Illusionary

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Illusionary Page 19

by Zoraida Cordova


  I stop and stare at the grains of sand beneath my feet. I have paced a trail within the rectangle.

  “Remind your body to breathe,” Argi says, and signals for me to keep going.

  “There was a shy boy in the palace. He was always dirty and alone like me—he’s the one who helped me escape when the Whispers attacked. The world outside was on fire. Dez found me in the courtyard and took me to his father. He never left my side, not even when my magics were wild. But we changed, he and I, and we left each other. We became different people.”

  “Describe yourself before.” Argi’s alto voice is soothing, like a guiding light through the dark. “When your magics were wild.”

  “Everyone I touched, I hurt. I pulled memories without thinking. When I was thirteen, the elders kept me in isolation for three months, until I could be trained properly. I tried to cut out the power from my hands with nails I dug out of the walls. All I got was an infection.”

  My heart beats so fast I feel dizzy, but I keep going. My past is a dam burst open, an artery cut to bleed out. “It was then, in isolation, that I discovered the Gray. Thousands of stolen faces and voices haunted me. They’d emerge while I was awake. I thought I was seeing ghosts, but it was only the stolen lives. I never really dreamed after that.”

  “Why was this morning different?” Argi asks.

  I close my eyes and see the crystalline sea and Castian’s smile. That’s how I know it was a dream—because we were both happy.

  “It was years before I made another Hollow,” I say, wanting to keep me and Castian private. “And it was Justice Méndez. Ever since then, my magics feel wild again. I’ve been able to see memories by simply touching a surface. Memories I couldn’t have taken.”

  Argi studies my hands again. The wrinkles between her brow pinch together in thought. “You mentioned something called the Gray. Is that where your memories go?”

  “The elders used to tell me it was the curse of the Robári, but I never had another Robári to ask.”

  “Curse them,” Argi spits out. “There have been stories of Moria going mad in the past, overuse of magics and the like. But here’s my theory: Because you gathered so many memories as a child, before your power had matured, the only way to stop your mind from breaking apart was to create this locked room of memories. The Gray could have very well saved you.”

  I wince at the pinpricks of pain behind my eyelids, a reminder that the Gray is still there. “It doesn’t always feel that way.”

  “We all have limits, and perhaps, creating a Hollow of Justice Méndez was yours. We were given the power of a goddess, but we are still breakable things. Your mind is a muscle. It demands conditioning and care.” Her memory marks flit along her forearms like shooting stars as her brown eyes come alight with realization. “Who you are is there, beneath the vault, and all we have to do is bring her out.”

  The ground seems to waver beneath me. “How?”

  “We’re going to destroy the Gray.”

  “I DIDN’T THINK IT WAS SOMETHING THAT COULD BE DESTROYED,” I SAY.

  Argi drops to her knees and begins to dig in the black sand. She glances up through her long lashes. “You created that wall. You can tear it down.”

  “But how?”

  “The Knife of Memory requires complete access to who you are. The very root of you. We will chip away at the wall, piece by piece, until it is weak enough to break.” The elder Robári plucks a pale, translucent crystal and cradles it in her palm. Unused alman stone. “This training ground was where Robári children dug through the sand to find their own crystals. You’re going to return each and every memory that does not belong to you.”

  It is as if she has slammed her fists into my stomach. Return each and every memory? I blink away the frustration that burns in my eyes.

  “I—I can do that?”

  Argi’s face softens with pity and regret, but only for a moment. She asks, “How many Robári were in your Whispers camp?”

  “I was usually the only one. There was another boy four years ago, but his magics were weak, and he died on a mission. The elders always kept us separate.”

  She lets go of a deep, slow breath. “The damned fools. No matter—in this moment, what’s most important is making room in your mind.”

  “And this will help me wield the Knife of Memory?” I ask tentatively.

  Captain Argi’s gaze sharpens on mine. “Claiming the Knife of Memory requires a test of self. Only Robári can wield it, but you must be in control of your mind or it won’t work.”

  “What happens if it doesn’t work?”

  Argi’s lips part, and she shakes her head slightly. “You won’t return.”

  She waits for me to speak. What can I say? I knew that there would be a cost to wield the Knife’s power and set the kingdom on the path of peace after ridding the world of Fernando.

  “How do we start?” I ask.

  “Do you know that feeling that builds when you’re ready to enter someone’s mind? It’s a vibration, deep in the marrow. It’s your power coming to life. Use it. Find a memory you wish to relinquish, and transpose it in this stone.”

  She places it in the heart of my palm. My eyes blur. I never, not once in a million years, would have thought this possible. What other knowledge of the Moria was lost when our people scattered, when the kingdom was reduced to ruin and rubble and everything was taken? Who might I have been if I hadn’t lived with these stolen lives in my head for a decade? I listen to the sounds of the clearing, inhale the sharp scent of grass and the sea. Faces and sounds crowd all at once, and a jabbing pressure at the center of my forehead brings me to my knees.

  “There are too many.”

  “Fixate on one.”

  I crouch beside her and close my eyes, listening to the jagged melody of her voice. One of tax collector Vernal’s memories comes into view, and I settle in.

  I knock on the door, but no one is home. I walk around back, into the courtyard. I hear a shuffling sound followed by a whimper.

  “I know you’re in there!” I shout.

  I stand aside, and Telmo kicks open the door. A man shouts and clutches his child. There is no time for this. If we do not fill the wagons by tonight, then it is my head on the line. I wait at the door as Telmo ransacks the house. Six pesos and one pesito.

  A strange sensation tickles the inside of my skull. My eyes flutter open, and the stone in my hand pulses with a new memory.

  “I could have done this all along.” My voice breaks. Anger claws its way up my spine. “I lost so much time.”

  “You’re here now. Your mind has to heal, Renata.” Argi guides my fingers until I am cleaving my way into the cold earth and finding new crystals. “Again.”

  I sit and hold the alman stone between my palms. Excavating memories one by one burns my skin, retracing a past I wanted to forget. I see them all:

  A boy runs through the maze of the palace dungeons, the passages get more and more narrow.

  An old woman on the streets of Citadela Crescenti throws rice in the air after a wedding procession.

  The horrific screams of a man unable to move, and Justice Méndez, the last thing he sees before his sight goes dark.

  A servant girl gathering Prince Castian’s sheets and bringing them to her face, inhaling deeply.

  Dissidents waving the ancient flag of the queendom of Tresoros cut down in a dense forest.

  A festival under the stars set on fire by the Second Sweep.

  A rebel fighting on the streets of Riomar.

  Someone running over a field of dead rebels.

  The howling cry of a girl watching her entire city burn.

  A priestess standing at the ruins of her temple.

  On and on. Memory after memory. Each and every moment rushes out of my mind and into the alman stones I dig from the sandpit. My nails are coated in fine black and gray dust, cracked and ruined. My index finger bleeds where the cuticle is torn and blood bubbles along the seam of a cut. I wipe it on my
tunic.

  “That’s enough for today,” Argi says, resting a hand on my shoulder. “It will get easier.”

  “I don’t feel different,” I confess.

  What was I expecting? The Lady of Shadows herself to emerge from the temple to give me a pat on my shoulder? Light to halo me as I transcend into a new form? Instead, I am sweaty and shaking, sand peppered along my arms and, well, everywhere. I fall onto my back and take fast, shallow breaths.

  “Even the Lady couldn’t undo your trauma in half a day, girl,” the pirate scolds me.

  “What do we do with these stones?” I hold one up and watch the soft, pulsing light within.

  “Anything you want. Toss them to the sea. Drop them in the ponds around the temple. Leave them scattered here. Either way, they will serve as offerings to the Lady.”

  I stack several stones into a tower. “Who taught you this?”

  Argi grunts as she takes a seat beside me. She tips her waterskin into her mouth and then offers it to me. The mineral water from the rushing waterfall behind the temple is the best thing my parched lips have ever tasted.

  “I learned on my own,” says the captain. “My father was a foot soldier in the Memoria army. He died fighting the Icelandian invaders and never got to meet me. He was a Robári, too. My mother died soon after I was born from a withering sickness. By then, the borders were shifting. Robári, already rare, were usually employed by King Umberto of Memoria.

  “When I was thirteen, I was on my way to the palace when I stopped in a town bordering Puerto Leones and Memoria. The apothecura needed an apprentice, and I stayed and learned her trade. It wasn’t until I met Illan that I would have access to some of the oldest books in the Memoria archives, and meet other Robári like myself.”

  The trembling in my bones begins to pass as she talks. There’s something soothing about her voice, the way she recounts her story, letting her scars—markings—come alive. I wonder, how does she choose which ones she keeps on her skin?

  “How did you meet Illan?” I ask.

  Captain Argi puffs out a laugh. “Like all great love stories, he rescued me from my jail cell.”

  “Jail?” I sit up on my elbows. “What were you accused of?”

  “A woman brought her ailing child to my apothecura. The babe was born with a weak heart that no form of magics or medicine could cure. The mother grieved. She accused me of using my ‘curse’ to hurt her child. Using our power wasn’t forbidden then, especially not along a border town. But there I was, along with other accused Moria, when Illan rescued us.”

  I think of the orders doled out by the justice condemning Moria magics. Slowly, over the years, they have vilified us. “How old were you then?”

  “Sixteen. I thought that no one would come for me. They didn’t torture Moria yet, not in a backwater village like San Lita. We had bigger problems like feeding the population during the worst drought of the century.

  “Even then there was a network of Moria. We’d been living under Puerto Leones rule for some time, dispersed into different parts of the kingdom. Illan was one of King Umberto’s ambassadors to Puerto Leones. But really, Illan had been building the Whispers Rebellion with a chosen few, dreaming of the day Memoria would be returned to its glory.”

  Her laugh is bitter, but there’s also a deep sense of loss and heartache. “We were so young then, and he was perfect. I loved his mind, his passion. He offered me a position with the Memoria embassy, and I took it. I never wanted our people to have to endure what I did. He brought me to the palace, and I was put to work.”

  Something cold passes through me. “Were you part of the Hand of Moria?”

  The Hand of Moria is King Fernando’s collection of Moria magics—one for each power. At least it was. He experimented on them, and he would have had me, too.

  “No,” she says darkly. “That would come later. I was assigned to protect Princess Galatea. She was only a few years older, and we were both Robári. I was the one who shepherded love letters between her and Fernando. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had simply said no, if I had obeyed and made sure she was the picture of propriety—but anyone who went within mere feet of them knew they were like comets burning through the sky toward each other. The world was collateral damage. I suppose no one could have truly known what was to come. I buried her here.”

  “I saw her,” I confess.

  Argi tilts her head, a question in her eyes.

  “When we first set sail I was overcome with a memory that I never took. At least, there’s no way, is there? The other times these occurrences happened, I blamed it on the thousands of anonymous faces in my mind. But I still felt different, like something within me was breaking.”

  “You’re stronger than you know, Renata,” Argi says. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Your power is simply attempting to grow, but because of this creation of yours—this Gray—it can’t. It’s rare, but there are Robári who are so rooted to their power, so strong, that they can see the impressions of memory in an ordinary object. Tell me when each occurrence happened.”

  I recount the market, Little Luzou, and the Queen’s mansion. For each one she has an explanation.

  “An impression when you brushed against a market stall. The stone steps. The column.”

  I shake my head. “What about Galatea? It’s not very well likely that she was on our ship once.”

  Argi’s smile is wide. She inhales the air and looks at me as if I’ve just told her of a miracle. “You saw Galatea’s battle on the sea. Its winds, its droplets. All of us leave behind something on this world, Renata. Some of us can simply see it more than others.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I say, examining my own scars. My Robári marks. “I’m not rooted to my power that way. I’ve tried to get rid of it more than once. That isn’t strength; it’s weakness.”

  “Perhaps there is a part of you that has accepted who you are, and the rest of you has yet to realize it.” Captain Argi reaches down and gathers a handful of sand. “Memories are slippery things. As hard to hold on to as grains of sand. But not for Robári. Illan should have known better. He failed you.”

  I want to argue with her, but she’s right. I was so grateful that he gave me a home that I didn’t realize I was simply being used in other ways.

  “Do you ever regret leaving Illan?”

  “Never.” She looks up at the clouds, twisting and molding themselves into new shapes, always in the midst of change. “That is, until you told me he was killed. Now we’ll never have the opportunity to see which one of us was right in the end.”

  I laugh, knowing that my old mentor would feel the same way. She laughs with me, and suddenly, I start to feel the absence of the memories I gave up, and my laughter turns into sobs. I cry like something has split within me, and the wave of emotions I buried for so long bursts forward. I have tried to make myself small and likable and normal. I have tried to be someone who is not me. I have tried to be a weapon again and again because how could anyone want me or love me if I was anything but?

  When my tears stop, she does the strangest thing. Captain Argiñe San Piedras hugs me.

  “This isn’t over.” She brushes my hair back and anchors me in place. “I’m only going to ask you this once. Are you sure you want this path?”

  “I do.”

  She tips my chin up, and I dry my tears. “Then there is someone I want you to meet.”

  WHEN WE WALK BACK THE WAY WE CAME, PAST TALL OVERGROWN HEDGES AND rows of apple trees, I hear a soft whisper in the wind. A voice that has only begun to grow louder since I have arrived in Isla Sombras.

  The temple of the Lady of Shadows and Whispers echoes every step, every breath, and even the wild beating of my own heart. Light streams in from the ceiling, turning the alman stone and marble into a shimmering plane where her statue is the focus. I have seen the Lady depicted on the inside of armor before battle, and in two-foot sculptures in hidden sanctuaries, but I have never seen this—a monument of
her that seems to stretch up to the sky. A halo of stars encircles her head, and long waves of hair reach down to her feet. In one outstretched hand she holds an orb, and in the other, a knife that can only be the one of myth.

  “Isla Sombras is where the Lady chose to sever her immortality,” Captain Argi says. “The first Moria order who lived here erected this temple in her name.”

  “This is where you’ve been all along,” I whisper.

  My words carry, and Argi gives me a temperate smile. “She is everywhere, and she is always with you.”

  I want to deny it because I have felt alone for so long, but then a chorus of laughter spills from nearby. I follow the sound outside, to the sprawling front lawn, where my friends are making their way back from their day of training with Elixa and Maryam. As they get closer, I take in the blooming bruises on their bare arms. Leo uses a wooden staff to walk. Cas is smiling as he talks with Elixa. She’s loud and boisterous, communicating with her entire body. After just a few moments, Castian looks up at me leaning against a column. How does he always seem to know where I am?

  I wave and bite my bottom lip to quell the urge to run to him and share every single extraordinary thing I did today.

  “Where did you learn to fight that way?” Castian asks Elixa.

  Elixa rests a wooden sword against her shoulder. “A retired Luzouan warrior on the Madre del Mar.”

  “Is it retiring if Josefino still taught aboard our ship for another twenty years?” Argi asks, taking the temple steps down and embracing her girls in greeting.

  “Josefino Edin?” Leyre asks, stopping suddenly. Her green eyes go wide, and she stumbles on her words. “He’s a legend in my empire. All right, take me back to the ship now please.”

  Argi chuckles softly. “Alas, he rests with the Great Tortuga. But his daughter has returned to Empirio Luzou.”

  “You raise warriors, though you do not fight,” Castian asks her. “Why?”

 

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