The Memory Thief

by Sarina Dorie

  He glanced at the tattoos fully exposed on my arms and then away. “I think that made my sister cry, not you.”

  I laughed and nudged him with an elbow.

  He offered me an arm. He made an effort to keep his eyes forward and not stare at my legs exposed under the skirt or the way the collar of my tunic shifted as I moved, sometimes exposing hints of cleavage he was unused to seeing.

  He said, “I beg you will forget my indiscretions and trust I have grown to be more diplomatic with time.”

  Upon reaching the room, we found all were seated at the table, save for my sister who played the stringed tonkori in the corner with her intact hand. She sat with her scars facing the wall. She nodded to us when we came in. I waited for her to break away from her music but she continued.

  It took a moment for me to realize what was amiss. She wore my dress with my corset underneath! How she had contrived them, I could only guess. Of all the vexing things sisters could do. . . . No, it was not vexing. I had never felt at home in those clothes. She was always the one who wanted to dress like a lady.

  Meriwether closed his eyes and swayed to the tranquil music of the harp. “What a lovely sound. I simply must bring one of those back home with me.”

  Taishi barked out in Jomon, “Is he referring to the instrument or the girl?”

  I rolled my eyes. Faith’s cheeks flushed red.

  Michi bounded up to my sister, tugging on her sleeve and making her twang out the notes in a less than harmonious manner. “Auntie, my mother wishes to introduce us to someone.”

  Reluctantly Faith turned from the wall, keeping her face angled away so her scars wouldn’t show. She stood before us, eyes downcast.

  “This is my sister Faith,” I said.

  Faith bowed, then midway she stopped and curtsied.

  Meriwether managed to close his gaping mouth. “Indeed!” He dropped to one knee and took her hand. “It’s you, the ghost from my dreams. I knew you were real.” He pressed her hand to his cheek.

  Faith slipped her hand out of his and turned her eyes back to the floor.

  I tugged Meriwether to his feet. “What are you going on about?”

  He looked from me to Faith, his face flushing even redder than when I’d mentioned his tendency to say the wrong thing. “Pardon me. As you might already be aware, I’m Lord Meriwether Klark. I’m pleased to be formally introduced to you.”

  Faith bowed her head.

  “Hmm,” I said. He hadn’t answered to my satisfaction, and I suspected he didn’t intend to.

  Taishi Nipa locked eyes with me, a question in his eyes. Whatever secret the two of them shared, he didn’t know either.

  I gestured to Michi. “And I would like to introduce Michi, my daughter.”

  I waited for the hurt in his eyes. I had forewarned him, but he could be so sensitive.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Michi.” He bowed and kissed her hand. My daughter made a face and wiped it off on her skirt. We all laughed.

  Meriwether sat between Sumiko and Faith. My sister seated herself with her good side toward him. He stared more than ate. Taishi nudged me a couple times when Meriwether did something he found worthy of poking fun at. Once it was missing his mouth and pouring sake down his chin instead.

  Meriwether dabbed at his cravat with a napkin and laughed at himself. “Oh, I’m so clumsy sometimes.”

  This even made Faith laugh and she forgot to hide her face from him and looked at him fully. While he gaped at her even more, he spilled his wine in his lap and she tilted back her head and laughed. More of her throat was exposed for the briefest of seconds and I saw the raw, pink patchwork of scars that sank below her collar.

  Faith dabbed at his cravat with her own napkin.

  “I bet he wishes she’d pat down the other places he spilled sake, ne?” Taishi Nipa whispered in my ear.

  Faith frowned and gave him a sharp glare, no doubt hearing what he’d said.

  Meriwether’s fingers lingered on hers as he took the napkin. There was a second when I thought I detected a hint of chemistry between them. Then he had to open his mouth and ruin everything. “We have very good doctors on our space station. They could reconstruct your hand. And it wouldn’t take much to fix your face.”

  I coughed. When he looked at me I shook my head.

  Faith returned to her corner to play music. After dinner, Sumiko joined her.

  “Your sister is an accomplished lady,” Meriwether said. “Why, you told me she knows drawing, but you never told me she had musical talent as well.”

  “Yes, and auntie sews and weaves.” Michi spoke slowly, enunciating each English word. “But she will not dance. She says she will only dance to waltzes. Also she sings most beautifully.”

  Meriwether rested his head in his hands, a dopy grin on his face. “Perhaps she will sing for us tonight too.”

  Michi shook her head. “Auntie will not sing. Father says the only time she ever sang was lullabies when I was a baby.”

  “Indeed?” Meriwether asked. He lowered his voice. “I will have you know I’ve heard her sing. Though there is a chance I was dreaming.” He called out to Faith. “Miss Earnshaw, will you sing for us tonight?”

  Faith shook her head and whispered to Sumiko. My sister tilted her head so that her hair shielded her face from view. My throat tightened every time I saw the way she hid herself. Taishi squeezed my hand. Did he know the guilt that already had begun to eat away at my heart? Surely he did with my memories inside him.

  “I will sing,” said Sumiko.

  Faith played the harp. Meriwether closed his eyes and listened.

  Taishi leaned close to my ear. “Someone has fallen in love with your sister.”

  I shook my head. “No, he looks like that all the time.” Most of the time, anyway. I’d seen another side of him caring for patients and responding to the situation with the seriousness it deserved. Even so, it was a challenge not to think of Meriwether’s natural state as something other than daydreaming or acting silly. The idea he might experience love at first sight with a different lady raised by savages shouldn’t have been such a surprise. Only she was so much older than he. I could hardly imagine they’d have anything in common.

  Taishi nodded to my sister. “Even so, I’m betting Faith has enough sense not to fall for him.”

  I stifled a laugh.

  Meriwether clapped loudly when they were done. “Lovely, just lovely. Miss Earnshaw, would you be so kind to sing for us?”

  She shook her head and stared at the floor.

  “You know I think highly of your voice. Please sing for us. Please. For me?”

  She blushed. She almost succeeded in keeping the smile from her lips. As soon as she began to sing, I knew the song. It was an Irish lullaby my mother had sung to us when we were children. The memory came to me unbidden. How funny our minds are that they might contain things we don’t even know we can remember until something sparks it for us.

  Michi hugged my arm and smiled up at me. I ruffled her blonde hair.

  The tune was the same, but Faith had changed the words to Jomon. I could only guess so my daughter would understand. On the second refrain, Meriwether joined in. I was just as surprised as everyone else in the room. Not only did he know the song, but he could speak Jomon? It took but a moment to realize he couldn’t understand the Jomon words he sang with the way he strung them together and separated them in the wrong places. Still, I gathered he’d heard that song enough times to memorize the sounds. I was now more curious than ever.

  His voice was a perfect tenor to accompany my sister’s sweet soprano. They made a harmonious duet.

  The song put Michi to sleep in my lap. I stroked her hair away from her face. A daughter. I still hadn’t gotten over the idea of that. Surely Lord Klark had known once his surgeon explained my condition. I tried not to hate him for Meriwether’s sake. But it was impossible knowing everything he had taken from me.

  I looked at Taishi’s face. He placed an arm around me
, seemingly content. Even after apologizing a dozen times earlier, it didn’t make me feel any better than I had accused him of being unfaithful. How was it he could still love me? I didn’t deserve him.

  Michi sighed in her sleep.

  Taishi scooped Michi up like she was a rag doll. “I’m taking this one to bed. I’ll be back for you in a few minutes.” He kissed my cheek.

  When the song was over, my sister bowed her head. Sumiko took out her flute and said something to Faith I couldn’t hear. My sister arranged her tonkori before her again and they played together.

  I watched Meriwether’s eyes flicker from my sister to me. His smile turned uneasy. I had known Meriwether well enough in the last seven years to detect guilt, try as he might to hide it.

  I kicked him under the table. “You’ve been keeping a secret from me, haven’t you?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent.

  —Susan B. Anthony of the United Worlds of America

  “Oh, Felicity dear, I didn’t mean to!” he said. He lowered his voice. I scooted around the table so we would be close enough to keep our voices confidential.

  “It was the second night here that I heard her singing outside. She was like a ghost in my dreams. I wandered out of my bed and followed the sound of her voice to a little garden—you know, the one with the raccoon dog statue with the—ahem—and I sat there and listened. It was warm and peaceful and I liked the sound of the song. The notes were sad and pretty and expressed the loneliness I felt at that moment. She sang it over and over until I memorized it.

  “The next morning I wondered if I had dreamed it and sleep-walked out there. My wife—the wife-swap wife—the one who is really more of a bodyguard, knows a few words here and there. Enough to tell me how displeased she was that I’d wandered off. She made Sumiko tell me how the ghost of a woman as pale as mist wanders around the cliff palace at night singing sad songs and strangling men in their sleep—if they don’t do as their wives bid them.”

  I covered my mouth to hide my smile. He was so easy to play jokes on, it seemed cruel.

  He gazed dreamily at Faith playing in the corner. “I heard her the following night again. You know me, I don’t believe in ghosts—much. I was scared, but I still had to find her because I was so intrigued. I went to the garden again and listened. At one point she stopped singing in Jomon and sung in English. When she had finished, I asked, ‘Are you a ghost?’”

  I laughed at Meriwether and he shook his head at himself and laughed too. “There was no answer at first, but then she did answer and she said she was. I asked her if she was there to haunt anyone particular and she said something along the lines of being the voice for all the lost Jomon who were killed on Planet 157. She told me sad stories and I listened.” He sighed. “Then the following day while I was hiding from—er, I mean, taking a break from my ‘wife,’ the children dragged me to some little room to have my fortune told by the wise woman. She was wrapped in furs and her face was covered with scarves. I only saw the vivid blue of her eyes. I leaned closer, thinking for a moment that she was you, but then I saw her eyes were different. One of her eyes . . . well, sagged. I allowed her to tell my fortune. It wasn’t a very pleasant fortune. She told me of my past—about how I had found you—and she told me some of who you had been before I came to meet you and how I had stolen your happiness away. I didn’t believe many things she said, about you being married and having a family of your own. She told me horrible things about my father.” Meriwether swallowed. “I didn’t believe these either, only I now know it all to be true.”

  I took his hand and squeezed it, sorry for the disappointments he surely must be experiencing. Not only had he lost a fiancée, but he’d also lost the ideal of who he thought his father was.

  He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I knew from her voice that she was the ghost woman. That night I went early to the garden. I tiptoed as quietly as I could and stole into the shadows. I fell asleep, but woke when she eventually came along. Her feet crunched over fallen leaves and my eyes followed her black silhouette to a door to enter another garden. She didn’t sing that night. She wept. I didn’t think I could sneak into the garden with that creaky door, so I climbed up the side of the wall.

  “The moonlight from the double moons was so pale and bright it illuminated her every feature. And it made her look ghostly and quite striking in the light. It must have caused me such a shock that I fell from the wall and into a soft cushion of plants. She jumped up from the water and was quite startled.”

  “Wait a minute. You fell down from the wall because you spied on my sister while she was naked in the bathing pool?” I asked.

  He glanced at my sister across the room. “Um. . . . Anyway, she was furious. I think she would have slapped me if I hadn’t hit my head. Well, I don’t remember hitting my head, but I must have. I was dizzy and woozy and I felt drunk.”

  I shook my head. He’d landed in the memory moss.

  A smile spread across his face as he spoke of it. “She started tugging on me and my clothes and before I knew it, she pulled off my shirt. Or maybe I took it off. I can’t remember. Then she did something strange to me. Unless I dreamed it from hitting my head.” His face sobered and he glanced at her where she played.

  I wondered if my sister had intentionally given him a memory or she had been trying to get him out of the bed of moss. Either way she must have given him something memorable. Probably something sad. Of course it wouldn’t matter what she’d given him, they would both feel a strong connection to each other afterward. I knew how memory moss relaxed my body. I could only imagine how Meriwether might take it to find a naked woman limp in his arms after the experience of their exchange.

  Still, I couldn’t imagine they’d done anything more than that. This was my prim and proper sister and even more scrupulous former fiancé. Then again. . . .

  Faith continued playing the tonkori but when she looked up, pink tinged her cheeks.

  I didn’t ask if they’d stopped at an exchange of memories.

  “She’s the most beautiful woman in the galaxy,” he said. “It wouldn’t offend you if, well, ahem. I think I may have . . . that is to say. My heart will always be true to you, but. . . .”

  Captain Ford chose that ill-timed moment to stomp in uninvited. “Someone has been using my comm unit. And that someone has twenty-two messages from various Jeffersons across the galaxy as well as a few from the U.W.A. And might I add that quite a few of my tri-tip steaks are missing.”

  I listened to each of the messages with my sister, Meriwether and Taishi. Captain Ford grumbled about how many of his sub-space minutes these messages used up. On the plus side, incoming messages in Captain Ford’s comm station were now classified as a priority in the most elite and noble families in the galaxy. He wasn’t even a princess.

  Many messages were from cousins, aunts, uncles, and distant relatives, some whom expressed surprise that my sister and I were alive, others that they wondered if they had seen me in the distance at a ballet on New Campton Manor Station, or thought they caught a glimpse of a woman who looked like my mother. Many didn’t know that I had even been born. More importantly, they all offered support in establishing Planet 157 as its own independent planet, and aid to keep the native colonists from extinction.

  It was my grandmother’s enigmatic message that simply said, “Call me at once,” that both excited and alarmed me.

  I reached over to press the button to move on to the next message.

  “Well?” Faith asked. “Aren’t you going to answer that one? She said ‘at once’ and that means at once.”

  “We still have sixteen more messages to listen to. Don’t you think we should at least see if one of the leaders from the United Worlds has more important news?” I asked.

  Meriwether and Taishi exchanged bemused glances.

  “What?” I asked.

  Taishi winked. “You’ve just been reunited with your sist
er and you’re already squabbling like children, ne?”

  “We are not!” Faith said.

  Because I knew it would vex her I added, “Are too!”

  She scowled, but seeing me giggle she couldn’t keep a straight face and laughed. It was nice to see her happy. It reassured me to see her lose her self-consciousness for a few minutes.

  “Call them back,” Meriwether said. “I’ll wait out in the hall to give you privacy with your grandparents. They might not welcome the sight of me after they learn, well, what you’ve shared with them about my father.”

  Taishi cleared his throat. “I will stay if you wish it, but I do not want to intrude. They may not speak as freely if the leader of the Jomonjin is present.” He bowed his head and followed Meriwether out.

  Faith and I looked to Captain Ford.

  “What?” he asked. “Surely they won’t mind a captain being present. It is my ship.”

  Meriwether entered the bridge once again and escorted the captain out.

  “Well, I never! This is my ship. A captain has a right to be on his own bridge.”

  I swallowed. My sister squeezed my hand. She positioned herself so the more presentable side of her face was angled toward the screen and her hair fell over the other half.

  I called Lady Petunia Jefferson. She took but a few seconds to answer. Her image came onto the screen, a genteel-looking lady in her seventies. Her silver hair was piled on top of her head and ringlets framed her face. I’d never paid much attention to gowns, but I had a feeling hers was uncomfortable. Her waist was so small and bosom so wide, she surely achieved the perfect body that Meriwether’s sisters strived for with an extremely rigid corset.

  “My goodness!” she exclaimed. “You both are present.” She sat up taller and put on her spectacles. Her lips parted and her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, dear me! You look just as your mother when I saw her last.” I glanced at Faith who kept her good side turned to the screen. In truth she looked far more like our mother than I did with my freckles and darker shade of blonde hair.