by Andy Marino
As Eri took them in for a closer look, Hannah realized what all the commotion was about: The station was decaying before her eyes. It was like witnessing the decomposition of a great stone beast. In the light from the hornet ships, every little crack was visible. Hannah watched as the cracks widened, sending avalanches of brick dust crumbling down. Iron windowpanes rusted, showing a century of water damage in a few seconds. The proud arches of the main entrance sagged, as if the pillars were getting tired.
“What’s happening to this place?” Hannah asked. A few of the hornets had landed. Watchers streamed out, their faces made grim and shadowy by the darkday sky.
“The Watchers are at war with a group of rebels.” Eri’s voice was flat and neutral, as if she were explaining the rules of a boring game.
Something about the word rebels made Hannah’s mind begin to churn. “So this is a battle?”
“You are witnessing the aftermath,” Eri said. “The rebels have fashioned weapons of rot and wither. Soon they will make their escape from the station, the Watchers will hunt them, and it will happen all over again. We have been tracking their movements — they are skilled at evading capture.”
Eri’s words nibbled at her brain. Hannah could sense an important connection buried in her past, but it eluded her. She struggled with the logic of it. How could she possibly be involved in the destruction of Jaretsai Station?
Eri kept zooming in. Hannah watched as weather-beaten gargoyles curled their wings about their bodies and went to sleep. A sense of resignation hung in the air, as if the station had simply given up on being useful and was now quite content to be a gutted old building.
The word rebels reminded Hannah of another word: banished. But what did that have to do with her?
“Hannah.” Stefan was trying to get her attention. “Hannah!”
“Sorry,” she said. “I spaced out. What is it?”
“It’s him.”
Eri had enlarged the map so that they were nearly pressed against the side of the building. A boy peered out of a broken window. His face was familiar — Hannah wondered if she’d seen him in a movie. He was certainly good-looking enough to be an actor. Was he one of the rebels? She felt her hands go numb, and loosened her white-knuckled grip on the handlebars. Why was she suddenly dizzy with rage?
“Do you know him?” Eri asked.
Hannah opened her mouth, but couldn’t find the right words. Did she?
“Yeah,” Stefan said, incredulously. “She does. His name is Kyle, and he killed her mother.”
“At the lighthouse,” Hannah blurted out. Impressions came to her, snatches of conversation. He killed my mother. She watched Kyle as he turned away from the window to yell at someone. She was fairly sure that she hated him, so it must be true. His face appeared in a different window, where he was joined by a man with a bushy beard. The man wore a necklace, from which dangled a single yellow guitar pick.
I’ve seen that guy before, too, Hannah thought. But where?
“Session paused,” Eri said.
Jaretsai Station and the hornets became sketches outlined in strings of raw data. In a moment, the outline reverted to a vague smear. Still, the withering station was burned into Hannah’s mind.
Eri turned slightly in her clamshell so that she was facing Hannah. “It would have been helpful to know about your memory gaps before logging in to the map.”
“My memory is fine,” she lied.
“This boy, Kyle, was responsible for the death of your mother, and yet without Stefan Weisz to remind you, it seems to me that you would not have recognized him.”
“Well …” Hannah couldn’t think of an explanation for this. “I’m here for my mother and that’s it. So how do we find her?”
“Please tell me we don’t have to do any more flying around,” Stefan said. Hannah glanced over at him. His hair was a mess; his eyes were bloodshot.
“There are one hundred seventy billion souls in the city,” Eri said to Hannah.
“Okay, so thanks for the orientation. What’s the first step?”
Eri stared at her for what felt like a very long time. Finally, she asked, “What is your mother’s name?”
Hannah shifted uncomfortably. “It’s … the last name is Silver …” She closed her eyes. Names drifted up out of the haze — Diana? Lottie? — but none of them sounded right. “I just … I’m having a little trouble, lately….” She took a deep breath. “Can we start with something else?”
But not much else was peeking out of the murk of her past. Nothing was real except for things that had taken place in the city of the dead. Everything before she arrived in the attic was lost in a dense fog.
“Slinky,” she said at last. Eri just kept staring at her. The clamshell felt like it was shrinking. Her limbs were tangled in the equipment. I have to get out of here. Gingerly, she wriggled free and hopped down to the floor. Stefan joined her. Charlemagne, abuzz with pixels, followed.
“You okay?” Stefan asked.
She nodded and tried to sound casual. “I just need a break.”
“A break? Hannah, trust me, your past doesn’t come back. It just gets further away.”
Tears welled up and Hannah gave in. She let her vision blur. Stefan’s mouth opened. He reached out to her, hesitantly, before pulling his hand back.
“I’ve been losing it for a while now,” Hannah admitted. “But there was always something to hold on to.” She wiped her eyes. “Now I can’t remember what she looks like. I can’t remember who she is.”
“Hey, what’d I miss?”
Hannah turned to find her twin in the octagonal doorway of the map room. Nancy took a huge piece of gum from her mouth, wadded it up, and stuck it on a sign that said PLEASE LOG OUT. “They told me you guys were in here.”
“We’re just taking a break,” Stefan said.
“It’s okay,” Hannah said. “I already told her about it.”
“What, your memories?” Nancy shrugged. “Mine are pretty much gone now, too.”
Hannah’s heart sank. The thread that bound them together had unraveled. What reason did Nancy or Stefan — or Eri — have to keep helping her now? She thrust her hands into her pockets, felt the pages of the stupid handbook.
Eri joined them near the door. “As I was saying, you should have been honest with me about your problem.”
The girl’s monotone voice, her unblinking stare, her whole matter-of-factness — all these things got on Hannah’s last nerve. Without thinking, she flung the handbook at Eri. The book sailed through the air, pages fluttering.
SHNK.
Neatly sliced, the two halves of the handbook hit the floor, pounced on each other immediately, and rolled away like wrestling dogs in a spray of ink and torn paper.
“Because,” Eri said, sheathing her sword, “I know someone who can help you remember.”
Hannah’s bare feet splashed in the water that pooled at the base of her chair. She had pulled up her leg warmer and cuffed her jeans so they wouldn’t get wet. The water covered the entire floor of the Memory Keeper’s office, a spacious room furnished with nothing but a single chair and a small round café table, upon which rested a polished metal bowl. Three of the walls were bare, but the one directly across from Hannah was studded with crystals.
Throckmorton and Urvashi waded about, busying themselves with strange preparations. Urvashi lifted the hem of her sari to keep it dry. Throckmorton sloshed through the water in heavy combat boots.
“Do you guys have a leak somewhere?” Hannah asked. She raised a foot and examined her toenails, trying to remember the last time she’d clipped them. She could not, of course.
Urvashi jabbed a finger into her wristwatch. “Have you heard anything about a leak, garlic knot?”
“All sectors are sealed up tight, fish stick.” Throckmorton adjusted one of the wall crystals, polishing it with his sleeve.
Hannah plopped her foot back down. “So why is there water all over the floor?”
“All in g
ood time, Hannah,” Throckmorton said. “I do hope this experience is as rewarding for you as it is for Eri.”
“I recall Eri’s first visit,” Urvashi said. “There was a moment afterward when I actually caught the hint of a smile on her face. Do you remember that, sunrise?”
“Ha, ha!” Throckmorton’s hearty laugh bounced around the room. “I do indeed, owl feather.”
All at once, Throckmorton’s sprites wiggled out from beneath his helmet, while Urvashi’s rose from her shoulders. Hannah watched as a cannon and a lamp found the crystals in the wall. Soon each one was blazing with color.
Throckmorton splashed to the door behind her chair. “See you quite soon, Hannah.”
Urvashi patted Hannah’s shoulder. “Good luck, dear.”
The door opened and closed with a resounding boom, followed by the sound of another bank-vault wheel being turned, locking her in. She wished that Nancy and Stefan were allowed to be here, but Eri had explained that the Memory Keeper only worked with one person at a time — privately.
The crystals slid out of the wall and dropped into the water. Concerned about getting electrocuted, Hannah tried to lift her feet but found them stuck to the floor. She could wiggle her toes, but that was it. The water around her ankles had formed the same kind of gelatinous skin that she’d seen at the entrance to the Institute.
“Hey!” she screamed. “Let me go!”
The water began to burble and sploosh around the crystals, as if someone had just turned on the Jacuzzi jets. Bubbles and froth tickled her legs. A stream of white-capped spray shot up from the floor in a graceful arc and landed in the bowl, which quickly overflowed. Water pooled on the table and ran off the sides.
Hannah squirmed in her chair. “Is this supposed to happen?”
A thin jet of water spurted from the bowl to hit her square in the forehead. She felt a gentle pressure and considered moving out of the way, but something compelled her to stay put.
“If you saw a cat in a tree and a hamster in a mailbox, which would you save first?” asked the bowl of water, with the rude voice of a man in a hurry.
Instead of finding this deeply disturbing, Hannah felt a burning desire to engage in conversation. “Why would there be a hamster in a mailbox?”
“You’ve recently caught a classmate cheating on a math test. This particular classmate is the son of your father’s boss. It was his cat in the tree. Do you tell a teacher what you saw, or keep it to yourself?”
“Why does it matter if it was his cat?”
“The brakes on your mother’s car have failed. Up ahead there’s a fork in the road. The left path leads to a bridge under construction, the right leads to a mailbox factory. What do you name the hamster once you’ve rescued it?”
“Petunia J. Cuddles.”
“That’s a nice name,” agreed the bowl of water. “Not as nice as Hannah Silver, but it’ll do. Now. I understand we aren’t beginning a major campaign of remembrance here, just a little nudge in the right direction.”
“It’s my mother — I know I’m supposed to be looking for her, but I can’t remember anything about her.”
The bowl of water sighed. “I’ve seen this before. The city’ll do that. Gimme a second.” The Jacuzzi jets gurgled, cranked up, and turned the whole floor into fizzy waves. Hannah felt a second jet of water hit the back of her head at the base of her skull.
“Uh-huh,” said the bowl on the table, muttering to itself. “Yep. There we go, a little boost, easy does it….”
Tolliver’s Old-Fashioned Cherry Licorice Bites!
Hannah almost cried out when the name of her favorite candy popped into her head. She could picture it, too: The wrapper was yellow and waxy, and the logo was licorice blossoming like a flower. The witch at Five Rivers Farm tossed them down sparingly — even among treats, they were treats — so Hannah’s mother would always let her stay to get as many as she wanted.
In her mind, Weaving Season sprang to life. The taste of hot apple cider was on her lips, the deep sweetness of the nutmeg that made her jaw tingle. Homemade autumn decorations — little straw dolls — peeked out from kitchen cabinets and sat on shelves in the Tree Room. All at once she was cocooned in memories of autumn at Cliff House — crunchy leaves that blanketed the driveway, smoke from the woodstove curling up out of the chimney — and she could barely feel the jets of water against her head.
“How’s that, kid?” the bowl asked. “Better?”
“Mmm,” she mumbled happily, eyes in a half-lidded stupor.
“Try this on for size.”
The water misted into a spray that wreathed her entire body. Seasons changed: There was the lopsided snowman she’d made, with its frozen celery nose. Then it was spring cleaning time in the dusty upper rooms, and Hannah was matching sneezes with her mother, flipping her mop upside down to snatch a spiderweb from a corner of the ceiling. Then she was in sandals and a bathing suit, climbing down to the Widow’s Watch to let the ocean breeze chase away the summer heat.
“Now we’re cookin’ with gas, eh?” the bowl yelled triumphantly.
Memories went off like fireworks. It was almost too much, like being stuck inside a candle shop where your sense of smell felt a million times more powerful. (She remembered WickMasters in Carbine Pass, which also sold gourmet mustard at the counter.) The bowl was babbling on excitedly.
With a jolt, she recalled her mother’s bleeding hangnail and the smell of fried chicken. Their argument about the Internet, so frustrating at the time, was the most welcome thing Hannah could possibly imagine. She could explore Cliff House now, hear the off-time clicks of the water heater in the basement, pedal the squeaky old exercise bike, organize the books in the Reading Room according to the color of their spines. She could hear the sound of her mother’s footsteps, the whistle of the tea kettle, a glass plunking down on the Tree Room table. There had been a rhythm to their lives, two people in orbit, colliding and clashing and moving side by side through the seasons, while the floorboards creaked and the garden grew and the lighthouse kept its watch.
And in an upstairs closet, she remembered with a smile, was a box full of her father’s guitar picks — Fender medium. She could see the old photographs of him with his beat-up old acoustic, the funny contortion of his mouth when Hannah’s mother snapped a picture of him singing. There was his bushy beard, and that yellow guitar pick he always wore as a necklace….
Stunned, Hannah began to cough.
The man at the window of Jaretsai Station.
Was her own father one of the banished? Had he been in the lighthouse that night, when Kyle had —
“Hold up, whoa, wait just a minute here!” the bowl of water said, ripping her back into the waterlogged office, cruelly dismissing her reverie. She felt woozy, as if she’d almost drowned.
“This is not the kind of thing I like to find out when your head’s already wet, you hear me?”
“My father,” she mumbled. “He’s with Kyle.” She reached out to grab the edge of the table to steady herself. Her feet kicked freely through the water.
“I ain’t talkin’ about your father. Never mind him. Listen, kid, this ain’t your first trip to the city.”
“What?” Bowl of water, chair, table. She tried to keep them all separate in her mind, even though her vision was making them overlap.
“What I’m trying to tell you is, you’ve been here before!”
The first thing Hannah saw when she opened her eyes was the grim line of a mouth. She blinked, groggily, and Eri’s face came into focus. Hannah was mesmerized by the severe part in the girl’s hair, which looked like it had been created with a ruler. She tried to sit up, but a hand pinned her shoulder.
“You are not well,” Eri said. “Rest. You are safe here.”
From what? Hannah wondered. “How long was I out?”
“You were never ‘out.’ You were in a between state after your session with the Memory Keeper. Sergeant Throckmorton ordered me to take you to the infirmary, but I brought
you to my room instead.”
“Thanks,” Hannah said. “But I feel fine.”
Eri hesitated, then pulled her hand away. Hannah sat up and got her bearings. The girl’s room was almost laughably bare. Besides the cot Hannah was on, a squat table held a wristwatch floating in a dish of water, which was connected to an outlet in the wall. A tri-folded screen made one corner of the room into a private dressing area. Two identical robes hung from hooks. A sword was displayed on an ivory rack.
Stefan sat on a stool by the door. Charlemagne was perched like a parrot on his shoulder, proudly sparking and blipping with bits of digital noise.
Hannah rubbed her eyes. “That’s a new look for him.”
“Welcome back to the land of the dead,” Stefan said. “Check this out.” He held up his dry paintbrush. One of Charlemagne’s tongues shot out, wet the bristles, and retreated.
“Now this is the cool part.” Stefan’s elegant brushstrokes curled through the air. Hannah felt a rush of warmth — she had missed his painting. After a few seconds, the air sparkled with a miniature dragon that hovered, flapping its wings.
“Soil my carpet at your own peril,” Eri warned. Stefan rolled his eyes and Charlemagne slurped the dragon whole, removing it from the air as if it were a failure moth.
“I don’t need to get more paint,” Stefan explained. “Ever since he ate part of the map, he’s like a little recycling machine.” Stefan nuzzled the scruff of the paint-lizard’s neck. “Aren’t you, boy? Aren’t you?”
Eri sat down cross-legged on the floor and began cleaning her sword with a white cloth. A rustling came from behind the screen and Nancy’s head peeked around the side.
“That is not meant to be a head decoration,” Eri said without looking up. One of her robe belts was dangling from Nancy’s forehead, tied like a sweatband.
“So, Hannah,” Nancy said, “what was the Memory Keeper like?”
“Um … wet. You’ll never guess what I found out.” Right away, Hannah regretted saying this. The details of her session felt highly personal, like secrets she’d learned about herself, and she didn’t feel like sharing them — especially not with Eri in the room.
