²Olden Crown, heroes of olympus

005.

OLDEN CROWN
━━ chapter five

━━ THE FUNERAL WAS a blur. Horribly enough, the thing Frank remembered most was the hours leading up to his mother's funeral. He remembered taking his grandmother's porcelain collection outside to fire at it with arrows.

His grandmother's house was a rambling grey stone mansion on twelve acres in North Vancouver. Her backyard ran straight into Lynn Canyon Park. The morning was cold and drizzly, but Frank didn't feel the chill—his emotions were running too high for him to notice the chilliness. He wore a black wool suit and a black overcoat that had once belonged to his grandfather; Frank had been startled and upset to find that they fit him fine. The clothes smelled like wet mothballs and jasmine, too—the fabric was itchy, but warm. With his bow and quiver, Frank probably looked like a very dangerous butler.

He'd set the porcelain up as targets on the old fence posts at the edge of the property. He'd been shooting so long, his fingers were starting to lose their feeling. With every arrow, he imagined he was striking down his problems.

The sacrifice medal, a silver disk on a red-and-black ribbon, given for death in the line of duty, presented to Frank as if it were something important, something that made everything all right—Thwack! A teacup spun into the woods.

The officer who came to tell him: "Your mother is a hero. Captain Emily Zhang died trying to save her comrades."—Crack! A blue-and-white plate split into pieces, shards flying in opposite directions.

His grandmother's chastisement: Men do not cry. Especially Zhang men. You will endure, Fai. No one ever called him Fai, except for his grandmother. She insisted that's what he needed to be called, instead of a lousy name like Frank. His mother told him years ago that there was no arguing with Grandmother, and Emily had been right. And now, Frank had no one except his grandmother.

Thud! A fourth arrow hit the fence post, and stuck there, quivering.

"Fai," said his grandmother.

His chin quivered, but Frank turned.

She was clutching a shoebox-sized mahogany chest that he had never seen before. With her high-collared black dress and severe bun of grey hair, she looked like a school teacher from the 1800s. She surveyed the carnage: her porcelain in the wagon, the shards of her favorite tea sets scattered over the lawn, Frank's arrows sticking out of the ground, the trees, the fence posts, and one in the head of a smiling garden gnome. Frank braced, waiting for her to start yelling. He had never done anything like this before—something so destructive.

Grandmother's face was full of bitterness and disapproval. She looked nothing like Frank's mom. He wondered how his mother had turned out to be so nice—always laughing, always gentle. Frank couldn't imagine his mom growing up with Grandmother any more than he could imagine her on the battlefield—though the two situations probably weren't that different. Or maybe Emily wanted to be nothing like her mother so she set out to be the exact opposite.

A nasty part of his brain wished it had been his grandmother who had died, not his mother. And then the guilt came in waves. How could Frank wish for his grandmother to be dead?

"Stop this ridiculous behavior," Grandmother chided, but she didn't sound very irritated. "It is beneath you." To Frank's astonishment, she kicked aside one of her favorite teacups. "The car will be here soon," she said. "We must talk."