Saturday, November 19, 2011

Shores of Dreamland: Fallen

“When he woke up again, he had trouble speaking. He couldn’t move one of his arms. He couldn’t stand. He could write. Very slowly, but his parents weren’t the most patient people, nor the best readers.”

“He survived. That’s amazing,” Jack breathed.
“Toby’s parents didn’t think so. To them, he was broken, just a shell, clinging to life. He was a burden.”
“But to you..?”
Beth smiled. “He could barely speak, but his mind worked, Jack. He was still as bright and sharp as ever, but was trapped in that badly broken body. He could dream, though, and that was when I learned that I could… wander… into other people’s dreams. Oh, we had some grand adventures, Jack. I started writing them down, sort of like… stories. Those, and the dreams I had of things that would happen in the future.” Her smile faded. “Another mistake.
“He had… spells. Fits. He had one when I was visiting, and his parents thought I had brought it on. They sent me home, but I left my journal there.
“Toby’s father was there, the next time I tried to stop one of the Dreams. Did you know, when you drop two stones into the water at just the right moment, some of the ripples just… disappear?”
“The two waves cancel each other out,” Jack said. “We learned about that in science class last year.”
Beth cocked her head. “Cancel… yes, that’s a good word.”
“And things turned out just how you Dreamed,” Jack finished, his voice not nearly as steady as Beth’s.
She nodded. “He wouldn’t listen, when I told him why it turned out like that. He was the first of them to call me a witch. All the Dreams I’d written down, he was there. And even when I was nowhere near when things happened… when things would go wrong that I hadn’t Dreamed of… people still looked at me.”
Jack didn’t know what to say. He wanted to tell her that people had learned a few things in a hundred years, but the more he thought about it, the more he thought that Beth was right when she insisted people didn’t change.
“It just got worse. One of the last times they brought Toby out into town, I ran into them at the general store. He had a fit, and they said that I caused it. There was so much broken stuff, Jack, I worked for months to pay it all back.” She took a deep breath. “I couldn’t see Toby after that.”
“What about… Dreaming?”
Beth shook her head. “I couldn’t get to his dreams, Jack. Or, when I did get to one, there was… nothing there. I think they were giving him something to make him sleep.” She shivered, hugged herself, even though it was a pleasant summer day.
By some unspoken signal, they both turned and started back down the trail.
“He died, didn’t he?” Jack finally asked.
Beth swallowed. Blinked. Nodded.
“And… they blamed you?”
Another nod.
“And you blamed yourself.”
“Almost a year, Jack. Ten months of suffering. Of pain. Of being… hated by his own parents. I tried to go to the service, at the church.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Oh, you should have heard the uproar then. Even Father O’Haley… He baptized me, you know. Gave me my First Communion. He was supposed to marry me.” She sniffled. 
“I didn’t blame him, didn’t blame any of them, really. But I stopped going to church. And school. I went back to the church. Once. To tell the Father about the Dream I had about the storm. And the lightning. That the people who did show up were going to die, and that he needed to warn them.”
“A priest telling people not to go to church?” Jack asked. “That didn’t turn out very well, did it?”
“I didn’t go into the church, so he couldn’t throw me out.” Beth tried to smile. “My father gave me quite a beating the next week, said he’d never been so embarrassed after the Father’s sermon about false prophecies and the ill intentions of witches. He didn’t ever go to church when it rained, though,” the girl added, bitterly.

3 comments:

Bruce Heard said...

Sounds like a familiar approach. Best of luck with that. Do you plan to cobble everything together at the end and publish the compilation via Amazon perhaps?

RobJN said...

My initial plan was to go through Apple's iBook store. I haven't done enough research on Amazon's process, and need to look into that, too, since this would be a very tough sell to a mainstream publisher. (Blog-posting notwithstanding)

Ahitra Gaethon said...

I live in Madagascar ( East Africa),and life is worth living comfortably for me and my family now and really have never seen goodness shown to me this much in my life as I have been going through a problem as seriously as my son found a terrible accident last two weeks, and the doctors states that he needs to undergo a delicate surgery for him to be able to walk again and I could not pay the bills, then your surgery went to the bank to borrow and reject me saying that I have no credit card, from there i run to my father and he was not able to help, then when I was browsing through yahoo answers and i came across a loan lender Mr, Benjamin Breil Lee, offering loans at affordable interest rate I had no choice but to give it an attempt and surprisingly it was all like a dream, I got a loan of $ 110,000.00 to paid for my son surgery then get myself a comfortable business to help me going as well. I thank God today is good and you can walk and is working and the burden is longer so much on me more and we can feed well and my family is happy today and i said to myself that I will mourn aloud in the world of the wonders of God to me through this God fearing lender Mr Benjamin Breil Lee and I would advise anyone in genuine and serious need of loan to contact this God-fearing man on ...... 247officedept@gmail.com through .. and I want you all to pray for this man for me or Chat with him on whatsapp +1-989-394-3740 as well.
Thank you