The Peregrine Way

I ran my fingers over the polished wood, smooth under the pads of my fingers the ebony case gleaming under the incandescent lights. “A stationary kit?” My mother said still fussing on the slap-dashed wrapping of the present. “I’ve seen one just like this at Tim’s pawn shop.” A snarky remark that earned my brother a chuckle from everyone except me. I wasn’t really a fan of journals, nor was I an avid reader or writer. Anything related to academia that couldn’t get me bonus credits never interested me, yet somehow I couldn’t stop fingering the oblong case. The stars etched on it boring a stark resemblance to the ones we saw here in Arizona.

A gift for my fifteenth birthday from my recluse Aunt Peregrine. There was no letter with it, nothing to congratulate me or warn me of the perils of women hood like anybody who got the chance had did. Nothing. Which was typical going by the account of her own quinceanera that had been recited to us time and again like a family folk tale. A paragon to whatever kind she identified herself with, because we’d dare not; she had eloped on hers’ on the pretext of not providing sexist people grounds to gather and indulge in their asinine views about feminism. Aunt Peregrine had undoubtedly been one of the most ferocious creatures I had ever beheld.

A woman of few words, she had never confirmed it outright but out of the five children my mother had given birth to and the three my uncle had, I was considered her favorite. The fact baffling to everyone, given I had always been the pansy of the lot. It didn’t however deter my relatives from giving there two pence about the situation. Everybody had something to say about her. Stories of scandals, impromptu expeditions, failed marriages and miscarriages blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. The one thing they all agreed upon though was that she’d take me under her wing once I turned eighteen.

I didn’t know what my mother thought of it, of handing her frail meek child to a living breathing rebellion. As for me I had no idea whether to look forward to the day or dread it.

Except that day never came. Nor did she, to lay her claim on me. The only relation between us being the yearly presents and even rarer postcards, which were more a proof of life than a sign of affection. Through the years her abandoned house became a sanctuary for me, to get away from home whenever I could, whenever I wanted to. Her maid, a short grim looking woman of South Asian descent, though equally fierce would always let me in. A smug smile on her face like my presence reminded her of a private joke.

We had never conversed either apart from the basic formalities. Which was why all I knew about her was also a bunch of different narratives paired with racial slurs as comic relief.

All that changed however a few months into my twenty third birthday, when I found myself pounding at her door in the middle of the night. To Kezia’s credit she opened it quite quickly, like she had been sitting next to it in anticipation. So fast that the effort to look nonplussed was immense, my rage thrown off course for a second. “H-how do you always act so indifferent? How can opinions never matter to you?” I had said by way of greeting, fully expecting her to call my crazy out. But she did nothing of the kind, that smug smirk on her face transforming to an alarmingly wide grin. “Come in, child.”

The house like always was deathly silent. We didn’t need to switch on the lights to find our way as Kezia quietly herded me in. However it took me a moment to realize we weren’t headed for the living room, and then the penny dropped.

Aunt Peregrine’s room was tamer than I expected, but it managed to steal my breath away nonetheless. I squared my shoulders after a shudder went through my spine upon realizing how far I had let my imagination run. The room wasn’t stifling hot like the rest of the house was. Instead it was like walking into an airy attic atop a large Victorian turret, whatever that felt like. It wasn’t like any other rooms in the house right of the bat, but was designed as if to house a dinosaur. A dinosaur with a keen eye for space, with the ceilings much too high and looming, windows expanding from the floor to the roof and making up for three out of the four total walls. To top it all of quite literally there was a large skylight fixed at the center of the roof right above a lone bed and a side desk.

Shafts of moonlight sifted through it, illuminating the otherwise quite bare room in a silvery glow. Disappointing as it was to not be identical to a dungeon it overcompensated by being magical.

 “She left something for you on the study table.” Kezia drawled in her funny accent, a new set of words in all of twenty three years I had known her. She didn’t wait for my reply either and disappeared into the darkened corridor leaving me to fend for myself. I didn’t mind it though, not when the fire thundering down my veins had quelled to a measly simmering; easily overpowered by my curiosity.

My feet slowly shuffled towards the quaint desk, only to find a letter addressed to me fluttering from the wind trapped under a weight.

Aunt hadn’t gone into the troubles of putting it into an envelope, quite analogous to all those presents I had received without a fancy foil over them. What was surprising however was her handwriting; legible, neat and beautiful. It set a weight in my heart on having judged her secretly, of scrutinizing it through the lens of all those stories about her callousness.

Celeste,                                                                                                                     You finding this letter must mean that Kezia finally sensed it, finally saw the ire that comes with being a Peregrine. I’ve never been the one to dish out sermons but the fact that you showed up on my doorstep has me going out on a limb.

I picked the letter up, suddenly wanting to take my time with it. My eyes roamed around the room as I tried to remember what she looked like. Imagined her milling about it when something caught my eye, on the only wall not made of glass.

So forgive me if I hit a nerve when I say it is your responsibility on how you want to channel the frenzy that comes with it. As ominous as it sounds hearing from a hermit you last saw when you were five, I hope you don’t waste your potential being a scandalmonger as is common in our family.

It was hard to read in the dark but some part of me refrained from switching on the lights as I inched towards the wall with the door I had entered from.                 

The world is much too wonderful a place and our life too short to just spend sitting on our asses. Pursue what you desire the most, even if it takes you to the ends of the world, take it from a woman who has spent half her life trying to fit the same into scraps of paper.

 A gasp escaped my lips. Not from the shock of seeing a small picture of her tacked on the wall with the same ebony pencil kit she had given me when I was fifteen, but from the hundreds of sheets of paper covering the wall. All of them, carefully hand-drawn maps of cities, states and islands I had never been to, and could never imagine visiting. Small and precise pencil strokes stenciled land-masses, and labelled the territories while dainty threads ran across signifying both the air and water currents.

You’re never lost Celeste, you’re never alone. But if ever the grim feeling of being led astray fills you, just follow the lodestar. Follow your true north. Everything is always right in front of our eyes, we just need to find where to look.

I felt my eyes well up as they fixated on her childhood picture, having no idea she had gifted me something so close to her heart. Tracing her smile for the last time I padded back towards her bed and lied down on the soft sheets. Stars greeted me through the sky-light but my eyes zeroed in on the Pole Star, shining the brightest of them all.

May you always shine bright my darling,                                                                                      

Flores Peregrine