Sword and Sorceress XXVII Read online

  “Do you know me now?” Only his voice had not changed.

  Unable to speak, she touched the cloth over his ruined eye.

  “A small enough loss,” he said. “Only someone brave enough to face down a charging bull, and steadfast enough to follow an injured animal so far into the wilderness, could cross the wild worlds without going mad. You see, I was right.” With a small smile, he touched her cheek. “You were the one.”

  Moon dared not speak, dared not breathe. At first, his true appearance had seemed strange to her. Now she would not have him any other way.

  Which of them, she wondered, had paid the greater price—he with his eye or she, having left behind her home, her sister, her clan?

  “I will take you back to your plains.” Bluejay held out his hand, “if you wish it.”

  Moon found her voice. “I wish to go with you, but not to return to the life I had before. I wish—I wish to see all those other worlds.”

  To walk those beaches and meadows, to explore those cities and forests...

  She felt his heart rise in his breast, even as hers did. Warm fingers closed around her own. Together, they stepped out on the luminous road.

  The Memory Box

  by Patricia B. Cirone

  Dozens of men were trapped in a mine, and it was Amina’s job to get them out. She expected the task to be difficult, but when she was deep underground, she discover a complication she had not expected at all.

  Patricia B. Cirone has worked as a scientist, a teacher and a librarian, but her true love is writing. She has had a number of short stories published, including several in previous SWORD & SORCERESS anthologies and is currently working on a book. She receives frequent editorial comments on her writing from one of her cats, who considers any hand to be better employed in petting her than in typing.

  ****

  “Can Onia do it?” Amina asked, turning the mug of tea around and around in her hands, and trying not to sound as if she was begging—or worse yet, whining. She kept her gaze steadfastly out the window, as if she could see something in the utter darkness outside. Utter darkness, as it would be inside the mine.

  “You know that wouldn’t work—she has absolutely no training,” her aunt replied.

  “Yes, but she is of the line. She should be able to access the box...” Amina trailed off, knowing this was all a pointless argument. It was her nerves talking, throwing up barriers between herself and what lay ahead.

  “Most women of the line cannot even pluck a memory from the box the first time they try, even with some training in ordering their thoughts and working in a trance state!”

  “I did.” The words slipped out before she could snatch them back from her teeth.

  “Yes, and we all know how well that went!” her aunt said acerbically and Amina winced.

  Yes, years of nightmares and waking dreams. She had not ridden that memory—it had ridden her. She had been a child, headstrong and determined; her mother vain and unwilling to spend the time to curb her willful child. Widowed young, her mother had been too busy keeping an eye out for a likely man and too proud of her ascension to the role of Memory Keeper upon the misfortune of her older sister. Amina had been jealous of the beautiful box her mother talked about so often, and was sure she could be just as important if she opened it and brought forth one of the memories.

  She had slipped into her mother’s room and sat cross-legged with the ancient box in her lap, then opened it. Somehow she had imagined it would be like walking into a fairy world, with beautiful creatures like the stories told around the fires on festival nights. Or like instantly becoming someone important, and grown up, and able to order others around. If it made her mother important simply to be the Keeper, when she hadn’t actually had to use it yet, surely it would make Amina even more important if she actually had some of the memories!

  Instead she had been sucked into a maelstrom of darkness pierced by cries, by odd visions floating up and vanishing before her eyes and then been grabbed and yanked violently into a world of screams and the thunder of hooves. She had stared helplessly as a horse the size of a small cabin bore down upon her and a man’s face, livid with rage, had aimed a lance at her from its back. She had ducked and run, tripping over bodies of loved ones she somehow knew in this other world, and felt blood running down her face from a gash that stung and burned on her scalp. And there had been more pain and screams and people dying and then she had woke screaming in her bed. The first of many times she would wake screaming in her bed.

  Her aunt had been by her bedside, not her mother. It had been her aunt who had nursed her back to a more precarious health than the robust spirits she had enjoyed before. It had been her crippled aunt who had patiently taught her to rein in her will and control her frustration and learn to separate dream from reality—both the dream that had escaped the Memory Box and taken over her mind and the dreams and self-delusions everyone wove around their lives.

  A Memory Keeper needed to know herself, every wart, every failing, every blessing and every strength, before she could risk knowing others to that depth and keeping their thoughts separate from her own. Not to do so was madness, and it was only the very strength of her talent, her aunt had told her, that had preserved her from such insanity.

  The strength of her talent, and the strength of her aunt’s talent as well, Amina knew later. Her aunt had not just nursed her physical body back to health, but had pulled her mind back from where it was lost, entangled with the memory of that other woman, long ago. Using the skills of a Memory Keeper and a Memory Binder, she had sought and found Amina’s own thoughts and somehow separated them from that other, and bound them back to her own body and her own time.

  Her mother, Amina found, when she was finally well enough to ask, had left the village, abandoning her own child as the source of her own fall from grace. Stripped of her right to be the Keeper of the Memory Box, she had packed up a few belongings and moved to a town some twenty miles downriver where she took up residence with the local inn keeper with whom she had been having a mild flirtation with at local festivals and fairs over the past few years.

  “But I was the one who snuck into her room and opened the box,” Amina, the child, had protested. “I’m the one who should be punished, not her.”

  Her aunt had smiled kindly at her and stroked back the damp, fever wet hair from her brow. “It’s not punishment, child, but need. The first duty of any Memory Keeper is to never leave a Memory Box where others can get at it—especially children. Your mother had been warned already about keeping it out where others could see it, and warned to keep it locked away from you and any other children who might come into the house. She treated it as a piece of jewelry, for her own personal adornment, not as a powerful tool of our people.”

  Amina hadn’t understood then, but she was too sick to protest and when she grew older, she understood what her aunt had meant, about her mother’s attitude and her carelessness. Now her aunt’s voice recalled her to the present. “Don’t worry, it won’t be like that time. You have the training to control a memory now, and just gather what bits you need to use them.”

  “I know,” Amina answered, smiling wryly. “I’ve certainly worked with enough of them from the training box.” She made herself sound confident; she was a grown woman now, not a child to be pampered and protected. Still, she dreaded opening that box, and working with a real memory. A memory gathered, or possibly torn, from a person who had no control over their own memories or feelings. It would not be like the training memories that Memory Keepers carefully stored; memories carefully strained of extra personal thoughts and emotions—after all, who wanted to let your innermost private thoughts and emotions be experienced by someone else, especially some child or youth who you didn’t even know. And often the stored, prepared memories in the training box were of the most everyday boring events: weaving a piece of cloth, weeding a garden, cooking a meal. Those were easier to keep free of stray emotions or thoughts.

  No th
e memories in the true Memory Box were whole—a defining moment in a person’s life—or death—complete with emotions and connections and thoughts and terror.

  Amina turned the now cold mug of tea around in her hands again and gazed out the window. Was that a faint bit of gray she saw lighting the darkness? The other villagers would be working through the night, trying to dig through the rubble of the cave-in, trying to free those of their own who were trapped below.

  But come dawn, it would be nearly two days. Days in which any food or water the miners might have had with them would have been used up. Days in which air might be getting scarce. Days in which bodies, young and old, would have gotten weaker, injuries left unhealed, minds grown fearful with the dark and despair.

  Come dawn, it would be Amina’s turn to open the Memory Box and pluck a memory from it. The memory of one who had traveled the fey way into the heart of the mine and lived to tell of it. And it would be Amina’s turn to try to travel that same route and hope it would connect to the trapped villagers, and lead them out.

  All too soon, the knock came on the door. Since it wasn’t accompanied by the sounds of rejoicing, Amina knew the attempt to dig through to the trapped miners had been unsuccessful. Not that the villagers would stop trying, but it was time for her to begin her attempt.

  She went to the door and nodded her acknowledgement to the solemn faced headman. “I’ll go ahead then.”

  “Thank you, Amina. May the Goddess be with you.” He turned and walked back toward the mine entrance through the pearl grey pre-dawn light.

  Amina turned toward her aunt. “Well,” she said. Her aunt opened her mouth as if to speak again, then silently lifted the Memory Box to hand it to her. Amina stared at it in silence for a moment, then moved forward and took it. She refused to let her hands shake.

  The last time she had held this, she had been a child. Its ornate designs and the patina of old wood still drew her, and she wondered if it was merely the beauty of its design that attracted her, or if it was somehow the memories within that were calling out to her.

  Enough. She took a deep breath and slowly opened its lid, quieting her mind and seeking for the one memory she needed. The years of training, both with the quieting exercises her aunt had taught her and with the practice she had done with the training box helped, but still she felt buffeted by the voices and snatches of sight and sound that swirled around her. She mentally drew her veil across her “self” more firmly and let the memories slide past and coil back into the box until she had found... that one. She grasped it firmly and closed the box with a snap, then put it down on the table, for her aunt to put safely away.

  She walked out the door and headed for the hills, letting the memory only lightly touch the surface of her mind—enough to follow it but not enough to absorb it into her being. She could follow it this way, step by step, as the memory itself had been formed, not knowing the end but only the moment. It was safer that way.

  Amina found herself walking higher up into the hills than she had anticipated, but let her steps carry her, seeing differences between her sight and how things had looked to that other woman long ago—a rock grown mossy here, a thick tree that had been a sapling, a scoured fall of rock where there had been a grassy bank.

  She entered a small copse of trees, their shadows deep in the now brightening skies. The air was chill here and Amina shivered. There—there at the base of a huge oak tree was a shadow darker yet. Amina pushed aside the accumulation of leaves and twigs and found a narrow twisting stairway made of roots and bits of stones descending into the darkness. She could feel the excitement flooding through the memory of the one she carried—an excitement that did not match at all the dread Amina felt. She had never liked darkness, nor small enclosed spaces. The thought of descending into that stygian blackness filled her with dread.

  Still, taking a deep breath, she cautiously took the first step down, following the other’s memory. It was too close here for the small lantern she held to do more than shine against the damp earth walls and she nearly lost her footing trying to peer down and see the next step let alone the one after that. She gave up looking down and used the other’s memory to light her way. Either the stairway had been wider a century or so ago, or the other woman merely a girl and Amina felt with each footstep to find the stairs that were little more than niches.

  Finally she reached flat ground and started to lift her lantern up to light her way a bit.

  She stopped, astounded. Around her was a small chamber of rock, with glittering crystals growing down from the roof. Light from some crack far up above filtered down, bathing the entire chamber in a soft radiant glow. The stillness was broken by the soft sound of water trickling over stones the hues of the reds and golds of sunset.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” a bright voice enquired.

  Amina spun around, startled.

  No, it couldn’t be. She knew it was called the fey way, but there were no such things as fairies. They were tales, spun to entertain children by the fireside.

  Yet there, perched on one of the multi-hued rocks was a small figure, its skin an impossible shade of silver, with small transparent wings growing from its back. Yet for all its delicate looks, something about the face warned Amina that this small being was not of a delicate nature. Indeed, the eyes assessed her coolly, with a hint of steely determination.

  “Indeed,” Amina replied politely, jerking herself free of the shrouds of the memory she had been riding, and wondering which was real, the dark earthen walls of the other’s memory or this place of beauty. Had she truly gone mad this time? But it made no sense; Memory madness consisted of being lost in one, not seeing something totally different!

  “Looking for treasure?” the fey creature asked, her pointed chin lifting a bit, challenging Amina with her gaze.

  “No,” Amina replied. “Unless you count lives as treasure, which I do—but I don’t think that is the treasure you were asking about.”

  “Lives! You think to find lives down here?” The fey creature laughed scornfully. “Seems the tales you humans tell each other have grown even larger.”

  “The lives of miners, villagers trapped down here after a rock fall. There is supposed to be a way through to the mine from here.”

  “Why do you think that?” the creature demanded.

  “Because the memory I carry is from one who walked this way, and she told the village of her journey, and her memory was gathered and stored in case another would ever need to find that way. Which now, I do, to rescue those who will surely die if they are trapped much longer.”

  “A Memory Keeper,” the creature said thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” Amina said firmly. “And I need to be on my way.”

  “She lied, you know.”

  “Who lied?”

  “The one who gave you that memory you are carrying. She was a deceitful one. She came here looking for treasure. All she found was me. I sent her on her way. She never walked through these caverns or went into the mine.”

  Dismay struck Amina’s heart. “No, that’s not possible! There must be a way!”

  She pulled up the memory of the other and, hesitating only a moment, plunged into the memory again, this time letting the wholeness wash into her. If she went mad, so be it; without this memory the other villagers, friends and kin, would die. It was her duty, her destiny, to be a Memory Keeper, to risk all for the good of others.

  But she realized with dismay that the creature was right. The girl-woman whose memory she rode had lied, using her lies to gain herself attention from the other villagers in her time, to make herself important. She rode the memory to its end, to the girl fleeing from the chamber and up the narrow stairway of roots, running away from the fey creature who laughed at her, all the way to her decision to tell a fancy tale rather than admit to her panic and be laughed at by the other villagers for her pride in thinking herself strong enough to outwit the fey. For in her time they had believed in the fey creatures, and no one traveled t
he paths that were supposedly theirs.

  And perhaps they had been right, Amina though, opening her eyes with despair. It had all been for naught. All her years of training. All her years of fear and overcoming it, in order to prepare her for a time when she was needed, for when a memory was needed.

  And instead she had grasped the memory of a foolish, prideful girl, much like she herself had been that first time she opened the Memory Box. She was justly punished for that arrogance. But it was others who would pay the price. It would be the miners who would die, either suffocating or starving. Oh, no doubt she would die too—that was the price paid by those who defied the fey. But it wasn’t the thought of her own death that crushed her; it was the thought of the others.

  “So there is no back entrance to the mine,” she said to the silvery creature, “and all this is for naught. I beg your pardon for trespassing, and will leave immediately.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say there wasn’t a way to get to your noisome mine from here,” the creature replied, watching her thoughtfully.

  “There is a way?!” Hope surged back up in Amina’s chest. “Please, I must get through to them! I must bring them out!”

  The creature stared at her for a long thoughtful moment. “I see that. You really do care about them. What would you pay for me showing you the way and letting them tramp back out through my home here?”

  “Anything,” Amina replied. “I will pay with my life.”

  “And what good would that do? Just give me a dead body down here. Bad enough all the cleaning I’ll have to do after all your miners tramp their muddy boots through my home.”

  “Then what do you want from me?” Amina asked.