The Partisan Chronicles [Dystopia | Supernatural | Mystery]

Andrei

Once Sinclair and Finlay were finished with their errands in Jaska, we all returned to the base to find nobody home.

We knew Everleigh was with Riz, and Teeth was with Peter and Alexander, but Maryse, Markus, and Bells were unaccounted for. The mystery was short lived, however. According to Adeline, a side table had been moved in front of the stairs with a storybook page propped up against a vase.

I'm told the illustration on the paper had been composed using soft, muted tones in water paint and ink. A depiction of Sebastian and Zacharias in the back, and the following row was comprised of Sinclair, myself, Adeline, Michael, and Feargus as children. Jakob as an infant sat in the front row. Our tell-tale eyes, including Sebastian's, had been deliberately exaggerated. On the left in a delicate script was written, "See you soon!" and the bottom right corner was signed by Avis.

Sebastian and Zacharias sighed.

"Quite talented, isn't she?" Finlay said. "She even knows how much I like horses and stealing people's snacks."

"Yeah, that's definitely my apple," Michael added. "But how does she know the brothers are back together? And with us?"

"No idea. What's important is: she and her mates have our mates," Sinclair interjected. "Thoughts?"

"We can't surprise her if she knows we're coming," Sebastian said. "We may as well knock on her door and play the rest by ear. It's not as though we're strangers."

"No plan is the best plan, sometimes," Sinclair replied.

"Precisely. For now, let's focus on restoring Michael's memory of the studio and collaborating what we know to expect from Avis."

With that, I waited while Jakob shuffled over to collect the illustration from the table. Following that, we all moved to the lounge area, and Sebastian instructed Michael to sit in the chair.

"Are you comfortable with us being here?" I asked.

"I don't have anything to hide," Michael answered. "I don't think."

Adeline and Finlay claimed one couch for themselves, and Jakob, with his mother's picture in hand, sat with me and Sinclair on the other. Nearby, Zacharias hovered.

"I'm kind of nervous," Michael said.

"Don't be," Zacharias replied. "My brother is the most accomplished telepath the world has ever known. He could have whole audiences believing we were performing in the desert wastes, or in a tropical paradise. Or in the cosmos."

Sebastian hummed.

For Jakob and my benefit, Sinclair provided quiet narration. She described Sebastian sitting on the armrest of Michael's chair, and for the first few minutes, she said he simply stared, occasionally tilting his head this way or that, his expression unreadable.

"Now he's whispering something in Michael's ear," she said.

In hindsight, I wonder if it hadn't been a pantomime. If Sebastian had something he wanted Michael alone to hear, he could communicate directly with him through telepathy. In any case, if anything had actually been said aloud, it was said too quietly for any of us to have heard it.

Another few minutes of silence.

"Michael's looking a bit stressed," Sinclair updated. "Now Sebastian's taking his hand."

"Thank you," Jakob whispered. He'd earlier confessed to me that he felt her efforts were thoughtful and had helped him feel more included.

I, too, appreciated her commentary. Firstly, and in no particular order, it grounded me in social situations where I enjoyed absorbing my friends' expressions, or knowing if one were missing a sock that day (Finlay). Secondarily, any excuse to hear Sinclair speak.

Sebastian broke the silence. "You've finally awakened and you find yourself in a room with books along the walls in copper and deep blue velvet shelves. You're laying in a chair. It had seemed at first comfortable, but as soon as you moved…"

"I remember," Michael said. "The chair, yeah, it wasn't comfortable at all. I remember being disappointed. I remember noticing the books. And then, I don't know."

Sebastian took a deep breath through his nose. "They're all three there…"

"Maybe—I… remember a woman with short hair," Michael said. "And spectacles, a quill… floating? beside her. And I remember the sound of metal against metal, like a tiny hammer."

Over on the other couch, Adeline whispered something to Finlay and he whispered something to her in return. I didn't attempt to overhear.

Sebastian continued, "You try to get comfortable, and you look around the room…"

"Yeah, I looked around the room," Michael agreed. "I remember wondering where my friends were—which is you guys, I guess. So, I looked around the room and identified where the sound was coming from. A work bench and another woman with brown hair. I couldn't see what she was making. And then—"

Sebastian seemed to be giving Michael a moment to finish his thought, but he eventually stepped in with another nudge. "You see her."

A heavy pause.

"I saw her. I see her—and I can't believe I forgot. She's so beautiful."

"Yes," Zacharias said, quietly and whether he'd meant to or not.

"She had goggles like Adeline's perched on her head. Her fingers were stained with paint, and there was a drop on her apron, but everything else was… perfect."

"…Yes," Zacharias repeated, this time buried within a sigh.

Sebastian adjusted his position on the armrest. "Michael Reider, your memory of that day may return as a tidal wave. If at any time you become overwhelmed, I will stem the flow."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

There was no further talking for a time until Sinclair whispered, "Michael seemed all right with the wave, so Sebastian's lifted up his sleeves. And now he's doing a swooshy thing with his hands."

A lifetime ahead to look forward to Sinclair's vague and yet somehow still effective descriptors and swooshy things. I brought her hand to my lips and kissed the top.

"The book," Michael said with an urgency. "I remember now. I remember everything from the moment I woke up in that chair. I felt normal at first, and I remember knowing I had to be somewhere, to be with my friends, but I don't remember remembering you. Your names, or anything."

"To remember your friends again we would have to restore years worth of—no, I would need to feed on an entire village after an undertaking like that. What you've recovered are but moments in time. Then again, not all is lost, is it? Go on, Michael."

"Yeah, no. So, there was a table by the chair, and an open, empty book. I asked them where I was, and who they were, and they said they were the authors of my new life. Again, I remember feeling like I didn't want a new life, even though I can't remember what I knew about my life to have felt that way, but I—I'm sorry. I'm getting distracted."

"It's all good, mate," Finlay said.

"Yeah—yeah. So, uh—where was I?"

"You were asking the Trio who they were," Adeline offered.

"Right. They asked me if I ever felt sad, and I said I did, sometimes. Though again, I don't remember why I said that. Um—does anybody have any water?"

Fidgeting beside me as Sinclair fetched her flask from her belt.

Michael caught the throw, and we all waited while he hydrated.

"Thanks," he said. "So, yeah, I told them I felt sad and angry sometimes, but that I usually felt fine. They seemed disappointed, but not devastated. Curious, I guess. I asked them what this was all about, and then it felt like time slowed down, but just for me? I couldn't move, or speak, but I could still see everything, which all seemed to be happening at a regular speed."

The couch shifted when Sinclair leaned forward.

Michael hesitated before speaking again. "The writer sat down at the table beside me, plucked her quill from midair, and started writing in the book. She was taking her time, too, making it look nice, I guess. And every time she'd turn the page, I felt—"

Sebastian muttered Avis's name in the form of a curse.

"—emptier? Didn't I have friends I was worried about? I remember knowing that I couldn't remember you anymore. Wasn't I important? Didn't I do something important? I couldn't remember, but I remember feeling like I should. In the background, I could hear the Tinkerer still working. By the time the Writer was finished writing, essentially all I knew: my name was Michael Reider, I had a good relationship with my siblings and my parents, and I trained hard at Palisade so I could join the Iron Hand and live with them in Leberecht."

"Were you feeling any residual negative emotion?" Zacharias asked.

"Yeah, I was feeling like I had good reasons to feel sad and angry sometimes, it just…yeah. Anyway. When the Writer was done, the Artist sat down with her art supplies. Like the Writer, she went page by page, adding illustrations. A lot like the one she left for us. Every page she finished, I felt—"

"For every illustration drawn, you felt less sad and less angry?" Sebastian asked.

"Michael's nodding," Sinclair said.

"Oh, Avis…," quietly, from Zacharias.

All confirmation of something entirely outlandish, and yet—there we were.

"Once they were both done," Michael continued, "I felt fine knowing what I knew, and they brought the book over to the Tinkerer at the workbench. I still don't know what she did with it, but not because I can't remember. I just don't know."

"They stored Commander Reider's feelings and memories in a book?" Adeline asked.

"Well, I doubt if it's anything as mystical as that," Sebastian said. "They manipulated his memory and his emotional centre using telepathy and empathy. But the book, a symbol in a sense—yes, that's why I believe not all is lost."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Sebastian directed his voice toward Michael, "In order for me to help restore your memory, I had to observe the memory, and then feed you the finer details of that memory—some verbally, others telepathically. I had a theory which proved to be true: even small reminders seemed to be enough to trigger your own recollection, making the memory thereafter easier to access both for me and for yourself."

"So, I remembered some of that on my own?" Michael asked.

"Exactly."

"And you said there were loads of those books?" Sinclair asked. "For everyone they've experimented with, I reckon."

"Yeah," Michael said. "That would make sense."

"Mother has been naughty," Jakob said. "Should we lock her up, Asa?"

Should we lock her up as we were? "No, Jakob. We'll find another way."

"Zacharias," Sebastian pleaded. "You have to know she's gone too far."

"It's Avis, Sebastian."

A sudden buzzing as the room broke into conversation: Adeline with Finlay, Sinclair and Sebastian in a heated debate versus Zacharias, and Michael: I didn't envy how he must have been feeling. Not to mention, the idea that in order to help our friend, we had to read from a storybook was no more absurd than the idea of living trees. And yet—

"I have an idea," I said.

The buzzing stopped.

In truth, I had a partial idea.

But as it happens, it was a partial idea more than enough for the others to work with.

The buzzing resumed.