I saw my grandfather, his shoulders stooped into a hunch; my father, his calloused hand shielding his gaze, the wrinkles on the corners of his eyes smiling as he took me in; and my mother, her long hair pinned back in a loose chignon. I felt my breath go thin. I couldn’t help myself. I reached out to a tendril of her hair, wishing I could touch her just one more time. But before the dust met my fingers, it dissolved, until my mother, my father, and all of the shapes in the dust around me had dispersed.
I turned to Dante lying beside me on the rock, his body weakening as the life left him. I folded to the ground next to him and slipped my hand in his. “I’m still here,” I said, searching his face for some sign that he could hear me.
Then his fingers tightened around mine. He opened his eyes, his irises struggling to focus on me. His breath was thin. “So am I,” he whispered. His heart slowed. I waited for mine to fill in the beats his had missed, but mine was fading, too. This was the end. Just before our lips touched, his eyes fluttered shut. “I love you,” he said.
His hand tightened around mine, pulling me toward him one final time. I saw his lips, lifeless as they pressed against mine in a cold last kiss. A real kiss. The dust from the lake lapped against our mouths, surrounding us in a swirl of dust until everything around me faded to black.
I felt the last of my mind unravel. I watched all of my remaining memories fade to black as each day, each year, each face reversed itself in unbeing, the lake washing my soul clean.
Dante. It always came back to him. I saw him stalking along the shore of the frozen St. Lawrence River, waiting for my silhouette to appear through the snow. I saw him searching for the secret of the Nine Sisters; I saw him following the Liberum through the woods while they chased down Cindy Bell, Miss LaBarge, and finally, my parents. I blinked and I was there with him on the sunny afternoon when he snuck out to the side of my childhood house and tried to warn them that the Liberum were coming. I saw my mother in the kitchen, washing dishes with my father. They had no idea what was about to happen to them. Finally, I saw myself, my freckled cheeks still kissed from the California sun. We were in our first class together at Gottfried Academy. Our professor had just called out our names, pairing us together. Dante walked toward me from across the room, his dark eyes a clear, startling brown. I waited for him to speak, for the moment when our hands were supposed to touch beneath the table, sending that first prickle of cold up my skin, but the memory faded away before he had a chance to sit down. His face blurred. I squinted, trying to bring it back into focus, but I could barely remember what he looked like. I tried to reach out to him. “Don’t go,” I cried, when I heard his voice echo in my head.
I’ll find you
, he whispered.
I
WOKE UP IN A SOFT CANOPY BED.
Sunlight streamed through the windows. It stung my eyes. I winced and looked down at the coverlet. It was made of thick downy satin. I touched its smooth surface with my fingers. It felt so familiar, but when I tried to figure out why, I drew a blank. My mind was bleary. I sat up against a pile of pillows and took in the room. It was a lovely bedroom, decorated with books and posters, shelves stacked with knickknacks and jewelry boxes. Was this my room? It seemed I had been here before, and yet I couldn’t place where or when or why.
A photograph was propped up on the nightstand by my bed. It was tinted yellow from age. A man and a woman smiled back at me from a grassy lawn, their fingers splayed on top of each other in a comfortable kind of love. Did I know them?
I kicked off the sheets and stood up. My legs wobbled beneath me. When I took a step, a deep sadness weighed me down. It was a strange sort of melancholy; it almost felt like I was missing something, and I would never know what. I looked at my face in the mirror. The girl that stared back startled me. She looked young and crisp, her cheeks dotted with freckles and her hair pale from the sun. I didn’t feel as young as I looked, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had been outside or felt the warmth of the daylight on my skin. On the shelf beside me stood a photo of a girl who I could only identify as myself, though something about her looked different than the girl in the mirror. I touched my cheek, tracing the collection of freckles scattered across it. None of my features had changed, and yet the entire arrangement of my face looked off, as if everything had switched sides. As if I were an alternate version of myself.
The door creaked open. I jumped back toward the bed as an old man slipped inside, carrying a silver breakfast platter. He was bald, his face heavy with wrinkles. He wore a three-piece suit, black and tailored short, as if he were a butler. He looked familiar, though I couldn’t place who he was.
He smiled. “Ah! You’re awake,” he said, and carried the platter to my bedside table, as though this were a daily routine for him. “Good morning.”
I furrowed my brow and watched him with suspicion. “Thank you.”
He set the platter down on my bedside table and lifted the lid. A plume of steam rose up from the plate. The smell of it startled me, first sweet and syrupy, then a sharp zing of an orange, followed by a thick salty smell melting with butter and oregano. I took a deep breath, savoring all of the subtleties, as though I hadn’t smelled food in years.
“Eighteen items in total. One for each year.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I frowned, suddenly remembering that I was standing in a strange room with a man I didn’t know. I stepped back from the platter. “Who are you?”
“My name is Dustin,” he said. “I’m the estate manager of the Wintershire House. Your house.”
I paused.
My
house? I gazed out at the topiaries lining the crescent driveway, the maintenance workers meticulously grooming the lawn. Impossible.
“Do you know who you are?” Dustin said.
I laughed. “Of course I do,” I said. Surely I knew my own name, but when I tried to recall it, my mind went blank. “I—I actually can’t remember.”
Dustin clasped his hands behind his back. “Your name is Renée Winters,” he said quietly.
“Renée,” I said, rolling the letters around in my mouth. Yes, that did sound familiar.
“Do you know how old you are?”
My eyes darted to the coverlet, as if the answer lay somewhere in the embroidery. My hands looked young and soft. Perhaps I was sixteen. My hands looked sixteen, though part of me felt much older. “I’m not sure,” I whispered.
Dustin’s face dropped. I had disappointed him. “What about today?” he asked gently. “Do you know what today is?”
I glanced out the window to the manicured yard outside. The garden around it was lush and colorful with flowers, the trees splayed out in brilliant shades of green. It must have been summer, I thought, though I couldn’t recall how I had gotten here. The most recent weather I could remember was ice and snow. I shook my head. “No.”
“Today is your birthday,” he said. “You’re eighteen years old.”
I had to be dreaming. I didn’t see how any of it made sense. How could I wake up on a strange bed that a strange man claimed was my own, and not even know my own name or birthday?
“Are you all right?” Dustin asked.
I narrowed my eyes and peered around the room, looking for some sign that it was mine, but everything within me felt blank. I didn’t know what I liked or didn’t like, or what kind of person I had been. It felt like I hadn’t been anyone before this.
“Ms. Winters?” he continued. “Maybe you ought to sit down.”
I listened for the sound of heavy footsteps down the hall, as if they were a natural part of the house. But none came. “Who’s missing?”
Dustin lowered his eyes. “Your grandfather. He was killed trying to save you.”
My grandfather. The word came with a flash of white fluffy hair, of broad shoulders stooped beneath a tweed suit. Yes, I had a grandfather once.
Dustin studied me, his face riddled with worry. “I’m so sorry. According to his will, I’m your guardian now. Though I suppose since you’re eighteen, you don’t need one.”
But I barely heard him. Who had my grandfather been protecting me from? Why couldn’t I remember anything? My eyes drifted to the photo on my nightstand.
“Your parents,” Dustin said.
The apologetic tone of his voice told me that they were dead, too. Though strangely, I didn’t feel upset. I felt a distant sadness, as though a previous version of myself had already mourned for them, and now I could go onward, unencumbered by the past.
“What happened to me?”
Dustin hesitated. “You went on a long journey,” he said, carefully selecting his words. “A dangerous journey, though you didn’t know it at the time. Your grandfather did. He and his colleagues followed you there. They tried to protect you.” He frowned. “But I suppose they were the ones who needed protecting. You were found alone in the French Alps, washed up on the shore of a mountain river. You were barely alive.”
His words brought back vague slivers of memories that felt more like pieces of a dream than reality. A white swath of snow. A blue lake reflecting the clouds. A terrible dark mist lapping against my face. “Who found me?”
“I did,” Dustin said, somewhat sheepishly. “With some help. I brought you home, where I’ve been caring for you. We do this every day, you and I.”
“Every day?” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“You’ve been here for six months. Every morning you wake up and you cannot remember. Or perhaps you remember a little bit more every day. Only you know the answer.”
“Six months?” I said. It was an impossibly long time. How could I have not remembered?
“Do you recall anything now?” Dustin ventured.
I blinked and was being washed down a black river that carried me away beneath the earth until I saw a white burst of sunlight. But that version of the past felt like a dream. “I was looking for something.”
“Yes,” Dustin said, his eyes brightening.
“But what?”
Dustin lowered his head. “I cannot pretend to know the desires of your heart. My sole job here is to help you.”
“Do you think I found it?”
“Only you can know the answer to that.”
My heart sank. I had been alone here for six months. I knew then that whatever it was I had been looking for, I had lost it.
Dustin was about to turn, when he ventured one more question. “Do you remember who you were with that day?”
Had I been with someone? I closed my eyes and went through all of the fragments of images still floating in my head. I tried to fill in the blanks between them, to summon a face amid the snow and rock. I saw a bit of red hair. A tin of pills. A necklace made of beans.
I opened my eyes, the images forming one word. “Anya.”
“Yes,” Dustin said, startled. “She was your friend. We recovered her, too. She is safe at home in Montreal. She is healthy. I spoke with her parents the other day; they said she called out your name.”
I repeated his words to myself. She was my friend. I believed him, and yet I could barely recall knowing her. I closed my eyes, trying to remember more. Shoelaces. A bit of sandpaper. Red dust collecting on the floor. A crooked grin. Then an arm, lifeless. A swath of auburn hair. A constellation of freckles. A handful of blond curls. A pair of thin arms wrapping around me. Candles flickering in a church.
“Theo,” I said. “Noah. Eleanor. They were my friends, too?”
Dustin beamed. “Yes, they were. We found Theodore and brought him back to his grandfather’s house.” Dustin chuckled to himself. “He picked the lock of my car twice before we got him home. I had to go gather him from the countryside, where I found him wandering about aimlessly, but he is back now, and safe. As is Noah. He is at home in Montreal; his parents are incredibly glad to have found him in one piece. He will be returning to St. Clément in the fall. Eleanor is still recovering, though her father and brother are taking care of her.”
His words made me glad, though I didn’t know why. Though I knew they had been my friends, they now felt like people I had known in a different life, people who didn’t belong in this one.
Dustin shifted his weight. “Do you remember anyone else?”
Was there another? I thought back, but the most I could see was a pale sliver of skin, and a dull gray eye, like the sun obscured by a cloud. I tried to complete it, but it slipped away from me.
I opened my eyes. A single image lingered. “Blue lips,” I whispered.
Dustin fell quiet. My words seemed to startle him.
“I—I don’t know where that came from,” I said.
“That’s all right,” he said softly. “Keep thinking. It will come to you.”
I swallowed. The tone in the room had suddenly become somber.
After a moment, Dustin spoke. “Perhaps this will help you.”
I wanted to protest, to say that I didn’t know him, that I didn’t even like presents, but Dustin held up his hand before I had a chance to speak.
“Don’t worry, it’s not a gift,” he said, reading my thoughts.
I looked up, surprised. Maybe he did know me after all.
He handed me a sealed plastic bag. Inside were a pile of dirty clothes and a white canvas bag.
“The clothes you were wearing when we found you.”
I slipped the bag out from the bottom of the pile, and as I did, a sprinkling of black dust billowed up around us. Instead of scattering across the rug, for a second it seemed to pause and hang in the air as if suspended.
I gasped, partially out of surprise, but also because it looked oddly familiar. I felt a warm breeze come in through the window. It picked up the dust, swirling it around and carrying it back outside. I blinked. Had I been hallucinating, or had the dust just moved on its own?
I turned to Dustin. “Did you see that?” I asked.
Dustin merely shrugged, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “A bit of dirt from the mountains, perhaps. Don’t worry, I’ll get one of the cleaners to clean it up later.”
Maybe I had been seeing things.
“How did you find me?”
Dustin paused. “I’ve worked for your grandfather for thirty years,” he said. “Before he left to follow you, he asked me to look after you should he pass away. So I did just that.”
I looked at him curiously. I had an inkling that he wasn’t telling me the entire truth. “Well, thank you,” I said.
He nodded and backed out of the room. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
I lifted the cup of tea. Beneath it was a thick white envelope.
Ms. Winters
, it said, in a sprawling cursive that seemed somehow familiar. Instead of a card inside, there was just a note. I unfolded it.
Dear Ms. Winters,
Only the pure of heart deserve a second chance. A soul is not given; it is earned. To many more birthdays to come.
Sincerely,
Dustin
A soul is not given; it is earned.
I heard someone say that to me before, though I couldn’t remember whom. I stared at the handwriting, at the way a hand had smeared the blue ink just after the word
Sincerely
. It looked startlingly familiar, as if I were holding something I had only seen in a dream. The only part that didn’t fit was the word
Dustin
.
A memory flashed into my mind. A thick envelope with plane tickets. A letter slipped beneath the door of a church. They had helped me, those letters, though I couldn’t remember why. A single word rose to my lips.
“Monsieur?”
Dustin froze. He had his back to me, his hand resting on the knob. His shoulders relaxed, as if my words had lifted something heavy from them. He turned. “Yes.”
As I studied his face, I began to remember.
Descartes.
The Nine Sisters. A long-lost secret, and a hidden map leading
to it. Eternal life. The Netherworld.
That was what I’d been looking for. But why?
“You—you were the one who was helping me.”
Dustin took a step forward. “Yes. With the help of my granddaughters.”
Granddaughters? I blinked. An image of a pair of small, gentle hands flashed through my mind. I felt them lift me from the river. Bright yellow light filtered in and out behind my eyelids. I cracked them open to see the pale cheeks of a woman, her blond hair fluttering around her shoulders, her eyes a watery blue. Though she was young, she had the face of someone old and wise. She looked so familiar, like a kind man I had once known. I reached out to touch her cheek, but she gently pushed my arm away. “Shh,” she cooed.
I remembered the five women, one disappearing behind the window of a old house, another stealing through a birch tree forest, another peering down at me from the mountains, still another materializing through the fog in a monastery. The Keepers, their blond hair the same color as a canary, the bird that had been etched into each of their houses. Their faces had been so familiar, though I hadn’t been able to place from where.