Cherry Blossom Snow

A New Beginning

This would be the day he died, but she didn't know it yet. As an albino, five-year-old Lyra O'Reilly had an aversion to sunlight, so her bedroom's lack of windows didn't really bother her. It was probably still dark outside, and with any luck, her parents were still asleep. She had gotten very little sleep the past week because her parents had been fighting, but things finally seemed to have calmed down.

Lyra's father, Kenneth O'Reilly, and her mother, Adalia Donegal, rarely got along. A week ago, Adalia discovered that Kenneth had been keeping in contact with Giorgio Bocchino, the man who murdered her cousin, Lucinda Moriarty, five years earlier. From what Mia understood while listening to the fighting, Giorgio and Lucinda had a son, Rico, but as to what became of him, she had no idea. Last night Adalia insisted—as she had many times before—that she was finally done with Kenneth and was going to take Lyra and leave. Lyra longed for the day her mother kept her word, but she knew it would never happen.

Kenneth forbade Lyra from ever going outdoors, but Lyra wasn't too concerned with her father's wishes, and the only thing keeping her from running away was that she simply had nowhere else to go. At least at home there were a few precious things to keep her entertained. However, to get to those things, she would first have to escape from her bedroom, but she had plenty of experience. Her room had a sliding door with a chain lock on the outside. While standing on a small but sturdy wooden crate that held most of her few personal possessions, she slid the door open just a tiny crack and placed a bent paper clip through one of the chain links to carefully slide the bolt out.

Lyra walked through the parlor, briefly glancing through the window. The light of dawn gleamed off the shimmering razor-wire that separated the courtyard of the stately manor from the bombed-out streets of Dublin. Small fires burned in the distance, and Lyra could hear the faint echo of gunfire, but paid it little mind as she passed by a marble sculpture of her father to enter the kitchen.

The refrigerator and cabinets were locked to prevent her from having ready access to food. She could easily pick the locks but rarely did so, taking the risk only when she felt her need for food was greater than her fear of her father, who carefully controlled her diet to maintain her figure. However, knowing that she would often be up and out of her room before him, he usually left her some bread and vitamin supplements on the table. Occasionally, he left something else to reward her for good behavior, and this was one of those days. He had left out a fresh orange and a whole jar of peanut butter. He must have been feeling particularly generous. Lyra almost never got to eat fruit. She also was rarely allowed to eat something fatty like peanut butter. She would savor this.

She started with the orange. It had been too long. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten an orange. It was so sweet, sour, and juicy. It was a truly precious experience. She could not hold back from crying when she had finished eating it. She moved on to the bread and peanut butter. She slathered the bread with every bit of peanut butter in the jar, not knowing when she might have it again. It was something for which she was likely to be punished, but the opportunity was too rare. It was so crunchy, oily, sweet, and salty. It was blissful, at least until she needed to swallow and it got stuck in her throat. She quickly dragged a chair over to the sink to reach for a glass and poured herself some water. When she was done, she took the vitamin supplements and left the kitchen.

Lyra walked up the thirteen steps of the gilded wooden staircase next to her door, and passed by posters of her father's films, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi Meets Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Revenge of the Lusitania XVII, Vampire Gladiators of the Canadian Outback, The New Adventures of Cowboy Hitler, Romeo and Juliet Versus Hamlet 3, 4, and 5, The Re-Awakening of Charlemagne's Robot Army, The Persian Dinosaur Rebellion, and Radioactive Blood Diamonds from the Rainforest in the Sky, all of which her mother had appeared in as a child.