Escape from Memory (7 page)

While I’d been gaping, Aunt Memory had circled the car.
Now she opened the door for me. I stepped out on uneven cobblestones.

Cobblestones.

Suddenly Crythe didn’t seem so charming and fairy tale-like. This was a real place. This was where my mother had carried me from danger, all those years ago, where the woman I called “Mom” had kidnapped me. And where I was supposed to be speaking about a cause I knew nothing of.

“I’ll wake a servant to get your suitcase,” Aunt Memory said.

Her voice echoed on the silent street. There were no other cars in sight. But I was almost relieved to notice that the old-fashioned-looking streetlights actually glowed with electric bulbs.

Aunt Memory was reaching for the stylized latch on the castle’s imposing front door before her words registered in my mind. I jerked to attention.

“Uh, no,” I said quickly. “It’s late. There’s no need to disturb anyone. I can carry my own suitcase.”

I didn’t want anyone else complaining about it being heavy, making Aunt Memory suspicious. And if I carried it, maybe I could figure out what else was in it besides the clothes I’d packed.

Shrugging, Aunt Memory stepped back to the car and opened the trunk.

I reached in and tugged. Fortunately, the way the trunk was designed, I didn’t have to lift the suitcase up, just straight out and down.

It was heavy. It was as heavy as the eighty-pound bag of water-softener salt Mrs. Steele had once asked if I could carry down to the basement for her. I couldn’t.

At least I could drag the suitcase, and I did. It went
bounce-thump, bounce-thump, bounce-thump,
all the way to the castle door. I was glad there wasn’t a curb and sidewalk—the street went right up to the castle wall.

And I was glad that Aunt Memory was occupied with opening the door, not watching me.

As soon as she had the door open, two men in uniform stepped out. They both wore black pants and fitted gray jackets. I couldn’t decide if they were military uniforms or servant uniforms.

“Oh!” Aunt Memory said, sounding surprised. She spoke quickly to the two in Crythian, her voice so low that I caught only scattered words. Then she turned to me.

“They’ll put your suitcase in your room. We’ll go to the kitchen for a snack. And I think it’s time for me to explain everything.”

“Past time,” I muttered under my breath, so low nobody could hear. But I was all too happy to surrender my suitcase to the men and follow Aunt Memory into the castle.

T
HE CASTLE HAD A GRAND, ECHOEY FOYER, WITH FORMAL, STONE
-floored rooms on each side. But as I followed Aunt Memory, we quickly reached cozier rooms. The kitchen itself wasn’t any bigger than the Robertsons’ back home. I sat at the table, and Aunt Memory heated water to make tea. Incongruously, she used a microwave, not a kettle.

“So you have microwaves, just not TVs,” I said, trying to be provocative.

“Some Crythians have TV,” Aunt Memory said. “The younger ones. But it is hard for the rest of us.”

Hard? What was hard about TV?

Aunt Memory brought two mugs of tea to the table. She sat down.

“You need to know the history of Crythe first,” she said. “Most Crythian children can recite the
Book of Crythe
by age five. But it is not your fault that you are so far behind.”

I waited, ignoring the hint of insult.

“Crythe is an ancient civilization, founded by Romans before the fall of the empire,” Aunt Memory began, stirring her tea.

“Romans came here? To America?” I asked incredulously.

“Allow me to finish,” Aunt Memory said frostily. She stared into the hot tea, obviously in no hurry to go on. Minutes passed before she looked up. “There is a … ritual for telling this story. It is to be the first thing any Crythian can remember. But it is wrong in English. And your brain is already … occupied? Is that the right word?”

I shrugged. “Can’t you just tell it the best you can?”

I was surprised to see tears in Aunt Memory’s eyes.

“But it is sacred….”

“So Romans settled Crythe,” I prompted, suddenly terrified that Aunt Memory might shut off the explanation. I couldn’t really believe that the Roman Empire had anything to do with Mom’s kidnapping—or my own. But I had to keep Aunt Memory talking.

“Yes,” Aunt Memory said. “Outside Crythe, most people have forgotten what the Romans excelled at.”

“Building aqueducts?” I guessed wildly. “Fighting wars?”

“No, none of that,” Aunt Memory said impatiently. “Remembering.”

I stared at her blankly.

“Paper was scarce, and they had a complex society. The petty bureaucrats would memorize tax documents. Their poets could recite long epics by memory. They schooled their children in methods of memory almost entirely forgotten in modern times. And in the supreme act of memory, in 447
B.C.
, the orator Simonides remembered all two hundred and forty-one guests at a dinner party after they were killed by a falling ceiling. He’d been at the party earlier, then stepped out briefly. When he returned, everyone was dead, crushed beyond
recognition. But he identified them. Think if they had died unknown.”

They were dead either way
, I wanted to say. I didn’t dare. Aunt Memory was clearly crazy. She had a strange glint in her eye all of a sudden.

“This is your memory your heritage, your past,” she chanted. She nudged my arm and hissed, “Say it after me!”

“This is your—,” I began.

Aunt Memory frantically shook her head. “This is
my
—” she prompted.

Halfheartedly, I repeated, “This is my memory, my—what was it? My heritage. My past.”

Aunt Memory frowned but went on.

“And in Crythe the heritage was not forgotten. We are what we remember. We do not forget,” she said, still in that hushed, reverent voice.

I was out of patience.

“So you remember the Romans?” I asked. “That’s what makes Crythe special?”

“No, we remember everything,” Aunt Memory said. “What we had for breakfast on our fifth birthdays. Every book we’ve ever read. Every conversation we’ve ever had. Every person we’ve ever met. Everything.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, more rude than I normally would have been. She was even crazier than I thought. “Sure you do. What was the first thing I said to you?”

“You said, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Where’s my mother?’ Then I said, ‘I am your Aunt Memory.’ Then you said nothing, and I said, ‘She didn’t explain? She never told you?’ And you said, ‘Who? Told me what?’ And then, ‘You mean my
mom. You mean my mom never explained.’ And I said, ‘I mean Sophia.’ And you said—”

“All right! All right!” I interrupted. Aunt Memory even had my inflections down. It was like listening to a tape. I blushed. “But that was just a couple of hours ago. Even I remember most of that.”

“September, the year you were born,” Aunt Memory continued smoothly, “I met your mother and father on the street, and they were showing you off. ‘Best baby ever,’ your father said. And your mother apologized: ‘Don’t mind Alexei. Every father has to think that.’ And your father said, ‘But I’m the only father who’s right. Kira is the best baby in the entire history of the world. And I should know, because I’m the one who had to memorize all those genealogy charts.’ And, Kira, you were an awfully cute baby. You had on a pink eyelet dress and a little bonnet edged in white lace, with a satin ribbon under your chin. And you were cooing.”

Aunt Memory could have been making it all up. I wouldn’t have known the difference. But it sounded so real…. I wanted to believe that my parents had thought I was the best baby ever.

It was my turn to have tears stinging at the corners of my eyes. I tried to stay logical.

“How?” I asked. “How do you remember everything?”

“We train ourselves—our Aunt Memories train us. We pay attention,” Aunt Memory said. “And we avoid that which we do not want to remember. We do not clutter up our minds with nonsense.”

No watching TV
, I thought.
No surfing the Internet. And does driving a car count as nonsense?

How could I have lived with Mom for more than a dozen
years without her ever telling me she remembered everything that had ever happened to her?

Did
she remember everything?

“Mom—Sophia—she can do that too?” I asked.

“She could,” Aunt Memory said. “Before. Everyone in Crythe could.”

Before? And then I understood. “The war,” I said. “Tell me about the war.”

Aunt Memory shook her head.

“I am giving you a memory,” she said. “There is an order to be followed, so you can remember it years from now.”

I could see how this memory stuff could really get in the way. I wasn’t entirely convinced, anyhow. But I kept my mouth shut.

“People lived in Crythe for centuries, keeping the old traditions alive,” she said. “We were in mountains, off the main trade routes, so there was little threat from the outside world. When we heard of some modernization beyond our village, we’d send a young man out to learn all about it and report back to the village elders. If it sounded useful, we’d adopt it and bring it into our homes. Indoor plumbing. Electricity. Telephones. But if it sounded like too much of a waste of memory, we’d leave it alone, just as the world left us alone. An ideal setup. Until 1986. Our Year of Horror.”

“The war started then?” I asked. I was doing the math in my head. I wasn’t even born yet in 1986. If the war started then and was still going on—

“No,” Aunt Memory said impatiently. I don’t think she expected me to keep interrupting with questions. “What befell us then was a world tragedy, one you’ve undoubtedly learned about.”

I racked my brain.
Nineteen eighty-six, nineteen eighty-six
. It didn’t ring any bells.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “They teach us 1492 and 1776, but beyond that, my history teachers haven’t really bothered much with dates.”

Aunt Memory looked as horrified as if I’d confessed that I couldn’t read.

“Chernobyl,” she said.

“H
UH
?” I
SAID
. T
HE WORD WASN’T EVEN OUT OF MY MOUTH BEFORE
I realized I should have at least pretended to be thinking hard, remembering. I could have used one of those classic ignorant-student lines like,
Oh, yes, of course. Chernobyl. I’m sure you know a lot more than I do—why don’t you tell me all about it?

Aunt Memory now looked as though she wondered whether I even had a brain.

“Chernobyl,” she repeated, through gritted teeth. “The nuclear meltdown at the power plant in the former Soviet Union? Crythe was right in the pathway of the worst of the radiation.” She waited, as if she wasn’t sure I would understand all those words.

“Yes?” I said.

Aunt Memory cupped her hands around her mug of tea, very precisely.

“It wasn’t ever publicized, but the United States and the Soviet Union had an unprecedented moment of cooperation. They were bitter enemies then, you know. But they evacuated our entire village. They brought us here. And we re-created
our village exactly as it was. We chose not to even talk about our old homeland.
This
is Crythe now. The only Crythe. Understand?”

I nodded, because that was what she seemed to expect. But my mind was churning with questions. Why hadn’t the Crythians just moved somewhere closer to their original homes—at least on the same continent? What did this have to do with me? I decided to cover my confusion by taking a drink of my tea, but I’d forgotten it too long. It was cold and unappealing.

“But the move brought … disagreements to our peaceful community. The Americans wanted to study us, to make sure no one had been affected by the radiation. Some thought that was necessary. Others worried that they’d find out more than they should know and treat us as … oddities.” Aunt Memory seemed to be choosing her words very carefully. She was looking straight into my eyes in a way that reminded me of being hypnotized. “Some saw all the technology the Americans had and wanted to use it to enhance our memories even more. Others worried that we would lose our old ways. Some … just wanted to fight.”

“What did my parents want?” I asked in a small voice. “And Sophia?”

I saw a flicker of something—was it anger?—in Aunt Memory’s eyes. But her expression stayed carefully bland. Maybe I’d imagined the anger.

“Well, of course you’d want to know that,” she said in a soothing tone. “Of course.” She glanced around the kitchen. “More tea first?”

I shook my head. Surely she could see I hadn’t even drunk the tea I had.

“All right, then.” She got up and bustled about, preparing herself some more tea. She didn’t speak again until she was sitting down, a fresh mug in front of her. “Your father volunteered to investigate computers for Crythe. And he took to them immediately. His mind worked that way. But ultimately he feared that they would … interfere with our lives. Our memories. He recommended that they be prohibited from Crythe forever. And that was why he was killed.”

I gasped.

“And my real mother?” I asked.

“She was executed at the same time as he,” Aunt Memory said. “For the same reason.”

Aunt Memory was watching my reaction very carefully, and that was why I had to be very careful not to react. I didn’t let myself think about what any of this meant.

“And my—I mean, Sophia?” I whispered.

Aunt Memory was looking at the clock above the old-fashioned stove.

“It is late,” she said. “Past midnight. We’ve talked enough for now. Tomorrow you’ll read your statement to the entire village. Then you can ask all the questions you want.”

She showed me to a room on the second floor. Its wallpaper had tiny pink rosebuds. Toys lined the walls: a rocking horse, a kite, a wooden train. I stopped at the threshold.

“This room—,” I murmured.

“You recognize it? Very good. This was your nursery, all those years ago. It’s been kept the same. But now you’ll be sleeping in your nurses old bed, not the crib, of course. The bathroom is through that door. Good night.”

Dazed, I walked around the room, sliding my fingers along
the curve of the rocking chair, the post of the bed. I had the eeriest feeling. Did I really remember this room? Or did I just believe I did because of what Aunt Memory said? I couldn’t recreate in my mind what I’d been thinking when it first seemed familiar.