i swear that you don't have to go Who: The Kapur siblings What: Thirteen year old Gale prepares to run away to the Tower. Four year old Storm intercepts. Where: The Kapur estate. When: Eleven years ago. Rating: G/PG. Status: Complete.
Night slipped over Emillion like a shroud -- there, the candles in each windows blinked out as the hours continued on, little stars blotted out in the middle of the night until they were lit again for the next day. The inky darkness swept over Emillion as its residents began to go to sleep, one by one. One window stayed illuminated in the Kapur estate, a richly-styled fortress with a lavish garden out in the front and a delicately-filigreed gate that only opened for the esteemed few. High in her tower, Gale Kapur, the eldest child of Tempest Kapur, angrily paced her room, an expensive suitcase flipped open on the floor. A full cedar trunk had already been stuffed with belongings -- important scrolls, clothing, bedding, magical items -- and pushed to the side, next to more piles of clothes, more useless mementos. Her windows had been thrown open and a chill spring breeze occasionally made itself known, but she paid it little heed as it whipped past her cheeks.
She would leave them forever -- all of them. At the age of thirteen, Gale Kapur had made up her mind: she would abandon Kapur traditions and shrug off the expectation of being a warrior. Forsake the sword and shield, and pick up staff in its place. Now she found herself imprisoned still by her family and their disapproving glares. She could no longer stay cloistered in these walls, little more than a canary beating uselessly against its cage’s gilded bars. Imbued by a sudden sense of purpose -- much more than the mindless running-away she had planned initially -- Gale wondered what would happen if she simply showed up at the Mages’ Tower, unannounced, her belongings in tow.
No, that would not do. She had to plan this carefully, had to do it right. Feeling peckish (her stomach grumbled), she abandoned her initial plans of simply running off, and exited her room with the intent of grabbing something from the kitchen -- only to see a smaller shadow in the hallway, the last person she wanted to see.
“Hello, brat,” she spat out, unable to keep the venom out of her voice.
In response, the four year old ducked into the nearest empty room. But barely seconds after he’d hidden, Storm Kapur, Tempest Kapur’s second child, peeked out at Gale. Only his messy head of hair and dark eyes were visible from behind the doorway.
“Hello,” he said. Though Storm was remarkably articulate for a boy his age, with Gale, his words became ponderous and clumsy. Mother liked to tell him that there was a time Gale had been fond of him. If that were true, Storm couldn’t remember it. As far as he was concerned, Gale had never treated him with anything but resentment.
That didn’t stop him from admiring her. She was confident and grown up. Like an adult. Storm wished she would talk to him, sometimes, and tell him how she managed to be so cool. Everyone was always scolding him for one reason or another. Until recently, nobody ever scolded Gale. Yes, he would have liked to be more similar to Gale. If she thought herself a canary in gilded bars, Storm saw her as a swan in the distance, swimming easily through a lake so vast and deep it separated them completely.
And himself, he liked to think of himself as the ugly duckling. Maybe right now he wasn’t big and strong and smart like Gale, but he hoped more than anything that he would one day transform. On that day, no one would scold him or tell him what to do. He imagined it would be very nice. Maybe Gale would even talk to him.
Maybe Gale would even talk to him now, if he tried. Gathering up his courage, Storm added, “Why are you awake?”
There was a momentary softness in Gale, caught off-guard by the quiet and meek behavior of her younger brother -- and the unmistakable spark of admiration in those dark, soulful eyes, the Kapur eyes, much too intelligent and sad for such young lives (and she had them too, she knew, though hers had already been made hard and bitter, like biting into the pit of a peach). But just as soon as it came, it slipped away, and she would have ignored him if he were not directly in her way, or what she felt was her way.
“I am running away,” the elder sister said to her younger brother. She had not decided on it officially until she said it aloud, and by then, it was far too late to say anything. But now, she was suddenly eager to say it all, as if it would happen by the power of her words, or if only because she could savor the satisfaction of seeing dismay on Storm’s childish face. “I am going to go to the Mages’ Tower and tell them I am going to become a mage, and then I am going to take all my things and move to a room there. And I am never going to come back here.”
For someone running away, she was not dressed appropriately -- her hair in its nighttime braid, wearing nothing more than her sleeping shift, gauzy and delicate as a moth’s wing in the soft light of the wallway -- and no shoes, but Gale acted as if she were just going to waltz out the door.
Just as Gale expected, Storm pushed his head further out from his hiding place, dismay blooming on his face faster than any springtime flower.
“Why do you have to go?” he asked. “You don’t know any magic.”
He had not yet begun to consider that she was choosing a path so markedly divergent from the expectations of House Kapur. For now, the younger Kapur was hit with the immediacy of her leaving. Storm barely knew his sister, and she was going away, never to come back. Never was such a long time. Did she mean it? Or was she in one of her moods?
But she couldn’t leave. Of course, she couldn’t. She was barefoot and unadorned. Gale never went anywhere looking like that. In fact, it might have been the first time Storm had ever seen her so plainly attired. He’d never heard her tell a joke before either, so perhaps this was her sense of humor. The joke made very little sense to Storm. He regarded her curiously as he waited for her response, for the punchline.
“I’m going to learn magic,” she replied, already exasperated though the conversation could not have lasted more than five minutes. “If you knew anything, which you don’t because you are just a brat, then you would know that magic is infinity times better than picking up a sword and hitting things with it, because it requires intelligence and skill.” Nevermind that her entire knowledge of magic stemmed from one ancient volume stowed away in the Kapur library, more for having a complete set of trilogy it was a part of rather than any true interest from any of its members. Besides Gale, that is: she was positively enthralled.
She was speaking more for herself than Storm at this point, as if suddenly realizing what exactly she was relinquishing should she step over the Kapur threshold and move into the Mages’ Tower. She could imagine their father’s face, the stone-crag quality of it like he was carved from rock, all jutting hard angles and the strongest jaw she had ever seen. How he would frown deeply at his food (she imagined saying it at dinner, though that didn’t make sense if she were leaving now, did it?), his anger and disappointment simmering like magma beneath the surface. How her mother would wail.
(She didn’t think of the confusion and distress on her younger brother’s face. Purposely, she avoided it.)
“So you can say good-bye to me now,” she said finally, “because I am going and you are going to be the Kapur heir, after all, I’m of no use to anyone until I’m married off or whatever it is.”
“Stop lying!” Storm cried, distressed, stepping out of his hiding place to gesture at her appearance, her lack of luggage, the impossibility of her leaving him. “You’re not really going anywhere!”
Realizing that he’d overstepped, he looked down as if in deference. In more subdued tones, small and tremulous like the fears of little boys are wont to be, he continued, “Please don’t say things like that.”
Gale felt her something twist in reaction to her younger brother’s anguish, but she stubbornly snuffed it out, like capping a candle. The light flickered inside of her and died meekly. “I’m going,” she said firmly, and as if to prove she was serious, she took a few steps away from Storm, her chin held high. “I am going to go.” She knew it was true, fixated on it, kept her eyes steely and cool, or as steely and cool as she might manage.
Storm could only watch helplessly as Gale turned back to her room, only to reemerge seconds later, packed and dressed and leaving, leaving, leaving.
“Don’t go! I’ll tell Mother and Father!”
Yet when Gale strode past him, he gave way. In the silence of the night, the creak of the mansion’s large oaken doors echoed through the house like a monster’s dying roar. The song of those noisy hinges was older than both Gale and Storm, but, before Storm could accept that his sister was gone, it was over.