A few hours later, Skye threw aside his two-hundredth book onto the growing heap of rubbish and meaningless words behind him.

  Nothing he’d read mentioned his blight. The few books on curses he’d found contained nothing relevant, and the mentalists books, few as they were, barely touched upon memory alteration.

  To make matters worse, this library was the most disorganized collection he’d seen in Troqua. Books on history, politics, and economy were mixed with romance novels, atlases, and fashion magazines. Many had vague, misleading, or downright bizarre titles. But it was the redacted content that maddened him the most.

  He clutched his head, keeping himself from bursting. A clue had to be found here somewhere; he could feel it. But at this rate, it’d take months to scan the entire place.

  Footsteps sounded behind. Emery wandered the rows alone, watering plants and straightening books, humming a raspy, tuneless melody. He seemed to enjoy his solitary time, which for some reason, vexed Skye. This man could travel anywhere in the world, yet here he was, stacking books in this sham of a library.

  Skye needed a better strategy. In other libraries, there were registries or indexes, cataloguing the books, and guiding readers to what they needed. If this place had one…

  A dangerous idea struck him. He might be lost in this clutter, but someone else seemed to know their way around.

  Emery was the duke’s brother and a special kind of warden judging by his sword-pen insignia. He was also the person in charge here, and some sort of librarian. If anyone knew whether these archives held the curse’s cure or not, it had to be him.

  He needed a convincing ploy to approach without him summoning the guards. Was it possible?

  This wasn’t the lamest straw he’d clung to. And with his curse, he had nothing to lose. Steadying himself, he walked towards the humming bibliophile.

  “Have you found the book yet?” he started.

  Emery shrieked and jumped, throwing his watering can high, splashing them both. He stumbled back, slipped on a book, and crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Skye felt foolish for fearing this frail man.

  “Are you alright?” Skye asked innocently, offering a hand.

  With his pale face, and trembling hands, Emery looked like a corpse dragged out of a tomb. After a moment of sizing up Skye, he concluded he wasn’t in danger and scowled.

  Slapping Skye’s hand away, he stood on his own. “No, I’m not fine, you little rat!” He rubbed his rear. “How in the Void’s name did you get here?”

  “You brought me here.” Skye frowned back. “You said you’d find a book to help with my curse.”

  Emery’s scowl deepened, twisting into a grimace. “Help you? Help you?! You nearly killed me! I won’t fart in your general direction if it meant saving your life.”

  “Wha- you…” Skye threw up his hands. “You brought me all the way from the city on the promise you’d find a cure to my curse here.”

  “Yes, and I gave you a piggyback ride and we had a tea party with the stonebear.” Emery turned, marching toward the exit. “Do I look like a coalhead to you, boy? Whoever let you in will fatten the rats in the dungeon tonight.”

  “Oh, no, no, no, no!” Skye moaned. “It happened to you too. My curse has erased your memories!”

  Emery stopped to glare at him. “Curse, curse, curse. What’s this curse you keep blabbering about?”

  Skye took a deep breath. Emery had bitten his hook. Now, he needed to reel in slowly as to not lose him.

  He sighed theatrically. “How many times must I explain this? It’s a strange bell that makes people forget me whenever it chimes. It must have rung while I waited for you. That’s why you don’t remember.”

  Emery squinted, crossing his arms. “And where is this bell now?”

  “It’s invisible. Only I can see it.”

  Emery gave a flat smile. “Ah. Of course it is. Boy, you’re not cursed. You’ve got a very special condition, called being completely off your rocker.” He turned away, continuing toward the distant door. “I don’t know how you got in here, but I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  “The curse is real! That’s how I got in! That’s why you don’t remember me,” Skye insisted, matching his pace. “It’s ruined my life! I can’t own anything, I sleep on the streets, I can’t get a job. My life’s a nightmare!”

  “Oh, the tragedy,” Emery said. “I too dreamt of joining the theater when I was your age. Maybe we should write a play together. We’ll call it The Idiot Who Believed, a stirring tale of a boy who thought nonsense would win him sympathy.”

  “No, wait!” Skye rushed ahead, speaking louder and faster. The line was about to snap; he needed another bait. “I’m not the first person this curse has affected, and I won’t be the last. Now that we’ve met, it might infect you too.”

  “Mhm.” Emery didn’t even look back. He stopped next to the stairs and bellowed, “Guards! Guards! You let a stinking bat into my library, you coalheads!”

  Skye jumped in front of him, blocking the way. “It might affect the duke or duchess next. Or even Chief Akunai.”

  Emery stopped, raising an eyebrow, smirking. “You’re telling me you’ve met the duke?”

  Skye nodded quickly. “Yes! I was at the Neashure estate this morning when Chief Akunai gifted Duchess Cleora the Oneirolian ring.”

  Emery tilted his head, eyes narrowing. Then, as if struck by a cold wind, he staggered back. His hand fumbled through his robes until he found a small black box, which he flipped open. Something shone inside.

  “Chief Akunai escorted me there and introduced us,” Skye said as Emery closed the box. “He said your vast knowledge can surely help remove my curse.”

  Emery stayed silent, rubbing his chin. Skye’s pulse quickened. His bait might have been too bitter; Akunai and Emery didn’t get along at the party.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Guards rushed in, staring stunned at Skye. Emery signaled them to hold.

  “Your curse, explain it to me one more time,” Emery said.

  Skye described his life for the past few weeks at length, adding the fabrication about how he must have caught his curse from someone else he’d forgotten. It might throw the chief’s investigation off, but Skye could start over whenever he wanted. He only needed a lead.

  Emery nodded through the explanation. “You don’t just have a flair for drama, you’re a natural-born playwright. I could try coming up with such a tale, but the reappearing dish would’ve never crossed my mind.”

  Skye heard his hope shatter to a hundred pieces. Emery went on unnoticing, or uncaring. “I have read or skimmed every page in this library at least twice. And I know the tale you’re spinning is a lie as vast as the Scar.”

  This couldn’t be true. There were millions of books in this library, tens of thousands of them discussing fantasia and a myriad of magical marvels. Emery had to be lying, or he simply didn’t know what he talked about.

  The bell was real, and so were its effects. Skye could see it right now, hovering at the edge of his vision.

  He wasn’t insane. He wasn’t a ghost.

  Sensing his frustration, Emery sighed. “Where should I start? First, you should be dead. You know how Geo fantasia causes petrification? Well, Psycho fantasia is worse, focusing solely on the brain. And manipulating the minds of thousands of people at once, as you described, will cause your braincells to go—” He snapped his fingers. “Boom!”

  The ground swayed beneath Skye. He grabbed a bookshelf to steady himself. He hated how much sense that made. “I am alive,” he confirmed, more to himself than to Emery. “I’m here.”

  “Unfortunate on both accounts,” Emery replied coldly. “Second, you don’t have a sufficient fantasia source to power your curse, and you’re not actively charging. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you need fantasia to channel. No recharging: no fantasia. No fantasia: no channeling.”

  Skye’s eyes flicked after the bell. “That can’t be true.” He bit down to stop his jaw from quivering. “You’re hiding something.”

  Emery waved for the wardens to come. “I can list a dozen different reasons for why your curse is impossible, but it doesn’t look like you’d listen.”

  “You’re lying to me!” Skye screamed. He shoved the nearest bookshelf, toppling it with a crash, slamming it into the next. Bookshelves fell like dominos, a cracking cascade of splinters and pages. Emery yelled. The wardens vaulted down, rushing after Skye.

  He sprinted into hiding. The instant he rang the bell, the world snapped back to normal.

  He ducked behind a stack of books, chest heaving. He felt buried under a never-ending cave-in, digging with all his might, hoping for a speck of light. This library was supposed to be his salvation. He’d defied death to reach it, but found only coals.

  What else could he do? He’d searched every corner of Troqua, asked everyone with an inkling of knowledge. And they all answered the same: ‘You are impossible.’

  “To the Void with them!” he shouted. Then rang his bell as Emery cursed back.

  He refused to believe Emery. The chief’s claim to having read all the books here had to be fabricated boasting.

  Skye would find the answers himself, and prove them all wrong, no matter how long it took.

  **********

  In the hidden library stood a great grandfather clock whose hands churned slowly, like a millstone grinding away at Skye’s mind. They turned and turned, drudging in their cumbersome, lazy way, dragging day after day into intermingling, meaningless memories.

  Skye leafed through his four-thousandth book, or perhaps his fourteen-thousandth; he couldn’t tell. Words merged into void drivel, the sentences, therefore, devolved into the mad scratches of a prisoner trying to keep count of his solitary days.

  He’d sustained himself by stealing food from the wardens whenever the knots tied around his belly could no longer suppress his hunger. His petrification had lessened, but not cured, leaving him in constant pain.

  Before him lay a stack of books with ‘curse’ in their titles: “Zalami Curses”, “Why Casting Curses is a Terrible Idea”, “Cursing For Dummies”, “Cursed Blesses and Blessed Curses”, “Infamous Yokamese Curses”, “To Curse a World: An Autobiography”, “The Curse of Immortality”, “Curses Encyclopedia: Volume 13”, and “Curse of the Keepers.”

  All equally useless.

  Every book he sat aside drained a dose of his hope. Every page he flipped dimmed his once-burning faith until it became the vague vestiges of a dark beacon. He still believed he existed. Never doubted the fact, same as his love for the sky and his longing for his friends. And he knew he was not the first person in the world to be so heartlessly cursed. But the suspicion that all those who’d shared his misfortune had died, forgotten and uncured, gnawed hungrily at his heart.

  “A Mentalist’s Guide to Curses” was the next book he retrieved. His back straightened; his eyes regained their focus. This was the book he’d needed.

  Hastily the pages flew by, revealing secrets, teaching techniques, and correcting misconceptions. A dedicated mentalist might have berated him for not being attentive to the detailed explanations and expert diagrams. But he only slowed wherever the keywords ‘memory’, ‘forget’, or any related synonyms appeared. He sought them with shaky fingers, and desperate eyes, pleading the dry, aged paper for answers. Then he turned the last page and stared at the leather cover for a bleak while.

  With a wordless cry, he hurled the book, then kicked over the next stack.

  He screamed until screaming became no longer a vent for frustration but the only act keeping him sane. He screamed until the pain of his throat exceeded the agony inside him and then some. He screamed until Emery cursed loudly and the wardens came running with their astra held high. He screamed even though he knew screaming wouldn’t save him.

  He screamed.

  Dong.

  It was over. He’d done everything he could think of in Troqua. Nothing worked. No cure to be found. This was his reality now, to be perpetually, and repeatedly forgotten.

  He threw his head back, resting against the hardwood of the bookshelf. So much hung on his shoulders. Justice for his teammates, the lives of everyone he cared about. When he closed his eyes, he saw an army of murderous elexii marching upon his city. Houses burned, people cried, and blood ran cold in the streets. His feet splashed as he marched, the city’s ceiling racing down, burying everything and everyone he knew. All the while, he went on, unnoticed.

  Where else could he find answers?

  Troqua was not the only city in the world. Kastrala and Shiema were nearby. And Narona and the capital Ferrugh further away. Shiema was a small coastal town, but Kastrala was a grand city, bigger than Troqua, with magically reinforced walls that had withstood the mightiest elexii for centuries. A hub for trade and a cultural center; logic dictated it had a library, perhaps larger than this. Hopefully, theirs held books not diluted into a tasteless mash of words by the removal of crucial information.

  He sighed.

  Going to Kastrala alone was impossible, even with the curse. The forest teemed with thousands of savage elexii, and the further one waded into the forest, the bigger and more vicious they became. No, he needed another solution. One with a chance of success above zero-point-one percent.

  He summoned his bell. What are you? he asked as it swung idly.

  He closed his eyes, caressing the ribbon on his wrist, reaching inward. No iota of ‘anticipation’ resided within him. He’d been spending it regularly, not allowing it to accumulate. Still, he could feel the hair-thin tether linking him to the curse.

  Could he sever it?

  After some prodding, he concluded that no, the tether could only be pulled from one angle. There was no use interacting with it unless he wanted it to chime. But… what if he flipped his perspective?

  How did their connection feel from the bell’s side?

  He traced the tether to the bell, careful not to tug on it. He felt… a hunger there. To learn. No, to hold secrets.

  To contain him.

  A bright light shone against his face.

  At first, he thought he’d discovered a new antic of the bell, but the light was physical. A gem had fallen from a chandelier perhaps, or one of the floating lights had drifted low.

  It blinded him fully, and yet, he squinted through his fingers at its source. Something was there —no, someone.

  Warden Emery stood before him, carrying a glowing crystal, looking down at him with glowering, condemning eyes.

  Before Skye could pull on his tether, before he could jump out of the way, or beg, or plead for a chance to speak, the old man swung a wooden cane down, smacking it against Skye’s skull.

  ?????Days until Green Eve: 36?????