The Memory Eater by Rebecca Mahoney

Author:Rebecca Mahoney [Mahoney, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2023-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Eleven

Insomnia has become my roommate since the Memory Eater got in my head. But when sleep finally does hit, it hits quick. It means dreams can sneak up on me lately. So quietly that I sometimes don’t realize until midday the next day that I was dreaming at all.

But tonight, I don’t think my brain shuts off, not really. Because when I close my eyes on the guest room and come to hazy awareness on the deck of a ship, in the wide palms of a roiling sea, I think immediately, the Advent.

So definitely a dream.

It helps that I saw this before, just a few hours ago. This is exactly where I stood in Mrs. Stinnet’s memory, right on the bow. The moody skies are just as Abigail described them in her journal: the green-gray clouds lingered for weeks; the storm itself was circling like an eel. But even if I hadn’t seen it earlier, maybe I would have known the Advent on sight anyway. Being here feels a bit like being in the presence of Abigail’s magic. There’s a pull.

Mrs. Stinnet is holding the sachet of herbs, watching the waves take hungry little tastes of the ship’s hull. She shudders, as if she knows what’s next. But she hasn’t read Abigail’s journals. She doesn’t know yet that by the time the Memory Eater is finished with her, she’ll no longer know what an ocean is.

“I wonder if you ever got to brew those herbs.” The sound of my own voice startles me. It doesn’t sound the way I usually sound in dreams, talking without moving my mouth. It sounds like real words.

Mrs. Stinnet turns and looks. Not somewhere past my shoulder, like she did in the Atwoods’ stairwell. Right at me.

“Excuse me?” she says.

I wake to predawn light and the sheets twisted around me.

I ease myself up, just enough to pour some water down my dusty throat. I should have expected weird dreams tonight. But that was—well. Vivid. Vivid enough that just for a moment, I thought I had touched her again.

But I’m as alone as I was before.

I settle the sheet back over me. It did feel real, for a second there. But when I spoke, she looked right at me. So it definitely wasn’t a memory.

Because there’s one thing you can trust about memory. It’s a closed loop. A dollhouse built by history and your own hands. You can change it, whether you mean to or not. You can shift the furniture, or the positions of the people within, and swear that they’ve always been there.

But you can talk to it all you want. It will never, ever hear you.

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