Rewriting Memory

The wind ruffled the red and orange leaves of the half-wire trees, and strangers walked on either side of Lysandra, keeping their heads down, never once casting a glance at her. A perfect day for masquerading. If only every day could be as perfect as this one. Lysandra's skirts swished around her ankles, and she held them up just slightly with her hands as she ran. She parted the crowds on the street with hardly a motion, and no one even looked up to wonder why she ran when they didn't. The wind rushed through her long auburn hair, catching it on the breeze just as it caught those leaves on the trees around her, real or not. The wind did not rush through her hair when she sat in the window back at her father's house - the screen blocked it. And her father's servants seemed to think it was unbecoming of her to stare dreamily out the window in the first place. She felt her feet take her faster toward her destination, flying just a few centimeters above the ground, and even as she saw where she was supposed to stop, for a second she believed that she would not stop running. She believed that she would run forever, run down this very road until it ended, until the crowd vanished, until she had entered an alien world she had never seen. Instead, a hand reached out and grabbed her arm, spinning her toward the side of the road. "Lysandra Ferry!" a voice said. "You are such an airhead sometimes. For the love of the Angels!" Lysandra turned to see Zephyr Winslow standing across from her, short hair framing her face, her eyes narrowed and her hand on her hip. Her skirts stuck out further when she did that; her hips looked twice as wide as they actually were. Lysandra had long since stopped trying to tell Zephyr that. She also refrained from pointing out that Zephyr's hair still had traces of lavender in it. She grinned. "Yeah, I know. Sorry," she said. "It's just that running is so much fun." "Fun," Zephyr repeated, as though the word were foreign to her. "Yeah, I don't think so. And hey, what took you so long? I thought we were supposed to meet here fifteen minutes ago." She glanced pointedly up at the clock on a brass post at the end of the street, the hands pointing out the time, accusing: three forty-five. "Well," Lysandra said, "I had to figure out a way to get out of my father's house." "What was it this time?" Zephyr asked. "Don't tell me you climbed out a window again?" "I didn't have to do that today." Lysandra laughed. "No, it was just that for some reason, all of his servants decided it was time to wait on me, and they kept ambushing me whenever I thought I had an out." "Annoying," Zephyr said. "If you get a chance, tell them they made me wait here on a street corner by myself." Lysandra laughed. "Yeah, I'll definitely do that," she said. "I'll just tell them straight up that I had to leave the house alone. They won't try to lock me in my room or anything like that." "Saints," Zephyr said, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. "I'll bring you a ladder." The two of them stepped off the curb and merged with the crowd, Zephyr in front and Lysandra behind. They cleared the street and took a right, a left, another left; they followed one street until they were the road's only occupants. Zephyr stopped to look at a sign marking the street names, rusty and hidden behind the half-wire trees. Lysandra whispered, "Zeph, are you sure you know where you're going?" "Yeah," Zephyr said, her voice echoing in the space of the empty street. "It's just that way." She pointed off to the left of the street sign. "If you say so," Lysandra said. "But if you get us lost again - " "Again?" Zephyr asked. "Remind me of a time when I got us lost in the first place." "A time?" Lysandra echoed with a snort. "It happened more than once, Zephyr." The other streets near the one on which they'd stopped were a little more crowded. People walked up and down the streets, and the occasional automobile or bicycle slipped by among the groups. Here, since it was Saturday morning, quite a few vendors had set up shop and begun to peddle their wares to anyone they could see. Zephyr and Lysandra blended in with the crowd and made their way up the street. Zephyr finally stopped and ducked under some low wiretree branches, pushing open a heavy oak door and stepping across the threshold into a dimly lit shop. The room was smaller than Lysandra's own bedroom, with only a few tables scattered across the interior and a chair in the back by the window. Wiretree branches tapped against the glass, and their leaves blocked the view to the outside. "Where are we?" Lysandra asked. "Shh." Zephyr turned to a table next to the door and rang the bell that sat upon it. Within seconds, a man emerged from a door off to their left, tall and thin with unkempt reddish-brown hair. He had shining eyes of a silver hue. His outfit consisted of primarily black clothing except for a silver chain around his neck. When he caught Lysandra looking at it, he deftly pushed it behind his collar with a hand. "Afternoon," the man said. "Something I can help you with?" "Yes," Zephyr said. "Do you do Erasure?" "As a matter of fact, I do," the man said. "It's not cheap, though." "What is?" Zephyr asked. "You have a point. Which one of you needs it?" "That would be me." Zephyr raised a hand. The man nodded. "Excellent. Okay." He took a few steps forward and extended his hand to Zephyr. "Mason Viatrix. You?" "Zephyr Winslow." She shook his hand. "Excellent," he said again. He turned to Lysandra. "And what do you need? Something else, I suppose? Placement? Recoding?" "None of the above, thank you," Lysandra said. "I'll just be moral support." "Moral support," Mason Viatrix mused. "And yet she sounds like she's done this before." He turned to Zephyr. "Do you mind if I scan you before I start the procedure?" "Go ahead." "Take a seat," Mason Viatrix said. "Be back in a minute." He disappeared through the door again.