Chapter 6
August 25, 1991
Erik, Henry and Coralis were getting ready to head back to school.
“Coralis,” said Kief, “I don’t know how I missed that detail when we were filing the paperwork for you, but was your birthday really on August 1st?”
“Hmm yeah, it was, I am now 11,” said Coralis. “Why does it matter?”
“Wait wait, DID WE REALLY MISS YOUR BIRTHDAY?” said Erik and Henry at the same time.
“Had we known, we would have done something to celebrate it. Why didn’t you tell us?” said Kief.
“Because I don’t think it matters. I never done anything for my birthday. Sometimes a social worker would give us a cupcake, but I never cared about it.”
The Fullemons didn’t like that answer. They decided that if Coralis came to their house again the next summer, they would do something to celebrate her birthday. Meanwhile, they would try to see if she could come to their family for the End-of-Year holidays: the boys started to see her like a sister.
Coralis was happy to see her friends again, but the uneasy feeling she had at the Montreal airport came back: something was watching her. She didn’t know how to explain it.
At the end of October, she mentioned it to Martha, but her guardian couldn’t reassure her: they didn’t catch Julian’s attacker. Although the school was heavily warded to protect the students, there was still a breach during the EET. They didn’t find out how the attacker managed to breach the wards, but Principal Arthurio had them redone during the summer. Martha told her she was going to have the wards inspected.
Through November, the uneasy feeling persisted. Anxious and frustrated, Coralis tried to keep her emotions in check by focusing on flyball. The team uniform was blue and when he was up in the sky, playing the game while turning her pent-up frustrations and restlessness into ferocity and fierceness on the field, the sky would sometime darken. With the heavy sound of students banging their feet on the ground and blowing their trumpets as they cheered for her, it was like thunders were about to fall from the sky. Students started to nickname her Blue Thunder. She didn’t mind the nickname and quickly got used to it.
She went to the Fullemons for the End-of-Year holidays. Sean was there. He was 17-year-old, still at school, but it was his last year. Coralis was glad he was there: she wanted to know if Julian knew who the attacker was. Martha said they didn’t catch the guy and that they didn’t know who he was. She was convinced someone knew something, but didn’t want her to know, thinking she was too young to understand.
“Did you find out who attacked Julian?”
“Not as far as I know. School administrators said they never caught the guy and Julian swore he didn’t know him.”
“Your friend Julian, what’s his family name?” said Kief. “Do you know if he was specifically targeted?”
“Dewarp, Julian Dewarp,” said Sean. “I know that he’s been living with his uncle since he was 5-year-old and that his uncle was his father’s younger brother, so even if he had been officially adopted, he would have kept the same family name.”
“So he is an orphan like me,” said Coralis.
Kief and his wife looked at each other. Sean’s parents were also looking at them.
“Julian’s parents were supporters of Lord Meozo and were killed during a raid from the European Bureau of Elemental Energy in July 1980,” said Darisa, Sean’s mother. “I wonder if it’s related to that. I wouldn’t be surprised if the attacker was one of Meozo followers trying to locate descendants of some loyal supporters.”
“That would certainly explain why both schools refused to talk about it,” said Barla. “These raids created a lot of orphans.”
“Coralis, what do you know about your parents?” asked Kief. “It’s fine if you don’t want to answer that, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“It’s fine. I don’t know anything about them, other than my mother was a water mage. No one knows exactly what type of mage my father was, people think he was a wind mage or mixed. I know that they have storage units in London and Alexandria, but I don’t know where the keys are. Probably in their safe at the bank, but I have to go to London for it and I haven’t been there yet, so I don’t know what’s in it. The only thing my cousin and I were told, was that they were involved with bad people and that was what got them killed.”
“I don’t think you’re a water mage,” said Erik. “Maybe mixed, but even the mixed ones, which are rare, have a prominent one. I think you could also be a spirit mage; people often mistake wind and spirit energies.”
“The guy called you Golmar,” said Sean. “If your bloodline is close to their god, that would give you a distinctive energy signature. Maybe the guy knew your dad and sensed the same type of energy coming off of you than what he sensed from your dad.”
“According to paperwork,” said Kief, “Coralis was born on August 1, 1980, in Montreal. Lord Meozo was killed on August 8 1980… in Montreal. Her parents could have been working for Lord Meozo. Even after he was killed, the CMMA and EBEE kept raiding suspected gathering places and warehouses affiliated to his supporters. From what I heard, most of the orphaned children were placed with family members, but a few were placed in the human system.”
“I heard a little bit about Lord Meozo in class. He was very bad, right?” said Coralis.
“Very bad, one of the worsts,” said Fabrize, Sean’s dad. “I seriously hope that his followers aren’t trying to bring him back. The EBEE assured the population that Lord Meozo had fully been destroyed, but in our world, nothing is truly impossible.”
“Enough talks about Lord Meozo. This is our End-of-Year party, so let’s be merry and talk about happy topics!” said Barla.
When she went back to school, Coralis decided to seek for a way for her to get to her parents’ bank in London. She didn’t know what she would find there, but was hoping that the keys for their storage units were there. Martha said that she might be able to arrange that at the end of the school year.
Early May, she received a strange letter:
Hello little Golmar, I was a good friend of your father. I would like to meet you to talk about them.
The letter wasn’t signed. She didn’t know what to think of it. She sent a pigeon to her cousin, to see if she had also received something like that. Her friends also found it weird.
The next week, she received another one:
Hello Ms. Golmar, I am an admirer of your parents’ work, it is a shame that they died so young. They could have accomplished so much more. I hope you intend on following their footsteps. Let me know if you have any questions.
Once again, it wasn’t signed. Coralis decided to show both letters to Martha. It was troubling her. If her parents really were involved with bad people, then she didn’t want to hear anything about them. Really concerned for her safety, Martha was relieved to hear that the Fullemons had made the same arrangements as the previous year: Coralis would go back to Canada for a few weeks, then travel to them once the paperwork went through. Some paperwork could only be filed while she was at the group home.
When the school ended, instead of taking their flight from Glasgow, Coralis and Victoria went to London with Martha. Fearing for her safety, Martha decided to personally take Coralis to her bank in London, hoping she could find out more about Coralis parents, if they were indeed dealing with Lord Meozo. The girls would then take their flight back to Montreal from London.
Before entering the vault where her parents’ safe was, the banker reminded Coralis that she was the only one who could go in there: Martha and Victoria would have to wait for her outside. Coralis nodded and followed the banker, who looked almost identical to the banker she met back in Montreal. She opened the safe and only saw 3 items in it: two keys and a piece of paper. On the piece of paper, two addresses were scribbled on it: one was an address in London, the other one was an address in Alexandria. She figured the keys were for the storage units she was told about, and the addresses on the paper were their location.
Martha was disappointed that there wasn’t anything else in the safe, but swore to herself that she would try to dig up more about Coralis’ parents during the summer. She remembered her mother, from when she was a student, but didn’t know what she had been up to after she left school. Donny Golmar didn’t attend GES, so she didn’t know him. However, she remembered that name being mentioned a few times in newspapers, with his picture, when Lord Meozo was alive.
Coralis had a peaceful summer. This time, she didn’t feel like she was being watched when she was at the airport, in mid-July. Just like they said they would, the family prepared something for her birthday. They didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable, but they wanted to do something, so Barla helped her twins cook her favorite meal. She had a lot of fun with the Fullemons and hoped that she would be allowed to go back to their house again next summer.
A week after she got back to school, she received another strange letter. Once again, unsigned and from someone who claimed to know her parents. She wanted to burn it on the spot, but decided to show it to Martha.
Martha didn’t find anything about Coralis’ parents during the summer, beside a confirmation that they were indeed working for Lord Meozo, so was Anita’s entire family. After Coralis showed her the letter, Martha met with the school administrators, to see about increasing security around the school, and got upset when they refused. They didn’t believe that Coralis was in any kind of danger: these were just letters. She just had to ignore them. They couldn’t stop people from sending letters to students.
As Coralis was getting ready to go to the Fullemons for the End-of-Year holidays, she decided to bring the letters with her, to show them. She had 14 of them, all from different people. She didn’t care about what the school administrators said: she believed the school safety protocols weren’t good enough and she didn’t feel safe. Kief said that he would try to find out who was behind them.