Things I Almost Remember: A Selection Story

Kerttu and Kate

Kate sat awkwardly in the old treehouse in the backyard oak tree. She sat with her knees awkwardly bent and rested the rest of her body against the back wall. She thought it was a miracle the treehouse had somehow avoided dilapidation in all the years since her grandmother and her siblings had played in it.

Her grandmother. Kate caught herself in her thoughts. Since when had she accepted that America Schreave, the former Queen of Illéa, was her grandmother?

"Probably at the same moment that you let Johnny call you Kerttu and kiss you behind the shed," a voice in her head said in a slightly mocking tone.

When General Leger had tried to call her Kerttu, she had snapped at him, but when Johnny called her Kerttu, it was different. It did not make her happy or assured exactly, but it made her feel more that she could possibly have been this girl. She could have been this young girl who was destined to someday rule the nation of Illéa, who had been born in a palace, who never had a care in the world, and who was a far cry from a poor amnesiac orphan who grew up in an orphanage.

Johnny made her feel as though she was and still could be more than her present self in her dusty boots and threadbare coat. However, if she was Kerttu, that did not take away the fact that she was Kate. Kate was all she could concretely remember. Only recently had flashes of memory of a beautiful home, the warm embrace of a mother and father, and adventures with a lanky dark-haired boy begin to come back to her.

Kate stared up at the night sky in its vast beauty. Even when she had almost given up and wanted to stop believing, the stars had always been there. She could see them out the window from her bed in the orphanage, above the bridges and barns she had slept in while traveling alone to the unknown, and now above branches of the large oak tree. They were her constant and light, guiding her to a home she only knew of in her heart.

In her gazing, she realized she did have a new constant in her life, a compassionate and annoyingly insistent dark-haired boy who somehow saw good and worth in her and seemed to love her despite how broken she was. She thought back to when he had truly confessed his feelings to her for the first time just several days before.

"You are everything to me."

She had never imagined she could be everything to anyone, but she had come to the realization that, despite her constant attempts to deny it, Johnny was everything to her too. She may have lost her memory, her family, and her identity in her lifetime, but nothing could ever take away the deep love she had for Johnny. He was the only one who had said he cared about her as Kate, not only as the lost Princess Kerttu. He was the one who saw her for who she was, even when she could not see it herself. She loved him, and it had been a relief for her to finally admit it, both to him and herself. 

Kate shifted herself out of her awkward position and climbed down the creaky ladder from the treehouse. It was the last night they were staying with Kota before going to France, and it was the last time she would have a quiet moment of solitude in the treehouse. Sitting out there while everyone else was asleep had become a nightly ritual for her. She hoped one day after all this was over, she could return back to this place and just sit there not as Kate or as Kerttu, but as the strong and determined girl with memories of both lives that Johnny helped her to find within herself.