Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) (14 page)

“You knew he was here?” Oscar asked from behind them. “You knew he was going to stop the buffalo?”

Mrs. Pianova looked back. “No, I didn't. Now keep quiet.”

They entered another Hall, not as big as the two before, and not as illuminated. The columns weren’t in the center of the Hall, but along the sides in niches. A single point of light shone down on each one.

The sounds of the other Halls were muted and the air was still. Thomas couldn’t see a single faun working on the columns. Only a couple looked like they had been worked on recently, and only one had instruments that weren’t covered in dust.

“The Hall of Atrophy,” Mrs. Pianova whispered. “Here, the last members of a Faun clan come to finish their history before extinction.”

She let her words sink in.

Thomas had heard the word “extinction” many times before. The world was growing aware that a massive extinction event was taking place, but the implications had never fully connected with him.

“This is the place where you’ll probably sense Mneme the most,” she said, “and maybe find some answers.”

“I thought we were going to actually meet her?” Oscar asked. Thomas also thought that they would be able to sit down and ask her directly for her help.

“You thought wrong,” she simply said.

“Those columns . . .” Thomas said, pointing. “They seem abandoned already.”

“They probably are,” she told him. “The Fauns need their anchors to survive, but the anchors don’t need the Fauns. The columns will remain here until the last member of an anchor species disappears. Then it will move.”

“Move where?” Oscar asked.

“I'll show you, Oscar,” she said, “but Thomas must wait here for Mneme.”

      Oscar exchanged a concerned look with Thomas. “What if the Fauns come back here? Thomas will be alone.”

“They won't. Chief Gratsat has already seen to that, plus, they are terrified of this Hall. Good luck, Thomas,” she said as she walked to the other side. “Don't read anything here,” she warned, lifting a finger as she walked. “It is not for your eyes either.”

“Well, good luck, I guess,” Oscar said, knuckling Thomas goodbye and following Mrs. Pianova.

Thomas stood alone, the silence and darkness of the Hall of Atrophy closing in on him as he saw Oscar disappearing on the far side. He'd left everything with Bolswaithe, and Mrs. Pianova warned that he shouldn't try to read anything on the columns.

He was tempted to do it though, and he knew his Cypher ability would probably work with Faun script as easily as with codes or different languages. He debated with himself for a couple of seconds, but decided against trying. He really trusted Mrs. Pianova's judgment.

Without anything to do, he sat down in the center of the Hall and waited.

And then, he waited some more, until he waited himself to sleep.

Mneme

Thomas slept until he dreamt, and then he became aware he was dreaming. It was a peaceful dream, a soft, dark blue dream where nothing mattered outside and worries and obligations washed away from him.

There was a question in the darkness; it wasn’t made up of words, but feelings.
“Who are you?”
it seemed to ask. Somehow, Thomas knew that it was Mneme talking to him, and he realized he had no body and no mouth with which to answer, so he tried to picture himself as best he could.

And the images poured forth from his mind. Forgotten memories of early childhood—he felt so much happiness as he heard his mother for the first time, as he opened his eyes and saw a blur that would later become his father. Oh, the faces his father made by his crib trying to get a smile from him. The sounds coming from the TV, the mesmerizing movement of the fan above his crib. The taste of chicken puree. How much would he have loved to tell his mother to give him something else to eat!

The images grew faster and faster, his whole life playing before him.

The anguish of going to the doctor, the pain as he got vaccinated, the comfort of his mother's kiss.

The anger of his first tantrum; why couldn't his parents understand? The joy of games, the anticipation of opening presents, the sound of rain on the roof, the fright of thunder, the complex feeling of uneasiness before touching a cat for the first time, the antipathy he felt for the boy who took his crayons in class—Mark was his name, the teacher, Ms. Katsulas, said it constantly.

Everything poured forth. Sounds, feelings, images, tastes, things he’d touched and things that puzzled him, all he had learned and all he was afraid of, all the words he'd heard and all the words he'd said.

Girls.

Girls were weird, girls were
different
, girls were pretty.

The first time he had approached a girl, the first time he had been kissed, the first time he had been let down, the first time he’d lied and broke a heart, his first crush, his first Tae kwon do class, the first time he’d let down his parents, the first time he’d felt love.

Tasha . . .
the line broke for a second with an image of her face, of her eyes, and then it jumped back to Fulton.

Grandpa brought him a toy gun,
why a gun?
He was so strong, much more than his dad, until year-by-year his dad’s strength dwindled as Thomas grew older. Dad went from superman to human, as his father had a mild heart attack and spent a week in the hospital.

Then the stream slowed down as it reached the last time he saw his parents, the last kiss from his mother as they boarded the shuttle to Akron, the last time he saw them through the window of the van.

The day he had arrived from school and saw Grandpa crying in his living room, phone on the floor, the last picture his parents had sent from the cruise sitting on his lap.

Shock, despair, sadness, anger, the feeling of impotence, the terrible uncertainty of being alone.

Grandpa.

So strong, so determined,
God!
So stubborn. The adoption board, the move to Carlsbad, the goodbyes in Fulton, the apprehension of a new school.

The anger at being insulted, the fight with Roger. The Vice Principal’s office.

Mrs. Khanna. So forceful, so frightening, so
strange,
so fair.

Guardians Inc.

Strange became a theme.

The images and feelings from his time in the company came faster and faster. Everything he’d seen or learned, everything he’d felt, smelled and heard up to that point.

Mneme wanted to know who he was and, like all human beings, Thomas was the sum total of all his experiences.

Including the reason why he was in the Halls of Remembrance and why he wanted to talk with her. 

The comfortable darkness enveloped Thomas again, inviting him to ask his question.  

Still, Thomas couldn’t speak, so he
imagined
himself and Gramps reuniting with his parents. Maybe Mneme could tell him if they were still alive and where could he find them.

But imagination is not memory; dreams were made up from experiences, not the other way around. Imagination was not Mneme’s domain.

She kept quiet.

Thomas tried to find a way to tell her, to communicate what he wanted from her. He was afraid that he would wake up without his answers.

The presence of Mneme began to fade.

Thomas tried to convey a message, but how? Mneme had already seen all there was about him. His whole life displayed open before her.

Except for one thing.

She had seen his memories, his experiences. But the memories he had seen when he touched Gramps in Ormagra were not his own.

He recalled them, the flash seared on his brain and Mneme stayed.

Tranquility, then movement, muffled voices, like those heard when swimming underwater. Then hunger and fear, followed by peace and happiness, all in utter darkness.      

Just a fraction of a second.

Thomas had replayed them over and over again a thousand times, but no new insights had come. It was like scrutinizing a photograph—at some point there was just nothing more to discover, nothing else to see but what he had seen already.

Thomas felt Mneme’s curiosity, then the memory disappeared from his head, gone, as if he had never had it.

He wanted to shout to her, to ask her to give them back. There was a moment of panic when he felt Mneme had left him, but she came back.

And the memories poured forth.

Slower, sharper. Like slowing down a movie seen at five times its speed. The memories seared in his brain were longer than what he had perceived in the beginning.

The feeling was the same. Tranquility. A gentle movement from side to side and warmth all around. Then a sharp move and alarm. A feeling of vertigo. Muffled sounds, recognizable only as voices because of their rhythm. A thunderous crash, and a long fall, the warmth slowly being replaced by coldness. The sharp sensation of hunger.

Thomas’s heart sank, a thumping rhythm that could only be a heartbeat was slowing down. Fear and anguish mixed for an unbearable couple of seconds, and then it was replaced with the loss of feeling and awareness as the rhythm stopped.

Then peace.

And then something Thomas had not seen—he’d felt happiness, but it had been too fast for him to distinguish between them. In this timeframe there was a pause between the two as the beating rhythm renewed, tremulous at first, then stronger and stronger.

Thomas was shocked as the darkness was replaced by bright light. Even in this timeframe it lasted just a couple of seconds. A glob of white light and a couple of dark silhouettes against the whiteness—the one on the right looked like a squat head above broad shoulders and what looked like a horn, or maybe a square crown at the top, and the other one had a thin body and an angular head covered in something that looked like a wide turban. The silhouette of a four-fingered hand reached into view.

 
A four-fingered hand!
A faun’s hand.

The strong feeling of happiness ended the memory.

And again he was in his dream state. The soft presence of Mneme was all around him.

He wanted to ask her things—there was so much more she could help him with, but he didn’t know how, and Mneme began to slowly fade.

Thomas tried to thank her as she receded.

There was a last surge of feelings from Mneme before it disappeared.

“She’s alive,”
Mneme told him before fading away.

Thomas was jubilant. First Killjoy had told him that the memories belonged to someone close to him and his grandfather, and now, after Mneme’s help and last message he was sure of one thing...

His mom was alive, and with any luck his father was too! The ship they were traveling had sunk, but Fauns had saved them!

He barely had time for elation before a scream pulled him out from the dream-state.

“What have you done?” The female voice was angry and coming from behind him. He heard lithe steps approaching him. He scrambled to his feet and turned around. The voice belonged to a tall, gazelle-like faun, her hair was white and her neck matted brown. She was wearing a blue, flowing robe, and from her head rose two long and elegantly curved horns. She was carrying a pouch slung across her shoulders full of paint and implements she used to work on the columns.

“Human!” She recoiled when he turned around. “Why are you here?”

“I'm sorry!” Thomas said, but he couldn't imagine why this faun was angry at him.

“What have you done to Mneme?” she demanded, centering her gaze on him. Thomas could easily see himself impaled by those horns.

“I spoke to her,” he told her.

“What? Who are you!” she yelled, kicking the ground. “Why are you here?”

“I’m Thomas Byrne. I’m looking for my parents,” he said, getting ready to run or jump away should the faun attack him. But instead he saw tears fill up the faun’s eyes.

“I came to finish the story of my Clan,” she said. “I needed Mneme’s guidance. And she’s gone now. I’ll have to wait to write the last chapter.”

The faun seemed defeated. She turned around and walked toward the door to the Hall of Transition.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas said.

The faun stopped, and then dropped the utensils she had brought to work on her column. “Humans are used to saying that,” she told him, then she walked away leaving Thomas alone in the room again.

The Shadow War

Sometime later Mrs. Pianova entered the Hall, and found Thomas sitting on the ground.

“Good news, I guess?” Mrs. Pianova asked.

“Great news!” Thomas said as he stood up. “My mother’s alive!  Fauns have her!”

Thomas told Mrs. Pianova about his encounter with Mneme and what she had shown him. She concurred that if Fauns had rescued his mother she was alive, because Fauns didn’t kill indiscriminately.

“Has to be dolphins or whales,” Thomas said.  “We can go to the League of Nations and ask who knows anything about them.”

“Of course we can, Thomas.” Mrs. Pianova shared in his happiness. “It’s wonderful news!” She even opened her arms to give him a small hug.

“Can we go now?” Thomas asked; he was ready to look for his parents.

“In a little bit,” Mrs. Pianova said. “Oscar is doing carbon drawings in the oldest Hall of Remembrance. He’ll be here in a couple of hours.”

Thomas knew better than to ask Mrs. Pianova for permission to leave them and go to the League of Nations, although the thought crossed his mind.

“Whose are those?” Mrs. Pianova asked, pointing at the bag the faun had left behind.

“A faun, like a big gazelle... She was here about an hour ago,” he told her. “She…um…got angry because I talked with Mneme.”

“A big gazelle?” Mrs. Pianova asked him. “What’s her name?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She didn’t tell me.”

“What did she look like?”

Thomas described the faun. Mrs. Pianova nodded as he described her elegant horns.

“That was Mar-Safi,” Mrs. Pianova told him. “And I know why she was so angry with you. Follow me.”

Mrs. Pianova led him through a small entrance on the side of the Hall. “We are leaving Uluru and the Halls of the Living,” she told him. “We are now entering the Halls of Remembrance under Kata Tjuta.”