“I bought this set in 1839, from a small shop in London, as a gift for you.”
I felt my eyes widen—1839!
Too quickly the words tumbled: “How old was I when you met me, how many lives had I lived? Do you know?”
“You were mortal then. I met you when you were sixteen. I celebrated your birthday with you when you turned seventeen, just the two of us,” he said.
“What happened to me?” My heart pounded hard, thudding against my chest.
“You died, Lailah. You were gone and so I left. How and why can wait. You need answers, I need them too.”
“But where did you go, where have you been all this time?”
“Where I went isn’t important. You said you never forgot me. Well, now I want you to remember what it was that you never forgot. I want you to have those memories back. The rest will come, in good time.”
He could tell me more. He knew everything about me, back then at least. There was a reason why he wasn’t revealing everything to me. It was as though he was trying to anaesthetize me, to soften the blow.
I slouched back, swallowed up by the broken leather, and waited.
Finally, he moved, slipping his hands together in a prayer-like shape, resting his elbows on his knees, watching me. I was confused to say the least; I didn’t know what he was expecting.
I broke the silence first, nodding at the chess set. “It’s very beautiful, but I don’t know how to play.”
Was he waiting for me to start?
Gabriel remained mute, his hands covering his lips making it difficult to read him. His mouth, I had noticed, had come to give him away on occasion. If he had a tell, it was his lips. Still he said nothing. I tuned in my other senses; he wasn’t communicating to me through my mind, but as I focused in I could feel a level of expectancy rising within him.
He left it a little longer, then outstretched his strong arm and placed his hand on mine, positioning it on top of a pawn. As he curled my grip around the cold, silky ivory, the room started to vibrate and pop all around me.
I found myself zooming through a tunnel of light, and at the end, the exact same chess pieces. Images began seeping in, but I was reluctant, so they didn’t come easily. I thought I heard Gabriel in the distance encouraging me to explore them, so I eased myself and stopped trying to escape.
As soon as I accepted the vision, I found myself staring at an image of Gabriel and my past self. We were perched over the chessboard. This was my memory; brushing the pawn had triggered it. He must have hoped it would.
Gabriel was kneeling behind me, hand on top of mine, moving the pawn up and diagonally along the squares. I was giggling and he was cheek-to-cheek with me, talking, explaining the rules. We were in a barn. Horses were tied up below us. The board rested at the very top of a high pile of stacked hay bales. We were having fun and a stream of summer sunlight filled the space through the open doors. Delight and excitement overwhelmed my past self and it rushed over me as I watched.
My outfit was a little over-the-top compared to current standards: a light cotton pastel-blue day dress with petticoats and big puffed-up sleeves. My face was the same; even my hair retained warm, vibrant shades of blond blending delicately together. Other than the clothing, I didn’t look any different.
I observed him gently moving my hand and the pieces across the board in different ways. I felt myself knot inside as his hand touched my own. Just as I was acclimatizing to the scene, smashing hooves clipped against an uneven ground. The sharpness of the clatter from a rearing mare scratched my eardrums, and the image splintered. The broken shards of a glass sheet fell all at once.
Hiding behind it was a new memory.
Again it was the two of us, our attention drawn over the heavy wooden board underneath an ancient oak tree. Autumn leaves cascaded down, forming a messy pile covering the grass next to my feet. We sat opposite each other, contemplating our next move. I watched and many minutes seemed to roll by before I finally picked a white knight and moved it carefully to a new spot. Gabriel wore a cheeky smile as he instantly took it with a bishop and presented me with my impounded piece. I tossed my head up to the sky with a disgruntled sigh; Gabriel placed the knight back on the board and reshuffled his bishop to where it had been. He seemed to be trying to show me where I had gone wrong and where I should have placed my piece.
It was odd; all my visions tended to be in silence, except for the occasional sharp noise. I never heard the voices. I had learned now to interpret body language and movement.
Watching memories was gripping, but being overcome by the strong emotions that they brought with them still felt unusual. All I felt watching the memory was pure rapture, and I couldn’t recall knowing such happiness in my current life.
I stretched my arms out in front of me and the tips of my fingers tingled as the air swelled around them. I was on the outside looking in. I had time to take in the memory for a few more moments but Gabriel couldn’t resist any longer; he had jumped into the tunnel, tuning in to my private channel, and watching once again.
As he joined, my memory broke apart into tiny segments, and as if blowing gently through a plastic tube, he manipulated the image, creating a series of tiny bubbles all reflecting the story that had disappeared somewhere inside me once upon a time. The bubbles drifted and vanished from sight.
My memory, now blown away, became replaced instead by images from Gabriel’s consciousness. He presented me with a slide show, but this time the photos whirled around, spinning and twisting.
They depicted similar moments of playing the game, always just the two of us in each other’s company. One of the images floated directly in front of me, tempting me. I reached out, trying to capture it as the picture paused just long enough for me to succeed. I poked my fingertips through its seal and it welcomed me by playing the story for me to watch.
I was sitting once more atop the haystack, hiding in the far corner. Gabriel sat behind me, my back lying flush to his chest, resting in his arms.
The white king lay horizontal and the other characters were scattered in a small heap next to the thick wood. An overwhelming sense of joy filled me and I realized that I was starting to feel what Gabriel had felt in that moment. I was suddenly intensely aware of a sensation of desperate longing. Had he joined in, so I could feel how he had felt and experience this the way he had?
I wasn’t sure, but I became, in that split second, more certain than I had been about anything else. He had loved me!