Now, the sensible question would be why are we at Fred’s.  And it would be so easy to explain if I didn’t start thinking about what I had lost.  What we have lost.

Okay, just rip of the bandaid.  The house burnt down.

There, I said it.

I don’t feel much better now I’ve said it.

Mum and I were eating at Bob’s tonight—he’d bought some of her produce and she wanted to see how it turned out on a pizza.  I don’t know exactly how long we were there for, but it was long enough.  We headed home, slowly, walking down the main road.

She was looking into the distance, in the direction of our house.  Mum stopped in her tracks, squinted and then pointed.  “Is that a glow?”

I’m still surprised by how normal she seems.   She talks, walks, and interacts normally.  So, saying something a little odd like that definitely caught my attention.  I looked up to the forest’s skyline, and there was a glow.  A orange glow like a sunset.

“Stay here.  I’ll run home and see what it is.”

I didn’t want her to see what I feared it was.  She stood in the middle of the street and watched me run towards our house.  It didn’t take me long.

I saw the house and came to a sudden stop.  It was engulfed in flames.  It had crawled up the  pillars up onto the room and into the rooms.  And there was an unbelievable heat radiating off it.

We don’t have a fire department in our town,  just like we don’t have a police station, so there was nothing I could do but watch.  I watched my childhood house burning to the ground.  It was so far gone that I couldn’t even attempt to get inside.  Everything—clothes, laptops, memories, photos—all turning to ash in front of my eyes.

Then the front pillar broke, and the roof came tumbling towards me—there was no support for the top level of the front of house, where the veranda and most of the roof need support.  I could see, it was going to hit me.  I wanted to move, yet, my house was burning.  If I moved, I would have to take my eyes from it, and that would mean missing what was essential the death of my house.  The beautiful house my Dad built from scratch.

I stared up at the house falling down towards me, and then suddenly I was looking at it from the ground, a great pain in my mid section and I can barely breathe.  I’m wheezing, looking at the house as it crashed to the ground.  It was like a firework, bits of flame shooting off in every direction and as the wood splintered.  Stefancic jumped up in front of my face to shield me from it, as he took the sparks that came shooting our way.

“You must leave.  They are watching.”

I shook my head… I couldn’t leave.  This was my house and all my memories were disappearing—it’s more important that there’s a physical reminder of them, as my own memory, proven time and time again, is not as reliable as I once thought it was.

“Harlie, please.”  I’d never seen him beg before.  He never had a reason to.  I know he was trying to protect me, and I wasn’t trying to be stubborn, I wasn’t trying to be brave, I merely didn’t want to forget.

I think that’s one of my worst fears these days.  I do not want to forget anymore.  It has been happening so easily to me, for years and years, and I don’t even notice.

“Harlie.”  He pulled me up onto my feet, took my hand in both of his and kissed my forehead.  “Go, I will come for you when it is safe.”

I nodded and stepped away from the house.  One.  Two.  I counted my steps slowly.

“Go!” Stefancic shouted at me.

I dragged my eyes away from burning house and ran.

My house doesn’t just catch on fire.  Hell, we don’t even have a fireplace because Mum was concerned about that when Dad was building it.  The forest has sometimes caught on fire around us, but our house?  It always seem protected.

So this wasn’t a freak accident.  It was on purpose and there is only one person who could have done it.

Mum hadn’t moved in the hour or so I had been missing.  The glow had gotten brighter, and there was a definite smell of smoke around the place now.  There are more people standing on the main street, looking in the direction of our house.

I left my Mum there, staring, ducked into Hannah’s and asked Fred if we could stay with him.  He obviously wanted to know what was going on; I couldn’t explain it to him.  Not yet.  I just shook my head.  He understood.  Didn’t ask another question, just said yes.

“Everyone out!” Fred closed up shop right then and there.

Violet came outside with me, and looked at what was happening.  She gasped.  The flames were now flickering over the treeline.

I still have that photo though.  The one of me looking unbelievably Faerie.  I saved that.

Fred’s just said the eggs are ready.  I’m exhausted, and I’m not that hungry, but I need to do something to take my mind off it.

I fell asleep on his lap, as he stroked my hair, and somehow he left without me noticing.

I woke up with a pillow under my head, and the last of the boxes opened in front of me.

He left the couch as it was.

So, yesterday, I was going through the last of the boxes.

This box, was the one with the most recent photos.  I thought they only went up until I was thirteen.  Not so much.  This box, when I dug down deep had photos of me when I was fifteen and sixteen.

A series of photos had me in a deep sea blue dress, with a low-cut back, and matching high heels.  Tyler, my one and only boyfriend, had his arm around me and smiled as we watched Isabelle and Henry spin around on the front lawn of my house.  She was wearing a gold dress and the boys had ties that matched our dresses.

I don’t remember that evening at all.

The funny thing is that I know what the evening is—it was Tyler and Henry’s formal or prom or whatever you want to call it.  They were a couple of years older than us when we were dating them.

I don’t remember the dress, I don’t remember the dancing, I don’t remember the photos.  I even went looking for the dress after I found the images yesterday and it’s not in the house anywhere.  It’s disappeared.

In one of the photos, when we were actually at the dance, there was a student with wings.  I didn’t know his name, but he seemed to know Tyler.  He didn’t come too close though.  I looked hard at the picture, because, why would a student be in fancy dress at their last event of the year?

He wasn’t a student.  Of course he wasn’t a student.  How could he be?  Wings!  And then, looking closer at the picture, it wasn’t the lights mak9ing him look pale—he was actually pale.  He was silver.  Like Stefancic.  Only it definitely wasn’t Stefancic.

I know Stefancic’s appearance inside out, now.  After all this  time being alone, being together—whether he calls it together or not, I don’t know what to call it.  It’s not as if princes have girlfriends.

This guy was looking my way though.  He seemed confused.  He’s come up and talk to Tyler, while I was around, but never stay for long.

I didn’t have any more photos of that night.

The next couple of photos were my own sixteenth birthday party.  I remember my Mum hanging onto the camera, and snapping away frequently.  I could line up the photos in sequence of when they were taken.

Somehow, I must have got hold of the camera, because Issa and I were taking self photos with friends and of the cake in the kitchen—it was a beautiful cake.  Layers of patterns of funky Alice in Wonderland colours.

Like when we were small, we must have heard a noise, or stumbled upon something, because my Dad came into the kitchen, followed by my mother, and they were arguing.  All they did was argue.

Yet, I was turning sixteen.  This was two plus years after he supposedly left.  So why was he there?  Why wouldn’t I remember it?

I probably blocked it out of my memory; he looked bruised.  Purple all over.  I don’t remember my father being a violent man, but he seems—at least with these photos—to be getting into fights.  Why?

Whatever Mum and Dad were talking about, it had to be civil.  They didn’t look to be yelling, didn’t look to be arguing or fighting or anything.  If anything, their lips barely moved in the photos Isabelle and I did take.

Then the party went on.  Isabelle and I were taking photos of friends, of decorations, of ourselves.

The final set of pictures are the worse.

I’m in my room, with the camera, in front of the mirror taking pictures of myself.

There’s a photo of me looking normal, like I usually did.  I was tanned and blonded and even a little leaner than I am now, but nothing too much different besides the age.  The next photo, I was colouring, as if it were getting cold.

The next one, I was starting to grow purpler.  My hair was growing.  My body becoming drawn.

The next photo, my eyes are larger, wider; and there are wings coming out of my back.  My hair is pulled up into a ponytail and I’m wearing something an Amazon woman would wear.

The final, fourth photo, it’s as if the last two didn’t exist.  I’ve snapped back to what I was before.  Human, tanned, blonde, a little athletic and very high school.

I’ve been carrying that last photo around with me, looking at it every now and again, trying to understand what is going on.

Am I faerie?  I don’t feel faerie.  I certainly don’t look faerie.  I don’t even remember ever seeing that.

Is it altered?  I know there are programs that do that sort of thing these days—are those photos a test case?

I’m not faerie.  I can’t be.  It’s just too impossible.

The only problem is that the guard was still outside my house.

How he got past them I don’t know, but they eventually heard us.  Before we get there though…

As is my usual routine these days, I get up, head to Hannah’s where I’m still getting free meals.  Mum will sometimes join me, but not this morning.  I eat breakfast, chat to Violet, who amazingly is still going to school, walk her town Tea Crescant, and then head home along the forest, my entourage in toe.

I get home and make a tea.  A regular tea, not a Stefancic tea.

This morning, as I went to get the tea out of the pantry, I open the door and a hand comes flying out over my mouth and I’m pulled into the living room which has all its curtains drawn.

I’m pushed against a wall, hand still over my mouth, and finally when the world stops moving so quickly around me, I looked up at who had actually pushed me there.  Stefancic had a finger over his lips.  I nodded and he kissed my forehead, taking my hand and pulling me up to the attic.

It’s the most enclosed area of the house which is why its also our storage area—not much chance of a leak, only things getting soft from age.

He turns two of Sonya’s blankets into the largest couches I ever saw.  He smiled at me in that “yeah, I’m a show off” sort of way, while sitting on the couch patting the seat next to him.

“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” I whispered to him.

I was so so so happy to see him.  I am completely alone in this, except for him.  He knows.  It makes everything so much easier, so much better, that I can share this with someone.

“I thought it would be best if I did not come around while your friend was here.  And, in any case, my guards were keeping an eye on me.  Like they are keeping an eye on you I see.”

I sat down next to him, just staring at him.

“Did you know there’s a replacement for Isabelle?”  It was the first thing I could think to say.  It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to say, but it’s what came out of my mouth, so I had to go with it.

He nodded.  “My mother put her there.”

“And it’s a faerie.”

“Yes.”

“Where are the people going?”

He shifted in his seat.  “What people?”

I told him what I saw the other day—that fake Issa is luring townsfolk to her rotting house and then I never see them again.

Stefancic remained tight-lipped.

I pulled my hand away and moved back into the opposite corner of the chair.  He’s not telling me something.

“What are you doing with the people?”

He shook his head.  “Do not ask, Harlie.  Do not ask unless you really want to know.  And even then, do not ask.  I do not want to tell you.”

I opened my mouth to ask again.  His lips came crashing down on mine.  “Do not ask, Sohalia.  Just know, I am trying to stop it.”

We sat in silence for a moment.  It’s comfortable, it’s easy.  Of course, finding anyone that understand what is happening is a bonus.  I just wish that I knew what he knew.  Obviously, it’s just not the right time.

He’s a prince and something big is going down.  Something big that he won’t tell me.  I think I might have to live with that.

“Why do you come around if you’re not going to tell me anything?  There is always something going on on your side of the forest, and yet, you don’t want to tell me what it is?  So why do you come?”

He frowned at me.  I said something wrong.

“I come to see you.”

Yes, there was that.

More events I don’t remember.  I hit an older box next.  I was nine or ten.  School sports carnival.  No idea where the one when I was nine has gone in my head, but it’s not there.  I apparently won every race possible.  Long jump—Mum caught a photo of me mid air.  I don’t look like I’m coming down.

In the box, there are ribbons from the races.  I never went to school carnivals.  I didn’t want to go; I hated going, or so I believe.  I never actually went to one to prove that.

Well, it seems like I did.  I went this once, and I won everything.

I love winning.  It’s human nature, to win that is.

So why would I not go back?

The next set of pictures I do remember taking, because issa and I—we met at primary school—were exploring the forest near our house and I was allowed to use the camera.  We took pictures of flowers and blurry birds because they flew away before I could get a good one and we searched for mushrooms.  Not that we’d eat them, but we searched for them.

I thought we’d fallen asleep during our exploring.  We were near a stream and when we woke up, I was leaning against a tree and Issa had my head on my lap. I remember the tree.

What I don’t remember is taking pictures of my Dad in the forest too.  I didn’t think he’d come out with us.  We’d gotten a bit far into the forest; further than we were allowed and we were a little lost.  I knew that we had to walk towards the light; but we were both tired so we stopped and sat down and fell asleep.

Only, we didn’t.  It’s on oldish camera, so it still printed the date and time on the bottom right hand corner of the photo when we got them printed.

Like on Thursday, I pulled all the photos out and laid them out on the floor.  The first half I recognised.  Birds, flowers, us.  Then there’s about half an hour—about as long as we were ‘asleep’—that had my Dad in them with someone else.  They were fighting.  At one point, Dad was pushed up against a tree.  The next photo, the other guy was on his back while Dad’s arm was outstretched in front of him.

Then there was a very sharp photo.

The flash had been turned on.  But me, or Issa, kept clicking away, taking photos as the men looked at us.  As Dad held onto the other man, holding him back.  As the other man put out his hand in our direction, irritated, and Dad’s face showing a horror I’d never seen on it.

There’s fifteen minutes of photos missing.

We woke up and continued clicking like nothing happened.

Dad would have had to remove these pics.  I guess we didn’t care that much about them afterall.

Dad is in all these days, these days that I’m missing.  How does that work?  Who is trying to stop me remember my Dad?

I’ve opened up the boxes.  They’re divided into years of my life.  From about three until I was thirteen.  Two years per box.

Most of the first box’s images were from three prominent events.  My Dad’s fortieth birthday, a cocktail party my Mum threw, and my first day at kindegarden.

Now, I know I’m only three and four, and sometimes five, in these photos and I problem don’t remember these events because I’m not meant to.   The only thing is I was wearing the same dress in all the photos.  Green, frilly at the bottom, big skirt?  I don’t remember seeing it in any other photos, nor do I remember seeing it in my kids clothing when I sorted it out, and I don’t remember wearing it.

I don’t tend to forget physical objects.  Nothing physical was lost in November, only my memories.  I’m missing a physical object, which means someone has had to be playing with me for a long time.

I asked Mum about the pictures.  Took one out to her while she potted in the garden.  Whipping her hands on her pants, removing the dirt, she smiled and took the picture between her fingers.

“Oh.”  She sighed.  Then smiled.  “I remember that party.  Daniel was so handsome.”

Right, yes, my father.  Of course she would pick that out of everything.

Although, I have to admit, he did look happy.

“No, Mum, I mean me.  Look at me.  Do you recognise that dress?”  I pointed directly at me, covering Dad with my hand so her eyes would peel away.

Oddly enough, she spent a few seconds trying to see through my hand.  “Mum.”  she looked at the me in the picture.

“Huh,” she muttered.  “No, I don’t remember that dress, Harlie.  But you do look cute.”  She stepped back into the patch and got back on her knees and into the dirt.  That’s all I was going to get from my mother it seems.

I headed back to the attic and laid Dad’s fortieth birthday photos out on the floor, trying to see why I wouldn’t remember it.  I wasn’t the only kid there, but I was the only kid I recognised.  A lot of weird little kids were at Dad’s birthday.  A lot of the kids had face paint on their faces.  Butterflies, tigers, lions, a wide range of animals on their faces.

I seemed to enjoy myself.  There were a load of photos of me and Dad.  There’s barely a photo of me standing on my own two feet.  Even the photos with the other kids, I’m jumping in the air or hanging upside down from someone’s arms.

It seems I have all these relatives that disappeared when Dad left.  I have no photos of anyone else at Dad’s party, and I most certainly do not remember them.  They do look a little like Dad though—same sort of bone structure and physique.

Mum’s cocktail party was slightly different.  Here are people there I know.  Not kids, though; I don’t think I had quite started kindergarten yet.  And it’s a cocktail party, how many parents would bring their kids to something they’ll probably get drunk at?  I appear to have been the entertainment.    I danced, I sang—and I ask, I sang?–I did twirls, I was thrown up into the air, I sat on high bar stools to seen like an adult.  In one photo, I was holding my own child-sized cocktail (that I assume was a mocktail).  Again, Dad seems to be around me quite a bit.  And his brother?  Brothers?  There’s two men in some of the shots that look very similar to him, and one seems to change his shirt throughout the night.

I think Dad had three brothers.  One set of identical twins.  But I don’t now that for certain.  I can’t remember anyone on my Dad’s side of the family.  I don’t even know if his mother or father are alive.  That part of the family was not a prominent part in my childhood.

A missing dress?  Maybe it’s in one of the other boxes I haven’t looked through.

Stefancic didn’t come by.  This didn’t upset me so much as frustrate me.  The guards are still standing outside, following my every movement, so he wouldn’t get very far if he wanted to see me anyway.  But I had hoped he would somehow get a message to me.  I want to see him again.

I feel like I’ve given up what’s left of my human life, now that I’m not  going to university.  I’ve given up my roommate and that sort of solidified it for me.  I gave up normalcy to be doing this.  To be waiting for a guy that doesn’t call, doesn’t write.  Given it up for someone that has no notion that he should be around more.

I don’t believe that he doesn’t want to see me.

And they probably don’t even celebrate Valentine’s Day.

Once upon a time, this town reveled in Valentine’s Day.  They hung hearts on ever lamp post.  Candy and flowers were sold from every street corner.  Cards were given out with such gusto that I would have some unopened for weeks, and I would find them at Christmastime when I was pulling out last year’s Christmas cards to hang around the house.  This town gets into silly traditions like that.

Not anymore.

The storms are still rolling in every afternoon and it makes us dark.  Not just physically as in the streets are dark, but the people.  The people are turning darker, dim, more pessimistic.

I didn’t want to be out on the streets yesterday, especially when all I can see are the people that are missing.  The holes in the puzzle that make up this town.

Mum was knitting on the couch when I told her I was going to clean out the attic.  She smiled and kept doing what she was doing—new socks.  It was supposedly going to be an extra cold winter.

Some of the boxes in the attic are labelled, others are not.  The labelled ones were pretty straight forward.  “Daniel’s Clothes”, “Harlie’s Toys”, “Sonya’s blankets” (my maternal grandmother).  I wasn’t going to do anything with those.

Way back in November, when I found my mother in the attic the first time after I arrived home, I noticed some unlabelled boxes.  I thought it was weird, but didn’t pay much attention to it.  Dad kept the attic clean and the boxes labelled.  I assumed Mum had put them up there after Dad left.

When I went back up there yesterday, they would have had to be placed up there by Dad.  They were in the furtherest corner of the attic—where I found Mum—and old.  Holes were starting to appear in the cardboard and cobwebs were falling off the sides.  These were definitely old boxes.

I pulled out one of Sonya’s blankets, laid it on the ground and knelt on the hardwood floor.  The boxes—five of them, all large large boxes—sat like eggs in a nest.  The front, foremost box was not a problem to open, and after that one, I expect the others will not be difficult either.  The cardboard was worn and even a little damp, like it hadn’t been touched or moved in a long time.

I opened the lid, careful not the break it.

If my Dad left it here, and he didn’t label it, it meant that he was trying to hide something.

What would my Dad want to hide in his own house, from his own family?

I took a deep breathe, closed my eyes and peered over the side.

Photos.

So many photos.

And they were photos of me.

All of me and things I don’t remember doing.  Dresses I don’t remember owning, people I don’t remember meeting, parties I don’t remember going to.

And for some reason, while my mind freaks out about the concept of ‘oh shit, not again’, my body is entirely relaxed.  I literally can not feel freaked out about it.  I’m not at all concerned one bit.

I’ve fixed this once, I can do it again.

I do wish Stefancic would come around.

I chose this, as Janie would tell me.  I should do something with it.  The problem occurs when I’m waiting on someone else.

What it really is is that I’m scared to go into Faerie looking for Stefancic.  I don’t think I’d be let in.  I wouldn’t know where to begin if I was let in.  And the guards would capture me before I got five metres into the forest.  So I don’t go looking for him.

I spend time with my Mum.  It’s actually rather wonderful.  It’s what I was missing when I was a teenager, but as a teenager, who knows if I would have paid any attention to her.  Teenagers tend not to, and I was not that much different from the stereotype.

But she’s completely well.  She gardens, she walks, she talks to me.  On Sundays it’s pancake morning.  Pancakes!  The last time I had pancakes, my Dad made them when I was like, eight.  She’s a baker now too.  Cooks constantly.  Uses her veggies and sells them at the market, just like Dad used to.  I think he veggies grow a little fast, a little magically, but I don’t say anything.  It makes her happy and that’s the most important thing.

On the other hand, she doesn’t remember her missing months or years.  She doesn’t remember being addicted to anything and she doesn’t know that she was away for months.  She doesn’t remember how upset she was when I left, and she doesn’t remember that I didn’t care.

They’ve placed a whole new set of memories in her mind.

I’m okay with that.

Hypocritical?  A little.  I can’t deal with not knowing, and if I ever let my Mum know she couldn’t remember, she probably couldn’t live with it either.  But I’m not going to tell her.  And the town won’t tell her—they love the new Mum too much.

I say new Mum, but she’s not that new.  She’s the Mum I remember when her and Dad were together.

Sometimes she brings up Dad.  Says that he looks so different know.  That she sees him in her dreams and wakes up and then he’s there.  I don’t know.  I want to believe her.  I’ll believe almost anything anyone tells me these days.  But Dad… I don’t think I can.

He’s been gone for seven years.

They’ll probably find a femur one day and the police will get a match on the DNA to Dad and then we’ll know for certain.

She seems so certain he’s alive.

The replacement Issa is still walking around town.  No one notices the difference.  It’s hard being the person that knows.  That notices the dead.  Fake Issa tells the town her mother’s moved in with her parents because she can’t deal with the loss of her brothers.

I’ve been around to that house in the last couple of days.  Renee is there rotting.  I can’t pull her out, and when I try to get inside, fake Issa is there stopping me.  She’s taken an intense disliking to me, now I know that it’s not the real Issa.  It’s gotten so bad, I’ve had to start telling people that we had a falling out.  They all say we’ll make up; they remember us when we were younger.  No one and nothing could keep us apart.

We’re not going to make up.  I still hear Issa’s screaming, and her blood spurting across my body.  I’m not going to forget that.  I don’t dream about it as often, but I do still see it sometimes.  It hits me when I’m walking or thinking.  But it comes to the surface when I see the replacement.

I’ve seen her lure Derick into her house.  I was following her the other day, because I’m curious—what would a real-faerie, but fake-person, do in a human town?  What would keep her occupied.  She flirted with Derick, a senior at the high school, a sound hockey player, but perfect hair.  His mother’s a hairdresser, he should have perfect hair.  She flirted, and somehow convinced him to go home with her.  I know he has a girlfriend—Violet tells me these things.

They take the back streets, him taking her hand every now and again. She would always pull away and say “come on, we’re almost there.”

She knew I was there, she had to.  She’s a freaking faerie.  And I have an entourage.

I stayed close to the forest the entire time while Derick tried to steal a touch, a kiss, a hand.  I wanted to warn him, he had no idea.  But I couldn’t jump out of the shadows; that’s not weird at all.

I followed them, it’s all I could do.  And even if she knew, I had to try.

They got to her house from the road along the edge of the forest.  She asked him to come inside.  I don’t think he was going to wait to be offered, actually.  But that’s beside the point.

Once Derick was inside, fake Issa smiled in my direction.  So yes, she knew I was there.  And yes, the smile told me exactly what was going to happen.  Derick wasn’t going to come out.

He didn’t.  And when I went to check up on where he was, he wasn’t in the house.  Renee still was, but Derick wasn’t.

Another missing.

There are still so many going missing.  And people are still forgetting that they are going missing, not leaving of their own accord.  Derick’s Mum reckons he went to hockey camp.  Violet thinks her friends Chelsea and Hayley left for gymnastic tournaments.  Bob, who usually has his head screwed on, he thinks a couple of mates, brothers, from school—from his school days so they’ve known each other forty years—he thinks they’ve gone to visit family up north.

Does this mean the faeries are taking people?  Or is it just Issa’s replacement?  I didn’t see any humans while I was in Faerie, so does Stefancic know what they’re doing?

I am concerned about Matt.  It definitely sounds like he’s turning into a faerie.  I’ve never heard of that happening before and I haven’t mentioned it to Stefancic.  Stefancic’s a silver faerie.   Does blue mean Matt is from a different court?  I don’t know what the different colour means.

From a scientific point of view, it would be fascinating to watch this transformation.  He’s not human.  And yet, no one, not his friends, not his parents, not his doctors knew.  No one picked it up.  There was no signed that he wasn’t human.

I didn’t pick it up.

I don’t know why I didn’t respond last time.  Thee email came in when I was at the party and when I eventually got back, there was too much other stuff going on.   I didn’t have the capacity to deal with an external problem.

This email has come at a good time.  I’m not saying Matt’s problem is only important when it’s convenient to me, but it certain does help.  I can concentrate on this, even if I know I won’t be able to find answers for him.

The washing away of his human self is interesting.  It sounds almost picturesque.  If I were an illustrator, it’s something I’d want to draw.

I don’t know what’s happening to him.  But it certain sounds like he’s turning faerie.  I hope he’ll be okay.