I shivered as I realised why he sounded so strange. Each of the three were taking turns to speak a word in each sentence, but with such exquisite timing, it sounded almost like a single person speaking. Almost. I must have reached out my hand in return because the next thing I knew, I felt a brief cool touch, and the warm summer night was suddenly replaced by a riot of colour and noise. I snatched my hand away and stared wildly around me. We were in a warehouse, which had been set out with an enormous dance floor. I could barely see the walls off in the distance, and the place was absolutely packed with people. The speakers blared with music I didn't know, and although the lights were bright and strobing with colours, I found it very difficult to make out any of the faces of the dancers. I yelled over the music:
"What is this place?"
The Envoys did not yell, and yet somehow, every word was perfectly clear.
"This is our house. We keep things here. Things you have chosen to forget."
"I - I chose to forget all of this?"
They said nothing, but one of them gestured to the crowd, inviting me formally to join in.
I couldn't believe I was here just to dance. I moved closer to the dancers, just to see if I could make out their faces. Many of them seemed to turn away, all in fluid motion, as I approached. It seemed casual, as if it were part of their dance, but somehow it meant I could not see what they looked like. I passed amongst them, thinking to myself that if I had chosen to forget them, then they were just as happy to remain forgotten.
I was almost ready to grasp one of them by the shoulders and force them to face me when someone appeared in front of me, through the crowd.
"Dora! You made it then?"
I felt as big a shock as I'd felt in the bedroom, back at the house.
"Dominic? How can you be here - you're - "
I stopped short of saying "dead". My older brother, Dominic - way older, if truth be told - had died, almost ten years ago, drowned in an accident. But I'd heard people afterwards say "accident" like they meant "suicide", and that I could not believe. Dominic had always been so full of life - he'd travelled half the world before I'd even been born. I'd wondered, in my darkest hours full of trouble whether he'd actually been murdered, but no-one I knew seemed even remotely as if they could be responsible for it. I too, wrote it off as a bad accident, rehearsing to myself for years the magical sentence I could have said to him which would have led him to be more careful that morning - some combination of words that would have stuck in his mind and saved his life.
"Dead? Yes, I suppose in a sense I am - but I'm alive in your memories and I have so much I need to tell you - "