Free The Memory of Death by Trent Jamieson Page B

replaced by something raw and pure, and I feel a scream bunched unevenly in all my throats. Our eyes close. Hearts beat as five, the Hound and us, then one. And we’re remembering a thousand things I didn’t even know that I had forgotten.
    The first time we saw her in the Wintergarden food court. The first time we touched her. The first time she smiled. The smell of my father’s cologne, the way the waves crashed against the shore. A storm of bicycles. We’re remembering friends lost, family snatched away, my dog Molly – yes, I do like dogs. Our house exploding, my first pomp (I was ten). There’s a knife fight on the top of this tree; there’s a Death whose face changes to suit his mood, and it’s a shuttling temperament. There’re betrayals, and death, there is always death. And those fucking memories bring me to my knees.
    I open my eyes. There’s only me. Just one Steven de Selby standing on that mighty branch of the One Tree. Clash and Okkervil are gone, only their clothes remain. I straighten my rather torn and bloody suit. I feel –
    ‘You!’ Lissa shouts, and I jerk my head to the left, then drop, which is the only thing that keeps my head on its shoulders.
    She’s holding the Knives of Negotiation. And I know they could chop me up. I’ve used them, up here, before. I used them to become RM. I never expected that Lissa would wield them against me. But the top of the One Tree is a place of ritual and violence. She holds the knives expertly; they’re sharp angles of death and they’re describing cruel geometries at me. I don’t want to bleed again so soon.
    ‘Hello,’ they whisper. ‘Hello.’
    I scramble backwards.
    ‘Wait,’ Charon yells. Lissa ignores him.
    ‘Right,’ Lissa says. ‘Just you and me. The Hound wasn’t enough. But I am. I will bring you death – that is my job.’
      ‘It’s me,’ I say, and I pull my knife from my belt and yank it down across my hand. It bleeds.
    ‘Is it?’ Lissa looks from the hand to me, to Mr D and Charon, both men hovering back. Wal is fluttering between us, his hands raised.
    Mr D nods. ‘Yes, it is.’
    Lissa lowers the knives and they grumble. I can’t help smiling.
    ‘I’m back. I’m back,’ I say. ‘And I forgive you.’
    Lissa’s lip curls into a snarl. ‘You? You forgive me !’
    ‘I’m back, I can put things right.’
    ‘You were the one who put them wrong,’ Lissa says. ‘Things have changed. Neither of us are the same anymore. And there you are, offering forgiveness.’
    I take a step towards her.
    ‘Steve, you’re an ignorant bastard.’
    ‘But –’
    ‘I still can’t hear a heartbeat,’ Lissa says.
    ‘Does that mean I’m dead to you?’
    Lissa shakes head. ‘It means you aren’t you. You’re not my Steve.’
    Her Steve. My face flushes.
    Lissa looks at me intently. ‘See, I don’t understand how that works. Your heart isn’t beating – you’re not alive, you’re not dead.’
    I want to reach out a hand and touch her, but her face says no. So I don’t.
    ‘Neither are you.’
    Lissa seems almost wounded by that. ‘I know what I am. I know what you made me. My heart may not beat, not in the way that it used to, but I know the difference between living and dead. And you’re neither, Steve. You’re wrong, and not in a good way. Even now, looking at you, you’re wrong.’
    ‘Trust me; you’ve trusted me before. I’ve trusted you.’
    ‘And where has that got us?’
    I remember again the first time I saw her. The first time I felt a burst of something that was more than lust. She’d been dead, and not dead, and I’d never felt more alive.
    Her first word to me: run .
    And we hadn’t really stopped running since. We’d fought Stirrers, we’d died for each other and found rebirth in each other’s arms. Lissa had forced me to grow up because I suddenly realised that I’d had to, that she deserved the best that I was capable of. Except growing up had only made things more complicated.
    ‘I really