Part III
He woke in a field, wet and gasping. Staggering to his tender, aching feet, he looked around. The night was dark, stars clouded over. The moon shone weakly through, illuminating the tree tops.
The night was cold on his bare skin and he didn’t know who he was.
Though the walk was long and agonizing and his feet were bruised, they didn’t bleed against the stones as he wandered. He needed somewhere to get warm. The grass, despite being kinder on his feet, was wet and cold when the breeze blew over them. He left wet footprints behind him, the blades of grass bowed against the pressure and the moisture.
The clouds peeled back from the moon and the stars. He barely noticed the sky from under the cover of the trees, just stumbling through the exhaustion and the cold. The trees were densely packed ahead of him and shaded him. The moon, only half full.
He picked his way over the dirt, avoiding twigs, rocks and tree roots. Fighting through the bushes and thorns, his skin was torn by twigs and brushed by leaves and flowers alike. He didn’t know where he was heading, he just knew it was cold and he needed a coat.
The only thing he wore that wasn’t stained or torn, indeed it looked pristine, was a silken braid of white around his wrist. It glowed in the moonlight and felt precious. It felt familiar, something he clung to, confused.
His skin prickled and he shivered as he broke out of the tree line, suddenly confronted with the dark shadow of a house. It had come out of nowhere and loomed over him, blocking out the few stars in the sky. After the unforgiving light of the moon, he had to shade his eyes to see into the shadows.
Though his shoulder blades itched at the thought of approaching the depths of those shadows, he knew there was a door there somewhere. A cold wind blew up and he hurried across the grass as quickly as his feet would allow. But something arrested his movement and made him hesitate as he penetrated the dark. He waited, reached out and laid his hand against the glass pane on the door. It was cool under his touch and his hand left a print behind.
“A mere whisper of yourself, and not even that.”
He turned, slowly, unsurprised as if he’d been expecting a voice. But he couldn’t have been. He was shivering, cold and without any shoes. How was she as unsurprised as he?
He opened his mouth to answer or greet her or explain himself. But then he closed it again, knowing that for some reason, he wouldn’t be able to speak.
“Let’s get you inside,” the woman said, her hand outstretched to him. Their palms met, hiding a shadow, thin as paper between them. He didn’t know how, but he knew her and when they stepped inside, it felt familiar.Her
She sat him down on a couch, the moonlight blocked out by the curtains. His skin itched in the sudden warmth. In short order she had him showered, changed and tucked up with a mug of tea.
“How do you feel?” she asked, her white hair tucked behind her ears, a pale pink china teacup in her hands.
He tried to speak but couldn’t get a sound out. She grimaced and got up, returning with a pen and paper. Once he had it in his hands, the tea making a ring on the glass table in front of him, he stared at it. He managed to write something. She read it over his shoulder.
“Your name is Manning,” she told him. “You live here… sometimes, with me. A few days a month. I’m Annabelle.”
She lightly touched the bracelet on his wrist, a soft smile on her lips. He barely noticed, eager to communicate. Frowning, he scribbled something down.
“I don’t know why you can’t remember,” she replied, shaking her head. “Do you want to see your room?”
When she turned the light on in the room he understood how he could live here. It was painted in a comforting color, the bed looked welcoming and it was clean. He sat at the desk and rooted through the drawers. She watched but he didn’t find anything interesting. Just maps and books.
‘What else is in the house?’ he wrote before handing her the piece of paper.
She took it, frowning. It took her a moment to open her mouth but when she did, nothing came out.
He gestured impatiently.
“You’ve never asked me that before,” she told him.
He gestured again, even more curious now that she hadn’t answered him. He had to wonder what was up there. They’d passed the stairs on the way to his room. The brief glimpse of the house when he was outside told him there was much more than the few rooms he’d seen on this floor.
“It’s just a house. Nothing special,” she told him with a shrug. “My parents used to live up there. I hardly use any of the rooms anymore.”
He got up, brushing past her on the way out of the room. She stood aside and let him go. He could feel her eyes on his back as he approached the bottom of the stairs. Standing there, his hand on the bannister, he looked into the shadows gathered halfway up. He couldn’t see the other end.
“You can go up if you want,” she said dubiously.
She didn’t sound as if she wanted him to. Everything he’d seen since he’d been inside told him she lived on the ground floor. He stood there, gazing into the shadows. There was no inclination to go up.
He turned away from the stairs, not missing her look of relief. Now that he was warm and dressed in dry clothes, he needed to get out of the house, stand under the moonlight. He took Annabelle’s hand, a familiar feeling, and they walked back through the house, out the door.
The grass was slick beneath his feet but no longer as cold. He let go of her hand as he felt something strange underfoot. Stooping to see what it was, his eyes picked up a fine sand. Annabelle made an aborted sound but he didn’t look up. He dipped his fingers in between the blades of grass, curious.
Ash. He rubbed his fingers together, the forefinger and thumb coated in a thin film of it. He took a closer look and couldn’t disagree with his initial conclusion. He sniffed it, spluttering when too much of it went up his nostrils.
He coughed, croaking, “Why is there ash out here?”
Her eyes went wide and then he realized that he’d spoken. He rose to his feet, the ash forgotten. His hand automatically went to his throat, rubbing.
Rusty and unused, his voice growled both words, “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she stuttered. “I’ve not heard you speak in a long time.”
“Why could I speak before but not now?”
“You’ve been fading.”
“What do you mean?”
“You used to know me,” she said. “You remembered my name, you knew your own. Or, at least you had a name to give me.”
He didn’t ask what she meant, instead turning away to look at the moon. The ash clung to his fingertips and he wiped it on his shirt. She moved behind him, a hand on the back of his arm. They didn’t say anything for a minute. His thoughts should have been churning but his mind held only emptiness. It was just blank.
“I don’t know what the ash is,” Annabelle said, “but you leave it behind every time you go.”
He looked down at her face. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, gazing out across the lawn. He couldn’t think of any reason why he might leave ash or what it could mean. But at that moment he couldn’t imagine leaving. Now that he was here, he couldn’t remember why he’d gone before or why he might go again.
He tried to speak again, ask her about it a bit more, but he couldn’t force the words out. Coughing, he cleared his throat again and again. Still nothing came out. She didn’t look surprised.
“You want to see it again? That’s the last place I saw you last month.” She guided him by the arm, back to the shadow of ash. “Most of it has blown away by now.” Annabelle pointed out where it had been. “You never leave much.”
He tried to speak, frustrated when he couldn’t ask her the questions he needed to ask. The pen and paper were still inside. A quick look at his face and Annabelle went inside to fetch it. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the ash.
When she shoved the implements into his hand, he took them, his gaze still stuck
on the grass. He wrote without even looking at the paper, handing it to her when she was done.
“I’ve never seen you leave,” she replied. “It’s always after the sunrise and I sleep through that.”
He didn’t understand and told her so.
“I sleep during the day, just like you do.”
He wanted more of an answer than that.
“Every night after you leave, wherever you’d been standing when I last saw you, there’s a spray of ash left behind. Never very much but enough to fill a small cup. You’ve never noticed it before or mentioned it. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never seen you leave. I don’t know where you go or what you do. I don’t know very much about you.”
He frowned, not liking her answer. It didn’t help him at all. He couldn’t remember anything either and he expected that since she knew him, admitted to living with him, she would know something about him.
Kneeling down, he dug his hands down into the grass, digging in the soil for the ash he knew was there. A little surprised at how much was left after a month, he sifted through the dirt he brought up, trying to separate the one from the other. He couldn’t do it and only found one other clump of the ash.
“Come here,” Annabelle said, tugging at his arm. He didn’t want to stand but she was insistent.
He followed her inside, wondering what could be more important than this newest piece of his mystery. Then she stopped them at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up, uncertain, but when she started, still holding his