Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Ninety Five
Felecia recited what she had gleaned from the book and its young and still angry author. “He spent his formative years in a hovel with his mother, they lived in the shadow of the big house watching it be built while they hunted and gathered for food and water. He met with the natives and used them for his crews while foraging shellfish and hunting...”
Jacqueline cut her off, “Show me in there where he uses the word native.”
Felecia stuttered and tried to finish her sentence but the old witches words kept interrupting her thoughts. She called the old woman out on the one thing that she was so sure was the subject never to be spoken of, she threw it in the old woman’s face that she knew, had known nearly from the start. Yet that didn’t seem to bother the old woman, but using the word native did. Why?
“He called them locals.”
Jacqueline smiled cruelly again, truly reminding Felecia of a dirtier, less kempt version of Nana. “That’s right, and they were…the locals where he was.”
Felecia stopped for a moment and tried to recall all of her great, great grandmothers book, Tiasa’s absurd little manual on how to plant, grow and cultivate tubers and mushrooms. She made mention of the…locals. She had called them that too. Not natives, only a handful of passages in the books back in the library at Rotary house ever made mention of natives. Nothing she had read in the cave so far used that word.
“Since I don’t know shit! Since I’m so old and stupid, you tell me, girl, why was he down in the village with the locals? Why did my Nana spend so long down in the weeds, why was she and most of her young left to scrape and scrap in the mud and the shit while the big house got rebuilt into that massive albatross?”
Felecia considered those questions for a few moments and only shrugged when she considered the likeliest answers and found that none of them fit.
“Fine, I guess I’m the one who still doesn’t know. Is this the part where we sulk off to our corners for a few days until you present me with another book that actually tells me about our family’s history?”
Jacqueline set the pot of water down, closed the lid and shook the cruel smile off her face. The old woman rolled a large log up on end to sit on and made an exaggerated sigh as she settled on the simple stool. “I’m done teaching, I never was good at it. I hated baby sitting as a girl, hated snot noses groping and pulling at me with their nasty, wet little hands. You want it, you have since you shouted at me that night in the meadow, so here it is.”
Felecia was still trying to sort out the difference between natives and locals and why the wife and child or children of a house might be sequestered and separated when Jacqueline began and as the old woman got started Felecia couldn’t find the right words to slow or stop the torrent as it flowed.
“You called it abomination, a sin. Maybe you’re right? My sister would come to agree. You called it my indiscretion. Maybe it was that too. I found love in this world and it was called forbidden. Maybe all the love in this world can be found lacking when viewed from enough angles? What I know is, I had him and he had me and we where happy. Even when we were little we knew, young enough to play house and keep it. We couldn’t harm no one. I was barren and found out too young. I couldn’t host them at all, much less keep them. It couldn’t have possibly mattered to anyone by then. Not my father lost to the sea, nor my mother lost to the laudanum and her precious sewing circles. No one cared what my Abe and I did. No one except my sainted sister.”