"You try being the daughter of a legend; it's a lot like work." Quote from a different author/series but it suits my purposes just fine.
Memories are funny things. They change and take on new meaning as you grow and age.
My earliest memory is from when I was about three years old. My little brother had just been born and Daddy had me spending as much time as possible out of the house. Because Mommy needed a break, and I didn't want to wake the baby now did I? My mother had taken to sitting on a window seat during those days; she would watch me and Daddy play in the yard while rocking Sage. I could hear her singing a melody that had seemed sad even to me, even then. Even when Mommy was happy she was still a little sad. Daddy too, but he was better at hiding it. Or maybe he had less sad in him to start with.
There were these pretty little flowers growing all around the house, they were pink and had lots of petals. They were thorny, too. I didn't know what they were called back then but I did know they were special to my parents. So in my three-year-old wisdom I decided that the flowers would make my mom feel better. Daddy brought Mommy flowers sometimes, didn't he? So I picked the biggest, fullest, prettiest blooms I could find, as well as some other garden flowers for color. I clumsily wrapped them in ivy and hid them behind my back. It wasn't the prettiest bouquet and most of the stems were too short for a vase but I was so proud of my little present that I ran to my mother in the window and thrust the thing at her.
"Look, Mommy! I brought you flowers!" I'd cried without checking my volume. I woke up Sage and he began to cry.
"Grace!" My mother had scolded me. "Now I'll never get him back to sleep. Please go play with your father." Then she started rocking the baby and singing that lullaby. She cooed to him and spoke nonsense words; she even danced him around the room.
The flowers lay forgotten on the window sill until a gust of wind scattered the blooms.
When I was five I started at the local school. The faces were a lot more diverse than they had been in my parents' time. There were red-heads, brunettes, blondes, freckles; green eyes, brown eyes, as well as the usual color schemes that had been class indicative Back Before.
"Before" had taken on mystical meaning to me. No one had ever explained anything to me. Before what? My father had once tried to explain. He told me that a long time before Sage or I were born people didn't have the kinds of right they did now. They were trapped in their station in life. It was all very abstract. I had the idea of everyone locked in the train station unable to leave. And then I decided not to think about it anymore.
When my parents walked me to school people stared at us, some whispered, some pointed, some held children up to see. I was used to it when we went to market. I had always thought they were looking because my mom was the prettiest woman ever. Daddy said so all the time.
But that day I could hear some of what they were saying and it didn't make any sense. They talked about a war, a game, a bird, it was all very confusing. Especially, because Mom and Daddy refused to acknowledge the attention. The only person they even talked to was a pretty lady who wasn't quite my mom's age but looked a lot like her.
"Grace, this is going to be your teacher. Say 'hello' to Ms. Hawthorne." My mom had said to me after she finished talking to the lady. I had always been a friendly but shy child, so instead of being polite, I tried to hide behind my father's leg and peek at the lady. She smiled at me so I had to smile back. I decided she was ok and followed her to a group of other kids my age.
Once my brother was walking steadily enough not to be followed everywhere, he began to follow me everywhere. He was small and clumsy and sometimes I didn't like him very much, but mostly he was my favorite person ever. He was even better than Daddy because he didn't get mad at me or put me in the corner.
Mom liked to look out the window at us when we played. Sometimes she would sing while she did her mom stuff inside. When my mom sang like that it made me want to dance. I spun and twirled and leapt and didn't always land right. My mom started calling me her dancing girl and she would sing songs made just for dancing to. Sage didn't dance. He tried to sing and even though he was still a baby he was pretty good. Soon he was the one singing the songs I danced to.
But we still had nightmares. I could hear my mom sometimes when she had bad dreams. I had bad dreams, too. Sometimes they made me cry and scream like her. And then Daddy, and sometimes Mom would come and talk to me and rock me until I went back to sleep.
In my dreams my parents were fighting in the war they never talked about. People were getting blown up and I was trying to keep Sage safe. And then they didn't come find us. That was the part that scared me, when they didn't come for us at the end. I never told anyone what my dreams were about. My parents thought it was shadows on my walls or weird noises from outside.
When I was twelve, I brought home a friend from school. Her name was May and she had curly blonde hair like Sage and Daddy. I never brought home another friend after that. Mom looked like she was going to cry.
I didn't know how much May looked like my aunt, Prim. The girl from the book who was so pretty and nice that everyone loved her. The next day at school May wouldn't talk to me and everyone in my class whispered when I walked by. I didn't like it. I yelled at my mom that night. I asked her why she couldn't be normal. I told her she was too busy missing other people that she didn't know how to love me. I told her I was going to go live in the woods.
The next morning she sent Sage to school without me and sat me down in the main room.
"Gracie, sweetie, this isn't an easy story to tell but I guess you're old enough to know…" Then she told me about being poor, and having to kill these other kids, and fighting this horrible war, and how almost all of her favorite people got killed. She told me that she loved me. She told me that she had almost given up living and that first Daddy, then I, then Sage had given her reasons to wake up every day. She said she was sorry she wasn't a better mom and we cried together and hugged for what seemed like hours. Then we tried to bake and almost destroyed the kitchen. And Daddy ate four cookies even though I used baking soda instead of baking powder and put too much ginger in them.