“What? I just want to see,” he complained.
“Well, I just want to know what the whole world knows, but do you care?”
A flinch, followed by a flush on his round cheeks half-covered by a blond stubble that grew in patches here and there.
“You know we can’t talk about that,” he muttered.
“We want to, Ora, we do,” said Finn from my other side—and he did genuinely feel bad about it. I believed it—except it really made no difference to me.
“If you did, you’d tell me.” I focused on the surface of the lake instead, on the sun reflecting on it—like it was woven by a million diamonds.
“Wecan’t,” Finn instead. “Ora—it’s the queens! Nobody is above the law.”
“Truth be told, I’d tell you all about it,” Allan whispered from my other side. Goose bumps rose on my forearms. “But I care about ya, kid. I don’t want to mess up your mind even more. I swear it on Time.”
There.The thing that had made sure the queens’ will was fulfilled by my own parents, too. Everyone was told that they’d be damaging my mind if they talked about what had happened, that my mind needed its own time to heal.
And I’d believed that for a week or two. I had.
I didn’t anymore. Not only that they wouldn’t bedamaging my mindif they told me the truth—it would only help me remember!—but also thatI wouldn’t.
No matter what the royal decree or what their physicians—whom I’d nevereven met, by the way, so how could they have examined me or known how my mind would react?—said, I wasnotgoing to get my memories back. Not ever.
And that thought both terrified me, and gave me a sense of urgency, an instinct to rebel like I’d never had before, tomove—speak—shout—do something!
Time’s Teeth, I should have never-ever-reven applied forthe Turning Trials. I should have known it wouldn’t be a solution to anything—on the contrary. I should have known.
“—doing it again.”
“Ora, hello? Blink twice if you can see me!”
Finn was waving his hands in front of my face, speaking slowly, like time was suddenly moving in slow motion, and…my heart jumped.
My heart jumped like it was suddenly terrified of the idea.
My heart jumped as if she’d just rememberedsomething, but my mind remained blank.
“Don’t bother—she’s not gonna respond,” said Allan.
“Maybe we should just get Uncle Neil,” muttered Finn.
“See that? She’s already not well in the head. I’m telling you, it’s not gonna change,” Allan.
I continued to stare ahead at the lake and pretend I didn’t hear or see them. Easy to do since I did tend to zone out all the time when my heart did strange things and the gears inside me twisted the wrong way and I kept waiting for something thatjustwasn’t coming.
I kept waiting for a memory that I knew would never arrive.
Meanwhile, the world around me continued to move and to breathe and to talk, like my cousins who felt like strangers to me now, but no more thanIfelt a stranger to my own self. It felt like something separated me from myself, from my own life, from the past, and the present, and the future.
“Let’s just go, okay? Uncle Neil can fetch her himself,” Allan said as he stood up, and he sounded afraid. “C’mon, let’s just go.”
“Ora,” Finn tried one more time, and it was hard to keep staring ahead, but I really just wanted to be by myself before my father came to get me. I needed another moment, so I said nothing, didn’t move an inch.
Finn stood up to leave, too.
“She gives me the creeps, I’m telling you,” Allan whispered as they went. “I keep expecting her to go all feral on us any second.”
“She really isn’t well…”
