Chatoyant College Book 9: Sundered

Chapter 99: Forgetting

When they arrived back at Leila's tree, no one else was there, so Dawn, Rico, and Roe sat down to wait. Tom, on the other hand, amused himself by climbing trees around the area. However, when he decided to try to climb Leila's tree, he fell out. He turned it into a somersault and landed on his feet with a triumphant grin, but Dawn knew better.

She climbed to her feet and reached out to touch the tree cautiously. "Did she throw you out? Do you think that means she's there and awake?"

Tom spun on his heel and blew a raspberry at the tree. "Did any of you try climbing it?"

Dawn shook her head. "No... wait a minute, Edie did. Quite a while ago. Nothing happened."

"Do you think that means Leila is waking up?" Roe asked.

"Could be," said Dawn. She frowned, wondering if she should try climbing the tree herself, but then she saw Ever and Celao coming down the path from the market and decided not to. If anyone else was going to climb the tree, it should be Edie.

"I guess you didn't find her," she said as soon as Ever and Celao came into the clearing.

Ever shook her head. She still had a firm grip on Celao's upper arm. "No news of her, either. They said they don't see her very often, and haven't for several months."

"And no one's heard anything about anyone going after her, I guess," Dawn said.

"Just us," said Ever. "Hello, Tom."

Tom bowed with a flourish. "And who is your glamoured young friend?"

"Celao," said Dawn. "He says he wants to leave the faerie court, but he's afraid of something, and Belara and Feloc have promised to protect him. He needs someone else to protect him."

Tom bent close to Celao, who shrank back. "Is that so? Why the glamour, Celao? Ashamed of your blue skin?" Celao shook his head.

Dawn rolled her eyes. "I wish I could see the glamour. You couldn't buy him any real clothes at the faerie market?" she added to Ever.

Ever shrugged. "What would we have to trade? He has nothing, and I care about what I have too much to risk it by trading just for him."

That was an intriguing statement, and Dawn was about to ask for more information about how trading worked at the faerie market, but then they heard someone approaching—more than one someone, judging by the crunching sounds of the undergrowth. She turned and was relieved to find it was just Corrie, Edie, and Naomi. After a moment, though, she frowned and stepped forward to meet them. They didn't look happy, and Edie looked really pale. "Are you okay?" Dawn asked.

"She's disappeared from their minds," said Edie. "Her friends—none of them remember that she existed at all. It was sort of creepy talking to them, actually." She shivered and clung to Corrie's arm.

"That does sound creepy," said Roe. "What did they say when you asked them if they knew where she was?"

"They just didn't know what she was talking about," said Corrie. "It was like talking to a blank wall. They remembered Edie as their friend, but not that Leila introduced them."

"They kept calling me Edie," said Edie. "That was the weirdest thing. They always called me Edith, because that's what Leila calls me. I think they remembered meeting me at the party that Corrie brought me to, but they must have thought that Corrie introduced us."

"I would have, if I'd known there was a group of theater lesbians," said Corrie. "So it makes sense. Though I don't know how they would know what I'd do."

"They just latched onto the nearest explanation," said Ever. "That's how it usually works. The mind can't abide not remembering something completely, so it fills something in, and before long, you don't even remember that you'd forgotten anything."

They all turned to her. "Has it happened to you?" asked Naomi.

Ever shook her head. "Faerie minds aren't so... mundane. I mean, I guess something could have been erased from my memory, and I wouldn't know about it, but I don't think it's ever happened."

"When parts of my memory were blocked, I just had blanks, I think," said Edie. "I didn't fill in new explanations."

Ever looked her up and down. "You're not fully human, are you?"

Edie swallowed. "No. I think my great-grandmother was a faerie."

"So your mind will work a little differently," said Ever matter-of-factly. "That could explain it."

"You said that's how it usually works," said Dawn. She didn't want to distract from Ever telling Edie things about being part faerie, but they were still trying to figure out what had happened with Leila. "Have you seen that happen to humans before?"

"Oh, plenty of times," said Ever. She raised her eyebrows. "You know that. Everyone but you forgot about Annie when they took her, right? And almost everyone forgot about me when I left."