‘HOW very odd.’
The words broke through my sleep, penetrating the thick fog of a nightmare about giant flaming orbs and fiery snowstorms and Aunty B, lying still as a corpse in an ambulance.
I rolled over and tried to brush away the remnants of the hideous dream. Little hammers were tapping out a concerto behind my temples, and I tried to recall when I’d been this hungover. My eyelids felt like lead and I was sure that even the smallest amount of light would make my head explode. Keeping my eyes firmly shut, I said blearily, ‘What’s odd, Aunty B, is that you’re the only person on the planet to wake up chipper after drinking your evil rum punch.’
‘Rum punch?’ The voice sounded startled. ‘I am sure I did not—at least—I do not recollect drinking—’
‘I’m not surprised. Given that someone usually has to carry you up the stairs.’
‘Is that how I got here?’ asked the voice and it struck me that being drunk made Aunty B sound quite unlike herself. ‘I do not recall.’
To be honest, I couldn’t remember who’d carried us upstairs. There was someone there, on the edge of my memory. Someone taking a glass from my hand and guiding me to my bedroom. I put a hand to my aching head. ‘Go back to sleep,’ I groused.
‘Sleep? I do not think so. Indeed, I do not believe I have slept for... some time.’
Huh?
Then it all came rushing back. Flaming orbs and fiery snowstorms and Aunty B, still as a corpse in an ambulance—and oh God, Oliver!
Then another, even more startling, revelation hit me.
I was not talking to Aunt Butters.
There was someone in my room.
Not Oliver (thank goodness), but somebody else. It must be Aunty B’s cleaning lady, Mrs Miggs.
I opened my eyes a chink.
At first the light was almost too much for me. It was so bright, I decided I must have left the curtains open and was being blinded by the morning sun, but I rolled over to find the curtains still drawn. I twitched them aside and looked out into the garden.
To my astonishment it was still dark. Silvery clouds raced each other across the sky and the full moon low on the horizon told me that dawn was not far off. Moonbeams lit the treetops with a pale white glow, but it was nothing like the intensity of the light that had almost blinded me. I shut the curtain but the light in my room did not diminish. A prickle of fear spiralled up my spine and my hand shook as I raised it to shield my eyes.
‘Please turn off the light Mrs Miggs. It’s blinding me.’
‘I am sure I do not know what you mean,’ replied the voice briskly. ‘Who is Mrs Miggs? And who are you? What is this place?’ The questions were uttered with such sharp rapidity that they wrenched me from my stupor.
I sat up in alarm. In the middle of my room, hovering about three feet above the floor in a cloud of intense white light, was a woman.
‘How do you do?’ She smiled uncertainly.
Not Mrs Miggs. I lay down again.
‘Is something amiss?’ asked the voice anxiously. ‘Are you ill?’
I shut my eyes tighter. ‘Hangover,’ I muttered. ‘I think I got very drunk when I got home from the hospital last night,’ Oh God, Oliver! ‘And now I’m having some kind of weird alcoholic dream.’
It was the only explanation.
‘You’ve been in liquor.’ I winced at the note of censure in the strange voice. ‘Drinking spirits, I surmise.’
‘No kidding. But as this is my dream, you can’t just barge in and start criticising.’
‘There is no need for incivility. And you are in error if you think I wish to be here.’
At that, I opened my eyes again. The figure was still there, floating distractedly about the room, peering at the walls as though they might open up and let her out. I couldn’t remember ever having a dream like it: it seemed so real it was like watching a movie. I squinted at the shining apparition and a little of my fear dissipated. The figure was still white and almost blinding, but she didn’t seem threatening.
As I stared, the light faded a little and I could see her frank open face. It was round rather than long, with curved, strongly-marked eyebrows above a pair of wide hazel eyes fringed with thick black lashes, a straight, well-shaped nose, and an expressive mouth. Her short light-brown hair was mostly hidden beneath a pretty white cap from which a few soft brown curls had escaped to frame her face.
Some part of me registered that it was strange to feel so awake while dreaming, but the part of my brain that was in deep denial happily accepted the apparition and just waited for it to disappear. ‘Don’t stay on my account,’ I murmured groggily. ‘You’re welcome to leave any time. I won’t stop you.’
A heavy sigh wafted across the room. ‘If I could do so, I most certainly would, but it is more difficult than I expected. If you will be so kind as to tell me how I might depart this place, I shall relieve you of my presence.’
‘There is a door, you know.’
‘I know, but it will not open.’
‘Of course it’ll open.’ I swung my legs over the side of the bed, my hand to my head.
‘Hurts, does it?’ The figure regarded me with a curious mix of sympathy and enjoyment.
‘Pounding,’ I agreed and slowly stood up.
‘Good gracious.’ The apparition recoiled. ‘What are you wearing?’ She peered at my clothes. ‘Ah, yes. I have heard of these things called pyjamas.’
I checked my crumpled t-shirt and jeans. ‘These aren’t pyjamas, these are my clothes.’
‘Your clothes?’ She raised a disapproving eyebrow. ‘But… surely they are better suited to a man? It is most indecorous for a young woman to be thus attired. A young woman in… pantaloons? I never heard of such a thing. Would not a walking dress and spencer be more suitable?’ She shook her shining head. ‘Nor does it look comfortable. Why are you not wearing a nightgown for sleeping?’
This dream was getting weirder by the minute. ‘I thought you wanted to leave?’
‘Oh, yes, indeed I do.’
I crossed the room and opened the door. ‘Off you go then.’
She inclined her head and glided past me, but as she neared the doorway, she stopped.
‘What is it?’ I asked, wishing the dream would end so I could go back to sleep.
‘I cannot get out.’ She moved forward again in some agitation, and I noticed she was tightly clasping a pretty sort of white cloth bag with a drawstring handle.
‘What do you mean, you can’t get out? The door’s open. Just… go through.’
‘That is precisely what I am endeavouring to do,’ she snapped. ‘Only I cannot.’
She tried again and this time I saw what she meant. As soon as she came within a few inches of the doorframe it turned from brown to yellow and then, as she drew nearer, to bright orange, and finally to a flaming, oddly familiar, red. She reached for the frame as if to pull herself through, but the moment her fingers neared the wood she leapt back as though scorched. ‘Oh, the wretched thing,’ she wailed. ‘Why will it not let me pass? I wish only to return to the cathedral.’ She wrung her hands in despair.
That did it. I’d always been hopeless when it came to creatures in distress. As a child I was forever bringing home stray animals, injured birds and wounded wildlife. Once I’d even brought home a homeless man, certain that I (with my mother’s reluctant assistance) could help him. Of course, it didn’t work out that way and the day I’d brought home an angry baby badger was the day my long-suffering mother banned me from bringing home anything (or anyone) again. But even in this crazy alcoholic dream, I couldn’t resist helping.
‘Let me try.’ I skirted past the shimmering form, thrusting my hip sideways to avoid the incandescent white mist swirling around her. My hip hit the doorway; I yelped, bounced off the wood and… realized I was wide awake. I stood there rubbing my hip and staring in shocked dismay at the strange, luminous woman.
She stared back, a look of polite enquiry in her eyes. Hazel eyes.
My heart did a tap-dance. I’d seen those eyes before. Only a few hours before. They’d met mine in the middle of the whirling vortex of snow and sparks that had flung me headlong into the dark. Tiny beads of sweat formed on my forehead. ‘You were there,’ I croaked. ‘Tonight. In the cathedral.’
‘Indeed.’ She nodded. ‘And I should like to go back there. Immediately.’
‘Right. Okay. Only—’ I stopped, struck by a sudden, extraordinary thought.
‘Only?’ She raised her eyebrows.
Oh. My. God.
I wasn’t drunk or hungover or even dreaming. The realisation hit me like a freight train. My pounding head was suddenly matched by my pounding heart as I stared at the woman in utter disbelief.
An idea had struck me that was so incredible – so completely impossible – that I could barely hold it in my head. I stared – no, I goggled at the slender apparition and at the strange substance of which she appeared to be made.
The intense white light emanating from her had dimmed considerably and now I could see all of her without being dazzled. Her face and body shimmered with a white, ethereal glow, and I could sort of see through her. It was like looking through milky-coloured glass – only glass that bent and moved and floated through the air leaving silvery tendrils behind her that hovered briefly, then vanished.
What was really bizarre (well, it was all bizarre, but some things really stood out), was that both she and her clothes were made of the same luminous substance. She had on an old-fashioned, very pretty white dress embroidered all over with tiny white flowers. It had a high waist with a low-cut neckline, wrist-length sleeves puffed at the shoulders and two flounces on the bottom of the skirt, from beneath which peeped white satin slippers with a rosette on each toe. Her small, well-formed hands kept a tight hold on the drawstring bag, but the strangest thing of all was that, while the rest of her was white, her lips and cheeks were faintly pink, her hair brown, her eyelashes and eyebrows black, and there was no doubting the colour of those clear, intelligent eyes.
But it was not her face, or her clothes, or even her strange, transparent form that struck me so forcibly, as impossible as those things were to grasp. No, it wasn’t what she might be so much as who she might be that was playing merry hell with my mind.
The ethereal figure said, ‘Pray, can not you tell me how I may return to the cathedral?’
‘Honestly?’ I asked, backing away and dropping onto my bed in a daze. ‘I don’t even know how you got here, never mind how to get you back. And that’s assuming you’re even real.’ I pinched myself. ‘I’m sure I must be dreaming. Except that really hurt and—’ I slapped myself across the face. ‘—and I definitely felt that. So I must be awake. Only, you’re not possible, which means I must be hallucinating. Maybe the rum punch was—’
‘Nonsense,’ cut in the woman briskly. ‘I beg you will be rational. You can be of no use to me if you allow yourself to give way to an excess of sensibility.’
Her face, her dress, her manner, all pointed to the same conclusion, but it was her words that clinched it for me. I swallowed and in a trembling voice said, ‘You—you’re Jane Austen.’