He led me to the cliffside, but not our usual spot, where we always sat and dangled our legs. Instead, we continued onward, keeping close to sea and sky. It was the opposite direction we’d gone when we first set off on our adventure. After we’d gone a mile or two, Oliver turned and met my gaze. He stood close enough to the edge that one misstep, one slip, and I knew he’d be gone. His expression was careful, neutral, and it was so unlike him that I still couldn’t bring myself to speak.
Without a word, he knelt and lowered himself over the cliff, then dangled there. I scrambled to do the same, because it was Ollie, and the instinct lived in my bones. To follow him everywhere, follow him into anything, no matter what end awaited us there.
Our gazes met, brown to blue, and our hair stirred in the salty breeze. My arms already hurt, but I knew I’d hold on however long I needed to. “Now what?” I managed, breathless. My heart raced.
“Do you trust me?” Oliver asked.
The answer should have been complicated. After all, the rules of this place were different now—if I hit the water too hard, I could really be hurt. Not to mention that things between us were stilted and undefined. But I looked at Oliver steadily and didn’t hesitate. “With my life,” I said.
“Then let go.”
Of course. Even now, though, I didn’t question him. This moment felt important, heavy with meaning in a way I didn’t fully understand. Releasing an anxious breath, I squeezed my eyes shut and opened my fingers. I fell…
…and landed on solid rock a few feet down. It was a thick ledge, I realized, turning in a circle. From above, it had camouflaged perfectly with the cliffside below it. To my left, a shallow cave deepened into black. Oliver dropped beside me and shoved his sleeves up to his elbows. It was a nervous gesture, I thought, watching him closely.
“You couldn’t just tell me I wasn’t about to fall to my death?” I asked, giving Oliver a halfhearted glare.
His gaze was still guarded, and even now, he didn’t sound like himself as he answered, “I wanted you to remember.”
“Remember what?”
His throat moved. “That I would never hurt you.”
My patience began to unravel. What was this? Why was he acting so guilty? Before I could demand an explanation, though, Oliver’s gaze shifted. I followed it automatically, twisting to see the rest of the cave.
My annoyance dried up when I saw there was a bed behind us. I recognized the pink blanket and the unicorn lamp resting on the nightstand. There was a small lump beneath the covers, and as I drew nearer, I knew it would be me lying in that bed. It’s another memory, I thought, momentarily blinded by a kaleidoscope of feeling. Fear, dread, anticipation. Confusion, as well. Had Oliver—
Then the younger me rolled over, allowing me to see her face. I forgot my fear and moved even closer. She was obviously on the verge of a bad dream; her eyes fluttered again and again, like a bird giving its wings an agitated flap. There came the sound of a door opening, though the door itself was nowhere to be seen.
The breath caught in my throat when my parents appeared.
No matter how many times I saw them, I knew it would always feel like this. As if there was a fist around my heart, the fingers closing, tightening, squeezing. I studied them hungrily, memorizing every detail. Dad wore striped pajama bottoms and a gray T-shirt while Mom wore a silk nightgown that hugged her every curve. His expression was worried, but hers was calm. Maybe a little sad, too.
Without waking younger Fortuna—although I must’ve been aware of their presence to some degree, or this memory wouldn’t exist—Mom settled on one side of her, and Dad stretched out on the other. Neither of them said a word. Mom rested her hand on the dreaming Fortuna’s elbow, and for that one moment, I swore I could feel it on my own arm, a spot of warmth that faded all-too quickly.
When the other Fortuna made a sound of distress, Mom pulled sweat-dampened hair away from her forehead and began to hum. Unlike Naevys, my mother couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but that didn’t matter. The sound floated through the cave like a spell. Young Fortuna went still, and her eyes stopped fluttering. Asleep at last.
I waited, but nothing else happened. The other Fortuna slumbered on, cradled in between her sleeping parents. This was it, I realized, staring at the three figures. This was the entire memory. It had been significant enough, painful enough, to tuck away here where I’d probably never have found it on my own. This night must’ve taken place before Tamar bound my magic. My parents couldn’t stop the bad dreams, so they’d helped me in the only way they knew how.
“They loved you, Fortuna,” Oliver said softly, his voice coming from behind. “Whatever their faults, whatever they did when you were a child, their love for you was genuine.”
Despite the warmth in my chest, I was frowning. It seemed too convenient, the fact that he had discovered this memory at the same time I was agonizing over my parents and everything I’d learned about them.
“How did you find this?” I asked without looking at him. My voice was too casual.
“It was years ago,” Oliver said softly, confirming my suspicions. “We were children. At first, it was because I didn’t understand what I was seeing. When I did figure out that it was connected to you, somehow, I had no idea how to get you down here. I didn’t even know my own name, much less how to communicate about this.”
It felt like I’d stumbled upon a second memory in this cave. My lips parted in a shocked daze. “That’s right,” I breathed. “At the beginning, you didn’t even know how to speak. I forgot about that.”
As the words left my mouth, the Oliver in front of me blurred with the Oliver from my past.
After my parents died, I had found myself in a vivid dream one night. Within that dream, during my wanderings, I’d spotted a towheaded boy hiding behind an enormous oak tree. Our tree, as it would become later. The vivid dream had happened again, and again, and again. Every time I opened my eyes, the strange boy was there, waiting with a shy smile. I remembered the sign language I’d learned just so I could have a conversation with him. He had picked up on it remarkably quickly, and soon, the boy hadn’t needed the hand signals—he began speaking English as if he’d never had any trouble in the first place. After that, he’d moved on to being able to manipulate the dream itself.
Eventually there came a day when I accepted the place wasn’t just a vivid dream. That was the day I gave the boy a name. Ollie.
“…after I’d developed the ability to communicate,” the boy was saying now. Not so much a boy anymore, though. The sound of his voice brought my mind back to the present. “But by then, I didn’t want you to see it. I thought it would make you sad, and I wanted to protect you from feeling that way here. Ever. As time went on, and we got older, it became one of my secrets. I thought that if I showed it to you, you’d hate me for hiding it.”
He fell silent, and his jaw clenched as he waited for my response. I stared at him, realizing what this meant—Oliver had known, at least in part, about the existence of these memories. He’d known for years and kept it from me.
Door hinges whined into the stillness between us. I turned back and watched my parents walk toward the bed. The memory was beginning anew, I realized faintly. No matter how good it was, I didn’t want to watch again. It hurt too much. “How do you get out of here?” I asked Oliver. “Climbing back up doesn’t seem like an option.”