by Suzi Davis
Time stopped and my thoughts suddenly became crystal clear. I saw every detail of the scene before me, I saw every moment of my life behind me and it all abruptly made perfect sense. In the blink of an eye, I completed the pattern that I had been weaving in my mind. The lines fell together in perfect harmony and I knew that this was the way it was meant to be. Time started again.
David took the last step towards me, his dark eyes glowing victoriously, his hunger for revenge and violence twisting his handsome face into that of a murderous monster. And just as the tip of his knife made the first cut into the soft, unprotected flesh of my throat, I thrust my amber necklace against the ancient ring on my finger, reuniting the small, heart-shaped chip with the teardrop pendant it had come from so long ago. As soon as the two were rejoined I released the magic into the air, filling the chamber with its pattern of destruction and hope, and letting it braid and twist into the amazing and endless design I had created to contain it.
The last thing I saw was Sebastian’s face, the cold terror in his eyes and the silent scream on his lips. The last thing I felt was the icy steel of David’s knife, biting into my neck and burning pain down my throat. And then the world exploded in a flash of light that blinded my eyes, blasted my ears, drowned out my heart and my soul, and blazed through my entire being. Pain ripped through me, tearing up my arm that held the necklace and searing down my whole right side. I was consumed by the light that flared from my necklace as hot and bright as the sun. It burned through me in an endless torrent of heat and pain, wave upon endless wave. I feared that there would be nothing of me left behind when it was finally extinguished. And I accepted it.
Slowly, silently, the heat cooled, the light faded and I fell into a world of silence and darkness.
Epilogue
I opened my eyes and found myself in a strange place. The lights were bright here, the walls sterile and white. The air smelt strange, a mixture of antiseptic and stale-smelling laundry that immediately offended my nose. I blinked my eyes, trying to focus my vision and figure out what and where this place was.
I was in a hospital. I was in a private room with just the narrow bed I lay upon and a small bedside table beside me. The sun peeked in at the tiny window between the drawn blinds and reflected off the glass of a small television set, mounted in the upper corner of the room. I looked down at my body, trying to figure out what was wrong with me and struggling to remember why I was there.
An IV was inserted into the back of my left hand and I was hooked up to a drip that hung beside my bed. Bandages covered my whole right arm, completely obscuring my skin from palm to shoulder. I shifted tentatively beneath the rough, starched sheets that covered me and immediately gasped in pain. I wanted to throw up and scream at the same time, and ended up just panting in shocked silence. It wasn’t just my arm that there was something wrong with – it was the whole right side of my torso, I realized. I lay as still as possible after that, fighting the waves of fiery pain and nausea that my slight movement had caused. It was while I lay there, quietly panting between my clenched teeth, that the door to my room cracked open and a familiar face peaked inside.
“Sweetheart, you’re awake.” My father spoke in an unexpectedly hushed voice as he stepped into my room and quietly closed the door behind him.
I was surprised to see his eyes were filling with tears, the mixture of joy and relief obvious on his face. I tried to smile back at him, happy to see him but still not fully understanding what was going on. I was also still wrestling with the overwhelming pain that was crashing down upon me in steady waves. A blinding headache was steadily creeping through my temples, throbbing through my skull with each beat of my heart.
“Dad… what happened?”
“Let’s not worry about that right now. The nurses thought you might awaken soon but still, you need to rest,” he gruffly instructed, brushing the tears from his eyes as he came to take a seat beside my bed.
I nodded my agreement, still feeling bewildered.
“But I don’t even know where I am,” I said in a quiet and scared voice.
My father reached for my left hand, holding it between his two large and steady ones and patting the back of mine gently while carefully avoiding the IV.
“We’re in Athens, at the hospital,” he slowly explained.
I watched his face eagerly, distracted from my pain by this new information. He sighed and reluctantly continued.
“You were on a tour of some old caves just outside of Parga with a group of tourists and there was… an explosion of some kind.”
I struggled to remember the events he was describing but my mind came up perfectly blank. I winced as the dull ache of pain between my temples increased to a piercing throb. It took me a second before I could speak – it was so hard to remember, to focus on anything.
“There was an explosion? Do you mean like a bomb? Please… I can’t remember anything. Tell me what happened?”
My father hesitated, looking torn. He roughly cleared his throat.
“The authorities are still investigating it – there has been speculation of the explosion being some kind of terrorist attack. You were with a group of fourteen other tourists and had traveled deeper into the temple ruins of the Necromanteion than most tour groups allow. There was an explosion in the central chamber, it blew out part of the wall and half the ceiling collapsed in on you. All fifteen in your group were injured to varying degrees and knocked unconscious – all with significant memory loss. No one seems to remember exactly what happened. The doctors can’t quite explain it…”
“Oh.” I frowned, trying so hard to remember but no matter how deep I dug through my mind, my hands came up empty. I didn’t even have the sense that I should remember; it was like there was nothing there where the memory might have been. “What happened to my arm and my side?”
“You were one of the three who was closest to the centre of the explosion,” my father informed me, his eyes both angry and sad at the same time. “Nearly the whole right side of your body has been badly burned. You nearly bled to death also – a piece of shrapnel had cut through your throat, only just missing your windpipe and your carotid artery. If the rescuers had found you even a few minutes later…” My father abruptly looked away, rubbing at his eyes again and noisily clearing his throat. I watched and listened with near sick fascination. It felt like he were telling me a story about someone else, despite the matching pain that coursed through my body and burned at my throat.
“I was so afraid I’d lost you, Gracelynn. You don’t know what a relief it is to see you open your eyes, to hear you voice – we’ve been waiting weeks. You both would have awoken sooner but the doctors thought it best to keep you in chemically-induced comas until the worst of the pain had subsided.”
“Both of us?”
My father’s expression soured, his displeasure obvious now.
“Yes, you and the boy you were traveling with – Sebastian. He has sustained almost identical injuries to yours and awoke just a few hours ago himself.”
“Sebastian,” I repeated, wondering over the familiarity of the name on my lips. A face flashed through my mind – black, unruly hair, color-shifting, gray-blue eyes, long lashes, perfect lips, piercings and mysterious tattoos. Unexpectedly, my mind focused on the details of his lips, their perfect shape, their softness and their warmth, the taste of them… “He’s my boyfriend,” I realized, speaking aloud.
I hadn’t been asking but my father nodded his confirmation.
“Yes, something like that.”
“And we were traveling together… we took a train through Europe and… there was a girl who traveled with us for a little while, I didn’t really like her though but… what happened…?” I spoke my confusing thoughts out loud, trying to make sense of the bizarre and disjointed memories that were suddenly darting through my mind. I had only glimpses of images and brief flashes of knowledge of our trip through Europe. I could barely remember Sebastian at all, to tell the truth, let a
lone the places we had been or the people we had met. I wished I could remember why we had been so deep in those caves too and what had caused the explosion but I couldn’t even remember traveling to the caves in the first place. All I remembered of Greece was a library I thought I might have visited and a flash of walking through a Greek city with someone, perhaps Sebastian, at night time.
“I wish I could remember,” I whispered, my eyes filling with frustrated tears. It was frightening to have so many holes in my memory. My father instantly comforted me.
“It’s not important, darling. The memories may come back to you but they may not. You may well never regain them – you should accept the fact that they are most likely permanently gone. All that matters now is that you are alive and you are safe. And in just a couple more weeks, we should be able to take you home.”
“Home?” I echoed, struggling to remember where that was.
“Yes, you’ll come back to Toronto with Dahlia and I – she’s here too, you know. Your mother has even made arrangements to stay in Toronto for a while until you’ve recovered more – she’s also in Greece, by the way.”
“She is?”
“She’s quite concerned about you, dear. I know your mother hasn’t always been the most maternal but she does love you, in her own way. We’re going to take good care of you, sweetheart, don’t you worry. I’ve already lined up the best physiotherapists and plastic surgeons to work with you upon our return home,” he informed me. I could tell he was trying to be reassuring in his gruff, take-control type of way but all of this information was overwhelming. The room starting spinning and a fresh stabbing pain drilled into my skull.
“Ah!” I gasped, squeezing my eyes shut and automatically reaching for my temple – with my right hand. The movement of my badly burned and injured arm sent even more agonizing pain coursing through my body. I was vaguely aware of my father calling for help as I slid, with silent relief, into the quiet, still darkness that beckoned to me.
Over the next week or so, my condition slowly continued to improve. The pain lessened and I was slowly weaned off the drugs I hadn’t realized I was on (strong pain-killers including morphine and several others whose names I couldn’t pronounce). My thoughts became clearer, my hazy memories of the past few months sharpened, but still – I remembered no new information about the explosion or the events leading up to it than I had the first day I awoke.
As my condition improved, I had several visitors whom I was able to tolerate for longer and longer periods of time as my mind cleared and my pain lessened. My mother came twice a day, her thin face drawn and lined. I was surprised to see her even though my father had told me she was there - and I was even more shocked by her genuine concern for me. She told me I looked awful, she criticized the hospital staff and the small size and plainness of my private room and she chastised me constantly, telling me that this was what I got for running away from home with an “obviously troubled youth” like Sebastian. But she also painted my nails for me, and brushed and braided my hair, and brought me magazines and books to read. She confided that she had been very lonely since Walter, a member of our household staff and close companion of hers whom I couldn’t quite remember, had quit her service and disappeared. I almost believed it when she said she had missed me. There were definite moments when I even enjoyed her company – it was strange.
The police also came to visit me several times during my hospital stay. They always asked the same questions, wanting more details about what our tour group was doing in those ancient ruins and pressing me for more information about the explosion. I could tell them nothing new. It was both frustrating and terrifying to have such large, gaping holes in my memory though I was definitely starting to grow used to it. It was reassuring at least, to hear from my father, that none of the other tourists could remember anything either. At least I knew that I wasn’t entirely alone.
But I was alone. Because though my mother visited me twice a day and my father and Dahlia spent most of the remaining daylight hours with me in my hospital room, I never once saw Sebastian. I knew he was awake and that he was in the hospital still. I even learnt from my father that his foster parents, the Jensons (whom I vaguely remembered), were also in Greece and staying in a hotel across the street from my father’s. Apparently, they would be taking Sebastian home on the same day that we were to depart as his injuries were healing at a remarkable pace, almost identical to my own. But still, Sebastian never came to my room.
I felt so confused about my relationship with Sebastian. I couldn’t remember much of the past year that we had known each other, there were only patchy glimpses of strange, foggy memories. Some information was there, and some wasn’t. I knew he was my boyfriend, I knew I had been very much in love with him but… I couldn’t remember exactly why. It was strange, remembering that you loved someone but feeling almost as if it were someone else’s memories, someone else’s thoughts and emotions that you were remembering. It was all so confusing, and disorienting, and frustrating. And it made it even worse that he was staying away from me. It made me feel both afraid and relieved in a sad type of way, that he might be feeling the same way as I did.
It was just two days before we were both scheduled to be discharged from the hospital in Athens that Sebastian finally came to my room. I was doing a lot better by then, wearing my own clothes instead of the plain, thin hospital gown and moving around a bit on my own. My burns were healing quickly and some of the bandages had already been removed, exposing the fresh, red scars and melted skin around my right wrist and forearm. My mother was horrified by these marks so I tried to cover them up when she came to visit to avoid upsetting her. I found them strangely fascinating though, often staring at my scars in bewilderment as I tried to recall how exactly I had gotten them.
It was late at night, long after visiting hours when Sebastian knocked softly on my door. He didn’t wait for me to answer, just quietly slipped inside with a small and uncertain smile. He paused just inside the doorway, staring at me and suddenly looking confused, like he wasn’t certain exactly what he was doing there or if he were making a mistake. I wasn’t sure either.
I studied him in silence, noting the differences between the boy who stood before me and the one of my memories. He was a little thinner and paler than I remembered. His hair was slightly longer but just as messy as I recalled. He wore loose sweat pants and a t-shirt that showed his bandaged right arm with almost identical scars to mine peeking out from beneath the white, linen wrap. He was even more attractive than I remembered, I realized. His pink lips pursed together thoughtfully, his dark eyes were deep and intense above the faint marks that shadowed them. I suddenly felt intimidated, and unexpectedly shy.
“Hi,” I greeted him softly.
“Hi,” he answered. He hesitated again and then stepped forward. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
“Not at all.”
He took the empty chair closest to where I sat in my bed. I slowly shifted my body upright more, wincing slightly from the twinge of pain in my side as I moved. I ran a quick hand through my shoulder-length, curly hair, feeling a little self-conscious. I was glad, more than ever, that my mother had helped me to bathe and wash my hair that morning.
“Do you remember me?” Sebastian asked. He definitely looked nervous, like he was holding his breath. The sight relaxed me a little.
“Yes. Well… mostly,” I clarified. He smiled and I relaxed even more, automatically responding with a smile of my own.
“It’s strange, isn’t it? To remember but to not really remember at the same time.”
“It’s confusing,” I agreed. I watched him curiously, trying not to stare too much at his attractive and compelling features. “How much do you remember, exactly?”
“Not much,” he admitted. “I remember our school – Craigflower Academy. I remember spending time with you there, sort of. I can’t remember many specific conversations or details but I remember you. I remember… your ex-boyfriend, Clarke, and his frie
nds beating me up. And then I remember that we broke up for a few months but I can’t remember why exactly… and I don’t remember getting back together but I’m sure that we did.”
“Yes, we did.” We shared another smile that made me blush and lower my eyes. I couldn’t remember anyone making me blush in a long time. It was strange the reaction this boy was causing within me. “I can’t remember why we broke up either – or how we got back together. I was mad at you about something, I guess it wasn’t that important.”
“And then, I’m told, we ran away together just before graduation.”
“My dad told me that too. He wasn’t impressed,” I added with a smile.
“I don’t know what we were thinking – literally,” Sebastian agreed with a teasing grin. “I can remember riding my motorbike across Canada with you. We camped… I think. I actually can’t remember that much of it to tell the truth.”
“Neither can I.”
“I know we visited your father in Toronto briefly but I can’t remember what we did there…?” He looked at me questioningly, leaning forward expectantly in his chair. I looked into his eyes and for a moment, I found myself lost within their gray swirling depths, searching for that faint and familiar hint of blue. My heart skipped a beat and butterflies fluttered in my stomach. I looked away, trying to focus and calm myself as I prepared my answer. My father had told me about Sebastian and I visiting him in Toronto and it was one subject that I felt quite awkward about. Still, Sebastian deserved to know the truth or as much of it as I had been told, anyway.
“Well…” I paused trying to gather my thoughts. It was hard when Sebastian was staring at me like that. I couldn’t believe how intense his eyes were. “My father told me we dropped in on him unannounced. I don’t remember any of it really but he said it was obvious we were in some kind of trouble. He suspected we might be involved in some kind of criminal activity – maybe even with a gang or something. He said we both looked a little “strung out”. Apparently, we convinced him that people were after us and that we needed to get out of the country fast. He bought us tickets to Europe and made travel arrangements for us, he had been planning on doing so for me as a graduation present anyway. He wasn’t even quite sure why he helped us out – he told me he’s regretted it every day since we disappeared but I guess we were quite convincing…”
