The Forgotten Locket (7 page)

“Better?” he asked.

I nodded, wrapping my arms closer to my body in a hug. “You didn’t have to do this. The priest said he’d bring blankets.”

“You couldn’t wait.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“I’ll be fine,” he said.

Now it was my turn to frown. His face had already turned a wind-whipped shade of red and his lips were shadowed blue. “No, you won’t. Here—” I started to shrug out of the cloak.

He sat down heavily next to me, his hand on my arm. “No. You need it more than I do.”

Looking more closely at him, I could see the strain in the line of his neck, the anxiety hovering around his mouth.

“Orlando?” I tried his name on my tongue.

He turned, and his eyes softened when he looked at me. “Yes?”

“Do you think he believed you? Father Marchello, I mean. Do you think he’ll let us stay the night? Or do you think he’ll call the guards back?”

Orlando’s gaze lifted to the angel mural on the wall. “By granting us sanctuary, he’s bound by all the laws of God and man to let us stay. At least for the night. I don’t know what will happen to us in the morning.”

“What happened to us
tonight?
” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I woke up in a courtroom, but I don’t really understand how I got there. Part of me feels like we just met, yet there is another part of me that feels like I’ve known you a long time.” I laughed ruefully. “I don’t think I’m even
from
here, though apparently I can speak Italian—except I don’t remember ever learning it. All my memories are scattered, and it’s hard to remember anything.” I sighed, my shoulders slumping under the weight of my frustration and fear. “Can you tell me where we are? Do you know what’s going on?”

Orlando glanced at the archway where the priest had exited, but we were alone in the church. His gaze returned to me, and when he spoke, his words were quiet but intense. “The black door in the courtroom—had you ever seen it before?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

Orlando frowned as though I had given the wrong answer. “Did you know it was a machine that could break through the barriers of time?”

I couldn’t stop the words from bursting out. “What! Are you crazy?”

His frown deepened. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“A time machine?” I asked, but the rest of my words died in my mouth. Was such a thing possible? No, of course not. And yet . . .

I’d been trying to force myself to remember something—anything—about my past, but so far, when I looked inward, all I saw was that strange blackness as tall and thick as a wall, blocking me from myself. And yet . . . I felt the darkness inside me shift a little at the thought. The flutter of a veil that offered a mere glimpse at the light behind it. As impossible as the idea was, it had the shine of truth to it.

Was I brave enough to believe the truth, no matter how impossible it seemed?

“I don’t know how it is that you can speak my language,” Orlando said, interrupting my thoughts, “but you do, as perfectly as if you had been born here. Yet, I can assure you, you are not from this place—or this
time.
” He held my gaze with a meaningful look.

I didn’t want to ask the question, but I had to know. “You think I’m here because I traveled through time?”

He shrugged his acceptance of the truth. “You said you felt like we had met before. We have. I met you for the first time in a place that exists only on the other side of that black door. A place that is
accessible
only by those who have been through that black door. So how could you have been in that place unless you too had passed through that same black door?”

I leaned against the back of the pew, too stunned to speak. The veil of darkness drifted in my mind again, the gleam of truth shining a little brighter than before.

“Where was it?” I asked. “The place where we met?”

Orlando hesitated, as though debating on what my reaction might be. “You called it the bank and told me how it runs alongside the river of time.”

“
I
told you that?”

He nodded. “That’s why I’m worried. When you arrived on the bank, you had all the answers. Now, though, clearly something has happened to you to change that. Do you remember
anything
that happened between when we were on the bank and when we were in the courtroom?”

I pressed my hand to my forehead. I remembered pain, and the harsh notes of a song that hurt, but somehow I didn’t think that was what Orlando was looking for. I shook my head, ruthlessly ignoring the beginnings of a headache.

“If that door in the courtroom is a time machine, then what year is it?” I asked.

Orlando tugged at his sleeves, revealing the pair of black chains marked around his wrists.

I swallowed. I wanted to reach out and touch the chains, but I didn’t dare. It would have been too invasive, too intimate. Instead I reached for the locket around my neck, following the smooth curve of the heart with my fingertips.

He rotated his wrists outward, and where the chains met on the inside of his wrists was a blank circle with two arrows pointing to the midnight mark. Beneath the curve on one wrist were the letters MD; beneath the other were the letters MDI.

He touched the marks with cautious fingers. First one wrist, then the other. “When I left. And when I arrived.” He swallowed. “You asked me what year it is. It’s 1501. The first month of 1501.”

Orlando looked down at his hands. “They marked me like this before I went through the door.”

“Why?” I asked.

“They wanted to keep track,” he said quietly, “and make me remember.”

“Why don’t I have them?” I asked. “If I went through the door like you say I did, then where are my marks?”

Orlando shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think you went through the same machine the same way I did.” He looked down at his lap, a frown pulling at his mouth. “But they said I was the first. That’s what I don’t understand.” He looked back up at me. “How did you travel to the bank if
I
was the first one through the door?”

I shrugged, barely able to hold on to the conversation, let alone offer an answer. Especially when I still had questions of my own.
“Then where did I come from?”

He carefully took both my hands, his fingers still cold from the wind, his skin still smudged with dried blood beneath the black chains.

“I don’t know,” he said again. “What I do know is that you helped me when I needed it most. You knew what I did not. You gave me the truth—and hope.” He paused, a bright light in his blue eyes. “And now I will do my best to return the favor. I don’t know where you came from, but I promise I will do everything in my power to help you return home.”

Home.
The word conjured the sensation of family, of refuge, of chocolate melting on my tongue. Longing welled up deep within me, but I knew that, as much as I wanted to go home, there was something I had to do first.

If I could only remember what it was.

Chapter 5

Father Marchello
returned with two bowls of broth in his hands and a large blanket draped over one arm. He left them on the edge of the pew, carefully straightening the folds of the blanket. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, thank you,” Orlando replied. “You have done more than we could have expected. We are in your debt.”

The priest bowed and silently receded into the shadows.

Orlando waited until we were alone before reaching for the bowls with trembling hands. His face was haggard and pale. His dark hair was stiff with dried sweat and his blue eyes were smudged with exhaustion. As he handed one bowl to me, his sleeve pulled back over his wrist, revealing the hard edge of the black bands marked on his body.

Our eyes met at the same time as our hands did, and I quickly accepted the food, allowing Orlando a moment to tug his sleeves down, hiding the brands.

My eyes caught on the gesture and a wave of memory slid over my eyes. Another cold night. Another hand tugging a sleeve down over a slender wrist. Another set of black chains. And then the memory was gone, lost in the shifting fog. Had I really seen something? Or was my tired mind simply playing tricks on me? I shook my head. It hurt to try to think around the block in my memory. I had just left behind my last headache. I really didn’t want to invite another one in.

I swallowed down a mouthful of a warm broth flavored with basil and sweet milk. I could feel the warmth travel all through me. “This is delicious.” I sighed with satisfaction and quickly took another drink.

Orlando watched me with a smile. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“I can’t remember,” I said around another mouthful. “Too long.”

“Here,” Orlando said, pouring some of his broth into the bottom of my bowl.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t—”

“I insist.” He used his finger to stop the drip of the broth that had spilled over the side. “There is more than enough to share.”

I cradled the warm bowl in my hands and looked up at him. “Thank you,” I said, knowing that those two simple words were not capable of carrying the weight of emotion that I felt. “For the food, the cloak. And for the information. You’re like some kind of hero—rescuing a damsel in distress and everything,” I said with a half laugh, quickly brushing my hand across my eyes to prevent the tears I felt welling up from falling. I wanted him to think I was brave, even though I felt small and lost and alone at the moment.

“Oh, no, my lady,” he murmured. “I’m no hero.” A mask of sadness covered his face, seeming to age him as I watched.

The fog in my mind shifted, an almost-memory stirring, but before I could bring it to light, he leaned forward. For a moment I thought he might touch my cheek, but instead he lifted my empty bowl from my hands and set it to the side.

“You should try to rest a little. Morning will be here soon.”

I nodded, yawning. I was warm and fed and feeling at peace in a quiet and still place. Rest sounded wonderful. I lay down on the pew, curling up to cradle as much of my body heat next to my chest as possible.

Through half-closed lids, I saw Orlando quietly slip from the pew and wrap the blanket around his shoulders. He walked the few steps to the main doors of the church and stood in front of the window, watching, guarding, protecting.

Between one breath and the next, I closed my eyes and let myself drift away.

• • •

The dream was as dark as midnight and as vast as the sky. Woven into the darkness was a thin mist of light, a curtain of song that swayed and chimed. The song wasn’t anything fancy or grand, just a few simple notes strung together in a gentle harmony.

And then out of the blackness, out of the mist of notes, a man with a bandage across his eyes emerged.

I had seen him before, hadn’t I? I couldn’t quite remember.

He strode forward, a lion on the prowl. In his hands, he carried a polished golden guitar like a fresh kill. He wrapped the embroidered strap around his fist and his mouth twisted into a snarl.

“You should know better than to leave your prize possessions unattended,” the blind man said. “Why, anyone could just come by and take them and break them into pieces.”

For a moment, I thought he was talking to me, but then I saw, standing along the edge of shadow, someone else. A second man. But he was just a blurry outline. Just a shape in the margin of my dream.

Without warning, the blind man lifted the guitar high above his head and brought it down hard, smashing the instrument with a sound of split wood and torn strings. The neck snapped in half. The sudden violence rippled through the dream like a shock wave, silencing the music that had been playing.

The shadow man dropped to his knees, and in the quiet that descended, a roar of rage and pain tore through the dream, blowing the curtain of music to tatters.

The blind man stood tall and still, listening to the wild sound as it built to a piercing crescendo.

After an endless time, the scream finally faded away.

In the silence that followed, the blind man dropped the broken remains of the guitar at his feet, turned, and walked away. The outline of his body blurred along the edges as he vanished.

The shadow man vanished as well, leaving behind the lumps of wood and strings that had once been a guitar.

I was alone again in my dream.

The darkness reached out for me like shadows.

Slowly, the music returned, but hesitantly, the chimes only occasionally ringing.

I thought they sounded a little like a voice, like they were speaking a language I could almost understand. They sounded a little like my name. A little like . . .

“My lady?” The voice came to me on a hurried breath, a tone mostly filled with deference, but underscored with a thin thread of demand.