Defiant Destiny

by Madison Cumbee

  “Yes, Dad?”

  He beckoned me into his office, the only room on the second floor that was used by anyone other than me. I walked into the impressive space. I’d always loved coming in here when I was little, sitting in his large, burgundy leather chair behind his important-looking mahogany desk and wondering at all of the informational books he had on his shelves. My father preferred historical biographies to my Helen of Troy novels. He collected books of science with confusing ten-syllable words while I collected dramatic fantasy series. Even with our differences, we had always shared a quiet likeness.

  “Yes, Dad?” I repeated once I was over the doorstep.

  He took his glasses off, the ones he only used when he was working, and sat them down. He leaned over his desk and placed his elbows on it, forming a pyramid with his fingers. “You were handling your mother earlier.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I still confirmed it. There was no use denying it. “I was.”

  My father shook his head. “Children should not do such to their parents.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Dad looked at me in a new way, like he was just realizing some new unbeknownst fact. He took in my appearance. I wasn’t in anything unusual- just the t-shirt and sweat pants combo that I always wore around the house. “Except you aren’t a child anymore, are you?”

  I laughed lightly at the obvious question. “I haven’t been for a while, Dad.”

  He didn’t seem to like that answer. “But are you really old enough to be interested in boys, yet? I thought you just had friends, like Josh.”

  Ah. That’s what this was about. “Things change, Dad. I’m going off to college in a year and a half. I’m almost grown.”

  He frowned. “I don’t like it.”

  I leaned my back up against the wall and shrugged. “I don’t think you can do anything about it. Sorry. Everybody has to grow up eventually.”

  Dad sighed. “Can’t you be like that cartoon fellow who wore an elf-looking costume and flew around London chasing his shadow? What was his name?”

  Flew around London? I made a guess. “You mean Peter Pan?”

  “Yeah- be like Peter Pan and remain a child forever.”

  I smiled. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “All the same, I wish you would.”

  One parent wanted me to dress in formal white gloves and say things like “luncheon,” while the other wished I could be from Never-Never Land and live a life of celibacy. Well I had news for the both of them, I was going to turn eighteen, but I would never live in the world of tea-time and doilies.

  “Uriel is coming over tomorrow, and I need you and Mother to be nice to him,” I told my father.

  Dad pretended to be shocked. “I’m always nice.”

  “I know you are, but I need you to soften up Mother. He’s a really great guy, and all I want is for her to give him a chance. I know that you will, right Daddy?”

  My father smiled. “Daddy? You’re trying to handle me too.”

  I stepped across the room to be beside him and bent down to give him a peck on the cheek. I probably hadn’t done that since I was five.

  His smile grew wider. “I’ll talk to her,” he yielded.

  “Thanks Dad.”

  “No problem Peter,” Dad badly faked a British accent, making me laugh.

  I walked back to the door and sang over my shoulder. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀

  Saturday morning, I woke up nervous. That’s not fair. I should have at least gotten a few hours of peace before the bats started hosting a disco in my gut. I wasn’t worried about what my parents would think of Uriel- how could anyone not like Uriel? I was worried that they wouldn’t give him a chance and then he wouldn’t think I was able to be a proper girlfriend. What was the protocol for old-timey traditions when they didn’t work out the way they were planned? Not only this, but I was also agonizing about the affect my mother would have on him. You should see her employees. They cower in fear whenever she walks by. I am not exaggerating. One young intern hyperventilated herself into a panic attack after she brought the woman a Caffé Americano instead of a Caffé Latte and was immediately and stridently harangued.

  Whatever was the girl thinking?

  I know that Uriel is a man and that he couldn’t possibly be intimidated by my bony mother, but she has a profound way of making even the most butch of men scurry away thinking less of themselves than from before they’d met her.

  It was time to pick what I would use to drive away the bats. It took me a few minutes, but suddenly, I had a vision. I saw a scene from Harry Potter movie three. Buckbeak was hopping around, chomping at bats in the Forbidden Forest.

  There was my answer. Well, sort of. I didn’t have any mythical creatures handy, but I had the next best thing to Buckbeak in my backyard- horses. And if my thought process gives you a headache, it’s okay. I’m very random in the mornings.

  Armed with a plan, I got out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans- I don’t really do riding pants- a sweat-shirt, excavated my riding boots- I do the boots, though- and raked my hair into a ponytail. Haha, ponytail. Get it?... Okay, sorry.

  Maria and Jerry were already up and eating downstairs. Taking in the early time, they had at least another hour before Mr. and Mrs. Meyer would be conscious. I set my boots down at the entrance to the kitchen and then slid to the cabinets in my socks. “Morning.” I grabbed a breakfast cereal bar and started unwrapping it.

  “Good morning, Keira,” Maria and Jerry said together in a way that was pretty adorable.

  “You going riding?” Jerry asked as he caught sight of my boots where I’d left them.

  “Yep,” I said and took a bite. “I’ve gotta calm my nerves.”

  Maria questioned me, “What are you nervous about sweetie?”

  “I would have told you both last night, but dinner was already over by the time I got home,” I apologized. “Uriel’s coming over to pick me up for a date at noon.”

  Maria’s mouth fell open, and Jerry had the same reaction. “You and he are back together?” She had to have already understood that from the phone call I’d made Thursday, but I nodded anyway. Maria stammered, “B-but you’re p-parents are here. Keira did you forget?”

  “No, Uriel wanted to meet them.”

  Maria’s mouth fell further than before.

  “I know! That’s how I felt too,” I agreed.

  After I finished my breakfast bar and Maria and Jerry had promised to not let on that they had already become acquainted with Uriel, I grabbed my boots and made it to the door that allowed us to go from the sunroom to the backyard. The family stables were a good quarter mile from the house and gave luxurious refuge to our three horses. They had everything they needed and more.

  For all of Mother’s faults, she did give me one meaningful gift- my love of all things equestrian. When I was about five years old, Mother had the stables built and brought Valentino to live with us. She was obsessed with that particular designer at the time, so she named her quarter horse gelding after the infamous high-fashioned idol. He was this pure white beauty that had just about as much superior attitude as his owner. They were a great match- Mother loved to parade around the riding ring in our backyard on him and he loved to be paraded around on. I called him Val because what five-year-old is going to say, “Getty up, Valentino!” Long story short, Mother let me ride Val, and ever since I’ve been in love with horses.

  At thirteen, Elektra (I was very in to Jennifer Garner at the time) chose me to be her human. It was love at first nuzzle. To this day, there is no other animal in the world I have found that can calm me like my Arabian mare. She’s a gorgeous warm, chestnut color with a classic white stripe down her nose. Her brown eyes have this constant spark of wildness that I’ve always admired, but my horse is non-spookable. She calms me the instant I walk into the personal barn and see her placid head peering at me over the stall door, and I borrow some of her cool d
emeanor. Which is what I did that morning. Elektra had plenty of peace to lend me.

  Once I had gotten her saddled, we worked together on stomping out those pesky, dancing bats while we made our way around the borders of my family’s land. Elektra understood that I didn’t want to talk so she remained silent and allowed me to lose myself in her majestic gallop. As always, by the time we arrived back at the stalls, I felt completely centered and serene. Elektra had spun her magic once again. I even found myself singing as I brushed her coat after she was back to being all-natural and unsaddled. I fed and watered her and Mother and Dad’s horses while I was already in the stalls.

  After walking back up to the house and dodging my parents, I enjoyed a hot and thorough shower, making sure that every piece of straw and speck of dirt was washed away. I was dressed and pacing in the entrance area by ten minutes to twelve, and my parents were sitting in the next room, the living room, waiting to see the first boy I’d ever shown interest in. As the pacing suggests, my rats with wings had returned and were causing me to walk a whole in the floor, but there was no way to get to Elektra’s pacifying affect from there.

  Nine minutes and two hundred calories burned later, Uriel’s jumbo Escalade rolled up and stopped in the road where I could see him through the window. I yanked open and rushed through the front door before my parents could even notice he was there. Practically speed walking, I reached Uriel’s side before he had stepped onto the stone pathway to my house. He was dressed to impress, which is good because that made him match me. I had chosen a Mother-approved skirt that hit me at the knee with a solid black border a couple of inches at the bottom and was otherwise covered in a subtle print of sporadically interrupted cream swirls on a dark chocolate brown cotton material. My top was a turquoise Cha Cha Vente Long-Sleeved Lattice Jersey, and the only reason I know that is because Mother picked it out herself on one of our forced and uncomfortable “bonding shopping excursions” and my sucking up was still in effect from the day before. Basically, it’s this scoop neck shirt with a lattice design around the top. Mother should be appeased.

  Uriel was looking elegant and sophisticated and totally hot. He had on pleated khaki dress pants and a wonderfully fitted polo Ralph Lauren black sweater that, while perhaps slightly dimmed his glow, made the blue in his eyes electrifying in contrast. And when he smiled at me, it was perfectly understandable that he was a heavenly angel, even if he was only half. It was good to see whatever had bothered him the night before hadn’t overlapped into that morning.

  “You look nice,” I understated. “Did Odeda dress you this morning?”

  “I can dress myself, you know,” he replied, the smile never leaving his lips as he kissed me on the cheek. I lifted a single eyebrow at him. He conceded, “Fine. Odeda bought this yesterday afternoon and insisted I wear it.”

  I laughed at his inability to shop for himself. “She does have great taste.”

  “That she does. You look exquisite, as always. Today you are very… proper,” he noticed.

  “Purely for Mother’s benefit, I assure you.”

  “There’s nothing at all wrong with proper.” Uriel took my hand, and started walking toward the house.

  The bats kicked it up a notch. “This is your very last chance,” I pleaded. “Run. Run far, far away.”

  “You did not run from me, and I am certainly not running from this.” He saw that I was not agreeing with him, so he went on, “Keira, I battle evil beings as a lifestyle. I think I can handle your mother.”

  “You’ve never faced this evil being.”

  Uriel smiled but didn’t comment. When we were at the door, he stop, and I thought he had finally come to his senses. But apparently not, because he turned to me and asked, “Which name did you use when you told your parents I was coming over?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you say, ‘Uriel’s coming,’ or ‘Luca’s coming?’”

  “I never call you Luca.”

  “Uriel it is then.”

  He gestured for me to open the door, since it was my house, but I was suddenly aware of something. “Why do you even have two names? I’ve been meaning to ask ever since I was first confused with Zev/Ralph and Odeda/Bridget and Dagan/Oliver and Azra/Eron. What’s with all the slashes, the double aliases?”

  “When I told you I thought Luca would go over better, I wasn’t lying. The names you use for my family and me are our original names that we received at birth, but over the years, we’ve found that mortals are more comfortable with names that they are more familiar with instead of our unusual and old names.”

  “Oh.”

  Uriel added, almost as an afterthought, “And a Nephilim’s birth name usually tells what his gift is.”

  He reached for the doorknob, but I stopped his hand. “Names equal powers?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “As names used to represent occupations or origins, our tend to indicate our gifts. Azra means wise; Odeda means strong; Zev means wolf; and Dagan,” Uriel smiled, “means grain of corn.”

  “Aw, poor Dagan.” He always seemed to get the short end of every stick. “What does Uriel mean?”

  “It means angel of light, but mine is a special case. I was named after a relative.”

  “A relative?” I repeated. “Like a close one?”

  “Yes, but that is a story for another time. Later. Right now, we are supposed to be honoring a tradition.”

  “Fine,” I sulked.

  Uriel faced the door once again. “This will be over very soon, you’ll see. There’s nothing to worry about.” He turned those irrepressible, breathtaking eyes on me and asked, “Are we ready to do this?”

  “No,” I immediately responded.

  “I love you, Keira.”

  “We’ll see if you can still say that in a few minutes.”

  Uriel smiled, opened the door, squeezed my hand, and led me inside.

  Historical Participation

  Chapter 20

  Uriel

  I pulled Keira into her house. She was completely overreacting, and I figured the only way I would get her to relax was by showing her I could charm her parents. Any nervousness of meeting them had vanished the second Azra had told me the night before who was coming to town, so I was feeling moderately comfortable in comparison as Keira reluctantly steered me to the living room that was to the left of the front door. The same elegantly decorated room I had met Maria and Jerry came into view as we rounded the corner. “Mother and Father, this is Uriel Gray,” Keira introduced. A very modern-looking middle-aged woman with styled short blond hair, keen and calculating blue eyes, and who was wearing very uncomfortable looking shoes along with a softer yet admirable-looking man with Keira’s eyes rose from a beige leather sofa.

  “Hello Uriel. I’m William Fairchild,” the man said with a forced smile as he regarded Keira’s and my joined hands. He held out his own hand which I shook. “You can call me William. And this is my wife, Abigail Fairchild.”

  “How do you do?” Keira’s mother asked in a sharp voice while sizing me up and down.

  Keira hasn’t been exaggerating. “Very well, thank you.” I made a show of gazing around the room. “You have a sumptuous home,” I complemented, using the age-old tactic.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Fairchild replied automatically.

  No one said anything for some time; it was obvious no one in the room had been in this kind of situation before. My wandering eyes fell on an exceptionally copied painting that hung on the opposing wall to the exterior. “Is that the Infanta María Teresa?”

  I turned to the woman who was most likely the one who had chosen the décor of the house. Abigail Fairchild was surprised and suddenly ever so slightly intrigued by me. “You are familiar with seventh century art?”

  “Diego Velazquez was one of the best painters of his time, in my opinion.”

  Keira’s mother did not bother disguising the brief flicker of approval that crossed her features. With the single recognition, I was bounds closer to
approval. “This portrait in particular is my favorite of his. Do you know why?” she tested me.

  I was learning to never back down from a challenge after months with Keira, and I wasn’t going to fail now. But of all the magnificent thought-provoking art of the time, why would anyone choose the simple portrait of a single woman clad in a modern dress for her era? “Could it be that the Infanta María Teresa is clothed in a fine and beautiful apparel that gives you, as a successful woman in the fashion industry, a constant reminder of the level of caliber that you must demand from your subordinates in order to produce high-quality clothing?” Mrs. Fairchild is obviously not one for philosophical artwork.

  By my side, Keira’s jaw dropped as her mother openly smiled at me. “A dapper young man with an instant understanding of my art collection is one who I find no fault with.”

  “I will not disappoint your expectations, Ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Abigail.”

  I bowed my head in response and risked a glance at Keira’s face. It took all of my self-control to keep an overly-satisfied grin from surfacing on my mouth as I shifted my attention to her father. “Your daughter tells me you’re a fan of the Tar Heels.”

  “I am,” William allowed. His guard was up doubly after also being surprised by his wife’s warm reaction to me. Mr. Fairchild’s torso was leaning toward Keira almost imperceptibly. He appeared possessive of his only child, which meant that I had to use more than flattery and art recognition in order to earn his respect.

  “It’s too bad Tyler Hansborough’s graduated,” I said in my best sympathetic tone.

  “It is. That boy had real fire for his sport.” William Fairchild eyed me. “It takes a true love of the sport to make a man worthy of playing the game. I know there are very few who could earn a place on such a selective roster. Just remember that no thriving player ever got far by disrespecting his point guard.”

  “I can say with absolute certainty that the player you are referring to is no temporary teammate and has nothing less than the highest respect for the point guard.” We were clearly not talking about college ball anymore.