Карин Тидбек - The Memory Theater

She and Grandfather joined hands and walked back into the mine.

They started out when it was still dark; dawn trickled into the sky as they strapped their skis on. The air crackled with cold.

Albin pushed himself down the hill. Dora followed in his wake.

Augusta walked to the enclosure in the middle of the burnt plain. Her eyes still stung from the wind that had whipped at her as she passed from the hillside into this eerie landscape. The sky had taken on a sickly shade; in its center shone a dark disc surrounded by a bright halo. So this was the crossroads.

She looked at her hands. They were still Nils Nilsson’s hands, an old man’s hands, coarse from work. She could feel this body weigh on her, an ill-fitting suit made of flesh. You will be Nils Nilsson forever or until one of your own recognizes and names you. Thistle knew, but he was beneath her. He wasn’t one of her own.

The creatures swaddled in lengths of ashen fabric looked very busy at their tables. She tapped the nearest one on the shoulder. It looked up from the orb it was fiddling with.

“You,” she said. “I need to go to the Gardens.”

The creature tilted its head and regarded her with enormous eyes that didn’t have proper pupils. It seemed completely hairless, its skin shiny and artificial-looking. A clucking sound came out through its little slit of a mouth.

“The Gardens,” Augusta repeated. “Show me to the Gardens. Now.”

The creature rubbed its fingers together and closed its eyes. Then it opened them again and pointed to Augusta’s right, across the plain.

“There’s nothing there,” Augusta said.

It snapped its fingers and pointed again. It said something in that clucking voice.

“Right,” Augusta said. “I’ll walk.”

The ground changed first. Blades of grass shot up in the cracks between the mud plates, then grew into saplings. Shadows wavered in front of Augusta, and she stepped in among them, and they coalesced into tall beech trees. She was walking in a forest. Patches of daylight danced across the path before her. In the distance, the buzz of voices. Something felt off. The trees weren’t birches, and the daylight wasn’t supposed to be there, and there was no dancing rhythm. Still, Augusta walked on.

The trees gave way to a clearing, a hollow in the landscape. A tall, spindly tower rose up against a cerulean sky; around it milled shapes dressed in identical hooded cloaks. Augusta couldn’t see their faces. The buzz of voices was louder.

When Augusta approached, the crowd parted before her but didn’t otherwise acknowledge her presence. The hoods on their cloaks obscured their features entirely. She couldn’t hear anyone speak, but the faraway voices didn’t recede. It was as if people were talking around her but not close to her. She reached out at random and grabbed a shoulder. The figure whirled around.

“You,” Augusta said. “Where am I?”

The figure stood very still. Augusta tried to peek inside its hood, but the figure was shorter than her and the hood hung very low.

“Show your face,” she said.

The figure remained impassive. Augusta lifted the edge of its hood. The buzz became louder.

Where there should have been a face was a blank surface across which little points of light danced in shapes too quick to follow. A mumble emanated from that surface. Augusta leaned closer to listen.

“Three, nine, seven, one, five,” a woman’s voice intoned. “Three, nine, seven, one, five.”

The voice was replaced by a loud, artificial-sounding tune. Augusta flinched and dropped the edge of the hood she had been holding.

“Three, nine, seven, one, five,” the figure said.

Augusta let go and took a step backward. She bumped into something. She turned around and was met by another figure, so tall that she was staring right up into its hood. There was that same blank space of a face. It emitted a cheerful, plinking tune.

Augusta shied away from the figure only to crash into someone else, and someone else again. She pushed through the crowd, past bleeping noises and recited numbers, and reached the trees. The beings didn’t seem to have taken any notice whatsoever. The tall spire gleamed.

She must have been sent to the wrong place. Augusta took a deep breath and sang the song.

The crossroads looked exactly the same. Augusta approached the nearest creature she could find. Perhaps it was the same one who had pointed her to that place with the tower; perhaps not.

“The Gardens,” Augusta said. “I was supposed to go to the Gardens, but you pointed me in the wrong direction.”

It did that head-tilting motion, then pointed, very decisively, to Augusta’s left.

“Fine,” Augusta said, and headed that way.

Augusta arrived at a labyrinthine garden the size of a city and went back to the crossroads. She was pointed to a garden of taxidermied animals. Then a garden with sculptures carved from ice. She came to a garden of living trees and ate screaming fruit that tasted of spices and flesh. She did not sleep there, although the ground was soft and inviting. None of these were her Gardens. Rage grew in her chest.

The eighth time she came back to the crossroads, she marched up to a booth and stared down at the creature seated there.

“You know where I need to go,” she said between her teeth. “You just won’t take me there.”

It looked up at her and clucked its tongue. It raised a hand to vaguely point at a spot behind her.

“No,” Augusta said. “No more.”

She gripped the miserable thing by its throat and squeezed. Its neck was frail, the skin dry and scratchy. She could feel the rest of them crowding around her, chattering, tearing at her clothes, but they were not nearly as strong as her. She snapped the creature’s neck. The others let go of her and fell silent. Augusta turned around.

“Do as I tell you!” she roared.

Later, Augusta sat down with her back to the enclosure just to rest for a little while. Behind her, tables were overturned and little bodies littered the ground. No one had been helpful. They had paid for it.

“There you are,” a familiar voice said.

Augusta looked up. A tall shape wrapped in shadowy silks loomed over her.

“Ghorbi,” Augusta said.

Ghorbi said nothing, just looked at her. Augusta got to her feet and took a step backward. She still had to crane her neck to meet Ghorbi’s eyes.

Ghorbi looked her up and down. “I know who you are, Augusta.”

Augusta brightened. “You know me!”

She waited for something to happen. Nothing did. Of course. Ghorbi was not one of her own.

She sighed. “I’m stuck in some old man’s body.”

“Indeed,” Ghorbi replied, then paused. “I came here on business. This is not what I expected to see.”

“They refused to help me,” Augusta muttered.

“Do you know what you have done, Augusta?” Ghorbi said.

Augusta shrugged. “Punished them.”

Ghorbi let out something between a guffaw and a growl, then bent over Augusta. “This place is a hub in the multiverse. And only these folk know the directions. You have just made travel between worlds impossible to almost everyone, you idiot.”

Ghorbi stepped around Augusta, who made to follow her. Ghorbi held up a hand. Her voice was tense with suppressed wrath.

“You will stay where you are.”

Ghorbi walked around between the bodies, checking each one for signs of life.

“Ah,” she mumbled, and helped one of them into a sitting position.

Augusta closed her eyes and heard Ghorbi whisper to the creature in its own language. All this action had depleted her, and her knuckles hurt.