Page 79 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
“Oh?”
“Yes.” Garvis smiled. “I think it’s time we start the hunt for your missing memories.”
CHAPTER
26
Back in the maze of my mind, Garvis and I had just meandered down another twisting alleyway where ice towered over either side of us when he flung out an arm.
“There. See that little memory tucked away in the corner?”
I squinted at the moving mist in a nook of an alleyway. It appeared to depict Emelle and me walking arm in arm down a crowded Esholian Institute square.
“Yes, I see it. It looks normal to—”
“Watch again.”
Frowning, I moved closer until I could clearly hear the echo of my past conversation with Emelle, both of us chattering away as we wove a path through all the Cardina peddlers from last year, occasionally stopping to inspect various bits of merchandise.
Right after I brought out a little copper coin to pay for two chocolate truffles—one for Emelle and one for me—the memory made a sharp V turn. Now, the two of us were headingtoward Grandma Gretel’s gown tent near the fountain, our expressions… tighter than they had been a few moments earlier.
As if something invisible had happened to us between the abrupt change in our direction.
“It’s a blip,” Garvis said.
I couldn’t look away from the memory of Emelle and me—so happy and close back then. So trusting of each other.
“Are you telling me,” I started slowly, “that one of my missing memories used to be imbedded withinthisone? And you… buried it?”
“Yes.” Every syllable in Garvis’s voice whispered with shame. “I ripped the mist apart and stuffed it beneath the foundation of your mind. You were already… frosty back then. But nothing like this.”
My gaze snapped to the perfect, untrampled swath of snow beneath the memory’s feet and the thick ground of solid ice that surely loitered beneath. If neither Garvis nor Steeler could melt it…
No. I shook away the surge of hopelessness. This wasmymind. I had control over it.
I clapped my hands together.
“Okay. How do I melt it?”
Garvis eyed me warily, but just blew out a clouded breath and said, “I want you to focus on the details of the memory youdohave intact. Think of how those details made you feel at the time. Joyful? Hopeless? It doesn’t matter, so long as you allow yourself to feelsomething.”
Because all this ice served as a preservation of my emotions, I was guessing. And it wasn’t going away unless I let that preservation dissolve, fully dived into my own insecurities… and whatever else lay within me.
Reconsidering the moving mist of Emelle and me arm in arm, I watched our faces go from smiling and carefree in the first half of the memory to rigid and pursed in the second.
I moved closer.
This time, I could make out the tears glittering in Emelle’s lashes like ice crystals in the second half of the memory. I watched my free hand shake, each finger trembling like icicles poised to fall off.
I cleared my throat.
“I was definitely happy at the time—at least in the beginning of this memory. I felt like I belonged, like I’d finally found my own family here at the Esholian Institute. I felt… amused at Rodhi and Gileon, how they both rushed off to find gifts for their crushes. And I felt grateful that Emelle chose to stick by my side.”
Garvis nodded gently. “Anything else?”
No. I didn’t want to say anything else.
I swallowed a lungful of biting cold and did anyway.
