the weight of the sky- OPEN

[elvishbanana]

Jo rubbed her arms and looked up at the stars. She was outside past curfew, and sneaking back in would be a pain, but for the moment she just wanted to be outside. Unrestrained. If her broom hadn’t been in the castle, she might have gone for a flight, just to prove to herself how unrestrained she was. Jo stood underneath her beech tree, the lake stretching open below her feet, the castle to her right. The blond girl leaned her head on the smooth gray trunk. She hadn’t told anyone at school, not even Kingsley. She didn’t really understand why. The best explanation she could come up with was that she was afraid of what they might think. They might get past her armor, her sunflower-troublemaker-wild-beach-girl armor and see how terrified she was. And Jo couldn’t let that happen.

”Come here, my darling. Come here, baby girl.”
”Yes, Mummy,” said the toddler, running to her mother over the wet sand. Tara scooped her up and swung her around, her blue eyes the color of the sea. Julius was at work, and this time of day was just for Clementine and Mummy. Sometimes they looked for shells- sometimes they lay on the sand. But they always ended up soaked in the sea. On rainy days they made cookies, Jo singing about fish or something else silly. And when the cookies were in the oven, Mummy would make sparks, beautiful blue and green and orange sparks that lit up Clem’s face. ”Magic!” declared the three-year old, pointing at the smooth stick in her mother’s hand. “Yes, baby. Magic,” answered Mummy. Clem clapped her hands and laughed delightedly. ”Me try! Me use magic ‘tick!” But then her mother’s eyes would become sad and dark. “Not yet, my baby. Someday. Not yet.”
And then the magic stick vanished, and Clem never saw it again…

Jo wiped her face with her sleeve. Before Hogwarts, before the magic had come to the daughter, she had assumed that her mother had used sparklers, or some kind of special light. She had made up her mind that the sparks were just a trick, not something special she and her mother shared. She’d put it out of her mind. And when the letter came, after the initial shock, the memories had come pouring in. Dishes that cleaned themselves when Julius was looking the other way. Her mother’s strange friends. And then the sparks and the magic stick. Jo had cried behind a locked bedroom door over that one, cried like a baby. She couldn’t let Julius see, she could never let Julius see her grief. He was weak enough as it was- it was her duty to protect him, to keep him safe. To keep him from breaking down. She had to be the strong one for them both. And after a while, hiding the pain became less of a job, a burden she shrugged on when Julius was around and took off when he was not, and became more of an instinct, a constant hidden thing. That was half the reason she was outside past curfew- because she couldn’t let any of the Ravenclaws see her pain. Because nine years ago exactly, Tara Foyle had passed from the world of the living.

Tears ran down her face again. Jo sniffed, almost angry with herself for crying. It was the same routine every year- sneak outside when no one was looking and spend a few hours crying underneath the stars. Then sneak back in and put her armor back on until the next year.

The white hallways were bland and ugly, and even then Clem knew her mother didn’t belong in a place like the hospital. She belonged in their house, where the rooms were painted with bright colors like yellow and purple and orange, and the air smelled like the sea and not like disinfectant. And everywhere Clem looked, she saw that awful ugly green color, the one she was supposed to call “sea foam”. She knew sea foam didn’t look like that. Nothing about the sea was that horrible color. Julius was talking to one of the doctors. But Clem wanted to see her mother. She skipped through the ugly white halls, waving to the doctors and nurses and patients she knew- and they had been coming to the hospital long enough to know quite a few. Clem entered her mother’s room and smiled. ”Hello!” she said nearly shouting it at her mother. The woman looked over. “Why, aren’t you cute! Who do you belong to, little one?”
Clem giggled, thinking it a clever joke. ”You, Mummy!” She tried to clamber up into her mother’s bed, as she had done a hundred times before, and cuddle up with her while they talked. But this time was different. “I’m not your mother, little one. Where are your parents?”
Clem frowned a little. Her mother didn’t usually take the joke this far. ”Mummy, why can’t I come up on the bed?”
“I don’t know who you are! I’m sorry, sweetie, but you’re going to have to leave.”
Clem began to cry. She knew her mother would stop now, stop the horrible joke and wrap the little girl in a big hug. Clem wailed and stretched her arms out.
“Now, really! Child, go find your parents.”
”Mummy,” Clem whimpered. ”Mummy, stop it. Mummy, you’re scaring me.”
“I am not your mother!” shouted the woman. Clem hid her face in her hands. Julius and the doctor burst into the room. “Oh, good. Is this your daughter?” asked the woman. Julius paled. “Clem, darling, come here.”
”No!” shouted the little girl. She seized her mother’s hand and held it tight. She looked into her mother’s eyes, clinging to her, begging her to recognize her baby. ”Mummy, Mummy, please! Stop scaring me!”
The woman shook Clem’s hand off. Julius stretched out a hand to pull Clem back, but she resisted again. The seven-year old ducked and ran away, fat, salty tears running down her chubby cheeks. Clem ran a long way, out the doors of the hospital. She ran down Hill Road, cutting through backyards and alleys, sobbing and running from the woman who did not know her. When they finally found her it was dark. Julius picked her up in his arms, not saying a word, but somehow conveying that he knew, that he did not blame her. Clem never walked the ugly white halls again…

Jo pushed the memory away. She didn’t want it. That one was the one she had tried so hard to forget, but it stuck with her, haunting her nightmares. She’d lost her mother to worse than death, and she didn’t want to remember. Jo didn’t bother mopping up her tears this time. She wrapped her arms around the beech tree and cried quietly, sliding down until she was on the dewy grass, crying and missing her mother. She would have to hide later, but she was used to that. A moment of weakness was all she would allow herself before she hid herself again. She was so tired of being the strong one, of never being able to break down and cry. Julius didn’t know- how could she possibly explain it to him? Or to anyone, really. It was why her favorite myth was about the Titan Atlas. She knew exactly how he felt, having to hold up the sky so everyone else would be safe from the weight. Jo was holding up her father so he would be safe from his own grief. But the problem was, she wasn’t a Titan. Unlike Atlas, she couldn’t hold up the sky forever. And there was no one else to help her bear the burden.

Not a soul…