zelda ginham /5

The rumours are all true of course.

No need to ask me to specify, there are too many out there already and what more could a woman ask for than an aura of mystery. Nina calls me ridiculous, says I'm a narcissist and I suppose I should be angry with her but what are older sisters for other than to nag?

I didn't start them, if that's what you're wondering. No, I've got enough on my plate without being my own rumour mill. The short of it is that a woman in power is to be feared and so people will talk about the twenty-something year old (can't be more than twenty-five) girl who inherited a plant from her grandfather.

My favourite story that I've heard about me is that I had a lover once, a lovely young thing and we had plans to leave Five together. As the story goes, he double-crossed me, took all our savings and disappeared. I was so heartbroken that I took my grandfather's gun and slipped into the fog that very night to hunt him down and take back what was mine.

I was in a shop last week and heard Elizabeth Worn, an old schoolmate no less, whispering some story to her companion about how I'm a witch who ate Devin Harrison's heart to gain eternal youth. God, I wish, it's getting hard to hide the wrinkles with makeup.

My problem with that story is that when Devin left to become a Peacekeeper twentyish years ago, he left intact. I did throw a shoe at his head but he deserved it. I hadn't meant for my heel to hit him square in the forehead nor did I mean for it to break the skin, those were just happy accidents.

I think it was a small fee for breaking my silly little heart.

I can just be glad that happened young. My grandfather always said that the wound would repair itself over time but I never found that it did. If anything, he's the one who stole my heart from me and I've spent years struggling to prove to myself that I never needed it to begin with.

There was a date here and there, maybe a string of them in a row at one point but conversations always ended when they found out I was barren. Nobody wants a broken thing, who would walk into a shop just to buy a mixer off the shelf that couldn't actually mix? Perhaps if I were less of a living breathing person and a broken mixer instead this analogy would make more sense, I could come to terms with it.

Unfortunately, I am not, being barren never stopped me from having children, just from having a man that wanted me. It's unfortunate and it's how I know that sexuality isn't a choice. If I could drop men I would, I've yet to meet one that hasn't been an utter disappointment. Nowadays I don't do the whole relationship thing, I'm far too busy anyway. A one-night stand does the job well enough anyway.

The first of my children showed up on my doorstep when I was a mere eighteen, the electric plant only just inherited. Any other girl in her right mind might have just sent the baby to the orphanage but as soon as Matilde curled her little hand around my pinky finger I knew that I was her mother.

Funny how things work like that, I'd never wanted to be a mother really until her. Or maybe I'd just gotten really good at pretending that my condition didn't bother me. Something bloomed within me the moment that I picked her up and over the years, as eleven more children were left on the steps of my electric plant I only felt the bloom within me grow.

As it grew, a strange fear did as well. Five is not a kind district to live in and I knew that my kids needed protecting. The idea that there would be a day where they might not come home was unfathomable to me. I raised them at home, homeschooled them and taught them slowly how to run the plant. The plant workers became my children's family and their teachers as well.

We protect our family here, I always have. In my earlier days when I was still young, so fresh, there were many who tried to take advantage of me. They thought that I could be manipulated, bribed, even threatened. It came to light quickly what I would and would not tolerate. There was a reason that my Grandfather bypassed his own daughter, even my older sister to leave the plant to me.

I learned to fight dirty, I teach my children to fight dirty too. It's ugly, a messy thing that I wish they didn't have to know so not all of them do. Not all of them are strong like me, just strong in other ways.

I forgive myself for tarnishing a few of my children to keep the others golden and those rumours are true. The Gingham children aren't helpless, forgotten things but loved, cherished and strong. Though I haven't opened my door to a baby on the steps in a few solid years the offer always stands, silent.

It took me too long to learn that conditional love is not love, that what I thought I had was a half-love and what I have now is so much more.

It's hard now to feel unloved with a brood of children around the dinner table, hard to feel unlucky when my mornings are spent herding my children.

Sometimes I wonder about what my Grandfather might have thought about all these Gingham children using his name, running all over his factory floors and filling the place with noise.

God I hope the old codger is rolling in his grave.