I stare into them all, into her gypsy mind, and I see that she believes everything she’s saying as truth.
“It’s as much a part of life as the wind or the sun,” she says in her husky, old voice. “It’s not strange, it’s not abnormal. We know what happens while others don’t.”
She pauses and looks out the windows, out at the black waving grasses of the dark moors.
“You can see things,” she says finally. “Little things, things that might seem like dreams. You might feel sick afterward, you might have a headache. You might even feel crazy. You’re not.”
The crypts.
Dare’s parents’ room.
The Sanitarium and Dare’s mother.
I try to hide my expression, but Sabine has already seen and she smiles with her grotesque teeth.
“See? You know what I’m speaking of.”
“I’m not….it’s not… real.”
She cocks her head.
“Your dreams are important. Even when you’re awake.”
I want to scream from the insanity of it, because it does feel like a nightmare.
“Why am I here?” I ask her, because all along, I’ve felt like there was a bigger reason.
“To recover,” she tells me, but I know there’s more.
She hands me a necklace. It gleams gold in the night, a locket with a flower engraved on the front. A calla lily.
I try to open it, but it’s locked.
“It’s your secret,” Sabine tells me, her dark eyes so knowing.
“Why do I have a secret?”
“Because we don’t get to choose,” she answers cryptically. “Because we pay for the sins of those who came before us.”
With a sigh, I leave her room on shaky legs and retreat back to my own. Against my better judgment, I wear the locket to bed, and it nestles against my breast as I drift to sleep.
And that is the first night I dream of her.
Of Olivia.
Of Dare’s mother.
She wears a white nightgown, filmy and light, and she stands at the window.
Her hair falls down her back dripping wet, and her figure is small and slight.
She turns, her eyes just like Dare’s, and so very sad.
“I don’t know where I am,” she whispers, and her eyes beg me for help. “I don’t know.”
She turns away, looking out the window at the sea.
Behind us, the waves crash.
Pictures of Dare hang on the wall, from infant to adulthood.
She looks at them longingly.
“Can you bring him to me?”
I want to answer her, but I can’t.
My lips are frozen.
My words are ice.
I can’t melt them.
I can’t bring him.
Save me, save you.
I wake in a pool of sweat, alone.
“Finn?” I call out, desperate to feel calm, but he doesn’t answer.
There will come a day when I don’t, he’d once said. Is today that day?
The moonlight shines on my nightstand, and Sabine’s box of tea sits in the light. I grab it up and make a cup.
I have to be calm,
I have to be calm.
This must be the way.
The tea creates oblivion and I sleep for hours and hours. When I’m finally up and around the next afternoon, Sabine finds me in the library.
“Did you wear the locket to bed?” she asks.
I stare at her, annoyed.
“I dreamed about Olivia Savage. Is that what you want to hear?”
Something passes through Sabine’s eyes and I can’t read it.
“What did you dream?”
“Not much,” I have to admit. “I just saw her face. She had pictures of Dare on the wall. I could see the sea through the window. It’s like she doesn’t know where Dare is. She keeps asking for me to bring him to her.”
She nods now, satisfied. “That’s enough for now.”
Enough for what?”
But I’m afraid to ask.
“A letter came for you today,” she tells me and hands me a battered envelope.
I rip it open to find my father’s handwriting.
It’s time to come home, he says simply.
I think he might be right.
Soon.
It’s time to go home soon.
I leave Sabine in her room, and I search for Dare.