Hey all, so I thought I would share something new. The world is a crazy scary place right now. Terrifying, truly. So rather than making more quarantine karaoke videos, I thought I'd share a story that's been sitting in my files for years. Hopefully, some will read it and find it distracting. I will try to update in the next few days.
This is for you, Anaïs, my friend in Belgium! Lots of love!
Disclaimer: I own nothing recognizable.
Mine to Keep
Part One:
The Fairytale
Once upon a time, there was a Kindly Man, with three daughters, who lived by the sea.
I only choose these words to begin my story for two reasons. First, if it is, in fact, best to start the story of one's life, at its beginning, as Charles Dickens suggested, to begin my account with "I was born" does not work. My story started far before the day I was born—Centuries, in fact.
Secondly, and most importantly, this is how my gran first began to prepare me to accept our heritage and who we were when I was a small child.
So again, once upon a time, there was a Kindly Man with three daughters, who lived by the sea. All three had eyes, a shade of the palest green, beautiful and enchanting, the most perfect of snares.
Each of his daughters was more lovely than the last, and yet, the father despaired. That is not to say he did not love and cherish each of them or that he did not give thanks for the blessing of three healthy children. Quite the opposite, actually. He loved them more than his own life.
But you see, his children were not like others. They were cursed, doomed to find true love. How could true love be a curse when it is what every young girl dreams of, you might ask?
The answer isn't simple or born of simple things. Long long ago, before The Kindly Man was born, an evil Witch had fallen in love with a Handsome Young Man. This Handsome Young Man lived in the same house by the same sea, as The Kindly Man, only long before him. But The Handsome Young Man had not loved the Witch; he loved another. He cared deeply for a Seal Skinner's Daughter. Enraged when she learned the truth, the Witch forbade the young lovers to marry, threatening a fate far worse than death. But their love was strong, born of the truest and purest of emotion, so they defied the evil Witch.
Yet, still fearful of her promise, they stole away in the dead of night, marrying in a hidden cove with only the sea and the moon as a witness.
Months later, the witch found them out but didn't strike with the speed of an adder's tongue, killing them and their unborn child. No, she was far too cunning for this and wished to make them pay. She came to them in the still of night, while they slept and blew seeds of malice and jealousy into The Handsome Young Man's ear, that promised destruction by the arrival of the couple's first child.
Touching the sealskin coat of the Seal Skinner's Daughter, the Witch cursed her as well. Commanding that she would love her young man no matter what he did, even unto her own ruination.
The worst part of all was the promise she made to both their unborn daughter and her daughter's daughters and their descendants through every generation. They would know none but the truest of loves, that turned bitter. And if they tried to defy the Witch, the sea would be their tomb.
So it was that, in this way, all of their descendants would pay the price for the young lovers' treachery.
The Kindly Man with three daughters, longed for a way for his own children to escape the curse so cruelly placed upon his family. That he might be able to find a talisman or a path of escape, so he prayed for help and guidance. It was then he heard of a place "for all Gods orphans." A place, while not completely free of their fates, his children would not have to live in constant fear.
As a child, I asked my grandmother if The Kindly Man and his daughters had escaped the Witch's curse after all.
She told me that he had taken them to a magical land that had kept them safe for twenty-seven years before the witch's curse found them again.
When I asked her what happened next, she had always said, Cassie, love, that is a tale for a later time.
As a young girl, I had thought it was a sad fairytale. Not a Disney one, with talking mice and singing princess, obviously, but a fairytale nonetheless. But Something more reminiscent of Grimm's works, in their original context where there wasn't a happy ending. The ones where people died, the witches ate the little children, and the monsters were all too real. However, it wasn't until I was older that I actually learned there was truth behind the words. That this wasn't just a story that had been handed down through generations of my family; it was our reality. Though none of us had ever called the sea our tomb, as far as I knew, we stayed near it. And we were, in fact, the monsters. We were the ones who sang their own particular sirens song.
And the truth was no one knew where the curse came from: it just was.
And Haven Maine was a magical land.
Thanks for reading!
A/N: This is the fairytale, as the title says but not exactly the prologue. That comes next!
Also, I told this part in the first person because I liked it best; the rest of the story I wrote in the third person.