PROLOGUE
Iopened my eyes, or at least I tried to.
My eyelids felt like they were made of sand, dry and gritty, and with every blink, they stung. Each flicker came in tandem with a throbbing thump that threatened to split my head in two. Yet I kept blinking.
I kept blinking until existence morphed before my eyes in flashes that told me it was not a vivid dream I was living, where there is no beginning and no end, but an unfamiliar reality.
What the f—Where am I?
I found myself lying in bed in a small room that seemed both foreign and dull. Apart from the colourful, frosted stained glass squaring the wooden door, there was no other hue in sight that wasn’t some shade of brown. Even the blotchy and peeling khaki walls wished to be umber.
I painfully swallowed, my parched throat resembling unused sandpaper. Ignoring my crushing skull, I focused on the tinted glass. Beneath furrowed brows, I caught the shadows of two figures, one male, the other a female with long hair. The figures mumbled, allowing me to hear just the bare minimum, and I caught only a few words here and there. Possibly the words “accident” and “doctor.”
I retaliated against my protesting skull and propped myself up until my back rested against the wooden headboard. The bed frame creaked, and I could tell through the glass that theshadows stiffened before they snapped their heads my way. They then mumbled between themselves some more.
It was not long hair I had glimpsed.
“Hello, sweetheart,” said the woman—eyes brown, kind perhaps, and wearing a veil that covered her head—as she neared the bed in small, careful steps, as if approaching a mistreated stray. “How are you feeling, my dear?”
“My head hurts and—who are you? Where am I? And where is my moth—”
A suffocating rush—one made of terror and fear—sprouted deep within me, anchored at my core, and spread its crawling vines, leaving no part of me untouched. It crept along my skin, my bones, my soul, leaving me with nothing more than a naked and trembling body.
“My mother and…and…my father. I—I…can’t remember. I can’t remember. Why can’t I remember!?” My voice started off raspy and broken, then morphed into a desperate plea that would certainly pierce and break hearts if heard.
The woman’s own pleading eyes mirrored mine, and I whispered with a dry and trembling mouth, “What’s happening?” And then I sobbed waterfalls, wept rivers, and cried a million oceans.
“Oh dear,” she mumbled as she wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulder.
“What’s happening?” I repeated. “Please.”
The veiled woman cupped my wet face and made me look at her. “Amfir once said that truth may not always bring light and joy to your neighbour, but it is always better than keeping them locked in deceit and darkness. And as hard as this is, it is the truth that I will offer you.” She swallowed. “My dear, you and your parents were in a grave accident. I amsosorry, but your parents didn’t make it, and you—you were badly injured.Thank Amfir a passerby found you and rushed you to the nearest doctor.”
My body trembled.
I couldn’t remember them. I couldn’t remember their faces. I was sure I knew before, who they were, what they looked like. But after a short while, I wasn’t even sure if I ever did. It somehow hurt more to mourn for the unknown, to long for lost recollections. It left a gaping hole within me, one deeper than an abyssal and void well.
“I can’t rememberanything. Why can’t I—” My next sob did not allow me to finish my sentence.
“My dear, I’m sorry you can’t remember them yet, but your head, it needs time to heal.”
My shaking hand reached for my bandaged skull, and I winced as every part of it pulsed. Then I closed my eyes and covered my face with my palms, forcing my body to wake. Because this was a nightmare—it must be.
But I couldn’t wake up. The veiled woman’s hand found my shoulder with the touch of an embrace. “It’s going to be all right. It will be all right.”
The whole of me shook, and I swayed my head in disbelief, ignoring its hammering protests.
“Look at me,” the woman whispered.
I didn’t.
“Look at me,” she repeated, firm yet soft.
I did. With shuddering and trembling lips, I looked.
Then she asked me, her voice low, “What’s your name?”
What a risky question it must have been, now that I look back and think of it.
