The Forgotten Locket (11 page)

“How am I supposed to find someone who recognizes me when I don’t even belong here?”

“Interesting question. We’ll have to save that impossible situation for another round,” Orlando said with a grin.

I laughed. “And playing this game helped your brother sleep?”

“Actually, no, not very often,” Orlando said. “What did work, though, was when we’d come down to the fireplace, and I would brew up a warm drink for him to help him sleep.” Orlando nodded at the empty cup still in my hands. “He was particularly fond of Father’s special tea, too. Though when I made it for my brother, I always mixed in a wish.”

“A wish?” I repeated. A quiet memory chimed inside, a feeling of light and the taste of pink.

Orlando nodded. “He always took his wishes very seriously. He would stop and think for a long time about exactly what he wanted to wish for. And his wording was always exact—it wasn’t ‘I wish for happiness,’ but ‘I wish for the sun to shine tomorrow so that the flowers will bloom and make Mother happy.’” He shook his head in fond memory. “He was always more concerned about other people than he was about himself.”

“What kinds of things did you wish for?”

Orlando turned his attention to the fire, avoiding my gaze. “Oh, I never made a wish myself.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to look at my life and see what was missing. Once you identify what you lack, then it’s all you see anymore. Wanting something I couldn’t have would only lead to unhappiness, so I tried to be content with what I had.”

“That’s terrible,” I said. “It misses the whole point of wishing. It’s not to focus on what you don’t have; it’s to show you what
could be.
Once you know what you want, then you know what to reach for, what to dream about. It’s how you change things.”

“What would you wish for, then?”

“A solution to my impossible problem,” I said without hesitation.

Orlando was quiet for a long moment. “What about this solution? Maybe if we go to the bank, and look back in the river, you’ll see something that will spark a memory, or even bring them all back.”

I bit my lip. My only solid memory of the bank was from my recent nightmare, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to that barren wasteland again. What if the real thing was even worse? What if that angry girl with her cryptic warnings and threats was still there, waiting for me?

“It’s a creative solution,” Orlando pointed out. “Besides, it couldn’t hurt.”

“You don’t know that,” I retorted, feeling unsettled and off balance. “What if going to the bank is what is causing my memory loss?”

“What if staying in the river is making it worse?” Orlando countered. “You said that was one of the dangers of being in the river for too long—having it wash your mind clean. You also said that when we felt out of balance, we were supposed to go to the bank to find that balance again.”

“I said all that?”

He nodded.

I sighed. “All right. I’ll go. But promise me we’ll leave at the first sign of trouble.”

“There won’t be any trouble,” Orlando said with confidence, patting my arm.

But I wasn’t so sure.

Chapter 8

The bank was exactly as I had left it.

The river, however, was not. I remembered it as being a single flow of light and images, of time tumbling headlong from the past toward the future. Now, though, the light was dimmer, and I could see where a grayish film coated the surface in places, making it look polluted. Worse, a few faint silver lines had branched out from the main body of the river like threads fraying off a woven rope.

I looked at Orlando, but his eyes were closed, a furrow of pain crossing his forehead.

“Orlando?” I touched his arm and his eyes opened.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Are you all right?”

He nodded. “It’s just . . . I haven’t been back since . . .” He shuddered and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “I had hoped I wouldn’t have to come back so soon.”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” I said, though we both knew I was glossing over the truth. “Once we get used to it, I mean.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this place.” He exhaled slowly, his body still tense, but less so. He rubbed his chest in the spot over his heart. “At least the pressure is gone. That’s something.”

Orlando looked down at the river and frowned. He studied the wild rush of time that swept past us, almost too fast for the eye to follow. Crouching down, he examined one of the thin silver offshoots that had started to peel away from the main body of the river. He twisted around to look at me over his shoulder. “Let me guess. It’s not supposed to be doing this, right?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so, no.”

“Do you know what’s causing it?”

“I’m lucky I remember enough to notice the difference.”

Orlando stood up, dusting his hands together. “I wonder how far it extends. Maybe this is an isolated instance.” He looked into the distance, squinting as though that might help him see farther in the flat light of the bank.

“Somehow I don’t think we’ll be that lucky.”

We walked together along the edge of the bank, careful to make sure our steps didn’t touch either the river or the newly created streams branching off it.

It didn’t take long to confirm my worst fears. Once I knew what to look for, I saw the fragments of time everywhere. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of silver threads spooled off the river. Some of them pulsed with a brighter light than others, seeming to flow faster and stronger. I watched as a thin thread was absorbed into the larger stream next to it and I shivered.

Orlando stopped and I drew up next to him. Up until then, we’d manage to keep the river on our right-hand side, following the various twists and turns like a path through a labyrinth, but now the way was blocked.

The river forked into two distinct and separate directions. The main river still ran straight forward, but a new thread had broken off and curved to the left, cutting through the bank directly in front of us. The second stream was more narrow and the flow more sluggish than the main river.

“Is this as bad as I think it is?” Orlando said quietly.

I nodded, too terrified to speak.

“So if the river has become so unstable that it is branching apart, which clearly it is”—he gestured to the evidence in front of us—“then what happens when it unravels completely?”

I closed my eyes, briefly blocking out the sight of the fraying river. The implications of Orlando’s deduction were too massive, too terrible. I didn’t want any of the answers I thought of to be true.

“What can we do to stop it?” Orlando asked. “We have to stop it, right?”

“I don’t know if we can,” I said.

Orlando pointed across the river. “What’s that?”

I rose up on my toes, looking past Orlando’s outstretched arm to see what had drawn his attention, and my breath caught in my throat.

There was someone else on the bank besides us. A tall figure strode forward out of the barren landscape, his steps sure-footed and swift. Dark black hair swept back from his forehead. The harsh, flat light cut sharp angles across his face and turned the bandage over his eyes into a swath of shadow, but as he drew closer, I realized it was a face I recognized.

This was the man I had met on the bank once before. This was the man I had seen in my dreams. This was the man who had given me back my name.

The breath I had been holding slipped out of my body like silk.

I took a step back, my hand clutching at Orlando’s elbow for support. My whole body burned with an unexpected heat, and the feather-soft brush of warmth along my nerves gave way to the flash burn of flame inside my bones. A light flared behind my eyes, illuminating the darkness that crouched like an animal in my mind. I couldn’t take my eyes off the man who stood before me. I didn’t want to.

He was part sunshine, part shadow. He was bright as a diamond.

I heard a strangled groan escape from Orlando, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him head toward the figure, his movements uncoordinated and hurried.

“No, don’t—” I started, but that was as far as I got.

Orlando’s attention was completely focused on the newcomer and he heedlessly stepped forward—directly into the thin trickle of the new branch of the river. He realized his mistake immediately. He had one moment to look up at me in surprise and anguish, and then he disappeared.

I gasped. I wasn’t sure where Orlando had gone. I hoped he would simply return to the apothecary shop, but I had no way of knowing.

For a moment, I considered following Orlando, but there was something about this new boy that made me stay, made me want to wait for him, made me want to hear him speak and say my name again.

The stranger continued to walk directly toward me as though he could see me even with the bandage across his eyes.

He walked right up to the edge of the narrow branch of the river and stopped in front of me, his toes so close to the flickering waves that I could see the shifting images reflected in his boots.

“I promised I would be waiting for you,” he said, his voice soft and low, ragged with regret.

I shivered. I couldn’t speak. At the sound of his voice, the darkness in my memories turned to light. My body remembered what my mind could not: the feel of his hair on my fingers, the smell of his skin, the taste of his lips. The feeling of flying. I
knew
him.

But unlike when I had fallen under Lorenzo’s spell at the cathedral, this time my certainty wasn’t based on a false memory or a wish of what someone else wanted me to feel.

This time, I
knew.

“I promised to protect you.” He took a breath, then slowly reached out his hand across the split river. Gold chains gleamed around the corded muscles of his wrists.

I drew a breath too, my heart already aching with anticipation. I reached for his hand with mine. Our fingers touched, and at that small point of contact, I felt the shiver move from me to him.

“I failed you,” he said with a sorrow as vast as the ocean. “I wasn’t there when you needed me most. And because of that, Zo was able to hurt you.” His fingers trembled as they slid into place against my flat palm. “I swore to you that I would make it up to you. I would make it right.”

“How?” The single word encompassed all the questions I wanted to ask. It was all I could manage.

In answer, he took a step into the broken river.

I gasped, expecting him to disappear like Orlando had, but he didn’t.

He took another step, and then he was across the river, closing the space between us. He stood next to me on the bank, close enough that when he breathed, the edges of his shirt brushed against mine.

I heard a rustle of chimes as delicate as a wish rise up and encircle us both.

He caught my hands in his and took a deep breath. “I know you don’t remember me”—his voice trembled—“but I think I can reverse what has happened to you. I think I can help you regain your memories. Will you let me try? Will you trust me?”

I nodded instinctively, remembering the wish I’d made to Orlando and knowing in my heart that right here, right now, I had found the right answer to my impossible problem.

He pulled me into his arms, and I bit my lip. I hadn’t realized how much I had felt like my life was in free fall until I was suddenly caught, cradled. Held.

Here was a safe harbor in the storm of my uncertainty. Here was a strength and a comfort I hadn’t imagined existed. Here, I felt like I was finally home.

He pressed me close to him, molding his body around mine. His voice whispered in my ear. “Then listen to me. To my voice. To the words. To the spaces between the words. Can you feel them? Can you hear them? Are you listening?”

The rhythm of his words matched the rise and fall of his chest, echoed the steady beating of his heart.

I nodded again, not daring to speak. I didn’t want to interrupt the smooth flow of sound against my ear. I didn’t want to start falling again.

The words he spoke washed over me in a waterfall. The relentless rhythm of his voice surrounded me and swept through me. The words melted into each other endlessly, effortlessly.

The music of his voice seemed to seep into my body. The cadence threatened to rock me to sleep even though I’d never felt more awake. I was acutely aware of everything that was happening to me, around me, inside me. Slowly, the beat of my heart, the flow of my blood, and the breath in my lungs drew into alignment, each element working perfectly with the next.

I felt cool and smooth. Weightless. Balanced.

I felt, if not exactly whole, at least closer to being healed.

Turning my face upward, I let the tears that had pooled in my eyes slide down my cheeks without bothering to wipe them away.