Jörn asks, sitting next to me,
“tell me again what you remember of that night in the hut—with Ulf—how far does it end in your memories of Elan and the dreams?”
He puts his hand upon my arm and searches my face
I realize it has great importance and because my mind has been swimming back and forth over thoughts and details I keep spinning out when we get here
I shut my eyes and think. I think about the new details I have learned from Jörn and —I cannot deny how things he’s said seem to trigger …. a complete picture perfect memory. The sharp details of these that go with the sudden flash of a memory picture are made only more vital because of the emotions the image triggers. The sudden urge to burst into tears. So, I’ve been in no hurry to think long upon all these crashing revelations
Truth be told, I seem to be embracing complete denial that this is real. Or not. Which ever ejects me through the safety hatch door out
So —using that sense of detachment which, shock of events have altered me into, I go into the mental place where the memory is sharp ….
“It was cold—there was blood….I remember being chased—hiding from—that guy ….who was that guy?”
“Mama’s other brother….”
So…. I think, trying to put it all together; the blood feud—and he said Elsa is Lisa’s aunt. Was she Ulf’s or Ivar’s? Or maybe there was a sister ….?
It is hard to keep hold of the plot when it is happening right in front of you. Being played. And a pawn.
But I continue,
“there were heavy weapons around because ….” I look at Jörn suddenly. Because I remember something suddenly. I remember the ones he was working on still when —this happened. They were still lying across the table by the welding pit. This memory sends a chill. As a flashing memory goes across my thoughts recalling the decision to choose one of the ones he’d not finished yet so I would not wreck something he was ready to sell
“Thank you,” Jörn says to me
I look up at him,
“I thought you said it doesn’t work that way.”
“I lied,” he smiles that lascivious, sly grin
I shrug. So…. at least it saves time when I’m not in the mood to talk ….
“I….used it….didnt I?” I look at him now as I put more images together as they flood my thoughts …. “Oh my god ….”
Only it is too horrific to say aloud
Because there was more to the story of that day —maybe I never wanted to remember; and horrors that are too disturbing
But I remember ….as her—I stare at the sky from the window now, thinking of another sky and I say,
“it changed me….I believed it cursed me—it went against the faith I’d believed in ….” but I remember more than that. I understand more about what he said before. The blood feud that wasn’t mine to end. It must have been guilt over killing Ulf that caused the self sacrifice only there was more to it; I look up at Jörn now understanding why my memories of Elan never go past this but I say to Jörn,
“I remember coming back ….” I feel my face drain of blood as that light headed feeling hits me
I take a moment to think. The parallel lives. The lessons. The timelines. The repeated lessons that never got learned and return to haunt through incarnations
but Jörn never gets to die. To reincarnate
“That isn’t precisely right,” Jörn says —correcting my thinking ….
So?
“The shifters shift between life and death,” he says simply but just as sudden as that remark is offered, he quickly drops it, “what else do you remember ….?”
“You want me to say it aloud what I already know you know I remember ….?”
He raises his pale brows patiently and looks me in the eye.
“I believed I was cursed—“
“—because?”
“When I recovered back from the dead ….we lost our first born— it was miscarried ….”
“Do you understand why you choose not to remember?”
“Because I believed all our misfortune was ….” because now I start to remember other things of after ….and after ….and more still ….
I sigh and cover my face. I take deep breaths
Jörn whispers, reading my thoughts
“You remember Andreas as he was then, don’t you ….his first steps and Hanna’s—arguing over what to name her that time by the surprise of that herd of deer—“
“I fell in the river—“
“It was a pond,” Jörn laughs
It takes more moments for shocks to wash over as details seem to drown my thoughts but finally, after a deep breath, I ask,
“do they know?”
Jörn stares at me oddly before he replies,
“can you imagine anything ever getting by those two?”
I shake my head but I say,
“I mean—they don’t actually think—believe —I’m ….”
Jörn sighs,
“I was harder to convince than they were. They picked you out of a crowd before you even met them. They’ve known all along. And—I might add, have been constantly going behind my back snooping around —well, doing what kids do ….”
I laugh,
“Kids…. what are they, like 1,100 years old? And—how is that —like how do they….?”
Is this something to do with what he was referring to in “slowing my biological timeline”—because Elsa and Josef ….
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