Elites of Eden: Yarrow Not Rowan

Chapter 21

Once upon a time, there was a girl with kaleidoscope eyes, imprisoned in a castle by her loving mother who wanted to keep her safe. The girl, locked behind high stone walls, knew all about the outside world from her brother. She was safe in her prison, but lonely and bored. Her loving mother found a way for her to be free, but it meant leaving her family behind. Angry, and afraid, the girl climbed the wall and met a princess with lilac hair. She felt as if she'd known her all her life, in a way she had because the princess was her brothers best friend, and she had heard everything about her.

For a while, life was beautiful and then, the monsters in greenshirts came. The girl and her mother escaped, but her mother was slain. Before she died she told her daughter two terrible truths, her own father tried to kill her in her mothers womb, and she was first born, it should have been her brother behind the walls all along.

The girl ran through a mechanical city without plants, without animals, without so much as the smallest insect, until a prince disguised as a beggar found her and fell in love. He took her to a magical city where trees grow beneath the Earth, and gave her an entire family to replace the one she lost. Then, just when she thought she might be happy, the girl found out her brother was stolen by the evil ogre. The prince made a bargain: if she would give up her kaleidoscope eyes, he would help her save her brother.

And they did. The girl with kaleidoscope eyes, the lilac princess, and the beggar prince all saved her brother. But the girl gave up her freedom to save him. For just a moment, she escaped the mechanical lifeless city, and glimpsed paradise. But she was captured, and the monsters tortured her, changed her. Throughout it all, she never revealed her secret knowledge of paradise beyond the lifeless city. And what happens to the girl, you ask?

The girl? Why, she wakes up.

~~~~~~~~~~~

"She wakes up," I mumble as I wake. Those words roll around my head for an eternity. She wakes up, she wakes up, she wakes.

What do those words even mean? I sit there in a daze, dreaming, as I debate this. Suddenly, it all comes back to me and I realize everything. I'm being crushed by it. Layer upon layer. My eyes fly open. They burn and pound but not like they did after my first surgery. I sit up in a panic.

It's me. I'm the girl...and I've woken up. I am no longer in a confused, dazed dream. I am completely awake, completely aware, and completely in control. Finally. I hid for six months, but the past few weeks I've been screaming for myself, but Yarrow could not hear me. Even when I was myself again, after I drowned, Yarrow controlled my thoughts, and could not hear me.

I look around and I feel like a mummy coming out of a tomb. My eyes are narrowed fiercely and I feel oddly alive. It's good to have me back.

"Rowan?" My dad asks. "Can you remember?"

I take a long pause as I look at him for what feels like the first time in seven months.

"Yes," I say at last. I feel breathless. Suddenly I realize the seriousness of this situation. They're captured, all of them! I stand up so quickly I feel dizzy.

"Rowan, you need to lay down. You can't be up. Where do you think you're going?" He asks.

"I have to save them! I have to get them out," I say. I want to relish the feeling of having my memory back, but I can't. I can't because I remember them and I know they're in harm.

"Rowan, there's nothing you can do for them now. You need to get changed into the disguise I brought you then go home. Go home quick and lay down." He tells me.

"No!" I protest. "I'm saving them, I have to."

"No, Rowan-

"You bikking bastard! You could help save them," I yell as I remember everything he let them do to me, everything he did to me. "How dare you? After everything that has happened, everything you've done, you think you can fix this? You think you can win my forgiveness. You think this will win my forgiveness. You're wrong. I hate you, and so did mom!"

I see his face go pale as he falls to his knees again, sobbing. I know he loved mom.

"I might forgive you," I say. He looks up hopefully. "If you do something for me."

"Anything." He says.

"Help me save them. You have to. We have to." He looks completely bewildered, flabbergasted, by this demand.

"That's-that's crazy. It's impossible. You'd have to shut down the entire Ecopan. Rowan, there's no way," He tells me. Suddenly, I'm struck with an idea.

"I don't think it's impossible. I have an idea...and it might be crazy, but it just might be crazy enough to work. If I can shut down the Ecopan will you get them out?" I ask. He looks shocked and confused.

"That's impossible-"

"But if it isn't...if I do succeed...will you help me?" My father, still crying on his knees, stands up and looks at me...but I'm not sure I recognize what's in his eyes.

"I'll get them out. Every last one of them, I promise." I think he has honor in his eyes. He has a job and maybe he will finally honor it. But I can't trust that. Is it possible that I see love? I would hardly say he's a loving father, taking everything he's done into consideration. "But make sure you lay down as soon as possible. You need to rest after that surgery."

My eyes are burning and pounding but the pain is tolerable. The pain in my right eye is much more severe though.

"I'll explain to you how the surgery went if I see you again." He looks at me and we both know how this will likely end. "May we meet again."

"May we meet again."