The Memory Thief

by Lauren Mansy

  “You already did.” He strokes my cheek with his finger. “Most everyone in Craewick owes their life to Greer, Penn, and you. The three of you saved us all.”

  As my mother sleeps in the bed beside mine, Grandfather, Ryder, and Reid stay up with me all night. My grandfather pours out stories about his true loves—my grandmother Violet and my mother, her spunk and lively spirit that was bold enough to fight for a life with my father.

  I drink up his words, spinning together my history with each tale. I look at my grandfather and then at Ryder, wondering how all these different threads of my life have somehow been beautifully braided together.

  Reid catches my eye and grins.

  And I know I’m finally home.

  CHAPTER

  23

  A month has passed since we brought war to Craewick. A month since my mother woke from her coma and my father gave up his life for me. When my grandfather received a granddaughter on his doorstep, Madame was knocked off her throne, and the city of Craewick changed from gray to color.

  The bloodstains have been scrubbed from the cobblestones, the remains of the auction stage chopped and stacked for firewood as we soak in the last days of autumn and prepare for the winter ahead.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve woken to screams, but tonight they’re back. Not mine but Ryder’s, coming through the thin wall we share between our bedrooms.

  I light a candle and tiptoe into the hallway of the orphanage, once Madame’s mansion. It feels so much bigger without all the orphans scurrying about every which way. Mother tucked them in one-by-one hours ago.

  Ryder’s door creaks open as I let myself in. “Ry?”

  She stirs but doesn’t wake.

  I sit on the edge of her bed, gently rubbing her shoulder.

  She gasps, rousing out of sleep with a quickness that startles me. Her face is flushed and sweaty as she lets out long breath and rubs her eyes. “Etta,” she whispers. “Did I wake you? I just . . . she was . . .” Ry glances around her room. “She was here.”

  Setting the candle on her bedside table, I ask, “Madame?”

  “I’m not afraid during the day,” Ry says quickly as I nod and give her my ‘of course not’ look, “but at night, everything changes. It’s like I can feel her here.”

  “Plotting her revenge?” I guess. “She can’t, Ry. She’s not even strong enough to get out of her asylum bed.”

  She props her pillow up behind her, brushing a mess of curls away from her face. “What if my heart knows that but my head doesn’t believe it?”

  A question I’ve asked myself too. Some days I wake wondering if I’m back in the old Craewick. That the darkness of night has given Madame her power, given my mother her coma, and given my father back to the Maze.

  “Move over,” I tell her, and she gives me room to lean back on her pillow. “Remember what you told me the day we got Mother’s auction notice? That when I planned to fight the Minders—”

  “You wouldn’t have to do it alone,” she finishes.

  “You knew way before me that some people are better together than apart,” I say, nudging her softly. “And you know what’s different about Craewick now? It isn’t just Madame who lost her power, but the people of Craewick finally found theirs. She thought weakness was relying on anyone but herself, but in the end, it was the only way to defeat her. You showed me that, Ry. You’re the bravest person I know.”

  She lets out a faint laugh. “I don’t feel brave.”

  “Well, as someone very wise once told me, being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid of anything. Just that the fear doesn’t stop you from fighting for something you believe in.”

  “Did Grandfather say that?”

  I grin. “Who else?”

  It’s been a few days since Ryder’s adoption into our family became official, but the thing I’ll remember most is when she pulled me aside at Grandfather’s celebratory dinner and said, “You know I’m all for parties and presents, but you’ve already been my sister for as long as I can remember.”

  Ry smiles, wiggling her toes on top of the blanket. “Nah, you’re the brave one, Etta. You’re the one who saved everyone out there.”

  “Nah.” I rest my head on top of hers. “I’m pretty sure it’s the other way around.”

  On my way back to bed, I pass my mother sitting on the stone hearth of the fireplace, still glowing with embers. She looks up from my journal, the one I promised to give her after she woke, spread across her lap. Around her neck is the tiny key to its lock, dangling on a silver chain just like the one my grandfather gave to me. It’s a sight that warms my heart, but tears sting my eyes as I imagine how my father should be beside her.

  “Hello, my love,” she says. “I peeked into Ryder’s room, but it seems a talk with her sister is all she needed.”

  I meet her smile and sit, resting my head on her shoulder as she wraps her blanket around us. I glance at the journal entry she’s been staring at, a charcoal sketch of my father. “I’ve missed him for four years, but this is a different kind of hurt,” I say, touching the corner of the page. “I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “To be given hope only to have it taken away again . . . It’s a different kind of sorrow,” she says, tucking a wisp of hair behind my ear. “Hardly a minute goes by when I don’t think of him, but in a way, isn’t that a lovely thing, Julietta? To be so loved that you’re always near one’s thoughts? I see him every day through the memories we made together, and the ones he gifted me with of you. Your father gave me the greatest blessings I could ever ask for.”

  “I’m so proud of him,” I say. “Even after he thought he’d lost us, he forgave Grandfather. He took all the bad that happened between them and changed it into something so powerful that Madame couldn’t defeat it.”

  She kisses the top of my head. “Learning to love again might not have been easy for him, but when we keep fighting to see the good in this world, our hearts will only grow stronger. Your father honored our memory, and now we get the chance to honor his.”

  The next afternoon, Reid and I linger at the stairs of the asylum. I take in the steep steps, noticing how this tall, narrow building doesn’t seem frightening anymore. Not with bushels of violets spilling out of the urns beside the door, and a fresh coat of paint on the bricks.

  “You sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Reid asks for the umpteenth time today.

  “I do want you with me,” I say. “But I think I should see Madame alone.”

  “You don’t have to see her today, Etta. You don’t have to see her at all.”

  I ponder it for a moment, the nagging feeling I’ve tried to ignore for weeks flaring up inside me. My grandfather tells me I won’t recognize Madame, but after my talk with Ryder, I want to see her, if only to be assured she’s no longer capable of the evil she unleashed in this city.

  “All the memories I have of her need an ending,” I say.

  Reid nods, understanding even if he doesn’t feel the same way. “She isn’t a threat anymore. Not now, not ever. You made sure of that.”

  “Well, I had pretty good partners.”

  “Is that so?”

  I angle toward him. “Now that you mention it, one was just all right. Kind of demanding, a bit moody.” I tell my lips to knock off the smiling, but they don’t listen. Reid opens his mouth but I hold my hand up. “Oh, I’m not finished. Very stubborn, overprotective . . .”

  He grins. “He feels the same way about you.”

  “Is that so?” I say, my smile fading as I stare up at the building. “I’ve built up all these images of Madame in my head, but the truth is she’s locked up in her own asylum, isn’t she?”

  “She is. But besides that, you’ve always been stronger than you think. At least you know that now,” he says, and I remember how he helped me believe that on our journey to Aravid. Back when I thought strength was something that once lost could never be found again.

  “Maybe this strength has more to do
with who’s standing beside me,” I say.

  He smiles faintly. “I’ll wait for you at Porter’s. Felix found some old maps in Madame’s desk that he wanted to show me. Thought I’d bring Ry along.”

  “She’ll love that.”

  Ever since she met him, Ryder’s been about all-things-Felix, an endless spring of questions concerning the Minders, their training methods, and battle techniques. A little commander in the making, Felix calls her.

  For weeks, Reid and I have been plotting where the Ungifted Tribes could be. It won’t be easy to find them, as for years they even managed to outsmart Madame. But we have a good idea who might have clues—the Hunters. They know every inch of the forest better than we ever will, and we’re hoping a certain wolf boy and fox girl might be willing to work with us.

  I long to meet Reid’s mother and sister, but I can’t pretend I’m not frightened by the idea. Because of me, they lost a son and a brother. Yet I yearn to thank the family of the boys who taught me life’s truest joys can’t be bought.

  At the top of the steps, I turn to glance at Reid, reminded of what my grandfather said during our stroll through the woods yesterday.

  “Reid looks so calm now. Peaceful, even.”

  “He’s always looked like that, Grandfather,” I say. The bruises have healed, and the cut above his eye is a small scar. Though he’s limping, I don’t see much of a difference from when I first met him. “He’s a Sifter with the world spread out before him and doesn’t want any of it. He’s always known exactly who he is.”

  Pushing through the door, it’s difficult to take in all the changes that’ve occurred in the asylum the past month. It was one of the few buildings that survived the battle, and it’s been filled with patients ever since. Only this time, they’re actually on the mend, far more being checked-out than checked-in.

  A few days after my grandfather assumed control of Craewick, Beau arrived with barrels of the violet compound, along with those who lived in the Maze. Most spend their days here, their knowledge of the healing process invaluable. They’re living proof of how well the compound works, giving hope to those who need it most.

  Unlike my mother, whose mind had four years to heal before receiving the compound, most of these patients will be here for a while. Some need physical healing—mostly Gifted soldiers who were able to protect themselves from attacks of the mind. Many of the Ungifted are working on regaining their memories and coming out of comas. It’ll be a long process, I know full-well, but nothing compares to hearing a loved one’s voice again. The happiness far outweighs any past sorrow.

  Clutching the pendant of my necklace, I stand outside Madame’s room, where my mother once slept.

  “Why should we show her mercy?” asks the Minder stationed here. “She would murder us all.”

  I smile sadly, reminded of what Greer once told Bray, and pull the curtain open. “Because there should be a difference between her and us.”

  Curled on her side, Madame looks small now, the opposite of the intimidating woman atop the auction block. Her eyelids twitch as I sit beside her bed, watching as she rouses herself from the nightmares that hold her prisoner most of the time.

  I’ve had a hard time feeling sorry for someone like her. But when I see how she’s ripped the hair from her balding scalp and how frail she’s become, I realize this is no longer Madame. That woman died the day we battled over Craewick.

  She opens her mouth three or four times before saying, “You were broken, Julietttta,” so quietly I barely hear her, but there’s a question in her voice, something which appears to haunt her.

  How did you do this?

  “Do you know who came . . . to see me? Braaay,” she says, pulling in a trembling breath. “I thought he would . . . kill . . .” She pauses, grimacing. “‘There has been enough death in Craewickkk,’ he said.” A thin laugh escapes her, followed by a series of rattling coughs. “I ordered that Minder to slit his brother’s throat and he is too weeeak to do anything about it.” She clutches the sheet with gnarled fists and grinds her teeth.

  The nurses say that she does this often. Moments of coherency followed by episodes where she shivers uncontrollably, her skin icy to the touch. Eventually, she’ll fall into a coma. And then all the history of Craewick, all those memories from rulers of old, will be locked up inside her. We all agree it’s time to start anew.

  Her eyes roll back before she says in a voice lower than her own, “Weakness is perceiving a threat and doing nothing to stop it.”

  I draw closer, her words identical to ones in my memory of when my mother was first placed in this bed.

  Her voice changes to one I recognize, heard every week from the auction block. “Yes, Father.”

  “Threats are only threats if you allow them to flourish. Seek and destroy,” says the lower voice.

  “Oh, I’ve already found my greatest threat,” says Madame. “And I plan to destroy it.”

  “Who?” answers the lower voice.

  “You,” she whispers.

  A chill runs down my spine as I watch Madame’s memories play out, remembering what my grandfather said when we first spoke of her condition.

  “She’s reliving a variety of things, her memories muddled with those from generations of other Craewick rulers. Most of the time, she cries out to her father, calling him weak and vowing she’ll never be looked upon the same way. Were you aware that he was murdered?”

  “She told me herself,” I say.

  He looks at Madame. “Well, we’ve finally discovered who his murderer was.”

  Widening my eyes, I gasp. “She killed her own father?”

  “Our past has a way of finding us, doesn’t it? Now she’s caught in the memory of that night, experiencing the horror she committed over and over again,” Grandfather says. “The more I watch her, seeing all these memories trapped inside her, I’ve come to believe that Madame spent her whole existence trying to become something she wasn’t . . . and never became anyone at all.”

  I wait until Madame breaks free from her memories, her bloodshot eyes shifting back and forth. Her gaze lingers on my necklace until it meets mine.

  “I came to tell you that you were right about me. For four years, my Gift terrified me. I’d seen how it could be used for evil just as easily as for good. My heart was broken, but when you tried to destroy my family, you pieced it back together stronger than I ever imagined it could be.” I lean in close and whisper, “You gave us the power we needed to destroy you.”

  She screams as I walk away, but I don’t look back. Madame belongs to the past now.

  On my way to the square, I pass the woodworkers designing the newest addition to Craewick—the gardens. I wave to a few of my old neighbors working alongside a group of former Hollows. They’re building greenhouses and arboretums alongside the new shops, and the sweet scent of pine sparks memories of being in the woods outside of Aravid with Reid.

  It’ll be springtime before our shipments of Aravid flowers arrive, but Grandfather is more than willing to stay until the job is finished. I’m glad for any excuse to keep him around a bit longer, and Commander Averett has volunteered to watch over the Woodland Realm while he’s gone.

  It’s as crowded as Auction Day in the square, but things couldn’t be more different. There are children laughing, adults chitchatting as Bray and Beau handle the adoptions to get the orphans and younger Shadows into new homes. It’s a sight I know Joss, an orphan herself who found a family with the Shadows, would love.

  Grinning, I sidestep a girl with red ringlets and a spatter of freckles skipping over to a family with four children already. As I watch her giggling with her new brothers and sisters, I see glimpses of my old friend. Of the courage Joss found after losing her family and the joy she discovered in becoming part of another. She proved the hardest things in life will either break us or give us a strength we never knew we had.

  All around me are Gifted, Ungifted, and those too young to know standing side-by-side, skin touching s
kin. There’s color in their cheeks and in their outfits—no longer gray, stiff, and high-necked.

  “Joy is rarely found in anything other than sharing life together,” my grandfather told me days ago. “Madame threatened her people with auctions and the Maze, but threats aren’t what brought harmony to this city. Friendships did.”

  Unfortunately, not everyone’s interested in a new kind of unity. Though the majority of Minders have pledged to the alliance between Porter, Sorien, and Bray, the ones who refused have been sent to Kripen. But my grandfather and Felix have made it clear the removal and implantation of memories isn’t a method they’re interested in. With Declan imprisoned, Felix has taken over command in Kripen for now, and though his prisoners won’t be hunted down and tortured, they will be kept there until their memories clear them of any future ill intent.

  Even in a sea of people, Bray has already spotted me when I meet his stare. He nods briefly as I raise my hand. Our relationship is one I’ve yet to name. Friendship doesn’t sound right, though I can’t deny there’s a bond. Certain memories, especially ones of Cade, shared only between the two of us. Nowadays he spends most of his time with Beau. Bray lost one brother but has been reunited with another.

  I step inside my grandfather’s house, once the treasury, that’s now been rebuilt into one of many colorful rowhomes. People scurry in and out, carrying shiny platters piled high with sweets and delicacies for the festivities beginning at sunset in the square. I spy Ryder plucking candies off a passing tray and grin, grateful the only kind of thieving she does nowadays gives her nothing more than a stomachache.

  Reid brushes up beside me. “Take a walk before the party?”

  We wind up on a hill overlooking Craewick, the sun spilling orange light and warmth over the city. I tell him about Madame, how my fear of her return has vanished, as we sit and lean back on our elbows.

  The lanterns my grandfather had mounted on every street corner are lit one-by-one, and the square glitters like the darkening night sky, countless candles flickering in the soft wind. Even from here, we hear the ripples of laughter and the soft rumble of conversation as the celebration begins below.