“Yeah, but like you’ve said before, if my mind — or the bit of you that’ll be in my mind — has a chance to experience the machine before we give it the Serpent memory, then we’ll definitely trick it. Everything depends on Neville believing the Serpent is about to attack the Steeps. Otherwise, this is all for nothing.”
I rubbed at Ember’s circles with my foot, messing up the lines and thinking about how strange the world would become once my memories were gone. “You know, Em, I still don’t understand how you’re going to do this.”
She brightened. “I’ve been thinking of a new way to explain it to you.” Taking a breath, she announced, “It’s like the rock pool!”
I eyed her dubiously. “The rock pool?”
“You know how there’s those rocks underneath the water, first the big one, then the five smaller ones sitting on top of it?”
“Yeah. I remember what the rock pool looks like.” Probably better than she did, because I loved that pool. I’d spent hours lying on an overhanging tree branch, looking down at the reds and greens and blacks of the marble rocks.
“Imagine,” Ember said, “that the pool is your mind. The surface of the water, which reflects the sky, is like the surface of your mind, processing everything that’s happening right now.”
“Okaaaay.”
“The way memory works is, we make sense of the things that are happening now by putting them into context, which is provided by things that happened before. So the underneath part of your mind, the bit under the surface of the water, is your past experiences. Those past experiences give you a structure that you slot your present experiences into. Like the way the presence of the rocks affects the currents of the water. Are you with me so far?”
I didn’t know if it was the rock pool thing, or the fact that she’d already explained all of this to me about five times before, but she was making sense. I nodded, and she continued. “And the way the structure gets formed is that some memories are more important than others. They’re key events that shape our characters and determine how we interpret everything. Which means if I submerge some of your key past memories into your subconscious — so the surface of your mind doesn’t have access to them anymore — the context into which you fit your more recent experiences changes. Imagine that the rocks are key events. I’m sinking them way down into the water, beneath the sand at the bottom of the pool.”
“Oh, I get it. The water would change, too, wouldn’t it? Because the rocks aren’t there anymore, the water would move differently.”
“Yes! Except I’m not sinking all the rocks, because I’m not submerging all your memories. So imagine there are lots of big rocks, and those are the ones that I sink — the key events. If the big rocks aren’t there, then all the smaller rocks that sit on top of them . . .”
“Will sink to the bottom of the pool.”
“That’s right. They’ll be disconnected and out of order. But since the mind hates chaos, the current of the water will take those rocks — those memories — and arrange them into a pattern that it knows. Without the key memories, it’ll use something else that it’s familiar with. Something that it won’t even know isn’t true.”
A smile broke over my face as it all came together. “I’ll adopt the version of the world that the third circle knows. Like the water rushing into the space left by the big rock and sweeping the little rocks around into a new position.”
She looked pleased, although I wasn’t sure if it was with me for understanding or herself for explaining so well. “That’s exactly it, and you understand why the mind won’t try to heal itself, right? Why it won’t try to bring the big rocks back up?”
“Because you’ll stop it?”
“No, not entirely. The real reason you won’t bring those memories out of your subconscious is because you don’t want to. This would never work otherwise. I’d have to take the memories out altogether instead of hiding them, and it would probably make you insane. But the memories I’m sinking are centered around people you love, and protecting what you love is your strongest instinct. You’ll keep those memories safe until Connor gives you the river stone and you say the code phrase to activate it.”
“And the stone will have this memory in it?”
She shrugged. “This or some other memory of us discussing the plan. That way, both your subconscious and your conscious mind will know it’s okay to remember. They’ll work together to bring the memories back into your mind. You’ll have a part of me with you to help, too.”
“Yeah. Em, I get how you can invent memories, and even change memories and submerge memories. Sort of. But I don’t get how you’re putting yourself in my head.”
“It’s not me exactly. I’m going to copy one of my memories, a core memory that contains the essence of who I am, and put it in your subconscious. In lots of ways, we are our memories, Ash.”
I stared at her and said, not very intelligently, “Um.”
She took a deep breath. “Think about it this way. After you shared memories with Connor, you could sometimes feel what he felt, couldn’t you? Especially when he was experiencing strong emotion?”
“How did you know that?”
“Your mind experienced the memories that were the essence of who he is. It created a link between you. Like an echo of him, in you. Which I warned you about, by the way.”
“Yeah, but it worked out fine.” Now it was Ember’s turn to say “Um.” I wish those two would get along. After a few moments of awkward silence, I asked, “So I’ll feel what you feel, too?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s my ability, so it works differently for me. It’s more like you’ll have a fragment of me in your subconscious, which can help you. As if I’ve put a new rock beneath the surface with the other rocks.”
“I won’t even know this memory is there, right?”
“It’ll be in your subconscious, so you won’t know it’s there. But it means that I’ll be able to help you and guide you through.”
It was reassuring to think that I’d have a part of Ember with me, but I didn’t tell her so. I didn’t want her to know how scared I was about this whole thing, because she’d never let me do it if she did. So I stood there quietly, listening to the birds and looking out through the trees.
The memory began to gradually dissolve, melting and blurring until it had slipped away from me completely.
I expected to find myself in the cell again once the memory was gone. But I didn’t. Instead, I was drifting in darkness, and I wasn’t remembering anymore. I knew that I was somewhere within my own mind. Someone came floating out of the blackness toward me. Ember again?
“You’re the Ember in my head,” I said as she drew near. “The one I saw when I was on the machine. Only you’re not really part of my subconscious, are you? You’re the fragment of Ember that she sent with me.”
She grinned. “That’s right, Ash.”
“The capture, the interrogation, the Serpent — we planned it all?”
“Yes.”
“Right . . . well . . . that’s . . .” Insane. “Did it work?”
“So far.”
“Why don’t I remember?”
“Because it’s not a good idea for your memories to come rushing back all at once and out of order.” She held out her hand and opened her fist, revealing four river stones. Each one was different — one flat and diamond shaped, one twisty and red, one curved like a claw, and one a beautiful shade of blue.
“These stones,” Ember explained, “represent the secrets that you couldn’t risk being taken by the machine. The key events, centered around people that you love. Are you ready for them?”
I reached out, and she put the rocks into my hand. “You have to remember in order,” she told me sternly, pressing my fingers against each of them so I could feel the different shapes. “This is the first, this the second, this the third, and this the fourth. You got that?”
Flat diamond, twisty red, claw, blue round. “Got it.”
&
nbsp; “Then, remember!”
She vanished, and lights started popping out of the darkness, brilliantly bright, as connections cascaded through my mind. The rocks flew out of my hand to spin through space, growing bigger and bigger until they were three times my size. Electricity sparked, becoming crackling currents that swept me up and sent me swirling around with the tumbling stones. I was almost overwhelmed, blinded and dazzled by the lights. But then I remembered the sequence and launched myself forward, grabbing hold of the diamond-shaped rock. Heat seemed to flow from the stone into my body, and I leaped from stone to stone. Flat diamond, twisty red, claw, blue round.
Four sets of memories came blazing through my brain, transforming everything I thought I knew about the world.
FOUR YEARS AGO
Something tickled my nose. I rolled over without opening my eyes, trying to find a more comfortable spot for my head to rest against the lumpy pack of supplies. The tickling didn’t stop. Go away, insect, I thought sleepily. Stupid fly . . . ant . . . wait, spider! My eyes flew open, and I batted at my face until a green bug shot through the air and went splat against a rock. Not a spider. Sorry, bug.
I stood and brushed myself down, in case there were any spiders. Then I realized I was alone. Where’s Georgie? WHERE IS SHE? After a scary moment, I spotted her sitting on top of the hill we’d been too tired to hike over last night. She was facing away from me, looking at something I couldn’t see from here and totally unaware of me fighting off imaginary spiders. Yawning, I walked over and climbed up to join her. Georgie didn’t turn around, even though she must have heard me coming. Great, she’s out of it again. But when I reached the top and saw what she was staring at, I went all silent and frozen, too.
Stretched out in front of us were waves of long yellowy grasses, broken up by patches of colorful wildflowers and rocky hills that rose up like turtles surfacing from the ocean. And beyond the grasslands were the trees, a sprawling forest of tuarts so tall they seemed huge even from here. The Firstwood. We were here. I glanced at Georgie, pleased to find she wasn’t wearing that frighteningly blank expression, the one where she seemed like her mind had gone on vacation and left her body behind. Instead, she looked — actually, I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone look like she did right then. Except, maybe, in the picture that hung in our school library, the one that showed Hoffman on the day the flood waters had started to roll back from the land and he’d realized humanity would survive the Reckoning after all.
Georgie shifted, her face growing worried, and I thought something might be wrong. Then she asked quietly, “Ash, is this the real world?”
I grinned in relief to hear her say something so normal — well, normal for her. “Yes, Georgie. This is the real world.” I said it with total confidence, as if I was absolutely certain, and I was. But Georgie wasn’t, and never would be, and I understood why. It wasn’t easy for her to keep track of the world-that-was, not when she spent so much time peering into worlds-that-could-be.
Reassured, Georgie went back to staring out over the grasslands. She’s okay. She’s herself. I’d gone along with her crazy scheme of creating a life for us in the Firstwood, and it was working. She was connecting again, in her own Georgie way, and she seemed happy, not sunk in gloom the way she’d been in the city.
Now that we were finally here, though, I couldn’t help thinking about the other person who should be with us. It does no good, Ash. You know it does no good. I couldn’t stop the entire sequence of events from playing out in my mind as, for the thousandth time, I tried to work out where I’d made my mistake.
This whole terrible thing had begun when Georgie had told me she’d “seen” something bad happen to Cassie. As usual, she hadn’t been able to give me any details. “Looking at the future,” Georgie had once told me, “is like watching clouds.” Which sounded like nonsense before she explained. “You know how clouds make shapes, and sometimes you’re not sure what those shapes are? So first you think it’s a dog, and then you look away, and when you look back, you think it’s a bird instead.” Plus, the way Georgie told it, she had no control over what clouds she saw or for how long. And the “weather” of the future changed all the time, sending possibility upon possibility flitting randomly through her head.
What Georgie had known about Cassie was that something bad was coming, and it involved the government. I’d thought my Firestarter sister was going to be detained, and I’d made a plan for the three of us to run away together. Only, somehow, my parents had figured out that Cassie had an ability. They’d called an assessor, and, exactly as Georgie had said, something bad happened to Cassie. I just hadn’t been quick enough to get Cassie out, or smart enough to realize that the assessor was coming. I hadn’t been enough.
My chest tightened until I could only take short, shallow breaths. Spots started to appear in front of me, and everything tilted the way it had right after I’d found out Cassie was dead. The doctor in Gull City had said I was suffering from panic attacks. As if I needed to be told. I mean, obviously I was panicked. I didn’t understand why everybody wasn’t panicked. Didn’t people realize how quickly everything could fall apart? You look away for an instant, you spend the day at a friend’s house, and when you come home, your sister is gone. . . .
“Ash!” Georgie tugged my arm, sounding terrified. “Ash! Ash!”
With effort, I forced my thoughts away from Cassie and concentrated on the world around me — the solid bulk of the hill, the hard stones beneath my hand, the wind on my skin. Finally, everything started to right itself again, and I could breathe more easily. “I’m all right, Georgie.”
She tightened her grip on my wrist, her pale eyes fixed on me in a super-focused way that was a little scary. “You’re thinking about Cassie. You told me I wasn’t allowed to keep thinking about her, and now you’re doing it.”
“I’m not. I mean . . . I’m . . .” I shook my head helplessly, unable to prevent the words I’d been holding inside from spilling out. “I was so mean to her, Georgie. You remember how she used to follow me around everywhere, and I pushed her away.”
“Because you didn’t know she had an ability. You thought you’d have to leave her behind one day, when you ran from the government. Once you found out she was a Firestarter, you were the best sister anyone could want.”
“I’ve only known that for a year. I wasted all that time, and now she’s gone, and it’s all my fault.”
“It was not your fault! Your mom and dad were the ones who called the assessor. And what about the enforcers? And, and the government? You always say everything’s the government’s fault.”
I had to laugh at that, a short, painful laugh that turned into a cough at the end. “I guess I do.”
She continued to stare anxiously at me. “I need you, Ash.”
“I know, Georgie. It’s okay. . . .”
“Because I’m like a kite.”
“Um, a kite?”
“I go flying around from future to future, and it’d be so easy to drift away and fly forever. Except I have you, and you’re the person who holds the string, the one who pulls me back to the ground.” Biting her lip, she said in a small voice, “If you’re lost, Ash, then so am I.”
I put my hand on hers. “Georgie, it was definitely the government’s fault.”
She laughed, and so did I, and the tension was broken. We went back to sitting in silence, but a more comfortable one this time. Then Georgie said brightly, “Look, a saur!”
There was a menacingly large black shape approaching from the distance. I clutched at Georgie. “If we’re not on its territory, I think it’ll leave us alone. So what we have to do is go back down to our packs real fast and real quiet. You got that?”
She nodded. I twisted around and began to slither backward. Georgie shifted as if she was about to follow. Then, suddenly, she stood up and ran down the wrong side of the hill. I leaped to my feet, slipped, and skidded. By the time I’d clawed my way back, Georgie was out on the grasslands, and the
saur was moving in her direction at an unbelievable pace. I belted after her, shouting, “Georgie! You’re going the wrong way!”
But she started skipping toward the monster, and I put on a new burst of speed. I had to reach her before the saur did! I grabbed hold of her arm and tried to drag her backward. She planted her feet on the ground and grinned at me, looking like a naughty kid who was playing a trick on her mom. What does she think she’s doing? Has she totally flipped out?
The saur was getting so close now that I could hear the ripping of its claws as it tore through the grass. Georgie still wouldn’t move. I flung myself in front of her and waved my arms wildly as the saur charged toward us. “You want to eat somebody? Eat me!”
The huge reptile skittered to a halt. It stood there, staring down at me, while I gaped back at it, my knees shaking and my heart slamming against my chest. From this close, I could see it wasn’t all black. There were thin orange stripes running along its scaly body, and it was huge, so big that the top of my head was level with the top of its front legs. The beast flicked out a long blue tongue, and if Georgie hadn’t been behind me, I would’ve fled. But I knew I had to keep between her and the saur, so I stayed where I was, watching in terrified silence as it licked at the air above my head. What is it doing? Then I remembered — lizards smell with their tongues. And it seemed to be . . . puzzled.
Maybe it didn’t know what we were. It’d been years since anyone had been foolish enough to wander into the grasslands and be eaten by saurs, so this particular saur might not have seen a human before. That could buy us enough time to escape. Or at least, enough time for one of us to escape. Without looking away from the beast, I whispered over my shoulder, “Georgie, I want you to go. Don’t run, because I’m pretty sure it’ll chase after you if you do. Just walk back to the hill and off the grasslands.”
The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe) Page 10
