Cyan’s fingers gripped the mattress. “Dr Haven…” He tried groggily to swivel from the bed, but Ms Ferryman stopped him with a hand on his knee.
“Stay put and relax. It’s normal to feel confused. You’re coming out of a nasty fever.”
“Fever?”
“You’ve been out cold for a few days. But you’re fine. The director’s been keeping a close eye on you.”
Cyan shook his head, his breaths quickening. “Dr Haven. He—” He stopped himself, suddenly remembering how much – or how little – he was supposed to know.
Ms Ferryman smiled and tipped her head, so that a black braid slipped from the bun in her hair. “Hm?”
Cyan swallowed drily, adjusted his glasses. “Is there food? I could eat a horse.” He attempted a smile, though it made his head throb. “Anything that’s not horse would do, though.”
Ms Ferryman patted his knee. “It’s a good sign that you have an appetite.” She stood up, took her locket from her tunic and opened it to speak. “Dr Haven?” She waited a moment. “He’s awake.”
She restored the locket to her tunic while addressing Cyan. “I’ll have the canteen throw something together for you. Perhaps some soup, so you can ease yourself back into eating. Sound good?”
Cyan nodded.
Ms Ferryman headed for the door. As she left the room she spoke to someone in the corridor, though Cyan couldn’t make out the words.
The door opened again, and Dr Haven entered.
Cyan’s muscles cramped around his neck. A stinging warmth blossomed across his palms and face and – realizing he’d have to hide his fear – he seized the flannel and spread it across his chin and reddening cheeks.
He forced himself to breathe at a more natural pace, shifting against his pillow as Dr Haven closed the door.
The director crossed the room and stopped by Cyan’s bed. He looked down from above, beaming gently.
Cyan looked up and feigned a smile. “Ahoy, Doctor.” He tapped vaguely at the tip of his non-existent cap, then wished he’d saluted less timidly.
“Hello, Cyan. You’re awake.”
“Yep. Unless this is a really boring dream.”
“Very droll.” The director cracked his knuckles and eyed Cyan’s flannel. “Are you feeling too warm?”
“A bit. Must be what’s left of the fever.”
“Ms Ferryman told you.”
“Yes.”
“And how are you faring?”
“Achy. But not too bad.”
Dr Haven studied him with grey, glacial eyes. “Is that all?”
Cyan’s forehead furrowed. “I guess so. Shouldn’t it be?”
“Your influenza was quite severe.”
Cyan shrugged. “If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it properly.”
“And what do you remember?”
“About what?”
The doctor licked his lips. “What do you remember, from before you woke up here?”
Cyan considered this carefully. “Um. I’m…not sure?”
He cursed himself; his reply had come out as a question. But Dr Haven seemed satisfied. “It’s normal to be confused. Fever can affect memory – even more so for someone under treatment here.”
Cyan nodded slowly. “Ah. Yeah. I just remember normal stuff. Normal days. The usual blur.”
“M-hm.” Dr Haven took a thin silver torch from his coat and shone it briefly into each of Cyan’s pupils before putting a cool hand to his forehead. “You’re still warm. But I suspect you’ll improve from here on. Ms Ferryman said she’s fetching you some soup.”
“Yeah. Turns out she’s quite nice when you’re on your deathbed. Usually she’s a bit…grimmer.” Cyan cringed. “But don’t tell her I said that.”
Dr Haven was washing his hands at a porcelain sink. “Sometimes there’s more to a person than you think.” He dried his hands and strolled to the door. “Keep eating and resting. You’ll be back on your feet in no time.”
Cyan watched the director leave. The moment the door closed, he pushed his forehead into his palms and breathed in long, shaking gasps.
First thing next morning, Cyan was out of medical quarters and back in uniform. He’d kept insisting he was fully recovered, until Ms Ferryman gave up protesting and told him – with her usual sternness restored – that he was welcome to leave and make himself ill again, if that’s what he really wanted.
He got straight to work, searching the sanctuary and racing on his quad around the harbour and sands. And, as he’d expected, there was no trace of Jonquil.
Late that afternoon, while sitting with Teal and Ruby on the benches behind the sanctuary, Cyan glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening in. Then he cleared his throat.
“That girl,” he began, as casually as he could, “Jon-something. You know the one?”
Ruby’s eyes didn’t move from the book in her hand, but Teal turned his head. “Jon-who?”
“You know the one. Tall. Really long black hair. Brown skin. Fast runner. Always playing with her hands.”
Teal pinched the tape on his glasses. “Jon-something…” His gaze drifted to the cove’s mossy face. He shook his head. “Doesn’t sound like anyone here.”
He chewed on a fingernail. “Are you okay, Cyan? You’re looking a bit flushed.” His eyes widened and he shifted along the bench, trying to get some distance from Cyan. “Hang on… You still got some of that fever? Is it infectious?”
Cyan didn’t answer. He’d checked again over his shoulder and spotted an orderly looking at them through one of the sanctuary’s windows.
Taking a book from his satchel, he pretended to read.
There was no doubt about it. Jonquil was gone and forgotten.
The next day, Cyan raced full-throttle across the dunes. He had an appointment to keep.
He saw the whale bones ahead. Huge ribs pointed skywards, bearing the weight of a giant chain of vertebrae. And on top of the vertebrae was a silhouette: Ruby, with arms extended, hopping on one foot, crisp and bold against a paling sky.
Cyan’s heart rate quickened at the sight, and he felt a prickling urge to get to her as swiftly as possible. He tried revving the quad harder but couldn’t go faster.
While Ruby skipped down the slope of the whale’s yellowing spine, Cyan rolled to a stop next to her quad. She was soon by his side, hopping gently with her plimsolls kicking left and right. “Ahoy, master of mystery! What kept you? Been waiting here for ages.”
Cyan hung his goggles on his handlebar. “Thanks.”
“Be at the whale bones,” quoted Ruby, in a low, hammy voice. “Alone. Tell no one.” Her eyebrows jiggled while she laughed. “I didn’t realize you’d turned into a cliché. What are you up to, whispering like a spy in the canteen?” She looked around suddenly, her eyes huge with exaggerated alarm. “Ooooh, are we being watched?”
“I hope not. Come on. Into the ribs.”
Ruby skipped across sand and through the whale’s parted jaws. Cyan followed slowly, scanning the sandscape as he moved. There was no sign of anyone. He saw only the distant mound of the cove; the twinkling rust of stranded ships; coarse tufts of beach grass; sand, sand and more sand.
Passing through the jaws, Cyan went straight to the rib he’d found the message on. He crouched and dug with his hands in the sand, but the etched letters were gone. He ran his fingers low along the rib, felt an area flatter and coarser than the rest of the bone. Someone had sanded the message away.
Ruby hitched her blue trousers a little, so she could sit with her arms wrapped around her legs. “What are you up to?”
“Looking for something.”
“What?”
Cyan muttered and left the rib. “Something someone wanted gone.”
He settled into a sandy groove across from Ruby and looked around again before speaking. “Teal didn’t try to come along?”
Ruby seemed puzzled, but her smile soon returned. “I told him he looked under the weather. Said he mi
ght be getting that flu of yours. He got all worked up, like he was about to die or something. Went looking for Dr Haven.”
Cyan’s shoulders slumped. “A while ago I would have found that funny.”
“It is funny. He’s his own worst enemy. Does it to himself.”
“But does he really?”
“What do you mean?”
Cyan didn’t reply. Instead, he dug deep into his satchel and pulled out a handful of pills.
Ruby stared at them. “Is that mealtime medicine?”
Cyan nodded again.
“Why’s it here?”
“I’ve been saving it up. In secret. I haven’t taken any pills since I got out from medical quarters.”
Ruby’s mouth was as wide as it could go. “Are you out of your mind? What about… What about your treatment? You might…remember something!”
Cyan scooped a hole and started burying the pills. “Maybe remembering’s not a bad thing.”
“What?”
He saw Ruby shifting away from him, so that the base of her back stopped against a whale rib. Her hand moved to her pocket and Cyan held up his palm. “Please, Ruby. Don’t use your locket. Just hear me out, okay? I need to show you something. If you want to call the orderlies after, go ahead. But let me show you first. It’s something you really need to see.”
Ruby’s eyes were fixed on Cyan, though her hand continued slowly on its course.
“Please,” repeated Cyan. He pushed his palms together. “I’m not going to talk about my past. I can’t; I don’t know anything about it. But I know about the present, and you need to know about it too.”
Ruby’s hand froze. “What do you mean, the present?” She peered around through pillars of bone. “Of course I know about the present.”
“You think you do, but you don’t.” Cyan took a deep breath. “Please, Ruby. Just let me show you something. Then you can do what you want.”
Ruby pushed her back further up the whale rib. She crossed her arms, and eyed Cyan for some time before finally speaking. “What is it you want to show me?”
Cyan cast his eyes east. “It’s at the Serenity. We’ll have to ride.”
After parking at the chasm’s edge, Cyan and Ruby headed upwards through the Serenity’s engine rooms. Then they navigated corridors of mildewed carpet, until they were standing outside cabin 7270.
Cyan pointed through the doorway. “In there.”
Ruby frowned at him before traipsing into the room. Her eyes searched the dank gloom, taking in the bed and its blanket of mould; the slanting drapes and rotting furniture.
“There,” said Cyan. “The mirror.”
Ruby approached the mirror on the dressing table. Cyan saw her frown deepen in its reflection, while she considered the four figures drawn with lipstick on the glass. He stood beside her, heard her murmuring.
“Me.” She pointed at the cartoon with squiggles for hair. Her finger moved along the portraits. “And that’s you. And there’s Teal. And that…that…”
She lingered on the red sketch of Jonquil, with its narrow face and long, centre-parted hair. “Who’s that?”
Cyan’s words were hushed. “Her name’s Jonquil.”
Ruby’s eyebrows drew together. “I don’t know any Jonquil. Is she a new resident or something?”
“She’s an old resident and she’s a friend. Your friend.”
Ruby puckered her lips, shook her head. “I don’t know anyone called Jonquil.”
“You do. You started these drawings on the mirror, and we each drew our own portrait. Jonquil was here with us. She drew her own picture.”
Ruby was squinting at the lipstick lines. “Nah. I’ve never been in this room. I didn’t draw any of this.”
“You’ve been made to forget. You had your memory of Jonquil removed – of all the time she was in the sanctuary. All the residents have. Apart from me.”
Although Ruby scoffed, she stepped – with growing unease – away from the mirror. “You’re making stuff up.”
“I promise I’m not. Jonquil was a resident. We used to hang out. But something went wrong with her. The Lethe Method made her…ill. It’s dangerous and it broke her. Dr Haven had everyone’s memory of her wiped. So they’d carry on as normal, with no idea of how dangerous the treatment can be.”
“That’s stupid. The treatment’s not dangerous.”
“It is. It’s not ready yet. It’s an experiment. Dr Haven’s using us – all the residents – as lab rats, to test and develop the method. Jonquil was a casualty, and everyone saw her have some sort of meltdown in the canteen. So the orderlies rounded everyone up. Knocked us all out so Dr Haven could remove our memories of her.”
“Pfft.” Ruby cocked her head. She was trying to smirk, but Cyan saw tautness in her cheeks, confusion in her eyes. “Okay, Mr Melodrama,” she began. “If this is all true, why do you remember Jonquil? Why hasn’t your memory been wiped?”
“Because I tricked Dr Haven. I woke up in… I don’t know where it was. A room with white tiles. You and Teal were there, anaesthetized or sedated or whatever. Dr Haven let me wake up before removing my memories, so he could ask me some questions about Jonquil. He’d already interviewed you two.
“I got him out of the room, just long enough to swap the memory drug in his syringe with water. I think that’s why I had a fever; maybe injecting the water made me ill. But I remember everything: what Dr Haven said about the treatment; how he took Jonquil away.”
Ruby broke into a sneer. “Can you hear yourself, Cyan? You sound like you’ve lost your mind.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Cyan nodded at Ruby’s trouser pocket. “Then why haven’t you called the sanctuary?”
“I…” Ruby’s mouth hung open. Closing it, she turned her face to the mirror.
Cyan followed her gaze, so that he was looking at Jonquil’s outline too. “You’re not sure. I can tell. You remember her, don’t you.”
Ruby didn’t reply.
“Don’t you?”
A gradual shake of the head. “No. I don’t. I don’t remember her at all.” Ruby’s mouth tightened. “But this picture, and the way you talk about her… Something about the name…” The shoulders of her blazer sagged. “It makes me…feel something.”
“Like what?”
“Sort of…sad. And weirdly worried. Or something like that. I’m not sure. But it doesn’t feel good.”
Cyan nodded to himself. He spoke gently. “Emotional residue.”
Ruby’s eyes were on him. “Emotional what?”
“Residue. Dregs. Sort of…the emotional stuff left over from what’s been forgotten. The treatment can’t get rid of it; it can only bury it. From what Dr Haven said, having it build up without knowing it’s there does the damage – the damage that made Jonquil fall to pieces. That’s why the treatment’s dangerous. That’s what Dr Haven’s trying to fix, but with all of us as his lab rats.”
Ruby was staring again at Jonquil’s empty outline. She began to shake her head. “No. This can’t be right.” Cyan heard the tremble in her voice. “You’re making all this up. Trying to freak me out.”
“There’s more.”
Cyan went to the bedside table. He opened its drawer and was relieved to find the message still etched inside; Dr Haven must have failed to figure out the bone code.
He beckoned Ruby over and moved aside so she could read.
Between green and red
Me: Ruth McMurphy
Mum: Helen McMurphy, blonde pixie hair, blue-grey eyes, best cuddles ever, smells like fresh soil in the garden, sings quietly in the bath
Dad: James McMurphy, bald shiny head, nerdy glasses, tickly black beard, brown eyes, Santa belly laugh, terrible jokes, smells like baking
Brother: Ben McMurphy, scoundrel, long blond curls, massive blue eyes, cute nose, noisy and lovely and smells like malty milk
Home: Nottingham in England, by the horse field in Bestwood
Best to de
ceive the memory thieves
Fight don’t forget, hold on or it’s gone
Ruby took a cautious step backwards while she read, as if afraid of the drawer’s contents. “What…”
“I found it here the day we drew ourselves on the mirror. There was a code on the whale bones that led me here. It’s been removed now. Just like Jonquil.”
“But what is this?” Ruby inched forward again, craning her neck towards the drawer.
“I think it’s a resident who was trying to keep hold of her memories. Someone who was fighting the treatment.”
Ruby’s hand rose to her lips. “God… This Ruth McMurphy…” Her voice was still unsteady. “She might be someone we know.”
“Probably forgotten all this by now. That’s my guess. But maybe not.”
“What does ‘between green and red’ mean?”
“I still haven’t figured that out. But if this Ruth was fighting the treatment, I’m guessing she had doubts. Maybe she sensed it was dangerous. Or maybe she found out Dr Haven’s up to no good.”
Some of the trembling left Ruby’s voice. “This is all guesswork.” She peered at Jonquil’s outline. “I… I still don’t know what to make of it all.”
“But you know the treatment’s flawed. You know you’re not as well as you should be.”
Ruby looked puzzled. Her eyes went to Cyan again. “Do I?”
“Your sadness. The emptiness that…pins you like a bug.”
Some of the colour left Ruby’s face. Cyan flinched. She looked so wounded.
“How…” she began. Her voice was brittle, but her eyes narrowed coldly. “Who told you about that?”
“You did. One night a while ago, when you showed me how to get into the framework.”
Ruby gaped at Cyan. Her fingers clenched and curled. “I’ve…never shown you that. I never would!”
“You did, Ruby. I swear. And you told me about the loneliness you get sometimes. The feelings Dr Haven tells you to keep secret. And I told you about my fear – how I’m scared of fire, and how Dr Haven tells me to keep that secret too.”
“But I don’t remember any of this! I—” Ruby’s lips twisted with words she couldn’t find.
The Memory Thieves Page 10
