Elaine was confused when she woke up in her bed, alone. She vaguely remembered falling asleep on the grass outside, and at some point Katherine must have taken her in, though there was no sign of her now.
Normally Elaine was an early riser; she enjoyed the quiet of dawn and liked to get a headstart on whatever projects she had for the day. In this moment, however, she felt as if the weight of what she had learned the day before was keeping her in bed, preventing her from going about her usual business.
And her usual business just seemed so pointless, anyway. De-magicking objects for small sums of money, embroidering tablecloths and mending clothes. What did she do that anyone else in the city could no doubt do for themselves?
Still though, it was something. Elaine took a deep breath and got out of bed.
A quick shower and fresh clothes turned out to help a lot with Elaine’s mindset, but she didn’t feel like eating and even though she normally loved sewing, she just wasn’t up to it right now. She wanted to… research.
With a goal in mind, Elaine suddenly felt infinitely better. She could go to the library in the city and from there perhaps she could figure out if there was anything to learn about her parents, or at least she might find a census or something, to see if they really didn’t have a last name— maybe even to see if they had titles, like Caitlyn had mentioned.
Elaine put on her boots and gathered together a few coins, in case she decided to eat while she was out, then pulled the door open and took a deep breath of fresh air. She allowed herself to relax for a moment in the sunlight before walking out in the direction of the city.
It seemed to take longer than usual to get there, perhaps because she was impatient to get started, but finally Elaine made it into the city. As she reached the doors of the library, she caught sight of a black cat sauntering down an alleyway, followed a few moments later by someone who looked like Lord Wilkins from the night before. Elaine laughed to herself before walking into the library.
A gentle wave of magic-enhanced quiet washed over Elaine, along with a less-gentle wave of nostalgia. She rarely came to the library, although she loved books, because it reminded her so strongly of her parents. Before they had left the city, they used to come here all the time. Her parents would sometimes leave her there all day, as it was one of the few places in the city where the magic didn’t affect Elaine quite as much.
Now that she was here, Elaine realized she didn’t know where to start. Ask a librarian, I guess.
So she walked up to the desk, trying to figure out what she was going to say, and was startled to see it was Caitlyn Watts who was sitting there, writing something on a small piece of paper.
“Good morning, just a moment,” Caitlyn said cheerfully, taping her note onto the cover of a very water-damaged book. With that out of the way, she looked up, and appeared as surprised as Elaine. “Oh, hello.”
“Hi,” Elaine said awkwardly.
A pause, then Caitlyn asked, with no trace of her coldness from the night before, “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I, um…” Elaine had no idea what to do now. Caitlyn thought that she was Verlorn, so asking about census records would probably give the wrong idea. But then again, Elaine realized, do I care what Caitlyn thinks about me?
To her own surprise, she didn’t. “I want to do some research about my parents, but I don’t have much to go off of other than their names. Do you have census records here, or could I give you their names and go from there…?”
Yet another surprise: Caitlyn looked entirely sympathetic and friendly at Elaine’s request. Is this just her putting on a facade because I’m a patron, or is she actually nicer than I thought last night?
“We do have census records, organized chronologically in ninety-two of nonfiction. Would you like me to point you to them?”
Elaine had a vague idea of where the nonfiction section was, but she had doubts about her capabilities of doing any of this research on her own. She could probably figure it out, but it would undoubtedly be faster with the help of a librarian. Besides that, she was curious about Caitlyn. “I would appreciate some help,” she admitted with a laugh.
Caitlyn smiled, and Elaine scolded her heart for fluttering. “Of course, follow me.”
Elaine trailed behind Caitlyn as she led her to the back of the library into shelves and shelves of books labeled as nonfiction. Right at the beginning was a set of shelves labeled “Census”.
“What year would you like to look at?” Caitlyn asked, running her fingers along the spines of the books.
Elaine thought for a minute. “How about… 3210?” It was the year after she had been born.
Caitlyn pulled one thick book off the shelf, titled Nordpoint City Census: 3210, and paused before handing it to Elaine. “It’s not really my business, but… Lady Katherine said you came from a different city.”
Oh yeah. Elaine had forgotten about that. “Well…” Elaine laughed a little. Spirits, what difference does it make what she knows about me? “Technically she just said I’m not from this city, which isn’t entirely true, since I was born here, but I do live outside of the city, so it’s not exactly untrue either.”
“I see.” Caitlyn sounded like she was curious, and perhaps reluctant to leave it at that. She genuinely seemed like a different person from the night before, bright and friendly rather than cool and sharp.
On an impulse, Elaine asked, “Would you be able to help me more? I haven’t really researched anything before.”
Caitlyn tilted her head slightly to one side. “I have to get back to the front desk, but… I could get someone else to watch it if you think you’ll need my help for a while.”
“Oh, well, either way is fine,” Elaine assured her. “I’ll just sit down and start looking for my parents’ names in here.”
Caitlyn nodded. “Alright, best of luck, then, and let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks, I will.” Elaine watched Caitlyn walk away and wondered, again, what her history with Katherine was. It didn’t seem like they were friends, yet both of them were really nice people. It didn’t fit with the way they had acted towards each other the night before.
Elaine shrugged. She could ask Katherine about it some other time. For now, she had other questions to answer.
Elaine sat down at an empty table in a corner not far from the nonfiction shelves and flipped the census book open to its table of contents. It looked as if it was organized by sections of the city, then last name alphabetically. What about people without last names?
Maybe if I started by looking for Katherine’s name. Unless she’s more than a year younger than me, which I doubt, she shouldn’t be hard to find in here.
Sure enough, the first family in the innermost section of the city included a Katherine with no last name. So they put the most important people first. I suppose that makes sense. Curious, Elaine looked at the various things listed in the census about Katherine’s family. Her parents were Arron and Adelynn, both with an entire paragraph of titles to their names, including, Elaine noted, “Lady of Light and Dark” under Adelynn’s name and “Spirit Defender” under Arron’s. It looked as if Katherine was three years old at the time of this census, making her two years older than Elaine. All three were marked as magic users, of course, nordic, Spirelans… nothing extremely significant, but Elaine enjoyed reading about them nonetheless.
Having read everything on the pages about Katherine’s family, Elaine began flipping through the rest of the book, skipping through sections looking for a family with Susanna, Abraham, and Elaine, with no last name.
She was starting to wonder if perhaps she’d been wrong, and she really just didn’t know her own last name, when she reached the last section of the book, the northernmost part of the city. There they were, no last name, and nearly as many titles as Katherines’ parents had had: Enchanters, Lord of Flight, Lady of the River of Stars, Spirit Defender, Spirit Seeker, Friend of Souls, Healer of Hope… Elaine’s mind spun trying to take it all in. How had she never realized her parents were so… significant?
Moving down the page, she saw her own name listed, no titles of course, but no last name to mark her as an ordinary citizen. Of course, it also showed that she was a sliver. Elaine looked back up at her parents’ information and took in a sharp breath when she saw that her mother was listed as a sliver, too. No way. How can someone be an Enchantress, a Lady of the River, a Spirit Seeker… and a sliver?
“Any luck?”
Elaine jumped, and looked up to see Caitlyn looking down at her with a pleasant expression on her face. Elaine didn’t have the words, so she just pushed the book towards the other girl and gestured to the page.
Caitlyn looked at it, and her mild curiosity quickly changed to astonishment. “Your parents are… Enchantress Susanna, Lady of the River of Stars, and Enchanter Abraham, Lord of Flight?”
Caitlyn looked back at Elaine with disbelief written on her face. “Apparently,” Elaine said numbly.
Caitlyn looked down at the book once again, probably to confirm that Elaine’s name really was there. “And you’re a sliver too, like Lady Susanna.”
Elaine blinked. “I thought you must have recognized that fact already.”
Caitlyn shrugged. “I’m not very adept in magic, so I don’t get the same hints as a lot of other people do. Now that I know, though, I can see it.
“Anyhow, I’m kind of amazed that you didn’t know who they were already; I was only a little girl when they disappeared, but practically everyone knows about them as famous Enchanters, not least because one of them was a sliver.”
A new thought seemed to strike Caitlyn. “Do you know why they disappeared?”
Caitlyn was honestly going too fast for Elaine’s dumbstruck mind to process, but she realized that a question had been asked after a moment, and a moment after that she got what the question was. “They told me they were going to find a cure for me, maybe for all slivers; to make the world a better place for people like us.
“I didn’t even know Mom was a sliver like me…”
Caitlyn shook her head. “This is… wow. I mean, everyone just assumed that their child— you, I suppose— disappeared with them. I could tell you what I know, but there are entire books written about them; let me see if I can find one for you.”
Elaine watched as Caitlyn rifled through the books, and for some reason the only thing she could think was My parents have their own Dewey decimal number. She didn’t even know if it was true, but the longer the thought stuck in her head, the more she thought she might start laughing hysterically. My parents are famous and I didn’t even know it.
Caitlyn returned with a relatively slim volume titled Stars and Flight: A Biography of Nordpoint City’s Lost Enchanters.
It didn’t look as if it could be more than 200 pages long, but that was still more than Elaine ever would have expected could be written about anyone related to her. “Thank you,” she said, taking the book from Caitlyn. The cover depicted a silhouette of some kind of bird flying among the stars. “I think I had better check this out.”
As Elaine was finishing getting her book checked out, the door to the library flew open with a bang that reverberated strangely in the magically-quieted library. Elaine startled and turned to see a young man there who looked as if he had run here from across the city.
“Caitlyn,” he panted.
“Daniel?” Caitlyn looked a little amused, as if this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. “You remember how this is a library?”
“It’s important this time,” Daniel assured her, grinning. “It’s your brother. Lord Watts caught Lady Katherine’s cat.”
Author Notes: Part 1: https://www.shortstories101.com/story/cat-part-1/
Part 9: https://www.shortstories101.com/story/cat-part-9/
Okay, I know I said the last part might be my favorite, but honestly this part was fun. Let me know what you think!
Part 11: https://www.shortstories101.com/story/cat-part-11/
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