Doni slipped her little hand into mine as we sat around the white wrought iron café table in the main room of Divine's. We sipped pineapple sherbet floats while I talked about my dreams. Angela didn't react. Her expression didn't change, except maybe that funny little smile, indicating she knew more than anyone else about what was going on... Well, it didn't quite fade, but it wasn't as strong as usual. She didn't ask me any questions, just focused her big blue eyes on me and listened until I ran out of words. Angela had a way of listening that made me think she heard more than anyone said. It would have been a relief not to say some of the things I had experienced in my nightmares, just picture them in my mind and have them go directly to hers.
I finished my story. We
sat sipping in comfortable silence, for a few more minutes. I felt a lot
better, like some pressure had been removed. Maybe it would be more accurate to
say that having told Angela, I had fulfilled a responsibility I didn't know I
had.
That made sense, I
realized. Angela and Divine's Emporium were there in Neighborlee to protect it,
or us, or maybe... Well, to be honest, sometimes I was sure there were things
in our town that had to be contained in our town. So maybe Divine's protected
the world from Neighborlee, instead of just the special people, the oddness,
being hidden from the world? By telling Angela about my dream, I was helping
her to guard us, or guard something else?
"Guardians,"
Angela murmured. Her little superior smile edged toward a smirk when I flinched
at her word, coming so soon on the heels of my thoughts.
Yeah, I could
definitely believe Angela read minds.
"Bethany, would
you and Doni go upstairs and get one of my moonlight journals from the chest in
my bedroom?" Angela reached inside the neck of her dress and drew out a
thin silver chain with a long, crystalline skeleton key hanging from it, and
handed chain and key to Bethany.
As the two of them
held hands and hurried out of the room, heading for the stairs, Angela's smile
faded entirely.
"It's real,
isn't it?" I whispered. "The things in my dreams." I swallowed
hard. "And you don't want Doni to hear what you're going to tell me about
fighting it."
"Right, and yet
not entirely." Angela took hold of my hand. "My dear Athena... How I
wish you weren't so perceptive, that you hadn't inherited your grandfather's
gifts and the responsibilities that come with them. And yet I know, from long
years of experience, we are born to duties and burdens. We destroy our souls if
we refuse them." She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, all the while
gazing into my eyes. "First, I sent them away because there are things I
don't want Bethany to hear. I made a promise to her mother to protect her from
the very things you must face because you are Ford Longfellow’s granddaughter.
Until Doni starts dreaming too … why worry her?”
"Why don't you
want Bethany to know?"
"Her bloodline
has done enough already for Neighborlee. Her mother was another foundling, just
like your grandfather, like Lanie Zephyr and her friends."
"Her mom?"
I shivered, the cold coming from deep inside, as I remembered when Bethany's
mother died. We were only nine. Sometimes being young helped to make the heavy
sadness fade, but other times it just made the impact worse, and last longer.
Then I knew. I
understood. Fragments of those sad, confusing days bobbed up to the surface of
my memories.
"There was that
weird storm. Mrs. Miller... She didn't die of a heart attack, did she?" I
whispered.
Angela gripped my
hand tighter and shook her head.
Six years ago, there
were strange buzzing sensations in the ground for a day or two. Other people
didn't seem to notice the electrical tingles in the soil, but Granddad let me
curl up on the couch with him, where we both kept our feet off the ground. That
day, Bethany and I were at soccer practice with Miss Lanie. Mrs. Miller had
left the diner on an errand before lunch and didn't come back. A freak storm
had struck, sending people diving for cover, driving rain horizontally. When it
cleared up, she was found collapsed in an alley between two stores on the Mall,
drenched, cold and dead.
Part of me wanted to
yank my hand free of Angela's and run away. If I tried, she probably wouldn't
hold onto me, keep me there. Not with her hand, anyway.
"Where are the dreams coming from? There's someone--no, something trying to come up, come out, break through a wall." I shook my head and pressed my free hand against my forehead. "I remember hearing things. You and Miss Lanie and Granddad talking. Mrs. Miller stopped something." For a second, it was like I couldn’t catch my breath. “Something that tried to happen before.”
"Yes, our enemy tries periodically to shatter the barriers we hold up to protect the world. Stephanie was part of that defense. Neighborlee has many guardians, each of us picking up clues, warning signs, in different ways.”
No comments:
Post a Comment