The Betrothed
for National Novel Writing Month
Day 5
That night, Darrick lay awake in bed, his mind overwhelmed by the day, ruminating over his recent past and his possible future. During the day, his anger over the betrothal had overshadowed everything else, but now that some compromise had been reached, he was left to consider the other world-shaking revelations he had received. Atlantis, real. Magic, real. Those two alone were enough to reshape one’s entire worldview. That said magic had been used on him was infuriating, but after nearly an entire day of arguments, Darrick found that he no longer had the energy to focus on his outrage.
What would all my science profs say if they knew about this? Maybe more important, what would my psych prof say if he knew about this? Maybe Mom is crazy after all, and she’s just so good at it that she managed to fool my Dad. But does that mean this girl Abigail is crazy, too? And what about me? Her explanation makes a disturbing amount of sense when it comes to my own relationships. In the end, his mother was right. He believed her, as unbelievable as her story was, because any other, supposedly rational, explanation was even more unbelievable.
So, magic. If magic is real, what else is real? Bigfoot, telephone psychics? Did the Salem Witch Trials burn real witches? Can I be sure of anything anymore? It was just too big, too much to comprehend. Is this what the brain does when it encounters something so huge it can turn the world upside-down? Withdraws, narrows its focus until the world can be handled again? All those people out there who don’t watch the news, don’t care about the world outside of their own hometown, is this what they’re doing? Limiting the universe until it’s something they can comprehend? Darrick was a history major, and one of the things he loved about his field of study was the broad perspective it brought, the necessity of taking the long and wide view. But now he found himself shrinking back from this long view, afraid of where it might lead and overwhelmed by the thought of revising everything he knew in the light of his new knowledge. How can I go back to school in the fall knowing what I know now, and still take it at all seriously? They’re all wrong, and I know they’re all wrong. But I can’t tell them. They’d laugh me out of the program. So what was left for him now? Return to studies which now seemed laughably ill-informed? He didn’t want to sit around and live off his fiancée’s money; whether he ended up with the girl or not, that thought left a bad taste in his mouth.
Darrick turned on his side and curled up; he felt like throwing the blankets over his head, but hiding from this problem definitely wasn’t going to make it go away. During the day he might be able to push all his uncertainties to the back of his mind and just focus on dealing with what was in front of him, but at night all those distractions faded away and he had to face whatever he had been avoiding. And sometimes the real concerns caught him by surprise.
What am I going to tell everybody? he found himself thinking, to his own embarrassment. I leave at the end of spring newly single, I come back newly married! It’s absurd. It’s not like people don’t tell me I’m impulsive – I’ve heard that enough to be sick of it – but this would take the cake. It was a ludicrous thing to worry about, he knew; the opinions of his friends were minor next to the huge questions this situation raised about his future – not to mention the fate of the universe – but he found himself worrying about them all the same. I guess I’m more shallow than I thought I was.
Darrick turned to look at the clock. 2:25 AM. I’m not going to sleep, am I? And I have so much to do this weekend. He rolled himself out of bed and slipped on a T-shirt over his boxers, remembering that staying in bed was the worst way to deal with insomnia. He walked into the living room, hoping to find something worthwhile on TV, but was surprised to find that his father had beaten him to it.
“I wondered if you would be able to sleep tonight,” John said. He was slouched on the couch in his bathrobe, the TV remote in one hand and a drink in the other. The glow of the muted television cast an eerie glow over the room, and combined with Darrick’s lack of sleep, gave the entire scene a dreamlike, surreal quality.
“What are you doing up?” Darrick asked. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or not. He had planned on being alone, but he hadn’t had the chance to talk to his father much during the day, and he found himself craving some relatively sane conversation.
“It’s not every day your son’s life is turned around,” Darrick’s father replied. “Good or bad, it’s never easy for a parent.”
“Mom doesn’t seem to have any problem with it,” Darrick responded bitterly. “I’ll bet she’s sound asleep.”
“Don’t be so hard on her,” John said. “The circumstances aren’t the best, true, but your mother’s finally achieved something I’ve wanted to see in her for a long time. She’s happy, Darrick. She truly believes she’s done the best for you, and that’s all any parent wants for their child. I hate to say it, but you might have never really known her happy before. Your mother has been isolated from her own people since before you were born, at first because she was the third-born, and then later because she agreed to raise you in a normal life. Now that’s all changing, and she’s getting the chance to see old friends she hasn’t seen in years, and find her way back into a society she’s been an exile from. She’s ecstatic, and desperate that nothing goes wrong. Please keep that in mind when you deal with her.”
Darrick sat down on the couch next to his father, facing the television. It was the news, the headlines describing some developing crisis with North Korea or someplace like that. Darrick found it hard to care about such things right now.
“You don’t exactly seem overjoyed by the situation, though,” he said to his father, turning his head to face him. The light from the screen played over John’s face, emphasizing the lines that had started to recently develop, transforming his father into a tired old man. “She may be happy, but the two of you don’t seem to be doing any better.”
His father sighed, and took a deep swallow of the drink he held in his hand.
“Your mother is very happy to rejoin Atlantean society, and I think they’re just as glad to get her back.” He paused, and his head tilted downwards slightly to stare into his drink. “I, on the other hand, am a bit less welcome. I’m the outsider who has tainted her in their eyes, and maybe even more importantly, tainted you, the heir. It may be generations before her family – your descendents, should you choose to go through with this wedding – can shake that stigma.” He turned to face Darrick. “Son, the Atlanteans are not modern people. Oh, they use modern technology and everything, but they don’t think like us. Bloodline means a lot to them; they will judge you based on who your parents were much more than on what you yourself do. I want to make sure you understand this before you meet them. You might hear some nasty things said about you, your mother, and especially me. People are going to call you ‘half-breed’, and believe me, to them, that’s a huge insult. Some of them will never see you as their equal, no matter how much rank your family has – and your mother’s family has a lot.”
“So my fiancée’s family already hates me.” The one good thing that could have come out of this, and it’s already spoiled.
“I don’t know, Darrick,” his father replied. “I’ve never met them; they may be some of the good ones. All I can say from the limited contact I’ve had with the Atlanteans is that some of them are very hostile to people who aren’t like them. I hope Abigail’s family isn’t like that. I’m sure she herself isn’t. But I didn’t tell you this to scare you; I know you’re scared enough already. I guess what I’m trying to say is . . . don’t let the bastards get you down. Don’t believe what they say about you. You’re better than they are. You’ve lived in the real world, dealt with different people and experienced more in your twenty years than some of them experience in a lifetime. That’s my gift to you. I had to fight your mother tooth and nail to agree to it, but I made sure you were raised like any American kid. You have common sense, even if you don’t always use it, and decent values. You understand that people should be judged for themselves and not for who their parents are, and that lives should be more than just vehicles for tradition. If you go through with this wedding, I hope you keep that in mind. And keep your poor dad in mind.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his shadowed eyes.
Darrick returned the smile, but he didn’t feel it in his heart. He felt as though he had never known his father before; suddenly, so many memories and impressions he had received over the course of his life came together, and he saw what his father must have gone through over his life. Married to a woman who yearned for an ideal she had built up in her head, attached to a family that despised him not for who he was but where he had come from, doomed to never win their love for reasons utterly out of his control. Struggling to keep his son from the same fate, and now faced with the possibility of failure. Darrick wondered if he could have held himself together half as well.
“Dad, I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he said, knowing the words to be inadequate but unable to think of anything better. In response, John smiled and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry about me,” John said. “I got what I most wanted: a son I’m proud of. And I have no doubt that you’ll stay that way.” Darrick’s father squeezed his shoulder. “But I think it’s time for you to go to bed now. You’ve got a busy week ahead of you, and you’ll need your rest if you want to keep up with your mother, let alone your finals.” Darrick chuckled in acknowledgment. They remained that way for another second, then Darrick rose to return to bed, leaving his father alone in the pale TV light.
for National Novel Writing Month
Day 5
That night, Darrick lay awake in bed, his mind overwhelmed by the day, ruminating over his recent past and his possible future. During the day, his anger over the betrothal had overshadowed everything else, but now that some compromise had been reached, he was left to consider the other world-shaking revelations he had received. Atlantis, real. Magic, real. Those two alone were enough to reshape one’s entire worldview. That said magic had been used on him was infuriating, but after nearly an entire day of arguments, Darrick found that he no longer had the energy to focus on his outrage.
What would all my science profs say if they knew about this? Maybe more important, what would my psych prof say if he knew about this? Maybe Mom is crazy after all, and she’s just so good at it that she managed to fool my Dad. But does that mean this girl Abigail is crazy, too? And what about me? Her explanation makes a disturbing amount of sense when it comes to my own relationships. In the end, his mother was right. He believed her, as unbelievable as her story was, because any other, supposedly rational, explanation was even more unbelievable.
So, magic. If magic is real, what else is real? Bigfoot, telephone psychics? Did the Salem Witch Trials burn real witches? Can I be sure of anything anymore? It was just too big, too much to comprehend. Is this what the brain does when it encounters something so huge it can turn the world upside-down? Withdraws, narrows its focus until the world can be handled again? All those people out there who don’t watch the news, don’t care about the world outside of their own hometown, is this what they’re doing? Limiting the universe until it’s something they can comprehend? Darrick was a history major, and one of the things he loved about his field of study was the broad perspective it brought, the necessity of taking the long and wide view. But now he found himself shrinking back from this long view, afraid of where it might lead and overwhelmed by the thought of revising everything he knew in the light of his new knowledge. How can I go back to school in the fall knowing what I know now, and still take it at all seriously? They’re all wrong, and I know they’re all wrong. But I can’t tell them. They’d laugh me out of the program. So what was left for him now? Return to studies which now seemed laughably ill-informed? He didn’t want to sit around and live off his fiancée’s money; whether he ended up with the girl or not, that thought left a bad taste in his mouth.
Darrick turned on his side and curled up; he felt like throwing the blankets over his head, but hiding from this problem definitely wasn’t going to make it go away. During the day he might be able to push all his uncertainties to the back of his mind and just focus on dealing with what was in front of him, but at night all those distractions faded away and he had to face whatever he had been avoiding. And sometimes the real concerns caught him by surprise.
What am I going to tell everybody? he found himself thinking, to his own embarrassment. I leave at the end of spring newly single, I come back newly married! It’s absurd. It’s not like people don’t tell me I’m impulsive – I’ve heard that enough to be sick of it – but this would take the cake. It was a ludicrous thing to worry about, he knew; the opinions of his friends were minor next to the huge questions this situation raised about his future – not to mention the fate of the universe – but he found himself worrying about them all the same. I guess I’m more shallow than I thought I was.
Darrick turned to look at the clock. 2:25 AM. I’m not going to sleep, am I? And I have so much to do this weekend. He rolled himself out of bed and slipped on a T-shirt over his boxers, remembering that staying in bed was the worst way to deal with insomnia. He walked into the living room, hoping to find something worthwhile on TV, but was surprised to find that his father had beaten him to it.
“I wondered if you would be able to sleep tonight,” John said. He was slouched on the couch in his bathrobe, the TV remote in one hand and a drink in the other. The glow of the muted television cast an eerie glow over the room, and combined with Darrick’s lack of sleep, gave the entire scene a dreamlike, surreal quality.
“What are you doing up?” Darrick asked. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or not. He had planned on being alone, but he hadn’t had the chance to talk to his father much during the day, and he found himself craving some relatively sane conversation.
“It’s not every day your son’s life is turned around,” Darrick’s father replied. “Good or bad, it’s never easy for a parent.”
“Mom doesn’t seem to have any problem with it,” Darrick responded bitterly. “I’ll bet she’s sound asleep.”
“Don’t be so hard on her,” John said. “The circumstances aren’t the best, true, but your mother’s finally achieved something I’ve wanted to see in her for a long time. She’s happy, Darrick. She truly believes she’s done the best for you, and that’s all any parent wants for their child. I hate to say it, but you might have never really known her happy before. Your mother has been isolated from her own people since before you were born, at first because she was the third-born, and then later because she agreed to raise you in a normal life. Now that’s all changing, and she’s getting the chance to see old friends she hasn’t seen in years, and find her way back into a society she’s been an exile from. She’s ecstatic, and desperate that nothing goes wrong. Please keep that in mind when you deal with her.”
Darrick sat down on the couch next to his father, facing the television. It was the news, the headlines describing some developing crisis with North Korea or someplace like that. Darrick found it hard to care about such things right now.
“You don’t exactly seem overjoyed by the situation, though,” he said to his father, turning his head to face him. The light from the screen played over John’s face, emphasizing the lines that had started to recently develop, transforming his father into a tired old man. “She may be happy, but the two of you don’t seem to be doing any better.”
His father sighed, and took a deep swallow of the drink he held in his hand.
“Your mother is very happy to rejoin Atlantean society, and I think they’re just as glad to get her back.” He paused, and his head tilted downwards slightly to stare into his drink. “I, on the other hand, am a bit less welcome. I’m the outsider who has tainted her in their eyes, and maybe even more importantly, tainted you, the heir. It may be generations before her family – your descendents, should you choose to go through with this wedding – can shake that stigma.” He turned to face Darrick. “Son, the Atlanteans are not modern people. Oh, they use modern technology and everything, but they don’t think like us. Bloodline means a lot to them; they will judge you based on who your parents were much more than on what you yourself do. I want to make sure you understand this before you meet them. You might hear some nasty things said about you, your mother, and especially me. People are going to call you ‘half-breed’, and believe me, to them, that’s a huge insult. Some of them will never see you as their equal, no matter how much rank your family has – and your mother’s family has a lot.”
“So my fiancée’s family already hates me.” The one good thing that could have come out of this, and it’s already spoiled.
“I don’t know, Darrick,” his father replied. “I’ve never met them; they may be some of the good ones. All I can say from the limited contact I’ve had with the Atlanteans is that some of them are very hostile to people who aren’t like them. I hope Abigail’s family isn’t like that. I’m sure she herself isn’t. But I didn’t tell you this to scare you; I know you’re scared enough already. I guess what I’m trying to say is . . . don’t let the bastards get you down. Don’t believe what they say about you. You’re better than they are. You’ve lived in the real world, dealt with different people and experienced more in your twenty years than some of them experience in a lifetime. That’s my gift to you. I had to fight your mother tooth and nail to agree to it, but I made sure you were raised like any American kid. You have common sense, even if you don’t always use it, and decent values. You understand that people should be judged for themselves and not for who their parents are, and that lives should be more than just vehicles for tradition. If you go through with this wedding, I hope you keep that in mind. And keep your poor dad in mind.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his shadowed eyes.
Darrick returned the smile, but he didn’t feel it in his heart. He felt as though he had never known his father before; suddenly, so many memories and impressions he had received over the course of his life came together, and he saw what his father must have gone through over his life. Married to a woman who yearned for an ideal she had built up in her head, attached to a family that despised him not for who he was but where he had come from, doomed to never win their love for reasons utterly out of his control. Struggling to keep his son from the same fate, and now faced with the possibility of failure. Darrick wondered if he could have held himself together half as well.
“Dad, I’m . . . I’m sorry,” he said, knowing the words to be inadequate but unable to think of anything better. In response, John smiled and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry about me,” John said. “I got what I most wanted: a son I’m proud of. And I have no doubt that you’ll stay that way.” Darrick’s father squeezed his shoulder. “But I think it’s time for you to go to bed now. You’ve got a busy week ahead of you, and you’ll need your rest if you want to keep up with your mother, let alone your finals.” Darrick chuckled in acknowledgment. They remained that way for another second, then Darrick rose to return to bed, leaving his father alone in the pale TV light.
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