"Tanith Caroline Buchanan! Pay attention." Tannie's aunt was beyond herself, again. Would the child ever get her head out of the clouds? She tried to reach the child again. "This wasn't my idea, however, your parents entrusted me with your education and your mother, may she rest in peace..." she paused to make the cross as their parents had taught them what seemed eons ago. Latin, really Amanda? But the dead keep their own counsel and the only answer she received was the call of a Thrasher bird. She sighed, "My dear dead sister insisted I teach you these things, whether we like it or not. Please come back to earth and pay attention before she comes back to haunt us both."
Tannie blinked back to reality. She could see the exasperation in aunt Mary's eyes. She was trying, she really was, but she just couldn't wrap her head around the work. Latin didn't make any sense in her brain, at least not the Latin that aunt Mary was teaching. The words were funny and sometimes she saw the words backward. It was like looking in a mirror. She also felt like some of the words were just written wrong. She kept trying to fix the spelling or the way that aunt Mary said certain words. They didn't sound that way in her head. When she read the Latin text in her head, she always heard it in a beautiful male voice. The words flowed in a perfect rhythm when he said them. Who he was she had no clue. But someday she just knew that she would find him... She blinked again.
"I'm trying aunt Mary, I promise. I just can't concentrate today." She twisted the end of her strawberry blonde ponytail between her fingers. It never grew much past her shoulders, but at least there was enough of the cornsilk strands to keep them up in the high ponytail.
She glanced over her aunt's shoulder at her reflection in the giant silvered mirror that hung on the parlor wall. What she saw there just convinced her even more that she was adopted. She didn't look a thing like Aunt Mary or the myriad of photos of her mother that were scattered all over the sprawling family home. Mary was the spitting image of the sisters' mother. Irish red curls and freckles galore with eyes like autumn leaves and a rounded figure that was perfect for hugs.
Tannie's mother had been more like her grandfather's side of the family. She'd had the blond hair and blue eyes of a Buchanan and twice the temper. Why couldn't she have been more like her? Instead, she felt like she was stuck somewhere in between. Her eyes were the color of a northern winter sky, gray with tiny flecks of steel blue. If she stood up, she knew that she would tower over her aunt. She was like a new spring foal, all arms and legs and non too steady with either.
Mary tapped her pencil against her palm and sighed. This was going to take forever. It was no use to try now. The child was off on her flights of fancy again, staring off into the world behind the looking glass. She sighed again, so be it. "Tannie, why don't you go find some lunch and spend the afternoon outside? Maybe the sunshine will bring you back to earth long enough to read some more this evening." The child had the audacity to snap back to reality and grin. Mary shook her head, she really was just like her mother.
"Oh, can I aunt Mary? I promise I won't go far. I don't know these woods well enough yet for that." Tannie practically jumped from her seat at the long oak table. The woods around the house were scary at night but in the bright California sunshine, they held a coolness that appealed to her free spirit.
"Yes, of course, but be back before dark. I don't want to have to send your uncle and that old dog of his out after you. Neither of them is spring chickens anymore."
Tannie planted a quick kiss on top of Mary's russet curls and ran out of the library. Mary chuckled and shook her head. Yes, just like Amanda. The thought brought Mary a small bit of comfort as she stacked the textbooks up for the evening lesson. A song she had long forgotten the words to came to her mind and she hummed it quietly to herself while she worked. Only time would tell how closely Tanith would follow her mother's path. Mary just hoped it wouldn't get the child into the same troubles.
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