The Weight of Forgetting

The fire cast strange patterns on their faces.

The flames had burned low now, reduced to a bed of glowing embers that pulsed with every breath of wind.

The light danced across their features, shifting and unsteady, making shadows that seemed to move on their own. No one spoke. No one moved. The only sound was the soft crackle of the dying fire and the distant whisper of the forest around them.

Pryce continued. "I took you in, and we moved to Thistledown."

He looked Wren in the eye. Not past her. Not through her. Straight at her, the way a man does when he has finally run out of places to hide.

"You were unconscious for nearly five days. Every single second, I was scared of what I would say to you. What I would tell you about your family. But when you finally woke up, you didn't remember them. The toll had taken your memories of them. You only remembered your sister, Joss. But you never asked about her."

He paused, his voice growing rougher.

"You also weren't speaking properly. You didn't say 'I' or 'me.' I was confused at first, but then I put it together. You had asked for your own selfish escape, leaving your world behind. You had the guilt, but it was lost with your memories. And it left behind a scar on you. That's why you don't mean what you say."

Wren sat very still. The words were landing inside her, each one finding a place she didn't know was empty. She wanted to argue. She wanted to say something, anything, to push back against the weight of what she was hearing. But no words came. Her mouth stayed closed. Her hands stayed still in her lap.

Pryce glanced over at Rourke, who was sitting apart from the fire, his face turned away. "The next month was a game of cat and mouse. The Crown put Rourke on the investigation. And he figured out you were a Wholevoice. But somehow, I managed to keep you hidden. I didn't want to see you taken away. Not like the others."

His voice cracked. "But the second time, I couldn't save you."

Some tears ran down from his eyes. They traced the lines of his face, catching the firelight. He didn't wipe them away.

"It was from Rourke I heard the aftermath. The entire town of Dunwallen was destroyed. Not a single body was found. Not one."

The fire popped, sending a spray of sparks into the dark. Wren flinched.

Pryce finally turned his attention back to her. His face was open now, stripped of everything he had been holding onto for seven years.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry for hiding it from you. I couldn't find the words. How was I going to tell you? I wasn't ready to face you. I wasn't ready to make you face the truth. I'm sorry."

The confession hung in the air, heavy and raw. The fire had nearly gone out. And Wren still had not spoken a single word.

Every eye in the clearing was wide open, but for different reasons.

Wren's eyes were dark. Empty. The fire had gone out completely now, leaving only the faintest glow of embers. She moved back slowly, her legs unsteady beneath her, and lay down on the grass a little distance from the others. She stared up at the sky, her arms loose at her sides, her chest rising and falling with slow, shallow breaths.

Nobody pushed her. Everybody understood. Now was not the right time.

Rourke sat with his back against the fallen log, his eyes wide and distant. He was processing what had happened, his movements becoming mechanical. He reached for his canteen, drank, set it down. Reached for it again a moment later, not remembering he had already drunk. The story had shaken something loose in him, something he had spent years locking away.

Tears were falling from Rowan's eyes.

He didn't try to hide them. He didn't wipe them away. He sat with his hands loose on his knees, and he let them fall. The dark days had come back to him, unbidden. The weight of everything he had lost, the faces he had tried to forget. And now, looking at Wren lying on the grass, he understood the truth that had been buried for seven years. He and her went far back. At the time, he didn't know she was that child. The girl who had screamed. But now here he was, sitting across from her, and everything he thought he knew had shifted beneath his feet.

Silas was nowhere to be seen.

Nobody had heard him leave. The man moved like smoke, silent and untraceable. Rowan was the first to notice. "Where's Silas?"

Rourke's eyes cleared slightly. He remembered the advice he had given him outside the stronghold. Disappear as soon as the mission is over.

"He must've left," Rourke said.

The words settled into the quiet. Nobody argued. Nobody asked more. The fire was dead, and so was the will to keep talking.

Everybody went to sleep, or tried to. But every mind was wide awake, every eye staring at the stars, turning over the weight of what they had heard. No one got any sleep. And it was already the next morning, while everyone tossed and turned.

The morning began with a walk to the pickup spot of the carriage.

The forest was quiet, the air cool and damp with the memory of night. All of the members of the party did not speak. Not even a single word.

The carriage was there, waiting on the road. All of them entered it without ceremony. Wren and Pryce sat on one side. Rowan and Rourke sat on the other. The doors closed with a soft click, sealing them into silence.

The carriage began its long ride.

The wheels rolled over the rough road, jostling them gently. The landscape slid past the windows in quiet greens and browns. Wren stared out the window, her head resting against the frame, her eyes fixed on something far away. Pryce sat beside her, his cane resting across his knees, his face pale and lined.

The road stretched on.

And then, Wren saw a sign on the side of the road. A wooden board with an arrow pointing and a name written on it.

Dunwallen.

Wren spoke for the first time since the night. Her voice was low, but it carried in the silence of the carriage. The words were the least expected by the others.

"Can we go through Dunwallen? Wren wants to see it."

Pryce put a hand on her shoulder and nodded slowly. He didn't speak. He didn't need to.

Rourke tapped on the window that separated them from the driver. "Take a left. We'll take the road through Dunwallen and then continue back."

Rowan was tensing up. His hand had gone still on his knee, his jaw tightening. He was going back to the place. The place where everything had ended. The place where Sofia had died in his arms. The place where the world had broken.

The carriage turned left, and the road to Dunwallen opened ahead of them.

The carriage approached the town, and the first distant houses came into view.

They were broken. Every roof had caved in, the beams exposed like ribs against the sky. The road was cracked and overgrown, weeds pushing through the stones. It was a place that had been left to die, and the forest had begun to swallow it.

They soon reached the town gate. Wren gestured toward Rourke. "Stop here."

Rourke tapped on the window, and the carriage rolled to a halt. Wren and Pryce got out. Rowan and Rourke stayed inside, their faces turned toward the glass, watching.

Wren stood at the edge of the town and looked.

The town gate. She would have used this gate as a child. Running through it with Joss, chasing the other children into the square. The playground, just visible beyond the first row of houses, where she would have played. The swings were still there, their chains creaking faintly in the wind.

She felt nothing.

Pryce stepped up beside her, his cane tapping softly against the broken stones. He nodded toward a house a little way down the road. "This was your home. You used to run to that door and throw it open so hard it would slam against the wall. You were a little bully about it."

His voice was gentle, but it carried the weight of memory.

Wren walked toward the house. Her steps were slow, uncertain. She reached the door and opened it, but very softly this time. The hinges groaned, and dust drifted down from the frame.

This was one of the few houses whose roof was still partially intact. She stepped inside. Pryce had been right. The house was large.

She moved through the living room first. The table where she would have eaten meals. The chairs, overturned now, their cushions rotted away.

She went to the kitchen. The counters where she would have helped her mother. A broken pot lay on its side near the wall.

The feelings were not coming.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to remember. She wanted the grief to rise up and swallow her, to prove that this place had meant something, that the people who had lived here had been real, that she had loved them once. But there was nothing. Just the dust, and the silence, and the hollow emptiness where the memories should have been.

That was worse. Not remembering. Not feeling. The absence itself was a kind of pain she couldn't name.

She reached her limit. Tears started falling from her eyes, silent and slow. Her knees buckled, and she sat down on the dust-covered floor, not caring about the tailored dress. The green fabric pooled around her, staining with grey.

"Why can't Wren remember?" Her voice came out small, barely a whisper. "She wants to remember. She wants to feel something."

She pressed her hands against the floor, her fingers spreading through the dust. "This was our house. Our table. Our kitchen. Wren lived here. Wren had a mother. Had a father. Had..." Her voice broke, and she stopped, her head bowing forward.

"She can't even remember their names." The tears were falling faster now, but she didn't raise her voice. She didn't sob. She just let the words come, quiet and uneven. "What kind of person can't remember their own family's names?"

"Wren's sorry." her shoulders shook gently. "Wren's sorry, Mama. Wren's..... I'm sorry, Papa. I'm sorry, Joss." She whispered the names into the dust. "I'm sorry I forgot. I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry I couldn't save you."

She wrapped her arms around herself, rocking slightly, her tears dripping onto the floor. "Wren didn't mean to. She didn't mean to forget you. She didn't mean to lose you all."

And then, finally, the words she had been holding back. "I didn't mean to leave you behind."

She sat there in the dust of her childhood home, crying softly, and for the first time, she let herself be a child who had lost everything.

The quiet cries filled the empty house, soft and broken, like a bird that had forgotten its song.