Don't Forget

Note: Sorry about the long exposition. The next chapter will be more interesting, I promise.

I was born in the exact center of the city where my parents lived. For years the mayor had contractors carefully measuring every border of the city so that a hospital could be built at the exact center of it. And so a perfectly circular building was erected right on the middle of the city, and the exact center of one floor of it was a birthing suite. This was where I was born. It was in this city that I lived until the Black Magician stole my memories.
My parents christened me "Jack", simply because they wanted a name easy to remember and spell. It was easy enough to spell, but as I always faded into the background wherever I went, it wasn't so easy to remember. Many times during my schooling, people would stop to ask me what my name was. Sure, some people remembered, a girl here or there, and of course, my friends (though I did not have so many, I was close to the ones I did have) but teachers were a lost cause. It's hard to remember someone's name when that someone does not like to talk very much, or give self introductions. Often people would start to remember my name toward the end of the school year, but by then it was a lost cause: summer would come, and inevitably a new year would start, and the process would begin again.
I never saw my friends during the summer. During the summer I went to my grandfather's farm, and miraculously every villager there could remember my name. From Joanna, the beautiful older girl who lived a couple of farms down the road, to Zack, the handler of shipments, every single inhabitant of Mineral Town knew my name.
This was a foreign concept to me. It startled me every time to hear "Hello, Jack, how are you doing today?" or "Hi Jack! I found a great spot on the mountain, do you want to go play?"
The very first time I visited my grandfather was when I was only two years old. Before then, he had always come to visit me (according to my mother, anyways; I was too small to remember anything), but he became busy with the farm after my grandmother, his wife, passed away. Although the atmosphere was clearly very heavy in the village (we were attending the funeral) I could tell, even as a toddler, how close everyone was. Naturally I didn't know it at the time, but some of these children would become my best friends.
There was Gray, with his Grandpa Saibara, and there was Elli and her Grandma Ellen, and her mother and father. There was Mayor Thomas, quite a bit slimmer in those days, with his big red nose not quite so.. big, or red. There was his son Harris, who had already found an excuse to stand next to Aja although the villagers had only started gathering a couple of minutes ago. There was the kindly old priest, feeble in his advanced age, but his voice clear and strong as he said a few words for my grandma. I hadn't much of an idea what was going on, as I never really knew my grandmother; her bad arthritis and rheumatism kept her from leaving the farm much. But when I saw some of the other children crying, I started to too.
After the procession, my parents and I stayed in the village for a couple of weeks. My parents had to get back to work. My grandfather offered to keep me for the summer, and though my mother was uneasy about this proposition, my father assured her that "the country air would be good for the boy" and so I stayed, and so I returned every summer. As I got older I got to know the other kids in the village better.
I learned that Gray lived in a city not far from mine, and that he, too, visited his grandfather during the summer. I learned that Elli had lived here with her parents and grandparents all her life, but that she had gone to the city once. "I went to the aquarium!" she had told me excitedly, one summer. "I liked it a lot. There were seahorses!"
In particular, however, there was one girl who had been extremely close to me. We would play together every day, no matter what the weather was like. In addition to our usual escapades (teasing the chickens, teasing the cows, pretending to be wilderness explorers in Grandpa's fields upon fields of grass and corn and tomatoes, getting chased by the chickens, getting chased by the cows) we also ate almost all of our meals together, and went to every summer festival together.
In a cruel twist of fate, it was I who could not remember her name.
Not when we were together, of course. I remembered when we were together. But abruptly she moved away when I was seven. Something about her father going to do research elsewhere, somewhere where there were more trees and grasses and fruits. Somewhere where there were more animals, more bugs, more minerals and rocks. Somewhere even more remote than Mineral Town. "Promise me you'll never forget about me," she had said, the summer before she left. I thought it was a weird thing to ask, but I promised her anyways.
The next summer, she was gone.
Oh, the other children were still there, and the cows and the chickens were still there, but it just wasn't the same. I was depressed the entire summer because of her absence. But as time went by, the wounds healed, and gradually I simply became closer to the other kids. Sometimes I would ask them, "What happened to her?" but the reply was always the same: she moved away, and just never came back. Letters never came from her, nor any word about where she was or what she was doing with her family. Gray became my new best friend, and we spent many a summer lazing about in the warm summer sunshine. Over time, I forgot about that girl. I forgot her name.
When I was fifteen my grandfather went to join my grandmother in Heaven. "May the Harvest Goddess bless his soul," said Carter, the new priest. The old feeble one had passed away, too, a couple of summers ago, and here Carter was to replace him. I liked Carter. He always had a Fruit Latte for me when I went to visit, and always one for Gray too.
And of course, when my grandfather left this world for a better one, so my visits ended too. I kept in touch with Gray, as I could always call him when he was in the city, but the rest of the villagers did not have such a luxury as a cellular phone, and so in my mind they, like the girl, faded out of existence.

My days passed uneventfully until I turned eighteen. Well, actually, more accurately it would be "until I graduated from high school." Oh, sure, over the summer sometimes I would visit Gray, or he would visit me, and occasionally we would go on trips together, but all this had to be done before he left for Mineral Town or after he returned. But otherwise I found my life to be somewhat empty and unfulfilled. At school most people did not remember my name, and those who did slowly drifted apart from me. "You're different now, Jack," they would say, "but I can't quite place my finger on why." Eventually all of my friends found new friends, and we only acknowledged each other with simple nods as we passed each other in the hallway. I found, however, that I didn't quite mind the solitude that my quietness gave me. Life was much quieter and simpler and just so much more peaceful in Mineral Town; I was surprised to discover how much I missed it.
And so when I graduated from high school, I did not go to college, as my parents had so wanted me to do, but instead persuaded them to allow me to spend a year in Mineral Town. I felt slightly guilty about having asked them to do so, but somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I would never forgive myself if I didn't go. I didn't know it then, but my life would soon be changed forever, and I would not reach Mineral Town until several years had passed.

We mailed most of my belongings to Mineral Town; as it was understood that I would be staying in my grandfather's farmhouse, we sent no furniture. Most of my clothes were shipped to the town, although I had some items with me in a carry-on bag for the train. My parents were busy with work and could not afford the time to send me. I think they were secretly glad to be rid of me for a year, although I'm sure the money they gave me to live off of for a year was a considerable chunk out of their salaries. My parents both worked, you know; my mother was a secretary for the company that my father worked at. That's where they met, actually, even though dating fellow employees was (and still is) strictly forbidden.
The train stopped at the base of a small mountain. There wasn't much of a station there, just an automated ticket selling machine and a deserted platform. Nobody had come to meet me, although I suppose that was understandable since I had essentially lost contact with all of the villagers save Gray. I think I would have come with him, on the ferry, and in hindsight it would have done me well to have done so. But, the train was just the slightest bit cheaper than the ferry, although the journey took much longer this way. While the ferry could take me straight to the shores of Mineral Town, the train had to wind around to the bridge across the river that emptied into the ocean, and then through the thick forest to the base of the mountain. But it was an old train, and an uncomfortable one, and so tickets were cheap and plentiful. At any rate, it was the train that my parents had chosen for me to take, and so that is exactly what I did.
After I left the station I had to walk through Forget-Me-Not Valley and up Mother's Hill (although I always insisted it was a small mountain. You just don't see a rocky peak like that on a hill, hills are supposed to be grassy and soft. Whenever someone assured me that it was indeed a hill, after all it was right there in the name, Mother's Hill, I would assure them right back that it was a mountain, thank you very much, hills just aren't that steep or rocky.) and on the other side I could already catch faint glimpses of Mineral Town. In fact I was so excited I dropped my bag, right there at the top, and yelled, "Hello, Mineral Town!"
"Well hello to you," somebody said. I jumped and turned, for the voice had come from right behind me (even though I hadn't seen anyone at all when I was hiking up). The somebody was a young man, perhaps a couple of years older than me, about Gray's age. He definitely had a strange air to him, I thought, and of course his long black robe and his sleek black hair didn't help his case much. But there was more to his strangeness to that. Perhaps it was his glassless glasses, or the way his eyes seemed just a little too bright. Or maybe it was his pointed nose, or the grin on his face that didn't seem to contain any joy at all.
At the bottom of the mountain, hill, whatever, I could see Gray hiking up. I suppose he had heard me yell, he was probably waiting for me out at the farm or maybe in front of Gotz's house. I wished he would hurry up.
"Oh, um, hello," I said to the man, rather uncomfortably.
"Are you visiting Mineral Town?" he asked, pushing the frames of his glassless glasses up the bridge of his nose. He stared at me, as if he were expecting something. I still don't know what he was expecting.
"Yes," I said, not wanting to say any more.
"Not much of a talker, are you? May I ask you about your business here?"
"I'm just visiting,"
"Visiting whom, may I ask?"
"Well... just.. everyone, I suppose," I didn't want to go into specifics. As you have probably gathered by now, this man was just downright creepy, and I didn't like it. Or him. Gray was quickly approaching, and silently I prayed for his feet to carry him even faster.
"Interesting," said the man. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Black Magician, and I have been looking for a town like this for years. Do you understand? I can't allow anybody to taint it. There can be no outside influences. I have to conduct my experiments in the most isolated area I can find, the most isolated inhabited area, actually. I suppose that doesn't make much sense to you."
"Well, no, it doesn't really, because how can-"
"How can an inhabited area be isolated? Well my point is that I don't want outsiders like you, outsiders who have not been here for years and years, to come and ruin everything I've worked so hard to build." Although that certainly did seem to be his point, it didn't answer my question at all. I thought it best to hold my tongue, however, and today I know that decision to be quite wise. The Black Magician rather dislikes sassing.
"So I am dreadfully sorry but you are going to have to go. And it seems that I have unwittingly talked a little bit too much about my plans, and so your memory is going to have to go too. Please don't ask me for any more specifics, you are going to ruin my plans in more ways than one, and I planned to start today, you know, but because of you now I have to start later, because I am going to have to get rid of you. Although I suppose that being delayed for a day is better than being delayed for a year, which is what would have happened had I allowed you to pass here and go down into there."
'But I didn't ask you for any specifics,' I thought. 'What a strange guy. I don't follow his train of thought at all.' Gray was almost at the top now, and he was sprinting. I suppose the man gave him a bad feeling, too.
The man pulled a long wooden staff out from somewhere, I don't know where, because I could see no place that he had to put it. It seemed as if he had been carrying it strapped to his back, but surely I would have seen it if he had. So, I will assume he had cast some sort of magic on it... a magic that allowed him to store his staff in thin air. "Good bye, Jack," he said, smiling wider so that I could see fangs where his canines should have been.
"How did you know my-"
Gray had just reached the scene. But it was too late; he could not stop the man in time from putting his staff on my head and pulling out all of my memories, he could not stop the man from chanting his spells and pulling out the beams of light from my head and condensing them into a spherical blue rock. All he could do was helplessly watch as his friend crumpled to the ground, only to be carried off by the Black Magician deep into a grove of trees.