Isabelle woke in a room that felt strangely familiar. She turned and snuggled deeper into the bedding, then sat up, ignoring the steady beat of a headache behind her eyes. She was in a strange room, but the duvet was her own. Next to the bed, under a lamp, a few of her books rested in a neat pile.
She sat up. More were stacked in a long bookcase that ran across the length of the wall above the bed. Some of them were hers, others not. Whoever they belonged to loved history, jazz, and philosophy.
She glanced around. She was in a big room with a bay window, the blinds drawn against the outside world. In the dim light she could see there was a closet on her left and, at the end of the bed, a comfortable leather couch. And was that a TV and small kitchen on the other side of the room? Yes. The kitchen even had a breakfast nook that could seat three people. A laptop sat on the granite counter, the screen black.
The apartment’s colors were earthy, browns and deep reds, designed to calm.
She looked around again and quickly found what she’d been looking for—a door leading to what must be the bathroom. She looked through the closet. Her clothes hung next to a stranger’s clothes. A woman’s clothes. Jeans, a few neat shirts, functional underwear, T-shirts, shorts, and running shoes.
She leaned in and smelled the nearest black cotton shirt. It was familiar, comforting. Cedarwood and lemon. The woman from the concrete room with the green door. Andy.
She fingered the soft material and waited for the door to open, smiling at the memory.
Behind her the door creaked. She swung around.
Andy stood in the doorway. “You’re up,” she stated the obvious.
Isabelle closed the closet door, walked to the window, and pushed two fingers through the blinds. The window overlooked a park dressed in the muted shades of winter. People wrapped in coats and scarfs hurried by on the sidewalk below. She guessed they were on the third or fourth floor of a building somewhere in New York. The skyline visible through the buildings looked familiar. Manhattan was to the northeast, at quite a distance. She would guess that she was in Brooklyn somewhere.
She turned back to Andy. “I was looking around.” She pointed to the closet, the bed. “My stuff is in there. And that’s my duvet.” She took a big breath and again asked the questions that had been burning inside her for days. “Who are you? And your mother? These people? This place?”
She tried to remain calm. If she wanted to survive this place she would have to keep her wits about her.
Andy looked at her watch. “I need to shower and you probably should too.”
“I think you owe me some answers first. And I have to call some people. I need to tell them that I’m safe.” Isabelle’s hands stopped midflight. She locked them in front of her, suddenly aware that she was dressed in her pajamas, which were nothing more than skimpy shorts and a T-shirt. She had no recollection of changing.
“Am I safe?” she asked.
Andy held up her hands. “You are. One hundred percent. And I promise to keep you as safe as I possibly can.”
“That’s a pretty vague promise.”
“It’s the only one I can offer you right now. But I’ll do my utmost to keep it.”
Isabelle held her breath. “No promise that I can go home then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s get cleaned up and then I’ll explain everything as best I can.”
* * *
They sat on the couch. Andy had turned it to face the window, as if she needed a horizon to look at. Her hair was wet, slicked back from her face. Despite the shower she looked tired, her face drawn.
“We don’t have a lot of time, so forgive me for providing you with only the highlights.” Andy glanced at her watch. “If we don’t do this quickly, someone else will come in here and talk to you and I don’t want that to happen.”
Isabelle pulled her legs to her chin. She wore jeans and a white T-shirt, her feet bare and her skin on fire from the hot shower she’d taken. She smiled nervously. “Better hurry up then.”
She liked Andy, perhaps even trusted her—at least, more than she trusted anyone else in this place.
“Ma Soeur means My Sister,” said Andy. “The organization is thousands of years old. Joan of Arc was a part of it. Victoria. Elizabeth I. The head office is here, in Brooklyn. A nice, five-story stucco building. It manages to look like a nonprofit because it really is one. Digging wells in India, campaigning against female circumcision, making small, interest-free loans to women-owned businesses, you name it. Ma Soeur is basically a group of women all over the world trying to push the female agenda. We…they also try to boost women into power positions in order to create balance. The belief is that more women in power would mean fewer wars, less violence, and greater ecological awareness. In short, it would ensure the prosperity and survival of the human race.”
Isabelle digested the thought. Decided to ignore the “we” that had become “they.” “Okay. Sounds feasible, I suppose.”
“The organization has been struggling the last few years. The advent of technology has meant that physical power plays less of a role in daily life. Things have started to change for the better. These days women can do a lot of what used to be male jobs. You don’t need to plow with oxen anymore, you have tractors. Anyone can drive a truck because of power steering. Anyone can use a gun. Fly a drone. Write code. You get my drift.”
Isabelle nodded.
Andy continued. “However, this technological advance—something Ma Soeur has been pushing for generations—has also meant that the frequency of dreamers has lessened quite dramatically. Nobody knows why.”
“Dreamers?”
Andy looked at her pointedly.
“What?”
“People like you.”
“People like…like me?” Isabelle turned on the couch to face her, sitting cross-legged. She stared at Andy, who was dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans fraying over her bare feet.
“Yes. Ma Soeur operates in two-person teams. One is a dreamer and the other is what we call a keeper. One dreams, like you, what will happen in the near future, and the keeper guards the dreamer, and then tries to prevent the event in the dream from happening. The dreams are often about episodes of violence, when somebody’s soul departs the body, or when they are badly injured. Nobody knows how it works, or why the ability was given to certain people.”
“Wait, back up a bit. Violence?”
“Yes.” Andy seemed hesitant to continue.
“Explain, please.”
“Often it is a murder. Or murders. Or an accidental death or deaths. Things like that. So, the team would work to identify and locate the person in the dream and save their life.”
“How would they—you, we, whatever—do that?”
“There are various options available to the team. Depending on the threat you can take the person concerned to a different location or you can find the intended killer.” Andy shrugged. “Mostly the team, and here I actually mean the keeper, are able to step in just in time to stop it from happening. The problem is to do that without showing ourselves. No one is to know about our existence.”
Isabelle shook her head, then turned away from Andy again. She leaned forward, arms crossed over her stomach. The headache from earlier had returned to hammer against her temples in a persistent, angry beat.
“Dream the future?” she whispered. Was she stuck in some twilight zone? An alternative reality?
“Yes.” Andy’s voice was gentle. “What happens to you…you are dreaming the future. I know it sounds preposterous, but it’s not. It’s real and I can only imagine how scary it is.”
Isabelle blinked through the sudden tears. Andy reached out and rubbed her back in a smoothing, circular motion.
So, this was what it was all about? This? The dreaming? Could it be?
Isabelle sat back on the couch, pushing her hair out of her face. “So…” She swallowed, then exhaled slowly. “So, I’m not mad? This is…the dreams are not…they are real? Will be real?”
“Yes.”
Isabelle stared at her for two, three minutes, then a new realization dawned on her. “It’s horrible. To dream about death all the time.”
“Yes. It takes someone awfully strong to manage it. And the intensity…That’s why you lose your balance when it happens. Why your body retreats into itself when the dream is over. It is also part of the keeper’s job to watch over you while you dream. To bring you back safely.”
“And that’s you?”
“Yes.”
“One dreamer, one keeper?”
“Yes.”
Isabelle considered Andy’s story. Prevent the dream’s events. “Which is the more dangerous job? Being a keeper, or dreamer?”
Andy smiled wanly. “I won’t lie to you. A lot of keepers have died over the years. And two or three dreamers. What also happens, however, is that some dreamers have…”
Her words dried up. She looked out the window and crossed her arms over the T-shirt, her biceps becoming tight and angry. Long, strong muscles stirred in her forearms as she closed her hands into fists and opened them again.
Isabelle put her hand on Andy’s arm. She needed an answer, for herself, her own sanity.
Andy relaxed her arms, her jaw. She rested her hands on her thighs. “It differs from person to person. Some dreamers go on until they die of old age. The dreaming does get less frequent the older they become, even if not less intense necessarily. Other dreamers seem to retreat inside their minds as they grow older, almost as if they’ve seen enough.”
“Madness.” Isabelle could believe that. Could understand it. How many times had she been right there, at the edge, wondering if she should jump in?
“Perhaps. Or maybe there is peace and safety in solitude.” Andy sounded wistful, sad.
Isabelle squeezed her hand. Andy looked at her watch. Isabelle ignored the unspoken signal to hurry up.
“You said two-person team. Not women. I’ve only seen women around here,” she added.
“There are men. Quite a lot actually. A lot of men share Ma Soeur’s vision. There are male dreamers, female dreamers. Same goes for the keepers. And the combination differs. Two men, mixed, two women.” Andy looked her in the eye. “Do you prefer a male keeper? Just because my mother forced me on you, doesn’t mean you have to accept it.”
Isabelle didn’t answer. Instead she asked, “What I don’t understand is why your mother locked you in that room with me. You made it sound like she abducted you too. Why would she need to do that?” A realization hit her. “Was it all a ploy for me to trust you?” She inched away from Andy.
“No, not at all. I can promise you that,” Andy said quickly. “I walked away from Ma Soeur three years ago. Things happened.”
“So why bring you back?”
“Kate came to London asking me to return to Ma Soeur to become your keeper. I wasn’t quite as willing as she hoped I’d be. She wanted someone with experience and no one else was available. It takes a certain amount of training to look after a dreamer, especially a new dreamer. A certain understanding. It also requires a certain skill set to prevent a dream from happening.” She looked Isabelle square in the eye. “I’m not here to deceive you. I can promise you that. I’m simply here to keep you safe and to see what we can do about this dream you had earlier.”
Isabelle decided to believe her, to believe what she had witnessed with her own eyes. Felt inside.
She smiled faintly. “Okay. Then the answer is no. I don’t want another keeper. Not at all.”
“Are you sure? It is a pretty intimate arrangement at times. If you are uncomfortable with me, it is best we get you a male keeper.”
“Why? Do dreamers and keepers sleep together?” Isabelle pointed at the bed, the closet. “I noticed that both of us will be staying here.”
Andy cleared her throat. “It’s believed that sex can enhance the dreaming and rush the repair process when you wake, but that’s not always the case.”
Isabelle stared at the bed, a jumble of images in her mind. The most prominent was one where she was screaming with pleasure as she came, Andy inside her, on top of her. She crossed her arms over her breasts where she knew her thoughts had become visible.
“I’m not interested in you. I mean in sex. With you,” Andy said quickly. “I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m only here to guide you through this one dream, as a…call it a favor…and then I’m leaving. Think of me as a personal trainer. My job is to get you into shape and then you can decide whether you want to stay or not.”
Isabelle frowned. That didn’t sound right. And it was not what she’d expected. “So you want to hand me off to someone else when…?”
“When we’ve analyzed the dream you had earlier and decided what to do about it.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Isabelle felt disappointed. Probably looked it too as Andy scrambled to say, “This relationship should be your choice. You should choose your keeper. It shouldn’t ever be this contrived.” She took a deep breath, as if trying to calm herself. “That’s if you want to stay. If you want to leave right now, I’ll help you get away.”
Andy shook her head, seemingly frustrated with her inability to find the right words.
“If?” Isabelle asked. “Do you mean your mother will let me go if I want to leave right now?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll help you anyway. What she did…she shouldn’t have taken you like that. She’s one of the many reasons I left Ma Soeur in the first place.”
Isabelle remembered what had happened earlier, in the concrete room, the conversation between Andy and her mother over the intercom. “Why do you hate her so much?”
Andy glanced at her watch again. “That will have to be a story for another time. I have negotiated a two-hour window for us to talk through your dream. If we don’t show some results soon we’ll have to go to the comm center and do this in front of a bunch of people who are going to gawk at you like you’re crazy.”
“Why? In here I’m normal, right?”
“Not quite. Normal dreamers can only see about twenty-four hours into the future. I hear you can see four days, from the little Ma Soeur knows about you. They’ve not seen such a powerful dreamer since the 1400s.”