Escape from Memory (6 page)

I jerked back from the window so quickly, I hit my head on the back of the seat.

“Wha—Where—” I couldn’t form a complete thought, let alone express one.

Aunt Memory turned around in the seat in front of me.

“You’re awake now,” she said calmly. “How do you feel? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

I stared at her. How could she ask such normal questions when we were who-knew-where and I had no memory of getting there?

I ignored her questions and looked around, wildly. The plane was a small one. Aunt Memory sat in the front beside a man I assumed was the pilot. It was too dark to see him clearly, but he looked old, wizened, and nearly bald beneath his headphones. The instrument panel glowed in front of him.

My seat, behind them, was smaller and less padded than theirs. My suitcase was wedged in beside me. I put my hand on it, as if the feel of a familiar object could reassure me.

I noticed that Aunt Memory and the pilot had no luggage.

“You said you’d explain everything in the car,” I accused Aunt Memory. “You didn’t say anything about a plane!”

I saw Aunt Memory’s shoulders rise and fall, carelessly.

“You were hesitant enough as it was,” she said. Somehow her accent seemed more pronounced than ever. I could barely understand her. “I saw no reason to frighten you.”

“
Frighten
me?” I fumed. “You don’t think it’s frightening to be knocked out and then to wake up in an airplane going to—Where are we going?”

“Crythe, of course,” Aunt Memory said impatiently. “Just like I told you. Crythe is far away and our arrival there is urgently awaited. You didn’t think we had time to drive, did you?”

“I didn’t have time to think,” I grumbled. “I was too busy being”—the right word came to me all at once—“kidnapped. You kidnapped me!”

I glanced at the pilot, wondering if he’d heard me. Weren’t pilots bound by some sort of international law by which they were required to report crimes? Unless, of course, Aunt Memory had a gun shoved in his side and was hijacking him, as well as kidnapping me. Or unless he was her accomplice, as committed to the kidnapping as she was.

All of this suddenly seemed too silly to be believed. I wasn’t the sort of person who got kidnapped. I didn’t think I knew anyone who was the sort to get kidnapped. And yet, if Aunt Memory’s story was true, I’d now been kidnapped twice, and Mom kidnapped once. Ridiculous. We weren’t celebrities or millionaires or princesses of endangered countries….

Were we?

Aunt Memory had turned around completely now, and she was looking me directly in the eye. Even in the near darkness, I could make out sympathy in her gaze. I couldn’t think of her as a kidnapper.

“Kira, I
am
sorry” she said. “I know this must be very … distressing for you. I wish there had been a better way. I assure you, I mean you no harm. How could I? I’m your Aunt Memory”

Once again, she said those two words reverently, as if “Aunt Memory” were gold coins she was handing me to treasure forever.

“But what does that mean?” I asked sulkily. Refusing the treasure. “Do I have an Uncle Memory, too?”

Aunt Memory laughed, and even over the rattle of the plane engine, her laughter sounded musical.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Aunt Memory is not my name. It’s my, um, title. In Crythe every child who is born has an Aunt Memory. A special female—usually a relative, sometimes a friend of the mother—who is charged with teaching the child everything there is to know about being Crythian.”

“So which were you?” I asked. Rudely.

“Pardon?” Aunt Memory said, sounding more foreign again.

“A relative or a friend? Did you know my”—I swallowed hard—“my real mother well? And my father?”

I was willing to back into the subject of my real parents, my fake mother, my kidnapping. I wanted to know everything, but I was scared to hear anything. It was like having a scar that hurt to touch. I just couldn’t help reaching for it.

“Yes,” Aunt Memory said softly. “I knew your parents well.”

Her voice was as gentle as memory itself. I forgot I’d asked another question too.

“Y
OUR MOTHER WAS SO BEAUTIFUL
,” A
UNT
M
EMORY SAID IN A
dreamy voice. I leaned forward to hear better over the engine noise. “And brilliant, too, like your father…. And so talented. When either one of them walked into a room, it was like the lights were suddenly brighter, the colors more vivid. Everything glowed. They had charm—‘charisma,’ I think it is called in English. They were like—like the glorious flames that moths are attracted to. Everyone was a moth compared with them.”

I thought of poor, mousy, mothlike Mom—the woman I’d assumed was my mother all these years. No one could accuse her of having charisma. Or talent or brilliance. But she did have a presence. People noticed her, too.

It was strange that I felt such a stab of loyalty to Mom suddenly. I was willing to believe that she wasn’t my real mother. I was almost willing to believe that she’d kidnapped me. But I still felt like defending her, to myself, if not to Aunt Memory.

“What did they do?” I asked Aunt Memory.

“Do?” she echoed.

“What were my parents jobs? Their occupations?” I was
testing her. If she didn’t tell me that my father worked with computers, it would mean—what? That Aunt Memory was lying? Or that Mom-who-wasn’t-my-real-mother had lied more than once?

“Um …” Aunt Memory seemed to be searching for the right words. “I think in English it is called ‘instructor’. No—it was more than that. ‘Leaders’?”

“They were in charge of Crythe?” I asked in disbelief.

“Yes and no.” Aunt Memory tilted her head thoughtfully. “It is hard to explain. We in Crythe rule ourselves. We do not have kings, presidents, chancellors, premiers. Not like outside. But there are some who … stand out. Like your parents.”

A new thought struck me.

“But they died a long time ago, right?” I asked, suddenly unsure. Aunt Memory didn’t sound like someone discussing long-dead friends. Her voice was raw, and I thought I saw tears glinting in her eyes. She looked like someone at a funeral, grieving the newly deceased.

Aunt Memory winced at my bluntness.

“They both died in the war,” she murmured.

War
, I thought. I imagined Lynne saying,
I told you so
. It was my turn to wince.

“There was a war in Crythe,” I said flatly. “When I was—what? A baby? A toddler? What were they fighting about?”

“The same thing they are fighting about now,” she said. “The cause you will help us with.”

Cause? What cause? I wondered if I’d misunderstood. But before I could ask any more questions, the pilot suddenly spoke up for the very first time.

“
Sahmoleyna blizo
” he said.

Aunt Memory answered him in a flow of foreign words. Crythian, I assumed. It sounded amazingly familiar, but I didn’t have the slightest idea what she said. It was like hearing a song I’d memorized years ago and then forgotten. Now I couldn’t pick out any of the notes.

Aunt Memory turned back to me.

“We are landing now” she said. “You have your seat belt on, yes?”

I nodded, watching what I could see of the pilot’s face. He showed no sign of understanding Aunt Memory’s English words. So I could not appeal to him with,
Oh, please, I don’t understand what’s going on!
I had no one to help me at all.

I peered out the window, but there was only darkness. Then I saw two thin rows of lights on the ground, far below. Wherever we were landing had to be an incredibly small airport, far from any city. I’d never flown before, but surely I should have been able to see streetlights and houses, office buildings and highways. Here there was nothing but one runway.

“Where
is
Crythe?” I asked. “Have we flown over water? What continent are we on?” I was so disoriented, I didn’t know if I’d been unconscious for minutes or hours or days.

From the front seat, Aunt Memory chuckled.

“You would say,” she told me without turning around, “that Crythe is in California.”

T
HEN WE WERE ON THE GROUND
. I
HAD NOTHING TO COMPARE IT
with, of course, but the landing seemed awfully rough. Were we supposed to bounce at the end of the runway?

Aunt Memory and the pilot said nothing, simply unfolded themselves from their seats and climbed out. Aunt Memory held the door for me.

With the plane engine shut off, the vast silence around us seemed to echo in my ears. I peered past the runway lights. We were on the edge of some sort of woods. I thought vaguely about running away, but there was nowhere to go.

“My car is over there,” Aunt Memory said, pointing out into the darkness.

“
Nya mesta
,” the pilot said behind us. He was struggling to pull my suitcase from the plane.

“Sah, sah,”
Aunt Memory said, and laughed. She explained to me, “Jacques is joking that your suitcase is heavy. Before, when he was putting it on the plane, he asked if we’d packed bricks. Look at what a good actor he is.”

The pilot had the suitcase out now and was pretending to
strain to carry it over to Aunt Memory’s car. I knew the suitcase could barely have weighed five pounds; it was like watching a supremely talented mime.

“Mozheh teh li auto,”
the pilot grunted.

“Det skudu! Makhahy teh seh!”
Aunt Memory said. Though I didn’t recognize any of her words, I understood her tone.
Enough clowning around
, she was saying.
We don’t have time for this
.

Aunt Memory turned her back on the pilot and stalked to the car, parked in grass just beyond the last runway light. I watched the pilot for a moment longer. He still struggled with the suitcase, though his movements were less exaggerated.

Maybe he wasn’t such a great actor. Maybe he was just very weak. Or maybe there was more in the suitcase than I thought?

Aunt Memory opened the passenger side door for me and the trunk for my suitcase. Neither one of us could see the pilot put it in. He slammed the trunk, and Aunt Memory started the car.

“He’s not coming with us?” I asked hesitantly, not wanting Aunt Memory to hear the fear in my voice. Why did I think I would be any safer with the pilot along?

“No. Jacques must see to his plane,” Aunt Memory said.

We were going up a dirt road now. I had the impression that we were in the mountains. The headlights shone on nothing but more trees, more rutted road. The car shook with every bump we went over. I’m not exactly up on my car brands, but this one was the kind that high school students barely scraped together enough money to buy. The seat was vinyl, the dashboard unadorned. I doubted that it had any shock absorbers. If my life had depended on guessing the car’s make, I’d have given a
Jeopardy
-style answer:
What’s the cheapest car made in the past twenty years?

Maybe my life does depend on knowing a detail like that
, I thought distantly.
I’m in real jeopardy. I’m being kidnapped. I need to stay alert
.

But it was hard to think that way. I didn’t want to believe that Aunt Memory was dangerous. I wanted to believe that she was showing me my past, helping me save my mom.

We kept on driving into darkness.

“What—” I cleared my throat. “What exactly am I supposed to do to rescue Mo—Sophia?” I asked.

“Why denounce the kidnappers. Appeal to all of Crythe for her release,” Aunt Memory said.

“That will work?” I said doubtfully.

“Of course,” Aunt Memory said. “In Crythe just the sight of you, your parents’ daughter—you have power.”

I puzzled over that one. I was supposed to have power? I’d never felt so powerless in my entire life. Fear clutched my stomach. What if I did something wrong? What would happen to Mom? What would happen to me?

“I’m supposed to make an appeal on TV?” I asked tentatively. “Couldn’t you have just filmed me back home and—”

“On TV?” Aunt Memory said sharply, interrupting. “No. Of course not. Not in Crythe. You will speak in the town square. To everyone.”

Aunt Memory acted like “TV” was a bad word. Why should that surprise me? Mom’s hatred of television had to come from somewhere. Maybe all Crythians disapproved of it. Maybe Crythe was one of those strange cults you hear about, left over from the 1960s.

I had trouble picturing Mom as a cult member.

“You still haven’t told me very much about Crythe,” I said in a small voice.

“Well be there soon,” Aunt Memory said.

I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. She kept her eyes on the road, driving with an intensity that seemed familiar. Who else drove with her fingers clutched so tightly around the steering wheel, with her back ramrod straight, her mouth clenched shut, her eyelids barely daring to blink? Then I remembered: Mom did, or had, back when she actually drove.

I shut my own eyes, trying to conjure up the image of Mom driving. If I could see something of Mom in Aunt Memory, or Aunt Memory in Mom, then I’d have another clue. Proof, maybe, that Mom really had come from Crythe (and therefore I had, as well?).

The next thing I knew, the car was stopping and I was straining to wake up from another deep, confused sleep.

“Here we are,” Aunt Memory said.

I opened my eyes and stared.

W
E WERE PARKED BEFORE A STONE CASTLE, WITH ROWS OF STONE
houses stretching up and down the street beside it. Some of the houses had thatched roofs and red window boxes spilling over with geraniums.

Old World
, I thought.
We aren’t in California. We’re in … Slovakia, maybe, or Ukraine. Or some ancient village in Greece
.

I hadn’t been to any of those places, only seen pictures in my social studies books all throughout school. Maybe streets in Slovakia, Ukraine, and Greece have McDonald’s golden arches glowing on practically every corner, just like in the United States. Maybe the pictures I’d seen were carefully edited for my schoolbooks, to make us think the Old World still looked old. But Crythe was those pictures come to life. I almost giggled, remembering how I’d imagined it as some leftover 1960s cult. Now I expected to see girls in kerchiefs and peasant skirts, boys in knickers. Heidi and Peter the goatherd, eating goat cheese and home-baked bread.