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Neither of the kids wants to leave the academy, both preferring to stay and play with their new friends. I don’t want to take them away either, but they reluctantly agree with the promise that they can come back tomorrow.
“Where’s Pearl?” Zach asks.
“She had to stay and do some stuff for her friends,” I respond, and they both nod.
“Daddy. Rora says I can have a sleepover at her house sometime soon,” Amelia says excitedly as we make our way back to Pearl’s home through the forest.
“Well, I will need to talk to Aurora’s parents first,” I tell her and smile at the normality of that statement. Never had I dared to hope to be able to have a conversation like this with her. I didn’t think that we’d ever be free to live our own lives, let alone for her to make friends.
“What about you Zach? Did you make some friends?”
He nods. “I did. The kids there are really nice.”
“I’m glad. What about the classes?” I wait with bated breath as he thinks about his answer.
“To be honest they were a little boring. The things they were teaching I’ve known for years.”
“Not me. I learned all kinds of stuff. And we got to color pictures,” Amelia says.
“That’s awesome, Pumpkin. And Zach, what if we got you a private teacher for the magic stuff so you can learn new magic.”
“Can I still stay in the same class with my new friends?”
“Of course. We may have to talk to the teachers to be sure, but the way it was explained to me, it seems like magic is only apartof the schooling.”
“That’s what Miss. Opal said earlier.”
“Opal?” I ask, racking my brain trying to remember where I heard that name before. It was definitely from Pearl. But what did she say?
“She was my teacher for the history of magic. She wears gloves all the time because she said she gets visions when she touches things.” That’s where I’ve heard that name. Pearl told me I’d stop thinking Valerie was so strange once I met Opal.
“And did you learn something in her class?”
“Kind of,” he says sheepishly.
“What is it?”
“Well, some of the things she taught I have heard before but not in the same way.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I know what he means,” Amelia says, and I turn to her in question, wondering how she can. “He means when we learned the same things with Mommy’s coven, they told the stories different.”
“Different how?”
“For starters, the people here pray to the goddess of the moon…” Zach begins.
“So does Ya-Ya and her parliament,” I supply, and he nods.
“I know, but when the Daughters of Eris told us stories about her, they were always about how she was such a bad goddess, how she didn’t care about any of us and that’s why they pray to Eris instead. But the way Opal talks about the Goddess of the Moon, it’s like she’s a completely different person than what we’ve been told.”
I stop walking, turning to face both my children, crouching down to their level. “You know that most of the things you’ve learned at your mother’s coven aren’t…” I struggle to find the words. I know that their mother is a monster. At the end of the day, though, she is still their mother. Despite my feelings about her, I refuse to talk trash about her to her children.
“We know, Dad,” Zach says.
“Mommy is not a good person,” Amelia says, her voice quiet and shy.
I nod my head. “But she’s still your mother.”
