You would think it’s hard when the villain’s henchmen strafe our house with photon lasers. Every Tuesday they saunter up next to our chicken coop, mustaches twitching in unison, and blast the house full of holes. They always seem surprised when no bodies are there to pile in a heap in the yard because we knew they were coming and are down by the river. Pisses the chickens off to no end, of course. Malthazar the rooster doesn’t take to laser fire, no matter how often he hears it. He chases them off, pecking at their heels, just like he did to the “Chosen One” when he didn’t like the color of my brother’s socks. Or maybe he just didn’t like the magic aura around the socks.

But those hazards aren’t hard, not really. We’re used to it. We patch the laser holes with mud and clay from the bank, which has notes of orange and blue and even some purple. Our house holds smears of rainbow in the shutters.

You’d think we’d mind when the villain kidnaps one of us. Usually me, the sister, the slender tyke with the big eyes who can’t stay on her own feet. Sometimes the villain goes for Mom, of course, but last year the villains snatched me eight times in a row, and that’s three more than her overall. We have a tally mark on the refrigerator to keep the score.

But I know how to get to them. The villains have a strong aversion to when I talk about Aaron Geger, the farmer’s son from the ranch a few acres over, and his perfect, swooping hair. They hate when I talk about my nail art or belt the latest banger from a HarpyPop band. I have a separate scoreboard just for when I manage to make the villain dump me back home before my brother rescues me. If the villain tries to kill me because I excel at the annoyance factor, I just remind them that my brother would only become stronger at my death, and have Revenge Armor, and that’s enough for them to deflate and portal me back home, or just stick me in a soundproof chamber. 

You’d think I’d get annoyed at the training montage, when my brother returns home and lifts all those logs, throwing them over the entire house with his weight-shifter magic or whatever he has. Or when he decides to drink eighteen eggs every morning because he must strengthen his bones enough to withstand a minotaur body-builder’s charge. Mom isn’t happy about that one because he sneaks all our eggs and we don’t have any to sell at the market the next day, and doesn’t he have any sense at all—!

She breaks sometimes, of course. We know the dangers, we’ve taken the course, we’ve signed the waivers. The signs were all there when he was born: the light illuminated him from the sky through our roof, the three sages meant to train him appeared and gave him different kinds of body cologne, and he was strong enough to lift Bessy the Barn at seven years old—and Bessy doesn’t tear off her foundation easily. The sages informed us of everything we would go through as the family of the Chosen One. But being told something and going through it are trolls of a different stripe, you know?

It doesn’t bother me. I don’t break. Not when he calls down lightning in the yard to impress me at 23, and I remind him it sounds like photon lasers, and that’s why Malthazar’s son pecks at his heels. I don’t break when he comes home at 32 years old, his face haggard and scarred, the fatigue carved into his eyes the same depth as Dad’s. Or when he parades home wielding the sunrise, his magic calling forth the morning on the other side of the planet just to warm our hearth in the winter.

It’s not a hazard that he thinks it’s a small thing to turn our nights into days, to switch our darkness to light. It’s not a hazard when he disappears for years, for over a decade, and then rushes down the old path in a panic, saying his magic has left him, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore. He defeated the archvillain, but the price of it was his special-ness, his unique-ness, his Chosen One-ness, and now he just sits in the yard and watches the chickens peck the dirt. Sometimes, Malthazar’s great-grandson hops up to him and nestles in his lap. Now that his magic aura has left him, the animals don’t fear him.

I don’t know how to help him. I can’t do anything because I’m not Chosen. That’s my own personal villain that kidnaps my sanity every minute of every day; that I’m forced to stay weak, and vulnerable, and annoying, even at 45 years old. Even Aaron Geger must have thought so, because he never responded to the letters I snuck to him at school, and he ended up marrying that nymph girl from Waterside. And being weak is in the official guidelines and training course for the Chosen One’s relatives, so it must be true.

I’ll tell you one more thing that doesn’t get to me… When my brother tells me I’m the strong one. Strong because I never had any magic or power, but I could still weather him.

I know the hazards of being related to the Chosen One. And it’s not that.

It’s not that, at all.

* * *

Ⓒ Emmie Christie