LJ Idol Week 23: The Bannister Effect

[flipflop_diva]

It was a story she would tell her granddaughters when they asked. She would gather them in a circle around her, spread her arms like she was summoning the spirit of something they couldn’t see and then she would begin, her voice lower and deeper than how she usually spoke to them.

She always started the story in the same place: on a cold New Year’s evening many, many years ago.

It started, she would tell them, with a young woman and a young man, just barely more than teenagers. They lived together in a shabby cabin at the edge of a forest. On this day, when the story started, there was a terrible snowstorm that came up quickly. One minute the sky was clear and still. The next, piles of snow were everywhere, burying the roads and the front stoop and even preventing the door to the cabin from opening.

The young woman and the young man weren’t worried, though. They had each other, and they lay in each other’s arms as the snow poured down and the white filled up the land around them, small flames in the fireplace beside them keeping them as warm as was possible.

But then, hours into the storm, something happened.

The young woman turned to the young man and declared, “They are coming. It is time!”

The young man instantly panicked. “No!” he yelled. “It is much too early! They cannot come now!”

But the young woman just smiled and pressed a kiss to his lips. “We cannot stop Fate,” she said.

The young man was not comforted. He was not as ready as she was. But he did his best, following her instructions as carefully as he could.

However, the Fates had a different plan than the young woman and the young man, and when the snow finally stopped and the sun rose again, spreading light into the small cabin, all was not as it should be.

On the small bed, wrapped in matching white blankets, lay three newborn girls, almost identical except for one feature. The one in the middle, the smallest and the youngest by twelve minutes, had a shock of red hair. Her two sisters had hair as black as night.

On the floor, beside the bed, lay the young woman, surrounded by blood and drained of life.

Later, and for much of the life of the three sisters, the people in the town a few miles down the road would whisper about the young man and the three babies. They were all sure he would drown in his grief over the young woman and drown his daughters along with him.

But the young man was stronger than he appeared. He took care of his daughters without any help as far as the townspeople could see, and they grew strong and healthy and more beautiful than any other child around.

However, not all the townspeople were fans of the young man and his daughters. Perhaps it was because they were not seen often, kept away from most public events. But when they were seen, they were always followed by rumors. Some of the townspeople claimed the sun seemed to follow the black-haired sisters. Others said they saw odd lights surrounding them.

There were whispers of witches and demons, of fairies and monsters, but yet, from the day the children had been born, the town itself seemed to be surrounded by good luck — storms passed it by, the economy grew — and eventually the rumors faded away to be just that, rumors told by crazy people who were jealous of the sisters’ beauty.

The story, as the grandmother told her granddaughters, then became almost normal for a while. A father raising his children in a small town.

But the night of the children’s thirteenth birthday was when the story took a new turn.

On that night, at just before midnight, the father crept into his daughters’ room and woke the two with the raven-colored hair. He gestured for them to follow him. He led them outside into the cold air, then deep into the forest at the edge of the land they lived on, until they got to a tree standing so tall they could not see its top even in the day when the sun was at its highest point.

There, by the shadow of the tree, he began to speak, telling them a truth that they had never before known, about their mother and their bloodline, about their fate and their inheritance.

And when he was done, he turned to the tree and began to climb, his daughters following after him.

He did not stop climbing, not even to rest, until he came out on the highest branch. Up there, he could see the rest of the forest and the town, dark and quiet in the distance.

When his daughters had made their way to the highest branch as well, he told them what to do. They followed his instructions, climbing as far out on the branch as possible. Then they looked up, to the full moon above, and repeated the words he had told them to say.

As they spoke, the sky above them seemed to change, the stars and the moon shifting until all the light around them was focused on the two girls, like spotlights in the air.

And then together, grasping hands, the two girls jumped.

The man watched them go, plummeting downward faster and faster, until he could see them no more.

If he were waiting for a crash, no one knew. His expression did not change as the seconds ticked by, slower and slower as if time itself were standing still.

And then there was a rustle and the light in the sky seemed to shift again and the man smiled as into his sight came his two daughters, still hand in hand, drifting in the air as if floating.

The next morning, the red-haired sister woke up to the news of her sisters’ fates.

“But I must have powers too!” the red-haired sister insisted to her father, who shook his head sadly.

“I am sorry, my child,” he said. “Only the raven-haired are the Gifted.”

But the red-haired sister refused to believe it.

Even when she trained with her sisters — and was by far less graceful, far less powerful — her faith never wavered. Even when she ended up in the hospital with her fifth broken bone and the doctors casting suspicious looks at her father, she refused to back down.

“I am as special as them!” she declared. “I know I am!”

Finally, a year had past. In that time, the two raven-haired sisters had grown more powerful, had learned more about who they were, while the red-haired sister had bided her time.

The night of their fourteenth birthday, the red-haired sister slipped from her bed, only to be met by her father at their backdoor.

“Please don’t do this!” he begged his daughter. “I cannot lose you, my child!”

But the red-haired sister refused to listen, and despite her father’s tears, she set off into the dark forest until she found the tree her sisters had told her about.

The red-haired sister wrapped her arms around the trunk, pressed her lips into a firm line and she began to climb, higher and higher, never slowing down, until she came out on the highest branch, from which she could see the rest of the forest, the town in the distance and even their little house, where her sisters slept and her father cried.

The red-haired sister crept carefully to the end of the branch, titled her face skyward, spread her arms and repeated the very words her sisters had spoken only a year before.

Above her, the sky began to shift, the moon and the stars altering their light, and the red-haired sister felt her body fill with a power she had always known lay inside her.

Somewhere, either in the distance or in her mind, she heard her father’s voice plead with her to not do this, but then she heard another voice, a woman’s, soft and gentle.

“You know who you are,” the woman said, and the red-haired sister took another step and then jumped, plummeting down through the branches to the hard ground below.

The grandmother always stopped the story there. Every time. And every time her granddaughters would plead with her to go on.

“But did she fly?” they would ask. “Did she get her powers? Did she get more powers than her sisters?”

But the grandmother would just smile and usher them to bed.

And then came the night of her youngest granddaughter’s thirteenth birthday. The grandmother was in her bedroom, reading a book in a rocking chair near her window, when she saw movement outside.

The grandmother stood, pressing her forehead against the window, watching as her grandchild raced into the forest.

She knew where the girl was going — to the tree that was taller than any other. And she knew what the girl was going to do.

But she did not leave her room to stop her or open her window to call to her.

Instead she walked over to the mirror above her dresser and looked into it. Through her reflection, she saw herself, years and years ago, red hair pinned up on her head as she raced to that very same tree.

No, the grandmother thought, she did not have to watch the little red-headed girl on this night. For she already knew how this story ends.


Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! This was written for Week 23 of therealljidol. We had three topics to choose from. I decided to go with the Bannister Effect. You can read more stories inspired by the topics here.

Comments

[sigrundora.livejournal.com]

Amazing

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

Ah-ha! No one was going to tell that red-haired girl what she could or could not do! Nicely told tale. I loved your spot-on fairy tale tone!

[i-17bingo.livejournal.com]

I love that it was pretty much her tenacity that unlocked her powers, as opposed to a natural gift that didn't seem to take much effort.

I enjoyed the folksy nature of this story. It really felt like something a grandmother would tell to her grandchildren.

[rayaso.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful fable! It was told simply, with fairy-tale-like cadences, and it had nice twists and turns, with a partially unresolved ending. What powers did the red-haired girl have? Very nicely done!

[marlawentmad.livejournal.com]

So many delightful twists and turns! I love how the red haired daughter was considered not magical, how determined she was to work for her powers, and the lovely twist at the end!

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

I'm glad she survived that "leap of faith" from the tree.

I did not see the ending coming, and I liked how it fit with the "mythology" of the earlier part.

[murielle.livejournal.com]

Yes! Power to the red-haired daughters! :-)

This is a beautiful tale, it has all the right elements to be a classic, and it's wonderfully written. Brava!

[swirlsofblue.livejournal.com]

Lovely story, I like that she had faith that she had powers and was proven right, and is there telling her future generations.

[beeker121.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, you fly. I love that her gumption is what helped her discover her powers, and wonder if all her grandchildren have the same. This is a lovely fable.

[bewize.livejournal.com]

Loved this. It was beautifully told.