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No. I didn’t.
“Alright. How about… Oh, I know. What year is it?”
Blinking hard, I looked around.
Basement.
No, root cellar. I was in the root cellar. The walls were dirt, metal shelves full of canned food stacked from the cement floor to the ceiling. A single bulb flickered overhead, dangling from a string.
“We went to sleep,” I murmured.
“You could call it that,” Hya said. “More of a trip down memory lane.”
I blinked still, eyes falling on my hands. Tattoos of vines and flowers climbed up my arms, covering almost every inch of pale flesh. Little pieces of plastic jutted from my skin.
“They’re IVs,” Hya said. “That’s how you got water while you were remembering. It took time to attain thousands of years of memories. Do you remember?”
I nodded slowly.
I did, but I didn’t.
I remembered being in the Elder’s Hall. I remembered tending to my flowers. I remembered Mirobhail—
I gasped. “My babies. Where are my—”
“Right up the road.” He took my hands, still smiling. “They’re with Medica, and Hana, and Venark, and Luna, and Rion, and the others. They’re safe.”
My trembling fingers relaxed in his grasp.
They were alive.
They were in new bodies, thousands of years later, but they were alive.
“It was a long time ago, mil,” Hya said. “Do you remember what year it is now?”
I swallowed hard a few times, trying to soothe the dryness in my throat. “2001.”
“Very good.” His voice was as gentle with me as I was with my children when they awoke from a nightmare. “And do you remember your name?”
Licking my dry lips, I said, “L… L…”
“Laila,” he said. “Your name’s Laila.”
“Laila,” I repeated. “Laila Callidy.”
His smile grew. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What’re your babies’ names?”
“Mirobhail, Vanna, Friel, and Aein.”
“They were, yeah. Those were their names before. Do you remember what they are now?”
Behind my eyes flashed an image. A burst of white light, followed by warmth in my arms. “Micah. Mirobhail, he’s-he’s Micah now.”
“He is. And Vanna?”
Within my mind, in slow motion, I saw those vibrant green eyes shining up at me as the doctor lay her tiny body on my belly. “Milly.”
“And the twins?”
