The Memory Theater

by Karin Tidbeck

  “I am trapped in someone else’s flesh,” Augusta said. “It follows me around wherever I go.”

  “Interesting,” Walpurgis said.

  He closed in and inspected her with heavy-lidded eyes. His breath was thick with wine.

  “Do I know you?” he said. “Do I?”

  “Please, Walpurgis,” Augusta said. “You know me. We have danced together in the Gardens, so many times, so many nights.”

  “There is only tonight,” Walpurgis said, and cocked his head.

  “I know,” Augusta said. “Again and again. And during all those agains, we have danced. My hair is curled mahogany; my eyes are dove gray; I wear a coat the shade of the sky. But I am stuck in this other body. I need you to let me out. Say my name.”

  “Your name?” Walpurgis repeated. “There is a lord…isn’t there?”

  “Not a lord,” Augusta replied. “Me.”

  She grabbed Walpurgis by the collar. “Look at me.”

  Walpurgis frowned, then sniffed at her. “What’s that scent?” he mumbled. “Lily of the valley.”

  Augusta let out a sob. “Yes. Lily of the valley. Who smells like that?”

  Walpurgis looked into her eyes. “Only the lady Augusta smells like that.”

  “That’s right,” Augusta said.

  Walpurgis looked confused. “Augusta?”

  Augusta’s stomach clenched. She nodded and let go of his collar. Walpurgis remained where he was, so close that she could see the veins in his eyes.

  “We like to play croquet,” Walpurgis said. “On the lawn.”

  Augusta reached out and squeezed his hand. “Say it again. Say my name.”

  Walpurgis bent his head to sniff at her neck. “Augusta Prima,” he said. “Augusta Prima is your name.”

  As Walpurgis spoke, a shiver went through Augusta. The flesh sheath that held her seemed to loosen its grip a little. She let go of Walpurgis’s hand and held her own up to her face. The skin looked translucent somehow, saggy. She could feel her own body underneath, pushing and straining against its prison. She flung her hands back and tore at the fabric between her shoulder blades. The fabric tore, and the shirt underneath, and the skin underneath.

  It was not quite as easy as taking off a suit. Walpurgis watched in silence as Augusta struggled her way out of Nils Nilsson’s body. Eventually, she stood naked on the forest floor, the other body at her feet.

  Augusta looked down at herself. She was herself again, a woman in her prime, albeit bloody and naked as a newborn baby. The relief made her burst into laughter.

  “Thank you, Walpurgis,” she said. “Do you see me now?”

  “I see you,” Walpurgis said. “Augusta.”

  “Good,” Augusta replied. “Take me to the others.”

  Walpurgis bowed and walked ahead of her to the game lawn.

  * * *

  —

  Here they were: Euterpe naked among the bushes, Virgilia and Cymbeline embracing a servant, Tempestis and the other courtiers dancing with their croquet clubs, swinging in time to the ever-present beat. They were all here.

  “I’m here!” Augusta said to no one in particular.

  Euterpe came running with a wide smile.

  “Sister,” she said. “You’re naked! And extravagantly soiled!”

  Augusta laughed. “So I am.”

  “How delightful,” Euterpe said.

  Augusta embraced her sister. Her eyes watered a little. She caressed Euterpe’s face, and got a frown in response.

  “What’s that, crying? We can’t have that. Let’s find you something to wear.”

  “And a bath,” Augusta said. “I need a bath.”

  Euterpe had a servant fetch a bucket of water, and everyone gathered around Augusta to watch as she cleaned herself of the blood. When Augusta was done and had dried herself off, Euterpe pointed to a servant at the edge of the lawn. He gave her a frightened look and started to back away.

  “You. Undress,” Augusta told him. “Give your clothes to me.”

  The servant’s trousers and vest fit Augusta unexpectedly well. She borrowed Euterpe’s discarded silk jacket, and lo: she was once again dressed for a party.

  Augusta made a twirl, and there was Mnemosyne on her throne. She had been watching the whole time. Augusta walked up to the dais and bowed.

  “My lady,” she said, “I am here.”

  “So you are,” Mnemosyne said, face unreadable under her laurel wreath. Her eyes were clouded. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then she said, “I cast you out.”

  Augusta swallowed. “Did you, my lady?”

  “I…” Mnemosyne faltered. “Did I not?”

  “Not me,” Augusta said. “Never me. See? I am beautiful and young. I live only to please you. I can do a little dance? Sing a little song? Would that please my lady?”

  “There is something,” Mnemosyne mumbled. “I forget.”

  “There is nothing,” Augusta said. She could feel a trickle of sweat between her shoulder blades. “Nothing at all.”

  “You seem troubled,” Mnemosyne said, and raised her glass. “Here. Drink and be happy.”

  The wine was acidic on Augusta’s tongue, but she emptied the glass.

  “Good,” Mnemosyne said. “Go play.”

  She sagged back in her throne, and for a moment she looked very old. Augusta left the dais and held out a hand. A servant appeared with a glass of wine. It tasted sweeter. The third glass was exquisite. Out on the lawn, the others danced in a circle. The circle dispersed, and the lords and ladies picked up their croquet clubs. Things began to soften at the edges.

  30

  “Something’s wrong,” Albin said as they approached the enclosure at the crossroads. “It’s too quiet.”

  He was right. There was no distant noise of commerce or murmur of voices. The halo in the sky cast an eerie light on the landscape.

  “Maybe they’re asleep,” Dora said.

  It was only when they came through the gap in the low wall that they saw the corpses. They were laid out in a neat line between the tables, their faces covered by cloth. Stains spread across the front of some of them; limbs stuck out at odd angles, as if broken.

  Next to Dora, Albin let out a little shriek. Dora instinctively put an arm around him and held him close.

  “I’m going to have a look,” Dora said. “Stay here.”

  Albin gave a quick nod.

  Dora edged her way around the bodies. There was no smell, even though the air was still. She could hear a rustling sound nearby and approached it.

  On the far side of the enclosure, Ghorbi was digging a shallow ditch. She had rolled her sleeves up to her elbows and gripped a shovel that looked too small for the job. When Dora came closer, she straightened. Her eyes burned with suppressed rage.

  “Hello again,” she said. “Sorry about the mess.”

  “What happened?” Dora asked.

  Ghorbi dropped the shovel and gestured at the scene. “Augusta happened.”

  “Oh,” Dora said.

  “Augusta?” Albin said behind her. He had followed her without her noticing.

  Ghorbi pointed at a creature sitting with its back against the wall. “Happily, she left one alive. The crossroads will recover, eventually.”

  “Where is she?” Albin asked. “Augusta.”

  “I pointed her to the Gardens,” Ghorbi replied. “She was wreaking havoc.”

  Albin took Dora’s hand. “We have to go. Ghorbi, where is the Memory Theater?”

  Ghorbi looked at the ditch. “I have places to be, too. But this has to be done. I can’t leave them like this.”

  “I’m good at digging pits,” Dora offered. “Let me.”

  “We don’t have time!” Albin said.

  “If she managed to get back i
n, she isn’t going anywhere,” Ghorbi replied. “Show some respect for the dead.”

  * * *

  —

  Dora took off her jacket and shawl, hiked up her skirt around her waist, and dug a long pit that would fit the eleven bodies on the ground. The soil listened to her and parted for her. Ghorbi spoke to the survivor in hushed tones; Albin sat down next to them, looking slightly ill. When Dora was done, she carried each of the bodies to the pit and gently laid them down. Then she asked the soil for help to cover them, and it did.

  “There,” she said. “It’s done.”

  Ghorbi helped the remaining traffic controller onto its feet. It ambled into the enclosure, where it began to pick things up off the ground and put them back on their tables.

  “Well done,” Ghorbi told Dora. “That was an act of kindness.”

  Albin took one of Dora’s grimy hands. Ghorbi looked them up and down, as if seeing them properly for the first time.

  “You have come a long way since last I saw you,” she said.

  “And I have my name,” Albin said. “And I found my parents.”

  “And?”

  “I had been gone too long,” Albin said, and his eyes were glassy. “They died while I was away.”

  “I see,” Ghorbi said. “I’m sorry.”

  “We have to get back to the Memory Theater,” Dora said. “Albin has a plan.”

  Albin was tense next to her. “Please tell us where they are.”

  “I don’t know,” Ghorbi said. “But I’ll ask the traffic controller if it does.”

  She went over to the traffic controller and bent down to speak to it. It nodded and walked past Dora and Albin onto the plain, leaning on Ghorbi’s arm.

  About fifty paces from the enclosure, the creature pointed at the ground.

  “Is that how we get there?” Albin said.

  The creature bowed its head and walked back to whence it came.

  “I must leave you,” Ghorbi said.

  “Will we see you again?” Albin asked.

  “Perhaps,” Ghorbi replied. “I have interfered as much as I can. I want you to find Augusta. I want you to be well. But there are rules I must follow.”

  She walked off in a different direction, robes billowing behind her, and was quickly out of sight.

  Dora dug into the ground with her hands until she was standing knee-deep in a pit about two paces across.

  “Dora,” Albin said, “we have to tell them about Apprentice.”

  Dora looked up at him. “I buried her on the mountain.”

  “So you told me. We have to tell them.”

  “Will they be angry?”

  “Probably. Are you afraid?”

  Dora shook her head. “No.”

  “I am.” Albin gnawed on his left thumb. “I don’t know if they’re people at all.”

  “Of course they are,” Dora said. “Just not people like us.”

  “Journeyman fell in love with you.”

  Dora considered this, then nodded.

  “Did you fall in love with him?”

  “I feel things about him,” Dora said. “I like feeling them.”

  “So are you nervous about seeing him again?” Albin asked.

  “Why?”

  “He might be angry.”

  “Because I buried Apprentice?”

  Albin made a frustrated noise. “No, because we have to tell them Apprentice is dead. They might think it’s our fault. And they might hurt us. They can do magic. Like the lords and ladies.”

  “That makes no sense,” Dora said. “It’s not our fault.”

  “They might not see it that way.”

  Dora shrugged. “I can’t do anything about that. They’ll be angry, or they won’t be,” she said. “But until you know, there’s no use being afraid. And if they’re really powerful, then there’s nothing we can do. And then there’s no use being afraid either. I promise I’ll be afraid later if we need to.”

  Albin chortled, then burst into laughter. Dora smiled back at him. Then Albin hopped down into the pit. The ground gave way under their feet.

  31

  Dancing. Drinking. Eating. Hunting. The Gardens, a place of eternal youth and beauty. Augusta feasted, slept, dressed herself, feasted, slept. It was not so difficult to forget about mountains, cities, a multitude of other worlds. To forget about wearing someone else’s skin, peeling it off like an old glove. Augusta was home. She would never leave.

  * * *

  —

  On the croquet lawn, Mnemosyne clapped her hands three times.

  Euterpe walked up to Augusta and handed her a club.

  “It’s Augusta’s turn,” she called out.

  A polished croquet ball sat in the middle of the lawn. Augusta walked out to it and swung her club. The ball landed on the arm of a page, who doubled over. Everyone else clapped their hands and cheered. The game was afoot.

  Augusta watched as the others played. She held out her hand for more wine. Her head felt blurry. Her vision swam. Perhaps she should have a canapé.

  She was startled by a loud crack. Cymbeline and Virgilia had hit Augusta’s ball with theirs so hard that it shot into the bushes. The others jeered at Augusta.

  “You’re out!” Cymbeline called.

  Augusta sneered at her and dropped the empty wineglass on the ground.

  The others continued the game as Augusta wandered in among the trees to find her ball. Her face was numb with drink. It was difficult to see details in the shrubbery. Augusta pushed her way out of a dog-rose bush, and there it was: the ball, sitting next to the corpse of an old man.

  Augusta crept closer. The man was old and hoary, his hands large and callused, his face contorted in a silent scream. He looked familiar somehow, but Augusta couldn’t quite place him. Why would he be so familiar? And what had brought him here? Only children ever ventured into the woods by mistake. A gold chain trailed from one of his pockets. Augusta bent forward, grasped the chain, and gave it a tug. A shiny locket emerged on the end of the chain, engraved with flowers. Augusta swung the locket up in the air and let it land in her palm. The touch sent a little chill along her arm, and for a moment she felt faint. She wrapped the locket in a handkerchief she found in the sleeve on her shirt, put it in a pocket, and returned to the croquet lawn. Never mind the corpse. She had to win the game.

  There was a rustle in the undergrowth as she made her way back to the lawn. Augusta turned around; a shadow receded behind a tree. Had she seen a pair of yellow eyes? She shook her head. No. Silly. There were only the lords and ladies in this place.

  Augusta lay on her side in her bed, the little locket resting in her hand. It popped open when she pressed a button on the side, and closed with a sweet little click. She wanted to lick it and eat it and crush it at the same time. There was something wonderful about it and something very bad. She wasn’t sure what. But pages knew these things. They had seen the world outside. She called for her page.

  A bell rang by her door and her page stepped inside. He stood in the middle of the room, with the audacity to stare directly at Augusta. She slapped him with the back of her hand. He shrunk back and looked down at the floor. He walked over to the bed and started to remove his clothes.

  “No, not now,” Augusta said.

  The boy froze halfway out of his coat. Augusta showed him the locket.

  “You will tell me what this is,” she said.

  “Mistress doesn’t know?” he replied.

  Augusta slapped him again. This time her nails left marks. His eyes watered.

  “You will tell me what this is,” she repeated.

  He sniffled. “It’s a watch.”

  “And a watch measures time,” Augusta said to herself.

  “It does,” the boy affirmed.

  “Tell me m
ore,” Augusta said.

  She pulled the boy down on the bed next to her and put her arm around his shoulders. He pointed at the different parts of the watch, explaining their functions. The rods were called hands, and chased around the clockface in step with time. The clockface indicated where in time one was located. It made Augusta shudder violently. Time was an abhorrent thing, a human thing. It didn’t belong here. It was that power which made flesh rot and dreams wither.

  “Does it measure time?” Augusta said. “Or does it just move forward and call that time?”

  The page blinked. “Time is time,” he said.

  “Time is time,” Augusta echoed. “If it goes, it goes forward.”

  “That’s what I was about to say,” said the page.

  “I know,” Augusta replied. “This has happened before.”

  Augusta twisted the little knob on the side of the clock, and the longest hand started to move. A faint ticking sound filled the bower. The air trembled.

  “This has happened before,” Augusta said again.

  She let go of the boy’s shoulders, and he stood up. His shape was blurred somehow.

  “I can’t let you leave,” Augusta said. “Not again.”

  “What do you mean, mistress?” said the boy.

  “What are you called?” Augusta asked.

  “Yarrow, mistress,” the boy said.

  Augusta blinked. “Not Thistle?”

  “There is no Thistle here,” Yarrow replied.

  Augusta picked up a long knife that lay on her vanity. She grabbed Yarrow’s jaw and quickly slit his throat. He gurgled as blood gushed down his shirt.

  32

  It wasn’t a pit that they fell into, but a tunnel that twisted back and forth. Then, bright light. The impact came fast: rubble and gravel, sliding away under Dora’s feet. She tumbled down a slope and came to a rest on her side, the satchel digging into her shoulder. Behind her, Albin yelled in terror on the way down. She grabbed his arm as he came by.

  They sat halfway down an enormous mound of gravel. Below them stood the ruins of a town: heavy stone buildings with their roofs blown off and huge holes through which the overcast sky showed; here and there, the burnt skeletons of wooden houses. The streets were strewn with debris.