Why Was He Gone So Long?

We created Golem-like creatures to pose as our grandparents and then as us or our parents as time passed, then we took the place of our children. Always seven of us, always just old enough or young enough to keep secrets hidden that we were anything other than human than the neighbors next door. Glamor went a good distance to help us hide. To the local children, we just had a haunted house that would terrorize anyone that came uninvited onto our land.

Now in my true form, standing next to my brother and sister I had to wonder what Steven had been up to and if anyone else in the family knew about it. I was annoyed but nowhere near angry. House would have known if I was angry before anyone else. House and I had a special bond, not deeper but more connected. "Steven, what have you been hiding in here and why?" I again demanded.

Steven, still eating his seed cake and is now on his fifth cup of tea. I could smell the small two-inch plant leaves, with its white five-petaled flower that was native to our homeland, filling the air. It was a local, native plant that we commonly made tea out of back in Alaska. It grew wild all over the tundra and hillsides of our native land and was one of our favorite beverages of choice. We chose to pick it wild rather than use magic to recreate it. With magic, it looked and smelled exactly the same but somehow hand-picked was just better, simpler, and in its season held as much memory as it did flavor. Seed cakes were a western European thing but from the time of English settlements till now we had developed a taste for it with our tea. The Nilagmu had brought seed cakes with them when they found Gold in our waters, shores, and land. At first, they made deals with us, they sought out our help. Then some took what they wanted, then others took more. Soon we lived in smaller and smaller villages with fewer and fewer freedoms. I think it was those early years of western settlements that really cemented the work we were doing for the fey creatures under our care. We watched as our villages were pushed further out, our people were inundated with a language, a culture, and a religion we hadn't asked for. We watched as the children and grandchildren of our fellow natives were taken and told that our beliefs and language were not only wrong but evil. It wasn't oppression, it wasn't indoctrination, it was just called progress. There were advantages, we learned about medicines we hadn't known about, learned that some natural things worked better than others, and that some assumptions about the body weren't as accurate as we thought. All in all the trade-offs didn't seem equal, fair, or just. The benefit our family had was time that some families didn't. Because of our spell, we survived where others fell, cut down, and lay where they were.

It wasn't long before Steven stopped eating and said." I've tracked the progress of some fey creatures over the centuries. "By the Hells Steven, I've watched some of the fey-born human bloodlines!" I snapped back. His response wasn't a surprise. Most of us tracked bloodlines through millennia, and some of us tracked magical creatures more than others. Still the question of this private, private study just seemed such a glaring secret to keep. "But why Steven? Why do I have to keep this room and all these things Secret from the family, From me?" I asked with a tenor in my voice that said do not challenge me. "Also House, why in all the world would you hide a space filled with our families' history from me, of all beings?" I stomped as I yelled at House for an answer. In my anger I forgot to hold back my strength, which in my truest form was far more than a human, putting a hole in the middle of my brothers, now, not so private; private, private study.

As I looked at all the treasures of my family's history stored in the room I got lost in the memories of times that weren't recorded in most histories, not even fairy tales. Was my first toy here? I couldn't help but wonder. A small ivory and seal skin Eskimo doll my grandmother had made when I was a child. It had soot made from a festival fire deep in its eyes and etched into the lines of hair. It looked strongly like me when I was a child. Even though my human appearance had changed a great deal over the millennia I still remember my skin and features back in the early days. I hadn't accessed my true form yet and only saw the palest of blue lines on my then-very Eskimo body. We didn't have to hide in those days because it was normal for our people, expected really. Everyone in our community had blue ribbons crossing their bodies so it was nothing strange to us, we existed that way for ages and ages and ages. It wasn't until the ideas that western men and women entered our world that a majority of us started to change, to transform to more conform with what we needed to deal with weekly, daily. "Why Steven?" I looked him square in the eyes when I asked this time.