Duet
But if you find the light of the sun
Or the warmth of a flickering ember
May the forgetting be undone
May you sing this song to remember
That was always my father’s favorite verse, but few still know it. Since his passing, there are only two people in the Hollow who’ve memorized it: my sister and me. When I sing it, time ceases to pass in the Tree of Memory. Memory globes stop in midair instead of shattering against the base of the tree. Large skeletal limbs that would have fallen on homes and schools in the Hollow instead hang off the tree at distorted angles. Our beloved keeper of memories has become a nightmarish parody of itself, but it’s still alive.
To restore the tree, two people must sing the third verse together. How am I supposed to convince anyone in the Hollow to sing it with me? The moment they hear the first few elegiac notes of the melody, they succumb to primal fear. They wouldn’t believe me if I said the third verse was the key to salvation.
When Elina wakes, I ask her to sing it with me, but she turns away from me and responds, “You must be insane.”
“It’s the least you could do after the devastation you caused.”
“Why should we preserve those memories? Can’t the Hollow move on without them? If you break free from memory, the future stretches out before you, infinite and open. You can move on. I have, and the Hollow should too.”
Grabbing the memory globe of our father’s death, I press it into her palm. “If you’d moved on, you wouldn’t have come back.” I ask her to play the memory again. When she hesitates, I add, “Let’s watch it together. Memories can preserve pain, but they can also help heal it.”
***
Finches sing their sweet tune in the grove. Poppies the color of the rising sun blow softly in the wind. White clouds drift through the sky as its color changes, pale gray becoming cerulean. Hawks leave their homes in the cliffside and ride the air currents, wings outstretched. A ring of clouds surrounds the sun like a halo. Only in the distance can I can see the half-dead trunk of the Tree of Memory. Elina embraces me for the first time since we were children, and we activate the memory together.
It’s no less horrible than before, but we have one another. This time, we both cry. Removing her mask, she washes her face in the sunlit stream. “Do you know what Dad was holding?” she asks. “A poppy, just like one of these. It must have been around this time six years ago. I’d said I wanted one, so he went to get it as a birthday present for me.”
I give her a cloth to dry her face. “It wasn’t your fault,” I say.
“Camyron, I know that. But that doesn’t make it hurt less. I’m sorry for leaving you without saying anything, but I couldn’t stay. I would have drowned in grief.” After wiping her face, she faces the Tree of Memory. “You’re right when you say I haven’t been able to move on. I hoped I could change that if I destroyed the record.”
“Will you help me sing the third verse of our song and revive the tree? Do it for me and do it for Dad. He loved that tree.”
She responds by asking for two promises: the first, that she can keep the memory globe, and the second, that we won’t imprison her when this is over. When I say yes, she stammers. Yes is hard to hear for one accustomed to hearing no. “One can’t change the past,” I say. “But the future has not been written. Come back home. Your bedroom’s still there.”
“Even if you’re willing to forgive me, I’ll always be an outcast in this town. But you’ll see me again. Running from the past is a doomed endeavor. That’s why I’m keeping this globe.” We share breakfast, lunch, and dinner in that sunny grove. It is not enough to compensate for the six years we spent apart, but it is nonetheless a hermetically sealed slice of paradise, and I would be tempted to continue talking to her for another few days if I didn’t notice birds flying in circles or streams flowing uphill. The balance of the Hollow is in jeopardy, so when the veil of night emerges from the embers of twilight, we sneak into the Hollow together.
We climb up a half-fallen branch and enter the tree through an opening near the fiftieth terrace. The inside is midnight black until we begin our song. Our voices harmonize. An anxious crowd of Hollow-dwellers, hearing us, races inside the tree and starts firing arrows, but they stop when the inside of the tree once more illuminates. As the memory globes glow, the broken terraces repair themselves. The branches reattach. A new Memory Thread forms. There can be no forgetting the shattered memory globes or fallen branches, but the tree lives. It instantly produces a memory of the event. I turn to show it to Elina, but she’s already gone.
Ten days come and go. The mayor showers me with accolades. I force myself to smile. My smile is less forced when I teach the Hollow residents about the third verse of the Song of Forgetting. My students wish me farewell as night falls, and I hike to Starcrest Hilltop. It’s the night of the full moon. Elina waits for me there. “I thought you might be here,” I say.
“Just like old times.” We revel in the golden moonlight and hum the entire song, remembering our father and dreaming of the future.
Editor’s Note: This is from a longer story I wrote in 2020 called “Song of Forgetting, Tree of Memory.” As a whole, the story suffered from the excess of exposition that too often plagues my own speculative work, but this excerpt, a revised version of the story’s final third, is largely successful as a standalone work.
Joshua Fagan is a writer and critic currently residing in Colorado Springs. His work has previously been published in venues including Daily Science Fiction, 365 Tomorrows, and Plum Tree Tavern. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the literary speculative fiction publication Orion’s Belt. His YouTube channel has received over 1.3 million views.