by Tom Larcombe
Amber smiled.
“Yeah, I remember. One of the memories I have is of her singing to me.”
With that memory came a bit more this time. Amber knew she'd been regaining memories, but hadn't realized that she wasn't experiencing them all as she remembered them. This time when she remembered her grandmother singing to her, she remembered something else also.
* * *
“Run, hide, little one. I'll send the wind with you to protect you and help you escape,” her grandmother said.
Blood ran from her grandmother's forehead, where she'd struck her head after daddy drove the car into a wall. Mommy and daddy were trying to get out of the car, but they weren't saying anything, they wouldn't talk to her or grandma when asked if they were alright.
“I'm scared grandma, what's wrong with mommy and daddy?”
“They aren't themselves right now. They're being controlled by someone else. Now run!”
Her grandmother started singing again, but this time Amber didn't like the song. It sounded dark and scary. Her grandmother's hand pressed against her and Amber felt a rush of energy, like when she ate too much sugar.
The fog swirled around them, disturbed by a wind that seemed to link Amber and her grandmother.
Then the monsters came.
* * *
Amber shuddered and nearly fell, but Charles caught her and supported her weight.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
She blinked her eyes several times before choking and coughing. Her eyes were moist again and she was sure the tears would flow soon.
Good thing Alicia isn't here or she'd be giving me a hard time about that, she thought disjointedly.
Finally she managed to answer Charles.
“I'm fine, or will be. Just... More memories, and they weren't good ones.”
“Sit down. I'll go get you a glass of water.”
A minute later Charles was back and handing her the glass. She drank half the water right off, then held the cool glass against her forehead.
“You were right Charles.”
“About what?”
“My grandmother, or my great-grandmother, whichever it was. I just remembered that she told me she'd send the wind with me to keep me protected and help me escape. She also said my mom and dad were being controlled by someone else. My dad drove the car into the wall on purpose! It wasn't an accident, someone made him do it.”
Charles sighed heavily.
“I think...” he started, then tried a different tack. “You like Greg, right?”
“Yeah, he and I get along great.”
“I think that we might ought to have him check out your memories. You said there are more coming back, right?”
“Yeah, but why have him check them out?”
“Well, in your own memories there are frequently things that you don't notice, that never registered with your consciousness but are still in the memory. If you let him check them out, he might be able to spot things that you just gloss over. Because it sounds an awful lot like someone has it in for your family. Between that attack you described and the benefactor Eric mentioned trying to keep you tucked away and out of a normal life...”
He trailed off and shook his head.
“I think we're going to have to find out what was actually happening back then. I was prepared to dismiss one or two oddities, but with the way things keep coming up I just can't ignore it any more.”
“So what are we going to do?” she asked.
“Here's what's going to happen. For now, you're going to keep practicing your visualization while I make a few calls. I'll try to follow the money first and see what that tells us. I don't know how we'll try to investigate something from forty years ago yet, I'll have to give that some thought.”
Amber gave an exasperated sigh.
Back to visualization? After I discover that my parents disappeared after they were attacked? How the hell am I supposed to manage that?
* * *
Two hours later Amber's brain hurt. She'd kept trying the visualizations, but other things kept intruding, especially the most recent memory she'd regained. Charles had told her it was good practice, that maintaining a visualization under distraction was a valuable skill, but she knew she had to manage a decent visualization first, before she could practice doing it while distracted.
She'd listened to him on the phone, he'd made seven calls tracing where the funds to maintain her parents' apartment came from. Finally, when he hung up on the last call, she gave up practicing.
“So what did you find out?” she asked.
“Not as much as I'd liked, but I did find that there's an inheritance for you, held by the same people who maintain the trust that funds the apartment.”
“A what?” she snapped.
“Inheritance, you know, your family passes away and leaves you money or property?”
“I know what an inheritance is, I meant how? Who'd leave me anything?”
“Well, evidently your great-grandmother was rather well-off. She's actually the one who owned the apartment and set up the trust. The executor was informed that it might be a very long time before you collected, so that isn't a problem. They do want to see you in person though, evidently she set something up to verify your identity. Oh, and this company is staffed by wizards, so there's bound to be magic involved. I can't think of any other way they could verify that you're the right person.”
“So, what do we do about that?”
“I can take you down there in a day or two. I've still got a few more leads to follow up right now. Plus I thought we might want to take another look in the apartment. If they were investigating, maybe the information they gathered is in there someplace.”
“That makes sense. I don't know how much help I'll be though. I wasn't thinking too clearly when I was in there yesterday.”
“Just focus on what we're after and that might help. We'll do that after dinner. In the meanwhile I've got a few more calls to make. Why don't you go try to catch up on the reading I assigned you.”
That's probably better than my trying any more visualization at least, she thought. But I wonder if he's trying to get rid of me for some reason?
Amber went down to her apartment and took out the books she was supposed to read, but she just sat there, running through her new memory in her mind.
Was it blood from her forehead they found at the scene of the accident? It didn't look like it was bleeding that much, but head wounds are notorious for that. What the hell happened to mom and dad? Why wouldn't they answer us. Grandma said they were under someone else's control, but whose?
Her thoughts went round and round, her vacant gaze on the books she was supposed to be reading. Finally, after what seemed like days of getting nowhere, she cracked open the first of the books, the one on the Spanish Inquisition.
She wanted to disbelieve what she was reading, the horrors that had occurred when someone was accused of witchcraft, but she knew, deep inside, that people really were that way. Or at least they could be that way given even minor provocation.
The assigned reading took her mind off of the memory, until she'd finished the reading on the Spanish Inquisition. Then she put two and two together.
What happened to my parents? That's the kind of thing that could set off another inquisition if it happened to someone else. If people without magic knew about wizards and that they could do things like that, they'd probably even encourage it.
As she worked on the reading for the Salem Witch Trials she grew even more depressed.
And that could happen again too. False accusations with no way to prove them. If people were worked up at all, they wouldn't even try to prove them. They'd just take them at face value and go after whoever was accused.
She rested her forehead on the book, depressed. Finally she pulled out her mother's journal again and re-read it.
Or we behave like this, no-one's the wiser regarding magic, and we get to actually do things with it that couldn't
be done otherwise. Okay, I guess I've learned the lesson Charles wanted me to learn from those two books.
She left her apartment carrying the books and headed upstairs towards Charles' apartment. As she was about to know, the door opened. Charles nearly ran into her before he saw her.
“Oh, I was just going to come get you for dinner,” he said.
“I came up because I finished the reading assignment.”
“You did? That was fast.”
“Well, you can ask Greg if you don't believe me, I read a lot. It was a form of escapism when I still lived at the building. But I guess I read enough to become a fast reader.”
“I was going to ask you about Greg, but not that. He's going to come over after he closes the store, if that's okay with you. We'll examine those memories and see if there's anything you're missing.”
She nodded, her face sober.
“That's perfectly fine. We need to find out what happened, not just because it was my parents, but because if something like that happens and gets out, we'll have another Inquisition or more Witch Trials to deal with.”
His face lit up with obvious pleasure.
“You did do all the reading, I'm impressed. Lots of people never make that connection.”
“I also made the connection to what you were saying about using magic in everyday life with no-one the wiser. You can still get things done with it that way, but you don't raise any sort of panic or alarm by doing so.”
If anything his grin grew even larger.
“That's a lot of progress for a couple of days. I think maybe we'll start moving on to some actual magic soon. Small things at first, but you need to start small if you want to maintain control with the more powerful workings.”
Now it was Amber who was cheering up.
“Really? No more of that visualization stuff?”
“No, there'll be more visualization for a long time yet. You don't even have the basics of that down, but there are things you can do without the visualization techniques, those things are just more limited. But we can start with those.”
She sighed and slumped her shoulders.
“Well, here are your books back. Any chance I can talk to Greg before he comes over? I want to see if he'll bring me some more books to read.”
“Really, you weren't kidding about reading that much?” Charles asked. “I can make some recommendations for you.”
“Not that kind of book. I read for entertainment. I think I'm going to have lots of down time where I'll need something to do and books will help me fill that time.”
A strange look crossed Charles' face, then faded into a cautious one.
“How good are you at keeping your emotions under control?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“Ask Alicia, like she said, I hadn't cried in years until these past couple of days. So normally, pretty good, but recently? Not so much.”
“Well, if you can keep your emotions under control, you can also use my computer. Wizards can have problems with electronics if their emotions get out of control. Errant bits of magical energy can fry a lot of different electronics and that's the same thing that allows you to tap the power from yourself. I've discovered a way around it, partially, but it only works on the delicate things if you can keep your emotions controlled.”
“Is that why I could never get a cellphone to work?” she asked.
He laughed.
“If any wizard finds a way to get a cellphone to work for wizards and sells it? They'd be rich in a heartbeat. Fortunately the old landline phones work well enough for us.”
“I don't know much about computers. Would you be willing to help me with it, at least to start?”
“Sure, we can do that while we wait for Greg after dinner. I'll show you the basics. Now come on in and we'll eat.”
* * *
* * *
Chapter 11
Amber is catching on to computers quickly, Charles thought as he shut his laptop down. It's like she really is the age she looks and still has the ability of the young to grasp concepts and ideas more quickly than an older person.
Greg had just come in and Amber was with him now, looking at the books he'd brought.
“All these years, I never realized we read the same genres,” she said.
“I read almost anything,” Greg replied. “When you live a really long time, you can get through a whole lot of books.”
“Well, you could've recommended things for me to read, you know?” she said.
“I didn't want to you think I was telling you to do anything, it always seemed like you'd react to it badly if I did.”
“You're probably right,” she said, after a moment of thought.
“Well, I brought you some classic sci-fi and fantasy authors: Heinlein, Asimov, Tolkien, Hambly, and a few others. I know what you've bought in general and remembered it was normally newer titles. So I thought you might get a kick out of reading some of the people who made those genres possible.”
Charles, who had been listening in on the conversation, thought she looked a little doubtful as he walked over. He noticed that Greg still had more books in the bag and pointed to it.
“And those?” he asked.
Greg blushed, caught red-handed.
“Well, those are ones I know she'll like. I just thought she should get a taste of the older authors first, you know?”
The remainder of the books spilled out of the bag and onto the table. Amber pounced, recognizing the later books in some of the series she'd been reading and enjoying.
“Thank you Greg,” she said.
“Don't mention it. Keep those others too, you may find you need something else to read and discover that you enjoy the older ones also.”
He handed over the bag for her to shovel all the books back into.
“Greg, I know I told you what we needed over the phone. Amber's agreed to it now also. But there are a few other things as well.”
Charles went through everything he and Amber had discovered and what they surmised as well.
“I actually remember back then,” Greg said. “For a while there we had a wizard a week disappearing. Everyone was wondering if there were some sort of supernatural only stalker or something like that. After Al disappeared it accelerated for a while, but then it just stopped dead.”
“Algernon didn't have any records for that time frame either, he stopped keeping them before anyone at all disappeared,” Charles added.
Greg scratched his head.
“Think someone got to him? Paid him to neglect his duties or something?”
“Or forced him to neglect them,” Amber said.
Greg looked at Amber again.
“You're voice is lower pitched now and you look about three years older than you did the last time I saw you. I was wondering what was different, it just took me a minute to put my finger on it.”
Charles stopped and looked at Amber.
Greg's right, I guess I didn't notice because I've been with her almost right through and been seeing it more gradually. But she looks at least eighteen now and her voice is lower pitched.
Amber looked at Charles, so he nodded.
“Greg's right. I didn't notice because we're together most of the time. I see all the changes one at a time instead of in a lump.”
“Great,” she said, “I hope I don't end up catching up with all the years I missed. It'd really suck to go straight to middle age.”
“Except that's not middle age for a wizard,” Greg said. “My guess is that if your body is finally willing to grow, you'll end up looking whatever age it would've stopped growing and filling out at. I'm not sure but I think that happens to girls somewhere in their early twenties.”
“Hmm, twenties wouldn't be too bad,” Amber said. “At least I'd look like an adult.”
“I think we need to get back on focus here,” Charles said. “I know this isn't your favorite thing Greg, but we do need to do it. Especially with that memory I told you she rememb
ered today. That, right there, could be a clue to what was happening.”
Greg sat Amber down in an easy chair and placed another one facing her.
“Okay Amber, what I'm going to do is monitor what you're actively thinking about. That's all I'm going to look at. So you just have to remember these new memories and think about each one for a minute or two and I'll examine them, okay?”
Her mind flashed back to the newest memory she'd recovered. The one where her grandmother had given her the gift. But this time it went a few seconds further.
* * *
The fog swirled around them, disturbed by a wind that seemed to link Amber and her grandmother.
Then the monsters came.
They looked like people, but she knew they weren't. Their heads were huge clouds of fog, like sickly-gray cotton candy. The fog around their heads swirled, occasionally glowing red in spots.
Her grandmother drew out what looked to be a small sword from under her coat, then placed herself between Amber and the monsters.
“Run Amber, do it now!” she screamed as she slashed at the first of the monsters.
Amber backed away from the monsters, watching her grandmother fight. Her grandmother dropped first one, then a second of the monsters, but then her daddy reached for grandma, except he wasn't daddy any more. Now his head was covered with swirling fog. She looked over and her mommy's head was also.
Mommy was coming straight for her and daddy had just torn grandma's sword out of her hands.
* * *
Amber screamed and fell back in the chair. Greg whipped himself backwards striking his head on the back of his own chair.
“Wow,” he said, “She's got some strong memories.”
“What happened?” Charles asked.
Greg spat the description out in a rush, as though trying to verbalize it while it was still fresh in his mind.