Things I Almost Remember: A Selection Story

Johnny's Memory

Johnny had seen a locket just like the one Kate had showed him years before, and he was shocked to see it around the neck of this pale young orphan girl with dirt on her boots and nothing but an old coat and hand-knit scarf to keep her warm.

Long ago, in another time, Johnny had lived and worked at the palace of the Royal Family of Illéa. His father had been a guard, and his mother had been a maid. The Royal Family encouraged a high level of friendliness and openness with the staff, and the Johnny's best friend in the world while he was at the palace was Princess Kerttu. 

Johnny had loved playing and spending time with Kerttu because, even though she was a princess, she wasn't a princess. She loved to run around the palace grounds and splash in muddles and play in the dirt. She loved to climb trees and play hide and seek in the vast castle. It never mattered to Kerttu that she was a princess and Johnny was the son of two people serving her family.

Even though she had been a young girl, she had a unique sort of love and compassion for those around her. She would ask the cook if she could help him cook. She would help her maid pick up the toys in her room. She had had her own garden in the castle grounds where she meticulously cared for her flowers. She loved making boquets for her mother to put on the desk in her office. Johnny had always thought Kerttu was going to be an amazing queen.

That was, until Marid Illéa attacked the palace.

Events from two years before that night held the memory that made him recognize the locket.

Every other year, the Royal Family threw a huge Christmas party where they invited much of the staff and advisors along with their friends and extended family. This included the Royal Family of France as the Prince Consort of France, Prince Ahren, was the twin brother of Kerttu's mother Queen Eadlyn.

Kerttu adored her uncle, and though she was always a very happy child, her face would light up for her beloved uncle like it would for her own parents. That year, when Kerttu had been 7, her uncle had brought her a special golden locket that read "Mon cœur est à Paris," the same inscription on the locket Kate had. 

Kerttu had worn the necklace everyday, and while she never minded getting her dresses dirty or torn by running around,  she was always very careful about her necklace. She would always take it off before she climbed a tree or got ready for a race across the lawn of the palace. It was her most valued possession, and she had proudly worn it when her family went to visit their family for Christmas in France the next year

Johnny would sometimes ask her if he could look at it, and that was the only time she had even gotten the tiniest bit cross with him. She wouldn't allow anyone to touch it or wear it. It held her heart.

The day of the Christmas party when the palace had been attacked, Johnny had spent all day preparing a special present for Kerttu that she never received. He hadn't been sure why, but that year, there had been something different in their friendship. He had been 10, and Kerttu had been 8. The idea of girls being anything but friends had always been gross and weird to Johnny up until then, but recently, he had found himself noticing what a unique and beautiful shade of blue Kerttu's eyes were. He had starting feeling butterflies when they would joke around in the grand hall and she would jokingly ask him for a dance and pull him out onto a floor to spin him around in circles. 

Johnny had not quite understood why he had started feeling differently toward Kerttu, but he had wanted to make something special for her. He had spent all day making Kerttu a special card with a drawing of them together on the front. He had even gone to the mailing room to borrow a special gold pen normally used for writing letters to color in the gold of her beloved locked. He drew a picture of them on the grass of vast green lawn of the palace and had written "Friends Forever" as neatly as he could at the top of the drawing. Johnny had not had any wrapping paper so he had also gotten some parchment paper from the mail room and carefully wrapped the drawing in the paper. He had tied it with some string he stole from the shed belonging to the lawn crew. 

When Johnny had seen Kerttu walk in with her family, he had stuck his tongue out at her because he knew that was the type of greeting he would expect her to give him. She had looked at him and giggled, and at that  moment, his mother had noticed and dragged him away for why it was supposedly improper for servant boys to stick their tongues out at princesses. 

While his mother had been lecturing him, the room had been stormed. Before Johnny had been able to realize what was going on, his mother had gestured his older brother Connor over and whispered something in his ear as she gestured toward a back stairwell for servants that had not yet been blocked off by the rebels yet. Connor, who had been sixteen at the time, had grabbed Johnny's arm and pulled him off down the stairs and down to the basement of the palace. 

Johnny had been able to spot one last look at Kerttu. He had seen her in someone's arms screaming as her parents were shot dead in front of her.

That night, Connor and Johnny had ran out of the palace and out into the city surrounding the palace, and since then, they had been on their own, traveling from city to city and finding work where they could. Kerttu was a memory Johnny always had in the back of his mind but tried to keep pushed to the very back tucked away where his thoughts never quite reached.

It was not until Kate, Kate with her heart-shaped locket and dark blue eyes, that Johnny had allowed himself to think about Kerttu.