Lies and Half-truths
It was early, and the sun had yet to make an appearance above the mist that hovered over the canal. The Molly cut through the vapour as she meandered along at a leisurely speed, Nat’s steady hand on the tiller and his gaze fixed ahead. Elora stood beside him, leaning against the bow, taking in the scenery and finding it hard not to smile. She had been waiting for this journey to start for a long time and now that it had finally begun, she felt a thrill of exhilaration pulse through her. Nat however, obviously didn’t share her excitement. When she looked to her uncle, his face bore an expression of sorrow. She didn’t understand. He had wanted this journey as much as she had. It must be another of his odd moods. They seemed to be getting more frequent the older he got.
By mid-morning Nat was positively doleful, barely uttering more than a grunt when asked a question and avoiding eye-contact altogether. He was going to ruin the trip on the first day if she couldn’t pull him out of it.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Nat was silent. Thinking he might not have heard her, Elora was about to repeat the question when he cleared his throat.
“I’ve got things that I need to tell you, but I don’t know how to go about it,” he muttered, his voice barely audible above the barge’s diesel engine.
“If you’ve got to tell me, then it’s probably best that you just say what you’ve got to say. No point sinking any further into your mood. It can’t be that bad.”
But secretly Elora couldn’t help but feel anxious. He had never held back from telling her anything before. Then a horrible thought struck her.
“It’s not...cancer?”
“No, I wish it were that simple.” He gazed at her with his watery blue eyes.
“Then what?” she asked, feeling relief and dread at the same time.
“I need you to be patient, Elora. I’ve got so much to tell you. So much that needs to be said. So much for you to understand.”
“You can tell me anything. Nothing that you say will ever change how I feel about you,” she said, and felt his hand grasp hers tenderly.
“You’ve a good heart Elora. A kind, sweet heart. And it took me a long while to realise it. You weren’t the easiest child.”
“I was a total bitch. It’s OK, you can say it. I was.”
She’d had a hard time fitting in at school. She found it hard making friends and too easy making enemies. With her freaky eyes and hair, she was an obvious target for bullies, but the trouble was, she never backed down from a fight: her temper always got the better of her. Most weeks she was in detention and she was sent home regularly for fighting. In the words of her headmaster, she seemed to bring out the worst in people. One day after school, she found herself cornered behind the bike shed. It was two girls she had fought with and hurt on a previous occasion, only this time they’d brought their elder sisters along as reinforcement. It was four against one and they should have been able to give her a good hiding, but as always, her temper rose to the occasion. She put three of the girls in hospital, one of them in intensive care. The fourth girl ran off and came back with the school caretaker. He tried to restrain her until help arrived but by then he was on the floor, unconscious and with a broken nose. Elora felt tremendous guilt afterwards and vowed to control her anger. She managed to scrape though sixth-form without further trouble, largely due to people - including the teachers - either giving her a wide berth or avoiding her altogether.
Nat chuckled.
“Yeah, right. A total bitch.” Then his face stiffened again. “And for a time, I tolerated it. Told myself it was simply the tearaway actions of a girl who’d lost her mother. Who needed bringing up properly but at the back of my mind I had a choice to make. What if there really wasn’t any good in you? What if you grew to be an evil teen? Or into an evil adult? Thankfully, you grew out of it and you became the daughter I’d always longed for.”
“And if I hadn’t?” she asked, raising a mocking eyebrow.
“I’d have killed you,” he said, deadpan. “To protect the worlds from you. Because of who you are. Because of what you are.”
Elora let her hand drop. She was struggling to understand what her uncle was saying. For a moment she searched for the slow smile that would show he was joking, yet Nat wasn’t good at jokes. His face didn’t crack.
“And what am I?”
Nat pushed his aged fingers through his hair and let out a heavy sigh. “Powerful. More powerful than you have any right to be.”
“I’m just a girl. How can I be powerful?”
“Because of who your father is.”
The words hit her like a punch in the gut. She had never known her father and her uncle had always told her that he didn’t know who he was either - that her mother had kept the secret with her to the day she died.
“So, you do know. You lied to me. You told me you didn’t, that nobody knew.” She felt an ache in her heart from the betrayal.
“I’m sorry, Elora. I never meant to hurt you, but you needed to be protected from knowing who he was. What he was.”
“And who the hell was he?” she demanded, hearing the anger in her voice and not caring.
“Later. I’ll tell you later. The trouble is, there’s so much I need to explain. So many lies and half-truths that need unpicking, I don’t know where to begin.” He stared ahead again, his lips forming a tight line.
“Damn it, Nat!” she said, slamming her fist against the cabin roof. “Tell me who he is. You’ve no right to keep it from me.” She always wore her anger on her sleeve. It was always there, like a tight spring waiting to be released. Well, it had sprung. Nat put a hand softly on her shoulder, but she pulled away, letting it fall.
“How could you keep this from me?” she growled, the noise scaring a pair of wood pigeons that were nestling in a tree above the barge. “How many other lies have you told?”
She read pain across his face as he answered.
“Too many to ever put right. But you must believe me Elora, the lies were told to keep you safe.”
“Safe from who? I don’t know anybody.”
“No, you don’t. But that doesn’t stop them from knowing who you are. There’s a group of people who have been searching you out since you were born. Wanting to use you and bend you to their evil will. And the others who aren’t evil, well, they want you dead, so you can’t be used. Either way, you can never be found. That’s why I get so annoyed when you sing in public. It’s like a homing-beacon to those that search for you.”
“And that’s why you chose to leave this morning? Because I sang in Gloucester yesterday? Ridiculous. It’s all in your head Nat. You’re going senile.” She made to go below to her bedroom, but Nat grasped her arm as she pushed by him.
“I said I had some hard things to tell you and things that you must understand. It was never going to be easy, but please, Elora, hear me out.” She pulled her arm free but stayed where she was, with her back to him so she didn’t have to look him in the face.
“Your mother loved you very much. She was the one who asked me to bring you here. To leave Aslania and hide you away and to never go back.”
“Aslania?”
