Out of Reach

Photo by Md Mahdi on Unsplash

Dawn swung the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, somehow still amazed at it all. Here she was, somewhere in her forties (probably), but only able to remember the last twenty-six years. Most days she still felt like a teenager. What she imagined a teenager felt like, anyways. Everything before twenty (probably) was a resounding blank.

But despite that, she was married, running a household, and raising teenagers (who arguably knew more about the world than she did). How had that happened? She pushed the wet clothes firmly into the dryer and patted the machine. It still seemed magical and unknowable to her.

Vanessa stomped in and dumped clothes on the floor, “How come Darcy gets to sleep?”

“He’ll do his laundry later,” Dawn said automatically. “The washer will be stuffed as it is.”

Vanessa grumbled as she sorted her clothes into different piles. She did not think her brother’s date to the high school dance was a good enough excuse to stay up late and get out of chores. Dawn had given up explaining that Darcy had done most of his chores during the week and would be finishing the rest later. She wondered if she’d been this crabby as a teenager. Had she even had a brother to argue with over petty issues? She pushed the thought away. It didn’t do her any good to chase questions she couldn’t answer.

Vanessa finished and headed back to her room. Listening to her footsteps, Dawn let out a sigh. She’d give anything to remember her past life. The footsteps came to a sudden stop.

“Mom?” Vanessa’s voice had lost the grumpiness and sounded small.

“What is it sweetie?”

“How do you know if you’re hallucinating?”

Teenagers ask weird questions and Dawn had thought she was done being surprised by the things they came up with. Apparently she’d been wrong. “Hallucinating? What?” She asked as she followed Vanessa into the living room. She stopped and stared and wondered if she was hallucinating. Darcy had been napping on the couch, and he was still sleeping, but now he was floating about six inches above the couch with strange golden designs hovering about him.

“We’re seeing the same thing?” squeaked Vanessa. “Like he’s floating in a hamster ball.”

“Yes…” said Dawn faintly. There was something familiar about the designs. Something like a memory danced just out of reach. They both stared, mesmerized, hardly daring to breathe, as if a sudden sound or movement would send Darcy flying away. (Impossible, something inside her whispered. It would take conscious effort to get him to fly and he wasn’t exerting any.) The golden designs shifted and tilted in intricate swirls. She couldn’t take her eyes off them. They twisted one way then the other, seemingly at random and yet… “Look, there’s a pattern,” she murmured and reached out.

“Mom!” gasped Vanessa, clearly worried. “What if you hurt him?”

But she wouldn’t. This, whatever this was, she knew it. There was a pattern in the twists and turns, and with a brush of her fingers she sent the pattern spinning in a different direction. For a moment, a new pattern formed, then the golden swirls dissipated. Darcy plopped back onto the couch.

“Ow!” he sat up, rubbing his head and then caught sight of his mom and sister. Vanessa stared at him opened mouthed. Dawn stood with her hand still outstretched. “Um, guys, what’s going on?”

Vanessa opened and closed her mouth several times, but couldn’t answer.

“Mom?” Darcy looked worried. “What happened?”

Dawn stared at her hand. For just a moment, when she touched the golden designs, her world had been clear and right. No unanswered questions. She’d understood everything. All that was lost now. “There’s something I’ve forgotten,” she whispered in bewilderment.

Blank Slate

Photo by Charlie Harutaka on Unsplash

If you could start over with a blank slate, what would you do?

Dawn shudders at the essay prompt as it beams down from the blackboard. The other college students babble incessantly, spinning imagined lives into being; filling the air with chaos and drowning her in mindless speculation. She hurries from the room before the professor officially dismisses them, gulping for breath. Outside she can breathe again, but her only thought is a vision of herself, forcibly erasing the prompt from the blackboard. How can she write such an essay? Eight years ago I woke up to a wretched existence in a hospital bed as a blank slate.

Waking in a strange room with machines she didn’t have names for and questions she couldn’t answer was bewildering. Fate had left her unconscious, floating in a battered sailboat, with no clues to the mystery that was herself. No parents came forward with relieved tears to claim her. No worried friends appeared to connect her with her past. No memories resurfaced to solve the mystery of herself. There was only the nurses, the doctors, the social workers, to put herself back together again. Never once in eight years has anything seemed familiar.

Sometimes she thinks her favorite dream is a memory. If only it was! If only she had just one memory. But this one is just a dream. In the twilight, she walks down a worn path with her father to a small wooden sailboat. Look, she says to him, I can sail to the end of the river and back. She doesn’t know how old she is in the dream. Young though; maybe a teenager, eager to show off her skill. Her father is just as eager to be shown. His smile grows with every step. It almost could be a memory. The feel of her father’s hand in hers; the sparkle of stars in the water; the gentle caress of the night breeze. It all feels real. But it’s not. Because when they enter the sailboat, she holds up her hands and golden light spills out in intricate patterns and that is how she guides the boat through the water. They sail at impossible speeds, passing slower vessels, passing cities, all the way down to the mouth of the river. There they turn around, laughing with delight. In the east, the sun rises and the dream ends.
If she could will herself into the world of her dream, she would. In that world her slate is all filled up, except for a little bit at the end, still waiting to be written. But reality is all around her as she walks through the buildings of the community college where she’s trying to cobble together something that looks like a life. She takes a bus to her next class: sailing. Her breath catches at the river. It makes her heart ache even more for the dream of what never was. This sailboat is fiberglass and modern, not weathered wood. The ropes (lines, the instructor said) are awkward in her hands. But something about it feels right.

I named myself, Dawn, she writes, after a memory that never happened, in the hope that someday, my slate will be filled.

 *

In fantasy, there's often a character who has amnesia who's trying to figure out who they are. Sometimes they're even stuck on earth, even though they're from a magical world. I've always wondered how would this character handle being told magic isn't real? Assuming they can still talk, they know the meaning of words and would know the word magic meant, but since they can't remember anything, would they remember that magic is real, while seeing all evidence to the contrary? Obviously, this question will never be answered. But it did lead to some interesting backstory for Dawn, who will eventually have a grand adventure to get her memories back.

 

Yada Yada, Rhyme Rhyme

Aerwyna stirred the steaming pot. Outside the castle infirmary the sounds of battle raged. There was the clang of swords and shields, the roaring of the dragon, and the screams of the injured and dying. She tried to shut them out. It didn’t really matter who won. She was the Chief Healer. One way or another she’d be mending the injured when the battle was over. Sure, she would prefer if the army of the One Chosen by the Forces of Light drove the Lord of Darkness out of the castle, but they hadn’t won for the last five years, so it didn’t seem likely they would win today. Everyone knew the prophecy, all that yada yada, rhyme rhyme nonsense and everyone had a different interpretation. The Forces of Light said it meant they would win. Eventually. The Lord of Darkness said it meant he would win, and the last five years (and deaths of four Chosen Ones) was a pretty strong argument in his favor. For now, along with the other healers, Aerwyna prepared potions and bandages and healing stones and sharpened knives for the inevitable amputations. It kept her busy and away from the windows were the Battle to Determine the Fate of the World played out. Again.

*

They had been right to prepare. As expected, the army of the Lord of Darkness, with its trained warriors, superior armor and weapons, and sheer enormity of numbers, won. There were casualties of course, and those poor souls, including the Dark Lord himself, were now being admitted into the castle infirmary. Aerwyna moved from one patient to the next, casting spells to stop bleeding, straighten bent limbs, and generally prevent people from dying. In between, she helped brew more potions and clean knives and try to rummage up more bandages. The work blurred together as she picked up bits and pieces of the battle. The Chosen One hadn’t been found among the dead yet and had apparently survived the battle. Many of the Dark Lord’s generals had fallen. The dragon still lived, but both wings were torn. The grooms outside were trying to patch it up. She found this out on a trip to the well for more water. There she picked a few herbs and had a good look at the ruined fields around the castle. It would be a lean winter. All the reasonable normal people (who seemed to outnumber the maniacal lunatics at the moment) wanted the fighting to end. But on they went. At the end of the day Aerwyna found herself coaxing the irritable Lord of Darkness to drink potions, and being very glad that his sword arm was broken and encased in a cast, where he couldn’t use it to hit her.

They both had a fitful night. Dark Lords are terrible patients. They tend to threaten violent destruction on whoever was telling them (gently and with sympathy) that yes the arm really was broken and needed to stay in the cast, sitting up too fast would cause dizziness, and that throwing up after a battle was normal and not a sign of weakness, though maybe it was a sign of infection and fever, and yes, a potion really could help with that in the long run and throwing it all over the place wasn’t going to do anybody and good. Somewhere in the early hours of the morning, the Dark Lord finally slept and Aerwyna had a bit of a breather. She would have liked to take a nap herself. Instead she brewed another potion with the herbs she had found by the well. As the steam rose up, she reflected on how lucky she’d been to find those particular herbs. She’d thought the Head Gardener had weeded them out years before the Dark Lord had taken the throne. When he woke she held out the potion to him. “Here,” she said in her most soothing voice, “Drink this.” And for a wonder, he did. Three hours later, the Lord of Darkness was dead and the castle was negotiating terms with the Forces of Light.

*

There had been one maniacal minion who had given a great speech about carrying on the Dark Lord’s legacy, but no one paid any attention to him. During the negotiations it came out that the fifth Chosen One was deathly ill from dragon poison and it became Aerwyna’s job to heal her. The camp of the Forces of Light was lacking in everything, from tents to water and medicines, but the jovial attitude of the victors almost made up for it.  There were no true healers with training. The poor man who had been trying to heal the Chosen One was relieved when Aerwyna arrived. Aerwyna was relieved to see that he hadn’t done a bad job. Dragon poison was non-intuitive to heal. With proper training, he would do well. They didn’t have time for that though so he acted as her assistant. The Chosen One drifted in a fevered haze, muttering to herself, until Aerwyna had a good idea about all her journeys. A bard would have killed to be in her position. The Chosen One’s companions hovered nearby and Aerwyna drafted them to fetch supplies from the castle. By the time the Chosen One finally woke, the fever had lasted three days.

“Drink this,” Aerwyna said, handing her a potion. Reflexively, the Chosen One pushed it away, spilling the potion.

“Who are you?” demanded the Chosen One. “Give me a sword and-”

“Relax, Neirin,” said the man who’d been Assisting Aerwyna. “We won! The Dark Lord is dead!”

Neirin, the Chosen One, calmed down and finally drank the potion and apologized. “I’ve been so sure someone would poison me, or something like that. It’s made me rather paranoid about what I eat.”
Aerwyna smiled. “You’ll last longer than the Dark Lord then.”