Page 1 of Memories of the Lost
PROLOGUE
Dragon
Once upon a time, a dragon came over a mountain with a roar, spitting fire so fierce and hot that everything turned to ash in seconds.
Arlette had only stepped away from the porch a few feet to collect things for a dream catcher, specifically seeking the banded feathers of the great horned owl she’d heard in the night. Her daughter napped peacefully on a blanket on the porch, protected at head and foot by the family dogs—shepherd mutts, both of them.
By the time the dragon stomped away, nothing was left of that cabin or three more. Four people and eight pets were killed, and everyone said it was lucky it struck when it did, in the middle of the day, when everyone was out working or seeking work.
It didn’t feel lucky to Arlette, who had been chased by the monster into the woods and emerged less than a half hour later to find her life in ashes. Why did it spare her? For what?
How could she bear to go on?
PART ONE: EARTHQUAKE
For he comes, the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than he can understand.
—W. B. Yeats
CHAPTER ONE
New York City
Five months and twelve days after her mother died, a painting ripped a hole in the fabric of Tillie Morrisey’s life.
If it had not been an opening for her best friend’s first show in three years, she wouldn’t have even gone. It was pouring, the kind of Manhattan deluge that fills the gutters to knee height in ten minutes, so she was forced to wade to the subway, then splash the three blocks to the gallery. She would look like a drowned cat by the time she got there.
Two doors away from the beacon of the gallery spilling light from its big windows, an old woman tripped right in front of her. She was clearly unhoused, pushing a cart, her coat dragging on the ground. She stumbled, five feet ahead of Tillie, and practically somersaulted over, feet in the air.
Four other people were on the street, and not all of them were as clearly dressed up as Tillie, but none of them stopped. Tillie felt ashamed of herself for hesitating for even a tiny second—what did it matter if she got wetter or ruined her makeup?
She hurried over, holding her umbrella aloft. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Let me help you up.”
The woman was a ball of cloth, layer after layer, her gray hair scattered down her back. “Bless you,” she said in a craggy voice, allowing herself to be helped to her feet. “I can trip right over the air!”
“Take my umbrella,” Tillie said.
“Oh, no, not for free!”
“Really, I don’t mind. I’m just going right there.” She pointed.
The woman peered up at her, and Tillie found herself pressing details into her artist mind, seeing the lady as an ancient little hedgehog, her hair caught under a knitted scarf, her nose red from the cold. She scrounged around in her pocket and came out with something she pressed into Tillie’s hand. She imagined a germy rock, and wanted to drop it, but not until the woman was no longer looking.
“Thank you.” Tillie handed her the umbrella, then dashed for the shining lights of the gallery.
A crowd had already gathered, impossibly polished patrons in cocktail dresses and suits, the monied folk you want to see at an opening. No one would mistake Tillie for one of them with her dripping hair and aging boots, but she wasn’t there for them. Standing in the vestibule for a moment, she shook herself like a wolf and pushed her wet hair out of her face.
What had possessed her to give her umbrella away? Now she’d have to walk home in the rain. She looked at the thing the woman had given her. It wasn’t a rock but a rather beautiful reddish crystal, and unexpected tears stung her eyes. It felt like a nod from her witchy, hippie mother, whom Tillie missed painfully.
The shoulders and heads of murmuring people hid any sign of him. Instead, her eye caught on a side wall, on a particular painting. It wasn’t large, but the colors—many greens and slashes of pink, with turquoise and yellow—blazed into the room, loud as a siren. It drew Tillie across the floor.
