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Chapter Three: The Curse Jar - Part Three
Olive
Olive tipped the china tea kettle over the tiny china cup, making soft, half-hearted hissing sounds and imagining steam streaming up in soft swirls.
With a sudden stop, she set the kettle on the still damp, dewy grass and sighed sadly. It just wasn’t the same without Daisy. Everything felt odd today. Off. Wrong. She looked around. The sun was high and bright as ever. The air was sweet and clean. The flowers around her were just peeking out of tight buds like tiny promises. And she even sat in the middle of a fairy circle, tiny toadstools like miniature chairs all around her.
She should have felt happy, surrounded as she was with what surely must be magic.
And, normally, she would have.
But instead she felt adrift in the everyday. Sitting alone in the slight valley just on the edge of the forest, the magic of her games — the usually effortless stretch of her imagination — just couldn’t seem to make it past make-believe today.
She’d tried to make Chia, the hotel’s fat and fluffy orange tabby, play with her, but Chia had just stared at her with indignant cat eyes before sauntering — tail twitching — back into the hotel.
Olive pursed pouting lips as she let herself fall back onto the grass in a restless, sloppy sprawl, completely uncaring that her pretty new sunflower-colored dress was now wet and covered in large, green, grass-stained patches. Feeling rebellious, she squirmed a bit, rubbing her wiggly body into the ground, kind of hoping it ruined the dress beyond saving.
It made her feel a little better — even though she was now cold as the wind breezed by, chilling her in her wet, soiled clothes. Folding her hands behind her to pillow her head, she wondered what to do now.
Rolling on her side, she stopped when she caught the sound of voices not far off.
“You’re sure that Mrs. Kinofuji won’t mind us taking what we need from the greenhouse?” she heard Rowan say.
“Yeah,” Calla replied. “Or at least, she’ll mind a whole lot less than Flax will if you keep stealing from his kitchen.”
Rowan agreed as they passed her, moving westward, past Olive’s child-sized valley and toward the back of the hotel. Olive blinked up at the blinding sun above her and wondered what the newest guests to The Elysium were up to. Curiosity piqued, she sat up on her valley-stained knees, staring off to the west.
Flax had told her that she’d feel better if she surrounded herself others; that, if she wasn’t alone, she wouldn’t feel so lost. It was why she’d given up Daisy to begin with, so her solitary uncle wouldn’t retreat into reclusive sorrow.
When she’d done it, she'd known that she’d miss Daisy, but Olive hadn’t really realized just how much she would.
Stomping to her feet, she decided she was tired of feeling sad. Sure, she missed Mei — missed her father and her doll and, yes, she even missed her uncle or at least the way he’d been before — but that didn’t mean that she had to dwell on it, let loneliness become her life. Leaving her miniature tea set behind her, she decided that she wouldn’t let herself drown in that sadness.
Hurrying west, she ran to the greenhouse, pushing the large glass doors open. She said hello to Mrs. Kinofuji before asking her where the others had gone. The old woman smiled before pointing her toward the small grove of trees in the back of the space.
Olive saw Calla reaching up to grab lemons from one of the potted trees, whistling and swaying her hips as she did.
“Can I help?” Olive asked without preamble as she stood beside the woman.
Turning with surprise, Calla blinked at the child. “Hey there, sweetheart. What are you doing here?”
“I want to help,” Olive said. “Can I?”
“Sure,” Calla told her, tossing her a shiny, yellow fruit. Together they walked around the tree, picking fruit as Calla taught her to sing some of her favorite songs. She’d even taught her how to use her dress — holding it out like a blanket — to hold more of the funny-shaped, sunny fruit.
And, though Calla kept looking at her with worry and wonder in her eyes, she didn’t ask questions, didn’t try to talk to Olive about anything more serious than lyrics, as if she knew, as if she could see Olive’s determination to find her way to normal again.
When Rowan joined them later — with newly skinned knees and elbows — Olive asked him what they planned to do with the assortment of fruit and leaves and seeds that they’d gathered.
“Magic,” he told her, his brows bobbing conspiratorially.
Magic! Olive perked up, instantly curious. “What kind of magic?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Calla interrupted quickly before Rowan could reply. “Just small stuff,” she hedged, giving Rowan a meaningful look that Olive didn’t understand at all. Her brow puckered and her lips pursed when she saw his responding wince.
“Like what?” Olive wondered aloud in a small voice.
That stumped them both before Calla said slowly as if testing the words, “Window washing.”
Olive shot them both a suspicious, confused look. “Window washing?”
Calla nodded with overenthusiastic innocence.
Olive turned and narrowed her gaze at the squirming man next to her. “Rowan?”
Ignoring the glares Calla shot his way, he stared down at the small girl who was tired of always being the last to know. He sighed. “It’s a spell to try to get back home.”
Olive’s eyes instantly widened as she let the corners of her skirt go, sending the small mountain of lemons crashing to the floor.
They were leaving. Leaving her.
“Jeez,” she heard Calla moan as she smacked him in the shoulder, “good going,”
“Ow.”
Olive sniffed hard, trying to fight back the tears she’d promised herself she would no longer cry. She blinked hard, trying to stop her quivery lip from wobbling. Stiff upper lip, as Linus had always told her.
Before he’d left her too.
Stomping her foot on the floor, she kicked one of the stupid, sunny, football-shaped fruit, making it crash against the glass hothouse walls.
Why? Why was this happening? Why was everyone leaving her?
Rowan knelt down on the ground next to her, trying to get her to look at him. But she wouldn’t. Maybe never again. “Olive, please,” he said, reaching out to hold her hand, “please, look at me.”
She shook her head furiously, her orange blossom curls flying wildly about her face.
He made a soft, sweet, helpless noise that made her peek up at him, despite her best efforts not to. “Olive,” he said, catching and keeping her gaze, “I don’t want to leave you.”
She sniffled. “Then don’t.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to leave you, but I can’t stay here.”
“Why not?” she asked, her lips stuck in a petulant pout, not understanding how those two things were different. Despite the difference in words, both phrases still left her alone again, aching for another person who just couldn’t stay.
He sighed and sat down on the floor cross-legged, bringing him below her. Gazing up at her, he smiled ruefully. “I don’t belong here.”
“But you could,” she insisted. “You could stay here and live here with me and with—”
He cut her off with a simple shake of his head. “I can’t stay. Not forever.”
Guests aren’t really guests if they stay forever.
Who said? Who decided on such a stupid rule?
She shook her head, trying to deny it.
But, of all the things that had changed over the past few days — in the past three decades — that hadn’t. And — she knew — it never would. She knew that. Knew that better than the man sitting resignedly across from her.
“Do you still want to help?” Rowan asked in a tone that implied he understood if she didn’t.
The girl who’d been eight years old for more than thirty years studied the young man before her with shrewd eyes far older than the round, unlined face that held them. She thought she understood what he meant, could feel the flicker of comprehension in the back of her mind.
What would she give to get back Mei, her father, and all the others she’d lost? Was there anything at all on earth or The Elysium that she wouldn’t give?
Rowan didn’t want to leave her — not intentionally. It wasn’t about leaving her or Calla or Flax or even the hotel; he just wanted to go home. He just wanted to see his family again.
Olive knew that. She understood that. Still sniffling, she nodded silently.
“Thank you,” he told her, leaning in to kiss her on her forehead, bringing with him the sweet scent of cinnamon and comfort. “I will miss you though,” he said, reaching his long-fingered, elegant hands out to stroke her hair.
“Promise?” she asked, unconsciously turning her head into his touch.
“I promise.”
It wasn’t what she wanted, but — she knew as she let out a resigned breath — it was the best of what she could have.
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