Part 13 Index Part 15
Tea with Llewella
Oh! I can't stop considering it, now that I know. I was happy then. I had foster parents who loved me, a good home. Nice things to eat and wear. Teachers. A beautiful city full of happy people (well, as far as I knew then). Even, unbeknownst to me, my birth mother visiting now and again. I was happy. I was eight.
Then the Oricarians came, and sacked that unsuspecting, beautiful, happy city. Heaven to hell in the course of a day. I - and doubtless countless others - saw things no child should ever see. Or have done to them. I was enslaved. Branded. Sold. Who knows what would have happened to me, where I would be now, and in what state if I had not unexpectedly manifested my leopard form and been able to escape? Nothing and nowhere nice, of that I am sure. I saw it too much in other children less fortunate - hard as that may be to believe - than I.
And now. Now I learn ... that it was all done by an uncle, to get at my mother and bend her to his will. He is dead. And she ... well, perhaps she is not as pathetic as her words had initially led me to believe. Just remember, 'mother', that if you should ever think me a monster, I am the monster he made, not one made by my own will.
She says she tried to save me, and has a scar to prove it. Either she is a very good actress, or she really did try to bring me out of that place. So perhaps she did choose us both, me and her mother. Only Eric, or his agents, Caine and Julian, stopped her from reaching Timashkurabad, every time. To keep her under his thumb. Bent to his will.
So what, now, can be done to make up for that? Can anyone make the last eight years to have never happened? Turn me back into the girl I was then? That would be better compensation. But would I now want anyone to? In hindsight, especially now that I have left Timashkurabad, I can see how sheltered I had been, and what I squeamish weakling I might well have grown into by now. Even if that me would have been more innocent by far than I. So which me would I wish to be?
I never had anyone to blame for what happened to me - and Timashkurabad - before now. I - and everyone else there - thought it was simply blind fate, striking down the innocent as it so often does. But no. It wasn't fate. It was family. I dreamt of family after the Oricarians came. That Sarashjur and Malintha would come back (though I knew, in my heart, that they were gone), or my birth parents, whoever they were, would come to save me. I never dreamed that family would be responsible for throwing me into hell, and making sure I stayed there. Never.
If I had the power - and I wonder if anyone here does - I would bring Eric back to life so I could kill him again, slowly. Or perhaps throw him into what I went through, and see how he likes it. That would be appropriate.
But now that I know who to blame, what do I do about it? Clearly Llewella isn't to be relied on, through weakness if nothing else. Nor, were he alive, would Eric be. In fact he would be a target. What of the others? Those of ... my generation with whom I have had contact seem, in general, to be all right, if sometimes irritating. But those of Llewella's generation? I don't know. I will just have to be careful, and see.
And the son of the man who destroyed my world - my childhood - sits on the throne of Amber now. Time will, I suppose, tell how much of his father is in him.