String Lights

Part I: My name is Specter (Chapter 3)

As I crossed the town and headed toward the path which led to the woods, I thought about the earlier argument I'd had with Mother in the kitchen. With me approaching my period of adolescence and Mother worn out from all of the evil and corruption going on in our world, fights between us weren't uncommon in our house. Sometimes it was about my name—or, more precisely, my lack of one—though not always.

There was one past argument I remembered particularly well. A couple of years back, when our neighbors reported sightings of soldiers nearby, Mother had forbidden me from making outside trips. But even at that time, I had reached an age where my mindset and wild spirit couldn't be controlled, not even by Mother. I couldn't possibly stand the thought of having to stay cooped up at home all day while everybody else went about their busy lives outside.

And so I had expressed my complaints, and yet another verbal battle between us had launched. It had started off low and quiet, like a rather heated conversation, although nothing more than that. I'd known Mother was giving me restrictions for my safety, but her vague reasoning had hit certain wrong spots, striking me with scalding fury. Before I knew it, we were shouting at each other in raised voices, trying to drown out the words that weren't ours, trying to pick out the harshest words possible to wield as weapons. The volume of our conversation had increased so rapidly that one may have seen us as two people determined to make the walls of our already unstable house collapse.

"It's not my fault I was born this way," I remembered yelling. "If only you hadn't given birth to an illegal child, I wouldn't have to go through this!"

"Did it ever occur to you that I was saving your life by giving birth to you, illegal or not?" Mother had answered angrily.

"AND WITH WHOSE CONSENT?" I'd bellowed at her, the anger inside of me bursting out in spiteful, malicious words that even I had no control over. "Who said that I wanted to be born? You did it all yourself, you made all the decisions, and you never even stopped to wonder if I truly was okay with becoming a criminal, if I even was fine with being born at all!"

I regretted letting out these words later on, when I was alone in the attic and left to ponder on what had happened. In no way was this true; I had always been thankful to Mother for protecting me in such circumstances, and nothing had changed since then. The remark proving otherwise had just been something I'd let out unconsciously, in the midst of my rage.

Clearly, there was nothing to contradict my feelings of remorse. But nothing, not even my guilt, could make me forget what I'd heard Mother say as I stomped up the stairs after our argument came to an end, trying to express as much of my contempt as I could into my walking feet.

"I'm going out for some air," Mother had said to Lia, who had stood aside during our argument, trying unsuccessfully to merge with the wall behind her. Then, with a nod of her head toward my retreating backside, Mother had muttered to my sister, in a cold and bitter voice much unlike her usual one, "See to it that the Specter doesn't come out of her room until I'm back."

The worst part of that sentence was how she'd addressed me: "the Specter." Although the word was commonly used between Erebans, Chronicle citizens tended to avoid using it when possible, as it was close to a swear. When a parent used it to a child, it meant more than just dishonor and disappointment: It signified pure resentment.

No matter how angry Mother was with me, she had never before called me by the word which classified me as an outlaw, a fugitive. And I had never before expressed blame on Mother for making me live the kind of life I did.

But that day, we had each shattered the promises to which we'd kept so well.

We never spoke about what had happened again.