Lives of Magic (Seven Wanderers Trilogy) (23 page)

An hour later, Moira dangled her legs over a bridge we had stumbled upon. The murky water beneath reflected our forms.

We had walked along a path the hotel manager guaranteed us was an old railroad. The metal had apparently been collected during wartime, and now a gravel path ran from near the hotel along various fields and over a stream.

She didn’t think going for a walk was a good idea, seeing as she had just managed to dry off, but I had convinced her that fresh air would be good for her. Plus, I didn’t want Kian to rope me into archery or sword fighting again. We had a few hours of daylight left, and I was determined to spend them neither shooting something nor hacking away at something — usually Garrison.

“How have your memories been treating you?” I asked her as we sat. The unseasonably hot sun had warmed the wood and I dangled my own legs over the bridge, enjoying the break.

“Fine,” Moira said. Then, “But I am never sure what is a true memory and what is a dream.”

I nodded. “You have to use your judgment. If you are used to having strangely vivid dreams where you’re an ancient magician, then they’re probably just dreams. If not, memories.”

My comment got a small laugh from her and I finally felt as if she was warming to me. I dared asking the question that he been on my mind for a while.

“Why did you say you hate me?” I asked. The mood seemed to darken in an instant, but Moira kept swinging her feet over the water.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t. But it’s hard to be around you. You cause heaviness in my heart. I just want to be rid of you.”

We sat in silence for a moment while I contemplated being such a burden for her. Surely I hadn’t done anything wrong since we had met.

“But thank you for talking to Kian,” she said in a small voice.

“No problem,” I said. “He’s like a strong wind. Blows cold for a short time, but then settles.” I thought about that for a moment. “It’s strange how well we have gotten to know each other. The memories even allow me to know people I have never met. Like my…” I paused as I forced myself to say it, “…
husband.
I feel like I know him well, too. Though I can only remember being very unhappy while married to him.”

“It’s still a shock to me that we were real adults in a past life,” Moira countered, “and married! I know I have memories of that, and it creates a whole range of emotions I’m still figuring out.”

If Moira was dealing with heavy emotions, she was being very stoic about it.

“Oh yeah?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism from my voice. “And who were you lucky enough to be married to?”

She looked at me seriously. “He is in the hospital.”

I
turned away to keep Moira from seeing the shock on my face. Wide-eyed, I gazed at the water running lazily below our feet. My mind was racing.

If past-Moira had been married to past-Seth, then I had a pretty good idea why she hated me. However, if she did in fact hate me, then somewhere deep inside she knew everything. I contemplated how long it would be before Moira found out and told everyone. Seth had defected to the Romans. I cheated on my husband. He had left Moira. My face burned as I fought to keep my stare on the water. How long did I have before everyone knew the truth? Kian had contented himself with believing I was misled, but Moira could confirm everything.

Understanding struck me. I remembered his smug face when he found Moira. Kian thought she would prove me wrong. He knew she had been with Seth. He thought Seth would recognize her and my erroneous feelings would disappear. He was wrong. I wondered how Kian knew some of our story but not all of it. The silence stretched between us as the sun began to set.

“We better go,” I told her, standing and leading the way before she could reply. If Moira sensed my reluctance to speak, she was very accommodating. We walked back in silence or deep thought, I couldn’t tell. Dozens of paranoid scenarios were running through my mind of what she would recall.

We walked up the stairs to our room just as Kian and Garrison emerged carrying plastic bags with dinner. I could smell the familiar fish-and-chips combo from the pub. Since I had hallucinated my husband and been attacked by the magic, I hadn’t wanted to go back.

As per our dinner routine, Moira and I pulled out a packet of paper plates and plastic forks we had bought and sat on one bed, while Kian and Garrison sat on the other. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was comfortable. Most nights. Tonight I couldn’t help but keep my eyes from sliding to Moira and thinking of what she had told me. When would she remember? Silently, I willed her never to get her full memory back. And then I instantly felt guilty. If she didn’t regain her full memory, the magicians would be that much closer to winning.

“I called the hospital today,” Kian said as he sat down to eat. There was a smile on his face and lightness in his posture that I hadn’t seen for days. “Seth is awake and has enough energy to see us now. They said the day after tomorrow we will be able to get him back.”

Kian’s description made Seth sound as if he was kidnapped, but I was sure that if Kian had his way, he would have healed the wound with avocado pulp as he had once done to me. Thinking of his strange tea concoctions made my stomach queasy.

“Do you think being closer to … you know … where we’re from is making us stronger?” Garrison asked.

I tuned back in to the conversation with a start. I hadn’t realized I was completely absorbed in my own guilty thoughts.

Kian shrugged. “In some ways,” he replied. “Probably.” Then he turned to me. “Gwen, what was your husband’s name?”

“Augren,” I answered without thinking. I clapped a hand to my mouth in surprise. “I didn’t know that!”

Kian nodded, chewing on a piece of fish. “On some level,” he said between bites, “facts that have been ingrained in memory are beginning to surface. I think it is helping to be here.”

I tried to not bring attention to myself as I pouted at my feet. I liked my new friends. I liked Kian. And I liked the adventure. What I didn’t like was my former self and how she might ruin things for me in this life.

I knelt in straw. The stone floor was cold and hard against my knees and I was uncomfortable. There was a chill that seemed to echo off the thick stone. My eyes glanced up to a hole in the wall, which served as a window. Beyond that, a grey mass told me I was looking out at an ocean.

“Stand,” a rough voice instructed, and I stood. Before me, and older man with a long beard and a golden circlet around his neck held a long staff. His hair was grey peppered with black. He sat in the only chair in the room, which was also made of stone. Around me, other people stood, looking bored or preoccupied.

I searched my former self for emotions. This was routine. My mind was on other things I could be doing right now. When the man, our king I assumed, turned around to consult someone, I understood my dismissal. I turned on my heel to leave but something caught the sleeve of my tunic.

I looked down at a young boy with a mop of black hair. He had been standing next to the king. He smiled, showing me his missing two front teeth. He held out a thistle and I took it, mock-smelling it. I thanked him and he ran away. I felt eyes on me and looked up to see Seth regarding me from the entrance, smiling.

I awoke to Moira opening the door. Garrison had been knocking. Within twenty minutes, we piled into the small car Kian had rented and drove to the hospital. I didn’t know why my heart hammered in my chest.

It had been nearly two weeks since I last saw Seth fully alive and not hooked up to a dozen tubes and machines. A small part of me worried that he would be mad at me for perhaps distracting him that day. My ankle had healed rapidly and Kian even commented about my having some kind of restorative abilities. He also took credit with one of his disgusting teas. But could Seth have moved faster were it not for me?

This morning, Garrison sat quietly in the front while Moira concentrated on the landscape as we drove past. She had to duck in the small car to fully see out the window, and her long dark hair fell past her knees. I tried to imagine her as she once would have been and drew a blank. I obviously remembered some things, but not everything.

Our footsteps echoed in the clean, barren halls of the hospital. At the reception desk, however, a nurse I recognized from upstairs intercepted us.

“I thought you’d be along today,” she told the four of us with a stern look. Her bright red lipstick went against her older age and the deep lines that covered her face. Her coloured brown hair was pulled back into a bun, revealing grey. “He’s in with the doctor now, being given some medication and then he’s due for a rest. You’re going to have to come back in the afternoon.”

Both Kian and Garrison opened their mouths to argue but the nurse silenced them with another stern look.

“Do you want him fit for battle or not?” she asked us.

Properly chastised, we sulked back to the car while I thought over her choice of words. I did not want to go back to the hotel and be given either a sword or a bow to practice with. Before we reached the sliding doors of the hospital, I heard a voice behind us.

“Hang on!” The same nurse puffed as she sped towards us with a flyer in her hand. She handed it to Kian and turned it over in his hand.

“There’s a fair,” she explained, pointing to the crude map on the back. “Just five minutes down the road. It’ll keep you close and you can entertain yourselves for a few hours before returning. Distract yourselves.”

She gave me a motherly pat on the back and returned to her duties. Kian looked up at me from the flyer. I shrugged.

“Why not?”

Exactly five minutes later, we pulled onto a dirt road on the side of the motorway. I forgot it was the weekend until I saw how many cars, children, and dogs filled the ad hoc dirt parking lot. A Ferris wheel could be seen in the distance. A few rides had been set up, but mostly booths and tents filled the farmer’s field in which the fair was held.

I had to yell at Kian a few times as he got dangerously close to driving over someone’s pet while searching for a parking spot. When we finally got out of the car I felt the full force of popcorn machines, candied apples, screaming children, and yelling vendors hit me. There was so much going on, all I could do was grab Garrison’s sleeve with one hand and Kian’s coat with the other and drag them towards the entrance, assuming Moira was following.

The day was proving to be much nicer than I thought November would be in Northern England. The sun shone and it warmed my face, though I was still glad for my jacket and hat. For the first time since knowing her, I saw Moira’s eyes light up with pure joy as she saw a ride which spun so fast that people were glued to their seats. Garrison shared her sentiment, exclaiming and pointing, though even looking at it made my head spin.

“You go ahead,” I said to them, turning around before it made me dizzy enough to be sick. Kian caught my elbow.

“How about we meet by the entrance in an hour?” he asked.

Garrison and Moira nodded and were soon off, handing money to a man selling tickets for the ride. Kian used his grip to steer me away from the rides.

“I don’t like them much either,” he said as I leaned against a fence.

When I felt like I had recovered my footing, I wanted to explore the fair. We wandered along the booths and got roasted corn to eat. Every time I saw a spinning ride, I had to turn my head away.

The crowd was becoming loud and thick. I wanted to escape and used Kian’s grip on my hand to pull him into the first tent I could find. Its closed curtain and small size must have been unappealing to visitors since only one family was inside. I looked around as a grin spread across my face at the irony.

Around us, dozens of chain mail suits, a few suits of armour, and lots of old-style dresses were scattered chaotically. A table of ladies’ accessories stood against a tent wall next to a table of weapons. The only clear area was a throne in front of a coloured background of what I assumed was a throne room. A camera was aimed at the display.

As I watched a mother struggle to get her two children out of their tunics, a printer spat out photographs of the family in different formats.

“Care to have your photograph taken in Renaissance attire?” the man behind the camera asked. He was wearing a white-buttoned shirt with a black vest and a purple beret.

Before Kian could react, I nodded enthusiastically. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow, but I let go of his hand and went to a rack of dresses to choose one. A part of me wanted to have a picture to remember our time together. Another part thought that maybe if I saw Kian in remotely time-appropriate attire, I would remember him. I searched my brain for what period the Renaissance actually covered. Pretty far removed from our own, but I supposed the clothing was closer to our time than jeans.

My dreams of Seth fading into Kian and vice versa were now mixing with my memories. The two had become one, but I felt like it was my own mind making the confusion. If Kian claimed to have known me, why did I know not him?

I found a blue dress covered in velvet, with white silk and long white laces. I highly doubted anything like this would have existed in the time we were from, but it was a really nice dress. Checking to make sure Kian was playing along, I went behind a curtain to change.

Getting into a dress had never taken me so long. There were layers that surprised me, buttons that had no use, and too many holes for me to accidentally stick my arms and head through. Finally, when I had settled into it, I realized I needed someone to lace up the back. My choices were the man in the beret or Kian. I called for Kian.

Hesitantly, he peered behind the curtain as I turned my back. Though he cleared his throat uncomfortably, he tied up the laces with deft hands, pulling the fabric together. I couldn’t help but smile like an idiot into the back of the makeshift changing room.

This is nice,
I thought. Then, immediately,
Shut up.

When he finished, I turned and my mouth dropped open. He looked like royalty in a silk blue tunic with a wide silver belt. While he had kept his jeans, a chain mail shirt shone from underneath the tunic and the image was complete. A tinge of disappointment washed over me as I realized no matter how good he looked, I still did not feel a single bit of remembrance. His outfit was made whole by the completely uncomfortable look on his face.

“Almost complete!” the man behind the camera exclaimed.

He motioned for us to come over to the accessories tables, where he stuck a plastic sword in Kian’s hand. I nearly laughed out loud when I remembered what Kian had in his hotel room and saw his incredulous look. For me, he chose some type of fan to hold up.