The Memory Thief Read Free Page B

clearly as if the speaker is sitting beside me. It is a man’s voice, low and husky, urgent. It is no one I know.
    Thus, though we cannot make our sun
    Stand still, yet we will make him run.
    Andrew Marvell, I think, before the air in my hands is replaced with carbon dioxide and my throat closes. Grief floods me, and then everything narrows to a sharp point: another needle, sinking deep into my thigh. Down I go again.
    Suspended, I float. Into the silence comes a worried female voice: “Nicholas, can you hear me?” Someone squeezes my hand, and I imagine they must be talking to me, though I have no immediate sense of recognition. I try to squeeze back, but my body is gone. This should bother me, but it doesn’t. Oh well, I think, floating away.
    The voice continues, directed toward someone else this time: “Shouldn’t he have woken up by now? You said in a few hours …”
    Footsteps cross the floor, pause beside wherever I am. “Be patient. We had to give him some extra sedatives, since he was thrashing around so much. He’ll wake up soon. Why don’t you go home and get some rest?” Fingers touch the inside of my wrist, then encircle my jaw, turning my head from left to right.
    The hand tightens around mine, nails digging in. “No thank you,” the voice says, polite but cool. “I think I’ll just stay here.”
    â€œSuit yourself,” says the other voice. It’s also female, but the tone is less personal, somehow. I hear the footsteps retreat.
    I am asleep, then, or unconscious. Am I in the hospital? What has happened to me? I try to figure it out, but come up blank until I remember my dream: the mountain, the falling, the lack of oxygen. Aha. No wonder I am hurt. In fact, it feels like a miracle I am alive at all. I remember the choking, suffocating feeling, my pointless fight for air, and shudder. It must be the brown-haired woman who is with me, then. I am happy that I get to see her again, assuming that I can indeed see. I try to open my eyes, prepared for my body to resist, but to my surprise they open easily. I see … nothing. The world is dark. Perhaps the lights are out in this room, wherever I am?
    I turn to ask my companion, eager to see her face, even the outline of it in this darkness, but her hand is no longer tight around mine. Instead, I am gripping something—a handle? My back is weighted with a heavy pack and metal clinks around my waist. I raise my arm experimentally and whatever I am holding comes with it. There is a focused, localized light and in it I see that I am gripping some kind of axe. Without warning my arm swings high, and the axe bites. I step up, expecting to slide, but my feet grip the ice and hold. Again I swing the axe and step. Other than the noises my efforts produce, all is silent. I swing and step, swing and step in the silence. Panic grips my heart.
    I am on the mountain again.
    With the eerie inevitability of déjà vu, the sun rises, a full round orb set against a backdrop of vivid oranges, reds, purples, and yellows, so true that they could be the standards against which all other colors are measured. The sun regards me like an accusing, omniscient eye as I place the ice screw, hoist myself up onto the glacier, pull up the slack in the rope. Above me the monster lets loose its ancient roar and down I go, down and down and down. My body tumbles, slams, jerks. I swing my axe, trying to arrest my descent, but it is as pointless as the first time. Something is having its way with me and it isn’t going to stop until it’s done. I feel my ribs crack, my legs twist in ways legs were never meant to bend. My head ricochets off a rock-hard surface and, despite my helmet, liquid courses down my face, warm and wet. Then the noise stops as abruptly as it’s begun and my body is still, hands cupped around my face. I see her face and I long for home with all I have. There is air. Then there is