Forget

“I’ll miss you.”

“I know.”

“I just want to make sure you do.”

“You’ve said that like thirty times in the last hour.”

“I know.” Lenore sat on her floor, folding another skirt, the green one with the gray stripes. I was cross legged on her bed. I had offered to help her pack, but she insisted she could do it herself, that she would have to while she was away.

“I’ll write,” she promised, again. The conversation of the past hour had cycled through many times and I was getting tired of it. “Every day, if you want. I’ll write you silly letters about what I had for dinner and every little detail of the day. It’ll be like you’re there.”

I didn’t say anything, simply nodded my head.

“And I’ll visit on breaks,” she continued, “and it’ll be like nothing has changed.”

She said it like it was so easy, like that was how it worked. We both knew it was untrue, or I like to think we did. No one is the same after they attend the Academy. It is a well known fact that those who returned were ultimately changed. Some people theorized it was because of the magic flowing through every brick of the Academy, others imagined they charmed their students to make them more loyal mages. Regardless of the reasons, Lenore would be a different person when I saw her again, if I saw her again.

Distantly, a clock rang out the hour. Lenore sighed, closing her trunk. She stood and surveyed the room, her auburn hair falling from where it was pinned as she turned her head. “They’ll be here soon,” she said. She met my eyes. “I don’t suppose I can fit you in the trunk?”

“Not if you want to bring anything else.”

Lenore crossed the room and took my hands, pulling me to my feet. “I love you,” she said. “Never forget it.” She pressed a kiss to my cheek.

“I love you too.”

Then she left.

=

Lenore stopped writing after a month. I was upset, but I can’t say I was entirely surprised. I had an aunt with a friend who was taken to the Academy. She lost contact with him after a week. I kept the letters, treasured them, read them so many times that I could recite every word she had written. I spent nights by candlelight, following her handwriting, tracing it with my eyes until I became dizzy.

Still, the months went by, the seasons changed, and I heard nothing. I wasn’t the only one. Her parents told me they had also stopped receiving letters. It was as though she had dropped off the face of the earth. Part of me wanted to forget her, to put her behind me, but whenever I tried, her image would reappear in my mind, her auburn hair falling from its updo. Her dark eyes staring into mine, captivating and entrancing me. It was its own kind of magic, looking into her eyes. I would have done so forever.

I was at the market one day, picking up a few things, when I saw, from the corner of my eye, a familiar figure. Standing before a stall selling herbs and other plants was Lenore. I recognized her in an instant, but something about her was off. She seemed too polished, her demeanor too serious. She wore a mage’s cloak, a dark blue, embroidered with sigils.

“Lenore?” I called, crossing to the stall. She shifted slightly at her name. “Lenore, hi. It’s been forever.”

Silently, Lenore finished her transaction, handing over gold in exchange for a few sprouts of some plant I couldn’t recognize. She turned–away from me–and left. I followed her. “Lenore!”

“What do you want!?” she snapped, finally looking at me. She met my eyes, but hers were wrong, were dark and cold and loathful.

I froze, trapped still in her gaze. “I haven’t seen you in forever. I-I miss you,” I said. “You stopped writing.”

“I have more important things to attend to,” she said. Again, she turned to leave.

“Lenore!” I grabbed her wrist, but she tore herself from my hold and left me without another word. Before I knew it, she was gone, lost in the crowd.

=

I was about to do something stupid, something incredibly stupid. I stood outside the Academy, dwarfed by its walls and towers that reached for the heavens and managed to keep them locked away. I flexed my hands as I searched for the shortest wall, still towering twenty feet in the air. I was going in. I had never been inside the Academy before. They didn’t allow visitors. It was a place populated solely by mages. I needed to get inside. I needed to see her.

In one of her early letters, Lenore told me where her room was. She had told me how disappointed she was to be in a dormitory that didn’t have a tower, how she had hoped to be able to look out her window and see the entire city below her. She had expressed her annoyance at being right next to the dining hall, though she admitted it made for quick access to meals. She said she had wanted to feel magical when she looked out the window.

Thus, if I found the dining hall, I would find her.

The stone wall was cold beneath my fingers and rough on my palms. I clung to the tiny cracks as I pulled myself up, only losing my footing a few times. At the top of the wall, I could see cobblestone paths snaking their way across the campus. There were more buildings, some that couldn’t be seen from outside. Lights lit the paths, floating in lazy circles like fireflies in the night.

At the base of the wall, I took a moment. I stopped. I breathed. I waited for any sort of magical security to take me away, but all was fine. Nothing happened. I was in.

The air seemed to buzz around me, a quiet hiss in my ear. The magic, I assumed. I found my way to a path and searched for a sign post, or any other source of directions. There were no signs, but one of the lights floated past me. It hovered directly in front of me, almost quizzically. When I tried to step around it, it put itself in my path again. We did this dance a couple more times until I groaned in frustration.

“What?” I whispered to the floating light.

It hummed, it grew brighter. It did not say anything.

“Can you… show me where to go?” I asked. It felt silly to ask the light, but it seemed intelligent enough. The light bounced in the air, spinning in circles, excited. “Can you take me to Lenore Carson?” The light spun around me before leading me deeper into the Academy.

I didn’t see anyone as I followed the light. I wasn’t surprised as it was late. I passed grand buildings and verdant gardens, touch I didn’t have the time to admire them. The buzzing in the air became more intense as I continued on.

The light took me to a courtyard, surrounded by buildings. It hovered in the center for a moment before leading me towards a window. The window looked into a ground level room. The curtains were half drawn, but the flickering light of a lantern glowed from within. “Is this it?” I whispered to the light. It bounced up and down in affirmation.

Through the crack in the curtains, I caught a glimpse of her auburn hair, loose around her shoulders. “Thank you,” I told the light. It raced off and left me outside her window. I tapped lightly on the glass. She turned and recognition flashed across her face as she saw me.

Lenore crossed the room and opened the window. “What are you doing here?” she whisper-shouted.

“I wanted to see you,” I whispered back.

“You can’t-” she started, eyes darting across the courtyard behind me. She grabbed my arm and pulled. “Get inside. No one can see you.”

I climbed into the room. It was warm, bathed in the golden lantern light. A bed stood in the corner, right next to the window. The bedding was simple. She had left her quilt. It was still on her bed in her parents’ house. The lantern sat on a desk near the foot of her bed, next to an array of books, opened to various pages. I saw the plants she had purchased at the market, sitting on a shelf above the desk.

Lenore shut the window behind me and closed the curtains completely. “What are you doing here?” she repeated.

“I told you. I wanted to see you,” I answered. “You stopped writing.” Her eyes found mine and I wanted nothing more than to stay in their gaze forever. “I miss you.”

Lenore sighed deeply, sitting on her bed. “Mina,” she said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You ignored me when I saw you at the market.” I knelt on the floor before her, taking her hands in mine. “You said it would be like nothing has changed.”

“I was wrong.” She stood, taking her hands away. She ran them through her hair. “It isn’t what I had imagined.” Her back was to me. “I made you naive promises and I am sorry for that, but things have changed.” She turned to me again. There were dark circles under her eyes and, despite the hour, she was still in her day clothes, though they were disheveled and her blouse was half unbuttoned. “I have changed, Mina.”

“I don’t understand.” I rose to my feet, ignoring the dizziness I felt as I stood. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t-”

“Talk to me, Lenore,” I begged. “You’ve always been able to talk to me.”

“Mina!” she shouted. “I can’t! You don’t understand and you won’t! This,” she gestured to the room around her, “this is my life now. I am here, I have responsibilities and things to do. I am busy. I don’t have time to see your or to write you. Mina, it’s over!”

“No.” I could feel my face falling. I don’t know what I was expecting to happen here, but it was not this. “That- I-”

“Go home,” she said. “Leave before anyone knows you were here. Forget me. It’s what is best.”

“I- Lenore, I love you,” I said. “I can’t, I won’t forget about you. I-I thought-” My vision darkened for a moment and I stumbled forward. When I could see again, Lenore was holding me.

“How did you get in?” she asked. Her tone was even, calm.

“I came over the wall,” I said. I felt dizzy and weak all of the sudden.”

“Mina, you idiot,” she said. She led me to her bed and helped me down. “You tripped the security.”

“What?”

“You’re going to pass out soon,” she said. “It’s supposed to make it easier to find intruders.”

“How?” I murmured.

“Protection magic.” She stood up and looked around. “I might be able to give you a little more time. Enough to get out. Wait here.” Before I could object, she went through the door and left the room.

I stared at the ceiling, though I couldn’t see much of it. The flames from the lantern cast captivating shadows. A moment later, Lenore had returned. She had a glass of some clear liquid with her. “Sit up,” she told me, helping me when I didn’t quite have the strength. She held the glass to my lips and said, “Drink.”

The liquid was sweet on my tongue, like honey and cake and something else I couldn’t describe. When I had drunk it all, the buzzing felt muffled, as if I were wearing earmuffs. “Alright,” Lenore said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

As I recomposed myself, she had gone to her closet and pulled out her mage’s cloak. She tossed it to me. “Put this on.”

“Why?” I asked, turning it over in my hands.

“You’ll look the part of a student here. Just keep the hood up. Come on.”

I put on the cloak and followed her out the door. I didn’t have time to take in the hallway. Her pace was too quick. The trek out of the Academy felt like it took twice as long as my trip in, despite Lenore’s confident steps. She knew where she was going. It was like she was meant to be here, and I suppose she was. Finally, we reached a small gate in the walls.

“Here,” she said. “Go. Don’t come back.”

“Run away with me?”

A strangled laugh escaped her throat. “Mina,” she said. She took my gaze and held it. She shook her head. “I can’t. I’m not the same Lenore you knew. She’s gone.”

“She doesn’t have to be,” I argued.

“Go,” she said. “Go. Forget about me.”

I stepped closer, covering the gap between us. She was inches from me now. I could feel her warmth in the night air. I looked into her eyes. “Lenore, come with me. Please.”

“Mina.” She pressed a hesitant kiss to my forehead as her voice took on an airy, echoey quality. “Go. Forget.”

Cotton filled the edges of my mind, soft and fuzzy. There was a different buzz to the one I had been feeling since climbing over the walls. Magic picked at the edges of my mind. “You’re charming me,” I accused.

She pushed me to the gate. “Go.”

“I won’t forget,” I swore. The fuzziness was taking more of my mind. “I won’t.” She pushed me outside the gate and pulled it closed, me on one side of the metal bars, her on the other. Me in one world, her in another. “I love you, Lenore. I won’t stop. I won’t-” My tongue felt heavy in my mouth. I stopped speaking.

At some point she must have taken the cloak because she draped it over her shoulders. She turned away and started back, deeper into the other world, far away from me. “Wait!” I called. “Wait, don’t go.”

She was important. She was special. I loved her. I needed her. I… I couldn’t recall her name. The girl with the auburn hair, like a messy halo around her shoulders, walked away. I had the faintest recollection of something, of warm hands, of soft lips, of captivating eyes. The name evaded me and she disappeared.

I stood outside a gate of the Academy, a place I was not supposed to be, and wondered how I had gotten there.