Of course! Why didn’t she think of that?
Gran nodded approvingly, her eyes glinting. “I was getting to that. There’s only one I know of. If it can be found, there’s a good chance it’s still working since, at the time, it wouldn’t have been caught in the whole debacle.”
Shanna breathed a sigh of relief. She could always trust Gran to have a solution. She was a little more annoyed at Gran’s clear approval of Simon, though. In any other case, she’d love her support of her potential romantic partner. In this one case, she certainly didn’t want her to matchmake, though.
“And? Where is it?” Simon asked.
Gran’s pale eyes penetrated Shanna. “Your mom had it.”
Shanna’s heart dropped into shadowy depths.
Simon looked from Gran to Shanna. “What does that mean? Is that bad? Is she an evil witch?”
“I don’t know,” Shanna squeezed out.
“Well, where is she?”
“I don’t know!” She fought hard not to rush out of the room like an angry teenager, but she still couldn’t stop herself from sniffling.
Mom.A name that was just that. No longer a title, a role, not even a memory. All Shanna knew was that she used to have one and that her leaving dropped a fuzzy fog over Shanna’s childhood. Shanna had been forgotten many times, but she’dbeen on the receiving end only once; just enough to know how it felt. It was strange. In a way, the absence of the memory was a memory in itself. Shanna knew something had happened simply because she didn’t have memories of what exactlyhadhappened.
“Isabel had a silver bracelet with three onyx stones. That was our family’s Mercurial Crystal, forged many generations ago.” Gran’s voice drifted over as if she were far away, separated from Shanna by mountains of regret. At least she was addressing Simon, not her. “But she left twenty years ago and took the bracelet with her.”
“Left?” Simon asked.
“Her lover, Shanna’s father, had forgotten her.” Gran’s voice had dropped low, overcome with memories.
How did she still know it? Had she written it down?
“They managed for a long time. Longer than I ever did. Longer than I imagined possible for any of us. But at last, the curse caught up with them. There was some silly mishap, an accident that separated them for a few days too many. And she was gone from his memory.”
“But couldn’t she tell him what had happened? She had—they had you,” Simon said to Shanna.
“It gets worse after the curse takes effect.” Shanna wasn’t sure why she was explaining, but somehow, she dragged out the words. “It’s harder to re-establish the relationship once someone has been completely forgotten. Imagine we’re a disease, and the curse is the vaccine. It doesn’t matter if the disease comes back once you’ve been vaccinated. You won’t care about it anymore.”
Simon blinked, staring down at the carpet.
She supposed she didn’t have to explain further.
Gran looked at her with a light smile of compassion. “Isabel left because of a broken heart,” she told Simon. “She didn’t want to go through anything like that again, so she said she’dgo somewhere where she had no one to care about. Where she could get lost. To the end of the world.”
Shanna frowned. “Maine?”
“Alaska?” Simon tried.
Gran snorted. “New Zealand.”
“New—” Simon bent over, wheezing. “She really meant it with the end of the world.”
“You don’t remember Mom, do you?” It wouldn’t be possible. Gran couldn’t have found a loophole in the curse or somehow escaped it, and they knew the solution to it was impossible.
Gran came over to Shanna, enveloping her in a hug. “No, dear. Everything I know is from what I wrote down. A few pictures I have. But looking at it is like reading a book or watching a movie. It’s something I objectively know happened, but it feels like it didn’t happen to me.”
They stayed like this for a bit, Shanna snuggled in Gran’s embrace, until Simon shifted. “Sorry,” he said. “If you brought this whole thing up, does that mean …?”
“That this is your only hope.” Gran straightened up from the hug. She smiled at Shanna and tucked her hair behind her ear—like she’d always done when Shanna was little. “If you want the Mercurial Crystal, you’ll have to go find your mom, sweetie.”
Shanna’s head swam as she slowly shook it. “To New Zealand? Is she even still there?”
