By the time Natalie made it off the train back in Coldton, Piper stretching her arms high over her head behind her, the sky was darkening. The girls had stayed out too long, skipping rocks on the bay, climbing boulders over the tumbling waters of the river, which gurgled and rushed from the ocean like a never-ending song.
Then Piper thought it would be funny, having still been tipsy with whiskey, to throw an extra, worthless copper coin into one of the wells, claiming if she made a wish, it would come true.
They had locked arms afterwards. "What did you wish for?" Natalie asked.
"If I tell you, then it will not come true. Don't you know that rule?"
"I am tired of rules and superstitions. Don't you know that by now?" She looked down at the little wrist watch she wore while out and about. "We really ought to head back now. I told Peter Sheinfeld I would be back by four, and it is less than an hour till."
Now, it was an hour after four. The sun dipped lower and lower in the sky while Natalie and Piper split ways at the corner where Natalie's office sat, between the train station route and a blackened alleyway, its uneven cobblestone path catching the rest of the sun like dying candle flames. Piper left for her own home, a rented house in the neighborhood just west of the Coldton palace and all its marble and flint glory.
Natalie and Piper had passed it a few times together while out on a sprint. They had stood outside the tall iron gate, woven almost as though intentionally with vines budding little blue and red berries. Through the bars, they spied the palace's massive green lawn, crisp and dotted with clumps of rose and barberry bushes. The drive was made of smooth, sparkling granite, leading straight up to the marble steps, breaking only to encircle the large stone water fountain, shaped beautifully of women in loose fitted robes holding large clay pots, in which sparkling streams of water sprouted. Though they had no faces, Natalie imagined they would all be smiling at each other, simply happy to be eternally beautiful, with pots of eternally cascading water.
After unlocking her door and slipping inside, she moved across the room to sit at her desk, not bothering to remove her snug wool trench coat and earmuffs. She felt as though she had waited an eternity, until, to her great horror and relief, footsteps clattered onto the step outside the front door. A moment later, someone knocked and pushed it open, taking their hat from their head.
It was Peter Sheinfeld.
"You're late," Natalie said, not unkindly, and stood up, hands braced on the edge of her desk.
"I am. Actually, I was here earlier, at four, but you seemed to be away. I waited, then got a little hungry." He smiled ruefully. "There is a café I like. They make extravagant sandwiches and soups.
"I think I know of the place." She could not suppress shivering in the cold air the open door let in, and instantly upon noticing it, Peter closed it.
"I am sorry I was away," she continued. "My assistant and I had to run a few errands, and I was gone longer than I had anticipated." She offered an apologetic smile, but it would and could not express the truer, deeper regret she felt missing his first call. Perhaps he would have invited her to the café with him after the session.
No, do not think about that. That is not why you are helping him.
"Please, take a seat," she said, moving around the desk, yanking the collar of her coat tighter around her neck.
"You are still cold." Peter looked around, and seemed to notice the fireplace for the first time. While he knelt by the hearth and opened the chain and glass doors, Natalie watched without protest.
He rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows and snatched a poker from the wrought iron rack. After lighting a match over the coals, he shuffled them around with the poker, spraying sparks, his free elbow resting on his left knee. With a little smile in Natalie's direction, he said, "See? That was easy now, wasn't it?"
The mind weaver smiled back. "Thank you."
"Now you can take off those earmuffs, at least."
There was a moment of silence as she did so. "Well, shall we begin again?"
He peered up at her through his lashes. Softly, he said, "Yes, Natalie, we certainly can."
***
Behind the pillar Natalie stood, waiting for Peter to come her way. He sat on the bench, elbows on knees, looking as wary as before. The conductor announced the train's departure to Coldton. And the young woman showed, just as before. This time Natalie realized it was not a book nor suitcase she carried, but a canvas, the front to her hip, so all that could be seen was the brown backing.
This was it. Natalie pulled the hood of her enchanted coat over her head, yanking the sides around her face. She walked with her hands in her pockets, quickly, shouldering past a person who hardly looked back.
Peter had spotted the woman. Already, he was on his feet and marching toward her. Natalie had to think fast. She stepped in front, keeping her back to him, face hidden, perhaps to dissuade him from his original idea, offer the woman enough time to get away. But she could not let Peter see her. She could not involve herself more than she was supposed to. Meeting before she became his mind weaver could ruin the professional aspect and her work.
The woman handed her ticket to the conductor and gathered her skirts with her free hand as she stepped onto the train, forcing Peter to look elsewhere. It worked, until Peter clamped onto her own shoulder.
Cursing under her breath, she elbowed him in the side, causing somewhat of a scene. People watched, but nobody moved to intervene, perhaps thinking it was only a scrabble between lovers.
Without thinking, afraid he would turn her in his direction and see her face, she ran. It was a thoughtless move.
"Hey, wait!" Peter called, rushing after her.
She was supposed to remain subtle, as if she were a ghost, not cause such a scene. Peter would now remember chasing a woman in a coat a lot like the one Natalie wore every day. She made it to the end of the platform and stumbled down the stairs, pushing a few people out of her way as if they were no more than tree branches, because for all their significance, they were.
The sun's warmth coated over everything, so different from Coldton. Already, Natalie felt beads of sweat on her neck. Her heart hammered. Peter was on her heels, too curious who she was, with no train to miss what with no ticket or perfect disguise. Natalie wanted to shout at him to leave her alone, but was afraid to use her voice in case he remembered it once they found themselves at the table afterwards.
She could break out of the session now. She succeeded in her mission. So why didn't she? She ran down the paved path toward the rocky cliffside of Pemawick Cove. People craned their necks in the sun, picnic baskets or books open on their laps. Others waddled by, taking pictures of the majestic lighthouse, the shimmering waters of the ocean. She could jump off the cliffside. It would not kill her. But it would ruin Peter, having witnessed what he would consider the suicide of an unknown young woman. She would not strain his mind that way, force him to always wonder, cause him to go insane like Piper insisted he would.
She turned toward the lighthouse, Peter's hand grasping air where her arm had just been. He did not seem to care how insane she may have thought him. At the lighthouse's front gate, she pulled on the door and slipped to the other side. She took a deep breath. Peter walked up and stood with his hands on the top of the low chain fence. A cool breeze, despite the sun's cloudless sky, rustled his hair, turning the strands to silver. Just before he could open the gate, she turned away and ran for the lighthouse. Shoving its door open, she stumbled inside, out of breath, and pushed herself out of the session not unlike trying to move from under one of Pemawick Cove's boulders.
She and Peter blinked at each other.
She waited for him to speak first, but he did not. At last, she could not bare it, and asked, "What do you remember of that day, Mr. Sheinfeld?"
He slipped his hands from hers and pushed them over his face, leaning back in the leather chair. It made a sound of protest. "I missed my train because a woman elbowed me in the side. Well, I did not actually have a ticket... and she had quite a reason to elbow me." He tilted his head, peering at the window. "I chased her, because she dropped something. We stood at the lighthouse's fence. I--," he stopped for a moment, turning back toward Natalie, "do not exactly know what happened after that. She ran inside and vanished."
He bit his thumb nail and studied her.
She felt her head spin. She wanted to shove her hand into her pocket to see what it was she had dropped, but could not do so in front of him, in fear he would instantly suspect that she was the woman in the coat. She needed Piper. She needed that special medicine her friend made to help soothe jumbling thoughts, those threads always weaving, always trying to remember the whole story, every word and detail to solid perfection. That kind of thinking could drive a person mad. Piper's medicine helped a great deal after sessions Natalie had stumbled over as carelessly as this one.
Not that she ever stumbled this carelessly.
"The train. You said you did not have a ticket. How could you have missed it without a ticket?"
She was trying clarify his new memory of this day.
"Well, I lost my ticket, and I planned to pretend the woman in front of me was my wife, trick the conductor into checking only her ticket, assuming I had one as well. But when I put my hand on her shoulder, she elbowed me very hard." He touched his waist, as though the jab was fresh, and shook his head. Then a new detail occurred to him. "I could not see her face, the hood of her coat was up. I do not know why, but I was curious as to who she was." He looked at her. "Can you tell me how this all works? I mean, you can change a memory, I understand that, but how? Could I meet you in my memory?"
She cursed, only in her mind. He knew. He knew she was the woman in the coat. He was drawing parallels. There was no starting this memory over.
"I am not really allowed to explain the mechanisms behind my gift."
"Please? I started that fire for you, to keep you warm." His smile was playful, even a little mischievous. "At least the primary idea."
Natalie stared past him at the fire. It continued to crackle, heating the room until her palms began to moist.
"So be it. No harm in basics." She took a deep breath. "I can see your memory as you do, like a person watching from the sidelines. In order for my gift to have any effect, I must stop you from experiencing whatever it is you had asked me to forget, all without being seen by you."
She did not explain all of her abilities to him. There was more she could do, if all else failed. And it would not be the end of the world if she was seen by Peter. Of course, a mind weaver liked to keep her work clean and efficient, but there were moments that could not be helped. Like this one. It is why at the very end, after the client's unwanted memory had been wiped completely away, they are required to drink a special capsule made by the mind weaver's witch, one that will erase ever even having met a mind weaver like Natalie. They would recognize her in passing, but would not remember where they had seen her before. Just another familiar face.
This part was essential, and required by Colette. Clients could not know who their mind weaver was, because if they did, they would go mad trying to remember what the mind weaver had made them forget. It was a safety procedure. And not just for the client.
She waited for his response to the information she had shared. He nodded. Did he dismiss the idea of the woman he had chased having been her? It did not matter. He would never remember Natalie after all of this was over.
But she was not sure she liked the idea of that.
"Does my answer satisfy you, Mr. Sheinfeld?"
He looked down at his hands. "Yes."
She wanted desperately to ask what it was the woman had dropped, but would find out soon enough, after he left. She would look in her pocket and see for herself. She could take anything into a person's memory with her, so long as it was in her special coat, but it would remain there, no matter how she used it in the memory. She could burn it, throw it over a cliff side, hand it to someone, but no matter what became of it in the memory, it would never physically leave her pocket. A lot of clients walked through the door thinking this was all time travel, but it was not, and it always annoyed her to sit and explain the difference, remind them that time travel did not even exist.
"I want you to know that you may start experiencing dreams of this new memory of yours. It will replay itself, because your mind will have a hard time adjusting to it, kind of like a new work schedule, or diet." She smiled, trying not to feel as lame as she did. She wished for a moment to drop the professionalism, and simply talk about the weather.
Peter nodded. "And what do you do with the memories of your clients, miss Gorman? Say you come across one you cannot handle?"
She swallowed, feeling as though the doors to her cabinets had unlocked and flung themselves wide open with creaking bangs behind her, exposing all of the memorable items for him to see. "Well." She cleared her throat and told the truth, though in her case was an absolute lie. "Mind weavers don't hold onto memories. We burn the items with our witch's spell, therefore banishing the memory from the world, as well as our own minds."
Peter's face fell. "You don't remember them, ever?"
She shook her head. "If we follow Colette's rule, then no. Never." She surreptitiously turned her head, pretending to brush a stray hair behind her ear so she could take a peek at her locked cabinets. She was surprised when there was the sound of a hand's palm slamming down against wood.
"You have to be able to remember at least some of the memories from your clients," Peter insisted. "What if you did not perform the witch's spell, then?"
Natalie's mouth opened, unsure what she was supposed to say. The truth? That she doesn't perform the spell? That she does remember every memory she has ever dealt with? She could not trust Peter with such a secret, could she?
"Why is this so important to you, Mr. Sheinfeld?" she asked, a little breathless.
He looked away, toward a painting on the wall. "Because I'd rather think my true memories would live somewhere, even if not with me."
Natalie wished she could tell him that they would live with her. In fact, she wished she could reach across the table to offer a reassuring touch to his hand... She took a deep breath to rid herself of both thoughts. "I have something I would like you to have." Without thinking, she moved toward the stairs that led up to her apartment. "Should you wait for me, I will fetch it and be back in a moment."
His brow shot up. "Alright, then."
She turned and walked up the stairs. When the slab of wall blocked her from his view, she stopped and reached into her pocket to feel inside. What she pulled out sent a shot of ice into her veins.