“Why couldn’t you just have trusted me?” she raged, pulling away from him enough to see his face. “Instead of dragging me here today? I didn’t want to come! I knew something would go terribly wrong! I didn’t want to tell you anything! If you forget, it will be exactly the same as if I had said nothing—only you won’t remember other things, too. Important things. At least, if it is anything like what happened to Cousin Blackie!
“I could have said nothing,” she wailed, “and we would have ended up with exactly the same result. Only better!”
Rachel recalled Illondria’s dead body, charred upon the ground. She recalled Michael Cameron storming out of the Knight’s meeting; the look on Eunice Chase’s face, right after Rachel mentioned James Darling; or on Gaius’s, the time she let on that she had overheard his interview with the Agents. She remembered Sakura Suzuki suddenly growing into an adult.
A low moan started deep inside her and rose until she practically howled, “Everything that goes truly wrong is because of something I say!”
Ambrose Griffin sighed and hung his head. “Well, because I am going to win the Worst Father of the Year award, anyway: If I forget, and then I start asking you questions anew, I’m giving you permission to lie to me.”
Rachel whimpered and said nothing.
She had nothing left to say.
Chapter Twenty-Seven:
The Master of the World
“I’m going to have Templeton send you back to school.” Ambrose Griffin pulled out a calling card and spoke Bridges’s name. Slipping it back into his pocket, he said to Rachel. “If your friends ask, tell them that I complained about you having a boyfriend. I’ve been thinking about that for a while, so I’ll probably bring it up again.”
“My boyfriend takes very good care of me,” murmured Rachel, her head still resting on her father’s shoulder.
“That’s not the point. That’s never the point.”
“Yes, it is precisely the point!” Rachel declared fiercely, sitting up again. “Nobody else takes good care of me, except for him and his friends!”
Ambrose Griffin opened his mouth and then shut it again, shaking his head sadly. He rubbed his forehead and sighed. There was a knock on the door. Gently sliding her to one side, he rose to his feet and let Agent Bridges into the room.
“Could you take her back to school, Templeton?” asked Ambrose Griffin, looking unusually weary. “And please see to her friend.”
Agent Bridges looked back and forth between the two Griffins, curiosity writ upon his features, but he did not ask any questions. Rachel followed him, as he escorted her through the same series of glass houses and across the Hudson by ferry, back to Roanoke.
“Family issues can be trying.” The tall man spoke softly, as they took their leave of each other on the snowy Commons. “But it will get better. Your father’s a good man. He loves you very much. He is only trying to look out for you.”
Agent Bridges shook her hand. Then, he left to seek out Zoë Forrest, promising not to let on to Miss Forrest that her friends knew about her troubles.
• • •
Rachel did not say much for the rest of the day. Gaius came to find her and asked how the visit had gone. Rachel merely shook her head. She was too worn out to say more. Gaius nodded, saying that he understood. He gave her a warm hug, and they spent the rest of the evening studying quietly together in the library.
That night, she woke up to find her dorm room aglow with a silvery light. The Raven stood in her room in his human form. With him was a man who resembled Nastasia’s father, only more severe. This second individual was dressed in strange flowing garments that reminded Rachel of styles from yesteryear but not of any particular style she had seen in a book or painting. The two of them stood on a silver road, a wider version of the princess’s slender, track-like path. It was this that lit the dorm room with its moon-like glow.
Jariel was dressed in a dark robe. His black wings were folded behind him. In one hand, he held the gold coronet that sometimes hovered like a bright circle over his head.
He gestured to her: be still.
Rachel kept her eyes almost-closed, peering through her lashes. The man who looked like the King of Magical Australia, but older and sterner with gray at his temples, stared at Rachel as she supposedly slept. He turned to the Raven and gestured curtly.
“Do it.”
The Raven waved his hand. Rachel saw nothing, but when she thought back, her memory showed her a rainbow light that spread from Jariel’s feet to ripple over her. A complex, second layer of memories settled into her mind. This new intrusion did not disturb her original set.
“I have created the false memories in her mind,” said the Raven.
The stern, older man nodded. Turning, he strode down the silver path. His body seemed to move away from her in a direction that Rachel could not ordinarily see. After a few steps, he vanished.
The Raven remained and counted to ten.
The silvery light winked out.
Jariel crossed the room and knelt down beside Rachel’s bed. Other than the pad of his bare feet against the floorboards, the room was utterly silent. Her roommates made no sound. Mistletoe was suspended, motionless, in mid-air, halfway between the windowsill and the throw rug. Beauregard had frozen half-risen from his bed at the foot of Nastasia and Rachel’s bunk. Astrid’s red-winged blackbird, Faraday, still sat upon its perch, its head tucked under its red and black wing. The Lion, however, opened one golden eye, where he slept upon Kitten’s bed.
“Who was that?” Rachel whispered, afire with curiosity. She pointed toward where the silver path had been.
“I…may not say.” The Raven paused. “You must be careful what you tell your friend, the Romanov girl.”
“Father wanted me to recommend him to her father—”
“It is too late for that.”
“Oh.” Rachel fought back tears. “Then, I won’t tell her anything.”
“That would be for the best.”
She swallowed, feeling suddenly shaky. “Poor father!”
“I do try to protect the individuals of this world as much as I can,” said the Raven, “but in the end, the protection of the world itself takes precedence. Your father picked protecting you over protecting the world.”
Rachel bit her lip, feeling miserable. She had tried so hard to help. To have her be the one whom someone chose over the world seemed painfully ironic.
“That was the princess’s grandfather, wasn’t it?” A shiver ran down Rachel’s spine. “The one she had seen as a child but had been made to forget?”
He bowed his head but said nothing.
“And he’s in charge here?” she asked. A tightness seized her chest. She found it hard to swallow. “You have to do what he says?”
The Raven did not answer.
Rachel’s mouth went dry, her worst fears confirmed. The princess’s grandfather controlled the Earth but not just the Earth. He did not merely have the power to arbitrarily take away the memories of people she loved. He also controlled Jariel. He could compel the Guardian to do these terrible things. The idea that Nastasia’s family, and maybe Nastasia herself, had such power over the Guardian made Rachel feel physically ill. The relief she had felt, when she dismissed Magical Australia as unimportant, now mocked her.
Then, another thought struck her.
Finally, she had found someone to hate.
She scowled and practically spat. “This monster who robbed my father of his memory, I have to call him something. If you won’t tell me his name, I’ll pick one for him.” She recalled a Jules Verne novel she had read the previous year. The villain had borne an appropriate moniker. “Let’s call him the Master of the World.”
The Raven inclined his head. “Very well.”
“So, now I have fake memories.” She paused. “Am I supposed to pretend they’re true?”
“That would be wise.”
“May I tell Gaius?” Rachel asked. “The truth, I mean? Does the protection that covered
one person, so I could tell him the other secret, cover all matters, or only that one?”
“You may tell him. I can continue to guard him indefinitely.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
“I am so sorry!” Her eyes filled with hot tears. “I’m trying to make things easier for you. I want so much to help! To do something useful. And, here I’m making things harder.”
Jariel gave her a bittersweet smile. “You did not make things harder for me. I’ve seen many different problems. I will see many more before my task is done.”
Rachel nodded and wiped her eyes, sniffling.
The Raven lifted the coronet of gold in his hand. “Take my halo. I wish to show you something that you may come to value.”
He extended his hand, but he did not give the gold circlet to her. Instead, he put it over her head. Brilliant light shone from above her. A feeling of diligence coursed through her so fierce and firm that she felt she would never cease until she had done everything that could possibly be needed. The feeling was so familiar, so much like her, that it filled her with a quiet, inexplicable joy.
Images flashed through her mind. She saw herself from her father’s point of view, so tiny and quick and bright. Emotions came with the images, worry and love and a ridiculously fierce protectiveness. The scene in her father’s office replayed in her memory, but this time, she felt the emotions her father had felt: his confusion, his frustration, his tender love for her.
The flickering memories came to the moment when Rachel had run and hugged Jariel’s leg. The instant the arms of the little her wrapped around the winged being, she felt a pain so sharp that she cried out. It was her father’s pain. To him, it looked as if his darling little daughter preferred this monster—Rachel could feel her father’s distrust and hatred of the Guardian—to him, her own father.
“Poor Father!” Rachel cried again, chagrined. “Oh! I never meant to hurt him!”
With the pain, however, she also felt his love for her. Rachel’s eyes widened. Her lips parted in awe. She had no idea that her father loved her so much. He loved her with the same pure, abiding love that she loved the world—the world she was willing to give her life to protect. If he loved her that much…
Rachel imagined what it would feel like to love something that much and lose it. No wonder he was so concerned about her safety! In that instant, she swore to herself that she would be more careful, that she would try harder not to rush headlong into danger.
Jariel pulled the halo away. It turned back into a gold hoop. He smiled at her, his eyes dark and kind, and patted her hand comfortingly. “I know you did not intend to cause him pain, but I thought that, perhaps, it would help heal the wounds between the two of you, if you knew.
“Of course,” the winged man frowned, “next time you see him, he will not remember.”
“I will get his memory back!” Rachel declared fiercely. “I am going to find a way!”
He nodded at her, as if he was pleased by her resolve.
Rachel regarded the Raven as he stood beside her. She wished so much that she could help him. “If there is something I can do to make it easier for you, you will tell me, won’t you?”
Jariel nodded. “In the fullness of time, I will, I believe, have need of you.”
Those simple words went far towards lifting the pall of guilt that this day’s events had cast over her.
“I’ll grow stronger!” Rachel vowed. “Until I am strong enough to help you!”
Perhaps the Raven replied, but Rachel recalled no more when she awoke in the morning.
• • •
The next morning dawned bright and clear. Rachel might have thought that the whole incident was a dream, except that, upon waking, she found that she still had a false set of memories—false memories, she realized with dawning dismay, that made no sense.
According to the fake memories, she had gone to see her father, and they had argued about her boyfriend. He had said that her mother did not object in principle to her dating Gaius, but he did. Rachel had cried and yelled and fussed—displaying much more emotion than she ever would in real life. Her father had insisted that Gaius was not the right kind of boy, that he did not have the right background. Rachel had shouted at him, listing Gaius’s Arthurian lineage. Her father had finally agreed to look into the matter at more length and had insisted that they would speak about this again.
It would not have been a problem if the new memories had stopped there, but they did not. They covered the entire period that she had been at Roanoke, except all knowledge of the Metaplutonians had been removed. It was as if she had come to school and everything had gone well: no priests summoning Moloch, no Morax among the bones of Carthage, no Azrael, not even Dr. Mordeau turning into a dragon.
Everyone at Roanoke knew that Mordeau had turned into a dragon. How was she going to pretend that these new memories were true, without alerting her friends instantly that something was wrong? And yet, if she spoke of the real events, would the Master of the World know?
• • •
The next two days passed in a daze. She had hoped to speak to Gaius at the Knights’ meeting, but, as often happened, he was so busy, between teaching and dueling, that there was no opportunity for anything except a few public comments and squeezing hands as they passed each other on their way to their next dueling strip. Friday evening, he was busy again with Vlad and his crew.
Saturday morning, Rachel received a message that Sandra was on campus and wished to see her and Peter and Laurel. The siblings met in the purple common room in Dare Hall. Rachel had never seen her oldest sister in her working clothes. Sandra looked quite dashing in the Inverness cloak and tricorne hat of an Agent, her medallion with its lantern surrounded by stars swinging in front of her chest. Or, rather, she would have, had her eyes not been red from crying. Sandra swept off her hat and hugged Rachel very tightly. Rachel hugged her back. Then she sat down on the purple cushions and waited.
“I need to let you all know, Daddy is sick,” said Sandra. “It’s bad enough that they are transferring him out of his current department, back to being a plain Agent of the Wisecraft. And they are putting him on holiday for a few weeks. He…had an accident with a memory spell.
“It’s okay, uri dongsaengdeul,” Sandra assured her younger siblings quickly. “He’s all right. He knows who he is. But he’s lost some time, going back a year. Maybe more. He’s being checked by one of the foremost experts on memory magic. So, just hope he gets better soon.”
Knowing it was coming was bad enough. Hearing it had actually happened was too much. Rachel put her face in her hands and began to cry, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.
Peter leaned over and hugged her. “Don’t cry, dongsaeng, Dad’s tough. He’ll get better.”
“Yeah,” Laurel patted her head. “Nothing’ll take Daddy down for long. He’s awesome.”
Sandra nodded. “Yes, he is getting the best care possible. Pearl Moth is checking him over. She’s doing it especially for our family. We should be happy Daddy has so many friends. His second, Templeton, is temporarily in charge of Daddy’s department. He’ll keep things going until he is better.”
Rachel wiped her face and nodded. Pearl Moth was Blackie’s mother. She was a famous nun in the Order of Asclepius. (Unlike some orders, nuns of Asclepius were not forbidden from marrying.) Since her son’s accident, she had specialized in restoring memories.
Wiping her face did not stop the tears. Sandra hugged her once more and departed with Laurel. Peter stayed behind a little longer, patting Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel longed to confess to her brother, but she dared not, lest he be robbed of his memory, too.
“Listen, it will all work out,” he said. “You’ll see!”
Due to the cruel nature of the universe, she could not share with her sibling her hatred for the man who had harmed their father. Nor could she cry out, “It’s my fault.”
• • •
Rachel wrote
her father a short letter, saying that she had heard the news and hoped that he would be feeling better soon. She included an origami griffin she made from lined paper. It looked more like a sick pig, but she hoped he would like it. After posting the letter, she wandered over to Room 321 to see what her friends were doing. She felt calm when she started up the stairs, but by the time she arrived at the third floor, she was crying again.
The others looked up in surprise. Nastasia sat at the table doing homework. Joy was attempting to make Zoë waltz around the room. Zoë’s expression was a cross between extreme boredom and sarcastic amusement. Valerie was fitting a new brass and leather bandolier around Sigfried, who had taken off his robes. Over his extremely well-toned body, he wore a black sleeveless shirt with gold letters spelling: I flexed and my sleeves exploded.
Rachel averted her eyes. While her affections for her blood-brother were entirely sisterly, even she could not help but notice, even in her tear-sodden state, that his shoulders and biceps looked as if they had been personally-crafted by an emperor of all things seen or unseen—and, right now, they were too much in the seen category. Out of the corner of her eye, however, she noted that instead of bullets, the loops of the bandolier held elixir vials.
Rachel noticed that while Joy was pretending to dance Zoë around the room, she was mainly staring at the half-naked Siggy. Salome, who was lying on her back on the table, painting her nails, was also surreptitiously watching her best friend’s hunky boyfriend and smirking. The room smelled strongly of nail polish.
“Rachel, did you hear?” Joy shouted excitedly, the moment Rachel stepped in the door. “There’s going to be a ball for Lunar New Year. A masquerade ball! It’s the Year of the Dragon! Lucky will be the star of the…Wait. Are you crying?”
Then everyone was staring.
Rachel sat down hard next to Nastasia on a straight-backed wicker chair that put her facing Zoë’s punk rock bands. This was too much for her current state of mind. She turned her chair until she was facing Daring Northwest’s sketches and the large pictures of Siggy’s head. Under other circumstances, she might have preferred to stare at the pretty Magical Australian vistas, but at the moment the very thought of Magical Australia made her feel ill.
The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Page 31