Secrets of the Tally

by Halie Fewkes

  “You bet,” he said, pulling them down for me. “You’ve just got to disarm your opponent or get your tip pointed at them to win, so doubles are great for sparring.”

  I stole a glance at Liz to see her grab wooden short swords as well, and she stepped back into the freezing morning, still not bothered by the cold.

  “It’s interesting. Even without memory, you’re still drawn to the type of weapon you used to use,” West said. He handed me the wooden blades, and their weight in my hands made me feel instantly more secure, like I had just gained a little control over the shifting sands of my life. “How was last night?” he asked.

  “It could have gone better,” I replied. “And Liz didn’t tell me much about myself. West, what sort of person am I? Am I just like everybody else here?”

  West shrugged one shoulder and replied, “Yeah, you’re like everyone else, just a little better.” My list was definitely a secret then. “And honestly, I think you might scare people. You like to work with the murderous combat dragons, whereas I’d rather do any other chore in the Dragona. Maybe that’s just me though, valuing personal safety and such nonsense.”

  I smiled because the idea of personal safety did seem like a joke, and I also liked the sound of combat dragons. If sparring didn’t jog my memory, I’d be signing up to work with them as soon as I could.

  “Are you going to take all day?” Liz asked impatiently.

  “No, I’m here,” I said, joining her in the ring of light.

  I tossed one of my wooden swords into the air, caught it, spun it, and knew this was going to be easy. Liz lunged straight for me and I easily sidestepped to avoid her. She recovered quickly and stabbed straight for my face, a move I blocked as an afterthought. She clearly wanted to win, but she was off balance and reckless.

  I struck to see how she’d react, but she parried me and went for my throat. With my right hand I took a risk and swiped both of her swords away in one swift movement while I brought my left blade up to point at her neck.

  As quickly as it had started, it was over. Sir Bruscan gaped at me, and the rest of the group stared as well.

  “You just beat Liz in less than seven seconds,” he said in amazement. “I mean, it usually takes you about twelve, but still…”

  Fighting felt like running or speaking, a skill so engrained that I had woken up with it. Unfortunately, this meant I hadn’t recalled any of my past in the effort.

  “Ready to take on two at a time?” Sir Bruscan asked.

  “Two? Can I do that?”

  Everybody laughed at my question. “We might have to make it three if they’re not hard enough,” he replied.

  West had already jumped into the shed and come back out with a long blade and no need for an invitation. It was him and Liz against me, and I was ready.

  “Go!” Sir Bruscan shouted. In less than a second, West and Liz both came at me and I had no time to think. Three swords against my two — I dodged one of Liz’s and parried the other two from her and West combined. The fight still wasn’t necessarily hard; it just required a little more involvement from the rest of my body.

  I bent over backwards to avoid a blow from West and kicked one of Liz’s swords from her hands when I saw the opportunity. It probably wouldn’t have worked in a real battle, but oh well. West was unbalanced after his blow missed, and I took no hesitation in jumping back up and maneuvering my blade around his to touch him with the tip.

  He stepped out of the circle, distracting Liz just enough. I got a parry with one sword and then victory with the other as I held it to her once again. As our audience applauded, she smiled and asked, “Do you remember something now?”

  With my sword still poised over her neck, I replied, “No,” and withdrew it. Liz didn’t stop smiling, and I wondered if she even heard me.

  “And that, boys and girls, is how it’s done,” Sir Bruscan rounded off the applause with a final few loud claps. I was relieved to step out of the circle. Not that the fighting wasn’t fun, I just didn’t adore the attention from all sides.

  Sir Bruscan called a girl with frizzy dark hair out to fight and I sat down with Liz and West to watch as a shorter boy stepped up against her, his sword on fire. Now that I was out of the action, I had to bite back the irritation I felt for not recovering any of my past. Sparring didn’t scare me, and I guessed that was why it didn’t jog my memory either. I needed real danger, it seemed; practice-danger wasn’t enough.

  “That was really good, Allie,” Liz said. “Even after you lose your mind, you can still annihilate us all in sparring.”

  “It’s fun,” I replied, trying not to see fun as a waste of my time. “Actually, that was a lot of fun,” I admitted. “Do we practice every morning?”

  “Yes,” West replied, “and tonight at the Eclipsival, we get to fight with the real swords, sharpened and everything.”

  The notion of danger perked my attention, but that sounded like too much danger. Play-fighting with sharpened swords? “Don’t we run the risk of dying?” I asked.

  “I thought I told you about the Eclipsival last night,” Liz said. “Nobody can get hurt during the Eclipse of the three moons, so we get to play in fire and fight with sharp swords. I was wondering why you wore your good clothes. You should have worn something you don’t mind destroying.”

  “You definitely didn’t mention that,” I said.

  The fighting girl with the frizzy hair surprised me when she flung out a hand and blasted her fire-wielding opponent out of the circle.

  “And if we can’t be killed, why are we wasting our time celebrating?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we be out attacking the Escalis?”

  “The Escalis can’t be killed during the eclipse either,” West said. “So, we could knock down some of their buildings, but I think it’s better that we take a break from them. A break from the constant fear.”

  “I heard that Dincara will be attacking the Escalis during the eclipse,” Liz said.

  “Well that’s not a surprise,” West replied. Seeing the blank look on my face, he added, “Dincara is our fortress on the coast. They’ve got the best non-mage fighters, and that’s where the ships from Tekada dock.”

  A loud whack from the ring interrupted our conversation, but I could only see one person swinging his sword foolishly around, fighting someone invisible.

  “Where are we going after this?” I asked Liz, beginning to feel restless.

  “West and I still have chores to do before the Eclipsival tonight,” Liz said.

  “We could take you to the Wreck first,” West said.

  I smiled, wondering when anybody was going to catch on that I couldn’t remember anything. “I don’t know what that is.”

  Liz said, “It’s where people go when they aren’t working. There’s food, and games, and other people. It’s basically where you spend any free time. And it’s like a circus right now with everybody here for the Eclipsival. They’ve been selling things and doing crazy tricks in there for weeks.”

  “Great, I’m ready to go,” I said, anxious to charge forward with my day.

  I was going to be able to put myself into as much danger as I wanted as soon as the moons eclipsed each other, and with all the Eclipsival chaos, I could find a way to stay in danger after the moons’ safety had vanished. By the end of the night, I might know why the Escalis hated me and why I had once hidden a list of so many tally marks.

  Chapter Six

  I was itching to leave by the time we headed to the Wreck. Liz turned to look at me as we climbed a grassy hill near the base of the mountain. “Guess what, Allie. There’s a new guy who just showed up at the Dragona. From what I hear, he’s your age and extremely good-looking.” She nudged me in the side an excessive amount of times.

  “Liz… I have a lot of other things on my mind right now,” I smiled. “Why is this relevant?”

  “Well! I was just thinking that he’s going to be new, and you’re sort of feeling like you’re new. You could be friends.”

 
“Thanks, but I’ll be alright.”

  I just then realized the racket taking place ahead, and we came over the grassy knoll to see hundreds of people set out in front of us. If the market from Tabriel Vale had grown ten times in size and added jugglers and fiddlers, it might have barely compared to what we were seeing now.

  “This is just the spillover of people who couldn’t fit in the Wreck,” West said, raising his voice to compete with the event as we approached. “Keep in mind when we get inside that this isn’t how it normally looks!”

  “Come on!” Liz grabbed my shoulder as one of the people-streams moved us toward a pile of boulders. Thrilling music behind the rocks sparked excitement in me, and we climbed between them to reach an enormous cavern filled with shouting, laughter, and chatter. Half the continent’s population seemed to be packed in to see it all, and the cavern’s sheer size took my breath away. Three fiddlers and a drummer played upbeat jigs immediately to our right while a troop of bounding dancers took up the space to our left, putting smiles on every watching face.

  “Back here is where you get food when you’re hungry,” West shouted over the celebration, leading the way through the crowd. He laughed. “There isn’t usually quite so much though.” I could see the blaze of cooking ovens taking up an entire wall, all making bread from the smell of it, while three enormous bears roasted on turning-spits. Smoke escaped through a skylight, but the wonderful smell remained to make my mouth water.

  Another source of entertainment from across the Wreck reached me over the music — one calling voice, answered by a chorus of others.

  “Two roasted stuffed peppers, sing hey hidey hey!”

  “Hey hey two stuffed peppers to roast right away!”

  I looked quickly to Liz just as she made a one-footed turn, dropped to her knees, and crawled beneath a table to get to a pile of brightly colored undershirts.

  “Liz,” I said, snagging her attention as she stood with the table between us. “We’ve got to see the Travelling Baking Show.” Their calls already felt like a familiar pull.

  The fiddlers finished a song, but Liz didn’t lower her voice appropriately. “Go on without me!” Her face reddened slightly as she realized she wasn’t competing with the music anymore and had drawn attention. She lifted an ugly pink undershirt in front of her face, pretending it had her full focus. “West and I have to get our chores done anyway, so we should probably go.”

  “Alright, then I’ll meet you at the Eclipsival tonight?” I asked.

  “Sounds good.” She set the shirt back down to feel the soft fabric of a different blue one. “And the tunnel back to your room is over there.” She stood on her toes and pointed. “You’ll just need to take a left and then a right, and then you go up into the tunnel above and take a right and then a left, and you’ll be at your room.”

  “Thanks Liz. I’ll see you both later.”

  “Have a good life,” she said, a phrase that seemed to be of her own making.

  I engrained left, right, up, right, left in my mind as I turned to push through the crowd, then turned around to walk backwards. “You have a good life too, Liz.” My use of her words made her smile, filling me with the kind of warmth that made me smile back.

  The Baking Show had thrown a makeshift wooden structure over their heads, and Corliss stood on top with her mass of curly hair, taking orders from the giant ring of spectators and relaying them to the crew below.

  I was almost to them when I noticed a curious group of girls point me out, whisper to each other, and begin to make their way over. The crowd was so dense that I knew I would never make it to the Travelling Baking Show in time to avoid the girls’ questions. As the only option I could think of, I cupped my hands to my mouth and shouted, “One Baking Show Special, sweet sauce and sliced roast!”

  Half of the Travelling Baking Show began their reply automatically, but the other half found me among the crowd and Old Osty shouted. “Allie! Great to see you!”

  I battled my way through the people and Corliss crouched from on top of the structure to say, “Best seat in the house is up here! I’ll pull you up.”

  “Alright,” I agreed with a smile, feeling truly welcome as Corliss extended a hand down to me and I jumped.

  I was surprised she was strong enough to pull me onto the wooden roof, but she did it effortlessly, and I sat down as the next customer shouted an order to her. She entertained the entire crowd with her energy, confident voice, and ability to twist anything into a joke. And during her short breaks from interacting with the spectators, I told her about what had happened since yesterday.

  “It’s absurd that there isn’t a single mind mage around with the Eclipsival tonight,” Corliss said.

  “I know. It’s just my luck.”

  The bakers below groaned at something that hadn’t turned out right, and Corliss leaned half her body over the side of the roof. “Osty! I can still hear you messing up the calls from up here. How long have you been doing this?”

  “It isn’t my fault,” he called back. “You guys change the order calls on me every other week. I’m elderly!”

  “Osty. We only changed it a week ago because we ran out of wheat toast. Now we’ve changed it back. Adjust!”

  Another of the bakers below defended him. “Come on, Corliss. How many years did it take you to get sweet sauce and sliced roast right?”

  “Hardly any,” she replied, pulling herself back up to stand again.

  The guy below asked, “How many poor customers thought their Baking Show Schpecial had sleet sauce, and sweet swauce, and swiced woast—”

  I saw Corliss grinning as she shot back, “And how many dishes did you break the first day you started?”

  “Nearly all of them? I told you, it was on purpose. I was starting a new theme, and the customers loved it.”

  “Who is that?” I asked, wanting a face to put with the quick-witted voice below.

  “That’s just Archie,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “He wasn’t with us yesterday when you met the troop, but he’s a friend of ours. And he apparently has the potential to become a mage, so he’s been invited to stay here at the Dragona. That lucky bat.”

  She took a few more orders, and I faintly heard the Archie guy from below say he was heading out to find his room. “I think I’m going to go, Corliss,” I said, curious to catch a glimpse of the stranger before he left.

  “Alright, let me know how the memory stuff turns out for you,” she replied.

  I swung my feet off the wooden roof and dropped to the ground, accidentally smashing into the person beneath me along the way. I knocked a load of things from his hands and caused him to drop a bag full of loud clanking items. I was back on my feet in a second, face flushed like a boiling lobster.

  “I am so sorry!” I immediately crouched to help him pick it all up, my self-esteem refusing to let me look anywhere but at the objects I hastily grabbed. “I don’t know why I didn’t look—”

  “It’s fine,” he assured me. “I needed to sort through it all anyway. Now I won’t be so shocked at what I find.”

  “Well I guess that’s a good way to look at it,” I mumbled as I stacked a couple rolls of paper on top of each other. One of them had been open when I ran into him, a map of the whole Dragona.

  Corliss stifled her howling laughter from the top of the wooden structure, and although the gathered crowd wasn’t quite as ruthless as Corliss, they still had the pointing and snickering bit down. Corliss finally took her hands off her mouth, wiped a tear from her eye, and asked, “All part of the show then? Sing hey hidey hey?”

  “Yes, all part of my theme,” the guy named Archie replied. He took one step closer to her to add, “Next theme day, I’m breaking more than just your dishes.”

  “Right, right, you break all sorts of things,” Corliss agreed. “You break dishes and equipment, now you break falls. Go break a leg finding your room!” She broke back into laughter, and when I finally felt brave enough to look at Archie, I saw
he wore the grin most people reserved for old and good friends.

  It suddenly donned on me that this was the same new guy Liz had mentioned earlier in the day. She had gotten something right. He had straw-blond hair, and beneath his several-shades-darker eyebrows were blue eyes that I immediately feared I would be caught looking at.

  “Hey, are you alright?” he asked, picking up the last of his things.

  I handed everything back to him, unable to say anything except, “I am so sorry.”

  “Really, it’s fine. You know how you can make it up to me though? This map.” He waved the roll of map I had just given him. “I don’t understand it at all. Would you mind helping me out?”

  “I could try,” I said, still horrifically aware of the ring of onlookers. “We should walk though.”

  “Alright.”

  I promptly took off to escape the watching crowd, which of course, involved entering into the crowd itself, but Archie was right behind me until I stopped. “Alright,” I started off. “Again, I’m really sorry—”

  “Sorry about what? There’s nothing to apologize for.” He unrolled the map and tapped it three times. “Do you have any idea how this mess of squiggling lines is going to get me to my room?”

  I took the map from him and then stared it down, trying to understand the chaos of tunnels that looped over each other, split apart then reconnected, and dead-ended unexpectedly. “This really doesn’t make sense. I hoped I might find my room on it too, but I can't even find the Wreck.”

  I handed it back to him as he sighed. “Whoever decided to throw noodles at a piece of paper and call it a map should be shot. I doubt anyone can read it.” He tilted it drastically to the side. “Although, maybe if we had a new angle…” I let a sharp laugh escape as he smiled and rolled it up. “Well, you know my name, but you haven’t told me yours.”

  “I guess I haven’t. I’m Allie. The assaulter of newcomers.”

  “What a title. I guess I’ll see you at the Eclipsival tonight?” he asked.