Chapter 4
You sit up in a bed that is not yours.
You sit up in a bed that is not yours and you look out on a world with eyes that are not yours and the world has passed you by but you’re not sure you know what that means exactly. It isn’t your phrase. But it jiggles in the back of your mind like something you should know and yet don’t.
You sit up in a bed that is not yours and you look out on a world with eyes that are not yours and you see a woman in bed next to you instead of a man – you don’t know why you should expect a man when there has only ever been a woman here when you’ve left the jungle and tucked her away – and she shifts in the bed, wraps an arm across your thigh, and seems to tug you closer to her. Seems to want that.
The edges of what she once called a lonely and empty void – that aching feeling that stretches from your chest to the tips of your fingers and toes that is only silenced by the cold ice of your burning rage – grow raw within her, that yearning for something warmed by the touch of someone who wants…but not you.
You slip beneath her grasp and you stand and you walk.
This, at least, is familiar. The bed is not familiar. The woman is not familiar. The halls are not familiar. But you walk them anyway. You find yourself in the kitchen – you haven’t been in a kitchen in…you don’t know how long, but it must have been a very long time – and you take a knife from the drawer where they keep their utensils and you take an apple from the bowl of fruit on the counter and you slice it with the knife and bring the slice to your lips and this, too, feels very familiar. As though you have done all of this before. You blink, and you stare at the knife, and you blink again, and you hop onto the counter, curl your toes around its edge, and lean forward, slice another bit of the apple off, and bring the knife to your lips.
It tastes sweeter than the fruit on the jungle path, the ones just outside of that rusty, locked gate.
You hear your name, and you look up. The woman who was in your bed stands just in the hallway, staring at you, and when you meet her eyes, even at a distance, her head tilts to one side.
“What’re you doing, Poppins?”
You blink again, and you look at the knife and the apple again, and you slice off another slice of the apple and bring it to your lips before slicing off another and holding the knife out.
She stares at you.
“Dani?”
The dream pauses.
She blinks.
This dress – a silk and lace affair in the deepest of emerald greens with a thick ebony hem and stitching of the same throughout – is held between her hands. She hasn’t brought it up against her skin yet. It’s still just in front of her, barely out of the chest. Her thumb brushes along the fabric, head tilting to one side as she examines it.
The doorknob rustles, and she turns to it, eyes narrowing. That never happens. That’s new. There shouldn’t be anything new.
Her hands tighten on the fabric. The doorknob rustles again, and she can hear it this time, the voice on the other side of the doorknob shouting her name. “Dani!” At least, she thinks it’s a shout. It sounds like it must be a shout, except that the door, thick as it is, muffles the sound so much that it sounds like an astonished whisper.
She blinks again, and she steps toward the door, the dress discarded somewhere – she doesn’t know if it made its way back to the chest or if she flung it back on the bed – it certainly isn’t on the floor; she wouldn’t have dropped something as exquisite or beautiful as that on the floor – and she reaches for the doorknob—
—only for her fingers to flinch backward as the door finally opens.
A woman she has never seen before strides through the door. Her hair is long and dark and curled and falls to her waist, or near it, and the nightgown that Dani has worn every time she has had this dream is mimicked on that other woman, only it fits her far better than it has ever fit Dani, who it drapes like a sheet, and it doesn’t have the mud or dirt or whatever it is that stains the edges of Dani’s nightgown.
A nightgown that, on second look, she is no longer wearing.
The woman grabs Dani’s wrist and pushes her past her, through the door, and for the briefest of moments, looking back, Dani catches a glimpse of the woman’s face. She doesn’t know why she thinks she won’t see features, doesn’t know why she thinks she’ll see the lady of the lake, and in fact sees something specific and halting and brilliantly bright and harrowing, but it is only a second, the briefest of seconds, and then she is through the door, and it is shutting behind her, and she is—
Jamie takes a bite off of the knife in her hands, and her lips have barely left the knife before Dani startles. The knife clatters as it drops from her hand to the floor, and the apple bounces with a thudding sound until it, finally, rolls under their sofa.
“Wh-wh-wh-what’s going on?”
Dani scoots back on the counter, scoots away from Jamie, scoots and grabs the edge with her hands so tight that her knuckles turn white. She can't breathe. No, she can breathe, she is breathing, but her throat is tight, and the breath is coming quick and fast, and she stares at Jamie, who is staring back at her, wordless.
That is the worst of it all, that Jamie is staring at her and saying nothing. She has always had something to say in situations like this. Always. And this time, this time, she is horribly silent.
It takes far longer than Dani likes, but Jamie says, finally, “I don’t think you were sleepwalking, Poppins.”
“I-I-I don’t think I was either.” Dani brushes her hands through her hair with so much nervous energy that Jamie reaches over and grabs them, holds them still in her own, warm ones. “I was dreaming. That dream I told you, the one I keep having, but I wasn’t done, I wasn’t done, and I—” She shakes her head and meets Jamie’s eyes. “What was I doing? Or not…not me, but in here, what was I…with the…with the apple and the knife, what was I…?” Her eyes search Jamie’s.
“Easier to show you.” Jamie moves from her spot on the counter, picks up the dropped knife and scrounges about under the sofa for the displaced apple, and then returns to the counter. She sits on it, hunched over, one knee pulled up against her chest, her toes curled on the edge of the counter, the apple in one hand and the knife in the other. She slices off a bit of the apple with the knife and then takes the slice in her mouth.
Dani reaches over and whaps her arm. “Don’t eat that! It was under the couch! That’s disgusting!”
Jamie coughs and splutters, spitting the piece of apple out into her open hand. “That’s what you were doing.”
“I wasn’t eating an apple off of the floor!”
“How do you know that’s not what you were doing?” Jamie drops the knife into the sink behind them and tosses the apple back and forth between her hands. She doesn’t look at Dani, and it’s a moment – a long moment – before either of them speak. Jamie is the one to eventually break the silence. “You know what I would like to try?”
“Hm?” Dani reaches for the back of her neck and presses her fingertips gently against it, that same spot that she keeps needing to soothe. Her head tilts to the side. She’s tired. So tired. Why is she so tired? “What do you want to try?”
Jamie catches the apple smoothly in one hand. “Let’s plant an apple tree. We might not see it bear fruit at all,” she continues, turning to Dani, “but it’d be something worth trying. Always wanted to plant one. Bly didn’t quite suit it.”
Something sits in the back of Dani’s mind, something just out of reach. She had been dreaming before all of this, and the dream had changed. But even the few minutes of talking have changed it, even now it is beginning to fade. Dani nods at Jamie’s suggestion. “Think the weather here is better?” She rubs at her wrist and winces in pain.
“Think it’s a spot better than where we were.” Jamie catches the wince and holds the apple still in one hand. “Something wrong?”
“No.” Dani looks at her wrist, finds mottled bruising starting to purple the delicate skin along the inside of it. Her head tilts to one side. “I must have banged my wrist earlier. Or yesterday. Or….” She shakes her head. It isn’t the right time to be awake. She rubs one hand along Jamie’s back. “Let’s go back to bed,” she says, her voice soft, lips curved into a soft smile.
The dream has already come once. It won’t come again.