Author's note: Hello, everyone! First of all, many thanks to ShadowhuntingNephilim123 for beta-ing this chapter! OK, just to give you a heads up, Jinx's story is long. Yes, I could've cut out some parts; yes, I could've edited it and streamlined it a bit; yes, I could've forced myself to focus a bit more on the main ideas of the story. But you know, I think that if something like this happened in the real world, a girl like Jinx would tend to ramble in some places. She would include those seemingly irrelevant little details. So, basically, this is the first half of how it came out, next week will be the other half, and I don't really want to change it. If you don't like it, leave a review saying why or send me a PM. I'll take the feedback as constructive criticism and consider it the next time I write something like this. Sorry about the long author's note. Without further ado, here's Jinx's story. Please review!
Oh, one last thing. Thank you, BB-chan, for reviewing chapter ten!
Disclaimer: Crazy girl owns nothing except crazy fictional girl very loosely based on real crazy girl. Cassandra Clare owns all else.
Chapter Eleven: Scars & Faith
Jem stared at her. Where did that decision come from?
Jinx held a hand up to her mouth, unsuccessfully trying to smother a laugh. Her head tipped forward as her messy curls shook in front of her face, most likely an attempt to hide her mirth.
It wasn't working.
He frowned in exasperation. "What are you laughing at?"
"Nothing," she said from behind her fingers. "It's just that you're looking at me like I suddenly sprouted horns and a tail. I don't think I've ever seen you look quite so shocked before."
Jem closed his eyes and let out a quiet sigh. This was one of those times when Jinx transitioned between infuriating and angelic so quickly that trying to keep up made his head spin. He shook his head, opened his eyes, and focused himself back on the more important matter at hand.
"You don't have to tell me," he echoed her earlier words, almost whispering.
Her smile turned sad and her eyes once again expressed the yearning thought if only that never seemed too far away whenever they touched upon this subject. "I know you believe it's possible to love someone without understanding them or knowing anything about their past. So do I. But I also believe love is a choice. It may be consciously made or it may not be, but you still make the decision to love, to keep loving…and to stop loving." Jinx hesitated, looking down at the bed. "There are certain things in my past that might change your mind."
Jem hooked a finger under her chin, tilting her head back and forcing her to meet his eyes. "I love you, Jinx. Nothing will ever change that."
She smiled again, this time not quite so sadly, and hope now shone through her hazel eyes. "Hear me out before you make any promises."
He nodded, acknowledging her wishes, and dropped his hand, but not before he brushed a lose lock of hair away from her face. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out, sliding her eyelids shut as she exhaled. Keeping her eyes closed, she began a story that Jem knew no one had ever heard before.
"Well, I guess I should start with my father. First of all, I honestly have no idea how he evaded the Clave. I would tell Charlotte if I did. We lived in a little one-room cabin he built in the Louisiana swamp, about a day's trip from New Orleans. He was…I hesitate to say insane because I'm not sure he was, but he definitely had some bad days and some better days. My earliest memory is one those better days; I was curled up on his lap, almost asleep, and he was telling me a story in his native language. It was an ancient Icāk legend about the moon," Jinx paused here, smiling wistfully at the memory. She shook her head slightly and continued after a moment, but still didn't open her eyes.
"Good days like that were few and far between. Most often, he was…indifferent to me. He didn't seem to care what I did or where I went, as long as I didn't get myself hurt. Whenever that happened, no matter how small the injury, he would fly into a rage, screaming that he had made a promise to keep me safe and that I had to help him keep it, because if he broke it then he had nothing left. I never really understood that, but it scared me when he got that mad, so I became a master at avoiding even the slightest of scrapes and hiding the ones I did get.
"There were days when he just wandered about, not making a sound, as if his mind had somehow left his body behind as an empty shell. Other days he would cry for hours on end. Looking at me renewed the tears whenever they stopped. On others he had a hair trigger on his temper. His moods were unpredictable, at best; I never knew what to expect when I woke up in the morning. My favorite childhood memories are of his good days, when he seemed to miraculously transform into a loving and doting father, the type of parent every child should have at some point. Those were the times when he would tell me about my mother, teach me his native language, tell me stories…those were the days when he was my friend.
"Our life in the swamp was simple. He taught me how to survive off the land: how to hunt and fish, which plants were safe to eat and which would kill me, how to read the land—you see, Jem, every land has its own particular rhythms. Take the time to listen, feel, and learn those rhythms, take the time to give the land the respect it deserves, and it will help you. It will sustain you. I only got those lessons when he had a good day, though; I think he realized he often didn't cook or prepare any type of food other days and I needed to learn how to manage by myself.
"That was necessary because there weren't many other people living nearby. I couldn't go to a neighbor and ask for help when I needed it; I had to learn how to get my food from nature. The few people who did live relatively close were mostly African slaves who escaped from their masters or criminals running from the law. They didn't want to help a crazy American Indian and his son."
Jinx grinned suddenly and laughter crept into her voice. "Sorry, that must sound terribly strange to you. I should probably explain. I didn't wear dresses growing up. At least, not while I lived in the swamp. I wore trousers and shirts like a boy because my father thought skirts wouldn't be practical. And he kept my hair cut off short so it wouldn't get tangled in branches. Oh, yeah, I enjoyed climbing trees in my spare time. I think I started climbing about the same time I started walking; I loved the challenge of seeing how far out on a limb I could walk before falling into the water below. But anyway, on the rare occasion that someone unexpectedly showed up, they mistook me for a boy. Which was probably for the best.
"You remember I told you that I got my first Mark when I was only seven, right? That was one of the worst days my father ever had. When I woke up that morning, I thought it was one of the days when he walked around like an empty shell, so I went fishing. It was a good day for it, too; I don't remember exactly what I caught, I just remember it was one of the best catches I'd ever had. But I made a mistake when I gutted the last one. It wiggled its tail—a lingering reflex, I suppose—at just the wrong moment and jerked the knife out of my hand, and I reacted without thinking. My best knife was falling toward the water and I really didn't want to lose it, so I grabbed for it and ended up nearly slicing my fingers off. I did save the knife, though, so I was proud of myself for that. I returned to our little cabin feeling very proud of myself, even though my fingers were dripping blood everywhere, and I expected to see an empty shell for a father. I was wrong.
"It was one of his bad days when the slightest thing would set off his temper. Just so you know, no matter how angry he became, he had never raised a hand to me. Not once. He still didn't that day, but that voice in the back of my mind told me he came close." Jinx paused again and sighed. "I don't know how to explain this to you, but I guess I'll have to try.
"For as long as I can remember, there has been this voice in the back of my mind, whispering things. Sometimes it tells me what to expect or what to do, it tells me about people I meet and places I go—it's actually saved my life on more than one occasion. It has never, never been wrong. Remember that day we fought the dragon demon? When the monster's tail swung at me from behind and I had no idea it was coming but jumped anyway? This voice I'm trying to describe is what told when me to jump. It talks to me almost constantly, creating this incredibly annoying buzz of chatter in my head that I've actually gotten very good at ignoring. It hasn't spoken to me since last night, though; that's odd."
Jinx frowned as she voiced that last thought, and Jem suddenly realized she wasn't thinking about what she said to him. She was just saying whatever thoughts materialized in her head. He continued to listen quietly, amazed at the trust that displayed.
"Anyway, back to my father. He ranted and raged at me for hours after he bandaged my hand. He kept this wooden box in the corner that I wasn't allowed to look into; he opened it in front of me for the first and only time that day. I still don't know what he kept in there, other than his stele. And I didn't even know what that was, I just knew it hurt like nothing had ever hurt me before. He drew an iratze for my fingers first—no, I don't know why he took the time to bandage the wound—and then he drew the Sight rune on my hand. He forced me to stay still while he drew it, and he said if I would be careless enough to get myself hurt then there was no purpose in trying to hide her world from me. Those were his exact words, by the way: 'her world.' Then he told me I'd never truly be a part of it.
"Good days came less often after that. There had never been a pattern to how they appeared before, but he usually had at least one every month or so. Not anymore. He didn't have one for three months after that day, and then it was another five until the next one, and then another four.
"Oh, we didn't have a calendar, by the way. I kept track of weeks and months by chopping notches into a stick. And I'd never even heard of New Year's, so my year started on the one date I did know: my birthday. And the only reason I knew it was because my father took a trip to New Orleans every year on my birthday to trade fish, meat, and game pelts for supplies. It was the only time he ever left the swamp. Every year, I begged him to let me go with him. I'd never seen more than five people in a group before and I was dying of curiosity about what a city would look like. As he prepared to leave the day before my eighth birthday, he was having one of his good days, so I pestered him to let me go. He always seemed to remember the promises he made on his good days and never reneged on one, not even on the really bad days, and to my surprise, he actually told me I could go with him that year. I remember being so excited. New Orleans seemed like something so grand; I'm not sure I believe it was real until I finally saw it.
"My first view of the city is one I'll never forget. We had slept in the swamp after making our way to the city boundaries, keeping out of sight until morning. I woke up before dawn, waiting anxiously, but not daring to wake him up. We entered the city a few minutes past daybreak.
"There was this little cluster of shops on the edge of the city, supported by a fairly small community. They had everything they needed to survive without venturing into the heart of New Orleans: a general store, a butcher, church, school, doctor, even a baker and an orphanage. Although I think that orphanage served several sections of the city.
"Anyway, the first thing I saw when I stepped out of the swamp was the back of a house, sitting right beside the bakery. The house was only two stories tall; it was a decent size for a house, not too small and not too big, but to me it seemed massive. And the baker's shop smelled heavenly. I'd never had bread baked in an actual oven before, our bread was suspended over the fire to cook, and that first taste of fresh baked bread—given out of sympathy for the poor half-breed boy—was amazing. I swear that's still the best bite of food I've ever had."
A smile suddenly blossomed on her face. "Oh, it's been a while since I've thought about this. There was a black man, sitting right outside the bakery, beating out a rhythm on an overturned wooden bucket. I was curious, so I went back outside when my father started haggling with the baker. I watched the African play for a while and then he smiled at me and started singing to the beat. I didn't understand a word of it, of course, but that was the first time I heard music. Real music, not just my father chanting an Icāk prayer under his breath. I loved the city from that moment on."
Jinx paused, a wistful expression on her face. Jem felt the corners of his mouth pull up into a smile. She was obviously far away, back in her city, listening to that foreign beat once again, and he wished he could listen with her. He wished he could see that city the way she had seen it, he truly wished he could see everything about that city that had made her fall in love with it.
With her eyes still closed, she shook herself and then continued:
"My father spent hours bartering with the shop owners that morning. I just sat outside the bakery listening to the black man sing. He didn't speak English. He understood it just fine, but he didn't speak it. Those carefree hours with him are my first and some of my favorite memories of New Orleans. But he—I can only assume he had to go back to work, because he left at midday. I never saw him again. And it's so strange; my memory has never been great with sounds, but I can remember every last syllable of every song he sang and every last beat he pounded on that bucket. I can remember that, but I don't even know his name."
A single tear slipped out of the corner of her eye, and Jinx swiped it away without pausing her story. Her voice had thickened, though.
"After he left, I got bored. I was accustomed to the swamp, where there was always something to do, always something to watch. I tried watching the community the way my father had taught me to watch the land, but I couldn't seem to pick up on its rhythms. I didn't yet know how to adapt my methods to fit human patterns. So I started wandering through the streets—idiotic, I know now, but I didn't know any better at the time. I learned my lesson quick enough.
"Two very drunk, very white men stumbled out of an alley as I walked past it. One nearly tripped over me. Looking back on it now, I think my Nephilim reflexes are what saved me from getting crushed, but I made the mistake of darting into the alley they just exited to avoid them. I blended myself into the shadows, hoping they would leave, but of course I had their attention now. They staggered back into the alley, searching for me, calling for me to come out. They called me a 'filthy half-breed' and then said they wouldn't hurt me," Jinx let out a bitter laugh here, "and they honestly expected me to willingly come out. I was only eight and wasn't entirely sure what the term meant, but I wasn't that idiotic. I slid down behind an empty crate, slowly enough they wouldn't notice the movement, and didn't so much as twitch after that. Until one of them kicked the crate.
"I think it was more out of frustration than anything else, but they found me nonetheless. One of them grabbed my arm and lifted me off the ground. It hurt, a lot. Not as much as the Mark had but the bruise from his grip lasted a few weeks. Anyway, he threw me toward the main street, probably intending to get me out in the open where I couldn't hide again. And I will never know how he got there in time, but my father appeared out of nowhere and caught me before I hit the dirt. Good thing, too, I probably would've broken some bones if he hadn't.
"He set me down on the street, as gently as humanly possible, and told me to go hide. I just backed off a couple steps and didn't go any further. He shook his head with a smile I'd never seen before, and said, 'you are so much like your mother. Never forget that.' That was the first time he said anything like that to me. The last time, too. He turned back to the two drunks and calmly said, 'you won't treat my daughter like that.' I remember they positively howled with rage before they attacked him. They screamed at him for daring to address them directly, they called him scum, an animal…I was horrified. That was the first day I saw how cruel humans can be.
"They beat him to death, right in front of me. He fought back at first, but they subdued him very quickly. I remember being so shocked. I had seen my father fight off five men at once and come out of the fight without so much as a scratch. And those five had been sober. I watched as these two men kept beating him, unable to tear my eyes away, until I knew he wasn't getting up again. Then I ran. It took a few months, almost a year, before I understood why he didn't try harder to fight back. It was so obvious; I should have figured it out sooner. He gave up. He was tired of keeping his promise to my mother…he was tired of yearning for something he could never have again. So he found a way to die without breaking his promise. He could have fought back. But he didn't. He gave up.
"I ran for…I don't even remember how long. I just wanted to get away from those men, away from the city that spawned them—I wanted to go back to my life in the swamp. It wasn't predictable at all but it was simple. I didn't have to worry about mean drunks there, I didn't have to worry about people there. I kept telling myself I would go back to our cabin and find my father waiting for me, that this was just a bad dream and I would wake up any second. As I'm sure you can imagine, that didn't happen.
"I eventually did stop running, but I kept wandering the streets until dusk fell. Then reality set in and I started looking for someplace to sleep. I went around, asking everyone I met if they knew where I could stay for a night, but they just ignored me. They didn't acknowledge me in any way. A few looked at me, but no one ever said a word. Until I asked the local priest. He didn't even ask me where my parents were, he just took my hand, told me he would take care of me, and then walked me to the orphanage. Which was run by nuns.
"I didn't have any idea what was happening until the priest told the nun in charge to keep a close eye on me. Then I heard the first thing that made me wonder just how human I really was: he told her I had 'the Mark of the devil' on my hand. I involuntarily glanced at my right hand when I heard that and it caught their attention. They stared at me, looking downright revolted. Looking back on it now, I guess they had been whispering too quietly for any normal eight-year-old girl to hear. Of course that only reinforced their opinion of my…shall we say, 'questionable heritage.' The nun thanked the priest for 'keeping the community safe' or something like that and herded me into the girls' bedroom. She wasn't even brave enough to touch me.
"And so began my life at the orphanage. In a word, it was…monotonous. The nuns woke us all up at the same time before dawn every morning and our daily routine began. We—there were maybe fifteen or twenty kids living there—we started by getting dressed and making our beds, followed by a small breakfast. Then came our own private school session. We weren't allowed to mix with the other neighborhood kids; their parents thought we would be a bad influence. So we studied in the orphanage and I assume the subjects were about the same. I was considered to be 'slow' because I didn't know how to read or write yet, so I was behind everyone else my age. Well, actually, the nuns didn't believe me when I told them I was eight. They thought I was five or six, so they figured my education was as good as could be expected for a six-year-old half-breed.
"That was where I got my nickname. Apparently right after I arrived, inexplicable little problems started showing up here and there. A door would fall off its hinges if you looked at it wrong, window curtains would billow when there wasn't any wind blowing, desks and chairs would disappear, books got torn to shreds sometime during the night. The nuns called me a 'curse'; the other kids changed it to 'jinx' and it…stuck. I kinda liked it, honestly. It seemed to fit better than Ríona.
"Anyway, midday meal was about as small as breakfast and it was our only break from school, which continued after we ate until late afternoon, when we had about one hour to play in the yard—fenced, of course—before dinner. We all looked forward to dinner; it was the largest meal of the day and we were always starving by then. After dinner, we either had more studies or cleaning or repair duties before bedtime. And once it was bedtime, we were expected to sleep. Nothing else. No talking, no whispering, no lying there with our eyes open, nothing but sleeping was allowed. The slightest little sound would send one of the nuns in to root out the troublemaker and make sure it wouldn't happen again.
"The nuns were very strict. They had their rules and we had to follow them. No questions or exceptions allowed. If we broke a rule, we got a ruler to the back, or hand or shoulder. I was their worst troublemaker. I hated the uniforms we had to wear—that was the first time I ever wore a skirt—and I especially hated the amount of food available. It wasn't because I wasn't getting enough, I didn't—well, still don't need much to survive and I'd lived with next to nothing before, so I could cope with it. But other girls had never had to deal with that. Occasionally I would hear them talking about how hungry they were and I couldn't believe that the nuns knew about this and still allowed it to continue. It made me mad, to be honest with you, so I started sneaking out at night soon after I showed up to find food for them.
"At first I tried going back to the swamp to hunt, but the nuns had gotten rid of my knife and I didn't want someone from the community to find me. Plus I didn't have any way to cook the meat I caught and I knew the girls wouldn't eat half the edible plants I could find. So I wandered the other direction, into the city. I wandered further every night I snuck out and learned how to avoid getting lost very quickly, more out of necessity than anything else. I got good at finding food that had been tossed away for some reason or another that was still fit to eat; sometimes I would sneak into somebody's kitchen and take it fresh. I know, it was wrong, but those girls needed food.
"I met Corentin on one such trip into a kitchen. He was French," Jinx's lip twitched upward in obvious disgust at that word, "and a thief. Apparently I had been 'working in his territory' and I needed to pay for the right. I immediately told him I was an orphan and had nothing to pay him with. Bad idea. He decided I should pay with my talents. He told me I was a natural thief, as if it was what I had been born to do. I didn't much like the thought of that, but I didn't dare correct him. You see, he had a violent streak. He'd slapped me pretty hard across the back when he first found me, just to get my attention. Don't misunderstand me here, he did not have a temper. That word implies he lost all sense of reason and acted without thinking. He always plotted, always calculated his actions and the most probable repercussions, he never lost control of himself. Corentin was, in essence, a con artist. And a good one at that. I swear he could talk himself out of any situation. And he could probably sell sand to a Bedouin.
"Since I didn't have any way of avoiding it, a new routine started that night. Days never changed, except for finding different places to hide food and getting creative about giving it to the kids who needed it most without getting caught. Nights were an entirely different story. I spent them with Corentin now, under his harsh tutelage. I figured after living with the nuns, learning how to be a thief from him couldn't be too hard. I couldn't have been more wrong. He used the same general methods they did, he would use physical punishment as motivation for improvement, but he didn't restrict himself to a ruler. And he was deceptively powerful. I mean, Corentin wasn't exactly a…uh…well, to be blunt, he was more on the short side of average height and built like a twig. But he knew the human body inside and out, he knew how to inflict massive amounts of pain without even leaving a bruise. Needless to say, I learned very quickly.
"I learned how to hide my emotions and control my mind, and from that foundation, control my body. He taught me how to completely stop my facial expressions and involuntary reactions, how to create desired expressions and matching posture even when my emotions didn't match them, how to lie without appearing to do so, how best to deceive people. I despised it. But it was the only way to keep getting food for the other orphans. So I helped Corentin. I helped him deceive good people, I helped him swindle life savings out of innocent people who did absolutely nothing to deserve it. But I never did anything to stop him. For one year, I did nothing.
"But, like everything else in my life, that changed. One night as I went to meet him, the realization of what I was doing finally hit me: I was acting just like my father. I'd given up. That thought didn't sit too well, so I vowed then and there to tell Corentin I wouldn't help him anymore. Those were the first words out of my mouth when I saw him. He tried to beat me back into 'my place,' as he called it, but I'd had enough. For the first time, I tried to fight back. And it felt good. I was only nine years old at the time, so of course I didn't stand a chance of winning, but somehow or other I managed to catch him by surprise and actually land a punch on him. Right under his eye. It was a good shot and I will never know how I landed it. I think it hurt my hand more than it hurt him, but he still backed away from me after that, gingerly rubbing his eye and staring at me, and then he told me to follow him. Then he just walked away. That bastard, he knew my curiosity wouldn't let me stay behind.
"He led me to Chinatown. I'd never seen it before and I wanted to explore, but I couldn't really take my time and soak it in just yet. He led me to a…oh, I don't know what the Chinese call it. It was a type of school, I guess. Corentin didn't even hesitate before entering. I didn't know what else to do, so I followed him in. He was talking to an old Chinese man in Mandarin, gesturing at me, and I wanted nothing more than to turn right back around and leave, but that little voice in the back of my head told me to stay. So I stayed and listened to a conversation that sounded like nothing more than gibberish—no offense, Jem, it's a beautiful language but at that point it sounded like gibberish—then Corentin suddenly stomped over to me and dragged me over to deposit me in front of the old man. His eye was already swollen up and turning purple; he pointed to me then pointed to his eye, jabbering something all the while. That much I understood: 'She did this.' The old man's eyes instantly widened and he held up his hand, palm out, and said something to me.
"'He wants you to hit his hand as hard as you can,' Corentin translated. I thought the old man was crazy, but I knew better than to say 'no' to Corentin, so I did it. And I think I must have broken his hand, because I heard a snap but nothing in my hand hurt. Any more than it had before, that is. I expected the old man to scream or yell or acknowledge the pain somehow, but he didn't. He just nodded and said something else to Corentin before he turned and walked away.
"Corentin looked distinctly satisfied about something, that made me worried, but he didn't translate the old man's parting words. I had to wait until the next night to find out he had told Corentin he would train me in hand-to-hand combat. And I found out the hard way. Corentin took me straight back to the same building, pushed me in and said he'd return in time for me to get back to the orphanage before dawn. I didn't have any idea what to expect. There were five Chinese boys about my age standing in line, staring at me, and the old man from the night before sat at one end of the room. I just stood there trembling until one of the boys walked over and handed me a slip of paper. I don't know who had written the note on it, but it told me to copy every move they made. Then they started going through their maneuvers and I was expected to keep up.
"Starting that night, I learned Chinese kung fu. Please excuse my pronunciation, Jem, and I apologize if that hurt your ears too badly. Anyway, I started another new routine that night. Corentin would take me to Chinatown every other night for my training and the nights I didn't go were business as usual with him.
"I picked up on the fighting very easily—much too easily, in fact. My training masters never allowed much emotion to show, but every once in a while they would look positively thunderstruck at something I did. I never actually won a spar against any of them, but I was faster than they were and somehow I just knew I shouldn't have been able to learn so much so quickly. I'm not even sure how I did it, but soon after the training started, I figured out that if I carefully watched them execute a maneuver once, maybe twice if it was complicated, I could repeat it. Perfectly. And I can still do that, with you, Will, and Charlotte."
Jinx paused her tale again, shaking her head with…reluctance, maybe? Jem couldn't be sure; reading her was so much easier when he could see her eyes. He waited patiently while she tried to find the right words to say something she obviously did not want to admit.
If you're curious, there's a new URL on my profile for where I found Corentin's name. Thank you for reading and please, please review!
For those of you who already read the long chapter, I'm not changing the content of her story any. I'm just changing where the chapter break is placed. The rest of Jinx's story will now be part of chapter 12 and you will see it next week. Until then, please review! Reviews fuel my passion for writing and you will make my day!