Something touched her leg, but Abby ignored it. A cat or a rat, it would move on, finding nothing of interest here. Water dripped on her head from the broken church roof, but she reveled in it, an anointment from history. She became separate from the outside world, existing deeper inside her own mind than ever before.
Then, when she felt the time was right, she went further.
* * *
As a true creature of the Memory, her way back was relatively easy to find. Abby moved forward into the light, pressed deeper, and when she emerged from the other side, darkness prevailed. This was the primal darkness, the place that was the everywhere and nowhere before creation had come to build upon it, and its vastness terrified her. She hung back for a while, sheltering in her own mind and aware of the light behind her. It no longer shone, but it was there, as much a presence as her own mind. It comforted her, and in this place comfort was hard to find.
This was the landscape of Memory. A great blankness, deep and endless, to which forgotten things had been relegated, imprisoned. They existed here as conceits, not physical presences, and though they had minds, there was no past and future, no now and later. Abby's time here had been long, but she could remember nothing of it, other than a sense of being known by no one but herself. That strange solipsistic existence had not been painful, as such, because it had allowed consideration of no other. But its memory was still there, painted on the black backdrop for her to draw upon, and now that she knew so much more of life, its implication was horrendous: she could have stayed here, a mind festering forever. Blake had pulled her through from the other side, and for that she wanted to feel grateful. But his reasons for doing so ... they had been all his own. There was only selfishness in his mind. Freeing the creatures of Memory he might be, but for his own ends, not theirs.
Abby moved on, leaving the light behind. She knew that it was there for her should she need it, and she had a very definite sense of being attached to her sleeping body, back in that ruined church in Baltimore. That was her physical side, and it was very important to her, a link to the world that she would never willingly break She might have been recreated for someone else's gain, but she was all herself once more. If ever a time came when she would be relegated back to the Memory ... then she would rather die. That way at least she would be remembered, rather than being sent back here so that everyone could forget.
Out in the darkness little stirred. She felt intimations of presences around her, but none made themselves apparent, and she was surprised at how reduced this place felt, how empty. She drifted through the Memory, questioning the dark but receiving only blankness as an answer. Perhaps anything out there was keeping to itself, shy of her intrusion and unsure of how to respond to this presence, one of them and yet linked to a place beyond. She tried to project kinship, but in truth she felt none. This had once been her place, but that was no longer the case. She had a new home now.
Help me, she thought, and the idea echoed in the dark. I was once here and always will be. The echo to this was smaller, as if the darkness itself could see the lie of her statement. A man took me out, and now I seek him.
The man! something shouted. Its voice was loud and broken.
The scientist, Abby thought. The magician.
He pulled he hurt he tore!
And did he not take you?
He pulled he tried he broke he shouted he left me all alone!
Where are you? Abby thought. She looked through the blackness but saw nothing, sensed nothing other than the vague outlines of things that once were. Echoes of presences, that was all. Most were the ghosts of memories made whole again by Blake, but some drifted, so faint as to be almost invisible even to her. Some were lost forever.
I'm here, I'm lost, the echo said. I'm here forever.
Why didn't Blake take you through?
He tried, it hurt, he failed and moved on. Left me here with them.
Them?