Lauren had no idea what was happening anymore. Unable to differentiate up from down or right from left, she simply closed her eyes and held on as tightly as she could. She could feel the raging winds and rain lashing at them like ice-cold whips, feel water splashing onto her clothes from the puddles underneath them as they ran, but she didn’t dare open her eyes. She had already tried, and whenever she did the overwhelming blur of motion, noises, and colours left her head reeling. It was like being on a dysfunctional rollercoaster ride, only fifty times worse. She decided to block it out as best as she could and put her faith in Tim.
After what felt like an eternity they slowed to a halt. Lauren felt herself being lowered into an ankle-high pool of water, and it seemed they had found some sort of shelter at last because the rain was no longer assaulting them, but she still kept her eyes tightly sealed.
“Where are we?”
“Not sure. But I think I put enough distance between us and them. Um… you can open your eyes now.”
With some reluctance Lauren complied and immediately regretted it. A powerful wave of dizziness crashed over her and she stumbled, her eyes rolling around. Tim grabbed her just before she went sprawling into the water. She allowed herself a few seconds to adjust, then Tim came into focus, a nervous look in the hazel eyes framed behind his spectacles.
“You okay?”
“No! How could I possibly be okay after any of that? I almost died at least six times in the last fifteen minutes, my parents are probably dead, and we’re stranded in a storm in the middle of nowhere!”
Lauren stood there, chest heaving with emotion, as the dire gravity of their situation finally began to sink in. Tim did not respond, but simply watched her while she took a moment to collect herself, her breathing slowly evening. Then she looked up at him, an uncomfortable feeling rising like bile in her throat.
“Sorry. I know this isn’t your fault. I’m just so… I don’t even know what I’m feeling right now, to tell you the truth. I mean I’ve had some really bad days, but this — this is a new low. How did this become the norm for us?”
Lauren pushed her rain-whipped hair out of her face and sat down. Now that she looked around, she saw that Tim had taken them into what looked like a small gazebo just outside a fancy-looking restaurant. It was neatly constructed of dark wood with bright orange roofing. There were several round, purple-and-white tables littered around them, some of which actually had remnants of half-finished meals upon them, as if their diners had rushed out prematurely because of the weather. Under different circumstances this place would have been perfect for a nice relaxing dinner, but it seemed the storm had done quite a number on it.
Tim sat down beside her, and through the corner of her eyes she saw that he was shivering.
“I just wish we knew what was happening,” said Lauren, absently picking at a spot on her drenched blouse. “Did they get away? Are our parents all right? What about Sytris?”
“I don’t know,” Tim spoke at last. “I want to think everyone’s fine. That mirror they were taken to, it leads to some kind of forge, like a blacksmith’s workshop. If the Harbingers don’t know how the mirror works, then our parents should be safe. At least for now. But the others…” He heaved a deep sigh. “And we can’t even call them,” Tim said angrily, flashing his cellphone, which had been rendered useless by the storm. “Maybe they’ve got a landline in there somewhere.”
He nodded at the restaurant, which was dubbed “The Red Stiletto” according to a glowing neon sign hanging just above the front door, complete with a crimson, comically large high-heeled boot. “Do you have anyone’s numbers memorized?”
“I don’t even remember what I had for breakfast this morning.”
Tim reclined in his seat. For a moment they simply sat there in silence, listening to the rain violently hammering against the roof. Then, to Lauren’s immense surprise, Tim started laughing. It began as a small chuckle, then after a few seconds it turned into a full-blown guffaw.
“Mind sharing the joke?”
“It’s just the irony. I mean, do you have any idea how funny it is to hear the Goddess of Memory say she can’t remember something?”
“I haven’t had the chance to practice my powers,” Lauren said defensively. “In case you’ve forgotten, I kept getting blown off every time I raised the subject.”
“I was wondering what was up with that too. It’s almost like he…” Tim’s words trailed off. Lauren glanced up at him and saw that he looked troubled.
“What?”
“Something Jon said… nevermind, it’s stupid.”
“Oh no — you brought it up, spill it.”
He hesitated, then he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Jon doesn’t really trust Sytris. He thinks he’s — shady.”
“‘Shady’?” Lauren repeated in an “are you serious” voice.
“Yeah. He thinks he might have deliberately kept you from learning more about your powers so that you wouldn’t find out something he’s been trying to hide.”
“That’s — that’s…” She wanted to say “moronic” but the word got lost somewhere on the way to her tongue. Her brows furrowed as she considered what she had just heard, analyzing previous interactions with Sytris. “That doesn’t sound completely out of the question," she said slowly.
Tim looked just as shocked as she felt to hear her in agreement. “Well, what do you think he might be hiding?”
Lauren shrugged. “Could be something about our parents — our birth parents, I mean. Something he thinks we’d be better off not knowing.”
“Or it could be something about himself.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. He’s said it before, he’s been around for a while. Maybe hundreds of years, thousands even. Maybe he did some things he wasn’t proud of. Things he believes that if we heard, we wouldn’t trust him again.”
“You’re right,” Lauren said very seriously. “What if it’s something really heinous? Like, what if he was one of those people who invented disco music, or bell-bottom pants?”
Tim gaped at her for a moment, then both burst out laughing. They laughed so hard and so long that she could actually feel stitches forming in her sides. Chancing another glance at him, she saw that some of the tension had left him. In her eighteen years of existence, she had never really felt lonely, but she couldn’t deny to herself that she felt things would have been a lot more interesting in her youth if there had been a few more faces in her household. And now, she was an older sister. It really was crazy the kinds of curveballs life could throw at you.
Lauren rose. “I’m going to find something to eat,” she said, nodding at The Red Stiletto. “Coming?”
Tim looked rather uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Stealing from them right after they were hit by a freak storm doesn’t feel right.”
“We’re not stealing, it’s more like… salvaging what the storm didn’t destroy. Besides, I’m pretty sure you’ve been thinking it too: the fact that this storm might be a result of something supernatural? Who knows when the weather will ease up? All those products could end up going bad anyway.”
Tim hesitated again, but after a moment he too rose with a resigned look on his face and followed her through the deep channel of muddy water leading to the restaurant’s front door. Fortunately the door was unlocked. Lauren turned the handle and they hurried inside out of the rain. The interior was dark and messy: glassware, cutlery, and portions of meals littered the floor, chairs and tables were overturned, and a number of boxes had been knocked over, their contents askew.
“Where’s Jon and his magic hands when you need him?” Tim muttered as they entered the kitchen, which was also ravaged.
“See if you can find some candles, or a flashlight.” Lauren and Tim began to dig through the drawers, searching for any kind of light source they could find. It was slow goings what with the limited visibility, but after a few minutes a triumphant yell reverberated through the room. Tim straightened up holding a stack of candles and a lighter.
Once they were lit they began to peruse the room once more, trying to find something edible. A brief glance through the inventory revealed some partially soggy pastries and platters of food that were only half-finished. Lauren looked at them with distaste, but they weren’t in a position to be picky.
She began to nibble at the dry sections of a strawberry shortcake, and in the few seconds while she pecked at her own Tim was already starting a third snack.
“Running for too long makes me really hungry,” Tim explained, when he saw her staring at him. “I figured that out recently.”
“I can see why. No offense, but it was terrifying running with you. I felt like I was on a carnival ride from hell.”
“Mild offense taken,” Tim said, holding a hand to his chest with an expression of mock hurt. “But yeah, I get it. It wasn’t all that fun for me at first. If you knew the amount of trees I smashed into — and the bugs I swallowed could raise a whole insect farm.”
Lauren giggled. “And then, let me guess, our wise caretaker helped you get better?”
“He’s actually a pretty decent teacher. Who knew?”
“I wouldn’t, seeing as I’ve never been to a lesson.” She didn’t mean to sound as bitter as she had, but the frustration seeped into her voice all the same. “And now, who knows when — or if — I’ll ever get the chance?”
“I’ve got a crazy idea,” Tim said after a small pause. “Why don’t you try to teach yourself?”
“What good will that do? I don’t have any experience with this kind of thing.”
“I’m sure we can figure something out.”
“Where would we even start?”
“Well… I think I know. What was it like, in those two days when you were stuck reliving your memories?”
Lauren had just raised a strawberry to her lips, but as Tim posed his question she froze and lowered it slowly onto the counter.
“You know what, never mind, I shouldn’t have asked —” Tim said quickly.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“No no, it’s okay.” Lauren took a deep breath. She had been trying to avoid this subject all morning, but she knew she would have to face it again at some point. “It’s just — it still feels so bizarre to think I was out for two whole days, when at most it felt like a few hours. It was intriguing, but it was also kind of scary, you know. Watching all these things that happened to you from an outside perspective. I felt like a ghost looking in at someone else’s life. I barely had any recollection of those things at all, and to think that the memories were preserved so perfectly, even the minor details. It was like I was watching a movie.”
“Well, what if that’s the answer right there?”
“Huh?”
“Memory is your domain, so you can probably regulate it in whatever way you think is easiest. All of our memories are sorted based on importance right, so the more relevant ones are retained and the older, less crucial ones are shipped out. For some memories a good chunk of the details are faded out, and the rest we lose entirely. Or so we thought.
“What if we never actually lost anything? What if everything we’ve ever experienced is perfectly preserved in some kind of magical database, but our brains only have access to certain parts of it? Think of it like some kind of library, but some of the sections are closed off and you’re the one with the master key.”
“I’d say that sounds crazy.”
“Crazy is basically our life now, might as well embrace it.” Tim set down his plate and took one of Lauren’s hands in his own. She raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t protest.
“Let’s try something: how about you try to tap into one of my memories, something more recent to make it easier.”
“I’ve never done something like that before.”
“First time for everything right? Think about it: if you can find a way to access a person’s memories, anywhere anytime, imagine how useful that could be? We could find out what happened to everyone else, learn more about Sytris, or the Harbingers… See what life was like back on Algyria,” he finished quietly.
Lauren contemplated this, staring into his pale, hopeful face. He was giving his best impression of sad puppy-dog-eyes, which certainly didn’t help the matter. She gave a sigh of resignation. “Okay fine. It’s worth a try, at the very least.”
“That’s the spirit!” Tim said happily. “Okay, now — concentrate…”
Lauren tried, but it was hard to concentrate when you had no idea what you were concentrating on. Memories were abstract, she had no solid basis to work with, but she tried all the same, trying to peer into the mysterious mind of Tim Bryant to find out what exactly could make him so hopelessly optimistic in the face of imminent despair…
“This feels silly,” she said when almost a whole minute had passed and no results had been seen.
“Just keep trying. Look, why don’t you try to narrow it down a bit? How about a memory from the previous week, our time at the mansion specifically.”
Lauren breathed in deeply. She cast around for ideas and settled on the simplest one: what he had for breakfast that morning. If an image like that came up she would know for sure it had worked, because she almost never had breakfast with anyone else, preferring to take hers in her room. It should have been easy, and yet no matter how hard she concentrated or breathed her mind remained blank.
“Ugh!” She pulled her hand away irritably. “This isn’t working. I knew this was a waste of time.”
To her surprise and indignation, Tim was smiling. “What about this situation could possibly make you happy?” she said incredulously. “We failed!”
“True, but this storm clearly isn’t going anywhere for a while, so I guess we have all the time in the world to keep trying. Why don’t you keep working on it and I’ll go whip up something else to eat, I’m starving.”
“You just had three helpings!” Lauren said, staring at him.
Tim looked genuinely surprised. “Really? It felt way less than that.”
----------------------------------------
Tim was right: the storm didn’t let up for another two days. Lauren was still concerned that they could be discovered here, but when she finally voiced these thoughts aloud Tim assured her that he had made sure to put so much distance between them and the mansion that they were probably in a different continent. They tried countless times to contact their siblings and parents, but the storm seemed to have knocked out the communication lines. For three days they remained in The Red Stiletto, spending most of their time in the kitchen (which was one of the few places that hadn’t been reduced to rubble by the water damage), and when they were bored they would explore the few other rooms that had been spared.
Despite Lauren insisting that it was a waste of time, Tim managed to convince her to continue practicing. He maintained that it was, unlike his own power, a case of mental fortitude and merely required sufficient force of mind.
Clearly that was something Lauren lacked: no matter how much effort she poured into it, her powers would not respond. Aside from the time they had shown her Oscar’s memory of the bar and the two-day period she had spent as a prisoner in her own memories, she had never been able to turn them on or off.
Lauren was taking the lack of results as something of a personal insult. She had maintained a 4.0 GPA in her pursuit of following her parents’ footsteps to becoming a dentist, and yet she couldn’t figure out how to trigger her own stupid powers. After a while, despite maintaining her front that it was all a colossal waste of time, she started staying up a bit longer when Tim dozed off to continue her practice sessions, determined to get the results she was seeking.
“Can you just work with me for one minute!” she burst out on the fourth night. Tim, who had zoomed out some time before to “salvage” some sleeping bags and more supplies, was curled up on the floor some feet away. He was snoozing gently, completely unfazed by her outburst.
After checking one last time to ensure that he was still sleeping peacefully, she returned to the task she had set herself: for the past few hours she had alternated between trying to access the memories of different family members, to determine if they were okay or not. Oscar, Jon, Haley, her parents — she was unsuccessful with all of them. She chose to believe that this was a result of her own personal shortcomings, rather than a darker alternative. After all she didn’t know if it was possible to tap into the memories of someone who was no longer living.
If Sytris had given her even the most basic of instructions, maybe this wouldn’t have been so difficult.
Sytris… She didn’t know where he was either, and a part of her — a part she was trying to silence quite viciously — was more concerned with his fate than those of their siblings. The last time they had seen each other, all three of them had been together. Haley hadn’t been in good condition but she was with Jon and Oscar, secure on Skylar’s back. She wanted to believe that just as she and Tim had managed to escape, so they did too. Maybe they, like her and Tim, were also stranded in some deserted, rain-washed building, waiting for the storm to pass. Maybe they had even arrived at the safehouse Sytris had mentioned.
But the last time they had seen him, glancing back just before Tim had sped them away, he was locked in battle with Erymithia. There was no telling what could have happened afterwards.
If they had known the location of the safehouse maybe they could have met up with the others there, worrying about their guardian together. That was why she was focusing so hard on Oscar. He was the one that the map had been thrust upon. If she could just be taken back to that moment, she could review the details herself.
“Okay Lauren,” she said quietly, taking another deep breath and closing her eyes. “Focus…”
She remained completely still, moderating her breathing rate.
In… out…
Lauren focused on Oscar, clutching desperately at anything and everything she could remember to strengthen the connection.
In… out…
She visualized his face: the green eyes, so similar to her own (albeit a bit bloodshot), the olive skin, the messy dark curls.
In… out…
After a few moments of this Lauren noticed something: the violent howling of the rain had disappeared. She opened her eyes at last. She was back in the mansion, standing around the vast dining table. Almost every chair was empty except the one directly in front of her, which was occupied by —
“Oscar!”
He was sitting with one foot on the table top, clutching a can of diet coke in one hand with a rather faraway look on his face. She was so excited to see him that it took her a moment to realize that he could neither see nor hear her, and then she noticed that the entire scene was once again in black-and-white. She was inside a memory.
It seemed to be a rather uneventful one though. He wasn’t doing anything, simply staring in the opposite direction as if he could see beyond the mansion’s walls. Well, Lauren thought, a little disappointed, it was only a trial run. The important thing was that it had worked, not what she would see. She was about to try to dissolve the memory and return to the real world when something happened that took her completely by surprise: in came her own parents, looking weary and miserable.
Oscar sat up at once, expression frantic.
“How is she?”
Her father took a deep, shuddering breath before he answered. “She still won’t wake up. Even Sytris doesn’t know what’s happening. We’ve been trying to wake her for over half an hour but she won’t budge.”
Oscar sank back into his seat, looking dejected.
Mrs. Combs looked to be on the verge of tears. She was clutching a tissue in her hand, dabbing at her nose. “We have to call an ambulance. We —”
“And do what, Melissa? Human doctors aren’t going to be able to anything: this is a magical problem.”
Lauren had never heard her father sound this way before, so feeble, so helpless. So this was what was happening in the two days she had been strolling down memory lane.
Mrs. Combs’s lips trembled, then the tears she had been repressing burst from their banks. “We can’t leave her like this. She’s in a coma, Andrew. What if she — what if she…?” Unable to finish the dreadful thought, she put her face in her hands and dissolved entirely into tears. Her father gently took hold of her arms and pulled her into a firm embrace, running his hand through her hair.
After a few moments she regained herself, looking up at Oscar through red eyes. “Thank you for checking in on her. Sytris thinks if you hadn’t found her when you did, it could have ended up worse. At least this way he can try to help before it becomes too serious.”
“Do you think he can undo it?” Oscar asked.
Her parents exchanged a look.
“I want to believe he can,” Mr. Combs said. “He has much more experience in this sort of thing than any of us, after all. We just have to put our faith in him.”
A whirl of gray streaked into the room, creating a gust of wind that Lauren didn’t feel but which sent their clothes and hair rippling around. It was Tim, holding a clear plastic bag filled with a number of strange-looking plants.
“I got here as fast as I could,” he said, handing the bag to Lauren’s father. “I got everything on the list.”
“Thank you, Tim. We’ll let you know if anything changes.” Mr. Combs took the bag and hurried upstairs with his wife in tow. Tim took the chair he had just vacated, looking anxious.
“How do you think it happened?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Do you… do you think she’ll wake up?”
“Yeah, I… Yes,” Oscar replied, his voice more confident. “Definitely. There’s nothing physically wrong with her. That’s what Sytris said.”
“Psychic monster attack?” suggested Tim.
Oscar pondered the thought for a few seconds. “Could be, but why it would affect her and no one else?”
“Lauren?”
Lauren jumped almost a foot in the air. The voice was familiar, but its owner was in front of her, reeling off a list of potential monsters who could have caused Lauren’s sopor. She wheeled around and found herself face-to-face with another Tim, who was dressed differently from the one she had been watching. Unlike the other, this one shone with colour, standing out vividly among the monochrome background.
“Woah… is this a memory?” Tim asked, his eyes darting all over to take in every detail. His confusion gave way to a huge smile. “I knew you could do it!”
Lauren had still not recovered from his sudden appearance. “How did you — how are you here?” she sputtered.
“No idea, one minute I was dreaming and the next I was in here. Wow, this is really creepy,” he said, watching himself deep in conversation with Oscar. He strode around to his memory-self and waved his hand vigorously in front of his face, but predictably his black-and-white incarnation didn’t give the slightest indication he knew he was there.
“This is so cool. Creepy, but cool. You must have accidentally pulled me in here with you somehow.”
“I didn’t even know that was possible.”
A frightened look dawned on Tim’s face for the first time. “Wait, we’re not going to end up stuck in here for days again, are we?”
“Uh — no, of course not,” she said with so little conviction that Tim raised his eyebrows. She huffed a deep sigh. “I have no idea.”
“Well, try to wake us up.”
Lauren nodded, although she was still interested in seeing this memory play out a bit more. She closed her eyes again, leveling her breathing. In… out… in… out…
The sound of voices in the background faded. Slowly the lashing of the storm against the Red Stiletto’s faded walls returned to hearing. Lauren opened her eyes and the messy, dimly lit kitchen greeted her, along with Tim, who was wide awake now, halfway out of his sleeping bag and gazing up at her in awe. He grabbed his phone and looked at the screen.
“Oh my God,” he said, a look of abject terror on his face. “We were out for thirteen days!”
“What?” Lauren felt as if the world had crumbled under her feet. She had slipped through the cracks and was falling, falling through a dark and lonely abyss —
“I’m just kidding, it’s only been a few hours,” Tim said with a grin.
“You are so — ugh!” Lauren groaned, tossing the remnants of her sandwich at him.
Chuckling, Tim threw off his sleeping bag and moved closer, eyes alight under his glasses. “Can you try that again? Only this time, see if you can bring me with you on purpose.”