When Morgana came into the playroom that afternoon, she said nothing, not even hello. Instead she went straight to the huge window and climbed up on the window ledge. Spreading her arms out wide, Morgana pressed her face and chest against the glass.
James wasn’t concerned because Morgana was entirely safe. There was no way to open the windows and they were double-glazed, toughened glass. He said nothing so as not to impede whatever feelings she wished to express.
“It’s windy outside today,” she said, her voice soft.
“Yes,” James said. “It’s coming in off the plains, so it’s cold.”
“I’m like a bird up here,” Morgana said, her arms still outstretched against the window. “There’s the plains out there and I’ll sail on the wind.”
“You’re feeling like a bird today,” James reflected.
“No,” she said, her back to him, her face against the glass. “These big windows just make me think that. I always wanted to do this. Ever since I came in here.”
“I see.”
“And the wind made me think about doing it today.”
“Why’s that?” James asked.
“Because the wind carries your dreams. That’s what my mum tells me. She says that’s what the Sioux believe. That dreams come to you on the wind.”
When Morgana said that, James immediately thought of Laura’s first book about the Wind Dreamer, the young man caught between the real world and his world of “voices”.
“Sometimes in my dreams I fly,” Morgana said. “Not in a plane or anything. Really fly. I just put my arms like this and off I go.”
“Yes, those are wonderful dreams, aren’t they?” James replied.
“Do you get that dream too?” Morgana asked and for the first time she turned around, although she remained standing on the window ledge.
James smiled. “Yes, sometimes.”
“I’d like to fly,” she said pensively. “I always hope that maybe on a windy day it will happen.” She hopped down from the ledge to the floor, “But I don’t think it ever will.”
Morgana moved off across the room to the shelves. Walking slowly beside them, she trailed the fingers of one hand along the wood of the middle shelf. “I had a bad dream last night,” she said. She picked up a baby doll.
“Would you like to tell me about it?” James asked.
Morgana brought the doll back to the table. “No,” she said. “It was too scary.”
“It was a nightmare?”
“Yes. I dream it all the time. Then I wake up crying. Sometimes my mum has to come in and cuddle me.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to talk about it?”
“No. I never tell anyone about it. Not even my mum.”
“I see.”
“That’s ’cause she might get mad. I mean, when it’s daytime and I’m okay, I know she probably wouldn’t, ’cause it’s just a dream and I’m not doing anything for real, but when I first wake up I’m never very sure.”
“I understand,” James said. “But that must be hard, keeping such a scary thing to yourself.”
“Mostly I try not to think about it, because it can scare me even when I’m awake.”
“It does sound very frightening,” James replied. “Perhaps if you shared it with me, I could think of something to help.”
Morgana bent closer to the doll and James felt the silence deepen. “I wish we hadn’t talked about that dream. I’m feeling scared now. My mum says, ‘Just don’t pay attention to it.’ But it’s in my head and it’s hard not to pay attention to what’s in your head.”
“You know I wouldn’t get mad,” James reassured her. “I never get mad at children who come to the playroom, because I understand that sometimes strong feelings make us do things we shouldn’t. To get problems sorted out, it’s important that children can show their feelings in here.”
Morgana raised her eyes to him without raising her head. There was a long pensive moment and then she looked back at the doll. She rocked it tenderly.
“The dream’s about me and my horse. I got a horse called Shaggy that Daddy got me last year. He’s got brown fur and that’s why we call him that. In the dream, him and me are out riding. We are going down on the road. On the highway. Actually, I’m not riding Shaggy. I’m walking him; I have him by the reins.”
“I’m not supposed to be down on the road. It’s too far away and it’s dangerous. But in the dream I am. And this car comes up behind me. I can’t see who’s in it. I think it’s a man. And he’s driving real slow. I start to get scared.”
“What do you think is going to happen?” James asked.
“I don’t know. That’s why it’s hard to talk about, because I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it makes me feel really scared. I want to turn around and look at him to see who it is, but for some reason, I can’t do it. I just know he’s there. Anyway, he drives real, real slow. I’m scared he’s going to stop. I think he’s going to do something.”
Morgana stopped. Her eyes were fixed on the doll. She cuddled it close against her. “There’s something else in the dream too. It sort of happens before. I never actually dream the before part, but I always know it happened. And what it is, is that I’ve gone into my mum’s study. See, me and Conor, we’re not supposed to go in there by ourselves because Mum doesn’t want us messing up her stuff.”
Morgana paused to caress the doll’s hair. “She’s got this itty, bitty little cat statue in there. Made of stone, I think. It’s only this big.” She measured out about two inches with her fingers. “It’s grey-coloured and it’s sitting down on its bottom, you know, like cats do. And my mum keeps it set up on the tower part of her computer. She showed it to me once. She let me hold it. But she said if she wasn’t in the room, I mustn’t ever, ever touch it.”
“The cat statue sounds very special to your mum,” James reflected.
“She thinks maybe I’ll lose it or something, if I play with it. Or maybe drop it. See, it costed a lot of money because it came from Egypt. That’s a place they talk about in the Bible and it’s a long, long way away from here. And this little cat’s as old as the Bible. My mum says. She told me the person who made this little stone cat statue lived in Bible times and when he was done carving it, he put it in the coffin of a king.”
James raised his eyebrows. “Wow. That’s amazing.”
“A coffin is where you put a dead body. The king’s dead body, before he gets buried,” Morgana said. “And then it goes in his grave. And that’s where this little cat statue was until an arkologist dug it up. And then this friend of my mum’s gave it to her. And she put it on her computer. And she told me never, never to touch it without her knowing about it, because it’s really valuable.”
“I can understand now why it’s so special to your mum,” James said.
Morgana leaned down and tended to the doll a moment.
“So how does this little cat statue figure in your nightmare?” James asked.
“Well, because in the dream when I’m walking along the road with Shaggy and this car starts driving along real slow behind me, I get scared and want to go find my mum. But then I put my hand in my pocket and the cat statue is there.” A quick, rather guilty glance to James followed. “I don’t know how it got there but I know I must have gone in her study and tooken it. In the dream I don’t remember taking it, but I know she’s going to be really, really mad at me when she finds out. First I think maybe I should throw the cat statue away and then my mum won’t know I have it. But then I know it’s so valuable and she loves it so much and, really, I don’t want to throw it away. But I don’t know what to do. So, I get really scared that the man’s going to get me, but I’m scared that if I call out for help, people will find out I have the cat statue. I’m scared I’m going to be in so much trouble and I didn’t even know I’d tooken it.”
“Yes, it sounds very scary,” James said.
“The dream’s a little different each time. Sometimes it’s not always the same car. It was a white car last night. Once it was a red car. And one time I remember it being a white station wagon. But there’s always this driver guy who makes me feel scared and I can’t turn around and see who he is. And every time I want to get help, I put my hand in my pocket and find out I got the cat statue in there.”
“What do you think the driver might do?”
“Kidnap me. Take me away from my mum and my dad and they wouldn’t know where I was.”
“And what feels the most frightening about finding you have the cat statue with you?” James asked.
“Because it’s such a surprise that the cat’s in there and I don’t remember taking it, but the minute I find it in there, I know I must have tooken it and everyone’s going to think I did it on purpose.”
“And that makes you feel afraid?”
“I feel scared, ’cause …” She paused, her forehead wrinkling in concentration. “Because … I’m running away. That’s how come I’m on the road with Shaggy, but I only remember this when I feel the cat. I want to go back so the kidnap guy doesn’t get me, but I’m running away ’cause I stole my mother’s cat.”
“That sounds like a very complicated dream. All sorts of things seem to happen that you hadn’t intended. You feel like you caused them, but, in fact, you didn’t. They just occurred.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“So what happens next?” James asked.
“I wake up.”
“It doesn’t go any further? The car just drives behind you? The cat statue is in your pocket?”
“That’s right. I never have any more of the dream than that, but I get that dream a lot. I’m always crying when I wake up and I feel so scared. Last night I went in Conor’s room.”
“Was Conor awake?”
Morgana nodded. “I think I woke him up by crying, ’cause he had his eyes open when I came in but he wasn’t sitting up ‘adjusting’. He had the covers up like this around his neck and he was just watching me come in. I said, ‘I’m scared. I had a bad dream. Can I get in bed with you?’”
Morgana paused. “Conor used to have all this stupid stuff around his bed, like metal junk, but lately it’s been pretty normal. His bed’s like anybody’s. So now sometimes I get in with him. And that’s what I did last night. ’Cause I didn’t want to call for my mum, in case it wasn’t a dream. That’s what always worries me when I first wake up. That maybe it’s real and I’m going to find I did steal the cat.”
“I see. So what did Conor do?”
“He said, ‘Don’t be scared. I got the mechanical cat.’”
“I said, ‘Where’?”
“He said, ‘Inside me.’”
“I said, ‘What’d you do, Conor? Swallow the one at Dr Innes’s playroom? Because it sounded weird the way he said it.’” Morgana laughed, her eyes twinkling. “That’d be funny, huh? If Conor ate your mechanical cat. You know, that cardboard cat you got.”
James grinned.
“But he said, no, but he could hear it singing. When I got in bed with him, he told me the song. It isn’t a song really, because it doesn’t have any music, but he said it to me. I felt better.”
“So you let Conor take care of you last night?” James asked.
She nodded. “He said, ‘I’m not scared of what you dream. I got strong cats.’ I said to him, ‘You’re strong all by yourself, Conor.’ And he said, ‘So are you.’”