Chapter Fourteen
Trip Down Memory Lane
The Bliss
“Now, right this way. Step into a new memory.”
I lie awake at the end of the moonturn with the stranger’s words playing in my mind.
This is the quiet time in The Bliss. Souls are expected to rest and reset for tomorrow’s tidings.
And I used to be one of those souls, but something has changed.
New knowledge and memory scratch away at my mind like a cat that’s found the edge of a sofa.
Before this moondown period, the dark time for rest here, I was as all the others were.
Gently flowing through the moments of work, reflection, and connection as just another being in The Bliss.
But I cannot shake the cryptic words of the cloaked stranger.
Nor can I seem to forget the memory of Thomas, which now weighs heavy on my chest. It is a sensation I’ve not felt before.
Not one I can recall anyway. It aches. The sense of longing for something lost and the desire to know more have awakened an entirely new side of myself.
I feel like I am walking through a thick haze.
What I can see —a chance reunion with my one true love after so much time apart—is like a lighthouse on the shore, but beyond the immediate reach of my vision, everything becomes cloudy again.
But I yearn for more. I want to peel back all this fog and remember.
Yet another voice inside my head warns me not to explore any further.
Rest, Maddy.
I try to quiet my mind, but to no avail. I am overcome by my need to know more. To remember all that I can. To satisfy this ache of unknowing, which has a name. I now realize what this feeling is. A sensation foreign to my mind and body until now.
I whisper it aloud, shocked to find the word for this novel feeling in The Bliss. “Pain.”
I shoot up in bed and slip into my sandals.
I must know more now. Why hasn’t the last memory from the river left me?
Why am I suddenly aware of feelings that I have no memory of ever feeling before?
I feel like I’ve lived my life inside one room, imagining it as the whole world.
But now I know there is a universe waiting on the other side of that door, and I want to see what’s out there.
I move silently to the door of my place and gently slide the bolt open.
I creep into the darkness of The Bliss and make my way to the river.
My eyes see little, but my remembrances of the many times I’ve made this walk help bring surety to my step.
The space around offers no sounds or hints of motion in return, and before I know it, I have found my way to the banks of the river.
Memories of my last dip in this water stay in the forefront of my mind.
Will they disappear when I enter the river again or compound and expand? Only one way to find out.
I slide my sandal off my foot and hike my skirt up to mid-calf. I bend at the knee and gently dip my toes into the river. The sensation overwhelms me, and the memory of seeing Tommy in London after so many years comes flooding back.
England, 1868
I exit the shop, and the door closes behind me with a finality that makes my stomach drop.
For a moment, I stand there on the threshold, one hand still pressed against the rough wooden doorframe. My chest rises and falls too quickly, and my stays suddenly feel too tight. The London air is oddly fresher than it has any right to be in this part of town.
I inhale a generous breath, then another. It’s the first lungful I’ve been able to take since stepping foot in that stifling blacksmith’s shop. Though it was neither the heat nor the close confines that resulted in my inability to breathe.
No.
It was him.
The intoxicating gentleman, charged with returning my means of conveyance to working order.
The way he looked at me, as if he could see straight through my fine coat and careful manners to something underneath.
Something I’d thought long buried. The sweat and soot made for a heady aroma for both my eyes and ears, and I find myself disturbed by how much I want to go back inside. To look at him again … to be sure.
“I’ll work with as much expediency as my muscles allow, my dove.”
My hand flies to my throat, as if I could physically stop the memory from choking me.
My dove.
The words reverberate through every part of me.
My dove. My dove …
No one has called me that in years. No one but—
I press my eyes shut, willing my heart to slow its frantic beating.
It’s impossible; it can’t be. The boy I knew is gone—dead, for all I know.
Lost to poverty or disease or any of the thousand cruelties that befall those without means in this forsaken city.
I said the saddest goodbye to that dream ages ago. I had to—survival demanded it.
And yet … those eyes. The exact shade of hazel comes vividly back to my mind the instant I think of him, like a pair of olives ripening on the vine.
I know those eyes. They possess a warmth not diminished by age or the weathered aspects of his steely face, the hard lines that labor and life have carved into what were once soft, boyish features.
It was him. I know it was him.
My breath catches, somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
Thomas Bennett Asher.
I recall so many moments of laughter and connection with the younger versions of ourselves.
His hand in mine as we ran through the fields, grass staining my skirts while he promised that, someday, we would run away together.
I can still picture the way he looked at me the last time I saw him, assuring me that we would find each other again.
His soft, boyish skin juxtaposed against his defiant eyes.
He always was so confident and determined.
My chest hums with joy at the thought that he’s still alive, that he survived, and that against all odds, he’s here, in London, close enough to touch—
The song beginning to play in the center of me cuts short, severed by the shrill note that rings out across the busy marketplace.
“Madeleine!”
Alister. My fiancé. The word leaves a vile taste on my tongue.
He belts my name like I’m one of his hounds that’s wandered off.
I turn toward him. I compose myself as quickly as I’m able, smoothing my expression into something pleasant and docile.
The mask I’ve learned to wear. I will my feet to keep moving, and they obey, walking me closer to my future. Each step feels heavier than the last.
“I’ve been waiting for ages,” Alister says, his high-pitched voice making the words sound somehow wet.
“Sorry.” The apology is automatic. Toothless.
“Never mind that. What news? When will we be able to venture forth?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Alister rolls his eyes and huffs a frustrated sigh. “I could have fixed it faster than that.”
Then why don’t you? I think to myself but dare not voice aloud. Why did you send me in there like an errand boy while you stood out here, too important to dirty your precious hands?
But of course, I know why. Because Alister doesn’t fix things. Alister commands and expects the world to rearrange itself accordingly.
“Of course you could,” I lie instead, the words slipping out with practiced ease.
“That hardly seems expedient. What was the point of sending you in there then?”
“I tried, Alister. I did.”
“Not hard enough, it would seem.” He shakes his head as if I were a disappointing child. “Come now. Let’s get you home so I can at least make the most of this free evening in town before we head out.”
Alister grabs my elbow and moves me down the road. His fingers press into the soft flesh above my glove with a possessiveness that makes my skin crawl. I am not a person in this moment. I am a problem to be managed. An inconvenience to be relocated.
I allow him to move me because what other choice do I have?
I am spoken for. I am his. And far too soon, I will be Lady Sullivan, and this will be my life.
I should be grateful, I suppose. Alister is handsome by conventional standards.
Our children will be strong and beautiful.
My family is thrilled. From the outside, looking in, this is the perfect arrangement, and this is the life most only dream of.
My nightmare.
I am pulled from my thoughts as Alister continues to pull me down the road, farther away from the forge. Away from a life that I never imagined could be. Away from the boy who became a man, who still, impossibly, calls me his dove.
The boy I once loved has now become the man I cannot have.
The realization settles over me like a shroud, heavy and suffocating. I loved him then with the uncomplicated fierceness of childhood. And seeing him now, covered in soot and sweat and still alive, I could love him still. Perhaps I never stopped.
But loving him changes nothing.
I am promised to another. My family demands it. Society’s rules forbid anything else. And Thomas gave no indication he wished to reveal himself.
Perhaps it was not truly him. Perhaps my fragile mind is playing tricks on me, taunting me with a life that never was and never could be.
Or maybe it was the boy from my family’s home, now a man in Shadwell, and he has his own reasons for keeping our past buried.
Maybe the reckless whimsies of youth have not carried through to adulthood.
The thought plagues me as I walk reluctantly down the road, Alister’s hand still tight on my elbow, steering me toward a future I never wanted in the first place.
I don’t look back. For I fear if I do, I may never wish to turn around again.
The Bliss
Pulling my foot violently from the water, I gasp.
The memories of happening upon Tommy’s shop are not only vivid now, but full of so much complexity.
My heart yearns for a place my body is not allowed to hope for.
My head begins to wonder so many what-ifs and hows.
This is more than I expected. I can feel the joy of my mortal days creeping into my thoughts, but so can I now feel the sadness.
Like a canvas on a wall with merely the tiniest tear, I reach my hand to the imperfection and start to pull.
What begins as mere observation quickly becomes destruction.