The little girl sat in her grandmother’s oversized armchair, her black-shoed feet dangling from the end of the couch cushion. She wore a knee-length school uniform and plain grey tights that looked comfortably warm. I wished I’d worn tights underneath my jeans; clearly Mrs Blackwood didn’t believe in running her heater once winter had finished. Goosebumps prickled along the outside of my arms.
“I like your hair.” The girl regarded me with wide eyes. Her own hair was the colour of a polished copper coin; her curls clung to the couch upholstery.
“I like yours too.”
The girl returned my smile, although hers didn’t reach her eyes. “Gramma, when I’m older can I have blue in my hair?”
“We’ll see, my sweet,” Mrs Blackwood said with remarkable calm, setting a tray bearing a floral tea set on the coffee table. “How do you have your tea, Miss Armstrong?”
“Please, call me Melaina. And just a splash of milk, thank you.”
Mrs Blackwood poured three cups: mine, plus two that were milkier and sweet. She handed one of these to the little girl, who blew on it, regarding me solemnly.
“Thank you for coming.” Mrs Blackwood eased herself back into her chair, at the other end of the three-seater couch I perched on. She was dressed neatly, in blue slacks and a collared shirt. “My friend Mim spoke most highly of you. Said you did wonders in curing her nephew’s nightmares.”
I nodded, inhaling the tea. The aroma of bergamot and lavender filled my sinuses as I remembered the trouble I’d unleashed by helping Larry three months earlier. He’d been possessed by a blight. The creature itself had been easy to deal with, but in doing so I’d attracted all sorts of unpleasant attention.
Remembering the creature, I studied the little girl. She was pale, but it was hard to tell whether it was as a result of winter pallor and her fair skin, or due to lack of sleep. The dark smudges under each eye were likely to be sleep-related, though.
Dragging my thoughts back to the conversation, I turned to her grandmother. “How do you know Mim? Is it through Wattle Tree Park?”
Mrs Blackwood frowned. “The nursing home?”
“Yes. She volunteers there. With her dog. A poodle-y looking thing?”
“Oh. No, we both volunteer at a charity shop in Woden.”
Maybe Felice wasn’t blight-infested after all. “Have you been sleepwalking?” I asked the little girl.
Felice tipped her head to the side. “How would I know? Wouldn’t I be asleep when it happened?”
“Usually you’d wake up somewhere different. Other than your bed.”
“Oh. Then no. I don’t think so?” She glanced at her grandmother, who shook her head and smiled reassuringly. “No,” the little girl said again, more firmly.
“Can you tell me about your nightmares?” Felice bit her lip and didn’t answer. I pressed a little harder. “Are they always the same?”
“It’s alright.” Mrs Blackwood reached over to take the still-full cup from her granddaughter’s trembling hand. “Melaina’s here to help.”
“Okay.” Felice’s voice was so soft I could hardly hear her. “They’re mostly the same. The scariest ones are.”
“What can you tell me about the scariest ones?”
“I dream about Mum and Dad. About the night they—” her voice dropped to a whisper “—went away.”
I glanced at Mrs Blackwood, whose lips had compressed into a thin line. “Felice’s parents died in a car accident last year. A drunk driver on the Princes Highway.”
I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the sudden lump in my throat. It didn’t work. “And Felice…?”
“Was in the car. Yes.”
“I…” For a moment, I was at a loss for what to say. The memory of my uncle’s funeral—of my cousins’ grief at losing their father—flashed before my eyes. I shook myself, looking between the girl and her grandmother. “I’m sorry for your loss.” The rote words felt awkward and inadequate.
The older woman nodded, her gaze flicking to my own before returning to her granddaughter’s face.
I also turned back to the girl. Felice avoided my gaze, picking at a loose thread in the hem of her skirt, twisting it around her finger until the fingertip turned red. She seemed even smaller in the armchair than she had before, lost amidst the abstract patterns. I squared my shoulders and forced myself to focus. Mrs Blackwood wasn’t paying me to pity her granddaughter.
Felice had plenty of reasons to be having nightmares, all on her own, and she wasn’t sleepwalking. She probably didn’t have a blight infestation, then—they tended to gradually assert control over their host.
But I wouldn’t know for sure until I walked in the girl’s dreams.
I glanced at Mrs Blackwood. She held her tea cup in one hand, but her posture was stiff, protective. Small chance I’d be able to get her to leave the room for long enough for me to use my Oneiroi magic to put her granddaughter to sleep. On the other hand, she’d come to me. She knew my reputation … didn’t she? “What are the other nightmares about, Felice?”
“There are lots. Sometimes I’m lost at the mall and can’t find anyone. Sometimes I’m being chased by a bad dog. Sometimes the kids at school tease me because I don’t have a mummy and daddy anymore.”
That nettled me. “I hope they don’t really do that.”
“Sometimes they do…”
“When I was your age, kids teased me about that too,” I told her in a gentle voice.
She looked up at me. “Don’t you have parents either?”
“Felice,” Mrs Blackwood said, gentle admonishment in her tone, but I waved her off.
“I don’t have a daddy.” I’d met him once. It didn’t count. “My mother is alive, but when I was a girl she was very sick, so I didn’t live with her.” They also said she was crazy, locked up in a mental institution … but that was more than Felice needed to hear. “It’s hard when people pick on you, especially when it’s for something that’s not your fault.”
A shadow crossed her face and was gone. “Yes,” she mumbled.
I sipped my tea and set it back on the tray, before sliding out of my seat to kneel before Felice’s chair. “I’m going to hold your hands. Is that alright?”
She nodded mutely, and I untwisted the thread from her finger and took her hands in my own. They were so small it was as if I held a baby animal in the palm of each hand: fragile and likely to bolt. She was the youngest customer I’d ever had. “Do you know what I do in my dreams when something bad happens?” I asked. She shook her head, and I smiled, leaning over her. “I fly away.”
“I can’t fly.” A frown marred Felice’s smooth brow.
“I can’t either, in real life. But I can in my dreams. Want me to teach you?”
She nodded, and I leaned over her. “Okay, sweetheart, close your eyes and take a deep breath.” Felice did so, and I pursed my lips and breathed a thin stream of air over her face. Slowly, her head lolled to the side, coming to rest against one of the chair’s fat, padded arms.
I sat back on my heels. Mrs Blackwood’s eyes opened wide when she saw her granddaughter was asleep. “That was fast. What did you do?”
“I need her to be dreaming. Then I can go into her dreams myself, see what is going on.”
“But how? Was it hypnosis?”
“Something like that.” I returned to my seat. The older woman narrowed her eyes, and I sighed. “Put simply, Mrs Blackwood, I’m a psychic. But not a very good one. This is my one and only trick. I can’t read thoughts or see the future or anything cool like that.”
“Mim never said…” She hesitated.
“That I was a crackpot?” I smiled grimly when Mrs Blackwood’s cheeks reddened. “I’ve never talked to Mim, but I’d wager she believes in this sort of stuff. Am I right?” Mrs Blackwood nodded, one corner of her mouth pulling tight. “So she wouldn’t think of me that way,” I said. “Still, you’re not the first sceptical client I’ve had, and I’ll tell you the same thing I tell all my customers. If I can’t help Felice, it won’t cost you anything.”
“That isn’t my concern.” Her tone carried a mild reproof. “I’m worried about Felice. She’s been through so much.”
I felt a pang of guilt at that. “Of course you are. But I haven’t given her anything chemical, if that’s what you’re worried about. If you shook her arm right now, she’d wake up—although I’d be grateful if you’d wait ten minutes. I was wondering, though, is she seeing anyone for the trauma from the accident? I can help with the nightmares themselves, but I’m not a psychologist.”
“Yes, she has been seeing someone,” Mrs Blackwood said. If she was surprised I was recommending traditional medicine instead of meditation and chakras, she didn’t let it show.
“Good. Now, what I’m going to do is touch Felice’s dream.” Mrs Blackwood opened her mouth, and I made an appeasing gesture. “This is where the ‘psychic’ thing takes effect, I’m afraid. It will look like I’ve fallen asleep too, but if you shake my arm, I will be harder to wake than Felice would be. If for some reason you need to wake me up, your best bet is to wake Felice. That’ll bring us both around.”
“Why … that is, what would be a reason to wake you?”
“If there’s a fire,” I said with a smile that I hoped was reassuring. “I’m not anticipating any issues on my end.”
“Oh.” She hesitated and then nodded. “Very well. It’s worth a try. Just … be gentle with her.”
“I will,” I promised, settling back into the chair and closing my eyes.
I stepped into Felice’s dream.
I was standing on a school oval. Long, dry blades of grass scratched my calves, and poked through the holes in my sandals to stab at the sensitive arches of my feet.
Sandals? What?
Grinning, I saw I was wearing a school uniform: sandals, a blue tartan skirt and a pale blue polo shirt. Brad would no doubt approve. At least they’d been scaled to fit … but I spent a thread of energy to change the shoes to a replica of my usual black leather boots with their purple laces. My butt-kicking boots, as Jen called them.
Now that the grass was no longer irritating me, I looked around for Felice, not really expecting to find her. I didn’t often meet dreamers during my therapy sessions; usually, when I put someone under and stepped into their subconscious mind, they weren’t there yet—it took them time to start dreaming, to enter REM sleep. But the girl was at the oval’s far side, trudging along a footpath, dressed in the same school uniform as me. Her hair was curlier than it had been in the real world, a coppery gold cloud of frizz around her head. A heavy backpack made her look like a turtle trying to carry its house on its back.
Somewhere, a dog barked, a staccato burst of sound. She stiffened, looking around. Her panic was clear not just in the lines of her body but in the dream all around me. The sun grew wan, like it had passed behind a cloud, and the shadows under the trees darkened until they were almost impenetrable. The grass beneath my feet transformed, growing unkempt and full of weeds: sticky, clinging grass seeds, and brown patches of oversized, sun-dried bindi prickles that wouldn’t just scratch but would tear the skin of the unwary like a rasp. Glad for my boots, I strode across the oval towards the girl.
The dog’s bark grew louder, each inhaled breath a snarl. Felice ran.
Looking around, I didn’t see a dog, but in dreams things didn’t need to obey the laws of physics. The animal could literally appear out of nowhere. Speaking of which … I willed myself to the girl’s side and caught her hand. “Felice!”
She regarded me with wide, panicked eyes. “Let me go. It’s coming!”
“I’m here to help.” I narrowed my own eyes, and the sound of the dog cut off, mid-bark, like someone had paused a recording. She stared around, her hair flying about her face. “It’s okay,” I said, keeping my voice calm, like I was trying to sooth a skittish animal. “The dog is gone.”
The colour returned to her cheeks and to the dream world around me. The shadows grew less threatening, the weeds smaller and more manageable. “Do … do I know you?”
“We’ve met. My name is Melaina.”
“I like your hair.”
“I know.” I smiled. Her confusion, the memory’s imperfect ability to cross between the dreaming and waking mind, wasn’t unusual.
“Are you an angel?” She peered around me.
That was unusual. “No, sweetheart.”
“But … oh. I thought you had wings. Where did they go?” She frowned at me and I realised my mouth was hanging open. “What’s the matter?”
I stretched, trying to look casual, and ran one hand along my other shoulder and as far down my back as I could reach. It was smooth, and I felt a twinge of disappointment. Most Oneiroi, including my father, had moth wings sprouting from their shoulders, and a second pair they called hindwings emerging from the bottom of their shoulder blades—or where the shoulder blades would be on a human. The wings were so long that they would brush the ground as they walked if the Oneiroi didn’t keep them lifted.
I’d never had wings, although when I used my powers in a dream, sometimes a ghostly reflection of them flared at my back, casting a shadow I could see before me. They never lasted long. Still, that was probably what Felice had seen.
I recalled my offer to the little girl. “I don’t have wings, but I can fly. Do you want to know how?”
“Yes, please.” Felice dropped her backpack onto the ground with a thud and tipped her heart-shaped face up to me expectantly.
“All you have to do is imagine you’re lighter than air, like Superman,” I said. “Can I have your hand?”
She slipped it into mine and I closed my eyes briefly, reaching deep into her subconscious mind. You can fly in your dreams, I told it. You just have to will it.
“Supergirl,” Felice corrected.
I opened my eyes. The girl had her free hand on her hip and was giving me a disapproving look. “Sorry, what? Oh, yes. Supergirl.” Normally, changing someone’s dreamscape used my own energy, but I’d learned through experimentation with Brad that, if I was physically touching the dreamer in their dream, changing the dream didn’t cost me anything. It meant we could both be superheroes.
“So I go like this?” She punched towards the sky with her fist and gave a little jump. The scrape of her sandals on pavement was followed by a squeal as she bobbed two feet into the air, tethered by my arm like a balloon on a string.
“Exactly like that.” I grinned, hopping into the air myself. I felt as light as a feather, as a joyful thought. Felice took my other hand and together we rose above the trees, the roofs of the houses, until the oval was a patch of green, the school roof a bright terracotta like something out of a storybook.
Awake, I was sure I’d feel dizzy, looking down from such a great height with no obvious means of support. But, in the dream, I was in control. My elation was enough to send us flying into the fluffy, cartoonish clouds above our heads.
Felice’s face was level with my own, so I saw the shift from nerves to giddy delight as she took it in … and then to alarm as the sky grew dark and a new sound emerged. The hiss of tyres on pavement. The steady thrum of a car engine. “Felice?” Her hands tore from mine. The world went black around us, and I struggled against a restraint that slithered over my shoulder and across my chest, pinning me down. “Felice?”
Blinking rapidly, I managed to clear my vision. I was strapped in the back seat of a car, a too-tight seatbelt pressing into my shoulder hard enough to bruise. What the…? I glanced down and realised I was sitting in a booster seat. That was why the seatbelt was too tight. Grumbling, I loosened it … then looked to my left. Felice was sitting in an identical seat on the other side of the car, white-faced and trembling. Judging by the slanting light, it was either just past dawn or just on twilight; the sun was behind us, glinting like fire off the rear-vision mirror and bathing the back seat in a warm golden hue.
“It’s okay, Mummy,” Felice whispered. “I’m not thirsty.”
“Hang on, sweetheart,” the woman in the front of the car said, a faint thread of exasperation weaving through her voice. “I’ll just…” She leant forward, and there was the sound of a rustling plastic bag. “Where is that bottle?”
“I’m not thirsty,” Felice said again, louder this time. Her hands were twisted in the flat strap of the seatbelt, and tears streamed down her face.
“She’s getting it, Felice. Hold on,” a man in the front seat said. He had Felice’s coppery hair. I caught a glimpse of a goatee as he glanced over at Felice’s mother. “Did it fall down the side of the—”
“Daddy!” Felice’s scream pierced the air just before tyres squealed, right in front of our car. Another vehicle.
Oh god. “STOP!” I flung out my hand, energy spilling from me as I froze both cars—as if they were a DVD and I controlled the remote. Fatigue rolled over me in a wave. Leaning to the side, I examined the car in front of ours. It was so close I couldn’t see its tyres. The driver was a shadow, malevolent and strange, with eyes glowing as red as taillights.
Of course he was a shadow. Felice hadn’t seen him. She’d only seen her mother trying to find her a drink; her father, distracted.
Beside me, Felice burst into tears, her sobs tearing from her throat.
I reached across to her, my hand trembling with fatigue. “Felice. It’s okay. It’s just—” I stopped. I’d been going to say it was just a dream, but it wasn’t. This was a memory. Sure, it was distorted a little, but it was real all the same. “Sweetheart, give me your hand.”
She looked up at me, pale face blotchy with grief. “Supergirl?” she hiccoughed.
It took two tries before I could reply to her. My throat ached with shared grief. The poor, sweet child. “Yes.”
“Can we fly away from here?”
“In a minute.” I wiggled my fingers, and she reached out, again slipping her hand into mine.
I closed my eyes and moulded the dream to my will.
“Oh, bunny,” the woman said, her voice warm and soft. The scent of vanilla threaded through the cabin: whether it was perfume or body wash, I didn’t know. The memory had come straight from Felice’s subconscious “What happened isn’t your fault.”
“Mummy?” Felice’s voice was tiny.
“It was the other driver.” Her father had a pleasant voice, sad as it was. “He did something stupid, and was on our side of the road. See?”
I opened my eyes in time to see the man gesture towards the windshield. He and his wife were moving normally, but the car outside was still frozen, inches away from disaster.
“But if I—”
“Even if I’d seen him swerve, there is nothing I could’ve done. It happened too fast,” he said. I wasn’t sure whether that was true, but it was what Felice needed to hear. “You did nothing wrong. You were just thirsty. You didn’t make it happen.”
“I …” Felice pulled her fingers from mine and slipped out of her seatbelt to reach for her parents. They each took one of her hands as she clambered forward. Her mother kissed her fingertips, one by one. “I miss you both.”
“And we miss you,” Felice’s father said. “More than anything.”
“Gramma said the man who crashed into us might go to jail,” Felice told them, a hint of fire in her voice.
“That’s good, bunny,” Felice’s mother said. “But even if he doesn’t, he will regret what happened for the rest of his life. I’m sure of that.”
“We love you, Felice.” Her father took her in a crushing embrace. Tears prickled my eyes as I watched the ephemera—the fragments of dream that looked, sounded and smelled like Felice’s parents—smother her with kisses and murmured words of adoration and forgiveness.
Finally, when fatigue tugged at me and I knew I couldn’t hold the dream together for much longer, I reached out and brushed my fingertips against the dreaming girl’s shoulder. “Come on, bunny,” I said. “It’s time to wake up.”