Anamnesis by Zorina Alliata (red queen free ebook TXT) 📖

She is our future. Your one Corner Flower will not keep you alive forever, but she might. It’s not too late. Do it.”

“No matter the consequence?” she asked. “No matter what she brings back with her?”

“It’s still our best chance,” my uncle said. “Do you want to live?” he asked, coming close to her, breathing near her ear. She trembled. “Do you want to feel young again? Do you want me to make you feel young again? Do you want it, over and over? I know you do. This child is our best bet, Ginny. Didn’t we mixed and matched until the pattern blossomed? Didn’t we wait for years until your sterile sister could get pregnant? I want to live, Ginny. Without this child, I will die. Do you want me to die? Do you?”

“You know I don’t,” she whispered. “Am I not allowed to be weak?” she asked, as she got up to look for the potions again. “I have known you since you were a year old. Your pretty blue eyes, your white face. They bred you into this, like all of us. At least I tried to escape, to control. Why didn’t you marry Sylvia? Why did you break the pattern? Then you could indulge your power dreams.”

“Sylvia didn’t want me,” he grinned. “We still have choices, you know. She didn’t like my pretty blue eyes and my white face. She liked my hairy, dark brother. The family agreed to her choice; it broke a pattern but it was acceptable.”

“Here,” my aunt said. “The Corner Flower.”

“Do it,” he said. “I’ll leave by our path. Find me there later – I’ll wait.” He caught her arm as she was moving around the cabinets. “Bring your potions,” he hissed. “Eliza is indisposed today.”

She accepted, humbly. She crushed the small, velvety white flower in a stone dish, while he walked away. The emotion left her too, the doubt bringing back old demons dancing in the shadows on the wall. But she chanted anyway. She put the crushed petals on my body and on my forehead. She danced, in a sad trance. As I came back from the dark, she swiftly threw three drops of water on my head. It smelled of roses.

I cried. It was better in the place I had come from. It was warm and forgiving, and lonely. My aunt took me in her arms; at the bottom of the stone dish, the last petal was crumbling. She decidedly took it and swallowed it in silence. Then she walked me out of her room and back to my grandparents.

“Did she bring anything back?” my grandmother asked.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” my aunt answered.

“Did you use the whole flower?” my grandmother checked.

“Yes”, my aunt lied. “I used the whole flower.”

But I had brought something back with me – the memories of the dead, awakened in my genes by the unfortunate trip between worlds. There I was: a few weeks old, pale and grave already, as the pain of all people had already started to creep up through my veins, hot and cold, stingy and sour, like a disease fatally embracing the core of my being.

*-*-*

As soon as Dante stepped into his cube on Tuesday morning, apathetic and filled with thoughts about his dad, he noticed that something was off. For one, his computer was gone. And his supervisor was waiting for him inside.

“Hello, Da Vinci. You’re late, they’re asking where you are”, the supervisor mumbled, obviously nervous and distraught for having to speak so closely with an employee. He never remembered Dante’s name.

“What’s happening?” asked Dante suspiciously. Never in his career had a boss stopped by to bring good news.

“Good news”, the supervisor grinned. “You’ve been selected for the team-building camp.”

“Huh?” Dante quipped.

“It’s a great honor, Leonardo,” the supervisor said. “I would have killed to be selected. They say only those that are being trained for high-power management positions are invited.”

“But,” Dante argued, “I really don’t want to be in management. Can you send someone else?”

Two large guards entered the cube and signaled to Dante to follow them.

“Sorry,” the supervisor said. “Valois insisted that you go. Go ahead, enjoy, you lucky guy.”

Silenced and terrified by Valois’s name, Dante followed the guards to a bus in front of the building. The bus was white and had no inscriptions and no license plate. The guards made sure he got in before locking the doors. The bus departed immediately, almost hitting a row of cars in the parking lot.

Dante looked around himself; the driver had a large black hat that hid most of his face; in fact, Dante was not even sure that he could see anything through that, plus a heap of dirty hair falling on his face.

“Hi,” he said, turning to the next row of chairs, where an Asian-looking giant was staring him in the eye. “Do you work for the Corporation too?” he asked, hoping to make friends with some high-powered executive.

“No,” answered the giant, and turned his head away towards the window.

“Oh,” Dante mumbled.

The bus was carrying about 10 people, all of them men, and all of them completely unknown to Dante. He figured they were probably so high up in the Company’s management, that he never had met any of them. He pondered the idea of going around and introducing himself, but nobody else was talking and the driver was rocking the bus pretty badly. It somehow didn’t seem like a good idea.

He did notice though that everyone else looked really tall and muscular; like wrestlers or basketball players. Obviously, he thought, it was not the first time they were going to a team-building exercise camp.

Eight hours later, the silence really started to bother him. There was nothing to look at through the windows either, but grass and trees for miles. The last people he had seen were hours ago on a field, an old farmer who looked sick and some other men helping him out. If the Company was trying a team-building success, then how come nobody even tried to communicate with each other? Besides, the more he looked at the men in the bus, the less they looked like high-powered executives. Dante was almost sure that one of the guys in the back was a janitor in the building.

“Are we going to be back by 5:00 PM?” he asked loudly. “Because I have dinner reservations,” he lied – mostly because it seemed the thing to do when all the other guys looked so much bigger than him.

“The camp is for 3 days”, the giant next to him hissed.

“3 days??” yelled Dante. “But I don’t even have a change of clothes. For God’s sake, nobody told me that.”

The giant shuddered. Just then, the bus turned a sharp left onto a country road.

“What the heck is this?” Dante asked. “West Virginia?”

The bus rolled over the hills, deeper and deeper into the country side. Unexpectedly, it stopped in the middle of the road.

“Get out!” the driver yelled. “All of you, out!”

Everybody rushed out in silence. Dante, deciding to keep some dignity, walked slowly to the bus front.

“I said, move!” yelled the driver again, and shoved Dante out the door with no mercy.

By the time Dante had regained equilibrium on the ground, the bus had left in a cloud of dust. He looked around; everyone else seemed cool enough. They had obviously been through this before and they knew that the abuse had ended.

“Maggots, assholes, filthy rats!” somebody suddenly yelled at the top of their lungs. Dante turned to see a huge fellow with a worn baseball bat looking straight at him.

“Who, me?” Dante asked with zeal and a smile. He so wanted to not upset this man.

The man ignored him the way you ignore a fly and moved forward.

“Welcome to Camp Hell,” he said loudly. “I’m Hardy. You pieces of shit, you deserve nothing. You will learn to be real men here. It is more that any of you are right now. Say ‘Thank you, sir’ for the privilege of being here.”

“Thank you, sir”, the men immediately answered, before Dante could join in.

“Do you have a problem with me?” Hardy inquired.

“No, sir, not at all,” Dante answered. He could sense the danger in the air, thick like blood. “I quite like you, actually,” he added with enthusiasm.

“You Alighieri?” Hardy yelled.

“Dante, sir, ” replied Dante. “My name is Dante Portinari…”

"Whatever", Hardy interrupted. "Here, have an egg."

Dante extended his hand in time to catch an egg in his palm.

"Whatever you do while you're here…" Hardy said in low voice, "Do not leave that egg off your sight. Do you hear me? If anything happens to that egg by the time you leave, I'll make you regret the day you were born. Understood?" he suddenly yelled.

"Sir, yes, sir!" Dante yelled back, remembering from some movies that this should be a satisfactory response in this situation.

On the horizon, the sunset was setting in. Dante was cold and tired. And he really had to pee.

*-*-*

In my uncle's memories, his mother was a powerful figure, present almost everywhere. He had adored her. When he was a child, my grandmother would whisper secrets in his ears, aside from his brother. Costin was a beautiful child – blond, curly hair, green eyes, long cheek bones. His brother Marin, my father, was two years older than him and his total opposite – dark skinned, chubby, common-looking. My grandmother did not make it a secret that she loved Costin more; he got all the good food, all the good clothes, all the good games. My father got to do his choirs and sleep in the small guest house with my grand-grandmother, Catrina. She was the one that raised him and gave him the nurturing love he was craving.

When Costin was four, he tried to set fire to the guest house during one dark night. My father awoke in time to stop the flames.

When Costin was nine, he pushed Catrina down the attic stairs. My grandmother laughed loudly at her son's sense of humor; Catrina never fully recovered and died a few years later, missed only by my father.

When Costin was eleven, he made a habit out of stealing small coins from the farmers gathered at the church on Sunday. He'd buy cheap, sticky sugar candy and eat it alone in the garden, hiding from his brother who could have asked for some of it.

When Costin was sixteen, he noticed a beautiful girl who lived across the lake. She had long hair that waved down her back and dreamy, innocent eyes. Her name was Silvia. By then, Costin had learned enough magic to go out on his own. My grandmother had taught him the dark side of spells – the ones that enslave your mind and your body.

His magic never worked on her; it washed right off and never affected her. She married my father two years later, in secret, by the lake. My father had built hidden shelters all across the hills; he was tough and silent and never complained that life had dealt him a bad hand.

"You promised her to me!" Costin yelled at my grandmother.

"I'm sorry", my grandmother replied calmly. "It was meant to be. I