Whispers of Nowhere

Chapter Twelve: Part One

All Gwen could hear was the sound of air rushing past her ears, hair whipping about her face as she fell farther and farther into darkness. She'd lost the ability to scream some time before, her voice having left her when she realized that Forneus was still holding her hand. Even while plummeting to hell-knew-where, she found comfort with her hand in his—despite his painfully vice-like grip. Still, she didn't dare open her eyes, for fear of what she might see if she did.

When at last her descent slowed, the wind no longer pulling her in all directions, she took a cautious peek around, surprised by the black void surrounding them. Within a matter of seconds, her feet were beneath her, coming into contact with something solid; though when she looked, she could see no difference between the darkness under her feet and the impregnable blackness above her.

"Where are we?" she asked, voice hitching slightly.

"We're still in Phenex's memories," Forneus said, gently releasing her hand as he cast his gaze around the void. "Though it would seem this one is a great deal more fragmented than the last."

Confused, Gwen followed his line of sight and immediately understood. While they had been fully immersed in the last memory, this one seemed to be far less substantial. She hadn't noticed at first, but looking around, she could make out the flicker of lights in the distance. It wasn't long before the lights drew nearer, and as they did, she realized they weren't just flickering lights. They were images, rectangular and brightly lit like those on a computer screen.

No. Not just images, she thought. More like silent films. Only unlike the ones she had watched so often with her grandparents, these weren't in black and white, but in vivid colour.

She watched as they hurtled closer, end over end, only to come to a stop no more than a few feet away. Then, like a deck of cards being shuffled, they flitted around her and Forneus, layer upon layer of fragmented memories forming a spiralling chain that reached high above them, and coiled all the way down to their feet.

It was only when they began revolving clockwise around them that Gwen found she was finally able to focus on the images, her eyes alighting on one to her right. Craning her neck, she could see Phenex, much as she had seen him with his long, coppery-red hair, only now the belt plaid was gone. In its place, he wore a simple drawstring tunic in white, leaving the tanned skin of his forearms bare. He appeared to be sitting in the same tavern that she'd seen in the previous memory, only instead of wearing a pensive scowl, he was laughing, his head thrown back and his shoulders shaking. The three men he'd rescued from the gallows were there too, laughing along with him as they drank from large metal tankards.

Gwen didn't get the chance to wonder what they were laughing about before the image evaporated, leaving a trail of white sparks in its wake. Blinking dazedly, she glanced at Forneus, noticing his puzzled expression as one of the images closest to him vanished the same way.

"What just happened?" Gwen asked. Her eyes landed on yet another scene—this one involving Phenex riding on horseback, grinning toothily behind him at one of his companions—only for it to disappear before she could blink.

"I'm not quite sure," Forneus admitted. "Even in such a fragmented state, I had assumed each memory would play out just as the last one did. It appears my assumption was wrong."

They both turned simultaneously, glancing at the many images that still surrounded them. Gwen's gaze flitted from one where Phenex and his newfound friends appeared to be playing some kind of sport involving tossing a long wooden beam (the "caber toss", she thought it was called), to another where he and the two more youthful of his companions—no longer appearing quite as young, having become broader in their shoulders with a healthy growth of scruff along their jaws—were working away on a modest-sized house.

With each image that disappeared, she found another. Phenex wading through the marshlands in the middle of a violent rainstorm, guiding a herd of cattle to safety by pulling the lead steer along behind him. Phenex and his three companions repairing the rooftops of several houses, in what Gwen could only assume was the aftermath of the storm she'd seen mere seconds before; Phenex helping an elderly farmer plough his fields on a particularly sunny morning; Phenex helping a harried-looking woman carry baskets of produce into her house while children ran under foot; Phenex sitting at a bonfire with those same children, telling them what must have been ghost stories, for one of the smaller children started to cry; Phenex comforting that same child in his arms until the tears had stopped, and he was smiling again.

It went on and on, Gwen only managing a glimpse before the memory would fade before her eyes, leaving nothing but an inverted after-image. The more she saw, the more she felt a strange fluttering in her stomach. It didn't seem possible that the Phenex she knew and the one in the images were one and the same, though she knew without a doubt that they were.

"I think I'm beginning to understand."

Gwen turned to Forneus, curious. "What do you mean?"

"I think I know why these memories are coming in brief flashes, instead of materializing as full-fledged phantasms," he explained, reaching out toward the image in front of him, only to have it vanish beneath his fingertips. "I think for the sake of his report, Phenex may have condensed his day-to-day recollections of his time spent undercover in Paisley." He turned to face her, silver eyes illuminated by the dozens of spectral images still floating around them. "If so, I can think of only two reasons why he would: one, because a great deal of it would not have been relevant to his report—"

"And two?" Gwen felt her chest tighten in anticipation, suspecting she knew what he was going to say before he even said it. That somewhere in these memories, the reason for Phenex's dislike of humans—bordering on hatred—could be found.

"And two," Forneus echoed, his voice subdued, "because remembering the only years he had spent living amongst mortals would have been too painful. Better that he dull such recollections, than suffer them in their entirety."

Gwen chewed on her lip, her gaze drifting from one memory to the next as she pondered his words. Each image showed her a side of Phenex she'd never known existed. One, she realized with some sadness, she was never likely to see.

Suddenly, the last of the spectral images sputtered, winking out all at once and plunging everything into darkness. Gwen grabbed hold of Forneus's arm with a stifled cry and he pulled her close, his lapel grazing her cheek. Traces of green and white danced across her vision, the normal gold-amber of Phenex's eyes appearing a startling blue in the after-image imprinted on her corneas, his face a ghostly white.

"What—" The rest of the words stuck in her throat, her eyes wide when she saw the shadowy grey figures moving toward them, their strides slow and purposeful.

"Don't be afraid. They are merely fragments of another memory," Forneus told her, gently wrapping his arms around her shoulders. "Even if they could see us...we are not their target."

Hearing the catch in his voice, she peered up at him. Anguish lined his face, the silver of his eyes dulling to grey. Gwen had seen him dismayed before, but there was something different about it this time, something sharper, more profound. It made her stomach hurt, and when tears threatened at the corners of her eyes, she looked away, her gaze coming to rest on the large rectangular shapes looming over them in the darkness.

Buildings, she realized, just like the ones she'd seen in Paisley's town square. Though it was still dark, she could make out the faces of villagers—men, women, young and old, alike; their translucent faces aglow with a fierceness that made her shudder.

"Forneus, what's going on?" she asked, her voice quavering. She had a feeling she wasn't going to like the answer.

"It seems we have finally arrived at the crux of the matter. This is the memory we've been searching for." Gwen saw him swallow, the rest of his words coming out a hoarse whisper. "The last memory in Phenex's report. The night his second life ended—and the heart I knew so well along with it."

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