Sea of Dreams

by Bevill, C. L.

  Kara found something interesting to do. She started folding blood-stained clothing that looked like it had been cut off my body.

  “We can’t move you, yet,” Zach said, folding his arms over his chest. He looked at me challengingly.

  “And if he stumbles onto us?” I asked sincerely. “We’re not far from the highway. If he was persistent, he could do it.”

  “We’re not moving you,” Zach said in a firmer voice. It was almost a growl.

  “At least we could move further away from the road,” I ventured.

  “Now she talks,” he said half to himself. “Now she does. Listen, Sophie, we are NOT moving you. Not yet. Do you remember what happened the last time we moved you. Oh, yes, yesterday. Last night, when you nearly bled out. That’s the reason I’m a little woozy from the transfusion. You know, the blood I gave you today. I’m not taking that chance with you again.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kara duck her head. Something was fascinating her on the floor. It must have been as interesting as Carter looking into Tut’s tomb for the first time. It suddenly occurred to me that the cut clothing that she was holding in her hand meant something. I looked down and saw that I was naked under the blankets. Furthermore, the blankets were slipping. My head shot back to Zach. His eyes were focused completely on my face as I jerked the blankets back up.

  “They did something to me,” I said. Well, I was the queen of switching subjects today, and I thought I might as well go with the flow.

  Kara brought her head up. She was a tough woman all right, but for some reason, Zach was the leader of this expedition. He was the alpha dog and it wasn’t sitting well with me. I hadn’t wanted to be alone, and I wasn’t. I still didn’t want to be alone. But I didn’t want to be dominated either. “They?” she said curiously.

  “The firefly pixies or whatever you want to call them,” I elucidated. “How else can you explain how I feel? Wasn’t I dead a few hours ago? Weren’t you pounding on my chest and breathing for me? I saw a light. A bright light. I think I was three-quarters gone. Maybe even more.”

  The expression that crossed Zach’s face was both pained and aggravated. “You were dead,” he said. “But you’re not now and we want to make sure you stay that way.”

  “I’m not a marshmallow,” I exclaimed. Zach jerked.

  “We don’t think you’re a…” Kara said and trailed off uncertainly. “Oh, hon. It’s just you were in shock and so ill. You’d lost all your fight, and now, it’s all back, isn’t it?” She tilted her head curiously as she looked at me. Judging from her expression, she thought it was amusing. “I’ll find you some clothes,” she added pertly. “And some oatmeal. Zach’s got a fire going in the back. A small one without any smoke,” she explained with no little amount of mirth.

  Zach stared at me. I was getting used to that. This time I stared back until he turned away with an aggrieved grunt.

  ♦

  Two days later, Zach was still grumpy. He spent a lot of time outside during the day, keeping an eye on what was happening. I don’t think he wanted to stare at me anymore.

  “He thinks it’s his fault that you died,” Kara explained to me one day while I was sitting in a chair, working on a new notepad. Zach had found a nearly new one in a house a mile away. He’d presented it to me with a gruff, “Here.” Then he’d tossed a pile of sharpened pencils in my lap. While I was looking down he’d escaped like devils were at his heels.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I said shortly.

  “He thinks he should have noticed that you were bleeding,” Kara continued blithely.

  “It was nearly pitch black and he was a little occupied.”

  “Well, yeah,” Kara agreed. “You should have told us.”

  “Uh, excuse me. Nutcase leaving skulls on grills and lighting motel fires? It seemed a little more important to leave than to worry about me bleeding.” I bit my tongue and cursed. I should have told them. I had been worried that the man would catch up to us and do far worse things to us and to me than the bleeding that happened to my shoulder.

  “Us or you?” Kara said astutely. Her kind blue eyes considered me for a long moment that made me want to squirm. “Zach said you wanted us to leave you there because you couldn’t ride a bicycle.”

  “We could have all burned up in the motel,” I said, coldly. “Or even worse. He could have used our bones for soup.”

  “Heck, no, you’re not a marshmallow,” Kara said loudly. “Glad, too. I hate a milquetoast. Should make for an interesting experience. I’m certainly more entertained than I thought I was going to be. It’s almost better than soaps.” She made a little noise and added, “Not that I ever watched them.”

  I didn’t understand and I didn’t ask.

  Kara looked over my shoulder and said, wonderingly, “You saw a Loch Ness Monster?”

  “Fernie,” I said. “The name of the reservoir where she was at. She had two babies. They were eating fish. I think the drawing is close. The mommy was about forty feet long.”

  Kara reached over my shoulder and idly flipped through the pages. She saw the griffin, the firefly pixies, and the unicorns, too. “Oh, my,” she muttered. “It’s a whole different ball of wax, now, isn’t it?”

  ♦

  Two more days later, I was sitting on an A-frame swing in the backyard of the house we’d set up in. It was a large ranch house with black shutters and white trim. Someone had put a lot of effort into keeping the yard trim. Rose bushes ringed the house and were neatly pruned. The back porch had two barrels of orange chrysanthemums guarding the door. Since they weren’t getting any direct rain, they were wilting. The grass was starting to be a little overgrown vainly waiting for someone to fire up the riding lawn mower and take care of business.

  Kara had gleefully discovered a vegetable garden beyond the barn to the south. She was picking fresh items to make something she couldn’t decide yet. Zach had watched me carefully negotiate my way outside to the swing with my notepad and a bottle of water and then disappeared in the other direction.

  I had decided to make a list of things I missed. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the high tech items that made me nostalgic, but simple things like ice cubes and hot water from the tap. I filled up one page and started on the next one before I stopped in amicable disgust. My fingers dropped to my lap and I sat in the swing, with one foot gently pushing me back and forth.

  My general physical improvement had been nothing short of miraculous. The scratches on my back were red marks that didn’t even look that bad in the mirror. The bruises on my chest had faded overnight. The shoulder wound was closed up. Kara had removed the stitches before the skin could grow over them. I felt better, better than I had in days. I thought I was ready to get on a bike. Or at the very worst be stuffed in the bicycle trailer again.

  Zach didn’t agree. Naturally. Kara was Switzerland, the weenie.

  I bent over slightly and looked at the green grass of the house we were staying at. It was easier to think about the people who had once lived here. Her name had been Gigi. His name had been Eddy. They had two grown daughters and three grandchildren. The photographs had been pretty revealing. They had loved their lives here. I hadn’t looked beyond the pictures that had been lovingly set up in the living room. Their names had been engraved on a wood plaque that was mounted above the front door. If their empty clothing had been strewn in the positions where they last lay or stood, Zach and Kara hadn’t volunteered the information.

  It was my thought that Gigi was the gardener. She had loved her flowers and she had loved being out in the sunshine. Had they been bad people? I wouldn’t have thought so. They kept their house clean and they liked to entertain people as evidenced by the pictures of parties in their backyard. But I hadn’t known them, so I couldn’t even guess what their true personalities were like.

  What was bothering me was that why I was sitting on their yard swing and why they weren’t. Why the man with the dirty blonde hair and searing blue eyes was still alive a
nd able to kill someone else? Why were only certain people still here, still alive? Why those people? Why me? I didn’t think I was particularly deserving of this fate. Or perhaps it wasn’t intended as a favorable action.

  “What are you thinking?” the deep voice asked.

  I would have liked to say that I didn’t jump but he had startled me. “I was thinking about Gigi and Eddy.”

  Zach came around the front of the swing. He’d approached from the rear and I hadn’t heard him. Dressed in his characteristic manner, he wore some loose blue jeans and an oversized t-shirt. Apparently, Eddy had been a much heftier man than Zach. He crossed his arms over his chest in his typical fashion and stared at me with those chocolate brown eyes. It was difficult to read his dark expression. “Gigi and Eddy?” he repeated calmly.

  “They lived here…before.”

  Glancing at the ranch house, Zach started in surprise. “Oh,” he said at last. “We’re here using their house, their things, even their clothing. I guess it would be hard not to think of them a little.”

  “You didn’t look at their portraits in the living room,” I said, thinking it was a fact.

  “I looked,” he said plainly. “I can’t do anything about them. Not now. And I didn’t know them. But I’m grateful that they kept their house well stocked.”

  I sighed. “There’s that.”

  “Are you all right?” Zach asked after a long moment. “You seem sad.”

  I met his eyes. “Yes, I’m sad. I wish I knew why things are the way they are. I wish I had answers to the unanswerable.”

  “And if you had the answers, would it make you feel better?” he said quietly.

  That stopped me. I had to think about it. If I had answers would I feel better? No, I wouldn’t feel better. It was possible I might feel worse. What if the answers to my questions were the worst possible answers that I could have? “Can we go tomorrow?” I asked instead of answering his question. It was obstinate of me but I thought he didn’t need to know the answer. “I can ride in the trailer, but I think I should pedal a little ways, just to try to start building my strength back up.”

  Zach nodded shortly. “Two days of riding in the trailer. Kara and I have been talking about it. We’ll see how you’re doing before letting you get on a bike. When we get to the next big town, we’ll find a better trailer for you or maybe a bike.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but you’ve got to know how hard it is to sit here and do nothing.”

  Zach unexpectedly grinned. It was absolutely shocking to see the wealth of white teeth in his tanned face. He had a pretty face when he was grim. But when he smiled it was like the sun came out from behind a large, dark thunderhead. I stared unashamedly. “You’ve been better than I expected. I thought you’d be beating me with a stick yesterday.”

  “You mean we could have gone yesterday,” I asked slowly.

  He grinned again with a nod and went toward the house with a little whistle.

  Before I went inside I watered the mums while Zach watched. When I was done, I looked at him and said, “Somebody else might get to see them before they die.”

  Zach didn’t reply. He looked levelly at me and then at the flowers as if he didn’t quite get my reasoning.

  Well, I didn’t understand him, either. Zach didn’t like to talk about before. He didn’t talk about his life. He didn’t talk about what had happened to him after the change and before he met up with Kara. He didn’t talk about his family. When the subject was broached he deftly changed it. Sometimes he did that so well that I suspected he was a psychologist before. That or a defense attorney. A really young one.

  Zach had secrets. We all had secrets, but he had big, glomming giant ones. He wasn’t a serial killer, or he was saving us for a rainy day. But seriously I didn’t think he was dangerous. Or at least I didn’t think he was dangerous to Kara or to me. Sometimes the subject of the man who had attacked me came up and I could see the blistering rage behind Zach’s eyes. However, he could be remarkably gentle to me and to Kara.

  I began to suspect that half of the reason he’d insisted on staying at the house was for Kara’s benefit. Her rebuilt knees were giving her problems that she didn’t want to discuss. She took anti-inflammatory pills and did several kinds of physical therapy designed to build the strength back up in her knees. Nonetheless, Kara had enough pride that she didn’t want to admit that her knees needed the break. Consequently, I was the reason we had to stay. I didn’t completely mind being a convenient excuse. It gave me a little something to do.

  That evening I sat outside on the swing again while Kara cooked on the small fire contained in Gigi and Eddy’s elaborate barbeque pit. It smelled good. There were grilled onions and pan-fried potatoes. She’d cooked fresh carrots and wrapped olive-oil drenched peppers in foil to bake in the pit. She put everything onto plates and took it inside for us. Then she came back out to clean up after herself.

  My mouth was watering as I anticipating eating the fresh vegetables.

  Then there was a whirl of vibrating light. The little firefly pixies returned in an avid swarm. They didn’t seem agitated or annoyed this time. Rather they seemed to be curiously intent on me. Kara straightened up from beside the fire pit as she realized they had returned. Zach came outside almost immediately. He stood on the back porch and watched the little things circling me enthusiastically.

  One buzzed my face and then again. It landed on my notepad and stared up at me. It made a little noise that sounded both inquisitive and interested. I didn’t understand but I thought that perhaps it was asking me if I felt all right.

  “I’m okay now,” I said softly.

  The firefly pixie twittered. Its wings beat intensely. It walked up and down my notepad as if lecturing me to be more careful in the future. “Thank you,” I said to it. “I know you did something. Something I don’t understand. But you saved my life. I think that you gave me something I desperately needed.”

  The little thing cheeped again. Its tiny, beautiful head tilted to one side and then to the other. It launched itself into the air and circled my head, finally hovering in front of me. Its body was glowing brilliantly.

  I turned the page to the drawing I had done of the creature and showed it to them. That really got their attention. They took turns examining my work, all making a sound that sounded suspiciously like chortling. When I looked up Zach and Kara were standing nearby, lost in a cloud of their own admirers.

  I knew the little things didn’t quite understand me. But I remembered something they had done. They had sung for me. So I cleared my throat and sang to them. I had an alto and I wasn’t a bad singer, but I couldn’t remember any songs but one. I sang, ‘Silent Night,’ to them. They immediately surrounded me in a frenzy of rapt concentration. Many landed on me or on the swing in their attempt to get closer to the music. When the last refrain faded away and it was obvious I was finished, one bumped me encouragingly. Several others chirped provokingly.

  Zach laughed and said, “I think they want an encore, Sophie.”

  “I can’t think of another song,” I admitted.

  “Sing ‘Silent Night’ again,” he suggested wryly. “I don’t think they’ll mind.”

  But they weren’t happy with just one more song. Dinner was going to have to wait. I ended singing for an hour with variously Zach and Kara joining in and suggesting music. We did a great many Christmas songs including ‘Deck the Halls,’ ‘Away in a Manger,’ ‘Drummer Boy,’ and ‘Here Comes Santa Claus.’ ‘Jingle Bells’ was a huge hit.

  After a while, they seemed happy enough to let me stop. It was just as well because my voice was starting to go. They gathered into a tight cluster of little glowing lights and flew off to wherever they needed to be.

  “I’ll get you something to drink, Sophie,” Kara said solicitously. She went inside to get water for me.

  “How did you know to sing to them?” Zach asked strangely.

  “I don’t know,” I said
, honestly. Then my head turned around. Something was bothering me and the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I couldn’t quite figure it out. But then I smelled it. “Do you smell burning?”

  Zach leaped up from the ground where he had ended up sitting. The fire in the pit was almost out and full night had fallen. The wind was blowing out of the north. He looked in that direction and stared for a long time. Then he said to me, “Go inside with Kara. Lock the doors. Load bolts into the crossbows. I’ll knock three times when I come back.”

  While Kara and I waited, she was silent for the longest time. Then she said, “You know, it’s strange.”

  I sat in a chair in the kitchen and rested my cheek on the palm of my hand. I was tired but I knew I couldn’t sleep. Not until Zach had come back safe and sound. “What’s that?”

  “It smells like cinnamon again,” she said with a great deal of puzzlement. “I remember the day before the change I couldn’t get that smell away from me. I thought Maggie had spilled cinnamon in the kitchen. It just seemed overwhelmingly powerful. All day long. Then the day I found Zach, and again on the day we found you. Then today. It seems strange.”

  It seemed strange to me but I let it go because there was a lot of strangeness to be found. The change, the new animals, everything. Smelling cinnamon at odd times didn’t seem all that farfetched.

  An hour later Zach returned. Kara broke open another glow stick and we both looked at his severe appearance. “I climbed to the ridge north of here. I think it’s the town five miles from here. One we pedaled right through that night. It’s on fire. The fire isn’t spreading and there are several breaks between here and there, so I don’t think we’re in danger from that. But I have to wonder if it’s him.”

  “He’s following us,” Kara said forbiddingly.