Trying to tell other people’s. Perhaps it is time I got ahead of that and shared mine. Because it is easy to look in from the outside and think you understand what happened, or why or how it happened, but those of us here, on the inside, know that it is impossible to fully understand what or why or how unless you were there. Unless you were a part of it. But I will do my best to explain. To put the pieces together.
I have always been rather good at that, after all.
I have a friend – a bard who calls herself Straight Jacket Jazlyn. She says that when one tells a story it is of the utmost importance to know ones audience. I am afraid she will be disappointed in my storytelling in that regard, because I do not know who I am writing this for.
I have encoded it with my personal cipher, which might imply that I mean these words to be for my eyes alone, but I lived all the events I mean to set down on these pages and do not need a reminder of them, so that is not it.
Curious.
If you are reading this, either you found this journal and broke my code (in which case, gut! Bravo!) or I have given you book and cipher both.
I cannot imagine who I would give this to, but the very fact I am setting these words out at all implies that perhaps my subconscious knows something the rest of my mind does not. Julian would be proud of me for listening to it, and today that is a good enough reason for me to do so.
This feels like something he would have done. He has always been like that–trusting his gut, listening to his intuition. That feels like what I am doing. I only hope it works out better for me than it did for him.
It all began with a rat.
My sister Anna was four years older than me and I worshiped her–I followed her everywhere, practically her shadow. I was following her up the stairs while carrying a bottle of ink when a rat darted between us. That never happens, it makes no sense for it to happen–rats are meant to slink around in the shadows not thrust themselves under the feet of young girls–but it did.
I tried to jump out of the way but I landed awkwardly, spilling my body across the stairs and the ink all over Anna’s new gown.
Seeing the big splotch of ink spreading across the bright red of her dress, a look of pure fury distorted her pale, pale face and she hissed, "You dirty cur! Look what you've done!"
"I am sorry," I stammered. "I did not mean–"
"You're sorry," she said. "You're sorry. Oh, well, if you're sorry I guess it's fine that my dress is ruined!"
"I am sure Father will get you a new–" I started, but she cut me off.
She leaned in close.
So close I could see the tiny veins in her eyes, could smell the sardines we had with lunch on her breath, and watch the spittle dance at the corner of her mouth as she snarled, "Father?"
Then she laughed.
Coldly.
Heartlessly.
I still sometimes hear that laugh ringing in my ears when I wake from nightmares–memories of far worse times than that moment, but overlaid with the sound of her mirthless laugh.
"He's not your father," she said. "He's mine. You're just some rotten little mutt he felt sorry for!"
I had never suspected I was adopted, but the moment she spat those words at me I knew the truth. I felt puzzle pieces click into place–a dozen small things all suddenly filled with more import and meaning than they had possessed moments before, making sense on a level I had not understood until just then.
Things like the way my bedroom was in a different wing of the manor than the rest of the family's.
Things like how Mother and Father always hesitated a moment before saying, "Our second daughter," when introducing me to guests.
Things like the way my parents never touched me the way they did Anna and Sören.
They were not cruel to me, my parents. Make no mistake, Mystery Reader. They did not beat me or punish me unjustly. But my mother sometimes looked at me the same way she might watch a spider spinning a web and my father occasionally seemed to forget I was there at all.
Anna came to me the next day, apologetic and contrite. She wanted to patch things up, to make things better. And I forgave her, I really, sincerely did–as much as my broken six year-old heart was able to–but obviously I could not forget. I could not turn back time and return again to the bliss of ignorance. Could not stop seeing the disparity between myself and my siblings.
When the twins, Friedrich and Dietrich, were born a year later I went to my father and asked him why he had adopted me. I was young, but sharp even then. I knew most people adopted children because they could not have their own and my father, or, rather, the man who was raising me, could clearly have children. So why adopt me?
He tried. I must say that much for him. I think he really tried.
He sat me on his knee–it was the one and only time I remember him doing that–looked me in the eye and told me a story.
He said they had adopted me because I needed a home. Because I needed someone to take care of me. He said I was special. Said he could tell, even when I was just a little baby, that I was special. But his words rang hollow and I began to cry.
Instead of gathering me against him and shushing me, stroking my hair like I had seen him do a dozen times with Anna, he patted my shoulder awkwardly and chucked me under the chin. "Chin up, my girl," he said. "You're still a Von Dietten, even if you came upon the name differently than your brothers and sister. There are worse things to be in this world. I promise you."
But my wounds were real and they festered and grew, forcing me out of the family like pus does a splinter, until I felt like I was perpetually on the outside looking in.
I wonder. Were they afraid of me even then? Or did that come later?
I have had friends who grew up in orphanages, and when they talk about those days they often speak of deprivation. Of not enough food, or coal. Of tiny hard beds and having to forge bonds with one another to survive.
And of rats.
I wonder some times which I would rather. Growing up where I did, or in an orphanage.
I was never hungry, my mattress was soft and my closet, though containing only Anna's hand-me-downs, was full. But I was alone. In their stories, those friends were cold, hungry and uncomfortable, but they had other orphans they could bond with, could depend on.
I had only myself.
Oh, I know. Poor little rich girl, right? But, Mystery Reader, I suggest to you that loneliness is crueler, even, than hunger. I have experienced both and I would choose starvation every time.
In the end, though, when it comes to hypothetically choosing childhoods, I almost always decide that I would rather have my childhood than my orphan friends’.
I would choose it, I have decided, because it made me who I am.
The strongest metals are those which have survived the highest heat. Is that not so?
And it was the material wealth my adoptive family provided that opened the doors for me to grow into the woman I became. Orphans in state-run homes do not have fathers who go on business trips and bring gifts when they return, but I did. And that, as it happened, made all the difference.
Father, for I cannot help but think of him still as Father, even after all these years–all these revelations–Father had gone on a long business trip that included a stop in Hupperdook. While he was there he picked up small gadgets for each of us children–there were seven of us by then.
My gift was a small clockwork owl that flapped its wings and hovered in the air. Anna's was a jewelry box which played the sound of Father humming a lullaby every time it was opened. The twins each got a cylinder, silver and shiny, and if one spoke into it the other could hear the words clear as if they'd whispered them right into their ear–even from several rooms over.
You get the idea.
I was overjoyed by my gift. My siblings, on the other hand, grew tired of their new toys almost immediately. It was not that they had so many more toys than I did for, as I have said, I never wanted for anything in the way of material goods, not even toys, but they just did not care for them. That was okay. I cared enough for all of us.
I played with that bird for hours and hours. And when playing with it as it was intended became boring I took it apart and then put it back together again.
It was a simple little trinket, nothing overly complicated, but it still took more intuitive skill to do what I did then, as a young child, than most adults possess. And my parents took note.
So, I responded to their interest in me with an increased interest in the toys.
I took mine apart again. And then I took my siblings' apart. And then I put them all back together in new ways. I made my bird sing with Father's voice, and Anna's jewelry box sparkle and gleam each time she opened it. Then I took them apart again and reassembled them as they had originally been intended.
Eventually, the clockworks and gears were too simple to hold my attention for long–and Mother always said a bored child was prone to getting into trouble (though she said that about a curious one as well. I wonder if she recognised the contradiction therein).
Speaking of getting into trouble, I recall one time when I was about nine…