cedar pallas | district seven | fin

.  CEDAR PALLAS  .
keep your feet on the ground
when your head's in the clouds

Aunt Piper moved in with us over a year ago, and I still can't get used to the ridiculous things that sometimes come out of her mouth. She means well, and would never harm a hair on anyone's head, but even with such kindness, it is sometimes hard not to just shake her until I get her sense of humor. She walks at her own pace, so to say. Mom says they called her slow in school, said she wouldn't ever amount to anything, that she was more or less a stain on the Ollimay name. I guess they would all feel a bit ridiculous if they saw her now. Only in her early forties, Piper is the head of one of the larger paper mills in District Seven. My mother works under her, and has done so for three years now.

See, Mom and Piper came from the richer part of our district. Neither of them were forced to work growing up, and Mom took that pleasantly. Piper, however, had something to prove, and decided to start working just as soon as she was graduated, a feat itself no one would have ever thought she was intelligent enough to accomplish. Mom didn't work. Instead, she met my father. I think I remember her saying she had talked to some other man, a boy as rich as her, but she fell for my dad instead. Every time she mentions him I cringe.

The smallest whisper of him brings back too many horrific memories for me to handle. First, a day in the woods. It was my first day, only a month after my fifteenth birthday. I walked with my older brother and my dad with my nerves pulsing with illness. What if I was bad at this? What if I got fired on the first day? The boys laughed at my upset mood, telling me it was nothing to worry about, that they doubted I would even have to do much on my first couple of days. We were happy. It may have been in our own weird, twisted version of the word, but it was still one that could be used to describe us.

The next thing it reminds me of is only about two weeks later, when my brother and my father argued the entire journey into the woods. It was over a lot of things, really. The fact that my brother was graduating soon and planned on moving out, how my father found it insensitive, how my father felt my brother owed him for his raising, how my brother wasn't prepared to pay him back. I kept my mouth shut mostly, staring at the ground when one of them tried to use me as their defense, and finally I guess my father got enough of my brother's mouth. He kicked my brother down a hill, and I watched in awe as the boy two years senior to me tumbled down it, frantic yelps escaping his lips with every tumble.

When he finally came to a stop, he didn't move. "Dad! Seriously?" I raced down after the boy, kneeling next to him. I almost instantly heard him grumbling and muttering, and as if a switch was flipped within him, my brother was on his feet and charging at my dad, which only landed him a punch across the face. "Stop! Toby, stop! Dad!" But neither listened, or even acknowledged me. They scrapped for a second, and Dad once again grew too impatient with my brother. He slammed into him and climbed on his chest, slamming his fists into Toby's face one after another, over and over. Toby struggled against him at first, but eventually, he just laid there, not fighting back, not moving, not breathing.

What Dad did next, though, is what really burned itself into my memory. His hands fumbled around in the earth until they produced a hefty rock, jagged and white, laced with clear crystals. While he did that, I found an ax. His, in fact. He raced it over his head, and I did the same.

But I killed him before he killed my brother.

I killed him so that he couldn't kill my brother.

The next thing it reminds me of are the nightmares that followed. Every night for months, my closest family members fighting it out until all that is left for me to do is kill my own father, the very man that helped create me. Sometimes I thought I could hear him in the night, whispering my name to rouse me from my sleep, then disappearing as my eyes opened. We told my mother a bear was attacking us, that it was getting Toby pretty damn good and Dad grabbed his ax to fight the thing off, but it swatted him against the tree, and he happened to land with the blade buried into his skull. We said I threw a rock and hit it in the face, and that it must have gotten afraid and ran away. We told my mother that, and the peacekeepers, and our friends and relatives, because the truth may not have been enough to keep us out of trouble. It might have even resulted in both of our own deaths.

After it happened, only Toby and I were working, and neither of us pulled a very large rank, which meant we barely had enough money for the two of us. We also had to take care of my mother, my two little brothers and my sister. mom started working, and even with her income from the mill, it wasn't enough, which is why Aunt Piper moved in. She says she doesn't mind sharing, that she never had a family of her own to take care of and that she was fine helping with ours. It was a rocky arrangement. One of my little brothers had to move into my room, the other into Toby's so that Piper could have a place to sleep, and we had a bit of trouble finding a balance of our different lifestyles, but over time I have come to love and appreciate her for everything she has done for us, and I consider her another mother.

Life in the forests has always been bothersome to me. I am not sure if it's because of what happened in them or not, since I never really got the chance to experience them before everything happened, but Toby says Dad's death definitely changed them. He says they used to have this undeniable peace and quiet, this feeling of safety and wonder, and that it is all tainted now, that he never really feels completely safe. I can relate. I always feel like someone or something is breathing down my neck, smiling because they know what really happened that day, because they know I am my own father's murderer.

Because I can't find any sense of calm within the trees, I have found something else to occupy my time and keep me sane: Piano lessons. It wouldn't have seemed that we would ever be able to afford the lessons after Dad died, but it was one of the first things Aunt Piper mentioned being able to pay for when she joined us. She has always been a sucker for my playing, and as long as she is willing to pay for my learning, I am willing to show her what I have been taught. So I meet my school librarian every Tuesday after school in her office for two and a half hours, and I play.

I also like to cook, but only when it isn't expected of me. Mom usually does the cooking, though my little sister, Dandy, has also given her fair share of time in the kitchen, but sometimes I like to throw my own ideas into the mix. They are amazing at what they cook, but it is always the same ingredients in the same dishes over and over, and for my own sake and their's, I'll stop and pick a few wild herbs and spices on my way back from work.

I have surprisingly learned a lot from the woods, no matter how off-putting they are. I know which plants are poisonous, which are edible, which woods burns the longest, which burns the easiest. I know how to track animals, and which tracks belong to which animals. I know a lot, and I hate to admit it, but the woods have actually been of great service to me.

Mom says I have never looked like Dad.

She says from the time I was born, it has been like she created me all on her own, and I have to agree. We have the same boring shade of brown eyes, the same dark hair and lightly brushed olive skin, and both of us are tall, with long, willowy limbs. Also like her, I appear weak, like some kind of victim or wounded animal, even when I am completely fine. I am always surprising people with the fact that I have average strength, like when a girl laughs and refuses to sit on my lap because I'm 'so fragile looking' but then catch their breath when I lift them into the air and carry them around until they take it back.

I have also inherited my mother's appreciations for appearances, and I think I am one of her only children to do so. I try to dress nicely and act dignified and respectful when with company, but I don't go to quite the lengths my mother does. Sure, I'll put on my nice shirt and wash the dirt from under my fingernails, but I don't spend money we don't have to make some fancy dinner for people we never really even talk to.

I'm better now, I think. I am obviously a bit scatterbrained, and tell things out of order and maybe leave a few important things out, but focus has never been my strong point. Toby has held off moving out for a while now, but I think he plans on leaving soon, since my little brother is going to be old enough to start working soon. I'll miss him, but I think it has been something he has been afraid to do because of everything, so it takes a lot of bravery for him to still go through with it. I wonder if I would ever be that brave?

It is still odd to me that I am now the same age as my brother was when everything happened, but only because it reveals how much time has passed since it all happened. Almost three years, to be exact, and I can now honestly say that what I did was the right thing. If I hadn't killed my father, he would have killed my brother and then, in turn, would have either killed me and my family, or would have been arrested and taken from us. Neither option is really worth me thinking my choice was wrong anymore, so I don't. My father tried to break our family, so we kicked him out of it. He tried to ruin us, but now we are stronger than ever. We were beaten and scarred and bruised and afraid for long enough.

It's time for us to live again.

to bury the castle, bury the castle
go get your shovel