5. All I Need is You – Rosemary #2
While I might be skilled with potions and elixirs, my magical capabilities were completely underdeveloped. I should have been receiving magical lessons since childhood.
"Precisely," she replied, a satisfied grin lifting her thin pink lips. She lowered her fingers toward the ground, and the dirt she'd disturbed danced back into place as she magically tidied my front yard.
"Maybe another time, Magdalyn. Try in another ten years. Today, I have plans." Magdalyn flinched at my harsh tone. Normally, as a healer, I took pride in my caring nature, but Magdalyn had a way of bringing out the worst in me. She was a lingering reminder of a world that had abandoned us.
Magdalyn huffed, glaring at me. "Listen here, young lady. Today is lesson day. Now, you turn that attitude around and maybe you will learn something new."
I laughed, my head falling back. "Mags, I’m one hundred and twenty-two years old. I’m not a child any longer. You cannot speak to me as such." I swatted my hands toward her. "Now flitter off to wherever you come and go from."
Mags stilled. Her small body drooped before she finally landed on a nearby table. Herb chose this moment to join us outside, landing near her and snapping his beak at the small fairy. She lifted herself back into the air, floating before me with her face scrunched with worry.
"I... I didn't realize so much time had passed."
Something cold settled in my stomach. Her tiny face crumpled like a child's. "Magdalyn, you don’t remember all the times you've come over the years? After the first ten years, I grew and became very different. Or the years where I'd grown so thin and fragile due to hunger?"
"I didn't abandon you," she squeaked, shaking her head.
"I just... I can't remember. There are gaps, Rosemary. Holes where memories should be. Your mother, her death. It took from me. Took because of our bond.” Her tiny shoulders sagged heavily, as if carrying the weight of the world, as she shook her head with a palpable sense of defeat.
The delicate, butterfly-like wings on her back flickered nervously, catching the light and scattering it in a dazzling display. My anger, which had been boiling within me like a storm, began to fizzle out, replaced by a reluctant empathy as I watched her struggle.
"Your mother was desperate those final days," Magdalyn whispered, her tiny wings trembling. "She knew she was sending you away, knew she might never see you again. A mother's love can work powerful magic when it's driven by the need to protect."
"What kind of magic?" I asked.
Magdalyn's expression grew distant. "The kind that ensures a child can grow up safely, without the weight of impossible burdens. Sometimes... sometimes forgetting is a gift, until you're strong enough to remember."
A chill ran down my spine. "What burdens?"
"Memory magic," she whispered, her form already beginning to fade. "She took specific memories from you, child. Ones that could have gotten you both killed if the wrong people knew they existed."
"What memories?" I demanded.
She pressed her small hands to her temples. "It started right after... after your mother..."
A chill ran down my spine. "After mother what?"
She huffed in frustration. "I can’t, the memory won't come. It's like trying to grasp smoke." Her voice grew distant and pained. "Your mother was powerful, Rosemary. More powerful than anyone knew. In those final days, she worked magic I'd never seen before. Binding spells. Protection magic."
"What kind of protection magic?"
Magdalyn's eyes grew unfocused, as if she were trying to see through a thick veil. "She said some secrets were too dangerous to remember. Some connections too powerful to leave intact." The fairy's form flickered, becoming translucent. "Memory magic, she called it. Said it would keep you safe."
"Keep me safe from what?" I demanded, but Magdalyn was already fading.
"Ask your crow," she whispered as she winked out of existence. "He remembers what the rest of us cannot."
I turned to Herb, my shoulders lowered with newfound dread. His beady eyes stared back at me with an intelligence that suddenly seemed far too keen for a bird. "Well, that went well, don't you think?"
But Herb was watching me intently now, his head tilted as if he were trying to tell me something important. For a moment, his eyes seemed far too knowing, too ancient.
In all the years of Magdalyn's visits and the years in between, I had never once considered what she had lost when my mother had perished.
Mags had been the bonded fairy to my mother.
Their bond should have been eternal. Instead, our mother had sent Magdalyn away with us, begging her to stow us somewhere safe.
But what if there was more to it? What if my mother hadn't just hidden us from the unseelie queen, but had hidden something else as well? Something dangerous enough to require memory magic?
Herb moved to the edge of the table, stretching his neck so he could be as close to me as possible. I stepped next to him, my fingers moving over the feathers like a whisper. "You remember, don't you?" I whispered. "You remember what really happened."
He cawed once, softly, and something in that sound made my chest tight with a loss I couldn't name.
"All I need is you, dear friend, and to break this curse so that I can have my sister back," I muttered the words, his soft feathers a comfort as I spoke. But even as I said it, I wondered what other secrets lay buried in the gaps of my memory, and whether I truly wanted them back.
I didn't know if I was trying to reassure him or myself, but now that Magdalyn was gone again, more than guilt settled deep within my heart. Fear had taken root there too, growing like a weed in the spaces where my memories should have been.