Luna stood over me, eyes blazing. “You almost left Esme behind!”
I picked myself up slowly from the ground and hobbled over to check on Adri, who was coming to with a groan, rubbing the side of his head.
“No Lu!” Esme stepped between us, “I told her to go ahead of me.”
“Then you’re as much of a fool as she is!” Luna shouted.
“I thought you were …” Her voice cracked.
Esme put a bruised arm around her shoulders, “I know …”
Luna lowered her face, but I could see the glow of tears in her eyes. 186
“We’re here Lu,” Esme comforted her.
“And where exactly is that?” I wondered.
The golden door, as usual, had disappeared from view. Instead of desert, we found ourselves in a large and fragrant field. It was a totally different time of day than the one we’d left behind. Here, the morning sun rose pink and gold over the horizon. The dewy grass was full of deep orange and red marigolds, yellow buttercups, and puffs made up of red and gold star-shaped flowers, called milkweed by some.
The air was full of the lemon scent of vervain plants, shaped like lilac flowers on green fingers of grass. And a sweet, honeyed fragrance came from the butterfly bush, whose small purple and fuchsia flowers came together in the shape of popsicles.
All around us, bees buzzed and butterflies fluttered.
Butterflies: there were so many! Blue morpho or emperors, with their vibrant cobalt wings and elegant black borders, scarlet peacocks with their bright red hearts and black and white-speckled edges. Then there were clouds of monarch butterflies who, according to Da, flew across the Americas each year, from North to South America and back again. Now, they were in danger of being wiped out by destruction 187of their habitats, pesticides, and changing weather patterns.
I looked around. Mum always said that a butterfly’s wings could start a hurricane. She meant that seemingly small things could lead to disaster. It was true, but so many of our disasters were man-made. Without these pollinators keeping plants alive, whole ecosystems could be in danger, not to mention the foods we ate.
Thankfully, in this field, monarch butterflies had found safety.
It seemed as if, for the moment, we had too.
Even though we knew that we needed to be on the lookout for what the Council would do next, it was hard not to take the chance to breathe.
We sat down in the bright green grass and munched on chips and bars from our packs. While we ate, Luna and Esme told us more about their friends – the other gifted children they’d lived and trained with at the Big House and their failed attempts to escape.
“I hope they’re okay,” Luna murmured, her face tightening. I could tell that she felt responsible for them, like little brothers and sisters. Maybe that was why she always seemed on edge. 188
“Me too,” Esme sighed. “Hopefully, after all this,” she waved around, “we’ll be back with them.” Adri was silent with a look of shame on his face.
“Agreed,” I said quickly, trying to change the subject. “But can we eat something more than chips and protein bars? We can’t save anyone if we starve to death first.”
I hadn’t eaten a meal in ages.
“True,” Esme nodded, digging around in her pack.
Even Luna agreed.
Adri went with Esme to a gurgling brook nearby, while Luna and I set up the solar heater. We boiled water to refill the thermoses and rehydrate cups of corn-soup from our packs.
An hour later, after all the prep, we were ravenous. The snacks had only increased our appetite.
The rehydrated soup was surprisingly good. I ate as fast as I could without burning my tongue.
Luna belched loudly and grinned, “Sorry.”
We all laughed.
“At least the Council did one thing right,” I said, with a stretch and a yawn.
Adri’s face darkened. I bit my lip. That was a silly thing to say. 189
He glared at me. “Back there in the desert … who got me away from the shadow?”
“Esme,” I told him softly.
“Zo did too!” Esme jumped in.
Adri sat completely still, staring into the distance.
He looked at us with a confused look on his face. “You risked your lives to help me, even after I betrayed you and the others …Why?”
I met his eyes.
“Because that’s what friends do.”
He looked at me for what felt like a long time. I held his gaze and my breath. I could feel Luna and Esme watching us. No one spoke.
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Adri announced. “I’ll let you and Esme bring back my memories …” He faltered, suddenly uncertain, “If you can.”
I wiped my tears and turned to Esme, “Please help.”
Her freckled and sunburnt face was radiant under her multicoloured hair.
“Let’s do it,” she grinned.
“I’ll stand guard,” Luna promised, her face softened by the garden we were in, as if by a painter’s brush. Her beautifully dark and watchful eyes, guarded by blue-black lashes, were full of an openness I hadn’t 190seen before.
Esme and I sat on either side of Adri, our hands in touching distance of his.
“Be careful, okay …? One, two, three,” Luna counted us down. “Go.”
We took Adri’s hands, and went in.
Esme and I splashed into water up to our ankles. We were standing in the shallows at the edge of Las Cuevas beach in Trinidad. Behind us was yellow sand and beyond it, the rocky caves for which the beach was named. In front of us was the green water of the wide-open bay, with striped fishing boats and fishing pelicans in the distance. Adri stood within arm’s reach of me, looking out at the water, but he didn’t seem to know that we were there.
“Is this normal?” I asked Esme, as the salty breeze blew into our faces.
“Everybody’s memories replay differently,” she told me.
In this case, instead of a rolodex of images or different video windows, it felt like we were inside of a movie.
“Do you want to let him know we’re in?” Esme asked. 191
I tapped Adri’s shoulder gently. He looked around with a start.
“It’s Zo and Esme,” I said in my most calm voice, “We’re in one of your memories.”
“So, it’s started,” he said, looking back out at the water.
He smiled. “This is a good one.”
It was then that I saw the family a little way out in the water.
“You want to go closer?” Esme asked Adri.
He nodded, with a huge grin.
We walked out to the little group carefully, the water lapping at our knees and then our chests. Somehow, the sea felt warm. The water was so clear I could see right down to my feet. None of us wore shoes. I could feel the sand hug my toes.
I recognized Adri’s mum Lila from her Frida Kahlo brows and loud, raucous laughter. She wore a light pink headscarf over what looked like a bald head, while sporting a pink and white tracksuit. His dad Sarun wore neon pink swimming shorts and Adri wore a matching pair.
Both Adri and his dad had full heads of hair. His dad even had a long beard. I had never seen any 192of them this way. They looked different, younger. Adri and his dad both had the same slightly crooked noses, that gave them a wry, humorous look.
His dad was cracking up at something his mother had said: a big booming laugh that filled the sky. Adri was between them, a year or two younger than when I first met him; floating on his back and looking up at them with a look of such sheer joy that it hit me in my chest just how much he must miss them.
“This was after her first set of treatments,” the Adri standing next to me said, looking at his old self. “The first time she lost her hair. Her first remission. We came back to Trinidad to celebrate then too. I can still taste the sea; hear their voices.”
Esme and I listened. We could see his dad go swimming nearby, while younger-Adri floated near his mum in the water.
“You know what Mai said to me that day?” Adri muttered, standing next to me.
“I was resting on my back in the water, totally relaxed, my ears going in and out of the sounds of birds and talk and wind and laughter above the water and the quiet below, where I could only hear my heart and the sounds of the sea. The water rocked me 193like Mai used to when I was little. Da was swimming nearby. He was so relieved, so happy we were all still together.
While he swam, Mai bent over and whispered in my ear: “Do you know four questions we all ask ourselves?”
“No,” I said laughing, thinking that she was trying to crack a joke. “What?”
All of a sudden, she was serious, her eyes shining down on me like stars.
“We ask ourselves: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? And … most importantly,” she touched the tip of my nose with one finger, like a blessing, “Why am I here?”
As Adri turned to look at Esme and I, everything around us spun and disappeared.
We found ourselves standing in a cement bunker, in front of a metal vault with a round handle. I looked at Esme, trying to catch my breath.
“It’s okay,” she said calmly, “He led us here …That vault holds your wiped memories, doesn’t it Adri?”
He nodded sadly.
“You see,” Esme reminded me, “not even the Council can take memories away completely. They 194just get some of them locked away.”
Adri and I looked at each other, then flung ourselves on the door handle, trying to turn it with all our strength. It didn’t move an inch.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Esme advised. “You need a code … For some people it’s the right sequence of smells, sounds, images, or words. It could be things that you’ve seen, or said, or done a thousand times before, just not in that order and in that exact way.”
I fell back. Adri’s head was bowed, thinking.
“Do you have any idea what it is?” I squeaked.
Of all the possible combinations, how were we going to find the right one, here and now?
“I think it’s words,” he muttered, glancing at Esme. “I don’t know why.”
“Trust that,” Esme touched his shoulder lightly, then dropped her hand. “Just try.”
Adri bowed his head again. Whether he was breathing deeply or praying, I couldn’t tell.
Then he whispered, his voice breaking over each word: “Lila, Sarun … Mai, Pa!” he called out with pain in his voice. After a deep breath, he added: “Zo.”
I stayed completely still, trying to take in what I had just heard. 195
At first, there was no change. Then there was a loud crying sound.
The door to Adri’s missing memories creaked open. Images, sounds, and colours began to leak out. We tried to pry it open all the way, but instead, it started closing, as if it had a mind of its own.
Suddenly, we were booted out of Adri’s memories, back to the field of flowers, with Esme and I kneeling on either side of a cross-legged Adri.
Luna kept watch with her bamboo sticks nearby, asking questions with her eyes.