Chapter Song: Theme (The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) – Jon Brion ( watch?v=zI-YR4LBzL0)


Chapter 2: The Spotless Mind

He was alone. Always alone. Stumbling through a dark forest. The way through which he never quite remembered. But he'd been here before. In fact, it was this same place he visited very frequently at night, the scene flickering on like a lighted splint behind his closed eyelids. Always the same. And the whole place was burning. The trees, the leaves, the ground itself. The merry birds on their little perches in the oak trees burned, their sweet chirping voices hollowing out and falling with their ashen remains. Everything would be ablaze around him, raging silently. Just like every time, a pathway appeared beneath him, blackened from the flames. He never wanted to, but every time he'd follow it, his legs taking him where his mind didn't care to wander. Around him the cracking, burning trees reached down their desperate hands. They moaned and screamed in voices he felt that he should know but didn't. He'd carry on this way for what felt like hours, stumbling along the ashy path, the whole forest dying and blazing around him. Until he reached her. In a shallow ditch she would be, curled in a ball and screaming his name. Always the same. He called to her and called to her until his voice was hoarse, but his feet would never move. Paralysed and alone he could never reach her. After sometime she looked up at him, her face as grey as slate and shimmering all over, hiding her identity. But she would call his name. Over and over again she would call it. "Run- Arthur, it's them! They won't stop! The fire, you aren't safe!-" Always the same. It never made any sense. Her mouth would contort around the words and be horribly wide, a gaping black hole in her face. It all grew silent for a single second and the woman opened her eyes. There was a feeling of being underwater as he stared at her wide irises. Green. Always the same. He'd then see not her, but himself...And he'd be burning too.

Arthur's eyelids snapped open. His breath came out shakily and a damp sweat was settled uncomfortably on his forehead. Reaching out he put a hand on the cool glass of the window pane beside his bed. It was comforting against his fingers, seemed to ground him again and tell him that this life was real. That he was no longer burning. His heart rate slowed in his chest at the thought.

It was that strange dream again. That...nightmare. It was relentless and haunting for more reasons than one, but mainly because Arthur felt it should mean something to him when it didn't. That was what most scared him.

He rolled over, pushing it from his mind almost easily now because he was used to it. It always came and it was always the same. Always.

He couldn't bear to think about it today anyway. Too many morning twilights were spent curled up and agonising over the dream, over his past. Over all the things he'd forgotten and all the questions he still had. It physically hurt him to think about it, his stomach twisting and aching with the effort of memory and the grief for something he couldn't recall.

The early morning light seemed to pierce through the room like a solid line. The suns first rays of the day softly invading the small space of his room, illuminating the wooden walls and floor. The bed was almost cruelly warm that morning and Arthur wanted nothing more than to curl back under his woollen bed quilt and sleep till noon. He sat up, fighting against the strong allure of his drooping pillow and leaving the comforting embrace of his worn wolf pelt mattress. Because, as they say, the early bird catches the worm.

Shaking the entangling tendrils of sleep from his thoughts and body and with this phrase in mind, Arthur swung his legs out of bed. The worn-smooth, crooked wooden floorboards were pleasantly warm from the early sun on his bare feet. It obviously wasn't as early as he would have liked or the boards would still be cool from the chilled winter night. Aware of this, he wasted no time in pulling on his light, cotton work shirt and trousers straight over the underclothes he had slept in. From under the low wooden bed he hooked out his leather hunting boots. These had been a gift passed down to him and he seldom wore any other shoes. The soles were supple and soundless when padding across the forest floor, the leather already worn in from when he had received them second hand, smelled fresh and summoned up far off images in Arthur's mind that he thought must be memories of a time he didn't know anymore. The image of a man kitted in full leather riding gear, his face always shifting and changing before Arthur could place who he was. Most memories were like that for Arthur now. The distant ones anyway.

He pulled on his boots, feeling the familiar snugness of them hugging his foot as he double knotted the laces. Straightening, he had time to clumsily re-arrange the blankets on his bed and splash water on his face from the tiny basin in the corner of the room, his forehead still clammy from the nightmare. They didn't have running water out here in the peasant villages, but there was still water left in the porcelain bowl that he'd carried home from the old well by the river the night before. There was a small mirror above it too, and Arthur pulled a face and made a small attempt to straighten out his ruffled fringe with his fingers. It was no use.

Abandoning the basin (and any hope of taming his fringe) Arthur pulled open the thin wooden door to the next room. He turned to survey his tiny box room in all its humble splendour. He half-smiled. It wasn't much, a little wooden cabin room fitting really only his bed along with a little desk and chest in the corner, the basin in the other, but it was his and it was what he thought of – perhaps oddly - as one of the safest places in the world.

He closed his door and made his swift way through the main room of the house (the second of three) his boots near silent on the threadbare rug covering the bare boards. He was somewhat surprised to find the house empty. The fire place on the wall cold and still ashy from the previous night. The rocking chair vacant and the cot in the corner absent of child. Nobody was sitting at the small wooden table or singing softly as they stirred a pot over the fire. On the wooden end table by the front door was a small note that caught his eye as he passed. He reached down to inspect it.

Arthur.

Have left early for market day in the town square - hoping Jean will do me a deal on those sweet potatoes.

Took Peter with me - he looked a bit peaky.

I know you're alright on your own but be safe in those woods and don't forget to eat!

Here Arthur stopped reading to smile wearily and scoop up the rosy apple and small brown package simply labelled 'food' left beside the note. She was always bothering him about that. He slipped the items into the leather satchel attached to his belt and noticed there were a few final lines at the bottom of the small slip of paper.

Tell that Antonio when you see him that he still owes me a chicken! - Well, just a leg will do.
I'll see you later.

Oh- and happy birthday, dear.

Arthur was smiling unintentionally as he hurried through the front door, pulling down his soft leather jacket from its hook and over his own shoulders in one swift motion before springing down the few rickety wooden steps of his cabin home. Taking a bite out of the apple and basking a little in the brilliant winter sun that greeted him outside, he allowed himself a moment of happiness - or perhaps satisfaction was a better word - as he began his way down the dusty track leading away from his home.

Of course. He was fourteen years old today. He'd almost forgotten.

It seemed so strange to think that it had only been two years since he'd moved here. Since he'd been...well, reborn in a sense. But that felt odd to say and odder to feel.

They told him he was nearly dead when they found him. All curled up in a ball in a ditch in the forest and clutching his little brother to his chest to keep the infant warm. They couldn't work out how he'd managed to get there, they said. They laughed about it now, the way he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere - as if he'd been coughed up by the very forest itself. He was so far from anywhere, the next villages all miles away and any manor estates nearby far, far behind him. He was something of an enigma.

It was a chance encounter actually; a few men from the next town up were doing a small delivery of fresh produce to Kattleroot, the village Arthur lived in now. The' next town up' however was nearly a three hour trip away. They had been clattering up the forest path in the pale grey twilight of the early morning when one of their horses had stopped dead in its tracks. Its ears pressed back against its head. Quite a stir that caused, the loaded carts bumping up against one another and the two other horses huffing and snorting at the disturbance. Listening a little closer, the men heard what had caught the horses' attention, and that was the loud cry of a newborn baby. Eerie it had sounded apparently, the piercing wail of a baby in the depths of the forest, some of the men had point blank refused to investigate for fear of witchcraft of some kind. He had been found in the end though. Cold and soaked through, his lips blue from the beginnings of hypothermia. Covered in burns and bleeding gashes and one of his legs at a painful broken angle. Yes, surely, they'd pegged him for dead at that point. They'd even considered leaving him at first, scooping the weeping baby out of his frozen arms and looking down at him with deep-set grimaces on their faces. He wasn't sure what made them change their minds. Fate maybe? Arthur didn't really believe in that though. Whatever it was, he and his brother were set down in the back of the cart and sent off towards the awaiting little village. Arthur had been covered lightly with a hessian sack labelled 'turnips'. Some people still called him turnip now, even after two years. It was a pet name that sort of stuck; A joke.

They eventually arrived at their destination and - this was the funny part really - the men just dropped them off with everything else. Laying them out with the vegetables before packing up and making their rambling way back through the trees.

The merchants hadn't known what to do at first, assuming, like the delivery men had, that he and his brother were dead, and wondering why on earth they had left the two of them here of all places. Eventually they found some conviction and rushed them to the only person they could think of.

Old Mel, they called her, though she couldn't have been a day over fifty. Her eyes still bright in that lively, youthful way that eyes could be and her auburn hair in a messy braid over her shoulder, reaching almost to her waist. She was a healer, a doctor of sorts. Only...she could do a little more than your usual physician could. A lot more, in fact.

She had 'magic hands' they said. Arthur knew this meant she was a witch, but where others may shy away from this kind of treatment, he knew now that had she not been, he would probably be dead. She had her work cut out for her that day though. A broken shin bone, severe burns, the increasing grip of hypothermia - he did indeed, look like a goner. And she says her heart jumped near right out of her ribcage when she saw his eyes open for the first time. Says he looked right at her and couldn't stop blinking like the light was too bright for him or something. It was like bringing someone back from the dead, the feeling it gave her to see his green eyes flickering around in confusion. She felt for him then, waking up in a strange cabin on somebody else's bed in so much pain. Arthur himself remembered it quite clearly though, despite it being two years prior. His tormented expression had not been from the pain, but from the severe confusion of it all. His head spun and he began to panic when he realised he had near no idea of what he was doing or where he was or even really who he was. They'd had to put him under again and as the strong smelling ointment was shoved under his nose he'd caught sight of another figure in the room beside Old Mel. They were holding a baby in their arms. He felt himself let go a bit because it formed a vague shape of memory in his mind to see this small child. Not only this, a name: Peter. It was a tiny thing to remember, especially when he seemed to have forgotten so much else, but he grabbed hold of that shard of memory - of sanity - and didn't let it go until everything had faded yet again.

He'd spent a few days like that. Waking and fading, panicking and then easing at the sight of his brother or the cool touch of Mel's hand, the familiar scent of the ointment, pushing him into darkness again. On the third day of his recovery he'd woken in the night shaking and sweating heavily. His hair matted and his shirt (the same nightshirt he'd been wearing when they found him) sticking to him uncomfortably. It was the nightmare, the same one he'd had last night, only this was the first time it happened and it left him breathless and horrified. He could still hear the words of the strange woman in the dream echoing around his brain: "Run- Arthur, it's them! They won't stop! The fire - you aren't safe!-". It made his palm's sweat thinking of these words because they were so urgent and so very, very desperate and yet... he didn't understand. Mel had been stirred from her permanent position at his side, she slept there even, her head lolling on the old rocking chair when night came. She grabbed hold of his hand at the sight of him so distraught and dishevelled, his eyes wide and haunted.

"A-Arthur!" He had choked out, clutching her hand tightly and staring deep into her eyes, hoping wildly to find something to cling onto in their golden depths.

"I'm sorry, child?" she replied quietly, stroking his arm to soothe him from his obvious distress, unsure of what he was trying to tell her with this outburst.

"M-my name! My name is Arthur!" He let the words stumble uncertainly out of his mouth. The woman in his dream had been chanting it over and over. He didn't know why, but he knew that each time she yelled that name it was meant for him. It was his. He'd had to tell Mel before it was too late, before he forgot it all again or before it never really existed in the first place.

But that was all so long ago now. He'd made a full recovery fairly quickly, though he still had a slight limp on his left leg. He stayed in Kattleroot, the humble forest village which had become his home. Honestly, what choice did he have? He couldn't imagine ever having lived anywhere else now. He stayed with Mel too, who admitted to becoming much attached to him and his brother, and Arthur had to say the same of her. She was kind but she also had a certain wizened toughness about her that made Arthur feel kind of intimidated but…safe. She was eccentric but it was her little oddities and daily rituals that soothed Arthur's mind. He himself was a creature of habit and appreciated familiarity very highly since becoming so uncertain of so many things in his life. Many people just assumed him and peter to be her sons and that was certainly less complicated than the truth. Those in the village that knew better though (and this happened to be most) knew Arthur to be the strange little boy with amnesia they'd found near death in a hole in the forest. Despite the wariness he was greeted with during his first few months in Kattleroot however, the boy was now widely accepted by the village and many people seemed to have taken a shine to this odd child with no past.

Kattleroot was secluded and quiet - so much so that very few had heard anything about the mysterious Kirkland manor fire that had occurred on the same night Arthur was found. Those that did made no connection anyway. The fire had been dealt with very discretely by the royal council and much information was held back from the newspapers and criers. Within a few days the incident was almost completely forgotten by even those in the capital who had instant access to the latest news and would have known Arthur's father as fairly influential lord. Mel had heard the story though. She, unlike the others, did not forget. The short story they released played endlessly on her mind. One line in particular: The whole family were reported dead by the fire team, although the bodies of the two youngest Kirkland children could not be found, it is assumed their remains were beyond recognition at the point of examination.

That was it. No first names, no descriptions, no suggestion of a further investigation. Nothing. Mel kept all this to herself, not even trying to ask Arthur about it to see whether it provoked any memories. She didn't feel it was the right time. Not when the boy was starting to set down new roots.

He was settling in so well, it wouldn't do to worry him with his past. Not yet.

Arthur felt refreshed as he padded down the beaten dirt track that led from his home to the heart of the village. In the near distance he could make out the smoke from chimneys and the clattering sound of people going about their early morning business, a bell ringing somewhere deeper in the village, or perhaps beyond, most likely the main town square. He passed a few other houses not unlike his own, some of them with people sitting out on the wooden porches in the mild winter sunshine. An old woman laughed when she saw Arthur pass, revealing her toothless gums.

"Good morning, Arthur!" She waved a hand to him, rocking on her chair in happy amusement.

"Good morning, Mrs. Sprigg," Arthur replied politely. He was always polite to Mrs. Sprigg, though in truth, she confused him a little. She always laughed when he came by in the mornings. 'A wonder of the world' she called him. He'd never understand it.

It was almost odd to think of how many people knew his name now. He hadn't really stopped to think about it properly before, but now that he reflected upon it, it was quite remarkable. He supposed they didn't often get 'Arthurs' in villages like Kattleroot. Boys who materialised out of thin air with no memory of where they came from or whom they really were. At first people felt a little sorry for him, at least some did, others were plain scared of him, thinking he was some...child of the devil or something equally absurd. He was different. He spoke differently and had different mannerisms and when asked why, he simply said he did not know or he could not remember - not exactly the sort of answer people were expecting. But people grew accustomed to his strange ways and, evidently, grew to like them - to like him. That was even odder because Arthur would never say he was a likeable person. He was too polite - until he was tested, and then his hot-headedness would get the better of him. It was something Mel often teased and scolded him for. 'That temper of yours will be the death of us all one day, Arthur' she'd say. Sometimes she'd comment that it was actually rather endearing - an idea Arthur resented wholeheartedly. He was not endearingly hot-headed. As well as this he knew he had a tendency to be either too awkward or too cynical and neither were particularly favourable traits. However, not one frown greeted him that morning and even those villagers he knew to be having a hard time at that point - the woman whose son had caught pneumonia from the cold, harsh winter they were having or the old man whose crop of parsnips hadn't survived the season, eliminating his main source of income - even they, had a weary smile for Arthur as he passed them.

It was also rather remarkable how busy things were today. On these early morning walks Arthur would usually only see half as many faces as he had this morning. But then again, there was an explanation for this too. It was market day; they were all headed for the Oakfield town square. It would be twice as packed with stalls and there would be twice the amount of produce, sellers even coming from places like the capital with much finer products to sell to the farm region dwellers (though in truth, these were merely the leftovers of what they sold in the capital, they hauled them all to villages like Kattleroot knowing the simple villagers would think they were getting a bargain for whatever remains they wished to flog at a decent price). Mel herself had left at the crack of dawn to get in early - she ran her own small apothecary stall selling whatever herbal concoctions she had made that winter. There was always something to do on market day; it was when people brought out their best products at the best prices. Market day wasn't the only reason it was so busy though, Arthur reminded himself, no, it was busy because he was up much later than usual this morning, swayed to sleep in by the temptress that was his bed. At this, he quickened his pace.

He hadn't been far from his destination anyway, and with the small boost of speed he'd given himself he was soon where he wanted to be. Looking up at the house he let out a sigh and wondered, with an unwelcome knot in his gut, whether or not he would be pleased to see him.


A/N

Fairly introductory, uneventful chapter here – but the next one should be out in a couple of days! A lot of the early stuff is sort of setting out the scene and story but I'll try to keep the ball rolling quite fast.

Thanks for reading and thank you to those who have followed, favourited or reviewed so far! :D