Карин Тидбек - The Memory Theater

Augusta stood up. “My lady.”

Mnemosyne regarded her in silence. Then she said, “This is a paradise, is it not?”

“It is, my lady,” Augusta replied.

“It is,” Mnemosyne echoed. She tilted her head. “Then why are the apples going bad, Augusta?”

Augusta faltered. “I haven’t noticed, my lady.”

“I have. My mind… is not quite always there. But I see it.”

“I don’t understand, my lady.”

“Ghorbi told me, you see,” Mnemosyne said. “She came to me and told me. What you have been doing. She said you wanted to know about the world outside. And time. Why do you want to know about those things, Augusta?”

“I…” Augusta gestured at the pile of paper behind her. “I was curious.”

Mnemosyne took a step forward. Augusta saw now that her round face was streaked with tears.

“You helped me build this place. That fact will never leave my mind. So it is like tearing my own heart out, Augusta,” she said. “But you must go.”

She laid a hand on Augusta’s forehead.

“I will not let anything threaten this realm. Farewell.”

Dora walked back through the orchard. The trees closest to the conservatory sagged with rotting fruit. Maggots fed on the fallen apples around their trunks. This had never happened before, not that Dora had ever seen.

The conservatory’s thick glass had cracked in places; branches and vines had burst out to climb the broken surface. For the first time, the dome’s little door was ajar. The rich smell of cooking wafted out. Dora crouched down and crawled inside.

The Aunts looked strange where they lay on their couches. They looked lumpy, sunken in on themselves. As Dora crept closer, it became clear that these were not the Aunts. It was just their skin, neatly peeled off their bodies and laid out. Swaddled in the skins lay the three Nieces, fast asleep. On the floor next to each couch sat a human-shaped cake on a small porcelain plate. They looked like the little figures the Nieces otherwise would scoop out from the Aunts’ chests, but they weren’t moving.

Dora picked up a cake. It smelled of meat pie, and she was reminded that she hadn’t eaten in a long time. Dora bent over the nearest Niece to listen for her breath and heard none. She would not need this cake. Dora ate it. It tasted of lard and salt. She ate the second one, too, and the third, then sat down. The cakes made her sleepy. The conservatory was very quiet, so quiet that her ears buzzed. Dora made her mind empty.

Someone knocked on the glass. It was Thistle. Dora opened the door, and Thistle wrinkled his nose and waved a hand in front of his face as she stepped outside.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked.

“The Aunts aren’t growing back,” Dora said.

Thistle frowned. “They always grow back.”

“Augusta was here when you were sleeping,” Dora said. “She had that locket. I think she did something to them.”

“She did indeed.” Ghorbi stood a few steps away, gazing past Dora into the conservatory.

“What’s going on?” Thistle asked.

Ghorbi looked amused more than anything .

“Change,” Ghorbi said. She walked up to the dome and ran a hand down the glass. “Augusta called on me while I was meeting with Lady Mnemosyne. It seems she has been experimenting, with interesting results. Time has begun to pass again.”

“What happens now?” Thistle asked.

“Augusta damaged this world,” Ghorbi said. “She and her little contraption have been cast out so that the place can heal.”

Thistle looked stricken. “She’s gone?”

Ghorbi nodded.

“She can’t be,” Thistle said.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” Ghorbi said. “She can’t hurt you now. She is not here, so you are no longer under her sway. You can go anywhere you wish.”

“But she still has my name,” Thistle said. “I can’t find my way back home until I have my name. I have to go after her.”

Ghorbi frowned. “And get it from her… how exactly? She’s a dangerous woman and even out of here has powerful magic.”

“I don’t know!” Thistle shouted. “There has to be a way.”

Ghorbi looked over Dora’s shoulder and raised her eyebrows at what she saw.

“Ah,” she said.

They came walking through the apple trees: Cymbeline, Virgilia, Walpurgis, Tempestis, and Euterpe. Their powdered faces were almost luminescent in the gloom, their rich silks and satins rustling like the wind in the trees.

“Thistle,” Walpurgis said, and his voice was oily. “Your mistress is gone, and we are hungry.”

Next to him, Cymbeline raised a curved knife. “We can’t have stray servants running about.”

Dora stepped in front of Thistle. “You can’t have him.”

Walpurgis laughed. “Oh, but we can. Get out of the way, monster.”

Dora felt herself moving aside against her will.

“Enough,” Ghorbi said.

Virgilia fixed her eyes on Ghorbi. “Don’t meddle in our affairs, outsider. You don’t belong here.”

Ghorbi grabbed Dora and Thistle by the hand. “With me.”

Behind them, a shrill cry went up, followed by a chorus of baying voices. Ghorbi ran with impossibly long steps, so fast that Dora had to push herself to keep up. As they ran, Ghorbi opened her mouth. A long, low note grew in her chest and emerged from her lips. It reverberated in the air and somehow harmonized with itself, then became a word, two syllables repeated over and over again. The note climbed higher, and the air trembled. A breeze stirred.

As they reached the pine trees that guarded the edge of the orchard, the wind intensified, nearly drowning out the sound of Ghorbi’s voice. The cold air raked at Dora’s face like needles. It occurred to her that it wasn’t just wind but sand, and it obscured the trees from view. A whirling inferno of sand enveloped them. Then the wind died down, and Ghorbi’s song faded, and with a thud, they landed on something solid.

They were elsewhere.

Augusta woke up with a stiff neck. She had fallen asleep sitting down, her head resting on a pile of scribbled notes. When she straightened, she found herself at her old drafting table, but it stood beneath a window in a small room with wooden walls. A narrow bed with tattered sheets filled the rest of the space. On the other side of the window stood a forest, bathed in light.

A golden chain hung from her waistcoat pocket. She swung the locket into her hand. It was ticking in a steady rhythm, not haltingly like in the Gardens. Forward, ever forward.

The sheets of paper that littered the desk were filled with inky blotches and random words in indigo and sepia. Augusta could not make sense of them. What was it Ghorbi had told her? It was difficult to think.

Next to the desk was a door with a curled handle. Augusta got up from the chair and opened it. Unbearable light rushed over her. She backed inside and slammed the door. The sun. She was not in the Gardens anymore.

Augusta crawled in under the covers on the bed. The blanket couldn’t quite block out the light, but at least Augusta’s eyes didn’t hurt. She lay there, listening to the ticking of the watch, until she lost count.

Eventually, the light faded and that awful orb sank behind the treetops. Augusta waited until the darkness was almost complete. She stepped outside again and looked at the tiny cottage behind her. Where was she? The air was different here, cold and crisp. The warble of blackbirds had died down, and bright pinpricks filled the sky. Stars, where the sky ought to have been smooth and empty. And there, floating above the trees, a swollen moon. Bile rose in Augusta’s throat. Just like the sun, that thing was an aberration.