The Memory Thief

by Sarina Dorie

“You will be our guests,” he said. Or at least I thought they used the word guest. I was a little rusty. Mayhap that was the word for captive. He bid me to hand him my possessions. My heart sank to new lows as they spotted the chain to the pocket watch hanging from my skirt and took that too.

  There was argument over whether they would bind me in addition to the men. I wasn’t sure if this was unusual. Women held equal rank to men, and I suspected there was no reason not to treat me the same as the men. I struggled to keep up with the quick words.

  “Where will you take us?” I asked. “Do you know the Chiramantepjin province? They will know me. They will speak on my behalf and attest I come here in peace.”

  The woman snorted. “The people of the chiramantep clan are dead.”

  My heart sank. I didn’t know if I would ever retrieve my memories if Taishi—or perhaps another of his tribe who had stolen them—had died.

  The warrior’s next words sent me into further dismay. “We need not ask who you are. I recognize you from the meeting of the seven tribes, Felicity, daughter of the star man.”

  Chapter Two

  The courtyard and the streets were crammed when we went to the ball, and the anxiety of the people to see poor stupid me was very great, and I must say I am quite touched by it, and feel proud, which I always have done, of my planet and of the territories in space which I am to rule.

  –Queen Victoria on her coronation in 1838, Earth Standard

  Meriwether found me on the planet seven years, two months and eight days before my return. I lay in a small, crude hut, asleep. He crawled in to get out of the jungle rainstorm, hoping there were no natives or wild beasts within what he took to be a cave in the side of a hill. He came upon me instead.

  He often said he felt like a fairytale prince. I suppose one might have mistaken him for a prince, with his fine clothes and smooth features. He wore his brown hair in a ponytail like an older gentleman, though he was young like me, mayhap seventeen. When he leaned down to kiss me, I woke, screamed, and slapped him.

  I lay sticky with sweat and aching all over. My head pounded and I felt ill. I clutched my father’s pocket watch to my chest, though I had no awareness of how it came into my possession. Disoriented and confused, I didn’t know where I was or why I lay in a bed of woven vines and animal skins, clad in little more than a thin blanket that clung to my sweaty body. I covered myself as best I could, not losing all my wits. I noticed the full sleeve of Chiramantepjin-style tattoos on my arms. I had no idea how I’d come to be here. My last memory was the gathering of the seven tribes.

  The mere effort of moving sent throbs of fire through my insides. My scream turned into cries of pain. I collapsed in exhaustion. My insides hurt, and sharp pain stabbed between my legs when I tried to sit up. Something bad had happened, I knew. It wasn’t just my memory I’d lost.

  “Are you ill? Injured?” Meriwether asked. “What do you need?”

  The earth thudded with running feet outside. The man I later came to know as Lord Klark shouted, apparently thinking it was his adolescent son who had screamed. They practically tore the walls down getting in.

  “My god! Clementine? What in the blazes are you doing here?” said a man in dripping finery that was out of place on this world.

  I noted the way he used my mother’s given name, but I was still in such a shock, and now more terrified than ever at being found by a group of men while in my naked and weakened state, that I hardly took any notice. Lord Klark threw his drenched cape over me and ordered his men to leave. Meriwether remained.

  “Pardon my error. I mistook you for someone else.” The gentleman kneeled beside me and took up my hand. “What is a young lady doing on this planet? What is your name, child?”

  “Who are you? You aren’t one of the Santa Maria’s crew,” I said. “Where’s my Poppy?” I tried to remember where I was and why I was there. Surely I was still on Planet 157, the world Father had been sent to survey. I knew I was in a Jomon hut, though this one was far less elegant that those I remembered in the Chiramantepjin village. My memories went as far back as the gathering of the head Nipa from each of their provinces. There had been a great rumble of thunder, and the earth had shook. I felt something horrible had happened, but what it was I couldn’t quite say.

  I clasped the pocket watch in my hands, feeling grounded by the tiny ticks in my palms.

  It took several minutes before we had it all sorted out. The man was a lord and prospector with his own party. He stared, looking as befuddled as I felt. “You are the only survivor of the surveying party? And you don’t remember any of it? Not even your father’s death?”

  Tears stung my eyes and my throat closed so tight it hurt to speak. “I don’t believe you.” I didn’t remember him dying anyway.

  “Poor child, you don’t know what happened?” At seventeen, I was hardly a child, but I didn’t correct him as he went on. “There was some kind of meeting of the tribes. But the savages betrayed your father and killed him and all in his party. They destroyed the ship. Don’t you remember?”

  I shook my head. Taishi’s tribe, and the others I had met, would do no such thing. At least, I didn’t want to believe they could do such a thing. I remembered something about the Tatsujin and dragons, but their faces were a blur and I wasn’t sure if it was a dream.

  I smoothed my finger over the surface of the pocket watch, rubbing off the smear of crusted blood. “What of my sister?”

  “Dead like everyone else. It’s a miracle you survived. But truly, you have no recollection? Not even of the ship being destroyed? It wiped out half the jungle and killed most of the tribal people. You are the first trace of a living person we’ve found.” He smoothed a hand over my hair like a father would have.

  I fell back into to bed and sobbed. My muscles ached from fatigue and my head pounded worse than ever.

  Lord Klark pressed a hand to my forehead. “Good god, you’re feverish, child.”

  Meriwether patted my shoulder, trying to console me. I’m ashamed to admit, I might have elbowed him in the ribs.

  “May I keep her, Father?” Meriwether asked. “We’ll take her to the ship and I’ll nurse her to health.”

  Lord Klark turned to his son. “I need you to fetch the ship’s doctor. This girl is injured and ill. She may die if you don’t hurry.”

  I felt like I was dying, anyway, inside and out.

  Meriwether took off.

  Lord Klark picked up a blood-soaked piece of fabric from the corner and dropped it. He leaned in closer and took my face in his hands. “Now that my son is gone, child, I ask you to tell me what you truly remember. You say you don’t remember, but I think you don’t want to remember. You must try.”

  “Truly I cannot. Someone stole my memories,” I said. I then explained what I thought had happened, as much as it shamed me to do so. Though I left out the detail that I thought I had been physically violated, he warily eyed the blood under my fingernails and glanced at the rust-colored stains on the furs and woven clothes. Only, there was too much blood to account for. Could some of it have been someone else’s? It was old and the entire hut smelled rancid.

  I felt dizzy and leaned back and rested.

  The doctor tried to examine me when he came, placing his hands on my knees to part my legs. Being a lady and unaccustomed to such boldness, I kicked him in the face. I don’t remember him sedating me but he must have. Later I overheard the maids whisper while they thought I was asleep, that I was weak from loss of blood and sick with an infection. Had I not been found, I would have died. They had overheard the doctor tell Lord Klark I had been violated. From the evidence of the stitches holding the wound together, I suspected I had proof.

  Still, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.

  I was relieved Meriwether wasn’t present as Lord Klark spoke to me in the cold, white hospital of the ship, especially since I later came to know his son so well. “This is most unfortunate. Why your father ever saw it fit to bring young l
adies to an uncivilized world in the first place is a mystery to me. If people know what you’ve been exposed to, they will treat you as a pariah. Your reputation as a lady will be ruined. No man will ever have you if they know you have been left unchaperoned with savages. You must not speak of your experiences on the planet, lest people think less of you. Do you understand?” He took my hand. “I will, of course, do all in my power to keep you safe from such gossips while you are my charge. Such matters need not cause you worry.”

  I stared at the sterile walls, so plain and unnatural after the vivid color of the jungle. The smell was acrid compared to the musky perfume of the trees and earth. Tears slid down my cheeks as he ranted. I had no family and no home. If any of my Chiramantepjin friends were still alive, I didn’t know if they were friends anymore.

  Lord Klark stroked his beard, eyeing me through his monocle. “Truly, all your memories were stolen? You remember none of the attack?”

  When I closed my eyes I saw myself running through thick foliage, others screaming and passing us by. I felt the heat of fire and choked on the thick smoke of burning flesh. I pulled my sister with me, trying to carry her, but when I tried to turn back to see her, there was no more memory. I retrieved a snippet of Taishi tugging me to the river, my heart racing.

  The image that came to me next contained the box of herbs used for memory exchange by the natives of the planet.

  In my five years on the planet, I had learned how the plants were used to remove memories and give them to someone else. When I closed my eyes, I felt my hands on warm shoulders, my memories wicking away. It wasn’t just a few minutes’ worth of memories, as was the custom in a memory exchange, but a great span of time. I couldn’t imagine myself giving up these memories freely. I didn’t know why, but someone had wanted to keep something about that attack secret, or perhaps simply the attack on me.

  As much as I hated to consider the idea, there was only one person I would have been close enough to exchange memories with. The idea that the man I loved had stolen them was worse than the physical pain I was in.

  But not by much.

  There was one reason, and only one reason I was on Planet 157 serving as guide and now translator to Meriwether’s surveying team. I wanted my memories back from the memory thief.

  Of course, there was also the matter of tracking Taishi down and finding out if he had been the one to steal my memories. I didn’t yet know how I would make him give them back—or even if he lived after what I had been told.

  Dressed in vivid green and purple furs made from the hides of the raccoon dogs they called tanuki, the tribal people wore their clan animal with pride. Flickering flames from fires in pits along the walls danced over the stone architecture of the great hall and the Tanukijin warriors surrounding us. The elders placed offerings before the altar at the front of the room. Many of the warriors wore headdresses of the horned raccoon dogs, burying their true faces behind the monstrous ones. Only their bronze limbs were visible, hinting at their humanness.

  The entire room stank of the dried fish hanging from the rafters of the ceiling, wood smoke and fermenting vegetables. My stomach churned from smelling the putrid body odors caused by eating such a diet.

  Meriwether’s pallor was green and I worried he might grow ill again. He covered his mouth and nose with his handkerchief. Charbonneau looked as though he were breathing from his mouth. Captain Ford might have been in too much pain from his burned arm and a leg wound to care.

  The villagers sat around us, giving our party a wide berth. This tribe resembled the other I had known. People possessed the same black hair and swarthy skin typical of those with Jomon ancestry. A hundred pairs of almond-shaped eyes pretended not to study us. Only the children stared openly. I had long ago perfected the art of using my peripheral vision, and with this I studied them in return. Unlike the Chiramantepjin of long ago, these people were thin and emaciated. I thought of the space station Lord Klark owned and how well-fed all citizens were—even the poor.

  I elbowed Captain Ford’s good arm when I caught him ogling a young mother nursing her child. “Don’t stare. The Jomon find it rude.”

  He loosened his cravat. “She keeps looking at me.”

  I didn’t bother to argue that she was using her peripheral vision—which wasn’t considered rude. I focused on the greater point. “You don’t dress like anyone they have ever seen, and they think you’re less than human. You’re devils. Foreigners. Gaiyojin.”

  “I’m not human to them?”

  Had the tribe been clad in waistcoats and top hats like citizens of the British Empire of Planets, or the women in frocks with puff sleeves and ruffles like mine, my party would not have found them so alien. But the calf-length skirts made of hides, fur-lined tunics and half-dressed women were a shock to those who had lived on asteroids, ships and space stations where such attire would be deemed scandalous. The appearance of the planet’s natives bothered me far less than it once had.

  I was more concerned with the men beneath the masks. The warrior who had taken us to the village had ignored my questions when I’d asked him if there were other survivors. Among these faces I could find none who looked familiar.

  I kneeled in the same manner as the Tanukijin people in the large hut. I removed my bonnet and gloves before the stuffy room grew more stifling. Charbonneau and Meriwether sat cross-legged as our people were wont to do. Charbonneau kept rubbing his wrist where he had been bound. Captain Ford reclined as best he could with his wrapped injuries, as he had not only the shot to the arm, but a chiramantep bite to the leg. He eyed the spears and muttered complaints to Meriwether. I could only attribute his obliviousness to the danger we were in to the fact that he was in pain. Or he was a dolt.

  Purple-and-green-striped pelts covered the windows and doors of the stone room, keeping the heat from the fires in and the raging blizzard out. I unfastened the clasp of my cape, letting it fall to the dirt floor. Truth be told, I would have rather rid myself of the cumbersome clothes of my people and worn the airy skirts and coverings I had grown used to in my teenage years.

  When scantily-clad maidens set cups of steaming liquid before us, Captain Ford licked his lips. “Is it safe to drink? Would they poison us?”

  More maidens set down platters of meat and vegetables and stepped quickly back. Now that we were no longer bound, it was difficult to tell if we were guests or prisoners.

  “It depends what you mean by poison.” I eyed the liquid, knowing from the strong smell that it was a drink of fermented grain called shochu. “They won’t do anything to make us ill. If they wanted to kill us, they would have already. But—”

  Meriwether lifted a spoonful of sticky greens with one of the hashi, a stick-like utensil on his plate. I placed a hand on his arm. “Have a care not to drink or eat anything until the chief thanks their local deities and he drinks his own.”

  “According to the guidebook, it says I am to—”

  I kept my voice low, more because he would interpret my harsh tone as rudeness than the Jomon would. “Your guidebook was written hundreds of years ago about the Jomon descendants in Asia and North America on Earth, not the Jomon colonists as they exist today. Nor does it take into account the local traditions and regional differences of the tribes. Put that plate down before you offend our hosts.”

  Frowning, Meriwether set it down.

  The captain leaned back again. “She isn’t your superior, you know. If that was my woman, I’d put her in her place.” He dabbed at his sweating face with his handkerchief.

  I studied the staring natives sitting past the guards. Now wasn’t the time for one of his diatribes.

  Charbonneau bumped into Captain Ford’s injured leg, which brought on a string of curses from the old star dog.

  “Terribly sorry. I see you’re still bleeding,” said Charbonneau. “Might I rewrap that for you, Captain?”

  Meriwether fidgeted and looked to me with apologetic eyes. He was too reticent for his own good. Another reason
he made a poor leader for an expedition. Had I not been born a woman, my experience on the planet would have qualified me to lead the mission.

  Captain Ford opened his mouth—which was never a good sign. “If you ask me—”

  I was saved from another cutting remark when the drumming started. At last the tribal elders made their entrance. In the Jomon native tongue, an old, toothless woman in the raccoon dog headdress thanked the nature spirits and then their ancestors for their blessings. People around us bowed, first to the elders and then to the shrine beside the throne. I joined in the bowing, the gesture coming naturally and automatically after the years I had lived on the planet. Meriwether dipped his head and gave a confused, half bow.

  “Miss Earnshaw, what’s she saying? They aren’t about to eat us, are they?” Charbonneau asked.

  I shook my head and whispered, “That’s one of the tribes descended from Sumerians on the Gearheart Colony in the Western Milky Way.” I couldn’t help adding, “Jomon hardly ever eat people.” I tried not to laugh at his startled expression. I wondered if my father’s party had been this ignorant when we’d come here last.

  At the thought of my father, my breath hitched in my chest—and it wasn’t just because my corset was too tight. I was reminded of the danger of this world. My father and sister had died the last time I had been here. I could have died earlier in the attack, and still might. I pressed my hand to my pocket, remembering too late my father’s watch was gone.

  I had begged to be part of this mission, wishing more than anything to find out what had happened to my memories the last time I had been on this planet. As I was a young lady in his charge, and his son’s betrothed, Lord Klark had been reluctant to allow me to return. Meriwether had insisted my knowledge of the land and where to find the sought-after red diamonds might succeed where the mining operations had failed. Meriwether also knew that my knowledge of language and customs made me a better liaison and translator than any of his men who denied the existence of Jomon culture.