Escape From Memory

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “Kira, I am sorry” she said. “I know this must be very … distressing for you. I wish there had been a better way. I assure you, I mean you no harm. How could I? I’m your Aunt Memory”

  Once again, she said those two words reverently, as if “Aunt Memory” were gold coins she was handing me to treasure forever.

  “But what does that mean?” I asked sulkily. Refusing the treasure. “Do I have an Uncle Memory, too?”

  Aunt Memory laughed, and even over the rattle of the plane engine, her laughter sounded musical.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Aunt Memory is not my name. It’s my, um, title. In Crythe every child who is born has an Aunt Memory. A special female—usually a relative, sometimes a friend of the mother—who is charged with teaching the child everything there is to know about being Crythian.”

  “So which were you?” I asked. Rudely.

  “Pardon?” Aunt Memory said, sounding more foreign again.

  “A relative or a friend? Did you know my”—I swallowed hard—“my real mother well? And my father?”

  I was willing to back into the subject of my real parents, my fake mother, my kidnapping. I wanted to know everything, but I was scared to hear anything. It was like having a scar that hurt to touch. I just couldn’t help reaching for it.

  “Yes,” Aunt Memory said softly. “I knew your parents well.”

  Her voice was as gentle as memory itself. I forgot I’d asked another question too.

  Twelve

  “YOUR MOTHER WAS SO BEAUTIFUL,” AUNT MEMORY SAID IN A dreamy voice. I leaned forward to hear better over the engine noise. “And brilliant, too, like your father…. And so talented. When either one of them walked into a room, it was like the lights were suddenly brighter, the colors more vivid. Everything glowed. They had charm—‘charisma,’ I think it is called in English. They were like—like the glorious flames that moths are attracted to. Everyone was a moth compared with them.”

  I thought of poor, mousy, mothlike Mom—the woman I’d assumed was my mother all these years. No one could accuse her of having charisma. Or talent or brilliance. But she did have a presence. People noticed her, too.

  It was strange that I felt such a stab of loyalty to Mom suddenly. I was willing to believe that she wasn’t my real mother. I was almost willing to believe that she’d kidnapped me. But I still felt like defending her, to myself, if not to Aunt Memory.

  “What did they do?” I asked Aunt Memory.

  “Do?” she echoed.

  “What were my parents jobs? Their occupations?” I was testing her. If she didn’t tell me that my father worked with computers, it would mean—what? That Aunt Memory was lying? Or that Mom-who-wasn’t-my-real-mother had lied more than once?

  “Um …” Aunt Memory seemed to be searching for the right words. “I think in English it is called ‘instructor’. No—it was more than that. ‘Leaders’?”

  “They were in charge of Crythe?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Yes and no.” Aunt Memory tilted her head thoughtfully. “It is hard to explain. We in Crythe rule ourselves. We do not have kings, presidents, chancellors, premiers. Not like outside. But there are some who … stand out. Like your parents.”

  A new thought struck me.

  “But they died a long time ago, right?” I asked, suddenly unsure. Aunt Memory didn’t sound like someone discussing long-dead friends. Her voice was raw, and I thought I saw tears glinting in her eyes. She looked like someone at a funeral, grieving the newly deceased.

  Aunt Memory winced at my bluntness.

  “They both died in the war,” she murmured.

  War, I thought. I imagined Lynne saying, I told you so. It was my turn to wince.

  “There was a war in Crythe,” I said flatly. “When I was—what? A baby? A toddler? What were they fighting about?”

  “The same thing they are fighting about now,” she said. “The cause you will help us with.”

  Cause? What cause? I wondered if I’d misunderstood. But before I could ask any more questions, the pilot suddenly spoke up for the very first time.

  “Sahmoleyna blizo” he said.

  Aunt Memory answered him in a flow of foreign words. Crythian, I assumed. It sounded amazingly familiar, but I didn’t have the slightest idea what she said. It was like hearing a song I’d memorized years ago and then forgotten. Now I couldn’t pick out any of the notes.

  Aunt Memory turned back to me.

  “We are landing now” she said. “You have your seat belt on, yes?”

  I nodded, watching what I could see of the pilot’s face. He showed no sign of understanding Aunt Memory’s English words. So I could not appeal to him with, Oh, please, I don’t understand what’s going on! I had no one to help me at all.

  I peered out the window, but there was only darkness. Then I saw two thin rows of lights on the ground, far below. Wherever we were landing had to be an incredibly small airport, far from any city. I’d never flown before, but surely I should have been able to see streetlights and houses, office buildings and highways. Here there was nothing but one runway.

  “Where is Crythe?” I asked. “Have we flown over water? What continent are we on?” I was so disoriented, I didn’t know if I’d been unconscious for minutes or hours or days.

  From the front seat, Aunt Memory chuckled.

  “You would say,” she told me without turning around, “that Crythe is in California.”

  Thirteen

  THEN WE WERE ON THE GROUND. I HAD NOTHING TO COMPARE IT with, of course, but the landing seemed awfully rough. Were we supposed to bounce at the end of the runway?

  Aunt Memory and the pilot said nothing, simply unfolded themselves from their seats and climbed out. Aunt Memory held the door for me.

  With the plane engine shut off, the vast silence around us seemed to echo in my ears. I peered past the runway lights. We were on the edge of some sort of woods. I thought vaguely about running away, but there was nowhere to go.

  “My car is over there,” Aunt Memory said, pointing out into the darkness.

  “Nya mesta,” the pilot said behind us. He was struggling to pull my suitcase from the plane.

  “Sah, sah,” Aunt Memory said, and laughed. She explained to me, “Jacques is joking that your suitcase is heavy. Before, when he was putting it on the plane, he asked if we’d packed bricks. Look at what a good actor he is.”

  The pilot had the suitcase out now and was pretending to strain to carry it over to Aunt Memory’s car. I knew the suitcase could barely have weighed five pounds; it was like watching a supremely talented mime.

  “Mozheh teh li auto,” the pilot grunted.

  “Det skudu! Makhahy teh seh!” Aunt Memory said. Though I didn’t recognize any of her words, I understood her tone. Enough clowning around, she was saying. We don’t have time for this.

  Aunt Memory turned her back on the pilot and stalked to the car, parked in grass just beyond the last runway light. I watched the pilot for a moment longer. He still struggled with the suitcase, though his movements were less exaggerated.

  Maybe he wasn’t such a great actor. Maybe he was just very weak. Or maybe there was more in the suitcase than I thought?

  Aunt Memory opened the passenger side door for me and the trunk for my suitcase. Neither one of us could see the pilot put it in. He slammed the trunk, and Aunt Memory started the car.

  “He’s not coming with us?” I asked hesitantly, not wanting Aunt Memory to hear the fear in my voice. Why did I think I would be any safer with the pilot along?

  “No. Jacques must see to his plane,” Aunt Memory said.

  We were going up a dirt road now. I had the impression that we were in the mountains. The headlights shone on nothing but more trees, more rutted road. The car shook with every bump we went over. I’m not exactly up on my car brands, but this one was the kind that high school students barely scraped together enough money to buy. The seat was vinyl, the dashboard unadorned. I doubted that it had any shock absorbers. If my l
ife had depended on guessing the car’s make, I’d have given a Jeopardy-style answer: What’s the cheapest car made in the past twenty years?

  Maybe my life does depend on knowing a detail like that, I thought distantly. I’m in real jeopardy. I’m being kidnapped. I need to stay alert.

  But it was hard to think that way. I didn’t want to believe that Aunt Memory was dangerous. I wanted to believe that she was showing me my past, helping me save my mom.

  We kept on driving into darkness.

  “What—” I cleared my throat. “What exactly am I supposed to do to rescue Mo—Sophia?” I asked.

  “Why denounce the kidnappers. Appeal to all of Crythe for her release,” Aunt Memory said.

  “That will work?” I said doubtfully.

  “Of course,” Aunt Memory said. “In Crythe just the sight of you, your parents’ daughter—you have power.”

  I puzzled over that one. I was supposed to have power? I’d never felt so powerless in my entire life. Fear clutched my stomach. What if I did something wrong? What would happen to Mom? What would happen to me?

  “I’m supposed to make an appeal on TV?” I asked tentatively. “Couldn’t you have just filmed me back home and—”

  “On TV?” Aunt Memory said sharply, interrupting. “No. Of course not. Not in Crythe. You will speak in the town square. To everyone.”

  Aunt Memory acted like “TV” was a bad word. Why should that surprise me? Mom’s hatred of television had to come from somewhere. Maybe all Crythians disapproved of it. Maybe Crythe was one of those strange cults you hear about, left over from the 1960s.

  I had trouble picturing Mom as a cult member.

  “You still haven’t told me very much about Crythe,” I said in a small voice.

  “Well be there soon,” Aunt Memory said.

  I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. She kept her eyes on the road, driving with an intensity that seemed familiar. Who else drove with her fingers clutched so tightly around the steering wheel, with her back ramrod straight, her mouth clenched shut, her eyelids barely daring to blink? Then I remembered: Mom did, or had, back when she actually drove.

  I shut my own eyes, trying to conjure up the image of Mom driving. If I could see something of Mom in Aunt Memory, or Aunt Memory in Mom, then I’d have another clue. Proof, maybe, that Mom really had come from Crythe (and therefore I had, as well?).

  The next thing I knew, the car was stopping and I was straining to wake up from another deep, confused sleep.

  “Here we are,” Aunt Memory said.

  I opened my eyes and stared.

  Fourteen

  WE WERE PARKED BEFORE A STONE CASTLE, WITH ROWS OF STONE houses stretching up and down the street beside it. Some of the houses had thatched roofs and red window boxes spilling over with geraniums.

  Old World, I thought. We aren’t in California. We’re in … Slovakia, maybe, or Ukraine. Or some ancient village in Greece.

  I hadn’t been to any of those places, only seen pictures in my social studies books all throughout school. Maybe streets in Slovakia, Ukraine, and Greece have McDonald’s golden arches glowing on practically every corner, just like in the United States. Maybe the pictures I’d seen were carefully edited for my schoolbooks, to make us think the Old World still looked old. But Crythe was those pictures come to life. I almost giggled, remembering how I’d imagined it as some leftover 1960s cult. Now I expected to see girls in kerchiefs and peasant skirts, boys in knickers. Heidi and Peter the goatherd, eating goat cheese and home-baked bread.

  While I’d been gaping, Aunt Memory had circled the car. Now she opened the door for me. I stepped out on uneven cobblestones.

  Cobblestones.

  Suddenly Crythe didn’t seem so charming and fairy tale-like. This was a real place. This was where my mother had carried me from danger, all those years ago, where the woman I called “Mom” had kidnapped me. And where I was supposed to be speaking about a cause I knew nothing of.

  “I’ll wake a servant to get your suitcase,” Aunt Memory said.

  Her voice echoed on the silent street. There were no other cars in sight. But I was almost relieved to notice that the old-fashioned-looking streetlights actually glowed with electric bulbs.

  Aunt Memory was reaching for the stylized latch on the castle’s imposing front door before her words registered in my mind. I jerked to attention.

  “Uh, no,” I said quickly. “It’s late. There’s no need to disturb anyone. I can carry my own suitcase.”

  I didn’t want anyone else complaining about it being heavy, making Aunt Memory suspicious. And if I carried it, maybe I could figure out what else was in it besides the clothes I’d packed.

  Shrugging, Aunt Memory stepped back to the car and opened the trunk.

  I reached in and tugged. Fortunately, the way the trunk was designed, I didn’t have to lift the suitcase up, just straight out and down.

  It was heavy. It was as heavy as the eighty-pound bag of water-softener salt Mrs. Steele had once asked if I could carry down to the basement for her. I couldn’t.

  At least I could drag the suitcase, and I did. It went bounce-thump, bounce-thump, bounce-thump, all the way to the castle door. I was glad there wasn’t a curb and sidewalk—the street went right up to the castle wall.

  And I was glad that Aunt Memory was occupied with opening the door, not watching me.

  As soon as she had the door open, two men in uniform stepped out. They both wore black pants and fitted gray jackets. I couldn’t decide if they were military uniforms or servant uniforms.

  “Oh!” Aunt Memory said, sounding surprised. She spoke quickly to the two in Crythian, her voice so low that I caught only scattered words. Then she turned to me.

  “They’ll put your suitcase in your room. We’ll go to the kitchen for a snack. And I think it’s time for me to explain everything.”

  “Past time,” I muttered under my breath, so low nobody could hear. But I was all too happy to surrender my suitcase to the men and follow Aunt Memory into the castle.

  Fifteen

  THE CASTLE HAD A GRAND, ECHOEY FOYER, WITH FORMAL, STONE-floored rooms on each side. But as I followed Aunt Memory, we quickly reached cozier rooms. The kitchen itself wasn’t any bigger than the Robertsons’ back home. I sat at the table, and Aunt Memory heated water to make tea. Incongruously, she used a microwave, not a kettle.

  “So you have microwaves, just not TVs,” I said, trying to be provocative.

  “Some Crythians have TV,” Aunt Memory said. “The younger ones. But it is hard for the rest of us.”

  Hard? What was hard about TV?

  Aunt Memory brought two mugs of tea to the table. She sat down.

  “You need to know the history of Crythe first,” she said. “Most Crythian children can recite the Book of Crythe by age five. But it is not your fault that you are so far behind.”

  I waited, ignoring the hint of insult.

  “Crythe is an ancient civilization, founded by Romans before the fall of the empire,” Aunt Memory began, stirring her tea.

  “Romans came here? To America?” I asked incredulously.

  “Allow me to finish,” Aunt Memory said frostily. She stared into the hot tea, obviously in no hurry to go on. Minutes passed before she looked up. “There is a … ritual for telling this story. It is to be the first thing any Crythian can remember. But it is wrong in English. And your brain is already … occupied? Is that the right word?”

  I shrugged. “Can’t you just tell it the best you can?”

  I was surprised to see tears in Aunt Memory’s eyes.

  “But it is sacred….”

  “So Romans settled Crythe,” I prompted, suddenly terrified that Aunt Memory might shut off the explanation. I couldn’t really believe that the Roman Empire had anything to do with Mom’s kidnapping—or my own. But I had to keep Aunt Memory talking.

  “Yes,” Aunt Memory said. “Outside Crythe, most people have forgotten what the Romans excelled at.”
/>   “Building aqueducts?” I guessed wildly. “Fighting wars?”

  “No, none of that,” Aunt Memory said impatiently. “Remembering.”

  I stared at her blankly.

  “Paper was scarce, and they had a complex society. The petty bureaucrats would memorize tax documents. Their poets could recite long epics by memory. They schooled their children in methods of memory almost entirely forgotten in modern times. And in the supreme act of memory, in 447 B.C., the orator Simonides remembered all two hundred and forty-one guests at a dinner party after they were killed by a falling ceiling. He’d been at the party earlier, then stepped out briefly. When he returned, everyone was dead, crushed beyond recognition. But he identified them. Think if they had died unknown.”

  They were dead either way, I wanted to say. I didn’t dare. Aunt Memory was clearly crazy. She had a strange glint in her eye all of a sudden.

  “This is your memory your heritage, your past,” she chanted. She nudged my arm and hissed, “Say it after me!”

  “This is your—,” I began.

  Aunt Memory frantically shook her head. “This is my—” she prompted.

  Halfheartedly, I repeated, “This is my memory, my—what was it? My heritage. My past.”

  Aunt Memory frowned but went on.

  “And in Crythe the heritage was not forgotten. We are what we remember. We do not forget,” she said, still in that hushed, reverent voice.

  I was out of patience.

  “So you remember the Romans?” I asked. “That’s what makes Crythe special?”

  “No, we remember everything,” Aunt Memory said. “What we had for breakfast on our fifth birthdays. Every book we’ve ever read. Every conversation we’ve ever had. Every person we’ve ever met. Everything.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said, more rude than I normally would have been. She was even crazier than I thought. “Sure you do. What was the first thing I said to you?”

  “You said, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Where’s my mother?’ Then I said, ‘I am your Aunt Memory.’ Then you said nothing, and I said, ‘She didn’t explain? She never told you?’ And you said, ‘Who? Told me what?’ And then, ‘You mean my mom. You mean my mom never explained.’ And I said, ‘I mean Sophia.’ And you said—”