This Week I Wrote

Part 55: Forgetting Things

Did I convince myself that I'd already written this week? Absolutely. Did I write this in literally ten minutes after realising that I hadn't? Yeah. I call this one- The Magnus Archives, if The Magnus Archives made very little sense.

My glasses were broken when I woke up. That's not a big issue for me- my vision isn't that bad, I can still see- but it made everything blurry, and it was pretty irritating. It was only once I'd spent a minute or so being annoyed about that, that I started to notice my more immediate problems.

For one, I had no idea where I was. There was a flowerbed to my right, and the sun was warm on my skin, but I couldn't see anything familiar, and I was pretty sure it wasn't because of the glasses. The other problem was that those glasses weren't the only thing I'd broken.

A jarring burst of pain ran through my left arm as I started to stand up, and by the time I was on my feet I'd learned it was best to let it lie limp at my side. Even standing, I didn't recognise the place around me, although I could tell now that it was a garden, and a large one at that. It was only then that I started to worry, if you can believe that. I hadn't been drinking, didn't even remember leaving my house, and yet here I was, coming to in some garden.

The flowerbed was full of primroses and low-growing spring flowers like that, bedded randomly, with little heaps of black compost around each one. It looked to me like some children had probably done it- which would also explain such a simple bed surrounded by so many ornate ones.

Perhaps now is the time to add that I'm not a professional gardener myself, but my Dad was, and he transferred some of his knowledge, and all of his snobbishness, onto me. I'm embarrassed to say that I often judge people's front gardens as I walk past. But anyway, I have a fairly good idea of what formal gardens look like. I don't know how relevant that is to my story, but I thought you should know.

The rest of the garden seemed much more formal, edged in with small hedges and built up of different coloured rings. I could make out a few which had centrepieces standing a little taller, and I gravitated towards them. Nearest to me was a sculpted stone tower, topped with a decorative egg-shape. The next was a topiarised tree, and the next after that was a small summer-house hemmed in with tulips.

I took a while, with my blurred vision, to find the handle and let myself in, and the door swung quickly shut behind me. A red leather chair sat in the middle of the room, and I sat in it almost without thinking- pleased to have somewhere to set my body, which suddenly felt very heavy.

Looking around, the summer-house wasn't all windows like I'd expected: the honey-varnished walls made it dark inside, and the view from the front windows stood out in contrast. The wood smelled sweet and newly cut, and I grew drowsy as I watched flashes of movement from the birds outside.

I'd guess I was close to being asleep when I started seeing symbols- runes, almost. Then the show began.