The woman’s eyebrows went up, and it took her a moment to answer.
“If the person survives it, there are not long-term physical affects, aside from the memory loss itself. However, ripping memories away from a person is intensely traumatic. It can cause enough shock to kill the brain the instant it happens. In asking me to do it, there was a chance you could have dropped dead on the spot.”
Maggie tried to absorb that, tried to imagine what on earth could possibly make her risk such a thing. Terror spread through her like so much undergrowth. She clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. “But I did survive it.”
“Even if the person survives the initial experience, there’s no way to tell if there won’t be delayed shock or later trauma. There could be injury to the brain that didn’t show up right away. And then there’s the fact that the memories don’t go away completely for about an hour. Once they do, there’s a danger of shock setting in again, and by that point, the person wouldn’t have any idea why. You managed to come through both. As you can see, what you did was…”
“Foolish, selfish, irresponsible?”
The woman smiled sadly. “The word I would use is desperate.”
Maggie’s chin trembled, but she swallowed and managed to control her voice. “And what reason did I give you for that desperation?”
“All you told me was that there was something, some piece of information hidden in your memories. You were afraid of someone else getting a hold of it, so you wanted your memories to be gone, at least for a time. You spoke of a man you loved more than life itself. You said his name was Marcus. More than anything else, you were afraid of losing him. That’s why you did it.”
The tears reared up in her eyes as the woman talked. They burst their dam and flooded over her cheeks.
“But I lost him anyway. He’s a good man, and our relationship obviously had passion, and it’s not fair to him that I can’t remember it.”
“Not fair only to him?”
“No! Not fair to me either. Why would I do that?”
The woman looked at the ground, considering. “Maggie, that’s all I know that is fact. But perhaps I may tell you a bit more. Not things I know, but things I surmised based on what you said, how you acted, what I saw.”
“Yes.” Maggie wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Tell me.”
“Understand, this is only my opinion.”
Maggie nodded.
“I think you stumbled upon something, some piece of information when you were…wherever you were.”
Maggie nodded. The ship.
“It scared you, terrified you. You knew you had to get rid of it right away. I honestly don’t know what it was. As I said before, once the process begins, it takes a while—about an hour—before your memories are gone. You were going to try and make it back to your friends before that happened. I understand you didn’t succeed?”
Maggie shut her eyes, willing the memories to return. A pair of boots walking across the room at eye level. “I made it back to where they found me, but by then my memories were being siphoned away. I fell into unconsciousness and…remembered them no more.”
The woman put a hand on Maggie’s shoulder, and Maggie looked up into her face. She saw genuine empathy there.
“I’m so sorry, Maggie.”
“Do you have a name?”
The woman searched her face for a time before slowly shaking her head. “Just the Remembrancer.”
Maggie sighed. “Can you tell me, Remembrancer, why, if my memories were taken away, I still have flashes of some of them?”
The woman leaned her weight against the roughly hewn wooden table. “Yes.”
Maggie waited for her to go on.
“Memories are intensely personal things, Maggie. You can’t make memories for another person, and no two people’s memories, even if they are of the same event, are the same. You can’t…” The woman’s brow creased, and she seemed perplexed for the first time since Maggie had met her. “You can’t…unmake a memory. Your memories are part of you. Despite the fact that your memories were…excised, they’re like rivers of identity that seep into the pores of your soul. What you’re seeing are echoes. If your memories don’t return in full, you’ll never be able to fill in the blanks, but the flashes are bouncing around inside your brain. Your subconscious is trying to remember, trying to figure out what happened and fill the empty space, so the echoes become more vivid.”
“But why those specific memories?”
The woman shrugged. “Who can tell? As I said, memories are intensely personal. Perhaps they were key points in what happened. Or perhaps it’s something as simple as memories that are evoked by a specific, random sensation. If you can interpret the flashes, they may be of use, or they may not.”
The woman went silent, and Maggie sensed she was done speaking on the subject.
“Is there no more you can tell me? Who are you? Why are you here? What is this place, and why is it Concealed?”
The woman put up a hand to stop any more questions.
“I cannot answer all your questions. I can tell you only a few more things. I have been here for a very long time. Now that you’ve come back and the path to restore your memories has been set in motion, my time here is finished. When you are gone from this place, I will be too. If you return in days or weeks, you’ll find only an empty lighthouse. I don’t know if the Concealment will go away immediately, but it will break down over the years, and soon this lighthouse will be naked to the world once again.”
Maggie was confused, but she was also tired of asking questions she knew wouldn’t be answered.
“I want to say one more thing, Maggie. There’s something I want to warn you about. Everyone has negative memories, whether they’re tragic, scary, or simply hard times that we’ve gone through. As human beings, we only deal with one thing at a time. Oh, many things can come to a head, or we can have tragedy pile upon tragedy, but because time is chronological, we only deal with one day, one moment, at a time.”
Maggie frowned. “Okay.”
“If your memories come back more than one at a time, you may get a rush of overwhelming emotions all at once. There’s nothing to be done about it, especially now that the process of true Remembrance has begun, but I want you to be prepared for how brutal it can be.”
Maggie nodded. “Is that all?”
The woman smiled, cupping Maggie’s cheek in her hand. “Yes, that’s all. Good luck on your mission.”
The way she said it made Maggie curious. “What do you know of our mission?”
“Nothing of the logistics. I assume it’s against the collectives, as it was before.”
“Hey! You said I didn’t give you details.”
“You didn’t. I surmised it. You’re an individual, Maggie. Any danger to you would have to come from the collectives.”
Annoyance flared, and Maggie couldn’t stay silent. “Forgive me, but you’re cloistered on this peaceful, albeit somewhat worn-down piece of paradise, and yet you know of the war between the individuals and the collectives? How?”
“I’m closer to it than you think, Maggie. But that’s not important. I know a lot of things. I know that man loves you. I know all your companions are fiercely loyal to you. I know there are two more of them to the east working on the beach. In fact—” She looked to the east where Doc and Nat were working. She seemed to be undecided about something. Finally, she took a deep breath. “Will you tell the good doctor something for me?”
“The…good doctor?”
“Yes, the doctor. He’s an old man now.”
“You mean Doc? You know him? Well let me go get him. He’s just—”
“No. There’s not time for that. I haven’t seen him in more years than you could imagine, Maggie. He wouldn’t even recognize me. Would you just tell him something for me, when you think of it?”
“I…well, yeah, I guess.”
“Tell him…tell him the roses are in bloom.”
Maggi
e was so confused. Who was this chick?
“The roses?”
“Yes. They’re in bloom.” The woman smiled at Maggie’s expression.
“The roses are in bloom.” Maggie sighed. “Okay.”
“Good. Now join your companions upstairs and head back to the beach. There’s no sense in keeping the good doctor waiting.”
Maggie started up the stairs with the woman coming up behind her. Halfway up, she realized that the only creaks were coming from her feet. She turned around, but the woman was gone. She hurried back down and let her eyes sweep the room.
“Marcus!”
Marcus was instantly beside her, not bothering with the staircase at all. He put his hands on her shoulders and followed her gaze around the room. “Where did she go?”
Maggie could only shake her head. “She’s gone.”
Chapter 27: Hope for Happiness
“The what-what?” Doc asked and Maggie sighed, knowing exactly how he felt. Doc turned to Nat, who was behind him and wearing an expression that was just as confused as Doc. The sky was much lighter than when the team left he and Nat on the beach two hours earlier, but it had glassed over with gray clouds, and the day, despite being early, was bleak.
“Re-mem-brancer,” Maggie said.
The five of them had walked back to the beach in silence. When they’d arrived at the craft, Doc and Nat had looked worried. They explained that they had lost all sense of the team at some point. It wasn’t hard to figure out that it had happened when the five of them went behind the lighthouse’s Concealment. Marcus quickly explained what had happened—the Concealment, the lighthouse, the strange woman.
“And what did she tell you, Maggie”—Nat stepped in—“when the others left the room?”
Maggie glanced around, feeling trapped.
“She…said she didn’t know.”
Karl guffawed. “What?”
“She said I found something out, something on the ship, and I was afraid the collectives would invade my mind and find it, so I asked her to get rid of my memories.”
Silence descended as everyone thought about that.
“But how did you leave the ship?” Doc asked. “And how did you get back on afterward?”
“Who is this woman?” Nat asked, looking at Doc. “Why is she here? It can’t be a coincidence that Maggie found her before, and now we’ve run into her again.”
Silence again.
“What could you possibly have found out?” Marcus whispered.
Maggie turned to Marcus, wishing desperately that she could convey her horror at what she’d apparently done, but not sure how.
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t keep her voice from shaking. “I have no idea what would’ve made me…” She ran her hands through her hair. “I can’t imagine making such a decision for…any reason.” She sunk down into a crouch, keeping her heels up and wrapping her arms around her knees.
Marcus crouched down beside her, putting his hands on her shoulders. She shut her eyes, and a tear leaked down her cheek.
“Maggie,” Doc said gently, “do you think that whatever she did will bring back your memories?”
Maggie sighed, passing a hand over her eyes. “I think she believes it. Beyond that, I don’t know what to think.”
Doc sighed, looking south. “Perhaps I should go and speak with this person.”
“You can’t.” Karl said. “She disappeared. Even before we left, she was gone.”
“She told me she would be,” Maggie said, and they all turned to her with raised eyebrows. “She said that she’d been here a long time, but that now that she’d gotten the ball rolling to bring my memories back, she would leave as soon as I did.”
“So,” he said, “this is about you. Specifically.”
Maggie shrugged.
“What else did she say?”
Maggie looked at the ground between her toes. She didn’t have the courage to tell them the rest. “Nothing of consequence.”
“If I may, Doc,” Nat said. “I know I’m not an actual member of the team, but I think this needs to take a back seat. I don’t mean to devalue any of it, but we’ve been out in the daylight for far too long.”
After a moment, Doc nodded. “He’s right. Are you okay, Maggie?”
She nodded, though it was a lie.
“Is everyone else okay?”
Everyone nodded in response.
“Then let’s get on the ship. We’ll speak more of this when we’re through with our current mission.”
Nat looked relieved. “Good. Doc, let’s get a move on.”
The way he said it struck Maggie as strange. Good. Doc. Good doc. Memory stirred. Hadn’t the Remembrancer wanted Maggie to tell Doc something? Suddenly, Maggie couldn’t remember what it was.
“Something wrong, Maggie?” Doc was gazing at her with concern.
Everyone had begun moving toward the ship, but they stopped at Doc’s question and turned.
“I think she wanted me to tell you something.”
Doc was taken aback. “Me?”
Maggie nodded. “She said she could sense two more team members on the beach, and she wanted me to tell you something when I thought about it.”
Maggie glanced around at the rest of the team. They all looked wary.
“Me, Maggie? Or me and Nat? Or the entire group?”
Maggie rubbed her forehead. “I can’t remember.” She cursed softly. “Why can’t I remember?”
Marcus took Maggie’s face between his hands, looking intently down into her eyes. She didn’t resist, but a minute later, Marcus dropped his hands and shook his head.
“There’s nothing there.”
Maggie massaged her temples then froze, face snapping toward Marcus. “Hey!”
The corners of his mouth went up. “I mean there’s nothing out of place in your mind—no one keeping you from remembering, from what I can tell.”
Maggie felt slighted but went back to massaging her temples. “Oh.”
“If you do remember, be sure to tell us, Maggie. Beyond that, Nat’s right. All this needs to go on the back burner for now. We have to be focused on this mission if we’re to succeed. Come, let’s board.”
Maggie let Marcus help her onto the ship. When she stepped inside, her jaw dropped. From inside the ship she had a clear, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the landscape around her. It was as though the entire ship were constructed of clear window glass. Yet the outside looked metallic and had no windows.
Maggie gaped for several seconds. “How—”
“It’s an alloy that allows light to flow through only one way,” Marcus said quietly at her shoulder. “Not yet invented in your time.”
Maggie gave him her best wide-eyed look. His face softened into a smirk.
“Don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe.”
The ship consisted of one huge room. The back right corner had a table and benches bolted to the floor. Along the wall behind them was what looked like this century’s version of a condensed kitchen. The back left corner had ten cots in two rows of five, also bolted to the floor. The entire front wall was a console that was obviously the center for ship operations, and behind it were benches for passengers, secured like the rest of the furniture.
“The ship is ready to go,” Doc announced. “We’ve plotted a course for the island David identified. We’ll put the ship on autopilot so we can all get some sleep. We’ll need to be as fresh as possible by tonight.”
The ship submerged smoothly and glided effortlessly through the dark ocean. Small schools of fish whispered past the thin hull-like pieces of phantom sea monsters from another world. Everyone lay down and was asleep almost instantly.
Except Maggie.
She reached out with her mind to find Marcus. He was sleeping on the cot next to hers four feet away. Her back was to him. Usually being able to sense him close by was enough to bring her comfort, but she felt lonelier tonight than ever.
The fear of the mission to come, the worr
y over what had happened the last time she’d gone on a mission with the team, the sickness in her stomach about the fact that she’d given up her memories for something more terrifying than she could conceive of—it all pressed in on her with such force that she couldn’t keep the tears in. She cried silently, knowing she ought to let it go and let her body sleep. She needed the recuperation.
Then she felt the hand on her shoulder. She’d been concentrating so hard on being quiet that she hadn’t heard him get up. She sat up and turned toward him. Marcus sat down on the bed and put his arms around her. He kissed her shoulder, and when he spoke, she could feel his lips moving against the fabric of her shirt.
“What is it?”
She shrugged. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m just overwhelmed.”
He nodded, brushing the back of his knuckles against her cheek. “You need to sleep, Maggie.”
She nodded but twisted at the waist so she could wrap her arms around his torso.
“I’m so scared,” she whispered.
With one hand on her back and the other at her knee, he pushed her over a few inches and lay down on the bed beside her, wrapping himself around her as completely as he could. Maggie turned toward him and curled up against his chest.
With the hum of the ship gliding through water and the rise and fall of Marcus’s chest, she fell asleep.
***
Maggie was pulled out of a deep sleep some hours later when Marcus rose. He disentangled himself from her and left the cot, but she was a light enough sleeper to register the movement. The quiet murmur of Marcus’s voice reached her ears. She thought it was Karl he was talking to. She caught snatches of mundane conversation—something about Karl letting them all sleep longer than he was supposed to because it was still too early to consider leaving the ship, yet.
Maggie barely registered it, letting her mind weave in and out of sleep. Then she heard her name. Her eyes snapped open. She shut them again immediately, not wanting the two men to know she was listening.
“I don’t know that it has a whole lot to do with me, Karl.”
“Why not?”
“Think about it. If you were in a strange place with people you don’t know going on a mission you don’t feel prepared for and you kept learning about disturbing things you did but you don’t know why and can’t remember doing them, wouldn’t you be reaching out for comfort too?”
Persistence of Vision Page 26