4.11: Unlinked

I was feeling normal once again by lunchtime. By nighttime, I was starting to think that the weird mental feeling had just been an overreaction on my part, that maybe I’d just been weirded out by the not-dream and unused to the effects of sedatives. I gave my roommates doses of the Broth of Dreams, and they fell asleep easily.

Which was more than I could do. I lay on my bed, staring at the stone above me, contemplating heading out to Phone Reception Mountain and texting my friends at home for a bit. Or maybe seeing if some of my other Refujeyo friends were up. Doing something. I had homework that I could be doing, but that didn’t really count.

How was I going to convince my parents not to fight to bring me home?

I didn’t want to compromise with them on anything. I was in the right; Refujeyo was where I needed to be, and the decisions I was making for my body were the correct ones, and they had absolutely no idea what was going on. They just assumed that because they were my parents, they knew what was best for me; in this case, they didn’t. They didn’t know anything about magic, or my life, or the familiarity thing or the prophecy or any of it, the entire basis for their concern being that I somehow didn’t know my own gender and couldn’t be trusted to have control of my own body was insulting on so many levels, and the very thought of taking their ignorant nonsense seriously on any level dragged against my nerves.

But I was going to have to. I couldn’t get caught up in who was right and who was wrong, and my own personal pride. There was too much at stake for that. Going home was simply not possible; me being Kylie’s familiar saw to that. That wasn’t on the table at all; it was logistically unfeasible. And while I was at school, on Refujeyo territory, my parents had no legal recourse, either. This wasn’t a fight they could actually win. But it was one that they could fight, and create problems.

There were multiple things I needed to protect. Firstly, keeping my parents ignorant of my various dangerous shenanigans. Them finding out about that sort of thing would go very badly. Secondly, keeping them from finding out about the familiarity bond, if possible. If HRT upset my mum this much, then the familiarity bond would make reason or compromise impossible, especially if they learned that people in my position were usually dead long before now. Thirdly, keeping my parents out of the media. If their fight to bring me back went on for too long, then it would definitely get out to the media. There were too many young witches in Australia who desperately needed Refujeyo’s help to let a ‘the mages are stealing your children and doing horrible things to them’ kind of story to be allowed to get out.

I needed to convince my parents that Skolala Refujeyo was still the best place for me. Mum’s whole problem was the HRT; both the straightup insulting idea that if the school was doing its job then I somehow wouldn’t be trans any more, and the expected concern that the school was providing me with hormones without parental permission. I absolutely was not going to stop taking hormones; that simply wasn’t on the table. Meaning that I needed to convince them that the school was the best place for me despite the HRT.

That was going to be difficult.

I drifted off partway through making Epic Parental School Tour plans, and woke shortly after Max and Kylie did. They were already talking quietly when I got up.

“Well?” I asked. “Did you guys get it?”

Max shook his head. “Neither of us experienced what you described. So it’s probably unique to you; most likely, some potions don’t work properly because you’re a human familiar, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

“We also didn’t see you getting that cut,” Kylie added. “Sorry.”

“Ugh. Well, thanks anyway.”

Max rubbed his goatee. “Don’t be too disappointed. The failure tells us something in itself.”

“What, that I screwed up the potion?”

“No, probably not. Your instruktanto would have noticed that when checking it. Anyway, I read up on Lorelei’s Broth and what Kylie and I experienced was basically what you’d expect when trying to access a memory that doesn’t exist. So it tells us that you cut yourself when you were out of our sight.”

“Specifically,” Kylie added, “I think we can say that you probably cut up that arm early on. There was a period of time when we were separated, and then you found Max, and then the two of you found me, remember? I think you probably cut it around then.”

Max looked at her in surprise. “How do you figure?”

“You performed first aid and wrapped up our bigger wounds after we passed out, right?” Kylie said. “We did the familiarity rite, and we passed out, and you did what care you could and eventually fell asleep yourself?”

“Yes.”

“So, you should’ve remembered bandaging that wound. You didn’t remember it, so Kayden must have bandaged it already, when we were treating our wounds halfway through our journey.”

I shook my head. “I would’ve remembered that. That was when we were using the healing potion that can only go on skin-deep wounds. I would’ve remembered having to avoid getting it on my arm, surely. It had to have happened after that.”

“Hmm.” Max frowned thoughtfully. “The whole mystery around this scar is that it healed as if treated with that potion, right? That’s what you’re so interested in? I think perhaps we’ve missed the extremely obvious explanation. When we stopped to treat our wounds, we were all exhausted, and scared, and in pain. It’s entirely possible that you simply didn’t notice how deep that wound was at the time, and treated it like your other scrapes, and there’s no mystery here at all.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. I was sure that that couldn’t be right; I would have noticed, wouldn’t I? But I had been in pain and hopped up on magic at the time. We’d all been tired and distracted. And I’d spent the full six months of my initiation semester convinced that I remembered casting my curse against Matt, and later to save Alania, when it turned out I’d never cast it at all. Maybe I really hadn’t noticed this either.

Normally I’d feel pretty let down by such an anticlimactic answer, but I had enough dramatic mysteries going on in my life already. I shrugged and started digging through my stuff to find my runecrafting supplies for my first class.

“Hey, what’s that?” Max asked.

“Hmm?” I glanced at the pile of random junk I was dumping onto my bed.

“The diagram.” He pointed.

I pulled out the sheet of paper he was indicating and handed it over. “It’s just a map of the scars on my chest.”

“Scars?”

“Well, they’re not actually scars, they’re just evidence of healed… it’s kind of a long story.” I explained the whole thing.

The pair stared at me, like what I’d just told them was a big deal. I’d been spending ages trying to get myself to understand that it wasn’t a big deal, so this was unhelpful.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Kylie said.

I shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. We tried all kinds of things to bind the curse, and I didn’t even know this had happened until Malas told me, so it couldn’t have mattered all that much, right?”

“Still.”

I shrugged again.

“Your parents… cut this design into your chest?” Max asked, frowning at the paper.

“More likely they hired someone else to do it. Malas says it was a really professional job. But… yeah.”

“As a cursebinding attempt.”

“I can’t see why else they’d do it.”

“Do you know who they hired?”

“When I brought it up, they denied knowing anything about it at all, so I don’t think we’ll have much luck finding that out.”

“Hmm.” He turned the paper around in his hands. “Can I make a copy of this?”

“You can keep it if you want. It creeps me out. Why? Is it important?”

“No, probably not. Just a random curiosity.”

“… Uh-huh.”

“Hey, Kayden,” Kylie cut in, “aren’t you late for runecrafting class?’

“Shit!”

I did get to class on time. The class was boring enough to make me wish that I hadn’t. The most interesting thing to happen was a last-minute scheduling of a meetup for our coven that afternoon, meaning I got to play an exciting game of ‘pretend you’re working while secretly messaging your friends a lot’.

Once Kylie, Talbot, Hua and I were assembled in our usual room and digging into snacks that Hua had pilfered from the cafeteria, Kylie got down to business. “I’ve found someone who knows someone who can contact the new witch initiates,” she explained. “I think we should meet with them as soon as we can. I’m sure they have questions that we can answer.”

“How many are there?” Hua asked.

“Three. Jamil is twelve, Helen is fourteen, and Alan sixteen. All from Australia, of course.”

Talbot leaned forward. “Two witches from Australia a year ago, and three more now? Is something weird going on there?”

“No, no.” I shook my head. “There’s been a law change so that Refujeyo can approach more Australians. We expected this to happen.”

“We need to figure out how we’re going to… do this, I guess,” Kylie said. “Like, do we just meet up with them somewhere and wing it? Should we prepare a speech or something? If we can somehow get Cheryl to come, to give them advice on their other options, that would be great.”

“You mean an apprenticeship?” Talbot asked. “I had one of those. It sucked.”

“Because your master was an exploitative dick,” Hua pointed out. “Cheryl might be having a better time of it.”

“How would we know? We haven’t seen her since that time she literally caught fire.”

“All the more reason to catch up with her,” Kylie said. “Anyway, the initiates should hear about your experience and her experience. And all of ours here at Refujeyo, of course. The more information they have, the better.”

We went back and forth on exactly how we were going to handle the initiates until Kylie had to go to maths. A few minutes later, I got up to leave, too. “I’ve booked a workshop to knock up some memory potions,” I explained.

“Ugh.” Talbot’s spell suddenly stirred up, agitated, and ruffled his hair. “I hate those.”

“Because you’re an idiot,” Hua said placidly.

“Worst experience. They make my brain hurt. I feel like I have to be careful how I think for hours afterward.”

I froze. That sounded familiar. “Is that… common?”

“Only if you’re an idiot like Talbot,” Hua said, “and ignore the safety protocols.”

“I assumed it would be fine!”

“Have you ever taken Lorelei’s Broth of Sleep?” I asked.

“Oh, you mean Lorelei’s Broth of Extended Sensory Deprivation?”

“It works fine for the vast majority of people,” Hua said. “You should have known better than to take it.”

“Wait, wait.” I held up a hand. “Why don’t they work for Talbot?”

“They do,” Talbot said. “To an extent. If I’m careful about what I think about.”

“You’re not supposed to take recall potions if you have extended brain damage,” Hua explained. “Like our risk-loving friend here seems to forget – ”

“It shouldn’t affect what I want to remember for tests!”

“Yeah, well, the brain is complicated. Get over it.”

“Wait,” I said again. “The sensory deprivation thing… and the hurting if your think wrong thing… they’re symptoms of brain damage?”

Hua shrugged. “Technically, they’re symptoms of encountering unlinked memories. But yes, that usually means brain damage. Memories are associative; you experience things, and your brain records them and links them to other things. Recall potions temporarily turn a bunch of ‘checks and balances’ in your brain off, strengthening those connections and allowing you to access the memories without actively filtering or changing them like you normally do when accessing memories. Okay?”

“Right,” I said.

“So, forgetting memories, or corrupting memories, is normal. There are massive swathes of our lives that are simply inaccessible to us. If the weak connections still exist, recall potions can pull those memories up, but if they’re truly gone, then the mind just kind of… papers over the gaps. Bridges right over it, links the memories that were linked to them to something else. The mind as a whole stays mostly coherent and consistent. Unless those memories have been removed by another force – physical damage to the brain, or extreme emotional trauma on some occasions – and they haven’t been accessed enough for the brain to ‘bridge over’ the damage. Your mind will normally avoid areas like that, or work to bridge over them when it finds them, but if you disable those functions with a potion and then make yourself think of those things…”

“You essentially cut the brakes on your train of thought and roll it right off a broken track,” Talbot finished. “It’s unpleasant.”

“And that’s why Talbot shouldn’t take recall potions, isn’t that right, Talbot.”

“Yes, Mum.”

I left the room in a sort of daze. Brain damage, huh? I’d taken a few knocks to the head in my time, but I didn’t think I’d suffered any brain damage. I’d know, right?

Right?

Except… something pretty significant had happened to my brain, hadn’t it? When Kylie prophesied, Fionnrath’s Destiny wrote the prophecies to my memory in a way that simply couldn’t be normal. Had becoming a familiar hurt me? Had it done actual, physical damage to my brain?

Was it still slowly damaging it over time?

It was a possibility. Nobody knew much about how my familiarity link worked, and it was definitely too much to hope for that it wasn’t doing anything to me. And the snatches of nonsense I’d gotten while Lorelei’s Broth of Dreams worked on me had been in the Destiny’s voice.

It had been right after we’d done the familiarity rite that the Destiny had given the prophecy stating “The Hero’s life cannot be saved”, and instructed us on how to choose how much to lose. Maybe that was it, maybe that was the stopwatch. We had to destroy or contain my spell, quite probably killing me in the process, before Fionnrath’s Destiny killed me first.