I.
I used to like the sound of raindrops against the rooftop. Now I can’t stand it. I remember what it was like when she was still here; home was a lot more bearable.
It’s been three years. I’ve finally reached my third year of college, and I’m closer to a dead-end corporate job my parents have wanted for me than I’ve ever been.
School was cancelled today, and I’m lying down here remembering the words that still haunt me from that day my entire story changed:
The magic of the world is dying.
II.
I used to have a sister. This is our story.
---
Fuck. Oh god. CRAP.
This wasn’t good. I could feel her hand slipping. I dug my nails into the roof’s gutter and tilted my face away from the waves lashing at me.
“Hang on!” I gagged as water rushed towards my mouth. The current was too strong, and my arm was beginning to ache. I could see my knuckles turning white. We needed a way to get on the roof, but right now Harri was being pulled in by the currents and my other arm wasn’t going to be able to hang on to her much longer.
The water had risen too fast. It had felt like one minute we were trying to evacuate the house, and the next the water was at our roof and the current was pulling us with it. And now we were trapped with no way out. Somehow, I had always imagined a much more boring way that I would die; it seemed to fit in pretty well with every other thing our parents had planned for me.
But I couldn’t let Harri die. Her story was meant for greater things.
I found my footing on the top of the one of the window frames, and tried to pull myself close enough to the edge of the roof.
AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
All our screams were drowned out by the noise of the storm as both of us were carried away by the floodwaters.
I’m not sure at which point I had lost consciousness. I just know I was hanging on to her hand for dear life.
III.
September 26, 2009. That was when it had happened.
I had finally found a birthday gift for her. I was more than a month late when I gave it to her that morning.
She squealed when she saw that it was a transparent umbrella, and took me by the hand so that we could play in the backyard by dancing in the puddles under the pouring rain.
Eventually, our parents saw us and demanded that we go back in. We got in trouble, but she took the blame for it. Our parents backed off then.
It had always been clear they cared about her more.
We went back to our room and she started sketching out the landscape of the rainy streets. She was also drawing unicorns pulling a carriage made of clouds through the rainwater.
“It looks wrong.”
She looked up, her eyes taking a while to focus on me from her drawing. “What does?”
“The unicorn. It doesn’t look proud or majestic enough.”
“Hmm. Well, I guess you’re right.” She laughed before adjusting her drawing.
We spent the rest of the morning talking about where the carriage was bringing the fire-prince.
Today had started out as one of our usual Saturday mornings.
IV.
Whatever I was lying down on, it felt cold and wet. It didn’t help with my discomfort. Everything hurt and my muscles were screaming at me as I tried to stretch. My eyes felt heavy and it took a while for me to adjust to the light when I finally opened them.
I could see Harri across the rocky ground and my eyes moved to what I was resting on. I scrambled away from it. I wanted to scream, but the sound got caught in my throat.
“MaEn?” Harri pushed against the ground to try and support her weight and peered at what I had moved away from. “I-is that a-“
“It’s a corpse. Oh gods, it’s a corpse.”
We were surrounded by corpses: bodies covered with mud and twisted in wrangled forms. There were also debris and scattered items – things like watches, soaked journals, and open photo-albums.
“Where are we?”
Harri stood on shaky legs and started to walk forward, peering into the darkness beyond the cave mouth.
“Hello?” Her voice echoed.
“…Did you really expect someone to answer back?” I walked over to her and tried to avoid the sight of the corpses.
“It could have worked! It’s what happens all the time in movies.”
“…Fair enough.” I guess I couldn’t expect a better explanation. I mean, she was 10, and had experienced most things through the movies and books we breathed in on an unhealthy basis.
We froze when we heard the sound of something approaching us. It almost sounded like footsteps, but more mechanical. We could hear turning and creaking, and the noises were getting louder.
Harri held on to me, and I was absolutely terrified as the footsteps came closer.
I tried not to let her know that.
V.
“Oh, hello there! It’s very rare that we have travellers who end up here. Welcome, travellers!”
We both looked down at him.
“Aww, how cute! It probably has a speake-“
“If you’re under the assumption that what I’m saying is all a recording, you’re wrong. I can see that you two are both young girls; I’m guessing a teenager and a child. We’re in a cave right now, filled with an assortment of trinkets and junk and some corpses. You probably came from the convergence of floodwaters, which is one of the known portals that travellers end up going through to get here.”
“WHA- did he just- You’re a-”
We were looking at a tiny wind-up toy designed as a knight. Parts of his armor were rusty, and every movement of his wind-up key and his joints made a creaking noise.
“Yes, m’lady, I’m a knight! Sir Roswell, at your service.” He bowed.
“So, erm. Hello, Sir Roswell. Are you…real?” Harri crouched down and tried to poke him.
“Real? I’m just as real as you! Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because…you’re a talking wind-up toy. Where we came from…wind-up toys don’t talk.”
“Well, your world is vastly different from mine.”
“I still don’t believe this, Harri. Maybe there’s a speaker connected somewhere else. He can’t be real.”
“Pfft. Can’t be real she says. Come with me, travellers! I’ll show you just how real my world is.” He turned around and began on his awkward journey back into the dark of the cave, before being stuck frozen mid-step. “Oh dear, this is embarrassing. Erm. Travellers, would you please do a good sir a favour and wind me back up?”
“Uhh…I guess…” I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. A part of me was thinking that maybe we were still unconscious in the flood, and these were all very vivid hallucinations. Maybe the psychological trauma of our near-death experience had driven us both mad.
Those were both complete possibilities.
VI.
We were in awe when the mouth of the cave extended and we could see the tops of buildings. They were crumbling and the highest ones were only two-stories high, but the entire street was filled with faded colors. It made me feel nostalgic.
It was only when we looked down that we noticed all the little toys walking around. An off-white stuffed bunny hopped past us and I noticed a line of green army men hobbling along the sidewalk.
“By the way, travellers, I don’t believe I caught your names. It feels awfully rude for a dignified knight like me to not refer to one without a name.”
“I’m MaEn, and she’s Harri. We’re sisters. Can you tell us…what this place is?”
“Occasionally, the currents of floodwaters can meet at a certain point and things are carried off here. That’s one of the portals I know to get here. You see, this is Remory. …The land of stories and memories and dreams that have been swept away, forgotten, or abandoned. Travellers like you sometimes find themselves here.”
Harri nudged me and pointed to some nearby stalls, where it seemed like all the sellers and customers were engaged in deep conversation.
“What is everyone doing in that marketplace over there?”
“Ah, I see you’ve noticed. Here in Remory, we understand the value of stories, since we were all parts of stories, once. They’re all we have and thrive on, and storytelling is our main method of exchange. I believe in your world this was called currency.”
“…That’s…”
“…Amazing.” Harri finished for me.
“Yes. Remory is quite amazing.” He beamed up at us, and puffed his chest out a little more.
“So where exactly are we going, Sir…Roswell, is it?”
“We’re going to see the man who keeps Remory alive – the clockmaker, the taleweaver, the collector of dreams – pardon me for quoting here, but we’re off to see the wizard.”
I couldn’t help it – I burst into uncontrollable laughter, and he had stopped to turn around and tilt his head.
“I don’t believe that was a very funny reference. I appreciate that you like my humor, however.”
“No, I’m sorry. It’s just – It just occurred to me that right now, we’re with a wind-up toy knight who enjoys Wizard of Oz.”
“Yeah. We are.” Harri smiled. “Now let’s follow the gray broken road.”
I ruffled her hair as we continued following Sir Roswell. “Not you too.”
She started singing to the tune of The Yellow Brick Road, and I joined in after the first verse.
VII.
“Mr. Wizard! I bring travellers!”
A bell rang when we entered. The place was cramped and filled with the smell of musty books. The books were gathered in piles around the floor, and it took us a while to navigate the miniature maze.
We heard someone passing through the beaded curtain that covered the archway in the corner of the room. An old man with a gray beard wearing a tattered wizard’s cap stumbled into the room.
“My god, Roswell. Next time, send someone to warn me beforehand.” He rubbed at his scalp before replacing his cap. “Hello there, travellers. I’m sorry this place is a mess. Come, let’s have some tea. You look awfully distressed; you probably ended up here through the Floodgate.” He gestured to the beaded curtain, and we took slow steps towards the archway.
We sat on the crates around the area and mumbled our thanks as he gave us our tea.
“Thank you for escorting these travellers here, Roswell. Now please, would you excuse us for this discussion?”
“Very well, Wizard. I bid thee farewell for now, m’ladies.” He bowed and left the room.
“I’m sure this must have been a very tiring experience for both of you. You both look quite young. I was around your age, I think, when I ended up here. I can’t really remember anymore.”
I couldn’t help but ask. I still needed to know. “I’m really sorry that after all this time I would still ask but…how exactly are all those toys outside walking around?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Magic, of course.”
“So it’s true then?” Harri looked up at him with gleaming eyes. “You’re really a wizard?”
The old man laughed. “No, I’m afraid that’s the title all these toys have decided to give me. Magic, you see, is not necessarily what everyone thinks it is. This world relies on the magic of the real world. But the magic of that world is dying. It’s fading.”
“…But why is the magic dying?”
“Because people are dying. Many of them already walk around dead half their lives. Remory is kept alive by the life in children, but even lately they’ve been growing up faster than this world can support. Ruthless cynicism. Apathy. Lack of passion. Life is the very essence of magic, you know.”
Harri sipped her tea. “That’s what magic is, at its heart, isn’t it? It’s not the sparks and the impossible we imagine it to be. It’s life.”
He nodded. “You’re a bright one. That’s exactly what magic is, traveller. Wonder. And hope. The ability to see life’s beauty beyond what might be obvious. That's all it ever was. So think about that, the next time someone goes up to you and tells you that magic isn’t real.”
VIII.
After we discussed more about Remory, and stories and laughed about some of the misadventures Sir Roswell would get himself into, I knew we needed to talk about something else. Something important. I took the chance at the next silence we had.
“Erm. Wizard. If you don’t mind me asking … how exactly can we get out here? We need to get home.”
“There is only one way out of Remory that is known to us. You have to sign a contract, to give up an important part of your story. Something that you brought in here with you.”
“But we didn’t bring anything with us.”
“That’s what you think. But both of you brought something in Remory that means more to you than anything else.”
IX.
Today is August 7, 2012. It’s been three years since then.
She didn’t ask me. We had talked about it, and we knew what the wizard was talking about giving up. And so she, like the person she always has been, decided to take the offer and sign the contract while I was asleep that night. I could go home.
The wizard had told me that once I left Remory, I could never come back.
My parents were glad when I found my way back home, but it was like Harri never existed. She was gone from photographs. My room had just all my stuff. No one remembered her.
I had tried to find my way back. I really did. Those rising waters had given me the hope that maybe I could come back and see her again. But the current wouldn’t bring me anywhere. At some point I decided there was only one thing left I could do.
I would never know if that letter reached her or not. I just knew it was almost her birthday, and I couldn’t forgive myself for having missed two of them already.
My parents found me soon enough. I had run outside and into the waters, and they asked if I had gone insane, running into the flood like that. They brought me back into the house.
---
Maybe I really have gone insane.
Or maybe the magic of the world really has died.
Epilogue
Visiting the grounds where the new junk gets swept to was one of her favourite things to do. There were always new things to discover. She’d been going here for as long as she could remember.
She made her way through the junk and shuddered away from the new corpses which catastrophic floods usually brought in, while a wind-up toy knight took creaking steps behind her. Something caught her eye – a rolled up piece of paper in a glass bottle.
“Hey look, Sir Roswell! It’s a message in a bottle!”
“What’s it about?”
She opened it up and her eyes skimmed the words. “…It’s a letter from someone addressed to her sister. Apparently, some time ago she and her sister had ended up here, and in order to get home the other had stayed behind. …and she misses her. It’s as if the other sister doesn’t exist anymore, because her parents don’t remember ever having a second daughter. And it’s almost her sister’s birthday.” She paused. “That’s such a tragic story, what happened to those sisters, don’t you think?”
Sir Roswell adjusted his knight’s visor and for a while his eyes bore into her; he pursed his lips.
“You’re being awfully quiet. What’s wrong?” She tilted her head.
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?”
“…Nothing, it’s not important. Anyway, I’m sure that story will be good for a week’s worth of food.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Off to the marketplace then!”
She started to run off back down the alleyway and stuffed the paper into her pocket, laughing as Sir Roswell called after her, running as fast as his rusty legs could take him.
They were all parts of stories.
Once.
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