“I know I’ve lived those lives,” he protested, although he sounded weak, even to his own ears. “Do you remember everything in your life, little changeling? Or do you also make up memoriesor believe your dreams to be true?”
She cringed at his words, blinking and darting her eyes to the side.
He pressed his advantage. “I’ve seen you drop into a dream world. Maybe you should get Dr. Murray to evaluate you, too.”
“I always snap out of it,” Clare said. “It’s just my active imagination.”
“Seems like you’re not really there when it happens,” Griffin said.“Maybe you were seeing visions in the Otherworld. You claim you’re Brigid. If you are, you would not lie to me.”
“I’m concerned about you, not lying.” She wrung her hands, encircled the altar, and sat down on a front row pew. “Won’t you do what the doctor said? If you can retain your memory, you would have an easier time knowing what’s true and what’s made up.”
“I liked you betterwhen you made things up.” He couldn’t help a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “Clare or Brigid or Morrigan or changeling. Why are we having this conversation under that wooden cross?”
She avoided his questioning stare and lowered her head over her hands. “I cannot take advantage of a man with a medical condition.”
“You pity me?”
“No, never, but I have a conscience.”She stood and faced him, head lifted and a fierce determination in the set of her jaw. “I will help you restore your family treasure, but no more pretending. We both heard Dr. Murray. Do you want to have no memories left by the time you hit forty? You’ll be like an Alzheimer’s patient. Memory like a sieve. I’ve seen it before. There was a nun at the abbey who would ask me the same question everyfive minutes. ‘What’s your name, lass? How is the abbess? Is the war over?’ She didn’t even know her own name. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
“But to cut off part of my brain? Why can’t I take medication?”
“You already take medication. The seizures are becoming more frequent. It’s getting harder for you to catch up. Don’t you want to live a complete life without forgetting?”
Zigzagged sparks flashed in back of his eyelids, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “What you’re telling me is to abandon my destiny. You’re saying Brigid isn’t real, and everything written in the annals are fables. I don’t think I can live with that.”
“You won’t be living any kind of story if you can’t remember who you are.” Her voice lowered. “Please, Griffin, if you want me to be yourBrigid, to experience a love story, or to do something epic, you have to remember.”
“Why do you care?”
She took his hands and rubbed them warm, looking like she didn’t want to answer. Could she possibly care about a confused creature such as himself? It was better to believe he was a man who lived forever or a time traveler than to have his condition revealed as a disorder.
When she finally spoke, she swallowed and blinked back tears. “I don’t want to care, but I love stories, and there’s something so tragic about yours. I want it to end happily. I want you to find what you’re looking for, and I hope I can be a small part of it. I feel a connection between my story and your story, and I’m a wee bit curious how it will play out.”
She seemed so sincere, and maybeshe was a great actress—especially since she had an angle of him funding a movie for her. She was a writer of fiction, a professional liar, and she herself was not entirely psychologically sound. She hallucinated and believed herself to be many people—including a fairy queen, a changeling, and a Morrigan.
“What’s in it for you?” His voice was rough and his throat tight. He wanted to believehis Brigid was out there, but the story he’d lived was much more epic than a movie script.
“You, of course.” She stroked the side of his face. “I want to know the real you.”
He ran his fingers through her lustrous hair. “Is the real you solely your memories? If so, how do you know your memories reflect what really happened to you, or they’re fabricated by the stories you tell yourself?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “But if we’re all living made-up stories, then I want to make up the story alongside of you, and at least our story would be consistent. We can be witnesses for each other.”
The door of the chapel swung open, and another couple stepped in, huddled together, weeping.
Griffin pulled Clare aside, and she glanced at him. A silent message passed betweenthem, and he nodded with understanding.
If a tree fell in the forest and no one observed it, had it truly fallen?
If he lived a life and no one shared it, had he truly lived?
Taking Clare’s hand, he walked out of the chapel with her and left the couple to grieve in privacy.
“Will you submit to the surgery?” Clare asked once they were outside of the Neurological Institute.
“There might be things I want to forget,” he said, wondering if his life of fables and mythology was actually better than the mundane life of the ordinary person.
“True, but the way you are now, you don’t have control of which memories are shot. Waking up must be disorienting. You don’t know which memories are true and which are fed to you.” She pulled his hand as they walked downthe street. “Let’s not decide now. Let’s have fun and create a few memories, then you tell me if they’re worth keeping.”
“Let me keep all of my lives, at least for the rest of today.” He winked and caught her eye. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be any fun.”
