The Price of Memory

 “It can’t be helped,” Alora thought. 

Down dawn-lit loggia, she led her patient, Reicha. The girl of eleven had not spoken a word since entering Asyla three years prior. Stopping at an indigo doorway, Alora produced a gold key.

“We’re here,” she told the child. “The way is scary, but it will help.”

Reicha’s eyes remained unfocused, nodding more of habit than acknowledgement.

The doors unlocked to a room of granite and blue stained glass. Sunlight angled towards a leather tome floating above a wooden pedestal. Alora paused before it, Reicha’s too-small hand in hers.

“It can’t be helped,” she whispered, unfastening the manuscript. Reicha’s gaze landed on empty vellum. For a moment, nothing happened. Silence, and light. 

Then, Reicha’s eyes shot wide, wailing. Alora held the convulsing child as memories wrote themselves frantic on the empty page - cadels decorating violence, pigments coiling rinceaux around grotesques of fallen friends and family. The child’s eyes went white.

Alora perused the other leaves. The tome contained many memories removed from many minds, and too disparate a transplant risked schism. A suitable memoir from another girl: brother leaving town for work; parents succumbing to illness; an aunt adopting the orphan. Alora read it aloud, then again, then again. Slowly, color returned to Reicha’s eyes. Slowly, she refocused.

Reicha regained consciousness, confused, but clear. Looking at Alora she asked, “Auntie? What are we doing here? I thought we were visiting home today.”

Alora smiled sadly.

“My heart, the season is cold, and travel difficult. We will pray for your parents at the temple.”

Reicha nodded, disappointment in her cheeks.

“I guess it is far…”

“Yes…” Alora sighed, closing The Manuscript. “Farther than you know.”

The two left the vaulted room, Reicha babbling away, Alora silent, the morning light white on marbled tiles.