Tested

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Long journeys can be made in short trips. But we can’t stay here indefinitely,” Sunny said in his soft voice. He had this way of speaking that made it sound as if he were yielding to Dad’s wishes, but really, he kept coaxing my dad with his own plans. Maybe he would teach me the technique if we travelled together. Not that I believed Dad. I had a terrible feeling that Dad was trying to screw over Sunny and Parker. I really hoped he wasn’t.

The rest of the day was awkward. Parker needed to go look for supplies, he insisted, and he didn’t want to leave Dad and me alone with his ailing grandfather. Sunny had dozed off after the discussion, and Parker kept looking at him anxiously.

“I’ll go with you,” Dad said. “Jess will stay with your grandfather. That way we all have something the other cares about.”

“Fine,” Parker said sullenly. He refused to look at me. “But she had better be polite to my granddad.”

I made a sound of disgust in my throat, but I refused to speak to him. Ignorant little—

“It’s a deal then,” Dad said. “Let’s go. Before it gets too late. You can show me where this station is, too.”

When they left, I sat in our corner and whispered words from the book. I was frowning over a word I didn’t recognise when Sunny called me over.

“Sorry,” I said. “Did I wake you?”

“Me? I wasn’t sleeping. I was listening. But I could barely hear you. What are you reading?” He made me think wistfully of Samuel.

“The Secret Garden. I know it’s a kids’ story, but I can’t… I’m not good at it,” I admitted.

“But you’re trying,” he said. “That’s how we all become good at things.”

I flushed with heat. “Dad hurt his ankle, and we stayed on the moors for a few days in a man’s house. He was old and, oh, sorry."

"Is being old so offensive?" But he was smiling.

"No," I said, unable to resist smiling back. "What I meant was that he was nice, and… he got me to read to him and gave me the book to keep so I would finish it some day. We move around a lot, so… school hasn’t really been an option for me.”

“School hasn’t been the right place for Park either,” he said with a sigh. “We all have a lot in common, it seems.”

“You said you escaped from the place you were born,” I said on a whim. What did you mean?”

“I fled from North Korea when I was a much younger man.”

“From your home? Everything you knew?”

He tapped my hand. “You can make home anywhere. But yes, from everything I knew. Life was hard there for everyone, but my wife was different. A lot like Park. She used to say she had kirin blood, that it had run in her family since anyone could remember. My daughter didn’t have the gift, or curse, as Park likes to call it, but she passed it on to her only son nonetheless.” He waved his hand. “That was later. Back home, people were scared of everything, but especially anyone who was different. Whispers began to spread, louder and louder, farther and farther. We had to leave before fear killed her or the soldiers came to use her as a weapon. There are all kinds of enemies in this world.” He hesitated. “What is your name?”

“Jessica. Jess, really. My dad is Adam.”

“Well, Jess, we weren’t free to leave North Korea, so we had to escape. And escape we did. We made it to London where we lived safely for a time. We weren’t the only ones to flee, and we hid amongst the others, drawn together by our culture and our memories in a land so foreign to our own. Many of us didn’t learn the language. We were still chained by those old ties, still trapped to our old lives. That’s not freedom. Everyone must adapt. We had to leave the old ways behind, to make new lives for ourselves, or we would never be happy. Never be truly accepted.”

“So what happened?”

“I led by example, and my daughter grew up a free bird,” he murmured. “She married a man she fell in love with, despite differences in race and religion. We were Buddhists, and he came from a Muslim family, but love sees past the divides that are often built by fear.” His sudden smile weakened. “But tragedy visits even the freest birds.”

“Tragedy?” I whispered. He was a storyteller, and I was enthralled.

“My wife had a heart attack, and in the shock of the pain set a fire that killed my daughter’s husband. He saved all of us, except for my wife, and the smoke… it was too much for them both. Neither survived. My daughter turned inward, turned her back on me, and I moved to Scotland to find a life that wasn’t mired in the darkness of the path we had already travelled. But Park grew older, and the fires came. Small ones, but my daughter couldn’t handle the memories. A big fire happened, and she sent Park to me. A child, sent to the grandfather he had forgotten in a place he had never been. But he thrived with me. I fed him stories, true and fantasy. I told him of his father, of his grandmother, of the mother he didn’t recognise anymore, and he grew on the words, strengthened and controlled himself. I let him be the hero of his own story. The fires stopped almost immediately.” He sighed. “Until hell came to visit us again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like… I’m sorry.”

“Every act of everyone’s life makes us stronger in a way we won’t even see until the time comes for us to stand tall,” he said with a smile. “I wouldn’t be without my Park. Even if the world burns around us.”

I stared at the tiny fire burning from nothing, a little piece of Parker he had left behind.

“But you think the fae might want him?” I asked.

“I’m afraid I’ll scare you,” he said gently.

“You won’t. I’m tougher than I look.”

I didn’t recognise the fleeting emotion that escaped before he could smother it. “Of course,” he said. “I’ve long lived with the fear that someone would come for Park. When the fires began, I was terrified. Not of Park, but of the wrong person finding out. He was sent to me in part to hide. London was a hive, full of rumours and stories. Everyone knew someone who had vanished, everyone knew someone who was a little bit different. The words weren’t always said, but they were implied. If Park had stayed there, the wrong story might have been told to the wrong person.”

“But why would anyone come for him?” I asked, trying to understand as I had failed to understand the shadows in my own life.

“To use him,” Sunny said. “Even your father is willing to use him for a time, but there are more mercenary figures out there. The supernatural ones just know more. The fae… from the stories I hear, they are the ones to fear. They are ancient and powerful in this part of the world. Long ago, they took what they wanted with no repercussions. Can you imagine a powerful race giving all of that up to be civilized?”

“Maybe they—”

“Jessica, don’t underestimate them.”

I laughed. “You’re starting to sound like my father.”

“We carry similar burdens, I’m sure.” He smiled. “Both of us have done what we can to keep our loved ones out of the reach of more powerful beings. Perhaps one day, we’ll rest.”

I stared at the fire again, wondering if anyone in the world felt secure.