Free Fathomless by Jackson Pearce

what pine sap smells like. Salt? No, I’m getting confused; that’s just what I smell right now. Pines are different; they havespindly needles and layered bark. I think. Why can’t I remember?
    The girl returns with the towel, wraps it around me. I look at the shore longingly—I want to sit in the sand, I want my body to dry out entirely, but Lo’s voice is in the back of my head:
No, no, I live in the water. I can’t go on land like that—
    “Naida,” the girl says, and I force Lo away. “Do you remember now?” She touches my shoulder, and her eyes change, get distant, like she sees something I don’t see.
    How could I forget the scent of pine trees? They were all over the place in the woods surrounding our house. They shed so many needles that sometimes the ground looked like a red-brown carpet, and during summer thunderstorms, they swayed and thrashed against one another like giants at war.
    I want to sit down. I wince and force myself to walk forward. My vision goes bright from the pain. The girl pauses, then loops my right arm over her shoulders. Walking still hurts, but with most of my weight on her, it’s not quite as bad. As soon as we make it to dry sand, I collapse, staring at the trail of my blood leading back to the water.
    “Who are you?” I ask her.
    “My name’s Celia,” the girl answers. “Celia Reynolds. We met last night—”
    “I remember that,” I reply. “Sort of. It feels like it didn’t really happen, though.”
    “I know exactly what you mean,” Celia answers, words slightly muttered.
    “All my memories feel real—but they aren’t complete. There are parts missing.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like the faces,” I answer slowly. It’s getting dark now; the sun is out of sight over the palmettos behind us, but remnants of its light still cling to the sky. My hands don’t look quite as wrong now, though I’m not sure if it’s because I’m drier or because it’s darker. I look out over the water, try to remember the faces of my family, of the people I lived with. I can see their hair, dark chocolate brown, but that’s it. Their faces are blurry, their voices distorted save for the occasional laugh or when they say my name. I realize I remember exactly how my name sounded on their tongues.
    “Do you remember your last name?” Celia asks. I shake my head. “Do you remember… something frightening?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “When I…” She pauses, swallows. “When I look at your memories, the loudest one is a memory of someone… of someone screaming. It’s so loud it almost covers the rest of them up. I can’t see it clearly.”
    Maybe that should scare me, but it doesn’t—how can I be scared of something that I don’t remember? I wish I did. I wish I had all the pieces. She can find a scream in my mind that I can’t. It doesn’t seem fair.
    “Who am I?” I ask, not exactly to Celia, though I hope she has an answer.
    Celia shakes her head. “I don’t know. Thirty minutes ago, you told me you were Lo.”
    “I am,” I answer. “But that feels like a nickname. Like a fake name I give people, because my real name is Naida. It’s always been Naida. Naida…” My last name, it was on the tip of my tongue, it was there… but it’s gone. “I don’t remember anything. Bits and pieces of things, but nothing big. Nothing real.” I look at Celia desperately, and she reaches out to touch me again, closes her eyes. It takes her a few minutes. She moves her hand up and down my arm like she’s reading something beneath my skin.
    “I think…” she starts quietly, like she’s not certain. “You have sisters. Or, one sister? It feels like there are two, but I never see the other’s face, never see any sign of her. I must be reading things wrong—”
    “I have one sister,” I say, inhaling sharply. My older sister. She taught me how to French braid and painted my face like a cat every Halloween, since that’s all I ever wanted to go as.
    “And