Hey readers! Welcome back to my "Meet the Characters" daily posts. Continuing on with Olive's journal entries, this was my favourite one she wrote about her younger brother, Elliot.
April 7th, 1890
Dearest journal, wouldn’t you know the moment I decide to collect memories of Matilda’s story, my brother makes it impossible to jot a single word of dastardly deeds or the power of true love! He has given me little privacy since I last communed with you, and I am forced to sneak you into the bath with me. (I hope the ink won’t run!)
Elliot seems to know I’m hiding something and has kept a watchful eye. He’s more attentive than his surly and sometimes childish temperament alludes. Unfortunately. And thankfully. To understand the conflicted part he plays in Matilda’s story, you must know not only how deeply he feels while afraid to reveal he feels at all, but also how fiercely protective he is, though I’m older than him by nearly a full year and a half.
It reminds me of when we were small and he fell out of a tree—the barren fir tree at the edge of the woods. In those days we’d already been bruised by the mistakes of a father neither of us remembered, but we didn’t yet realize how many more bruises the world held in store for us. Mother must have wanted to protect us from as many of them as she could.
She had cautioned us many times that the fir was dead and good only for firewood, but Elliot and I preferred to imagine the tree’s ladder-like branches as the steps up to a watchtower in a glamourous castle. We’d play at being knights, our twig swords at our sides and our lord’s banner flapping in the breeze. High above our heads, higher than Elliot or I had ever climbed, the rag I’d painted a white lion on had dangled proudly from the branch Nathaniel had tied it to when he’d still had time to make believe with us. I no longer remember the day Nathaniel had taken our proud banner up, but I remember the day it came down.
That day Elliot ascended our watchtower to keep vigil for the evil sorcerer from the neighbouring kingdom. As Mother had warned, that traitorous tree’s branch snapped from under Elliot’s feet and bombarded me with a hail of kindling arrows and a torn white lion.
I’ve never heard such a horrendous thud as when he landed, but even as Elliot tried in vain not to cry at his scrapes and broken arm, he reassured me he wouldn’t tell Mother I’d begged him to play in our watchtower. He took the scolding I’d earned and only half of Mother’s soothing hugs.
Our watchtower was long ago used to heat our home through a rainy winter, but Elliot still has a battle scar at his elbow. And, though I’d rather he left me space to write my thoughts at a desk instead of over the edge of the tub, I still have my knightly brother to care for me.
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