The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe) (13 page)

Ember had cleared a big patch of dirt with her foot. Then she’d picked up a stick and sketched a rough picture of three circles sitting inside one another.

I rolled my eyes. “Em, this is exactly how you explained this to me when we first decided to bring other Illegals to the Firstwood.”

“I know, but what I’m trying to tell you now is how you’ll see the world once you’ve lost your memories. Can you think about it for a second, please?”

I stared obediently down at Ember’s system of dividing information. The third ring, the smallest, represented the people in the Tribe who knew the least about our secrets. These were the newcomers, the youngsters, and a few others who Ember didn’t consider to be entirely reliable. Then there was the middle ring of long-term Tribe members, and finally the first ring, the largest one. That last circle was made up of Georgie, Ember, and me. And now Connor and Daniel, too, I guessed.

Ember tapped the biggest ring with her stick. “You’ll lose this knowledge, Ash. So you won’t remember all of what I can do or any of what Georgie can do. And you won’t know about the saurs.”

“Or,” I put in, “about Jaz or Connor.”

She nodded and moved the stick to the second ring. “This knowledge goes, too. You’ll forget that some of the Tribe are still in contact with their relatives and that those relatives help us out with information and supplies. All you’ll be left with,” she concluded, tapping the third circle, “is this.”

“Which means,” I said grimly, “that I’ll know what Briony knows. Em, if I haven’t said it, I’m sorry for saying you were paranoid to want to keep secrets. How did you know, so long ago, that there’d be someone like Bry —?”

“I didn’t. I just thought it was unwise to be telling anyone who happened to come along everything about ourselves. Anyway, it wasn’t all about security. Hiding my ability was more because people aren’t very comfortable around me if they know I can change memories. As for Georgie . . .” She shrugged, not bothering to say what didn’t need to be put into words. We’d both agreed Georgie’s ability was best kept hidden. She was too fragile to have people pestering her for answers that she couldn’t give them.

Ember tapped the stick on the ground again. “What I’m trying to explain is that it’s not about losing small pieces of information. This stuff shapes your entire understanding of reality. I don’t think you realize how badly not knowing these things could affect you.”

“I know it’ll be awful, but it’s the best way to fix everything. Besides, it’ll only be for four days.”

“A lot can happen in four days.” She was silent for a moment, then added tentatively, “We could send you in closer to the Inspectorate visit. . . .”

“We’re cutting it close as it is. Anyway, you said my subconscious needed time to work with the machine.”

“It might not be necessary. It’s more of a precaution.”

I shook my head at her, knowing she was trying to find a way to make things easier for me. “It’s a precaution we need to take. We can’t afford for anything to go wrong.”

“I know that. But from everything Connor’s told us about the machine, it sounds like it works like my ability, although it can’t do what I can. It only
finds
memories, so I don’t think it’ll be able to tell a real memory from one I’ve manufactured.”

“Yeah, but like you’ve said before, if my mind — or the bit of you that’ll be in my mind — has a chance to experience the machine before we give it the Serpent memory, then we’ll definitely trick it. Everything depends on Neville believing the Serpent is about to attack the Steeps. Otherwise, this is all for nothing.”

I rubbed at Ember’s circles with my foot, messing up the lines and thinking about how strange the world would become once my memories were gone. “You know, Em, I
still
don’t understand how you’re going to do this.”

She brightened. “I’ve been thinking of a new way to explain it to you.” Taking a breath, she announced, “It’s like the rock pool!”

I eyed her dubiously. “The rock pool?”

“You know how there’s those rocks underneath the water, first the big one, then the five smaller ones sitting on top of it?”

“Yeah. I remember what the rock pool looks like.” Probably better than she did, because I loved that pool. I’d spent hours lying on an overhanging tree branch, looking down at the reds and greens and blacks of the marble rocks.

“Imagine,” Ember said, “that the pool is your mind. The surface of the water, which reflects the sky, is like the surface of your mind, processing everything that’s happening right now.”

“Okaaaay.”

“The way memory works is, we make sense of the things that are happening now by putting them into context, which is provided by things that happened before. So the underneath part of your mind, the bit under the surface of the water, is your past experiences. Those past experiences give you a structure that you slot your present experiences into. Like the way the presence of the rocks affects the currents of the water. Are you with me so far?”

I didn’t know if it was the rock pool thing, or the fact that she’d already explained all of this to me about five times before, but she was making sense. I nodded, and she continued. “And the way the structure gets formed is that some memories are more important than others. They’re key events that shape our characters and determine how we interpret everything. Which means if I submerge some of your key past memories into your subconscious — so the surface of your mind doesn’t have access to them anymore — the context into which you fit your more recent experiences changes. Imagine that the rocks are key events. I’m sinking them way down into the water, beneath the sand at the bottom of the pool.”

“Oh, I get it. The water would change, too, wouldn’t it? Because the rocks aren’t there anymore, the water would move differently.”

“Yes! Except I’m not sinking all the rocks, because I’m not submerging all your memories. So imagine there are lots of big rocks, and those are the ones that I sink — the key events. If the big rocks aren’t there, then all the smaller rocks that sit on top of them . . .”

“Will sink to the bottom of the pool.”

“That’s right. They’ll be disconnected and out of order. But since the mind hates chaos, the current of the water will take those rocks — those memories — and arrange them into a pattern that it knows. Without the key memories, it’ll use something else that it’s familiar with. Something that it won’t even know isn’t true.”

A smile broke over my face as it all came together. “I’ll adopt the version of the world that the third circle knows. Like the water rushing into the space left by the big rock and sweeping the little rocks around into a new position.”

She looked pleased, although I wasn’t sure if it was with me for understanding or herself for explaining so well. “That’s exactly it, and you understand why the mind won’t try to heal itself, right? Why it won’t try to bring the big rocks back up?”

“Because you’ll stop it?”

“No, not entirely. The real reason you won’t bring those memories out of your subconscious is because you don’t want to. This would never work otherwise. I’d have to take the memories out altogether instead of hiding them, and it would probably make you insane. But the memories I’m sinking are centered around people you love, and protecting what you love is your strongest instinct. You’ll keep those memories safe until Connor gives you the river stone and you say the code phrase to activate it.”

“And the stone will have
this
memory in it?”

She shrugged. “This or some other memory of us discussing the plan. That way, both your subconscious and your conscious mind will know it’s okay to remember. They’ll work together to bring the memories back into your mind. You’ll have a part of me with you to help, too.”

“Yeah. Em, I get how you can invent memories, and even change memories and submerge memories. Sort of. But I
don’t
get how you’re putting yourself in my head.”

“It’s not me exactly. I’m going to copy one of my memories, a core memory that contains the essence of who I am, and put it in your subconscious. In lots of ways, we are our memories, Ash.”

I stared at her and said, not very intelligently, “Um.”

She took a deep breath. “Think about it this way. After you shared memories with Connor, you could sometimes feel what he felt, couldn’t you? Especially when he was experiencing strong emotion?”

“How did you know that?”

“Your mind experienced the memories that were the essence of who he is. It created a link between you. Like an echo of him, in you. Which I warned you about, by the way.”

“Yeah, but it worked out fine.” Now it was Ember’s turn to say “Um.”
I wish those two would get along.
After a few moments of awkward silence, I asked, “So I’ll feel what you feel, too?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s my ability, so it works differently for me. It’s more like you’ll have a fragment of me in your subconscious, which can help you. As if I’ve put a new rock beneath the surface with the other rocks.”

“I won’t even know this memory is there, right?”

“It’ll be in your subconscious, so you won’t know it’s there. But it means that I’ll be able to help you and guide you through.”

It was reassuring to think that I’d have a part of Ember with me, but I didn’t tell her so. I didn’t want her to know how scared I was about this whole thing, because she’d never let me do it if she did. So I stood there quietly, listening to the birds and looking out through the trees.

The memory began to gradually dissolve, melting and blurring until it had slipped away from me completely.