For much of the narrative, Rafe cannot recall what happened during the six months he spent in Red Crow with Jeremy, which means that he has forgotten both the good and bad surrounding his time in Shanandoah. The complexities of memory and forgetting thus form the touchstone of Rafe’s journey in the novel, as he must learn to confront the reality of his past if he is to finally move forward in the present.

Rafe sketches all his memories of Shanandoah in a book. Sunk into paper, the memories of the Painted Sea, the unicorns, Skya, and Sir Jeremy are then erased from Rafe’s mind. Figuring that he deserves to forget his worst memory as well, Rafe adds an extra drawing, the one for which Skya never asked: “a picture of an electrical cord in his father’s hand” (421). If Rafe returns to the real world with the knowledge of his father’s abuse, he cannot access the idyll of a safe home. Therefore, he makes the deliberate decision to choose forgetting over memory. After he returns, Bill apologizes for slapping Rafe. Rafe makes peace with Bill because, as he tells Emilie, Bill only slapped him once. However, because Rafe remains stuck in time, the text suggests that forgetting and innocence also extract a heavy price.