‘One day, I’ll visit there myself. I know it. I know for sure.’ René had said that night we took to the skies.
“René, René! René! Oh, no, no, no! This can’t be happening! Amelie! AMELIE, PLEASE!” Minerva screams. I bolt through the door.
René foams at the mouth, his body stiff, violently racking against the bedframe. The bedsheets are nearly thrown off with the force of his body’s attempts to seize, unseize, and seize his musculature again and again and again and again.
I feel the presence of horrors in his subconscious. Without a second to spare, I take out the Eisen bar I’ve kept for emergency in my coat pocket, and crack it, inhaling deep. My inconveniences matter very little.
I grip René’s stiff and lifeless hand as I take the plunge.
Where? Where? Where? I look this way and that, screams and wails issuing from everywhere and nowhere in this velvet dark memory.
The landscape expands to accommodate me, becoming that of a city in rubble, with piles of scrap metal and corrugated iron doors dotting the barren hills and lands, all gray, though there are no frames. As I stumble my way through the iron, cutting myself on their rusted edges, a trill of a little Celendir pierces my ears. I turn my head to its source, and see a mass of churning black by the sides of what must be a warehouse, weeping with melting paint.
I conjure a sword and shield, though it disappears from my hands – but redoubling my efforts, honing my consciousness and my will over this dream to a razor’s edge, I explode a lance of light into existence and hurl it full force into the center of that tenebris sphere.
The lance skewers the cacophonous congregation of creatures all bent, and disperses to reveal a terrible sight.
René’s little Celendir form is ensnared in the claws of a raven demon and are being pecked and twisted and flailed. I conjure a mighty war-axe of frost and swing it into the neck of the raven demon, bouncing off like hitting steel –
Cleave it, 10,000% force!
I swing it, and the world explodes around us as the strike meets true. The blade cleaves clean the raven’s head, rarefying it into a fine cloud of caustic black. Its claws disintegrate around René’s injured form, freeing him from its clutches.
I kneel down to hoist him up in my arms, and as my skin makes contact, I’m yanked into a vision – a dream – a memory – which I cannot tell.
I stand outside an abandoned warehouse, their windows plastered with faces of awaiting children, shaved and bald. All colors are in gray. The letter signs read ‘E. J. Greenwood.’
As the shards of the world flicker around me, some letters on other signboards and features faded and no longer recognizable by conscious recollection, an intuition strikes me:
This is a part of René’s own Memory Archive. Through my weeks and two dozen visits, I’d never seen this part.
As I am forced by the currents into and around the warehouse, hundreds of children greet me, reach out to me, as if wanting me to take them home, to save them from this place. Their clothes are threadbare, their arms and legs gangly, their eyes sunken.
Among them, is René.
I yank him by the arm and pull myself out of the dream into the waking world. As I do so, the children yell.
MANFRED!
I come to my senses in cold sweat with an inhalation so deep.
René lies face up, eyes glazed. He still breathes.
Minerva breaks into muted sobs of relief, embracing his body.
I collapse onto the armchair.
* * *
The letters ‘E. J. Greenwood’ hang upon the façade of what appears to be a warehouse in yellow and gray, with some umber brown brick meshed in the corners. Years of rain had melted down the painted outline of those metal letters, leaving them to drip in black rivulets. The sign seems to weep to passerby. Heaps upon heaps of scrap metal rise like hills next to the structure.
It’s a sorry sight.
Shards of glass pepper the windowsills on the second and third floors, perhaps a quarter of the windows in disrepair; corrugated iron bars and meshed staircases jut out unceremoniously from the dilapidated exterior, drooping under their own weight. This is no place for respectful habitation. I find my mind wishing that the vision I saw in René’s memories are just that: imaginations. It would be cruel to let hundreds of people reside here, let alone orphans.
I push past those black, spear-like iron gates and briskly walk through to the yard. The trees here, which should have bloomed by now under the auspices of summer, are a sickly-white, with only a smattering of buds struggling to open amidst dripping branches.
I put my hand on the main entrance and push it, but it doesn’t budge.
“That entrance is blocked, whoever you are!”
Someone calls from afar, making me flinch. I creak my head.
The figure stands at the main gates in a navy overcoat, hair of wheat slicked back relaxedly. “It’s been that way for years. You need to go through the back,” he continues, standing with an inquisitive air, curious. And that’s when I realize it’s –
“Mr. Reynauld?”
“...Hold on, you are...” recognition flashes across his expression.
We approach each other in an unexpected reunion.
“What serendipity! It is you!” he exclaims, as we both briskly embrace. “To run into you at a place like this – what brings you to this town?” he asks, concern evident.
“The surprise is mine – I’m just here to find something.”
“Here? At the orphanage?”
My voice catches in my throat. “...The orphanage? This building?”
“Yes, E. J. Greenwood. I understood you knew about it?”
“No, yes, I mean, it’s difficult to explain.”
“I see. Well, this town is not hospitable to visitors – at least not at the moment where the Syndicate’s running it as their turf. Are you here alone?”
“Yes. What about you?”
“My usual retinue’s right behind me.”
Half a dozen guards behind the trees dressed in plainclothes make a subtle gesture of acknowledgement as Reynauld turns, so subtle that I almost miss it.
“In places not too conspicuous. Look, it’s not entirely safe out here, especially if you are traveling alone. It may have been a couple of years ago, but it presently finds itself in the crosshairs of many unsavory things.”
“What about you? Why did you visit?”
“I’m here to scout out a supplier. The deal’s happening tomorrow.”
“I assume you are familiar with the town then?”
“Yes. Many of my father’s friends are based in this area. I’ve been here a couple dozen times.”
“Mmm-hmm...”
“I am off time at the moment to get some luncheon. What about you?”
“I have some tasks I need to attend to. In there, I think.”
“What tasks exactly?”
“I need to get some records. From whoever runs this place.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Names of children? Who they’ve been adopted by?”
“Kind of like that.”
“Well I am uncertain as to how amenable they would be in letting you see those, unless you wanted to adopt. Or unless you are from the Council or higher-up who can show their authority,” he remarks, glancing at his watch. “How about I accompany you? I can help you find for whatever you’re looking for.”
That would be much appreciated. I had an uneasy feeling about this place ever since I stepped foot on its bounds. I could defend myself quite adequately with the Art of Air, but against an ambush or anything of that sort... why was I even thinking of anything like that? It’s just an orphanage! Right...?
“If it doesn’t trouble you, Mr. Reynauld, you are most welcome,” I say, feeling relieved, telling him the brief rundown on what I wanted to find. A record, a ledger, and whether I could find the name René in it. Or Manfred. I say I'm leaning on finding the name Manfred first.
He nods and motions his guards to stand by at the brick and iron perimeter.
“This front entrance is famous for not doing its job,” Reynauld jests, as he leads the way towards the back, walking in confident strides. “Played around here once when I was a kid, saw adults entering and exiting through the back. I was curious so I tried to explore the building, but the front was locked.”
He cautiously opens a rusty metal door on the back, streaked with misty waves. It’s dark inside, but we make sight of outlines of several heads which turn in our direction.
It’s children.
Their shaved heads catch the brief light outside as they gather around us, hands outstretched, feeling for our coats and hugging us close.
So it is indeed an orphanage. But to keep their conditions like that....! I am a bit taken aback, almost recoiling from the eerie sight, but Reynauld pats the head of one.
“Can you show us to where the intendent is?” Reynauld asks.
What must have been a girl nods without a word and pulls on our sleeves towards a hallway. They shuffle behind us to let us lead the way.
We pass the dim hallway – punctuated only by the light falling from the occasional windowsill, and pass into a large wooden door and gate. The boys and girls move away and retreat behind us as we creak the door open.
A harsh man’s voice drums off the cracks of the door.
“What did I say about sorting these correctly?!” he shouts, slapping a boy in the head with a folder. His reprimands echo off the walls and corrugated iron railings and stairs of the giant warehouse. The children look emaciated, dressed in clothes too threadbare for the cold of spring rain. A sack from a flour pack would make better protection against the cold. Their arms and legs are gangly and bony.
“And you, what’s with your pace? Everyone here works hard to get bread on the table, and you want to eat for free?” A girl with a shaved head looks down onto the floor, trying not to cry. The superintendent – the boss of this place – picks up a jar from her low-stepped workbench and rattles the metal pieces inside. “This – shouldn’t – rattle! Understand?”
“Yes sir...” the girl croaks.
The superintendent, not noticing us walking through the door, shouts over the sounds and noises of clattering metal and work.
“You think things out there are easy? It’s harder than here!” he enunciates in a volume that makes the children flinch. “Out there, Bloods prowl the streets, ready to pluck you one by one! If you don’t pull your own weight here to support everyone else, then you don’t deserve to be here! You deserve no home!”
“In time, people will come and consider you. But only if you can be loved! Would any parent want a child that lazes about and play, play, play all day? Put yourself in their shoes, for the sake of –” he announces, halting his next words as he sights us.
He changes his expression to an amicable countenance, lips grinning and frog-eyes narrowed in a false smile, fixing his dirtied cravat and adjusting his vest.
“Ah... esteemed visitors, I do apologize that you had to hear all of that.”
We look at him in a mixture of sadness and disgust.
Is this how you treat the children under your care, is what I want to say, but I don’t want to needlessly antagonize him before–
“Is this how you treat the children under your care?” Reynauld asks indignantly, stepping closer.
“No, sir, no, this – this is to ensure bread is on the table. The Council cut our funding, so we’ve been on our own for the last couple years.”
“What’s with those? What are they making?”
“Tenaliton. They’re salvaging it from the metal scraps. Each piece they are able to salvage earns them money. We place that money into their private coffers so they can support themselves when they grow older or get adopted.”
“You’re running a workhouse, not an orphanage,” Reynauld threatens. “I don’t see any classrooms or places for them to run around as children.”
“You misunderstand, good sir, allow me to introduce you and your wife around to the –”
Wife? I want to blurt out, but in this situation, I surmise such a prejudice is useful. By pretending we are married and looking to adopt, we can fish information out of him as much as we want. Reynauld himself must have thought the same thing, because he lets the superintendent proceed.
The superintended whistles a nosy bell to which the children stand. “The gathering hall, in ten! Make yourselves clean!” he announces, in a gentler tone that is so obviously false that it makes me sick. Who knows how many years of abuse these children endured from this two-faced snake...?!
The superintendent shows us around several classrooms with the barest of amenities, with chalk that seemed like last year’s alphabet class etched into the chalkboard. I brush my hands to erase it, but it does not rub off. It doesn’t even smudge.
The superintendent looks at me, his head erratic at angles, pursing his lip and carrying on. He shows us around the indoor gymnasium, with rubber boards and seats cracking like earth under a drought. The walls are off-white, flaking off in several places in cracks. A jungle gym with yellow red and blue has paint peeling off, with rust in several places. Several corrugated iron staircases lead upwards to their quarters.
Their bedrooms – more barracks – have such low ceilings that Reynauld and I have to bend to glance inside. Hay matting and straws and blocks of wood like pillows are strewn across the headrests of their poorly made beds.
We grimace and nod our way down the stairs, through the gymnasium, and to the large hall where all the children have assembled.
“Hundred-and-ninety-two,” I whisper under my breath.
“So... any child takes your fancy?”
The superintendent grins nervously, rubbing his hands together. I am wondering how I am to break the news that we’re not actually adopting a child, rather to search, when Reynauld smoothly comes through with his speech.
“Yes, a child named Manfred, who came through here some time ago,” he replies, casually. “He was adopted, but the adoptive parents unfortunately got caught in a crossfire between the Syndicate and the Council. The neighbors say he was returned here. We are here to take him home.”
The many children waiting in the assembly droop their heads, shifting their feet.
“Manfred... Manfred...” the superintendent repeats, feeling the taste of the word on his lips. “There was one boy named Manfred, I remember.”
“Is he here now?”
“Well, no, but if that’s what happened, I’m mighty sorry to hear that,” he remarks without an ounce of sadness in his eyes, shuffling his attention away for we are no longer profitable.
“How far back was he adopted?” I ask.
“Can’t remember.”
“Can’t remember?” Reynauld reiterates. “Surely you keep records.”
“Those aren’t for any eyes, I’m afraid.”
“Any chance I can allay those fears?” Reynauld says, cocking his head.
The superintendent narrows his eyes. He looks to the children, to us, and then back again.
“Dismissed! Recess until three,” he announces. The mass of children begin shuffling, downtrodden, out of the hall.
The superintendent waits for the remaining last dozen children to trickle through, and turn to us.
“And what do you have in mind to allay my fears?” The superintendent asks, his eyes shifting for the gleam of a coin.
“We’ll see when we get there, I suppose,” Reynauld comments.
“That isn’t how this works,” the greasy superintendent objects, shrugging.
“Oh, I’m afraid it does,” continues Reynauld, as casual as ever. “I’ve just halved your sum. Pray I do not alter it further.”
“Why you – you want the records or not?”
“I do, of course.”
“Then, well, show me what you’ve got!”
“Now until you show me those records first.”
“Ain’t happening.”
“Last chance,” Reynauld says, his voice low and threatening. “If you want something positive your way.”
“Get lost, you piece of dung!” The superintendent spits, smashing it with his boot. His back is to the gates, but as he turns, half a dozen men in plainclothes are blocking it, tapping their foot.
The orphanage guards slide down the wall half-beaten. Reynauld’s guards shake their head. The governesses peer from behind them, cupping their mouths.
“Your records. Please,” says Reynauld.
* * *
“When did you manage to get them in?” I whisper into his ear, on our way to the office at the pinnacle.
“Oh, we have our signals. I told my general to step in once the intendent refuses my second offer.”
“How brilliant of you. Thanks.”
“Didn’t break a sweat,” he says. “Pick up the pace, will you!”
“It’s only a few seconds, damn it,” the superintendent swears, eyes flicking back to the entourage of Reynauld’s guards behind us.
He throws the doors open and furiously searches through the mountain of folders and piles, clearly without a care for organization. He fishes one out, looks through the other with quick hands, and then another, fumbling, sighing, muttering all the while.
Reynauld raises his eyebrow, and so do I.
“Manfred, Manfred, where are you, you little cantankerous piece of – AHA! This,” the superintendent says, shoving the file down at us, expectant.
My hand shakes as I lift it upon spying names so familiar.
No. 22 37 Surayasna 1841 Adopter: Minerva Cartier Adoptee: Manfred A. Bastian
I lay the file down. It corroborates my suspicion. In the seizure-induced nightmare, the name that the children yelled when calling out to René was 'Manfred'.
My head trembles. Breath catches in my throat.
Something was wrong. To what extent I did not know, but something was indeed wrong. This is the first clue.
The boy in the cottage may not be Minerva’s biological son.
I can barely give a nod of affirmation to Reynauld. We turn to leave the way we came. “Come a time, I’ll do something about this place,” Reynauld says. But my head’s not in the mood, because all I can think now is why and how Minerva would choose to not tell me everything about René.
* * *
Minerva shifts in her seat, concern upon her brow. “You saw something alarming in René’s dream?” She asks me, seated across from her, whispering.
“Yes,” I whisper back. “There is – back when René had the seizure, when I dream-dived, I saw memories of an orphanage. René was in this memory. He held the typical features of a child at an orphanage. He was shaved and wearing threadbare clothes, and he was being chased by other children. He was crying, saying he didn’t want to be abandoned. I think maybe his sickness has got to do something with it – I don’t know which exactly – but I think he has this fear of being abandoned, and that’s manifesting as the orphanage which he believes he is at.”
“A memory of an orphanage...” Minerva trails off. “That can’t be. He’s my son. My biological son. We’d not taken him anywhere nor abandoned him at a place, ever...”
My heart squeezes. Either someone made up the records at Greenwood, or Minerva’s not the one who adopted René – well, Manfred perhaps – or Minerva herself is not telling the truth. I was still going to be referring to René as René to Minerva – I was still far from seeing the whole picture. For all I know, René in the bedroom upstairs could be the real René still, and the existence of Manfred has been conjured up by someone who wanted to trouble the Cartier family. They were wealthy, so it wasn’t out of the possibility.
“Please, Amelie – why do you think he has this memory? Do you think the trauma of losing his father made him so? Felt abandoned by his father? And that’s why he’s ensnared in this nightmare?” Minerva asks, hand over her heart, leaning in so close I can see her eyes moisten with desperation tears. “It’s the closest thing we’ve ever had to the source of his disease. Maybe if we can understand him further, maybe if we can coax out this nightmare and bring it to the light, we can remove it – you can exorcise it! Maybe that could heal him! It should!”
She enunciates her words with such hope and expectation that I am afraid to let her down. I still have to dive again. I still have to investigate further. I gently place my hand on her back and pull her close. “Don’t worry – I won’t let this chance go to waste. You have my word.”