Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy 1)

by Daniela Sacerdoti

Sarah ran upstairs, followed by Harry, to her parents’ room. Her mother kept some antique dolls on the windowsill: Morag’s dolls from when she was a little girl. Sarah had never been allowed to play with them, but she had often looked at them in wonder – they were a little girl’s ultimate dream. She had often asked herself why one of them – the fair-haired one with the blue velvet dress – had a key around her neck, like a necklace.

  Sarah touched the doll gently, stroked her hair, smoothed her dress – then she lifted the key from around her neck, and put her carefully back in her place. Harry looked at the doll again and again. He thought he’d seen her before, somewhere, but couldn’t quite remember where.

  “Maybe … or maybe not,” said Sarah, wrapping the chain around her fingers.

  “Worth a try.” Harry threw one last look at the doll as they left the room, and a chill went down his spine. Where did I see her before?

  Sarah slipped the key in the lock of the wooden chest. It worked. It turned smoothly, easily, and the chest opened. She lifted the lid slowly, with Harry looking over her shoulder.

  “What is it?”

  “They look like … scrolls.”

  Sarah took out one of them, and smoothed it down on the table. It was very old, but not antique, and it showed the traces of where it had been folded time and time again, like a grid. It looked like a map.

  “Oh my God, Sarah.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “This is one of the Secret Maps!” Harry leaned on it with his palms, reverentially. “These maps are pure gold, Sarah. They’re virtually impossible to find …”

  The map they had lifted out was a map of the British Isles – but it was full of weird symbols and writings. The legend was very strange. Sarah couldn’t make sense of it.

  “This one is for landmarks. Look. Hollow hills … underground streams … Oh, I knew it! I always knew there was a city there! Look, it’s all underwater now …”

  Sarah took out another one, and unrolled it.

  “This one is a map of Scotland, look …”

  “Of course … Callanish … Loch Glass … Rosslyn Chapel … and Edinburgh, look! Quite a lot going on here. Amazing.”

  They examined a few others. One had strange shapes and signs all over it, and different coloured lines, bending and circling, forming spirals, waves, curls, some continuing into the sea, some stopping abruptly. They reminded Harry of the Maori tattoos he’d seen in New Zealand.

  “What is this?” asked Sarah.

  “Ley lines and electromagnetic fields. Useful for things like unusual bird migrations, crop circles, blackouts … Had I had one in Japan … ” He shook his head.

  “This one is huge.” Sarah unfolded a map that took up a good quarter of the table. “It’s London.”

  “The Secret Map of London …” Harry was in awe.

  “Is there one of Edinburgh, I wonder?”

  “There it is. It’s the twin of the London one. Sarah, these maps are worth millions. My clients in Japan would kill for these. Literally.”

  If the Sabha knew what treasures the Midnights hold, all the knowledge they have …

  Sarah sighed. “Pretty useful then?”

  “You can say that again. With these, and James’s arsenal …”

  “Harry.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s all yours. My dad’s stuff, I mean,” said Sarah, folding the maps carefully back into their chest.

  “What?”

  “You’re my dad’s only nephew. His things belong to you. I wouldn’t even know how to use all these … weapons.” She said the word with just a touch of revulsion.

  “You can learn.”

  Sarah shook her head, frowning. “I’m not my father. I have the blackwater, and my dreams. I’ll learn my mum’s spells,” she gestured at Anne’s equipment carefully arranged on the oak table, “but I won’t fight the way you and my parents did.” Harry nodded, in wordless understanding. “I want you to say yes. It’s the Midnight inheritance, it’s yours too.”

  Harry looked away.

  The Midnight inheritance …

  “Very well.”

  Sarah smiled, a rare smile that lit up her green eyes for a second, like the secluded heart of a forest, so remote that nobody can step into it.

  “At least you know what to do with them. With my mum’s things, I don’t know where to start …”

  “She never taught you her spells?”

  “No. She thought there’d be time …” The usual wave of sadness that drenched her every time she thought of Anne.

  “I don’t know, Sarah. She knew her life was in danger. She’d known it for months. What was she thinking, to leave you so … unarmed? James didn’t teach you to hunt either, you had to do the first one yourself …” His voice trailed away. He’d seen her eyes welling up.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “It’s OK. I know you’re right. I don’t know why they didn’t teach me. They were never here, they were so busy …”

  Too busy to save their daughter’s life?

  “Now that I think about it, my mum did say something about it, once …”

  It was a warm, balmy July night. Anne and Sarah were in the garden, in the small patch that Anne had planted with healing and magical herbs.

  “For protection, and purification,” said Sarah, touching the rosemary bush.

  “Well done.”

  “There’s so much more to learn … When will you teach me?”

  Anne looked away, holding her black hair back with her hand as she leaned to collect some thyme.

  “I taught you a few spells already.”

  “Little girls’ spells! Not the real ones, to use for proper hunting. I’m sixteen, Mum, it’s time!”

  “I know, darling, I know … But those spells are not harmless. They can be very dangerous. Your grandmother only allowed me to learn them after I got married.”

  “But I’m ready!”

  Anne looked into her eyes. My wonderful child, she thought. My woman-child …

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Sarah smiled. “Is it a yes?”

  “It’s an ‘I’ll think about it’!”

  “When? Soon?”

  “Soon,” conceded Anne. “If something happens to me …”

  Sarah’s smile vanished. “Don’t say that.”

  “We have to be ready. If something happens to me, you must know that I haven’t left you unprepared. If I won’t be here to teach you my spells, you have to know that I found a way for you to know them.”

  Sarah shivered, in spite of the summer warmth. Anne’s words sounded like a premonition.

  “She said she found a way for you to know them?”

  Sarah nodded. She couldn’t speak. Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry.

  “Oh, Sarah. Don’t worry. We’ll find out what she meant. I’ll help you, promise. Listen, it’s been a long day, why don’t you go and get some rest?”

  “Ok. But I’ll practise for an hour, first. Harry …”

  “Yes?”

  “If a dream comes …”

  “I’ll be awake.”

  “Thank you.” They looked at each other, connected for a moment.

  Sarah took out her cello, and stood at the window.

  When she played, Sarah felt serene, peaceful, as if reality had been suspended. Her music mirrored her passionate nature, the dark, vibrant tones of the cello singing her own sorrow, her own loneliness. James had often said that she was a cello, in a way.

  She closed her eyes, and lost herself in music. She knew her audition piece inside out, she’d been practising it for so long – and she mastered it perfectly. Her music teacher, Mr Sands, had helped so much. He took a lot of pride in that dedicated, talented, obsessive young woman.

  “To be a great musician, you have to be obsessed with it. Eat it, drink it, breathe it,” Mr Sands had said to her once. And she certainly did.

  Mr Sands had often looked at her hands,
and wondered why they were so dry, red and raw looking. She caught him looking a few times, and she decided to lie once more.

  “I have psoriasis.”

  “Oh. It must be agony, to play.”

  “It is, yes,” she said, and didn’t offer any details. The pain distracts me from what really hurts, she could have said, but didn’t. It was none of his business. To think that she did so much with her hands. That’s where her soul lay. That’s where her power lay. And still, she destroyed them, she made them bleed.

  The last few notes lingered in the air. Sarah put away her cello in its purple case, and started getting ready to go to bed. She got changed into her shorts and T-shirt, wrapped herself in her white woollen cardigan, and sat on the windowsill. She leaned against the cold glass. She saw Shadow, out for her nightly hunt, a black, silent silhouette against the white gravel.

  Sarah watched the sky getting darker, the purple clouds closing on the moors as if to imprison them, and the first star lighting up in the west. Venus was scintillatingly white, like one of her mother’s gems. Sarah’s ruling planet, the planet of beauty and love …

  She could see her profile reflected in the window. She was always a bit surprised, when she saw her reflection – as if she didn’t recognize who she saw. She thought she’d see a child, the child she used to be – and instead she saw a young woman. When did she grow up? She must have missed it. Because inside, she still felt like a little girl. A little girl who hadn’t been much loved, who had been left alone a lot.

  A wounded one.

  Sarah shivered. She was cold and tired. She couldn’t keep her eyes open, but she was afraid of what she was going to see in her sleep.

  Maybe Leaf is going to visit me …

  That hope convinced her to slip into bed. She did her usual ritual with the duvet and the pillows, adjusting them, and then again, just to make sure. She closed her eyes, and sleep took her away almost at once.

  The visions started, but it wasn’t a nightmare. Her mother was standing in front of her bed, and she was smiling.

  “Mum!”

  Anne had her black hair loose on her shoulders, and she was wearing her favourite nightdress, white and flowing. In one hand she had a book with a blue cover, her other was curled up in a fist. She was holding something, but Sarah couldn’t see what it was.

  Silently, Anne sat on Sarah’s bed. She opened the book, and showed her the first page.

  Anne’s Diary, for Sarah.

  “It’s for me …You wrote it for me!”

  Anne nodded, and then she spoke, for the first and last time in the dream. Her voice seemed to come from far away, like the echo of a voice that had disappeared long ago.

  “It’s my spells. Be strong. I love you, my darling Sarah …”

  “I love you too, Mum. Where is the diary? Is it here, in this house?”

  Anne opened her hand, palm up. She was holding a little blue velvet pouch …

  Sarah woke up with a sigh, her face drenched with tears.

  Mum!

  She got up and ran downstairs. She was cold, but it didn’t matter. She went into the kitchen, and down the wrought-iron stairs, icy under her bare feet. She took the little key from the chain and unlocked the door.

  It was pitch dark. Sarah felt the wall with her hands, looking for the switch. She put the light on, and immediately she saw a shadow on the floor, mixed with hers, so that she couldn’t have said where her shadow ended and the stranger’s began. She gasped, and turned around.

  It was Harry.

  “Is everything OK?”

  “Oh, it’s you! You frightened me. You’re always so silent.”

  “I heard a noise. I wasn’t sleeping. I promised you I’d stay awake.”

  “I had a dream … I saw my mum. She gave me a message.”

  Harry’s eyes widened, his heart racing. It can’t be … she can’t be back from the dead to tell her …

  “What did she say?” His chest was going up and down, fast.

  “She wrote a diary for me in the last months of her life,” Sarah whispered in the semi-darkness. Harry breathed a sigh of relief. For a second, he had felt the room spinning around him.

  “To teach me her spells. In case something happened to her. That’s what she meant when she’d said she found a way for me to know them.”

  “Did she say where it is?”

  “Not exactly. She showed me … wait …” Sarah surveyed her mother’s belongings on the oak table, looking for the blue pouch. “This. Maybe there’s a message in it. Maybe it says where the diary is …” Sarah started undoing the little strings, impatiently. She poured the contents of the pouch on the table.

  Nothing. Nothing, except some dry, sweet-smelling dust.

  “What is it?”

  “I think it’s … dry leaves.” Instinctively, Sarah took a bit of it between her fingertips, and smelled it.

  “Thyme. Of course – I know where the diary is!” she said, running up the winding stairs, followed by Harry. She ran down the corridor and opened the heavy wooden door. The cold night enveloped her and chilled her to the bones, but she didn’t care. She ran down the stony steps and on to the gravel. Her bare feet were hurting her, but she couldn’t go back and get a pair of shoes, she couldn’t wait. She had to find the diary.

  She ran to the back of the house, across the garden, and towards Anne’s patch. She kneeled on the damp soil, and started digging under the thyme bush, careful not to hurt its roots.

  She felt something warm and soft around her shoulders. Harry had brought her the white woollen cardigan, and had kneeled beside her.

  The new moon was watching them, a baby moon in the sky beyond the garden, shining on the moors and on the whole of Scotland. Harry took everything in, the beauty of that clear night, and Sarah’s face, determined, impatient, anxious, with her black hair like a silky waterfall on her shoulders. The light of the moon was reflected in her skin – he had often thought that Sarah was like the moon, white, luminous, distant.

  Untouchable.

  “There it is!” Sarah took out a parcel wrapped in oilcloth, tied with string. She opened it carefully. Inside, there was a blue book.

  Sarah cleaned her hands on her bare legs, took the diary out, and opened it with reverence. Page after page of her mother’s writing. Pictures, drawings, samples of dried herbs in little transparent bags … spells, stories, recipes, all in Anne’s graceful script. She felt tears of joy pouring down her cheeks. Harry held her in his arms, and she let him. She closed her eyes, lost in silent joy, her face against Harry’s chest, his arms around her waist, and her mother’s diary cradled between them.

  13

  The Sapphire’s Song

  Watch over me as I go

  Watch over me though you can’t be there

  Sarah woke slowly, peacefully, after a deep sleep. She came back to the surface, blinking, feeling she’d been sleeping for days, when it had only been three hours. She caught a glimpse of the clock on her bedside table.

  Half eight!

  She jumped out of bed, disturbing Shadow, who leapt up with an outraged miaow.

  Sarah had only half an hour to wash, get dressed and run to school. Impossible.

  “Oh, no,” she moaned, rubbing her face with her hands. She’d spent most of the night reading her mother’s diary, and had fallen asleep well after dawn.

  She couldn’t wait to be out of Trinity. At least at the RCS she was going to have a bit more freedom on how to organize her work … if she managed to get in. And considering what the Midnight way of life was – well, she was going to need a lot of freedom.

  She had a quick shower, dried her hair and put her uniform on, very, very carefully. She looked at herself in the mirror, and immediately she felt breathless. No, that wasn’t right. She sighed in frustration, undid the buttons of her shirt and did them up again – a hurried version of her morning rituals. There was no more time. That would have to do. She noticed deep blue shadows under her eyes. Like a vampire.<
br />
  I look like the living dead.

  Sarah sighed. She didn’t like the feeling of make-up on her skin, but this was an emergency. She grabbed some concealer and spread a bit of it under her eyes. She looked at herself critically. Not much better. Oh well, I hope I look alluring, as opposed to just exhausted.

  “Sarah, it’s late! I’ll give you a lift!”

  Harry. Hearing his voice gave her an involuntary, sudden bout of joy.

  “Coming!” she called. With one last smoothing of her tights, she ran downstairs.

  “I made you some toast and jam.”

  Immediately Sarah looked at the toaster, anxiety forming a knot in her stomach already, but Harry had picked up every single crumb. She breathed deeply. Thank you.

  “I’m not very hungry, and it’s late.”

  “Sarah, you’ve got to eat. I’m going to sit here until you finish at least one slice.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “You’re worse than Aunt Juliet!”

  He laughed. A dimply laugh, Sarah noticed.

  “You learnt to use the coffee machine? Well done!” she said mischievously.

  “Not sleeping has its advantages.”

  “Do you often not sleep?”

  “Pretty much. I’m an insomniac; I have been since I was a child.”

  He was wearing a checkered shirt with its sleeves rolled up – he always did that, rolled his sleeves up, Sarah thought fondly. She caught a glimpse of his scar, whiter than the rest of his arm. The sun streaming from the window made his blond hair shine.

  He looks … strong. Yes, that’s the word. Strong and luminous, like a warrior of the sun.

  And there it was again. Another little bout of joy. How long had it been, since she’d woken up happy? Long, long before her parents’ death.

  “Will you be at school with me?”

  “Yes. You won’t see me, but I’ll be there.”

  Sarah nodded. She was safe, then. She put the last bit of toast in her mouth, and cleaned her hands.

  “Ready,” she said. They ran out, with Sarah barely stopping to straighten the coats in the entrance.

  “Oh, and Sarah?” he said casually, as they were walking down the gravelly path.

  “That boy you were talking to, yesterday …”