Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

‘Unholy whores, but that was real!’ he cried. ‘I was there, Alen, there in your house. It was like yesterday – there were details I would never be able to remember now, not even on my best day with my clearest recollections. I saw it all: your house, the fireplace off that little room you called your study, the one with the green and brown rug on the floor – I haven’t seen that rug in a hundred Twinmoons, but I could weave it for you, today, without missing a detail. I don’t remember you smoking, though, or having a dog, but the rest of it was so real.’ He paused, shaking his head as if to clear it.

‘It was the day you gave me the first books in my collection. I never told you what happened afterwards, but I left your place that night and I met a woman. She was a thief, and gods, but I was in love with her.’

‘Sounded more like lust from where we were sitting,’ Hannah said.

‘Call it what you like,’ Hoyt chuckled, ‘but she was the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen. I asked her to stay with me that night. I couldn’t help it; my whole head was caving in just looking at her. I couldn’t-’ He paused, considered his rambling storyline and ended with, ‘I don’t suppose you need all those details, do you?’

‘We need a few,’ Alen said. ‘I don’t recall smoking, and I have never had a dog.’

Several tumblers clicked into place in Hoyt’s mind. ‘The dog. Hannah, you remembered a dog, too, both when you came through the forest of ghosts, and again when I set the bone in your shoulder. Isn’t that right?’

She nodded. ‘It was more than remembering him. When I was in the forest, it was as if reality had changed. I was there with my parents, and the dog was there too – that dog was there at my parent’s house in Denver, but we never had a dog. I spent a long time wondering which were my real memories.’

‘How very odd.’ Hoyt shook the last of the fog from his mind. ‘What do you think, Alen? Is it just some strange effect of the narcotics in this bark?’

‘It must be,’ Alen said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s clear that we all experienced the most memorable times in our lives, and whether they were a highest high – collecting that medical library in Middle Fork – or a lowest low, like Churn’s family massacre or my leaving Reia in England, the memories are as vivid as any dream we’ve ever experienced. And they’re repetitive and very real – and captivating, in that none of us have been able to escape them without some outside intervention.’

‘What happened to me?’

‘You were out all day, so we cut the strip holding the piece of bark around your neck. It wasn’t long after we took it off that you started to come back to us.’ Hannah held up the thong on which Alen had carefully affixed a piece of the bark.

‘A leather strip,’ Hoyt said under his breath. ‘That’s another detail.’

‘What?’ Hannah asked.

‘It’s nothing, but Alen is right, some of the details are things we seem to be adding. The dog is one. I don’t know why you added it to your memories, and I can only guess that I added it because you mentioned it after your last episode, so you must have put the idea in my head. The dog appeared in my memory as an added bonus, just like this leather strip: I knew you had attached the bark to my neck with it, and as a result it appeared in my memory as an exceedingly seductive piece of jewellery Ramella was wearing the night we met. But I can’t remember if she really was wearing a leather thong around her neck the night we met.’

‘She probably wasn’t,’ Hannah said. ‘I am convinced we had a dog at the house in Denver, but I know we never did.’

Hoyt turned to Alen. ‘Well, let’s document that as a side-effect.’

‘Added details and embellished memories?’

‘Ramella’s breasts didn’t get bigger, if that’s what you mean, but yes, the dog and the leather thong both seem very real to me now – yet I know you never had a dog when I used to visit in those days.’

‘Right, and I didn’t smoke, either.’

‘There’s that, too. The dog sort of makes sense, in an odd, shared way between me and Hannah, but the smoking? I can’t figure it.’

‘I don’t know either, but we have learned a few things. We’ve discovered that the bark appears to work on everyone – you went under in moments, even though you were unaffected by the forest.’ Alen was trying to tally a mental list before any elusive details escaped him. ‘That’s why you volunteered, because we already knew it would work on the rest of us. You looked as though you’d go on reliving that one day over and over again for the rest of your life if we didn’t cut the strip from around your throat. And like Hannah, you added details to your memories. Neither Churn nor I can recall adding anything to ours.’ Alen looked to the big man, who nodded in agreement.

Alen went on, ‘You were under its spell all day, like we were, but you were able to communicate with us – at least to hear us.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Look,’ Alen said, and stepped aside to reveal a stack of firewood, enough logs to keep a significant blaze going for several days.

Hoyt didn’t understand; he signed to Churn, ‘Pissing demons, did you think we were going to stay here all Twinmoon?’

Churn smirked and signed, ‘You did it.’

‘I did this?’ Hoyt walked over to the pile and took a log from the top. He looked at it uncomprehendingly, then dropped it into the fire, as if to confirm that the stack was real. ‘How did I do this if I was back there all day?’ Hoyt gestured into the past as if it existed somewhere on the other side of their camp.

Churn went on, Alen asked you to get some firewood. You did.’

‘But- This can’t be. Alen, I was there with you. It was a conversation we had for maybe half an aven. We ate, then I left to steal a wheelbarrow. It took an aven, start to finish, if that.’

Alen crossed to his friend. ‘You collected firewood for nearly four avens today, Hoyt. One of us was always with you, but you worked nonstop until we made you sit down and cut away the bark.’

‘But I don’t feel tired,’ he protested. ‘Look at how much wood there is: I’d be flat on my back if I worked that hard! And look at the size of those logs – I could barely lift one of those on my own, never mind pile them up like that!’

‘That’s another interesting detail we need to consider as we analyse this bark and examine the forest of ghosts more closely – I think I’ve an idea of why Nerak wants so much. Imagine what he could make the people of Malakasia do… Hoyt, we hung this around your neck and the bark took you – it was quick and painless, and you were gone. I protected my fingers as I fixed this piece to your throat, Hoyt, and it barely touched your flesh all day, but you didn’t break from your memories for four avens and you worked steadily the whole time. Imagine what might happen if Nerak uses this on his army, or his servants – and what if he gives it to them internally, what might happen then?’

‘But I’m not tired,’ Hoyt repeated, still unwilling to believe the evidence.

‘Still,’ Hannah said, ‘we should take rooms in the next town. We don’t know what might happen once he starts travelling again. He might pass out or fall asleep. We should be someplace warm and safe tonight.’

‘I agree,’ Alen said and began packing up.

‘Alen, are you suggesting that Nerak would be able to make these effects permanent?’

‘I shudder to think that, but yes, he might. Imagine the workforce he would have-’

‘But would Hoyt have been able to make us do things when we went through the forest of ghosts? Gather firewood or build mortar outhouses or sack Sparta?’