My dream was so vivid that I remembered every detail about it when I woke the next morning. I hadn't had one of my visions of the past while I was asleep, but it was just like one of them.
I am walking through a jungle. I can hear the wild animals growl as I walk by, but I'm not afraid. I make my way to a small hut where there is a man and a woman standing with a small child. They look like a nice little family, I think to myself.
The small child runs to me and says, "Mama, you're home." She wraps her little arms around my leg and gives a big squeeze. Evidently the nice family belongs to me.
"Elsie girl, I was only gone for an hour. You act like I've been gone for months," I tell her.
"But, Mama, it seemed like forever. Look at the new dolly Sara and Henry helped me make," she says, sticking out the little doll for me to inspect. From my body's memories, I gather that Sara and Henry are my oldest daughter and son. All the name changes over the years must have been difficult, because I've only heard a few of the different names and I'm totally confused.
Looking down at the doll in my hand, I see that it is the doll I currently have sitting in the shoebox on the dresser. I wanted to bring it along on the trip in case Elizabeth recognized anything from it. It seems the doll was hers, however many years ago in the past I am currently witnessing.
"That is the prettiest dolly I have ever seen. Does she have a name?" I ask my littlest girl.
"Her name is Callie," she reports. "And I'm going to keep her forever." Well, maybe not forever, since I somehow got a hold of her.
"Do you want me to play with you and your dolly?" I ask.
"Oh yes, Mama. Can we play hide-and-seek?" she asks. "Me and Callie will hide and you have to find us."
"That sounds like a perfect idea," I say to her.
For the rest of the dream, I spent the day playing with my little girl and her new doll. It made me depressed to think of all the memories that I was missing. Getting up from bed, I went to the shoebox and took out the doll. The second I touched it scenes started flashing before my eyes.
I didn't know how much time passed as I stood like a statue in place, but at some point Nate started shaking me and shouting my name. From the look on his face, a day very well could have gone by.
"Avery, are you okay?" he asked. "You just stood there when I called for you and wouldn't move. You were out of it for at least five minutes." He gathered me in close to hug me, before he allowed a little distance to make it easier for him to study me.
"I'm fine. Actually, I'm more than fine," I replied.
He looked down at me with concern lining every inch of his face. "Then why are you crying?" he asked, wiping a tear from my cheek.
"Because I remember her," I said simply.
"Remember who?"
"Sana, I remember Sana and everything about her. I know she has my eyes and your smile. She loves to help people and is a little bit of an adventurer. I know that when she first changed into a phoenix you made her a little phoenix statue carved from a tree branch. I know that my nickname for her is Tulip. Her favorite color is turquoise. She loves anything with onions in it. There are so many things I remember. I know every detail of her life until my last resurrection," I explained.
I saw moisture well up in Nate's eyes. "Is it just her, or are there other memories that you now have?"
I hated to crush the hope I saw in his eyes, but I couldn't lie to him. "Right now it's just her. I had a dream about her and this doll the first day she got it. When I woke up, I wanted to see the doll to feel close to her and the memories just started coming. Do you think the other things in the box will eventually have the same effect?"
I looked at the different items and wondered what they had to do with anyone I was connected to. They seemed so random.
"Since each item belongs to one of our children, they might." He'd moved to stand behind me, with his arms wrapped around my middle, as we both looked down into the box.
"Wait, you know what the other items are?" I asked, pondering how hard I was going to need to kick him.
I remembered asking my parents, him and Rick and they all claimed they were probably just some mementos or something. They'd acted like the knick-knacks were things they'd never seen before.
"We didn't lie to you. They are mementos, but we didn't want you knowing who they were attached to for fear it might trigger something too early."
"So you still won't tell me about them?"
"No, but I will say all the items in the box except the knife are from our children. The knife we still have no idea what significance it holds. It isn't a knife any of us have seen before and Rick has had our researchers searching old texts to try to find out if it's important."
"I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have packed it away unless it was important. You don't think it's the weapon that can kill phoenixes do you?" I asked.
I didn't think it was, but my former self didn't seem exactly stable, and I wouldn't doubt she was crazy enough to pack a weapon without letting anyone know it could kill them.
"No, it's not. We've had it tested and it's very old, but nothing about it would cause us permanent damage," he answered.
We'd been standing there, hugging for the entire conversation, and my stomach decided it was time for us to step away from each other. We made our way down to the kitchen, where Rick and Vinnie were already enjoying pancakes. Vinnie really wasn't eating them, but he was flipping them in a skillet.
"How did you guys sleep in the new bed?" Rick asked.
"I slept very well, while Avery may have slept well, but had a little bit of a rude awakening," Nate responded.
"Oh really? Do tell," Rick replied.
"It's nothing really. I just regained all my memories of Elizabeth," I said, shrugging.
Saying her name aloud made me realize that there was nothing stopping me from trying to get a message to her. I knew who she was and I didn't need an exact location when I'd relayed messages to Rick and my parents from miles away. I knew she wouldn't be able to reply because she was outside of Nate's distance to talk, but I could at least try to send something.
"Elizabeth, please come home. There's an emergency and you're needed," I sent her way mentally. I hated that I couldn't get back some sort of message received indicator.
"Really, all the memories? That's great. Do you know anything else?" Rick had dropped his fork and was searching my face for something.
"No, but I'm mad at anyone who knew the significance of the items in that box and kept the information from me. You guys need to stop treating me like I'm fragile. I don't care what my past self wrote in some letter. Every once in a while you need to share information with me. As an example, it would have been super cool to know my best friend wasn't human and I didn't have to watch everything I said to her." My hands had migrated to my hips, and I took on my "I mean business" stance.
"I told you she'd be mad about that," Nate said to Rick, ignoring me.
"And I told you I'd just blame you and I bet she'd forgive me."
"You guys are such dorks. Vinnie, could I please have some pancakes?" I asked. "Arguing with knuckleheads makes me hungry."
"No problem, darling, you just sit down and I'll get you a plate set up," Vinnie said, grabbing a plate.
"So, tell me more about this ghost orchid stuff you were smelling yesterday, Nate," I said as a plate of three pancakes with blueberry syrup was set in front of me.
"Ghost orchid is a very rare poison to shapeshifters. It prevents them from changing forms. As you saw last night, if they can't change forms, certain things can cause their death. It isn't usually instant as the other part of them has to give up the fight. We were lucky you were able to help Miranda. Whoever dropped her off must have known none of the foxes were strong enough to help."
"Does it affect us?" I asked Nate in between bites. He seemed to be the one answering question, but it turned out they were tag teaming their responses.
"Since we don't have to change every month, like a regular shifter,
the same thing wouldn't have happened to us. If a person could kept us on it for a millennium, we may have an issue, but I doubt it. There's no real rules when it comes to how we live our lives. That's one of the reasons other uniques treat us like royalty," Rick said.
"You said you could smell it. I don't remember any unique scents, and being able to smell a potential poison would be very handy."
"If you know what to look for, it isn't that hard to pick up the scent. It's very sweet; I relate it to cotton candy. I don't know why, just when I smell that scent I think of cotton candy," Nate relayed.
Okay, run whenever I smelled something that reminded me of cotton candy. That seemed simple enough.
"I'll store that tidbit of information for later use. I'm going to go take a shower and get dressed, but when I'm done I want to go check on Miranda. Are there any arguments?" I asked.
"No, I think it's a good idea. I want to see if she saw Elizabeth wherever she was being held," Nate said.
I finished my pancakes and thanked Vinnie before running upstairs to use one of the two bathrooms in the house. After the quick shower, I threw on my long underwear, some jeans, two t-shirts and a sweatshirt that said?Cold enough for ya?. I added two pairs of socks and my boots. With my big winter jacket on top, I hoped I'd be warm enough.
I headed back downstairs to sit with Vinnie while I waited for Nate and Rick to get ready. I hadn't heard from Frannie and Gary, so I assumed they chose to sleep in. It wouldn't be surprising if they entered a sort of hibernation phase. Even inside the house, I felt the cold from outside trying to seep inside.
"So, Vinnie, how's the cold treating your electronics?"
"No problems. I coated my wires with something to protect them from any kind of extreme temperature," he replied.
Listening to Vinnie speak was sometimes fun, especially when we were alone. He liked to try out different voices to see how I reacted to them. The current one was deep, and reminded me a little of Kyle's.
I did my best to limit my reactions. It was fun to watch Vinnie develop into his own person and I wanted my opinions to have little to do with the end result. Of course, if he started speaking in a voice that made me want to jam pencils in my ears, I'd add my two cents, but until then, he was on his own.
"That figures, you're always ten steps ahead of everyone. I bet you already know who's kidnapping the uniques around here."
"You give me too much credit, Avery. I don't know yet, but if you allow me to go with you when you talk to the fox, I may be able to run whatever description she has of the perpetrator through my database to get a list of suspects who might be in the area."
"That would be very helpful, Vinnie. Do you have any input on the people we've met so far?" I asked.
"You already know I don't like that Kyle character. Neither of the other two men we met last night are high on my Christmas card list either," he said.
"I know, like Nate, you don't like other men having any kind of interaction with me. How about the girls, did you get anything from them?" I asked.
I really needed to find a man to be in my life who wasn't super protective of me. It was bad when the robot in my life didn't like how long a guy assessed my assets. I really wished telling any of them that I could take care of myself would make a difference, but I'd gone almost hoarse from trying.
"I guess the two who changed made pretty cute little foxes. I think Romeo and Juliet might like us to bring one of them home, so they have a new friend. Other than that, they seemed like weepy females," he replied.
While we were waiting, I had him run some searches on the ghost orchid flower, so I could find out where it grew and any other characteristics that could be interesting. He started running a thorough scan of his databases and let me know the report would be back in an hour.
I would've liked to have it sooner, but with the amount of databases he was zipping through, I didn't mind a little wait. If I tried to do the search myself, it would've taken a bit longer to hit each of the millions of sites out there and analyze the information into something usable. Having a robot was really cool sometimes.
CHAPTER 8
Baby, it's cold outside