Persistence of Vision

  Chapter 26: The Strangeness of Roses

  Maggie felt her stomach bottom out. “What?” she whispered. She swallowed the metal lump in her throat. “Why would I do that?”

  “You didn’t give me a specific reason.”

  “No, I mean, why…how…this is just something you do for people?”

  “I’ve done it for many people. You are one of the few to return, though, and certainly the soonest.”

  “How many is many more?” Karl asked.

  She looked up at him over Maggie’s head. “Dozens.”

  “So,” Maggie said, her head hurting again. “How does it work? I gave you my memories and then…?”

  “You had me remove your memories for safe keeping.”

  “So you can restore them?”

  The woman shook her head. “It’s not that simple. You came to me in desperation, but what you did was dangerous. There was no guarantee it would work—that you would be able to regain your memories. There was no guarantee you would survive it, and there was certainly no guarantee that you’d make it back to where you wanted to be before your memories seeped away. I have no idea how you fared after you left here. Can you tell me?”

  “I made it back to where my friends would find me, but I never got to tell them what I’d done. And now even I don’t remember.”

  The woman nodded. “An unfortunate side effect.”

  “Can you reverse it?” Marcus growled over Maggie’s shoulder.

  The woman hesitated before responding. “I can start the process. But it’s different for everyone. Maggie’s memories may come back or they may not. If they do, they may come back in a day, a year, or a decade. They may seep back little by little or come back all at once. I told you this was a dangerous thing to do. It does little bodily harm, but there are those who’ve gone mad from the effects of it.”

  Maggie felt herself recoiling. “Why?”

  “Because you’ll never know if your memory is whole or if there’s more you’ve not yet remembered. Some go mad waiting for memories to return that never do.”

  Maggie considered for a moment. “Do it anyway. Try to bring them back. Slim chance of their returning is better than none any day.”

  “Maggie.” Marcus stepped toward them from where he still stood against the wall. “Maybe we should talk—”

  But before he could finish, the woman put the palms of her hands over Maggie’s temples and shut her eyes. Her face was inches from Maggie’s, and Maggie watched it contort through every possible emotion for a full minute. In contrast, her body was rigidly still—a perfectly toned marble sculpture. The woman’s face smoothed out, and she opened her eyes, dropping her hands from Maggie’s head.

  “How do you feel?” Joan asked, taking Maggie’s arm.

  Maggie shrugged. “No different, really.”

  The other three were staring either at Maggie or the strange woman, and an awkward silence descended.

  “Okay,” Maggie stepped toward the woman. “Tell me everything that happened last time I was here. Tell me everything I said to you. What reason did I give for wanting to do such a thing to myself, and how did I find you? Tell me.”

  The woman studied Maggie’s face for several seconds before nodding. “I will, but only to you.” Maggie started to object, but the woman talked over her. “This is sensitive information. When you leave here you can tell anyone you want, but for now I will only speak of what happened before when we have privacy.” With that she turned and walked calmly to the fire.

  With a sigh, Maggie turned toward her friends.

  “I’m not leaving you down here alone, Maggie,” Marcus whispered, taking her arm. “We can’t sense her. What if she whisks you away from here? What if it’s all a lie and she works for the collectives?”

  “Marcus, can you sense me?”

  He looked taken aback. “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll know if I’m in trouble. This may be the only way to find out what happened to me during those unaccounted-for hours. I have to hear what she knows.”

  “And if it’s a lie?”

  She shrugged. “That’s a chance I’ll have to take. Please?”

  Marcus looked back and forth between her and the woman. Reluctantly, he nodded. “We’ll be at the top of the stairs.”

  The three of them ascended, casting angry glances at the woman over their shoulders.

  When they were gone, Maggie went to stand by the woman in front of the fire.

  “Maggie,” she said, “I don’t have all the answers you want.”

  Maggie’s shoulders slumped. “What?”

  “I can only tell you what you told me, and it wasn’t a complete picture of your motives. I think you found me by accident. You didn’t seem to know who I was, but when I explained what I could do, you jumped to do it as though it were the solution to your problems.”

  “How could I accidentally find a place and person hidden by Concealment?”

  The woman smiled cryptically. “There are ways.”

  Maggie’s eyebrows went up. “Like?”

  The woman shook her head. “That’s a different issue. What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. You said dumping my memories was dangerous, but then you also said it does little bodily harm. Which is it?”

  The woman’s eyebrows went up, and it took her a moment to answer.

  “If the person survives it, there are not long-term physical affects, aside from the memory loss itself. However, ripping memories away from a person is intensely traumatic. It can cause enough shock to kill the brain the instant it happens. In asking me to do it, there was a chance you could have dropped dead on the spot.”

  Maggie tried to absorb that, tried to imagine what on earth could possibly make her risk such a thing. Terror spread through her like so much undergrowth. She clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking. “But I did survive it.”

  “Even if the person survives the initial experience, there’s no way to tell if there won’t be delayed shock or later trauma. There could be injury to the brain that didn’t show up right away. And then there’s the fact that the memories don’t go away completely for about an hour. Once they do, there’s a danger of shock setting in again, and by that point, the person wouldn’t have any idea why. You managed to come through both. As you can see, what you did was…”

  “Foolish, selfish, irresponsible?”

  The woman smiled sadly. “The word I would use is desperate.”

  Maggie’s chin trembled, but she swallowed and managed to control her voice. “And what reason did I give you for that desperation?”

  “All you told me was that there was something, some piece of information hidden in your memories. You were afraid of someone else getting a hold of it, so you wanted your memories to be gone, at least for a time. You spoke of a man you loved more than life itself. You said his name was Marcus. More than anything else, you were afraid of losing him. That’s why you did it.”

  The tears reared up in her eyes as the woman talked. They burst their dam and flooded over her cheeks.

  “But I lost him anyway. He’s a good man, and our relationship obviously had passion, and it’s not fair to him that I can’t remember it.”

  “Not fair only to him?”

  “No! Not fair to me either. Why would I do that?”

  The woman looked at the ground, considering. “Maggie, that’s all I know that is fact. But perhaps I may tell you a bit more. Not things I know, but things I surmised based on what you said, how you acted, what I saw.”

  “Yes.” Maggie wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Tell me.”

  “Understand, this is only my opinion.”

  Maggie nodded.

  “I think you stumbled upon something, some piece of information when you were…wherever you were.”

  Maggie nodded. The ship.

  “It scared you, terrified you. You knew you had to get rid of it right away. I honestly don’t know what it was. As I said before, once the pr
ocess begins, it takes a while—about an hour—before your memories are gone. You were going to try and make it back to your friends before that happened. I understand you didn’t succeed?”

  Maggie shut her eyes, willing the memories to return. A pair of boots walking across the room at eye level. “I made it back to where they found me, but by then my memories were being siphoned away. I fell into unconsciousness and…remembered them no more.”

  The woman put a hand on Maggie’s shoulder, and Maggie looked up into her face. She saw genuine empathy there.

  “I’m so sorry, Maggie.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  The woman searched her face for a time before slowly shaking her head. “Just the Remembrancer.”

  Maggie sighed. “Can you tell me, Remembrancer, why, if my memories were taken away, I still have flashes of some of them?”

  The woman leaned her weight against the roughly hewn wooden table. “Yes.”

  Maggie waited for her to go on.

  “Memories are intensely personal things, Maggie. You can’t make memories for another person, and no two people’s memories, even if they are of the same event, are the same. You can’t…” The woman’s brow creased, and she seemed perplexed for the first time since Maggie had met her. “You can’t…unmake a memory. Your memories are part of you. Despite the fact that your memories were…excised, they’re like rivers of identity that seep into the pores of your soul. What you’re seeing are echoes. If your memories don’t return in full, you’ll never be able to fill in the blanks, but the flashes are bouncing around inside your brain. Your subconscious is trying to remember, trying to figure out what happened and fill the empty space, so the echoes become more vivid.”

  “But why those specific memories?”

  The woman shrugged. “Who can tell? As I said, memories are intensely personal. Perhaps they were key points in what happened. Or perhaps it’s something as simple as memories that are evoked by a specific, random sensation. If you can interpret the flashes, they may be of use, or they may not.”

  The woman went silent, and Maggie sensed she was done speaking on the subject.

  “Is there no more you can tell me? Who are you? Why are you here? What is this place, and why is it Concealed?”

  The woman put up a hand to stop any more questions.

  “I cannot answer all your questions. I can tell you only a few more things. I have been here for a very long time. Now that you’ve come back and the path to restore your memories has been set in motion, my time here is finished. When you are gone from this place, I will be too. If you return in days or weeks, you’ll find only an empty lighthouse. I don’t know if the Concealment will go away immediately, but it will break down over the years, and soon this lighthouse will be naked to the world once again.”

  Maggie was confused, but she was also tired of asking questions she knew wouldn’t be answered.

  “I want to say one more thing, Maggie. There’s something I want to warn you about. Everyone has negative memories, whether they’re tragic, scary, or simply hard times that we’ve gone through. As human beings, we only deal with one thing at a time. Oh, many things can come to a head, or we can have tragedy pile upon tragedy, but because time is chronological, we only deal with one day, one moment, at a time.”

  Maggie frowned. “Okay.”

  “If your memories come back more than one at a time, you may get a rush of overwhelming emotions all at once. There’s nothing to be done about it, especially now that the process of true Re-membrance has begun, but I want you to be prepared for how brutal it can be.”

  Maggie nodded. “Is that all?”

  The woman smiled, cupping Maggie’s cheek in her hand. “Yes, that’s all. Good luck on your mission.”

  The way she said it made Maggie curious. “What do you know of our mission?”

  “Nothing of the logistics. I assume it’s against the collectives, as it was before.”

  “Hey! You said I didn’t give you details.”

  “You didn’t. I surmised it. You’re an individual, Maggie. Any danger to you would have to come from the collectives.”

  Annoyance flared, and Maggie couldn’t stay silent. “Forgive me, but you’re cloistered on this peaceful, albeit somewhat worn-down piece of paradise, and yet you know of the war between the individuals and the collectives? How?”

  “I’m closer to it than you think, Maggie. But that’s not important. I know a lot of things. I know that man loves you. I know all your companions are fiercely loyal to you. I know there are two more of them to the east working on the beach. In fact—” She looked to the east where Doc and Nat were working. She seemed to be undecided about something. Finally, she took a deep breath. “Will you tell the good doctor something for me?”

  “The…good doctor?”

  “Yes, the doctor. He’s an old man now.”

  “You mean Doc? You know him? Well let me go get him. He’s just—”

  “No. There’s not time for that. I haven’t seen him in more years than you could imagine, Maggie. He wouldn’t even recognize me. Would you just tell him something for me, when you think of it?”

  “I…well, yeah, I guess.”

  “Tell him…tell him the roses are in bloom.”

  Maggie was so confused. Who was this chick?

  “The roses?”

  “Yes. They’re in bloom.” The woman smiled at Maggie’s expression.

  “The roses are in bloom.” Maggie sighed. “Okay.”

  “Good. Now join your companions upstairs and head back to the beach. There’s no sense in keeping the good doctor waiting.”

  Maggie started up the stairs with the woman coming up behind her. Halfway up, she realized that the only creaks were coming from her feet. She turned around, but the woman was gone. She hurried back down and let her eyes sweep the room.

  “Marcus!”

  Marcus was instantly beside her, not bothering with the staircase at all. He put his hands on her shoulders and followed her gaze around the room. “Where did she go?”

  Maggie could only shake her head. “She’s gone.”