Chapter 39

I teleport to Victoria's side, only to be assaulted by an acrid smell and Victoria flailing around like a newborn. A quick application of my cleaning power sorts out the cause of the smell, and Victoria calms down.

"Victoria?"

I watch her head turn towards me, but there's no recognition in her eyes. Trying again, I say, "I am Berenike, apprentice of Selene."

When her eyes loose focus I sag to the floor. Did we save her only to lose everything that makes her Victoria?

"Gu-aah"

I look up as Victoria makes a noise and then hits her hand hard against the floor and starts crying. Not knowing what else to do, I carefully, but firmly pick her up in my telekinesis and coo as I take her hand and kiss the grazed skin like mum used to do. "There there, it's all better now."

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Day~~~~~~~~~

"Victoria!"

Damn it, I thought it was supposed to take a year for people to learn how to walk. I push myself to my feet and run after Victoria as I gather up the pages of my diary she's pulling out.

We've been running for a couple of minutes when Victoria's flailing arms fail to allow her to keep her balance as she trips over a stone.

Rolling over onto her back Victoria waves the diary in the air, "Fix it! Fix it! Berenike Fix it!"

With a sigh I use my repairing power on the diary and all the pages fly back together into the diary. Then my pen comes flying across the valley into Victoria's hand, and she starts scribbling on one of the few blank pages.

Heaving another sigh, I levitate Victoria and start walking back to the cave. I'm going to have to find somewhere else to store the sharp objects and mum's books now.

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"Selene, goddess of the moon. I wish you were here."

"I'm sorry I can't be there with you. If this Sleeper stays on Gaia then it could attract more Sleepers."

"Dad, Kurt, and Lacey are looking for an abandoned container or car."

"I'll tell him to bring both. It might distract any of the others that are following us."

"Others?"

"Yes, others. And without a body I can't mask my presence, so I'm standing out like a lit beacon."

"I wish I could help."

Victoria suddenly says, "Selene, goddess of the moon! Selene! Selene!"

Selene dryly says, "I see Victoria has learned to speak."

I nod, "And run. She also doesn't feel as empty as she did before. It's weird, it's like I can feel her resonance all the time now."

"Selene, Berenike play!"

"You must have left a bit of your soul behind and marked her. Now go and play, maybe teach her to use a spear."

"I what? Sh-oot. I will, it's a better idea than any other ideas I had."

As Victoria tugs on my arm, I pull my old staff out of my pouch and hand it to her. "Let's play how to use a spear!"

Victoria takes the staff and starts jumping up and down, "Spear, spear!"

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Day something,

I'm down to passing time by my periods, and Victoria's periods now. I am exhausted, but at least Victoria's feeding herself now, even if I have had to hide the carrots. I think I've been here nearly a month, and I only have two clean pages in the notebook. The rest are full of scribbles.

I had to take Victoria hunting with me yesterday, and it scared her. A lot. She's currently running around with my staff pretending to do the moves I did while I was fighting the bison thing I hunted.

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I'm sitting on the hill above Selene's cave when I feel Amy's resonance in my chest.

"… is it true, is Vicky alive?"

I nod, "It is, though she's not herself. She's needed to relearn everything."

"What happened?"

"All I know is that I was trying to teleport her away from Oni Lee, and suddenly we were falling down the canyon and she was convulsing while bleeding out of her eyes and nose. Then she bit her tongue."

"How?"

"Did we save her? You'd need to ask Selene, all I know is that I had to hold Victoria's soul in her body while Selene worked. And the fact that souls exist freaked me out for days. Well, that and potty training your sister."

Amy laughs as Victoria skids down the hill to stop beside me, "I can't imagine that."

Next to me, Victoria says, "Berenike, you're also Taylor aren't you?"

I turn to stare at Victoria and nod dumbly, "I am, do you remember?"

Amy says, "Remember what?" while Victoria says, "Some. I have a sister."

I nod, "I'm talking to her now."

I laugh when they both say, "Can I talk to her?"

"You both said the same thing. In answer, I don't know how. I'm sorry."

Victoria says, "Could you at least ask how she's doing, and what her name is?"

I smile, "I can do that. Amy, Victoria want's to know how you're doing. She also wanted to know your name."

Amy responds, "I'm, ok. I'm staying at the PRT, and mom just called to say she had news about you both."

I quickly relay that to Victoria, before replying, "Sarah volunteered to let your family know that we're alive."

Victoria shakes her head, "I don't remember."

I put my arm around Victoria, "Don't worry, it will come back when it comes back. Now you're remembering, I can start teaching you to meditate and find your inner world. That may help, as you'll be able to touch all your memories then."

Amy's resonance disappears as Victoria says, "When can we start?"

I smile, "Whenever you want."

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"Why can't I do it!"

I quickly teleport over to Victoria from my own practice with trying to hold my awareness without vomiting.

"Victoria, it's ok, it takes time. It took me a couple of weeks, a week is seven days, before I first accidentally found my inner world. You've only been trying a few days."

Victoria looks at me with raw terror, hope, and need chasing across her face, "Berenike, I need this. I have to know."

I nod, "I know you do. I can't imagine what it must be like only having some of your memories. But you need to look without expectation. Look past your memories and feed them to the fire. The hardest part is finding it the first time. After I found mine, I kept dropping into it accidentally when I was trying to do other things. Now I don't even need to think to do it. But it's like everything else you'll ever do in life. To start with it seems impossible, but it isn't. You just need to calm down. Now, would you like to practice with the spear for a bit before you try again?"

Victoria nods eagerly as my old staff comes flying out of the cave.

I'm almost about to call a halt to the spar, as Victoria has almost slipped into a meditative state, when she suddenly teleports to the cave. A few seconds later I feel Sarah walking up the valley towards us, along with something that's twisting magic next to her.

I teleport next to Victoria and gently say, "It's ok Victoria, she's a friend. Her name's Sarah, and people call her Big Sarah. Do you think you could meet her with me? You met her before with Amy."

Victoria looks at me for a long moment before nodding her head and gripping her staff hard enough for her knuckles to turn white.

As I turn to the entrance to the cave I tap them gently with the shaft of my spear and say, "Remember, relaxed grip."

The only answer I get is Victoria crowding behind me as I walk out to meet Sarah.

"Hey Sarah, this is Victoria. Victoria, this is Big Sarah. You've met before, but Victoria has lost her memories."

Sarah smiles and waves, "Hi Victoria, how are you doing?"

Victoria pokes her head around my shoulder, "I'm doing ok I think."

I smile and step to one side so that Victoria's no longer behind me, "How are things back on Earth Bet?"

"Carol and Mark were relieved when I told them that Victoria was alive and safe. Well Mark was, Carol wasn't satisfied until she'd phoned the PRT to confirm that you were both missing. While she was doing that Mark suggested that I let the Pelham's know, so I did. Your aunt Sarah sends her best wishes, and I've got a get well soon card in the bag here. Honestly, I'm not sure how much they took in, as all of them were in a right state."

Victoria asks, "What about Amy?"

Sarah shrugs, "I don't know, I think Carol was on the phone to her when I got back to them. Mark also gave me a bag," She lifts the duffle bag she's holding at arms length, "with several changes of clothes in it, and there's apparently a tub of your favorite ice cream in there too."

Victoria cocks her head with a smile, "I remember ice cream. We were at a park and mom bought me a double chocolate waffle cone with sprinkles and chocolate sauce. Amy got a single strawberry scoop with a chocolate stick. That doesn't seem fair."

I briefly give Victoria a hug, "It might or might not, but it's in the past. We can't change the past, no matter how much we want to. All we can do is move on and be thankful that you're getting more memories back."

"But it feels wrong that I didn't notice that Amy's ice cream was so small."

I look at Sarah helplessly, who shrugs before asking, "How tall were you when this happened?"

Victoria holds her hand just below breast height, "I think I came up to there on mom."

"Victoria, you were a child, and this is a good memory for you. I'm sure you just saw that you both had ice creams and didn't think anything beyond that. Did you do anything after the ice creams?"

Victoria shakes her head, "I, don't know. I just remembered that when you said you had ice cream."

"Once you've found your inner world we can work on it better. What else is in the bag, as there's something that feels off, like it's screwing with magic."

Sarah grimaces as she puts the duffel bag down and takes out a plastic carrier bag, "It's a cast iron saucepan and a wrought iron frying pan that Lacey had. Felt like I was dragging a bloody car behind me when I came here, and they burned me when I tried to pick them up."

I reach out and grab the bag with my telekinesis and frown as it takes more effort than I'm used to for something that size. When I switch my focus to just the handle the difficulty goes away. "That's weird. I think Selene's talked about this before, something about it stabilizing magic and being really dangerous to mortals because of that. I might have it written down in one of my notebooks. If not I'll try and remember so that I can tell you about it later."

Sarah nods, "Thank you. Danny and Kurt both managed to find a container, but they couldn't get it through the thing in your house, so they've put it back until tomorrow."

I grimace, "Maybe the pans will be enough. I don't know, all we can do is ask."

Victoria pulls the other bag to herself, and starts slowly looking through the clothes in there. While she's doing that I say, "Selene, goddess of the moon. We have a cast iron and wrought iron pan. Will they be enough?"

Selene's voice comes back almost immediately, "I don't know, and I don't want to chance returning until I'm sure, as the more we leave the protection of whatever barrier there is, the more Sleepers we'll attract. Like fisher birds to feeding fish in a still lake. I will be trying to persuade any other Sleepers that I found a bit of iron by chance, and the sleeper chasing me is trying to steal it from me."

"Why is iron so important out there anyway?"

"It stabilizes a physical body, allowing these sleepers to sleep away aeon's in dreaming of their past existences. The planet you call Mars used to hold life before Gaia did, my own teacher told me he met one of their gods once, and they managed to kill a Sleeper and extract it's memories. In doing so they doomed their own planet."

"How did they kill it?"

"I don't know, but I know that it is possible for an immortal to absorb the soul of another immortal."

From her bag, Victoria says, "Can I go home?"

To Selene I say, "Victoria needs me, stay safe and I miss you."

As I'm crouching down, Selene says, "I miss you too."

I put my hand gently on Victoria's back, "As soon you can move through the different worlds on your own, and not fall down the canyon without me holding you here, we will go home."

Victoria looks back at her bag, "That means meditation, doesn't it."

Sarah vehemently says, "I hated that part of learning how to use magic. I swear it took me a month to just be able to meditate properly. Then it was another couple of weeks till I found my inner world."

Victoria looks at Sarah strangely, "You couldn't meditate?"

Sarah nods, "I've always been an active person, it's why I joined a fisher crew rather than go to college. Just sitting still for that long was agony."

"I just want to find out who I was."

I pat Victoria's back comfortingly, "And as soon as you can make the journey yourself we can go. But first of all, you need to find your inner world."

Victoria whines, "Isn't there a different way to do it?"

I shrug, "I don't know, there might be. Tell you what, I have a book on woodworking. How about we start learning how to make more complicated stuff than the bookshelves in the cave?"

Victoria looks up at me, "Can we make a pretty house?"

I smile, "Sure, once we've learned how to make the different joints, yes. We'll also need to learn how to sand it down and make paint too if we want it to be pretty."

Victoria scrambles to her feet and runs to the cave to grab the book.

Sarah looks at me oddly, "You're really good with her, you know that?"

I look back at the cave, "I think it's easier because her memories are there in her magic, they're just taking time getting back into her brain. Or something like that anyway. I'm just glad she didn't learn to teleport until after she was potty trained."

Sarah looks disgusted as she says, "I'm not even going to ask."

"She was completely empty Sarah, there was nothing there after we healed her. I think most of it is still there. But she seems, happier than she was. I've been reading to her at night, and I've even worked out how to make a magical light now. It's certainly easier than making animal fat torches, and far less smelly too."

Sarah nods, "Would you mind an extra pair of hands sticking around? As I don't exactly have any paying work I need to worry about."

I smile, "Sure, and maybe you can help me teach Victoria more about spear work."

Sarah laughs, "Yeah, right. I'll be learning right next to her."

I shake my head, "I'm not actually that good. Since I was given my spear, I've only learned three or four new moves. Selene believes in ensuring that I've fully integrated the moves into everything else I've learned."

Sarah shakes her head, "I think it was in a Bruce Lee film or something, but someone once said, 'Do not fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once. Instead fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.'"

I shrug, "I still lost to Oni Lee though."

Sarah stalks off into the cave muttering something, leaving me to deal with Victoria's clothes and the iron pans.