The Book of M

by Peng Shepherd

  “So help me God,” she snarled in Dhuuxo’s face. Dhuuxo strained to get away, and Ursula grabbed her braids at the base of her skull, pulled her face so close to her own and held it there that they could have kissed, if they hadn’t wanted to kill each other instead. “I will not let you endanger the rest of us, too. If you give up one more time, I will throw you out of this caravan. I will leave you behind.”

  “Please,” Intisaar begged.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Dhuuxo whispered. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Do it again and watch me keep my word,” Ursula said.

  I held Intisaar in terror, waiting for something horrible. An absence, a shifting, an addition to reality. The only one strong enough to stop Dhuuxo if she tried something was Ursula, because they had both forgotten so much—but she would have to use the magic right back to thwart anything Dhuuxo tried to do, and none of us know how much Ursula has left. What if what it took from her was the memory of how to drive?

  “I’m sorry,” Dhuuxo finally said. Her cheeks were wet then. “I don’t know if I can stop it.”

  “You can,” Ursula said. She pointed at Dhuuxo’s twin sister, and they studied each other’s identical features. “You have to.”

  She tried. Intisaar watched her, and Victor and Ysabelle watched Wes. We wound around the circular lands. Every revolution made them more and more agitated, as if each turn hurt.

  “How much longer can it go on like this?” Intisaar asked Ursula softly one night as we drove under the glow of Dhuuxo’s unnaturally luminous moon. Everything shone silver, almost as bright as day.

  “I don’t know,” Ursula said. “But there has to be an end.”

  “Maybe it’s a test,” I offered. “Maybe whoever is waiting in New Orleans made the land like this so only those who really want to go will make it.”

  “Maybe it’s a warning,” Dhuuxo said then. She wiped the sweat from her tired, furrowed brow. “Maybe they made it like this because they don’t want us to come.”

  “No,” Ursula said. “The stories are about The Welcoming One, not The Unwelcoming One.”

  On the fourth day, the road finally uncoiled into a straight, long line. We came around the last bend and all gasped. Ursula had to stop the RV for a moment so we all could take it in. An endless stretch of green with a single gray ribbon straight through it, extending out until it faded against the horizon.

  “We made it,” I finally said. “We can’t be far.”

  “I can’t see anything at all,” Ysabelle mused, squinting. “Just green.”

  Ursula nodded determinedly. “New Orleans is out there.”

  “What’s New Orleans?” Wes asked from behind us, studying the landscape from beneath the shade of his palm.

  “It’s where we’re going.”

  “No, we’re not,” Dhuuxo said.

  Outside the RV, we stood clustered in two groups, one beside each tired taillight. The ones who wanted to remember—Ursula, me, Ysabelle, Victor, and Intisaar; and the ones who didn’t—Dhuuxo and Wes. Wes was pacing listlessly in vague circles, as if trailing some sort of shifting magnetic attraction, but Dhuuxo was still, staring calmly into Intisaar’s eyes. In the dirt behind us, tiny little lightbulbs the size of grapes were pushing slowly through the earth, unfurling like new crops. Farther back, a carved porcelain teacup the size of a freighter sailed silently past in the sky like a cloud, its smooth, rounded lip tilted at a graceful angle.

  “Please, Dhuuxo,” Intisaar said. “Don’t do this.”

  Dhuuxo shook her head. “Trust me, walaashaa. Transcendence was right. Not that we should follow them, but that there’s so much more out there than whatever might be in New Orleans. I can feel it.”

  “Let’s just go there first,” Intisaar begged. “If you don’t like it, we can leave.”

  “No, it’s a mistake. Trying to save what we used to have—that isn’t the way. We have this power for a reason. We’re supposed to use it. We’re supposed to make something new.”

  Intisaar wiped her face fiercely, to slap off the tears before they trickled down. “What about me?” she asked. “I don’t want to be new. I want to remember.”

  “I know you don’t understand yet,” Dhuuxo said. “But you will soon. I can show you.”

  Intisaar turned to us. “If we go faster, we can make it,” she said hurriedly. “If you help me get her back inside, I can hold her. I can remember for the both of us.”

  Ursula sighed. If it had been possible, Dhuuxo and Intisaar would be the ones who could do it. But it wasn’t possible.

  “We promised,” I finally said. The teakettle was passing now, following after the cup, birds clustered on its spout like dust. The porcelain gleamed in the setting sun. “We have to get everyone there, even if they don’t remember that they wanted to go.”

  “I will not go,” Dhuuxo said firmly. “I will undo the vehicle if you try and force me.”

  We all tensed. Ursula spread her arms protectively, as if her hands could stop anything from reaching the RV. “The RV is ours,” she said. “It’s going to New Orleans.”

  “Are you sure?” Dhuuxo asked. She looked at Wes. “Maybe it’s going somewhere else.”

  There was a small, groaning sigh behind us then. The beginning of something. Or the end.

  “Dhuuxo, no!” Intisaar screamed. I felt my breath catch, but I couldn’t look at what was behind us now. It was death, emptiness. Ory. I couldn’t move.

  But Ursula could. All the air came back into the world suddenly. Everything was a few iterations lighter, like I’d taken off a hat and a coat.

  I turned and looked. The RV was the same. It was still the same. It was as I remembered it.

  “Go before I kill you,” the silver-haired woman said quietly.

  Dhuuxo nodded. She was slicked with sweat, damp from forehead to her shoes. Humid stains crept through her clothes at her armpits, her knees. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I would have let it go. I didn’t mean to—what you had to give up.”

  “Go before I kill you,” she said again.

  Dhuuxo turned slowly and strode off toward the distant hills, almost floating over the ground. Wes considered for a long moment. “I’m sorry, too,” he said softly. He turned to follow his new, liminal queen.

  I hugged Intisaar before she could say anything. “Stay,” I said. “Stay and remember.”

  “She’s my sister,” Intisaar whispered helplessly. “I can’t leave her.”

  “I know,” I said. Her hand slipped out of mine.

  Then there were only four of us, standing beneath Dhuuxo’s glowing moon.

  I turned around at last and touched the aluminum side of the vehicle. It felt solid, real. “The RV’s okay? Everything’s okay?” I asked desperately.

  Our driver nodded, exhausted. But instead of going back toward the RV, she turned and walked away, into the tall grass waving in the field stretching away from the road. She walked faster and faster.

  “Wait!” I cried. I chased after her. Where was she heading? None of us could drive the RV but her. “Wait!” But she just kept going until she was moving at a run. “Stop!” And then she disappeared.

  But no—she’d only dropped to her knees, and the grass had appeared to swallow her.

  I slowed as I came up behind the gap in the sea of weeds where her body had crumpled the stalks beneath her. She wasn’t moving. Just kneeling there, staring into the distance in silence. The grass hissed softly around us.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said. Her voice was thick. “I just needed—I needed.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “It’s going to start happening much faster now.”

  “I know,” I breathed. We had all felt it. The size of what had been lost to save the RV. It was a big thing, an anchoring thing. We had so few of those left.

  “We should go. There isn’t time to waste anymore.”

  “In a moment.” I edged forward and sat down beside her, as quietly a
s I could. “We have a moment.”

  She looked down at her hands. “A moment,” she conceded at last.

  I waited for her to tell me what she’d just given up. Then I realized what it was.

  “I don’t remember it either,” I said. Somehow she had forgotten it, and then forgotten it for all of us as well. “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “It’s all right.” There was nothing more to do about it, except just forget more. The woman climbed to her feet. In the moonlight, she shimmered lightly. “It was just a name. There was hardly anything left to it anyway.”

  We have been driving a long time, I think. I can’t see where we came from—there’s nothing around us for miles. Wherever it was, it’s too far away to know now. The air is warm, and the road is straight.

  “Where are we going?” I asked the woman driving next to me when I saw her glance over.

  “It’s a place called New Orleans,” she said patiently.

  “New Orleans,” I repeated. What a wonderful-sounding place, don’t you think, Ory? A place that’s new. A place for starting over. I don’t know what Orleans means, but it also sounds like your name. I don’t think I ever believed much in signs like that, but then again maybe I did, and I just can’t remember anymore. In any case, it sounds like a good sign, don’t you think? “How far are we?” I added.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “We’re just following the painting.”

  “What painting?” I asked.

  “The painting on the side of the RV,” she replied.

  There was a long silence. An unspoken understanding. That she didn’t remember from where it had come either.

  “We can stop so you can look at it if you want,” she finally continued after a few moments.

  “That’s okay,” I said. A strange feeling niggled at the back of my mind. I didn’t know there was a painting, but the conversation was playing as if I should. I was in a big van with a painting on its side, so I must have seen it when I climbed in, right? I didn’t know if I didn’t want to see it because I should remember it, or because it seemed like now if we stopped the van and I looked at it, I’d just forget again in a few minutes anyway.

  The driver was fiddling with the fraying leather wrap around the steering wheel. The sun was in our eyes.

  “How do I know you?” I finally asked. I felt ashamed to ask it. I was comfortable sitting next to her there, in the passenger seat, as if we could’ve known each other for years. I searched her face for anger or pain. The expression I had been terrified to see on your face one day when I finally forgot something you couldn’t bear.

  But the driver only smiled. “I don’t remember either,” she confessed. “But we’re here now.”

  There’s just so little left, Ory. You might be the only thing that’s left. I wish I hadn’t run. I wish I’d stayed with you in that little dark shelter, hiding in the dim, musty ballroom—was it a castle? A house?—resisting the pull as long as I could. But then I think about how much I’ve forgotten—I don’t know what all of it was, but I know it was too much, because there are so many things I can’t answer anymore—and I know I couldn’t have stayed. I wouldn’t be able to bear it if I’d done something to you.

  “Why are you crying?” the woman driving next to me said.

  I clicked the tape recorder off then, to finish talking to you later, and wiped my face.

  “Is that your voice in there?” she asked. “It sounds like you.”

  “Yes, I think so,” I said. The tires beneath us slowly lapped the cracked road under our hood, turn after turn. I could feel the steady hum of the engine. “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.

  “Yes and no,” she said.

  Somehow it made sense to me. “Why are we going? Is it because . . . because we know people there?” I added hopefully. Maybe you’re there, Ory? Waiting for me?

  The driver shook her head. “I don’t know anyone there. I don’t think you do either. Or them.”

  I looked over the seat behind us and saw two other people dozing in the semi-darkness of the backseat, a man and a woman. How long had they been there? How long have I been here?

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Once we get there, things will be better. Someone will be able to tell us why we came.”

  I looked down at this little machine in my hands. “Will they be able to . . .” I don’t even know what exactly I need. Help, but what kind? And how? “. . . fix us?”

  “I hope so,” the driver said. “I think so. They’ll be able to fix you.”

  I looked out the window. I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t think it had been a mistake—that she’d said fix you instead of fix us. I wonder what she’s forgotten. How she knows that it’s too much. Will I know when it’s suddenly too much for me? If I—if I forget you, will I know I have?

  The One Who Gathers

  IT WAS SUDDENLY QUIETER WHEN THE BASEMENT DOORS slammed shut, but the darkness was the same. It smelled of vomit—then the amnesiac realized it was his own. “Gajarajan,” he moaned again. He was still clutching the bag.

  He was guided to the floor. One of their first-aid kits popped open, and pills were pushed into his hands. “For the pain, swallow these,” Dr. Avanthikar said from somewhere just above. Someone padded his wound with cotton squares and wrapped a wide roll of fabric around his head to keep them in place. The pressure helped, slightly.

  “Never again. There always has to be a shadow in the group,” Marie said. “If something had happened to him and then to you—”

  “It had to be me,” Dr. Avanthikar returned. “You know it.”

  The amnesiac touched the gauze band around his face softly. It was already wet, soaked through with blood. Maybe something else—whatever soft, liquid mirror was inside an eye. He swallowed the pills and rocked as he tried to wait for the fiery, searing edge of the agony to slide from murderous to simply angry. There was no point in hoping it might get better. Not a chance. When it healed, he was going to be blind.

  “What are we going to do?” he heard Buddy whimper. “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

  “It’s okay,” the amnesiac managed. Everything felt so tight, like whatever was left of his remaining eye had swollen to a size that was crushing everything else in his skull. “I can still remember everything for us. I just can’t see.”

  Marie burst out crying at that.

  “Please,” he begged. “Please, I can feel the sound, it’s pounding.” His hands clawed uselessly, unable to reach into his brain, covering his ears. “I can feel it inside my head . . .”

  “We need a tranquilizer,” Dr. Avanthikar said, putting her hands over his own to help drown out even more of the sound. Marie bravely strangled her sobs. Even through the doctor’s soft, wrinkled hands, he heard the soft click of Marie’s dreadlocks tapping one after another on each shoulder as she shook her head back and forth, taptaptaptaptaptaptap, taptaptaptaptaptap. She doesn’t remember how to read, the amnesiac wanted to explain, but he just moaned.

  “I’ll do it, I can do it,” Downtown said from somewhere deeper in the basement. Boxes shifted, glass vials clinked against each other.

  “Are they okay?” the amnesiac begged the dark air, prying his palms away from his ears to touch the leather bag. “The book, the files?”

  Dr. Avanthikar’s bony hands pushed his fingers gently out of the way. The bag’s zipper hissed. “Everything’s okay,” she said after a moment. He could feel her pulling files out one by one. “Some of the folder covers are a little wet, but all the papers inside are fine. Buddy, you lay these out in the back, on top of all the food boxes, so they dry.”

  “My book—” The amnesiac panicked, hearing all the files rustle up and away.

  “It’s here,” Dr. Avanthikar said, and laid the heavy binder in his lap. He clutched it to his chest. Dr. Avanthikar touched the cover gently between his forearms. “I never thought I’d see this again,” she said.

  “I added—I researche
d as much as I could before we lost the internet here. Then I stole encyclopedias from the school nearby. I added as much as I could.”

  “Tell the story of Chhaya again,” Buddy whispered, now back in front of the amnesiac, his voice low, as if he’d squatted down to the same height so he could see the cover of the binder where the elephant’s face was.

  “Buddy—” Dr. Avanthikar began.

  “Please,” he protested. “He always does it when I’m afraid.”

  “It’s okay.” The amnesiac grimaced. His hands scrambled weakly at the pages, turning them to the right place. He didn’t need to see to know where the page he sought was. He knew them all so well he could do it by memory alone.

  “Just until Downtown finds the medicine,” Dr. Avanthikar said to him.

  The amnesiac felt Buddy’s knee press against his own as Buddy settled to listen, sitting close so that he could hover over the book as well. The amnesiac put his finger down on the page, on the hand-drawn image of Chhaya that Hemu had pasted there. He knew it was in the right place. “Sanjna—” he began. The pain washed over him, a paralyzing wave. “Sanjna wanted to run away and hide from her husband, Surya, god of the sun, for even though she loved him, his brightness was too great for her to bear. It seared her eyes and burned her skin, and she could not even look upon him without being blinded.” He tried to swallow the agony. It was so overwhelming, he thought he might throw up again.

  “Before she escaped, Sanjna took off her shadow and made it into a likeness of herself, and named it Chhaya, which means shadow,” Dr. Avanthikar said suddenly. The amnesiac felt her hand on his shoulder and leaned gratefully into it. His finger pointed at Hemu’s scrawled text, sliding from word to word by memory, and she picked up where he had left off. “She commanded Chhaya to stay by Surya’s side, always in her place, and fled. Even though Chhaya was born that very moment and had not lived the childhood and youth that Sanjna had, she still remembered everything from Sanjna’s life—the names of all their servants, where all the belongings were in the palace, Surya’s favorite dishes—because that is the place where memories are stored. In shadows.” She leaned closer. “She remembered so much, even the great Surya was fooled.”