Remembrance

Oliva huddled in the bone-cold corner, a film of the past drawn over her unseeing eyes. The rough wood scraped against her skin as she shivered, earrings jangling quietly. She had not been able to see for the past few minutes now, and she knew what that meant. Every month, they came for her. They had been coming for the past seventy years. The temperature in her stuffy shop dropped, and the door vanished from the front of the shop. There was no escaping.

Luckily for her, though, Oliva now knew the names of the bad spirits which plagued her, which cursed her.

Wait.

Did she?

She couldn’t remember. That wasn’t good. Now she couldn’t cast them away.

And then they came, filling the room with an unearthly keening that resonated throughout Oliva’s whole body. She could not see them, but her ears popped with pain at the high, piercing shrieks, and her nose scrunched at the musty yet sharp smell that announced the spirits’ arrival.

The ground shifted underneath her, and a fierce jolt of memory came over her. Oliva found herself tucked in a warm bed of her childhood. Not this flashback again! The spirits must really be out to get her tonight. They usually didn’t use this memory. Oliva scrunched her eyebrows, but found the thought fading from her mind, save for the word spirits.

Wait. Spirits? Mama said spirits were good. Father said spirits were bad. Tenyr claimed he’d talked to one once, but Oliva knew not to trust her older brother when he said things like that, or when he said that five-year-olds couldn’t cook. She and Jaina could most definitely cook. Just not very well.

Oliva snuggled deeper into her blankets. The harvest had been plentiful this year, and the profits they had made were enough to get the young ones extra blankets. And Oliva refused to share with Jaina, though they were twins, so Oliva got her own, after a fairly long tantrum.

She could distantly hear the fire popping in the other room, even being the farthest away from the door, as the youngest child. The one-window, two-room house wasn’t all that big, especially for nine people. One room with a hearth and mats for eating and praying, and the other room for sleeping. But the house was kept warm on cold nights, with nine bodies in a small space.

Oliva was just drifting off into sleep when the door to the main room flew across the room with a bang and stuck in the dirt wall. Items fell over or toppled from shelves. A blast of frigid air swirled into the rooms. The house shook with a dreadful shudder, and Oliva tasted dirt. But even worse, she smelled oppressive smoke from tar-covered torches.

Mama and Father both bolted awake, scrambling out of their blankets with alarmed gasps, and so did the rest of the children. Oliva pressed herself against the wall, eyes wide with terror. Her heart pounded, and her lungs suddenly seemed like they could not get enough breath. She saw Jaina get up and stand by Molly, and so Oliva did too. Their oldest sister placed trembling hands on their shoulders. 

Father stood at the doorway to the main room. Mama stood slightly behind him, frame quivering. The children stood behind their parents.

Father would protect them, Oliva knew. He was the seventh son of his family, born with strong magic. And since Oliva was also the seventh child, Father had taught her all that came with being the seventh child, the blessed child, except she was the seventh child of the seventh child, so he said there were some things she would have to figure out on her own.

But what Oliva couldn’t figure out, was who the men piling into their house were. The door fell from where it had been lodged in the wall, shaken free by the thumping of boots in and around the house. 

One of the men stepped forward and spoke in an unfamiliar language, all harsh and throaty. Were these the invaders from the east, who had been subject of many rumors in the village? Oliva whimpered.

The man yelled a command, and suddenly the room was full of strangers and death and sharp, shiny things. Oliva didn’t remember all the details, only breaking free from Molly’s grip and hiding in her blankets. She trembled as she heard Mama’s wails of pain, Tenyr’s shouts of agony, Jaina’s shrieks, Liran’s and Pug’s and Kenna’s screams as they all were massacred. It broke her heart to hear her sister’s body hit the ground. Was anyone okay? Surely Father was, right? Silent tears soaked into Oliva’s blankets as a distant yell from Father reached her ears.

Then she was transported, in a whirlwind of memory, to another flashback. A distant marketplace, in the deep of night. She felt blood on her hands, crusty and not her own.

Another memory. The backrooms of the king’s palace. She smelled his birthday feast, warm and savory. Too bad he would not live to enjoy it much longer.

With a gut-jerking whoosh, Oliva found herself in a flat field. It was a dim night, only one moon half-shining above. The grass screamed silently as it was burned beneath her feet.

The scene glitched, and became a dark forest, trees rustling ominously. A sword flashed in the distance, and Oliva heard a horrified gasp.

Another jerk in her core, another recollection. A quiet library, which would not be quiet much longer. The fire hadn’t been her fault-- she’d just been visiting. Someone else was blamed, anyways.

As Oliva was tossed into a prison cell, the door slamming shut in a sharp clang, she had a few strange seconds of self-awareness to contemplate that these memories were coming all out of order. Some from only two years ago, some from fifty-two years ago. She didn’t know why, and then her moments of self-consciousness were gone in a flash and a tumble.

Oliva then found herself shivering at the entrance to a cave, screams echoing in her ears. The rock was burning cold to her feet, and it was dimly lit by a moon obscured by clouds. She felt like she was forgetting something. Pine trees rustled softly behind her, and an owl hooted somewhere distant.

She figured that if she did forget something, it probably wasn’t important in the first place. Oliva stepped into the freezing cave, shuffling along the rock, robes swaying around her. The light slowly faded, and the shadows took over her surroundings. She felt her way along the rough rock, wet with cave water, cold as ice. 

And suddenly, she fell. A spike of adrenaline jolted through her as her heart jumped in her chest. She panicked, trying to use magic to escape, to no avail. Oliva fell for an eternity, tumbling around in a black nothingness, robes flailing around. This wasn’t any normal cave, was it? 

Then she felt two spirits, swirling around her, made up of tattered rags carried on cold, concentrated breezes. They whispered in the Dark Tongue, swishy voices twisting into Oliva’s core. She felt the dark magic come upon her, soaking into her being, writhing underneath her skin. It was cold and evil and malevolent in a way she’d never imagined, and yet it burned. She felt like metal being thrust into the deepest depths of the blacksmith’s hottest forge, heated to unimaginable levels and then thrown into the frigid winter.

So this was where she’d gotten cursed.

That was it! The Cursed Cave. That was all it was known by. Oliva couldn’t believe she’d forgotten.

“Hey!” she croak-yelled. “Let me go!” She recalled the names of the spirits and drew upon her blessed heritage. When she spoke the spirits’ names, her words were weighty as a boulder sinking to the bottom of the ocean. “In the name of the moons I command you to unhand me at once, you devilish spirits!” The spirits shrieked, an unearthly, shrill sound. 

“From hereby and henceforth you shall torment me no more!” More, louder shrieks. Oliva felt as if her eardrums would burst. The spirits whirled around her, filling her nose with the scent of musty spiders and rotting flesh, tumbling her around and around, and suddenly she felt a great pressure on her chest, her whole body, squeezing and stretching. She could not draw in a breath, she tasted something acrid, her senses began to fade. . . .

Oliva’s sight was restored in a painful snap. She peered around the dark room with her feeble eyes. Where was she?

Who was she?

She’d forgotten.

Then it came back, in a twinge of memory.

Oh, yes. Madam Oliva’s Assortment of Magical Trinkets, in the city of Emberwood. She was Madam Oliva, the odd, “practically ancient” shopkeeper, collector of many Magical Trinkets. She sold them, to anyone who was odd enough to venture into her small shop, which was tucked out of the way in a stereotypical dingy alley, the shop door almost hidden behind piles of weathered crates. A creaky, dilapidated wooden sign hung precariously above her door, swinging in the breeze and threatening to fall on anyone who walked under it.

Madam Oliva slowly pushed her aching bones upward. She shuffled out of the back room, and into the main room of her shop, where unevenly spaced lanterns provided flickering light and a cloying smoke. She grew warmer-- thank goodness. She hated the cold. Could never understand how people seemed to like it.

And yet, she’d gone into that frigid, cursed cave, so many years ago.

Well, she was free now, finally, of her bad spirits. No more reliving every moment of her life that brought her pain. She could finally forget!

Madam Oliva began to polish her many many Trinkets, letting her memories disappear like the blemishes on her Trinkets as she rubbed them with a worn rag.

Oh, they brought such joy to her, her gleaming, precious Trinkets. So very precious. Like children. But smaller. Madam Oliva tenderly polished a glass cylinder, then a crescent-shaped blade. She placed all the Trinkets she polished back on the shelf, in their exact spot. She moved on to some wonderfully shiny coins from her last business. The two strangers had been nice by paying with coins, she supposed, though she had offered them a good deal by giving them the option to pay for their trinkets with a lock of that pretty girl’s hair. Madam Oliva couldn’t understand why those two wouldn’t take such a good offer. At least they didn’t pay with rattling bones.

A muted crash out in the alleyway drew her attention. She looked toward the door of the shop, which had reappeared. Another clang sent her shuffling out from behind her counter. Probably some vagabond children again, Madam Oliva supposed.

She creaked open the door, and a blast of frigid air sent her stumbling back. The door blew off its hinges, shelves toppled over, spilling Trinkets all over the floor, lanterns blew out. The coins she held in one hand and the rag she held in the other dropped to the floor, the sound muted to her suddenly aching ears. The shop sign outside broke free of its fraying ropes and cracked against the stone wall of the alleyway.

Madam Oliva stared up at the dark, malevolent cloaked figure that stood in the doorway, feeling a surge of panic flood her every thought. Her memories flooded back, the pain of it all almost outweighing the fear she felt. Couldn’t she just forget the painful things?

The figure was darker than the moonless night, blacker than a raven’s feathers, more wicked than the two spirits of her curse. She grasped one of her many pendants, knowing it would not help. The air smelled of sickly sweet decay, and she tasted the tang of blood. Her heart pounded in her ears, in her fingers, her feet. 

“I am Deza,” a raspy, thunderous voice rumbled, coming from under the hood. The deep voice shook the room like a great earthquake-- of death. “And I have come for you, Oliva Moontracer.”

Oliva screamed as the black-cloaked figure raised his head and skewered her with two ominously glowing red eyes. They speared through her soul, spreading that all-too-familiar chilling burn of dark magic. Fear was all she knew, a primal terror that rooted her to the spot. She could not move, nor think. Fear seeped through her old, aged body. 

Fear was the last thing she remembered before everything went black.

Oliva found herself tucked in a warm bed of her childhood. She had the nagging feeling that she was forgetting something, but she couldn’t remember what. . . .