Memoranda (38 page)

From the museum, we went down the hall to the library, and I showed her the volumes and my writing desk with the pen in its holder and the pages from my previous night's work neatly piled.

“
What are you writing?” she asked.

“
About Cley,” I said. “I'm trying to find him with words.”

“
People who believed Cley's writings in Wenau gathered money and sent an expedition a few months ago to the Beyond to also find him,” she said.

“
A mistake,” I told her. “I wish them well, but I'm afraid what they will find there is death.”

“
They took a lot of guns,” she said.

I could not help but laugh.

She was unfazed by my reaction. “Cley has become a hero for them,” she said.

“
I wish them well,” I repeated.

Then she pointed to my desk, at the jeweled box I keep in the corner of it. It is fixed with red stones and fake gold—just a trinket, but something that I have always liked since finding it underground by the site of the false paradise.

“
What is that for?” she asked.

“
Nothing,” was the real answer, and I was going to give it to her, but at the last moment, I had an idea. After our tour through the ruins, she knew most everything about them, but I thought as long as there was some element of mystery here, she might return again.

“
That box holds a powerful secret,” I told her, knowing by her obvious intelligence that she would be susceptible to wonder. “I'm not ready to show it to anyone,” I said. “I would have to know that person very well indeed.”

I thought she would ask me to open it for her, but she didn't. All she said was, “I understand; I have a box like that at home, myself”

“
And at home, they do not mind that you and your brother have run off to the ruins?” I asked.

She looked away from me, down one of the long aisles of the library, as she spoke. “We were supposed to be going to Latrobia to visit relatives. I made the boys follow me to the ruins by telling them they were cowards if they didn't come.”

“
How were you traveling?” I asked.

“
On horseback. We had two horses—Caine and I on one and Remmel on the other. I know they have probably taken them and gone back to Wenau to tell my mother that I have become lunch for the demon,” she said.

“
Come quickly,” I said. “We will easily beat them to the village.”

As it turned out, I flew her home. I cannot recount the details of that journey because as I now fly in my memory, I do not pass over the fields of Harakun, but instead, move at the speed of thought over the flat land of the Beyond. The beauty has me in its arms, and I am empty-handed, searching for Cley. Below, the wilderness is shaking off the spell of winter.

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Acknowledgments

I could not have written this novel without having read two books about mnemonics by Frances A. Yates—
The Art of Memory
and
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.
These are truly incredible works of scholarship, and I recommend them to anyone with an imagination.

I also must thank the following individuals for their help and encouragement:

Bill Watkins, Kevin Quigley, Mike Gallagher, and Frank Keenan for reading and commenting on this manuscript in its various stages of creation.

Walter, Jean, Dylan, and Chelsea for their generous technical support.

Jennifer Brehl, editor of this book, who, amidst the baffling maze of memory, would not allow me to forget to remember.

About the Author

Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels
Vanitas
,
The Physiognomy
,
Memoranda
,
The Beyond
,
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque
,
The Girl in the Glass
,
The Cosmology of the Wider World
, and
The Shadow Year
. His story collections are
The Fantasy Writer's Assistant
,
The Empire of Ice Cream
,
The Drowned Life
, and
Crackpot Palace
. Ford has published over one hundred short stories, which have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies, from the
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
to
The Oxford Book of American Short Stories
. He is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edgar Award, France's Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, and Japan's Hayakawa's SF Magazine Reader's Award.

Ford's fiction has been translated into twenty languages. In addition to writing, he has been a professor of literature and writing for thirty years and has been a guest lecturer at the Clarion Writers' Workshop, the Stone Coast MFA in Creative Writing Program, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and the Antioch Writers' Workshop. Ford lives in Ohio and currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1999 by Jeffrey Ford

Cover design by Jamie Keenan

ISBN: 978-1-4532-9388-1

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

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