Memory's Wake Read online

  Memory’s Wake

  by

  Selina Fenech

  Lost in a world full of monstrous fairies, a troubled sixteen year old has to find out who she is and why her memories were stolen before she is found by those who want her dead.

  She takes the name "Memory" and knows she has just one goal - to find her way home, wherever that is. But this land is strange. No technology to be seen, and iron is banned, thanks to a pact the humans have with the magical creatures who share their pre-industrial era world. In her t-shirt and torn jeans, Memory knows she's different, even before she performs impossible magic.

  Haunted by her past, chased by a dragon, wanted by the king and stalked by the strange, handsome savage that seems to know her, everyone is after Memory, and she suspects it's not just for her eye-catching outfit. Her forgotten past holds dangerous secrets that will challenge everything she believes and risk the lives of everyone she loves.

  Memory's Wake contains 47 illustrations by the author and artist. Approx. 80,000 words or 320 pages in paperback.

  Dedication

  To all my fans who believed in me when I traded pictures for words.

  Chapter One

  I’m falling, she thought.

  Rushing air tore at her like claws and her stomach churned. She knew only darkness and the horrible, hateful wind.

  She jolted into consciousness as if waking from a nightmare, one so real, so intense, it left her soul shaken. All she remembered from her dream was the noise; a furious, bellowing rumble, like the call of a hungry dragon from a dark and twisted fairytale. It turned her insides as much as the sensation of falling. Now awake, she couldn’t understand why she still heard it, why she still felt like she plummeted into hell. Some other sound teased her, unidentifiable, lost in the wind.

  “What’s happening? Is someone calling me? Where am I?” Pain rampaged through her and the questions fell away. Her scream twisted into a whimper.

  A voice reached her. Persistent, hysterical, all static and unclear sounds.

  She called out, tearing her throat raw with effort, trying to reach through the gusting void to whatever had spoken. “Can’t hear. Please help, it hurts!”

  The talking stopped. The wailing wind and painful rumbling continued. Her insides rattled as if her ribcage had been hollowed out and filled with marbles. She thought she might throw up.

  The feeling of hands grabbing her forced out a harsh scream. Then, like slamming a door on a windy day, the tearing air stopped and the world became solid. Her skin still tingled right to her fingertips but the pain had gone, replaced by burning in her chest. Panic crawled up her back, tugging at her with icy fingers.

  Stop. Look. Feel, she ordered herself, attempting slow breaths.

  Her eyes stung as they opened. Dark hair hung around her face, curtaining her vision. She lay on the ground, face down. Had she fallen? Her body hurt all over, so maybe she had. Old blackened leaves spread in front of her eyes and the smell of dirt and rot added to her lingering nausea. Sharp twigs poked through her jeans. She spat soil from her mouth.

  That other voice spoke again. “By the fae, what has happened? Can you hear me now?” It was a girl’s voice, young, like her own. A strange accent made it curiously elegant and musical. The tremor of fear in it only made it more so.

  Fighting the weakness in her body, she nodded to the voice and managed to roll over. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked out into a twilit forest of wild briars and giant trees. Beside her, another girl crouched on the ground; plump but strikingly pretty, with skin and hair so pale it was almost white against the shadowed woods. The long hair tumbled all around the stranger, making her look like a beautiful, scared ghost.

  Their breathing matched each other’s; fast, labored, scared out of their minds. An intense frown of thought and calculation marred Ghost-girl’s face, the look of a mind weighing options, assessing risks, looking for answers. In her own head she could feel nothing but the fractures of stress upon her sanity.

  She stared at Ghost-girl, hoping for some recognition. No name came to her, but she felt a strange connection to the pale girl, almost a physical attraction. She wondered what it could mean and coughed out a giggle, hysteria rising. This didn’t seem like the time to be questioning her sexuality. Her thoughts scattered in all directions, racing frantically, searching for answers to the growing crowd of questions. Every one drew a blank.

  “Alward?” Ghost-girl called out into the trees. “Alward? Oh no, he didn’t make it through.” Wide green eyes, shadowed and full of fear, darted from the surrounding woods back onto her. “I’m not where I ought to be. Did you do this, did you bring me here? Was it magic of yours? How did you come to be caught within my Veil door?”

  She could only gape at Ghost-girl. Magic? Is that why my skin’s tingling like this? But magic’s not real. She wasn’t sure she could say just now what was or wasn’t real, but the accusations confused and stung. She was sure she hadn’t done any bringing. There must have been some kind of accident, she thought, feeling like the victim of something. She worked hard to find words again. “What...” She paused. So many questions, where to start? “What happened?”

  Ghost-girl looked at her with a wary frown. “You don’t know? Please, it is important you tell me the truth. If you are a caster of unauthorized magic, know I’m not an enemy.” She made a complex hand gesture. When no response came, the girl’s frown turned from wary to scared. She gasped and spoke as though to herself. “Unless... no, you couldn’t be one of Thayl’s wizard hunters?”

  “Whose what hunters?” Her words slurred. “Was there an accident? Shouldn’t we get help?” She sat up and brushed hair from her face, wincing when she touched a tender area under her eye.

  “You are hurt, but I don’t know how, I don’t...” Ghost-girl’s voice worked up into the high pitch of panic, and she visibly swallowed it down. “I need to find out where I am.” She turned away, reached down and dug her fingers into the earth, then spoke too quietly to hear. The ground trembled into a shiver, growing outwards, expanding quickly, up tree trunks, along branches, tickling the leaves at the treetops. A thousand voices whispered.

  Brilliant. I’m hallucinating. She put a hand to her forehead, dizzied by the disembodied voices. How hurt am I? Concussion? Brain damage?

  The blonde was talking nonsense again, words flying. “...too close to home. The Veil door didn’t take me far enough away. They’ve found me, already? The hunters, they’re coming this way. We have to go! Please, I don’t know how you came to be here, but listen. There are people chasing me. If they find you here, they’ll think that you’re one of us. We have to run.” She stood in a cascade of crumpled dress, face turned up toward the canopy of woven branches screening the dimming sky. “They’re almost here, and their beast… their dragon...”

  Everything was on fast forward. With her face half hidden behind black hair, she thought maybe she could let herself cry. It was too much, too many words, too much chaos, to still feel so empty inside. Each question seemed to tear a new hole, leaving her more hollow. She needed to pause, rewind, start finding answers, before there was nothing left to tear.

  “Do I know you?” Speaking the words out loud jolted her physically. She whimpered, squeezed her eyes shut and tried to hold her head together so tightly her hair ripped. She felt the touch of Ghost-girl’s hand, plump and gentle on her own. Not a ghost after all.

  “I do not know you, but I can’t have you caught here when they are hunting for me. Come with me. My name is Eloryn.” The blonde smiled but the urgency in her features soured the expression.

  “I’m... My name is...” Nothing. Nothing at all.

  Her emptiness. It came into perfect, terrifying clarity. She knew nothing of who she
was.

  No name.

  No home.

  No memories.

  Only a void where her life should have been.

  The canopy above them shuddered as violently as her heart. An impossible creature filled her vision. It crushed through the trees, talons reaching for Eloryn. The hungry dragon from her dream. Of course, I’m still dreaming. Ghosts, wizards, dragons, none of those are real. But the claws were so sharp, so vivid. Squeezing Eloryn’s hand tighter, she reacted, pulling Eloryn out of the way before the razor tips could strike. “Go!” she screamed, to herself, to Eloryn, or the dragon above them she didn’t know, but they all began to move.

  The dragon writhed, reaching for them from between the massive oaks above. Branches groaned and splintered against the beast’s strength, creating a hail of sharp twigs and leaves. Strong trunks held back the black mass and it hissed in frustration, talons swiping just above the girls’ heads.

  “This way!” Eloryn pulled her by the hand, still holding tight. The girls crashed and stumbled through briars and over fallen logs slick with moss.

  Through the grim grey trees, men in leather military jackets ran toward them. Orders were yelled, metal flashed, boots crushed ferns, thumping the ground with heavy feet. Wings beat in the sky above, blowing about dirt and dry leaves. Talons raked at the tree line. The girls ran faster, hand in hand. The dragon roared.

  Eloryn dragged her on through the woods, petticoats catching and pulling, slowing them down. In tight jeans she had more freedom to move but her legs felt weak, wobbly. She barely kept up with Eloryn. The hunters were so close.

  To her left, a bear-sized man came within reach. She cried out, pushing her body to move faster. Her vision blurred, sweat running into her eyes. She cringed, expecting the feel of rough hands locking around her arm, pulling her down. Nothing came. She turned to see why. The man was gone. She tried to look for her pursuer and still watch the treacherous ground under her feet. Trees flashed past. Shadows flashed between them, toward her. Something struck another man, just to her right. A dark form dropped from the branches above, bringing him to the ground.

  A cry of pain and one more hunter was gone.

  The trees above cracked as the dragon plunged again. Lichen shook from the bark and fell like green snow. She ran on, begging herself to wake up. Breathing burned her chest and rattled in her throat, but a deep inner dread kept her running hard. These men, chasing her, hungry for the hunt, boiled her emotions down to pure, distilled panic.

  Still dragging her onwards by a hand, she heard Eloryn struggling to breathe as well, and something else, a mumbling between each crying breath. The running became easier. Fewer branches blocked their path. Fewer brambles and thorns tore at them. The ancient trees moved, bending away from her and Eloryn, then closing back in to hinder their pursuers. She blinked but the impossible images remained.

  Reaching a sudden steep incline, Eloryn let go of her hand and ran toward a rocky outcrop. “In here!” she called out and disappeared into a dark crack in the mountain side.

  Moving to follow Eloryn, the girl slowed, faint from exhaustion. Her vision dimmed and starred. Staring at that thin sliver of black, ringed by unwelcoming rocks, she shivered. Silly, she thought, to be scared of the dark, knowing what danger chased them there. She drew haggard breaths, and made her way over loose stones.

  Just a step away, a creature landed in front of her, blocking the cave entrance. The shock stole her precious breath in a gasp. It also stole her balance. Scrambling backwards she fell hard onto the forest floor. No, not a beast, she saw, looking up from the ground. The figure looked back down with concerned human eyes. A young man; dirty and tattered and animal in nature, but a man. Soil darkened his skin and earth brown hair hung down bare shoulders in knotted locks. His knuckles were reddened with blood. She lay there like a deer in headlights, unable to move.

  And then there were more men, pushing through the trees, growing more furious as they battled against the forest itself. Eloryn had left her, long gone into the slim crack in the mountainside. There was nowhere to go. Surrounded with the hunters behind and the beast-man blocking the way forward, she lay dumbfounded.

  She wished her brain would work. Wished she’d just wake up. The beast-man reached down for her. She cowered but could see only worry in his features. Grabbing her arm, he lifted and threw her into the cave. She tumbled, barely missing Eloryn who crouched inside with her head against the stone, talking to herself.

  The lost girl looked out through the cave entrance, shaking with adrenaline. The beast man stared back in. His eyes shone piercing blue even in the fading light. His shoulders shifted as though he was about to follow, but with the deep growl of a hunting cat he turned around.

  The remaining men ran at the cave and the ground shook. Stones scraped against each other, tumbling and falling in a dangerous tide and the cave entrance sealed.

  For the second time in the brief, harsh moments of her memory, all she knew was darkness.

  Chapter Two

  Earlier.

  Why has it become so hard just to keep my mind on a simple book? Focus, Eloryn ordered herself. Her eyes skimmed over words without absorbing any meaning. She pinched her forehead and flicked back a page, trying to find the last information she’d actually retained from The Principles and History of Infantry Warfare. Alward no doubt had his reasons for making this dull book part of her syllabus but she couldn’t see how it would ever be much use to her, either for her teaching or in practice. If she was learning things she couldn’t share with her own students, she’d prefer to be studying magic.

  Learning used to be easy. As a child, Eloryn already knew everything Alward taught the farmers’ children. She went to classes with them anyway, enjoying being with the other students. They stopped coming at age ten, schooled enough for their lives tending fields. She became a teacher herself after that while her own education continued. Now at sixteen, teaching felt repetitive, and she rarely saw anyone her own age. Apart from her small clutch of young students she rarely saw anyone at all. They lived alone, just herself and Alward, here in the fortified old monastery high in the wooded hills, set apart even from the tiny rural hamlet; a place where no one might recognize Alward, or herself, for who they really were. A place they could be safe.

  Eloryn brushed against the pink flowers that spilt over the garden wall where she sat. They released a syrupy fragrance and she breathed it deeply, hoping to quell the unnamed ache in her chest.

  “Riddip.”

  Grateful for a distraction, Eloryn smiled to the speckled frog who hopped up onto her knee. “Kiss you? Why do you want me to kiss you?”

  “Riddip.”

  Eloryn giggled. “Oh, a handsome prince under a curse, and just one kiss from a beautiful princess will set you free? I’ve known you since you were a tadpole, little fool.” Eloryn poked him and imagined he smirked bashfully in return. But really, he always looked like that. “I shouldn’t have read you that story.” Eloryn sighed. Night approached, stealing away the friendly light. The high stone courtyard walls loomed over her. “I shouldn’t have read me that story.”

  “Riddip.”

  “I don’t know. There might be romance like that out there, and adventure and charming princes, but not here. Those things happen in places far, far away.”

  “Riddip.”

  “Shush! Really.” Eloryn dropped her voice to a scandalized whisper. “Owain only comes by to deliver produce for us. I’m sure he’s taken little notice of me.”

  But she couldn’t say she hadn’t noticed him, with his feathery brown hair and strong wide shoulders. Eloryn closed her eyes and turned her face into the sun, enjoying the last few warm rays. Rather than focusing on infantry warfare, Eloryn found herself developing tactics to be the one to greet Owain on his next visit. She wondered what it would be like to hold his work-worn hands, and the heat from the sun’s touch spread through her whole body.

  “Eloryn!”

  Eloryn jumped and a d
eep blush bloomed on her face.

  Alward bellowed from his chamber window overlooking the courtyard. “In here. Quickly!”

  The urgency in his tone made her bolt to her feet, dropping book and frog from her lap. She whispered a sorry to her friend and puffed her way up the stairwell to Alward’s quarters.

  Inside, Alward had shoved all the furniture aside to clear the space, knocking precious books off shelves in the process. Shards of a broken porcelain cup lay ignored in a puddle of still steaming tea, and the floor mat had been lifted and thrown over an armchair. Alward wore his normal grey suit, the top buttons now undone and sleeves rolled up. He hunched over the floor, scrawling magical symbols and words in charcoal. Eloryn recognized with excited fear what he was doing. The workings of a Veil door.

  “Ellie.” Alward stood up to inspect his work. Pushing his glasses back up his nose he left a line of black soot behind. His graying blond hair, tied back in its usual ponytail, frayed and escaped from its bonds. “We have to go; we’ve been found. I don’t know how. Someone in the village perhaps recognized me. I’m sorry child. Hurry, fetch the pack.”

  Eloryn’s mouth turned dry. She always knew they could be found, but one thought stormed through her head, leaving her dazed. Why now? Why have they found us now? Her chest tightened. Please don’t let this be my fault.

  Forcing her body to move, she went to a large wooden chest and unlocked it with a spoken behest, pulling out a packed bag that had been prepared for just this day. Alward still focused on the complex spell words, so to keep busy and calm her nerves, Eloryn took a fresh loaf from Alward’s desk and tucked it into the top of the leather satchel.

  Alward called her to his side and she skittered to him, stepping carefully within the wide ring of soot-black words and trying to hide her shaking. She tilted her head back to look up into his face, which had begun showing the deeper lines of age. A crash of noise rattled up from the monastery entrance, making Eloryn gasp. Alward’s eyes darkened and he put a hand on her shoulder.