Memory's Wake - Book One of the Memory's Wake Trilogy

Chapter 8

She stood in an alley way. All grey.

Impossibly tall buildings, sharp and slick, bent over and watched.

She looked up, not into them but into a hand.

It glowed. It hurt her. It belonged to a man.

The hand, the man, the buildings spun.

She was losing herself.

Then found a young boy.

He yelled, punched, pushed the man and made him disappear.

One, two, three. They all fell into nothing.

An eternity of darkness.

They dissolved and swirled. Ran through trees.

Brambles tearing.

Talons and scales. Thundering, hungry roars.

She held his hand, he held hers back.

Their wrists matched.

They couldn’t hold on.

She screamed.

She screamed. Strong hands held her down. She thrashed, clawed, bucked. Sweat and tears drenched her skin. Her eyelids felt glued. She tore them open.

Heart thundering and chest burning, Memory’s eyes darted, trying to refocus in the morning light.

Where am I? How did I get here? I can’t remember, I can’t…

Oh… right. That amnesia thing.

Roen knelt on the bed next to her, holding her still by her shoulders. The feeling of his hands pushing her down kept her panic racing, and she pulled away, backing up against the carved headboard. The red velvet of the bed’s canopy shook like blood dripping down from the ceiling.

Across the room, Isabeth had her arms wrapped protectively around Eloryn. Both had wide eyes and tangled hair, just awoken. A bathtub of black, cold water stood in the corner. Brannon watched from the foot of the bed.

“Sorry.” Memory’s voice cracked, sore from the screaming she’d done. “Nightmare.”

She felt an awful disappointment that she hadn’t woken up somewhere she recognized, with people she knew and memories of who she was. She wished that the few things she could remember were the nightmare that she could wake from.

Roen gave her a kind smile. “As long as you’re all right.” He looked tired and grim, and wore the same clothes he did yesterday. He got back up off the bed and seemed to be trying to catch his father’s eye.

Brannon looked at Eloryn. “Are you sure she remembers nothing?”

“No, she doesn’t,” Memory cut in.

She wished she hadn’t when Brannon turned on her, a hard line across his forehead. “Memories or not, you have to understand how strange you are, how risky it is for all of us to trust you here.”

Roen choked. He apologized with his eyes before dropping his head away.

“I’d leave if I knew where to go!” Memory winced at the shrill tone in her voice and tried to calm it. “But I don’t. I don’t remember anything. I just want to go home and will as soon as I know where that is.”

Tears from her nightmare still wet her face and she wiped it furiously. She felt like a two year old, sitting in bed crying while everyone stared at her. She wished she had somewhere else to go so she could leave right now.