The Enemies

The Right Answer

Rhea

There is a longcase clock in the corner of the room, ancient, rusty, with cracks in the bloodwood. I can vaguely describe my father's study, but this thing I remember, its loud ticking like a thunder in a tense space. Everything my father owns is high tech apart from this ugly relic. It stands out and looks ultimately out of place.

'Sometimes you remind me of her,' my father says.

It is long past midnight, and we are both tired. And for the first time in a long time, I don't want anything. After Tadgh passed, all my abilities and feelings run wild. My body and mind work in overdrive, and I have a strong feeling this will soon come to an end. I cannot think clearly sometimes. Maybe all those people were right, after all, when they thought of me as a psychopath. Sometimes I act like one without realizing it.

'So you finally decided to share graciously? Well, then. Let's hear what you have to say about a woman who mysteriously disappeared into nothingness, leaving me as a testimony she ever existed?'

Like father, like daughter.

My mother. I never knew her. She died when I was too young to remember, and my father never mentions her. When I was little, I did not think much of it. As I grow older, I start asking questions that are never answered and lead to ugly fights. The disappointment and resentment grow with me, and I turn to other ways to discover at least something about her. But I have no luck. My internal struggle fuels my temper determines my character, but most importantly, it helps to learn and perfect the most important of my talents – to take, store and use the secrets I trick out of people. At first, I manage to learn secrets people share willingly. Eventually, my father shows me ways to make people talk, not that I need it as in many cases, there is not much effort on my part. Ironically, this kind of talent grows stronger with my desire to discover at least something about my mother. And I don't get even one crumb of data while the rest of unimportant to my heart things I learn effortlessly.

Deep down, I am miserable as this is the only thing I crave – to know my heritage, my roots, where I come from, and why I have to be this way – reserved, fighting, brutal, without a chance to have a peaceful life and be normal. The bottom line is I wholeheartedly wish to be normal.

I still think about her just the same, but with each passing year, the desperate craving to learn more about my mother morphs into frustration and eventually becomes a forlorn hope. Now that I lock my sacred desire deep in my heart, I almost accept to be only a half, not a full person. It is one of the reasons we drift apart with my father. Our evenings together become awkward and often silent.

'Can we make a deal?' he says.

I shrug. 'Let's hear it.'

'I will share everything I know after we discuss the matter at hand.'

My more than rude gesture to continue only brings a kind smile to his face.

'I think what you did is remarkable. I always believed you to be the one destined for great things for Karm. Everything in life is taken by force. Fight, after all, is in our blood.'

I almost believe him - I learned to fight when I was six and since then never stopped fighting.

'It is not exactly true. Some things come naturally, you know?' I counter.

It was Tadgh who taught me this, and in the long list of examples, he gave me to rest his case, the major ones were friendship and love. He even went to all this length to make me see my father loved me. I am sure he was right. My father loves and cares for me. My father tried to get closer, but his silence about my mother became the size of a full-grown monster between us and made me reluctant to share anything with him.