From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 5
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
Millie didn't trust herself when it came to reading Elise, so she defaulted to honesty. "I was, but then we talked a bit, then she told me to go out to clear my head."
"She told you that?"
There was something in that question Millie was missing. "She did."
"And you will listen?"
"Erm, yes?"
"Then you should go," Elise said, and returned to her book without another word.
As Millie stared at the back of Elise's head, she knew the conversation was over, and that was that. She just wished she knew why. Taking a deep breath, she tasted nothing but more questions, and turned to leave.
"I guess I better had," Millie said sadly. If it was the sound of logs shifting in the fire or the sound of Elise turning around as she took the first stair, Millie didn't stop to look.
The rain had finally stopped, and the sun was threatening to show itself, but so far appeared to be bluffing.
Bertram had gone out to check all of the vulnerable grave sites to make sure they hadn't been tampered with, as well as to make sure the young Private Stokeworth was laid properly to rest. When he had told her that there was no family in attendance and that he was simply to be put in the ground without ceremony, she had managed to see Bertram out the door before allowing herself a short weep for a man she only knew by name, and quite possibly had never met. That she had chosen to pitch herself into a grave that was literally all the man had left her feeling the kind of dirty that no amount of bathing could ever remove, and it was that shame that had kept her away from a burial that was otherwise only to be attended by the man wielding the shovel.
It didn't escape her that she could very well be Stokeworth's family, and that he was the reason she'd come to the cemetery in the first place, but the fact she had no idea only drove her further towards despair. The repatriation and burial had been paid for anonymously, Bertram had said, but wouldn't go into any further detail beyond the fact that no-one had requested to be present, which would have made it odd indeed for her to be there two days early in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. If she was a family member who was supposed to be grieving, she felt confident he would have told her, if for no other reason than it would tell her who she was and get her out of his cabin.
But she didn't know, and it was infuriating.
She'd taken out her frustration by scrubbing every sign she'd ever been in that poor man's grave from her clothing, as well as herself, of the mud and dirt she'd been covered in since she came to consciousness.
On one hand, she felt significantly better, or at least marginally more human. Having clean hair and not feeling like she should apologise every time she touched anything was liberating. On the other, it meant being huddled alone in a blanket, with nothing else to do but look at her clothes drying in front of the stove and piece herself together from what she saw.
She learned she apparently didn't like colour, as every garment she'd peeled off was grey or black. It was all sturdy, practical clothing that had worn falling into an open grave well, but had no coherent style to it. To her eye, it struck her as somewhat dour. Was she dour? She hoped not.
In spite of being willing to speculate based on her clothing, reflections were still proving to be problematic. As she was washing, she'd found herself keeping the water in motion as much as possible to avoid seeing one. Even so, learning certain things was unavoidable. The hairs she'd found were short and black, the longest of which would have barely passed her chin. She was dotted with a smattering of dark freckles, though she didn't find any more tattoos in her brief investigation. Any that she couldn't see would have to remain discoveries for later.
Black hair, black ink tattoos, dark clothing.
She took a sip of tea. Earl Grey.
She'd found a theme, but had no idea what it could mean.
Worryingly though, she'd had empty pockets and had been wearing no jewellery. Did that mean she'd been been robbed before she'd gone in? Having been mugged and tossed in that grave afterwards would answer a few questions, but raise others. Muggers didn't force their victims to march across a cemetery afterwards, did they? Then again, if she had been drunk, that plus panic might very well have led her into a hole in the ground. A mugging would also explain why the sight of a gun would trigger such an intense reaction. She shuddered.
What other possibilities were there?
Alone in a cemetery on Christmas Eve night, with no sort of identification whatsoever; not even her name sewn into her jacket. She couldn't imagine she was so irresponsible as to have done that on purpose. It was maddening. She couldn't even go to the police for help.
Yes, Constable, I would like to report that I was probably mugged in a cemetery on Christmas Eve.
Probably?
Yes, I don't actually remember, but it's my best guess at the moment.
I see, and your name is?
I don't remember that either.
What did they take?
The conversation would only spiral away from her at that point, she was certain. Then they would tell her either to go home or with the nice man with 'asylum' somewhere on his CV.
But that thought dislodged something else for her to do while she waited for the little pot-belly stove to do the work of making it possible for her to go outside again. What was she supposed to be called? "Hey You" was good for one, maybe two utterances before the novelty wore off, and even then it would be somehow disrespectful of Private Stokeworth to make mock of the circumstances that had put her in his grave.
The events of the previous evening came back to her then, and it became obvious what she needed to be called; the only word she'd had any sort of response to: November. After all, if May and June worked as names, she couldn't think of a reason why November couldn't. Well, there was the reason that it was bizarre, but having her memories bashed out of her head was even more so. Besides, not being a 'proper' name, it would serve much better as a label than a name, she surmised. If it was as temporary as she hoped it would be, in the end it wouldn't matter what she was called. Looking down at the bold black letters that would be with her for the rest of her life, November was, at the very least, something she wouldn't forget.
That decided, the warmth of the small room made her brain even less reliable than it had been, and she began to fade in and out of consciousness. Her eyes would grow heavy and her head would loll, but whether or not she ever fell asleep she couldn't say.
No dreams came, only fleeting images, fragments of words. The place she found herself when her consciousness left her was dark and quiet. It was a lonely, desolate place peopled only with shadows and whispers, as she didn't even have her memories to keep her company any more. The maw of where they once were stretched out before her, amplifying the darkness of the nowhere place she found herself again and again.
Every time the real world returned, it was with the light at a different angle, brighter becoming dimmer. When it left again, it was always the same darkness, the same emptiness that took its place. No light was coming to her there, November knew.
The thought snapped her awake, and she looked about to see it was much later in the day than she could account for. The dark patches in her clothing were all gone, and when she went to them, confirmed they were dry.
She must have slept, but if so, why was she so tired? she thought as she shrugged into her now-stiff jacket. It was the only one she had, and now even it felt unfamiliar to her, having dried so quickly in stagnant air. She looked down at the frayed sleeves and wondered how long she'd had it. What had made her choose it? Why this one? It was fine enough, but it was a stranger's jacket now. And yet it wasn't. It was hers, but she didn't know how or why. She could have pulled any jacket at random out of Bertram's wardrobe and had the same response.
It made her want to tear it off and burn it as much never take it off again, and the war of those diametrically-opposed feelings must have been plain on her face when Bertram walked in. He was filthy from head to toe, but his features were soft and sympathetic.
"Let me get cleaned up, and then we'll go out for a pint, yeah?"
Whether he'd asked her a question or not, or even been in the room, November knew she would have said the same thing: "Please."
The walk from the ADAM house to the village was not an unpleasant one. Though the trees were in their skeletal winter state, they were plentiful and provided the wind with a voice to accompany Millie on her way. In the spring, the gardens in front of all the other houses would finally be given back to the flowers, and the air would once again be fragrant and colourful. As it was, many of them had been almost entirely given over to the war effort, growing fruits and vegetables to help ease the burden on Britain's farmers.
Ivy and Elise had been voracious tenders to their own War Garden, and had produced the most of anyone in the neighbourhood, by far. As Ivy's experiments were considered part of the war effort, ADAM had been allowed to keep a great deal of what they grew for themselves, much to the consternation of the local busybodies. But sod them, they should have tried harder. Or done it themselves, rather than having their gardeners do it.
Elise had done it herself, and had tried sharing her love of growing things with Millie, but it had become quickly apparent that her talent lie with things once they'd come out of the ground. In Millie's hands, a potato could end a dozen tasty ways, but a potato plant would only end in sadness and questions. Likewise, she could arrange flowers and string them together in ways that would flatter even Hekabe, but every bulb she'd planted had either rotted in place or been stolen by squirrels, the fuzzy little turds.
A watering can though, she was ace with that.
Eventually, the low, moss-encrusted walls that demarcated 'mine' from 'yours' ended where the village centre began, where everything was 'ours', except the flats above all the shops. It was a sleepy place overrun with older people who all knew each other because they'd all grown up there and had never left. Their families had lived in the same place since before the dawn of time on land granted them by King Arthur himself, to hear them tell it.
That no-one ever left shouldn't have surprised her. They were content with their lot and saw no reason to change it. If she'd grown up here, perhaps she'd feel the same way too.
The last few years had been tumultuous and nomadic, but she'd come to enjoy it. This was the third place she'd lived since the beginning of the war, so now home was where she was, not where she was from.
There was nothing left for her there.
Maybe once she'd have agreed with painting the goal line over the start line and calling it a life, but now the idea of staying in one place and then just calcifying there filled her with a stark sense of dread—it made the potential move to place number four another reason to get past the evaluations.
After that? Maybe number five could be France—if she was lucky, perhaps Elise would be the reason. But that was a fantasy Millie kept under lock and key. If she let it out, just the exposure to sunlight could shatter it into a million pieces.
But such thoughts weren't why she'd stepped out the door that afternoon. She'd taken that step because it was the first one on the way to somewhere else, which was where she needed to be. She wandered in and out of shops, looking at things she would never buy, waving to people whose names she'd long forgotten and was now afraid to ask—generally trying to empty her head of every conscious thought she'd ever had. Finding only moderate success in what would be regarded as healthy, she made her way towards something that wasn't, namely the White Hart pub.
Any other time or day, Millie wouldn't have dared to go into a pub by herself. A woman alone, the scandal would have followed her right back to ADAM for as long as she was there. But since that wasn't likely to be much longer, she pushed open the door anyway.
Several pairs of suspicious eyes fell on her as she entered, but she met every single one of them unerringly. If there was to be scandal from her choice, it wasn't going to be made directly to her face. Satisfied she was going to have some kind of peace, even if it might be temporary, she made her way further inward.
The new electrical lighting would take some getting used to. Coming from the warm, soft light of burning wicks, wood and gas, it felt harsh and somewhat disconcerting. It was steady and orange but with no character or life, making all of the shadows it cast seem off. Maybe it was because they were sharper or more solid, she couldn't say. The fact she hadn't known day-to-day electrification in her life until she'd gone to work at the munitions factory probably coloured her feeling toward it: industrial and artificial, which of course it was.
Looking around, the little flaws that marked the pub as being as old as it was stood out under electric lights the way they hadn't before. It made them seem more like flaws that detracted rather than character that enhanced. Such was the price of progress, she supposed.
The man tending bar was not someone Millie had seen very often, but given that it was a holiday, she shouldn't have been surprised. He was young and looked to be smartly dressed under his black apron. When she took the last seat at the end of the bar he greeted her with wide eyes, but closed them to a more professional size as he favoured her with a smile that in no way helped her remember his name.
"What can I get for you?" he asked.
"Pint of lager, please."
When it arrived, Millie tipped it back far enough to bury her nose in the frothy head, the rest gone before the bartender had taken more than a few paces towards a trio of ladies at the other end of the bar who had clearly already captured his attentions for the evening.
"Another, please," she said. If she had come here to take her mind off things, she was going to make sure it was taken as far away as she could get it.
The steady rain had left the roads in a sorry state of muck that greedily sucked at the shoes of anyone with the unfortunate necessity of gaining the other side. Twilight hid the pools of standing water and the deep ruts left behind by vehicle traffic to provide further obstacles to the simple art of walking in a straight line.
November took due note of every one of them in an effort to keep from looking up. If she didn't know where she was going, then perhaps some unconscious part of her would lead her where she needed to go without her amnesia having any say in the matter.
Also, she didn't want to fall in.
Bertram followed close behind, enlarging her footprints with his own to help achieve the same goal.
As treacherous as it could be, the walk was proving to be doing her some good. The fresh air and the simple act of moving around was helping to clear her head and make her feel more like a functioning human being, rather than a brain-damaged invalid.
She was still rolling 'November' around in her mind as a name. As far as a name that was derived from a tattoo, she could easily imagine a lot worse. 'Saucy Lady' or 'Anchor' would have been right out.
Why weren't ideas like that at the bottom of her memory crater? Sailor tattoos no, name and address, yes. Bloody irritating is what it was.
Still, she supposed she should be thankful she still remembered things like 'how to walk' and 'English'. The latter she was particularly thankful for when she looked up to avoid colliding with a man coming out of a doorway. He tossed a slurred apology over his shoulder, but the bright yellow paint on the door prevented her from acknowledging it.
'White Hart' they said above the faded, cracking illustration of a pure white stag with a crown around its neck.
"Here," November said, though she didn't know why.
She smiled and went inside.
The bottom of Millie's pint glass had not been the repository of knowledge and reassurance she had hoped it would be. Neither was the second. Nor the third. Oh, they kept beer from going everywhere well enough, but she didn't feel any more enlightened for having found them.
Would a fourth hold what she was looking for? She doubted it. Besides, she was already feeling sheepish for finishing off three without having a single conversation with anyone.
Several slurred and unbalanced interpretations of chivalry had not gone down in her books as conversations so much as interactions, ones that had become less amusing the more they accumulated. She should, in fact, be alone in a place like this; because she chose to be; yes, she did have somewhere to go after this; no, she didn't need any help getting there, but thank you for the offer all the same.
The normal back-and-forth with the bartender hadn't happened either, as he had spent the entire evening thus far tying himself in knots around the little finger of a coquettish young blonde woman, and so even he had been a void of interaction beyond 'sure thing.'
How could Millie justify coming here to clear her head if all she did was think? It didn't feel any clearer—it was all muzzy and full of anxiety, and Vickie wasn't there to help make sense of it all. Her absence was the problem and was, in fact, making things worse.
How many evenings had they spent together in the company of alcohol? Millie couldn't even count. They had run the entire emotional gamut together countless times, and that was before they'd even come to ADAM, which had only made them closer. In a new place under the most extraordinary of circumstances, they had been there for each other each and every time the other had needed it.
Being told witches were real and they could be one; sparking their first witchlights—learning beyond doubt that magic was real had made the subsequent evenings a blur of half-recallable images brought to mind by people asking questions like, 'Do you know what you two did last night?'
Vickie and Millie the Inseparable had been separated.
And Elise? Millie hadn't been surprised that Elise had stayed home, she rarely did anything else, but since she was another one of the things Millie was anxious about, it was probably for the better.
Elise Cotillard, the woman so beautiful it drove her to drink, Millie thought as her third pint disappeared.
