The Emergence of Power

After 12 years in the house, Amelia had seen enough to know that she didn’t want to spend another second there. It’s not that Mrs. Ainsworth was a mean person, it’s just that she wasn’t all that nice either.

Amelia had arrived on Mrs. Ainsworth’s doorstep as a baby. Her parents had been starved out of their home in Ireland, and moved to London in the hopes of securing a better future for their child. The journey only made them sicker, so they brought her to the only person in the city that they knew. They left the girl with a note explaining everything. They both died soon after. Amelia had given up on asking to see the note long ago. Mrs. Ainsworth said it would would only make her more restless.

Mrs. Ainsworth had her hands full with 8 daughters plus Amelia. She was exhausted. As the girl approached her twelfth birthday, Mrs. Ainsworth grew more and more paranoid. The note Amelia’s parents had left with her indicated that a dramatic shift would happen when the girl passed into her twelfth year of life, and Mrs. Ainsworth did not like dramatic shifts.

On a balmy August morning, a month after Amelia's birthday, Mrs. Ainsworth called her down to the drawing room. There was a man standing in the middle of the room wearing a perfectly pressed suit. He said nothing when she entered, just looked at her with curiosity in his eyes. It was as if he expected her to have horns, or a tail, or 7 heads. She didn’t like him. Mrs. Ainsworth led her to the center of the room. The man took out a black book that had been tucked under his arm. The leather cover was in perfect condition, the pages set neatly in their binding.

Instructions had appeared one morning on the man’s desk. He was to take the book out and deliver it to an address in East London. The morning of his scheduled delivery, a cheque for 20,000 pounds had materialized under the front page. He tried to pull it out but it was stuck. It felt like it was made of the strongest material in the world. He tried then to tear out a page of the book. Nothing. He couldn’t do it. He had tried to write on a page, but his pen wouldn’t even make contact.

He handed the book to the girl slowly, wondering what might happen when she took it in her hands. The moment her hands touched the leather precisely nothing happened. He was disappointed. She opened the front page and ran her hand across the paper. She loved to write. She didn’t know who this man was but this was the most beautiful notebook she had ever seen. She turned a few pages and there was the cheque. The man stared intently at her. She picked it up with ease. Only then did the man realized who she was.

She stared at the cheque. If there was ever such a thing as a ticket out, this was it. Mrs. Ainsworth gasped when she saw the sum. The man said nothing, simply handed a sheet of instructions over the matriarch of the house, stood up, and left. Mrs. Ainsworth instructed Amelia to hand over the money, but she could not separate the cheque from the girls hand. It was as if it was glued. She turned to look at the instructions the man had left behind. Her eyes widened and her hand made it’s way up to cover her mouth. She got up to leave the room, before she walked out she turned to Amelia and simply said tartly, “remember everything we have done for you”, and left.

There she was. A small girl, a massive sum of money, and an empty notebook. She slid the cheque back between the pages of the book and went upstairs to her attic room. She hid the cheque under her mattress, and went back downstairs. It was finally time to leave. She had money, now she had to make a plan. That night, she started to write in her new notebook. She denoted the times, down to the minute, that she would have to enact each step of her escape. When she finally paused, writing appeared below her own. It was a beautiful flowing script. The words appeared one by one, “come find us”, then immediately below that, “hurry”.

The book flipped shut. There was a creak in the hallway. Perhaps one of the sisters was up and about, she thought. She tried to open the book again, but she couldn’t pry the cover open. There was another creak in the hall followed by a muffled “thud”. Something wasn’t right. She began to frantically pack her small bag quickly. When she looked under her mattress she found the cheque had been replaced by cash, 20,000 in cash. How was she supposed to carry that around without looking ridiculous. The book flipped open, it read “you know what to do”. The door to her room slowly opened.

The tall man’s thin fingers curled around the door. He slipped into the room and closed the door behind him. He looked at the girl, small in her nightgown, crouching by the edge of the bed. She stared up at him with piercing green eyes. He approached her. “Do you know what you are?”, he asked. She just looked at him. Her face remained strangely blank. She didn’t seem frightened. In fact, it looked almost as though she had been expecting him. They can’t have contacted her yet. It was impossible.

The man approached her slowly. His pale skin reflected the moonlight shining in from her small window. He didn’t look like the type to hurt a child, but then again, he didn’t seem the type to break into a house either. Did she know what she was? She felt an overwhelming urge to open the book. She turned to look at the place on the bed where it had been a minute before, but it was gone.

The girl turned back slowly, he could tell that she had no idea what the book meant. Perfect, she wouldn’t be able to resist him with any strength. Once he had taken it by force, she would have to give it all up. He pulled the knife out of his back pocket, the blade freshly sharpened. Her eyes widened, the green darkening, shifting.

She could feel fear coursing through her veins, it felt like there was a fire deep in her bones, it was almost painful. He slashed the blade once through the air, she ducked. He lunged at her, pinning her to the bed, the blade against her neck. The fire inside her intensified. Everything happened all at once. Mrs. Ainsworth burst through the door and rushed to pull the man off of her. The man’s blade crumbled to dust and he tore his hands away from her as if she was on fire. His hands and arms started to blister.

Amelia backed up into the corner of the bed, hugging her knees into her chest as the feeling faded. How had she done that? The heat was unlike anything she’d experienced. It was like lightning was hiding inside her. Mrs. Ainsworth wrapped a rope around the man’s blistering hands. With a surprising strength she held him still. She looked at the girl, understanding finally what her role had been. “Go”, she said, “He was the first, but he certainly will not be the last”. Amelia stared at her. “GO”, she repeated, louder this time.

Amelia grabbed her bag. The money, she knew, was now Mrs. Ainsworth’s. It became hers the moment she pulled the man away. She opened her bag and unloaded the cash onto Mrs. Ainsworth’s bed. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the black book laying open on the desk. She rushed over and saw two words written on the first page, “It’s time”. Who was writing these messages? How did they know what was happening? What did the man mean when he asked if she knew what she was? These were questions that Amelia would answer in time. Now, she had to go.

She grabbed the book and stuffed it in her bag. The money might have belonged to Mrs. Ainsworth, but the book, she knew, was hers. She walked down the stairs and out the front door, closing it softly behind her. It was the last time she would ever close that door. She turned and walked into the darkness, guided by the force that she was starting to realize she had.

In a far corner of Ireland they smiled as they shut the other little black book. Everything had gone according to plan. The girl had been tested, her powers revealed themselves to be strong. They’d been waiting 1000 years for her birth and 12 more for her to be ready to join them. It was time to bring her home.