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NEW SENSATIONS
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SAVARA WOKE TO THE light of the full moon, drenched in a cold sweat—again. The same dream that had haunted her for the past month had, once again, robbed her of a peaceful night’s sleep, only this time, it was worse.
She ran her trembling fingers through sweat-soaked hair. Under a different light, it might not have seemed so harsh a contrast, the olive of her skin and the dark brown of her waves, but matted down by sweat, it shone the colour of onyx, and her face paled in the moonlight.
“It was only a dream,” Savara told herself, though she’d been telling herself the same thing for the past month and at no point did those words console her.
The dream was always the same.
First, there were shadows, whorls of them swarming her, as though they were moths and she the flame. Then came the fire—there was always fire—starting as a spark between the darkness and growing to become an all-consuming blaze. Sometimes she’d see flashes of colour from within—a hint of blue, a streak of green, a smattering here and there of silver and gold—but she never had time to stare too long. After the fire came the screams. Somewhere off in the distance, she’d hear laughter, low and sinister. It curdled her blood even in her waking hours. There were days when she could’ve sworn to have heard it on the wind, but somehow, she’d always convince herself she was overreacting.
Her heart would race regardless.
Next, voices would begin calling out to her, pleading with her to stop. Normally they were voices she’d never heard before, but what made last night’s dream exceptionally terrifying was that this time, one of them she had.
Her movements were always the same, no matter how hard she tried to change them. She’d look down at her hands and find them covered in blood. Whose? She never knew. Tears would fall hot and heavy from her cheeks to a scorched stone floor, and just as the fire would begin to grumble, she’d raise her hands and...
Savara never quite knew what happened at the end, only that she felt as though she were being torn apart from somewhere deep inside herself. That was usually the point in which she’d wake up, sometimes screaming, always drenched in sweat, and questioning what she’d seen. She’d heard of lucid dreaming before, but this was something different.
This felt real.
Savara gazed out the window as she waited for her pulse to steady. The night was clear, stars twinkled in the open sky, and off in the distance, boats bobbed on the waves. To anyone else, it would’ve been perfect sleeping weather, but here she was, trembling in the gentle sea breeze and afraid to close her eyes.
“It was only a dream,” she repeated, as though uttering a mantra of protection against the only thing she inherently feared: the dark.
Her eyes fixated on the moon, unwilling to stare down the shadows behind her. Twilight would soon give way to the dawn, and she’d have to be up to fetch the bread from the bakers anyway. Between the whisperings of the creaky old house, and the beckoning sensation from her uncle’s strange library, it was a wonder she ever got to sleep at all.
Savara let out a heavy sigh, the dream already slipping from her mind, but the tingling sensation in her palms was yet to subside. She wriggled out from her bed, yawned, and shut the window, pausing briefly to contemplate the empty garden below.
The air around her hummed, charged with something other than sea salt and spray. Things she’d seen many times in the past decade no longer looked familiar. The streets, the shrubs... even the ocean seemed different. As though the world reset during the night, and she had been left behind.
Savara debated whether to attempt to sleep again, on the chance that whatever little sleep she managed be marred by the same visions, before ultimately deciding in favour of staying awake. At least this way, she could poke around the library.
***
THE BARNYARD DOOR IN the kitchen slammed open. Waves of black hair and the scent of freshly baked bread blustered through the door before she did.
“Is Uncle Hyrum up yet, Ms Short?” Savara asked as she nibbled on the end of a warm baguette, last night’s dream already a distant memory.
“Yes, he is, dear. Ready and waiting in the dining nook. We will have breakfast in just a minute,” Ms Short replied, scrambling the last of the eggs.
She hated scrambled eggs. They were the most lacklustre, least effort egg dish and only tasted half decent when paired with mountains of cheese and baked beans. The problem lay in that her uncle thought they were God’s gift to humanity, and he would make her eat them regardless. And yet, no amount of egg could strip away the grin plastered across her face.
“I wanted to ask him about a book I found in the library.”
“Now Savara, you know better than to go sniffing around that dusty old library of his,” Ms Short admonished. “The things that man keeps in there... Not what a—”
“—respectable woman should be occupying her time with.” Savara rolled her eyes as she finished the one phrase that seemed to mark her adolescence.
“Hmm,” Ms Short said with a frown. “You know what they say about curiosity killing the cat.”
“That satisfaction brought him back?”
“Yes, dear, but you’re not a cat.”
Her uncle’s library, which she had only recently been granted access to when she turned seventeen, was just a large, musty room with lofty ceilings and blackened oak floors, in theory. In practice, however, the number of books and paintings and displays that jumped out at the eye caused it to seem much more matchbox-sized. Lining the walls were bookshelves that went on forever upward, filled with large, leather-bound volumes that had collected dust from every century known to man. Large glass displays sat scattered across the floor, containing everything from weapons to rocks, cups to craniums, and any other oddity that should more rightly belong in a museum. Unlike any museum she’d been to, however, she swore the library was alive.
Savara hadn’t admitted it to anyone—not even Jasper, her best friend—but each time she visited she noticed a low pulse emanating from the room that she could only rightly call a heartbeat. During the daytime hours all was quiet, but during the nights she heard it whispering, beckoning her to find it. Night was for the dark and demons, Ms Short would impress upon her, but then, Ms Short was always trying to impress upon her things she refused to learn.
“But Ms Short,” Savara began, once again pleading her case to the matronly woman who believed only in things she could see with her own two eyes and touch with her own two hands. “Haven’t you ever wondered what might be out there? The world can’t just be this island and these people.”
“You have a good life here, my dear. This island and these people have treated you well. You shouldn’t knock it.”
“But there has to be more out there...”
“Would you prefer to be shipped off to Europe or the Americas, where people work twice as hard and live half as well?”
“Maybe. Those places are old, filled with history, personality...maybe even magic...” Savara smirked.
“Magic? Is that what this is about?” she scoffed. “Magic? My goodness, child. You need to stop rummaging through your uncle’s things,” Ms Short replied irritably. “Magic is for heretics and people who aren’t content with their place in life. It doesn’t exist, child. There are no dragons, no witches, no pixies, faeries, or monsters under the bed. The sooner you get that through your head, the happier you will be.”
Savara sighed. She never understood Ms Short’s aversion to the unknown. She herself relished in it—thrived in it. In the earlier years of life with her uncle, he’d told her stories of far-off places and distant worlds. Of creatures that science could hardly describe. Of people who walked hand in hand with magic.
Savara was well-studied, grown. She knew that these kinds of stories were just that. Stories. For a long time, they only occupied her passing thoughts. The ones that follow raindrops down window panes and ripple like tossed stones in a still lake. The stray dream that one forgets with the sunrise.
And they would have stayed that way, had she not found the library.
“Then why are you so afraid of the library?” Savara prodded, hoping to find a flaw in Ms Short’s argument.
Ms Short dropped the spatula, sending bits of scrambled egg to the floor. “That is no concern of yours,” she replied nervously. “That library of his should be burned, along with the rest of the undesirable, heretical memorabilia that he keeps in it.” Ms Short bent down to clean up her mess, unsettled and still rambling. “No wonder your head is filled with such fantastical nonsense.”
“What about all the stories? You’ve heard them... Stories have to come from somewhere. You can’t just dismiss them.”
“I can, and I do. That is not the world I have chosen to live in, Savara, and if you had any sense, you’d choose the same. Now, go wash up and get ready for breakfast. I’ll have no more of this magic talk.”
“Fine...” Savara groaned, realising there was no use in fighting this losing battle. “Oh, and would you mind setting out an extra plate for breakfast?”
Ms Short craned what little neck she had and raised her curious brow. “Who for?”
“Jasper. I crossed paths with him on his way back from visiting his grandmother in the home.”
“Oh...” Ms Short grinned knowingly.
“It’s not like that. We’re just friends.”
“Right.”
“I told him to come in for breakfast,” Savara said as she nicked some cheese from one of the cutting boards. “Maybe poke around the library and,” she mumbled, “and afterwards we’ll go to Skully’s for my birthday.”
“I know that look anywhere, you’re up to no good.”
“I do not have a look,” she replied indignantly.
“You’ll get yourself into real trouble one of these days.” Ms Short pursed her lips. “You are just lucky your uncle has immeasurable patience with you.”
“Or immeasurable indifference,” Savara groaned.
“Now, you know that’s not true,” Ms Short sighed.
“We are only having breakfast because he feels he must show face on my birthday so he can ignore me the rest of the year.”
“Your uncle is a piece of work, but he means well. Besides, you two are more alike than you think.”
“I doubt it,” she replied, reaching for another handful of cheese.
“And stop munching,” Ms Short scolded, swatting her hand out of the way. “Now, go wash up. We’ll be having breakfast soon.” She scraped the pan clean onto a plate, taking care not to burn herself. Savara found herself wishing the rest of the eggs had ended up on the floor, that way they could be replaced with something slightly more appetising.
Something had been bothering her all morning. The day felt like any other in the small island town, and yet, like none before. Savara washed her hands distractedly, her mind hitching on the book she’d found during her insomnia rather than if she’d already used the soap—which she had, twice. The leatherbound volume, like everything else in the house, was ornate, old, and strangely enough, seemed to whisper when opened. The script inside glittered as though wet but refused to smudge when touched.
Maybe Jasper would know what to make of it, she thought.
A frigid wind blustered through the window, bringing the unavoidable shivers that prickled the hairs on her neck. Accompanying it was an eerie feeling of being watched. Savara peered out at the back garden—just in case—but found everything in its place. She frowned, hoping that closing the window would close the tap to those sinister feelings, but they had already pooled themselves within the pit of her stomach.
Savara splashed her face with cold water and scanned it for signs of a new year. Little cracks in her lips would remind her to drink more water and her button nose was allergy-free. Other than that, she was exactly the same. Her dark hair still curled at her temples and her charcoal eyes were still flecked with all the colours of the rainbow.
Maybe this is what eighteen feels like... she thought.
The shadows you inherently feared as a child become feelings of being watched, the voice in your head now says you’re unequivocally the same—but different. Still, she felt wrong.
