The Boy Who Forgot

The time is many yesterdays ago. London harbour. A boy of eleven years walks along the piers, looking out at the water and the boats. He was even younger, then, but he does not conceptualize himself as younger. He is himself. Walking beside him is nothing. His tiny hand grips the nothing, wrapped around a crumple of black hole that floats beside him. Where it walks, it leaves scars in the memory.

Before them is a broad, brick building with towering smoke stacks that rise from it, jutting out into the waterline. The hole speaks, and its absent voice dissolves patches of the image. The boy squeezes his eyes shut, but he can still see through his eyelids. “…Merlin…” the only word he can make out from the darkness is his name. Something inside of it squeezes his hand.

Merlin falls forwards. The world changes, and his stomach lurches. He’s on London Bridge, empty in the night, the pavement shining back the yellow light of streetlamps. Merlin isn’t anywhere. He’s floating, a ghost in a memory that isn’t his, of an event he never attended. A large man with broad shoulders walks unsteadily along the guard wall of the bridge, precarious over the black water. In his hand is a half-empty bottle, and he swigs deeply from it. The sway of his head thrown back to drink unsettles his balance. The man looks up towards Merlin. His face is Merlin’s. Tired eyes look up past frazzled red hair, and a little red nose. An eleven-year-old’s face on the body of a man, scarred with all of the man’s years. The man falls. He never seems to register that he’s falling. He plummets to the water below and slams into its surface, spread eagle. Then it swallows him up, the blackness there, except Merlin’s face doesn’t sink. It is stretched out over the water like a mask, mouth and eyes gaping open into the abyss between the stars.

“…Merlin…” the reflective surface of the black water reaches out, in the shape of a hand, reaching for the flying viewpoint the boy watches from. It feels like it will grab him, and drag him under into the emptiness. It speaks in a girl’s voice.


“You alrigh’ there?” a girl’s voice asks. Merlin’s floating right now, above the nightmare, in the uneasy place between awake and asleep where you can’t tell what’s real. He coulda sworn she said his name. There was no other voice to remember, after all. So the boy’s mind just plops it into the memory. It doesn’t quite fit. The shape of it is wrong, and it makes him shiver. He sits up and cracks his sleep-encrusted eyes open.

They’re on a train. Slumped sideways against the window, Merlin has his cheek smushed on the glass, tugging one side of his face upwards. The girl standing over him looks caught between concern and wanting to laugh at how dumb he must look. She waves a hand in front of Merlin’s slow-blinking eyes. “Oi! Anybody ‘ome?”

When he sits up, he finds he’s drenched in sweat. “Where’m I?” he mumbles.

“You’re at platform nine ‘n three quarters! We’re leavin’ soon for Hogwarts!” metal and plastic rattles as she sets down a little terrarium on the booth-seat opposite Merlin’s. Inside is a snake, orange-yellow in hue, curled up and snoozing much more peacefully than he had been. “Do you mind if I sit here?” the girl asks, while sitting beside the terrarium.

“Goferit,” rubbing his eyes, Merlin grabs his wide-brimmed blue hat from the ground where it fell and puts it back on. He knows he’s been mouthbreathing when he licks his dry lips with his dry tongue. Regaining enough of his faculties to realize neither of them know each other, he says, “Ahm Merlin English, firs’ year. Nice t’meet’cha.” Leaning forward, he extends a hand across the train car. The girl tries to reach it, but their arms are too short, so Merlin gets up to shake her hand.

“Merlin English? You’re Merlin English?” the girl asks, her teeth showing in a wide grin. They are much nicer than the boy’s, which came in crooked and a little buck-toothed.

“Yeah, ‘sme. You heard o’ me or sumfin?” he raises a brow.

“No, ‘s just a funny name’s all,” the girl lets go of his hand and leans back in her seat, pulling a rolling suitcase onto her lap. “Like if an American fella was called John America.” She laughs again, throwing back her head. It’s a wild cackle. “Just ‘magine it. Some fella with an American drawl comes up and he tells you he’s John America.”

Thinking it over, Merlin bites his lip. He can’t help but let a little giggle escape, the girl’s laughter contagious. Soon both of them are laughing. “Arright, you gotta point ‘ere, gotta’d ‘mit. Y’still nevva told me yer though! Maybe you’s got a funny name too!” Jumping back into his chair, he points a crooked finger accusingly at the girl. Already, the shakes leftover from the boy’s fever dream are forgotten, the sweat stains on his shirt their only remnant.

“Amalia Oceanborough,” the girl enunciates carefully with a slight wiggle of her jaw. “I’m first year too.”

“Aw bugger, an’ y’got a cool name,” Merlin shakes his head in mock shame, and the two laugh again.

Their laughter wakes the coiled serpent in the terrarium, who raises his head and spreads his hood in annoyance. “Isss it too much to asssk for sssome peace and sssilence?” the serpent chides grumpily. He sounds to the boy’s ear like a crotchety old man on his porch on a rocking chair, waving a cane around at the young’uns running across his yard.

Wearing a broad grin, Amalia offers the snake, “You want th’ little pink earmuffsss I made you?”

Hood flexing, the snake looks up at her. “I ssshall retain my dignity.”

“Aw c’mon now, dignity’ss overra’ed. Sssee?” in demonstration, Merlin sticks his finger up his nose and scratches at the itches inside. “Feelsss great!”

The girl and snake both stare at him. “Wait wait,” the girls says, leaning forward and tilts her head to the side. “Wait. Wait. You can talk t’ snakes too?”

“A’course I can, can’ erryone?” Merlin cocks his head to the side, unconsciously imitating her.

From the hall outside of their train booth comes a crash and a smash. Amalia jumps from her seat immediately to go check what happened, while Merlin slides from his with more sluggish reflexes, still groggy. Just down the corridor of the train car, there’s another tired-looking boy. One of two stacked terrariums in his arms has toppled onto the floor, and the corner cracked open. From inside, a tangle of snakes wakes up and slithers away from their clump, looking around in confusion. Some more faint-hearted students beyond the boy back away, and squeak or yell.

“Bother…” the boy mumbles to himself. He slowly tries to ease down to his knees and let his other terrarium easily to the floor. “No, no, don’t ssscatter,” he hisses to his pets. As he tries to scoop them up, two more children squat down to join him, handling the slippery slinkies gently and without fear. The pale, gaunt-faced boy looks up at them in surprise. “Who are you?”

Amalia lifts one of the snakes and drapes it across her shoulders, shushing it as she pets its head. “Hi. I’m Amalia Oceanborough,” her voice is quieter than usual, to avoid startling all the little snakes.

“Merlin English,” reflexively, the red-haired boy juts out his hand to shake, but their new acquaintance doesn’t have any free hands. “Why don’t’cha come join us innar train car? ‘S snake-friendly, a’promise.”

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Pub: 01 Jun 2025 15:49 UTC

Edit: 01 Jun 2025 15:56 UTC

Views: 115