The library at Hawthorne High was small, but old. Not in the charming way with ornate ceilings and leather-bound books. No, this place felt forgotten.
The lights flickered. The corners smelled faintly of mildew and varnish. But Elora had come here on instinct.
She didn't know what she was looking for.
Only that the roots of her dream—and of something deeper—had begun to wind through her waking life. And she wanted to understand.
The back section held the oldest texts. Thick, cracked tomes no one checked out anymore. Covered in dust. Spines like bones.
She found it by accident.
A worn book with fraying cloth edges titled:
"Foundations of Hawthorne: A Settlement of Sacred Soil."
Elora sat cross-legged on the floor, resting the book on her knees. She turned the pages slowly. The first few were maps, old sketches, charcoal outlines of the original layout of the town.
Then—portraits.
Names.
She leaned closer.
The first page read:
"The Founding Families of Hawthorne"
And beneath it were five spaces—each one with a name scrawled out in violent ink, so deeply etched the paper had torn.
She turned the next page.
A family tree. Same issue. Every name above the first generation of Knights was gone.
Blacked out.
Scratched out.
Erased.
Even the ink had bled.
The deeper she went, the worse it got. Any mention of multiple lineages? Destroyed. Every note that began with "In conjunction with…" was redacted.
Only one family remained consistent on every page:
The Knights.
Elora stared at the torn name beside Reginald Knight's portrait, her fingers frozen mid-air.
Why is no one talking about this?
She left the library with the weight of ghosts pressing against her shoulders.
Mira was at the herb table in the sunroom when Elora arrived home, sorting dried fennel into clay jars.
Elora didn't wait. She dropped her bag, crossed her arms.
"Were the Clove family part of Hawthorne's founding?"
Mira paused, then looked up slowly. "Yes."
"Then why," Elora asked, "are their names scratched out in every official record?"
A long pause.
Mira placed a lid on the jar with deliberate care. "Because hey probably don't feel the need to include us "
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you'll get tonight."
"Mira—"
"You are a Clove, Elora. That's not just blood. It's memory. It's danger. That's why you feel it. Why you dream."
Elora's mouth went dry. "So the Knights—what? They took credit for it all?"
"They survived with a pen, not a sword."
"You hate them."
Mira's jaw tightened. "I protect you."
"That's not the same thing."
Mira didn't answer.
---------------
That night, Elora couldn't sleep. The words scratched out spun in her head. An entire bloodline—buried. Not just with silence. But with ink. With intent.
She needed to know what people believed.
She needed to see how deep the lie went.
"Founding families?" Jessi echoed as they walked the perimeter of the school's courtyard the next day. "That's easy. The Knights, obviously. The Winters showed up a little later, but people say they helped with the town seal. Um… the Barnes were involved in the town square, I think. And the Acker family. Our principal is, like, sixth-gen or something."
Elora waited.
Jessi kept walking, sipping from a juice pouch.
She didn't mention the Clove family.
Not once.
"Is that it?" Elora asked quietly.
"Yeah. I think so." Jessi glanced at her. "Why do you ask?"
"Hum..... Nothing am just figuring something out "
What really happened between these families.
What ever it was it was bad.
---------------------------------
Elora sat in the library's back corner again after school, the old history book open before her, its damaged pages now personal.
The book refused to lie.
The names were gone—intentionally, savagely. It wasn't time or wear. It was deliberate, cruel.
She reached out again to the page with the portraits. One in particular caught her breath: a faint outline of a woman with long black hair, her face turned in profile. No name. Just a torn space beneath it.
But Elora recognized the curve of her cheek, the slant of her eyes.
It looked like her.
She traced the silhouette lightly with her fingertip.
Something stirred beneath her skin again. That same faint pulse she felt near the root. It wasn't as strong—but it was there. Awake.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
No answer. Only dust.
The next day, she sat with Jessi under the oak tree by the field—far from the lunch crowd. Jessi was ranting about the cafeteria chili again, but Elora wasn't listening.
She was still thinking about the erased names.
"Do you think history can be changed?" she asked.
Jessi blinked. "Like, rewritten?"
"Yeah. Like if enough people agree to forget something... does it stop being true?"
Jessi frowned. "That's heavy for a Tuesday."
Elora didn't laugh.
Jessi leaned back on her elbows. "People only remember what they're told. If someone powerful tells the story, that's the version that stays. Everyone else gets forgotten."
"So if someone wanted to erase a family from Hawthorne's history... they could?"
Jessi glanced over, thoughtful now. "Maybe. But why would they do that?"
Elora shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe they were afraid."
"Of who?"
Of us, Elora thought. Of what we are.
Out loud, she just said, "No one. Forget it."
But she couldn't.
And later that night, when she pulled out her journal, she began sketching the torn portraits from memory.
The woman who looked like her. The name that wasn't there. The roots under the school.
Then, without thinking, she wrote something across the page:
They buried the name to kill the power. But roots don't die—they wait.