Daughters of Sea and Storm by E.E. Holmes EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: E.E. Holmes
- Language: English
- Genre: Coming of Age Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I had only a handful of memories of my grandmother, like glittering stones
tucked away in a childhood pocket. Whenever I would take one out and
turn it over in my palm to examine it like a secret treasure, I was always
struck by how each one felt more like a dream than an actual memory, hazy
around the edges and full of tiny details that I decided afterward certainly
couldn’t have been true.
But they were true. This I knew as well as I knew my own name.
My grandmother, Asteria Vesper, swept into my life once a year on my
birthday, from my earliest memories until the day I turned ten years old.
She arrived in a whirl of color and sparkle and barely tamed energy like a
gift I couldn’t wait to unwrap. And my mother opened the door to her every
year with an expression of stony resignation, like she was doing it against
her better judgment.
Because she was.
“Wren! Where’s my little guiding star?” came that musical voice, and I
would stumble forward into her arms, where I would be enveloped in a
heady perfume of herbs and oils and florals that made me deliciously dizzy.
“I missed you, Asteria!” I would cry, for Asteria would have none of
those matronly titles associated with grandmothers.
“I have a name and prefer to be called by it,” she would say. “My name
is my power and my song. Why would I want another?”
My mother rolled her eyes at this, but I would remember it for years
afterward. Sometimes, I would whisper my own name into the silence as I
lay in bed, listening for that music and power that Asteria claimed a name
could contain. All I ever heard was my own uncertain voice curling up into
a question mark in the darkness.
Asteria always brought a gift for me, but she never wrapped it. Instead,
she made me hunt for it through the dozens of pockets and pouches of her
flowing skirts and dresses, or else guess which of the bangles or rings or
necklaces was for me among the jingling collection she always wore that
made her sound like a human windchime. I would finger each bauble
reverently, as though the right one would speak to me if I only knew its
language. When I finally closed my shaking fingers around one, looking up
at Asteria with the unspoken question in my eyes, the answer was always
the same.
“You found it! However did you know?” Asteria cried, and plucked the
item from her person at once to present to me. When I was very small, this
would fill me with a kind of wonder at my own cleverness. By the time I
was ten, logic had begun to creep in to spoil the magic of the little birthday
ritual, and I began to suspect that my grandmother was simply allowing me
to select my own gift, and that there never could be a wrong answer,
whatever I chose.
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