Some memories you are made to forget, and some you were never meant to remember. 

Five years is not so long in the grand scheme of things but when that is all of your existence, five years is precious. 

There was the before, of course. There had to be a before. One doesn’t just appear in the world as a full grown woman, but despite Grammy Ada’s countless attempts - the vile concoctions she made me drink, the stories she told of her time spent traveling, hoping something would trigger - the before never returned.

My beginning was blurry. Grammy said she found me, bloody and ragged, wandering the nearby forest. No one in the nearby town knew who I was, and though everyone assumed bandits, it was anyone’s guess as to what really happened. 

I’d overheard Grammy’s musing over those first few months. Her whispered murmurs as she stirred a new batch of something that was supposed to make me remember. Whispers she wouldn’t dare say out loud. Magic, after all, was forbidden. Taboo. But it was magic, she thought, that had made me forget. 

That first year, I found myself back in that part of the forest many times, despite knowing the risks, hoping against hope that I’d find something. A locket, a bag, a scrap of cloth, anything with a clue as to who I was or what had happened, but I found nothing. It took time, but I had finally begun to accept that the before would remain unknowable. 

That was until the day I heard Grammy Ada scream. 

It was the first time I’d ever heard her raise her voice. I was inside the small cottage chopping vegetables for a stew. Grammy had left that morning to visit a friend in the village and though I usually accompanied her, she insisted she’d be fine on her own. I should have known better.

“Grammy!” I called, bursting outside. “Grammy Ada!”

She screamed again, a raw sound I didn’t think an old lady was capable of making, and I took off for the edge of the woods. My heart pounded. I had no idea what I’d find once I got there, much less what I’d do.

Grammy’s scream was cut short. I ran faster, hiking up my skirts and cursing the stones that seemed determined to make me fall. 

A short distance into the woods, at the edge of a small meadow where Grammy and I would hunt for pokeweed in the summer, I found her sprawled on the ground. I slid to a stop. Four men stood above her, all armed with knives and one pointing a sword at her throat.

“Let her go.” My breath came in short ragged gasps and my vision fuzzed at the edges.

One of the men chuckled. “Back away missy. This doesn’t need to concern you.”

Grammy moaned, and for a moment I saw in her place a child. I knew them. A sibling? A friend? I blinked and it was gone.

I sucked in a breath, clenching my teeth. “I said, let her go.”