Tell Me My Name Page 5

  He’s the only light I have.

  A thought whispers: I could use him. He seems sympathetic toward me – if I plead with him, he might be willing to take the risk and help me, even if it means facing his master’s wrath again.

  He’s already sacrificed his own warmth for me by giving me his cloak, and then spoke to me even after his master explicitly forbade him to. I didn’t even ask for anything; he must have wanted to bring me the comfort of companionship in his own small way. My guess is that he possesses a deep-seated need to help others, to be the hero. It wouldn’t be difficult to convince a person like him to take his kindness one step further … to help me escape.

  The idea makes my blood pump faster as I realize I could make this plan a reality if I wanted to. I could tell Darien that he’s my only hope, that I’d be lost without him. I could even weep, and appear every bit the helpless damsel, in need of a strong young man like him to save me. From the way he stood up for me, I don’t think he’d be able to resist coming to the rescue. And if we’re caught … maybe he’d consider it an honor to endure whatever his master inflicted upon him, as long as he saw himself as the hero.

  But if I did that, if I took advantage of him in such a way, what would that make me?

  My mind recoils at the thought of intentionally wilting into a tearful fool, of surrendering any dignity I have left to a cold-hearted scheme. It would be all too easy, but every instinct tells me that I can’t use another human being purely for my own gain. If I did, I would truly be the monster his master fears I am. How could I even consider it?

  A sharp complaint from my stomach yanks my head back to my immediate needs. I pull open the edges of the brown sack Darien gave me and, seeing a bread roll inside, grab it and immediately take a bite. I didn’t realize how famished I was until now, and I devour the rest with ravenous speed and wash it down with the entire canteen of water.

  My hunger satisfied and my thirst relieved, I place the empty brown sack on the floor and pick up the cloak again. Wrapping it around myself, I start to stand, then glimpse a face glaring down at me and yelp in shock. I instantly recognize the Sorci master, standing outside the cell’s window. Terrified that he’ll cast his fire-laden spell on me again, I scramble backward. My heart clenches and hammers at the same time, and I inhale deeply to try to calm it.

  He raises his hand, and I cower in the cloak and squeeze my eyes.

  Nothing happens. I blink and cautiously turn back to the window. He’s still there, holding his hand by his face. But his snake-like eyes aren’t looking at me – they appear glazed over, as though he’s in a trance. His lips move, but no sound comes out.

  Then a warm current of air washes over me. It would have been comforting if I weren’t certain it came from the Sorci master’s spell.

  The need for information defeats my terror, however, and I ask, “What are you doing?”

  He continues moving his lips, but otherwise remains still. Several moments pass, and I wait. But then my patience grows short. I deserve to at least know why I’ve been imprisoned like this.

  I start toward him, intending to tell him so, but barely make it half a step before his attention turns back to me. He flicks his wrist in a circular motion, and I feel myself thrust backward into the wall, the breath knocked from my lungs. I collapse to the floor, my vision swimming and my body aching.

  Before I can even look back at him, pain surges through me. Instead of heat, this time, it’s a million tiny claws scratching at my insides, and they’re shredding me, like there are innumerable monsters trapped in my gut trying to tear their way free. I writhe in agony, and my own shrieks pierce my ears.

  “Stop!” I cry, barely able to manage the word. I want to say that I’ll do whatever he asks, as long as he lifts this curse, but my ability to speak is lost in my screams of terror and pain.

  The invisible claws rip at my flesh, and I’m sure if I were to open my eyes, I’d see my own blood pooled before me. They slash at every inch of my body, inside and out, as if they’re trying to tear the flesh from my bones. The sheer agony blinds and deafens any other perceptions I might have; the pain has devoured my entire being, leaving nothing but my screams.

  Then it disappears. Like before, it vanishes so completely that only the tears streaking my cheeks give evidence to its existence. And though I see no physical wounds on my skin, I feel once again as if the life has been drained from me. My limbs are heavy, my vision swims, and my head wants to sink into the ground.

  I wipe my eyes and turn to the window, where the Sorci master is still staring at me.

  “If you dare try to bewitch my apprentice again,” he growls, “I will bring you such torment, you’ll beg for death.”

  His words impale me as powerfully as his spell did, and I shake so much that not even tensing my jaw can keep my teeth from clattering. When I was under that curse, I would have done anything to make it stop. The thought of facing pain like that again – or something worse – makes tears of terror spill from my eyes.

  Then anger jolts me as I realize what he’s accusing me of. I never asked Darien for anything – how could the master blame me for the actions of another? How could he punish me for a crime I didn’t commit? My heart cries out at the injustice, and, forgetting my own weakness, I stand and face him.

  “I haven’t done anything!” I shout.

  He curls his lip with disgust, as if my words are the foulest lies he’s ever heard. “You and your kind are a plague upon humanity! You brought disaster to man in the past, and I won’t let you do it again here.”

  “What did I do?” I stride up to the window. My legs quiver, and my head whirls, but I ignore them. “If I’m some kind of monster, then tell me!”

  But instead of answering, the Sorci master breaks his gaze and stalks away.

  “Stop!” Though I know he’ll ignore my words as he did before, I have to say them. I have to try. “You can’t just lock me up without a reason! Tell me why you’ve trapped me here! Tell me what you want from me!”

  The Sorci master continues toward the staircase, and suddenly my anger turns to desperation. I have to know what’s going on here, or I might go mad with the wondering. I grab the bar in the window and pull myself forward until the jagged edge digs into my collarbones.

  “Just tell me something! Anything!” My voice feels hoarse from all my screaming, but I might as well be mouthing nothingness for all the reaction the magician gives me. “Tell me who I am! Tell me my name!” My chest heaves with involuntary sobs, and though I inhale deeply to keep them at bay, I can’t stop them from rising. “Just tell me my name!”

  “Enough!” His voice explodes through the dungeon, and he abruptly spins to face me, then marches toward the cell with his fist raised.

  Terror courses through me, but I remain where I am and clench my jaw in an attempt to suppress my sobs. “Please–”

  “Silence!” He cuts me off with his great shout, and a hot gust of air slams against me, throwing me back.

  My head bangs against the wall, and the world goes black.

  Soft green grass covers the ground, cool against my toes. The air is so warm, I can taste the freshness of spring on the breeze. There is joy here. And serenity. I don’t know where I am, but right now, it doesn’t matter. All I know is that this is a place where I’m safe. In fact, it might be my favorite place in the world. Inhaling deeply, I take a second to savor the feeling of contentment that surrounds me.

  Having allowed myself a moment, I bring my focus back to my surroundings, to see where I actually am.

  I find myself standing in a small grove. The twisting branches and billowing leaves of tall trees nearly block the blue sky. But these are no ordinary trees. The branches of each one reach toward those of another, intertwining like they’re holding hands. At first I think the limbs must be very thick, but as I look closer, I notice that what I took to be heavy branches are actually several small ones, each about the width of my finger, weaving together into intricate bra
ids of brown and gray.

  Sitting atop them is an array of hardcover books, with gilt lettering down their spines. That’s odd – why are there books sitting outside instead of in a library where they belong? And they don’t look like they’ve been left out by accident, since there are so many of them neatly lined up.

  I tilt my head and try to read the titles, but the letters blur and jumble before my eyes, denying me their meaning. What is this place? It feels familiar, like I’ve been here many times before, but I can’t recall why.

  An uncanny sensation strikes my mind, and I realize that this too is a dream.

  Or could it be more?

  Something significant must lie between the pages of those books, or I don’t think I’d be here. Their words must carry some importance, and I reach toward one, intending to find out what.

  Suddenly a wave of mist assaults my vision, and the air crackles with heat as the silver haze I saw in the last dream reaches toward me, searing my skin with its invisible touch. Knowing I have to escape, I turn and run as fast as I can, but the mist chases me, swirling around the trees and climbing over the branches.

  Then a thought strikes me: The mist is trying to keep me away from those books. Whatever knowledge they carry in their pages, someone doesn’t want me to see it. Which makes it all the more important that I do.

  I stop running. The unbearably hot mist engulfs me, but I grit my teeth against the pain. I take a deep breath, which turns out to be a great mistake, for the scorching air fills my lungs, burning me from the inside out. My agony is so great that I want to curl into a ball and weep.

  But I can’t. I have to find out what’s in those books. Something in my heart – something that I don’t understand, but know I must heed – tells me that my life could depend on it. I have to listen, if I’m to save myself.

  So I turn around, steeling myself against the pain, and start running back.

  The mist assails me with renewed force, enveloping my whole body with its blazing grasp, and a scream bursts from my lips. My foot catches on something, sending me to the ground, and when I try to get up, the mist’s scorching tendrils wrap around my arms and legs like chains, anchoring me down. Crying out from the pain of a million flames pressing into my skin, I kick and twist with all my might, trying to free myself.

  Then I glimpse my own foot, and widen my eyes in horror as it dissolves into ashes before my eyes. I feel nothing where it once was. The ashes creep up my leg, consuming me bit by bit. I desperately struggle to get away from the mist, but it’s no use. It’s devouring me, and I’m helpless to stop it.

  I awaken with a gasp to see the dark iron ceiling staring down at me. The cold floor stings my bare back, and as I sit up, my head throbs with a dull ache. It was just a dream, I tell myself, breathing deeply in hopes of calming my racing heart. Only nonsense. I glance down at my leg to make sure it’s still there. It is – of course it is! Nothing actually happened; that was all in my head. No mist hangs in the air, and even the memory of the nightmare seems distant, now that I’m awake.

  I absorb my surroundings with my gaze, reminding myself of what is real. This cell of ice and iron. The darkness that fills my mind where memories should be. The Sorci master who imprisoned me, but won’t tell me why. I close my eyes. Reality is better than the nightmare of turning to ash, but not by much. I can’t tell myself that the mist’s infernal touch was just a dream … I’ve felt it in the real world too, when the magician cursed me.

  The last thing I remember before the dream is him telling me to be silent, his eyes so hot with rage, they could have melted glass. The burning mist in the dream must have been my mind forcing me to relive those moments under his spell, and I wonder how I’ll ever sleep again.

  But there was something prior to that – something that brought me happiness and peace. I think back to what I saw in my sleep, grasping the remnants before they can fade away. A sense of familiarity came over me in the dreamscape, like I was visiting an old friend whose face I knew, but whose name I’d forgotten. I want to believe it means the visions were telling me something … but then again, I had that same feeling about the nonsense I recalled before – the clock tree and the sensation of flying. And now that I think about it, the images I saw this time are just as ridiculous. The sight of branches weaving into shelves and books perched atop them, outdoors where they’d surely be damaged by dew and mist, makes no sense. Even if someone could train branches to form shelves, who would leave so many books outside like that?

  I know for certain that my turning to ashes was imaginary rubbish, and I’m glad it was. I have no reason, then, to believe the grove and the books were anything else.

  An abrupt shudder down my spine forces my mind back to my surroundings. Glancing to the side, I spot Darien’s black cloak just a few feet from me. I want nothing more than to wrap myself in it, but I’m too frozen to move. I look for the ball of light and find it even further away, sitting in the far corner of the cell. Reluctantly, I fight through the stiffness and reach for the cloak. My movements are so slow and shaky that I fear I’ll freeze to death before I can even get a grip on the black cloth.

  Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. At least I’d leave this world numbly and quietly, instead of screaming in the grasp of the Sorci master’s spells. Just recalling the painful curse he placed on me makes me quiver, and it evidently affected me enough to invade my dreams. I know he doesn’t mean to kill me – not yet, at least – because he gave me the ball of light and sent his apprentice to bring me food. What, then, does he want from me? Just to torture me? Does he derive some kind of perverse joy from seeing me suffer?

  If my living in torment satisfies him, then I’d rather die on my own terms. I start to draw my hand back, but my eyes are caught by what my stiff fingers were trying to grasp. Or rather, it’s my mind that’s caught – by the thought of the one who gave me that cloak.

  Darien. The image of his smile flashes through my mind, and I feel the corner of my mouth lift involuntarily. His existence reminds me that there is good in this world, and I can’t give up on life just yet. There’s more than just the four frozen walls of this cell, the painful curses of the Sorci master, the barren loneliness of not knowing who I am. Outside, beyond this dungeon, lie wondrous possibilities – places to see, things to do, and, most importantly, people to know. At one point, I was part of that world. I had a place in it, a life, and I can’t abandon that infinite beauty; I must fight with every shred of strength in me to be a part of it again. After all, life is a gift given to us all by the Divinity, and to abandon it would be wrong.

  Whatever happens, I must hold on as long as I can. My heart tells me so.

  So I cover myself with the cloak and move toward the ball of light. Knowing the cruel Sorci master was the one who created it makes me wish I’d thrown it back at him when he first gave it to me, but my desperation was too great at the time. Even now I cling to its warmth, and that I need something so despicable makes me hate myself.

  Then I remember that the master only gave it to me after his apprentice protested on my behalf. This enchanted sphere doesn’t represent the magician’s actions – it represents Darien’s.

  His smile brightens my mind again, and I hold on to the image. Brief as that moment was, it’s the only memory I have of anything resembling joy. I know it didn’t mean much, being a smile of sympathy or pity. But still, there was something genuine in his eyes.

  The recollection of the master’s voice booming behind him invades my thoughts. I remember how he accused me of bewitching his apprentice – why did he say that? I was too terrified then to untangle the meaning behind his words, but now they begin to gnaw at my brain. He must think I’m to blame for Darien’s disobedience, but why? What does he think I can do? Is it possible that he’s right? Am I … could I also be a magician of some sort?

  My mind churns with possibilities, some reasonable and others even more absurd than when I thought I might have wings. The most plausible of the
se is that boys have been known to do foolish things around girls, and the Sorci master thinks I’m intentionally trying to charm his apprentice, though I have no idea why he’d think a scrawny, pathetic girl like me would succeed. And the most ludicrous is that I once possessed magic like his, including the ability to bend others to my will.

  I almost want to laugh at that notion. If I had that kind of power, how could I have ended up captured and cursed?

  Then again, maybe the curse was placed on me precisely because I have magic, and the Sorci wanted to prevent me from remembering so I couldn’t use it to escape. Is it possible that I’m more than just a girl?

  I look down at my hands, which seem so fragile. They don’t seem capable of doing anything like what I saw the Sorci master do. But he did say that looks are deceiving, and magical powers are unrelated to material ones. A mouse wielding a great spell could defeat a lion that possesses physical force alone.

  Perhaps there is indeed more to me than meets the eye. And if there is magic in me, then I must recover my memories. They would tell me what I’m capable of, and whether those abilities might help me escape. Perhaps I can conjure the tools to break down these walls, or transform into a creature small enough to escape through the window, or transport myself instantly from one place to another. Even if I can only create illusions, that’s still something, and any ability I have would help. I need to remember, before the Sorci magician can do whatever he plans to do.

  It’s my only chance at surviving.

  Part of me tells me to stop thinking like this, since I know that trying to bring back the memories will make that unbearable heat return, and the idea of suffering so much pain again fills me with terror. Besides, how am I supposed to call upon a power I’m not even sure I have? But I silence the warning in my head. I have to at least attempt it, in case there’s any truth to the notion.

  I wrap the cloak tighter around myself, and, shutting my eyes, probe my senses, trying to get a grasp on the energy inside and hoping something will stir. I concentrate on each breath and each heartbeat, making myself aware of everything within me. I can sense the blood flowing through my veins and the subtle movements of each muscle, and I search deeper, hoping something else lies behind even those.