Nanowrimo 2016 - Prologue, part 3
Prologue, part 1
Prologue, part 2
An Dannsa Sìth
Ro-ràdh : roinn a trì : Aisling (Dreaming)
14 February
City of Portsmith
Sarah woke up, lying flat, blinking into the darkness of her room. After a moment, she sat up, taking stock.
Her sisters, Helen in the lower bunk and Lily in the other bed, slept; their even breathing a comforting hum. Lily's dog Leesha, curled up beside her mistress, made little yipping noises; a canine snore.
Cautiously, Sarah slipped down, setting one foot on the edge of Helen's mattress to aid her descent. Trixie, the alpha female belonging to their mother, raised her head over Helen's body and gave a growl of warning. There were dogs in her dream, Sarah remembered, growling just like that. Absent-mindedly, she quieted the animal, reassuring her with words. With a hmph of protest, Trixie settled back down, the gleam of her eyes disappearing as she closed her eyes.
From underneath the lower bunkbed came another grumbling protest. Macavity emerged, carrying a foxfire lantern in one hand. He spoke to Sarah in complaint. She shushed him, reaching up under her mattress for the small book hidden there. Further rummaging brought forth the pen.
With these in hand, she made her way down the hall, through the living room, into the kitchen.
The furnace was banked for the night, February chill notwithstanding. Sarah's feet were freezing by the time she reached her destination. In truth, it would be warmer, and more comfortable, to curl up on the couch in the livingroom, but then she'd be in the direct line of sight of anyone getting up in the night to use the bathroom and she'd have to explain herself and probably be ordered back to bed.
The kitchen was better. Enough light from the bulb in the far corner near the back door reached the table for her to write by and it wasn't all that obvious from the hall leading to the bedrooms.
But it was cold. So when Macavity appeared a moment or two later, carrying a sock in each hand, she was grateful, though she knew better than to thank the grumpy old house imp.
Her own socks, picked up from the floor where she'd dropped them the night before. She remarked on how thoughtful he was to bring them, how warm they were.
Macavity had made it clear early on that there were things that could be forgiven a child that couldn't be allowed from an adult and now that she'd 'become a woman' as the literature said, she had to mind the rules.
Rules. That caught up a thread of dream memory. There was something about the rules.
Macavity rumbled a request at her. She laughed, quietly and replied. "It'll have to be milk. We only have that non-dairy creamer stuff and you know you don't like that." He grumbled a disgusted agreement as she went to get him a saucer of milk. Trixie appeared a few minutes later and had to have her own saucer. Sarah would tidy them away when she was done, leaving no trace of her nighttime activities.
Then she sat down at the table, book opened to the next clear page, and she let her thoughts disengage in the unfocused concentration required to tease the threads of dreaming from the tangle of waking memory.
Macavity spoke.
"Shh. I need to think."
Not that she was speaking English to him. Macavity spoke no English that Sarah remembered, and her earliest memories were of him playing with her. It was clear that he understood it well enough but he preferred his own language and so, perforce, Sarah had learned it as well.
Macavity was what some call a brownie and others a house elf, though the thoroughly repudiated the descriptions of the latter in book and film. He preferred the term taigh-stic so that was what Sarah used. It translated into English as 'house imp'. He'd followed her father's family from Scotland to Ireland and from thence to the new world, always chosing one member of the family to whom he revealed himself. Sarah in this generation. He'd once had another name, but a great-uncle had pinned the name 'Macavity' on him years ago and the old imp had liked it, so that was that. Once Sarah learned it was from poem, she looked it up and she could understand why.
'For when the crime's discovered then ... Macavity's not there!'
That summed him up in a nutshell. He loved to play tricks but sometimes not even Sarah could find him.
Her breathing slowed. Deliberately, she turned away from outside thoughts, real life needs, concentrating - without thinking about it - on the amorphous mass from which dreams emerge. She needed a thread. A clew to follow.
Rules, the importance of not breaking them, that was one. Too general, leading back to Macavity.
Trixie's growl. Yes. That was it. That was the first thread.
Her breathing slowed. Slowly she drew out each thread, twisting it, weaving them together, twining a yarn to draw out the whole.
Hounds, growling. Circling. The Hunt.
The Huntsman. His prey in a trap, praying.
Amber eyes, full of anger ... not anger? Not fear, though she expected it. She almost lost it then but caught herself and considered again. Amber eyes, glaring up at her.
She had it. Drawing the book toward her, she began to write.
"Bha mi coiseachd anns a' choille bha geal leis sneachd ... "
She thought about the dream from time to time during the day, even tried to draw a picture of Hearne, the hounds and the man they caught, but she made the mistake of working on it at lunch and Robin grabbed it away, showed it around the table. They laughed. Said that the horse looked more like another dog and the hounds looked like poodles. Robin showed her how a horse should be sketched but Sarah's pleasure in the drawing wsa ruined and she shoved it away in the back of her book.
Later, sitting in class, her attention wandering ... why were teenaged boys so stupid? Did they all lose their brains when they hit puberty? She started sketching the man in the margin of her notebook; trying to catch the moment just before she woke up. Him standing beside the horse, looking up. Those eyes. Such an odd colour. Yellow, like a hawk, like a predator. Not prey.
If only she could figure out what was behind them.
This image she hid away, showing no one and later she tore it out and taped it into the dream journal, opposite the description of the dream itself.
Time passed, other nights brought new dreams and Sarah ... didn't exactly forget about the incident in the snowy woods, but she didn't exactly remember it either. It was just another dream, preserved in words in a small book hidden beneath the mattress of her bed.
She never forgot those eyes, those amber-gold eyes with their hawklike intensity, not entirely. For years after, when she imagined herself attracted to this boy she met or another, she always found them lacking. Even so, it was years before she understood why. Years before she saw them again.
Four years, to be exact. And when she did, she didn’t recognize them at all.
Prologue, part 4
Prologue, part 2
An Dannsa Sìth
Ro-ràdh : roinn a trì : Aisling (Dreaming)
14 February
City of Portsmith
Sarah woke up, lying flat, blinking into the darkness of her room. After a moment, she sat up, taking stock.
Her sisters, Helen in the lower bunk and Lily in the other bed, slept; their even breathing a comforting hum. Lily's dog Leesha, curled up beside her mistress, made little yipping noises; a canine snore.
Cautiously, Sarah slipped down, setting one foot on the edge of Helen's mattress to aid her descent. Trixie, the alpha female belonging to their mother, raised her head over Helen's body and gave a growl of warning. There were dogs in her dream, Sarah remembered, growling just like that. Absent-mindedly, she quieted the animal, reassuring her with words. With a hmph of protest, Trixie settled back down, the gleam of her eyes disappearing as she closed her eyes.
From underneath the lower bunkbed came another grumbling protest. Macavity emerged, carrying a foxfire lantern in one hand. He spoke to Sarah in complaint. She shushed him, reaching up under her mattress for the small book hidden there. Further rummaging brought forth the pen.
With these in hand, she made her way down the hall, through the living room, into the kitchen.
The furnace was banked for the night, February chill notwithstanding. Sarah's feet were freezing by the time she reached her destination. In truth, it would be warmer, and more comfortable, to curl up on the couch in the livingroom, but then she'd be in the direct line of sight of anyone getting up in the night to use the bathroom and she'd have to explain herself and probably be ordered back to bed.
The kitchen was better. Enough light from the bulb in the far corner near the back door reached the table for her to write by and it wasn't all that obvious from the hall leading to the bedrooms.
But it was cold. So when Macavity appeared a moment or two later, carrying a sock in each hand, she was grateful, though she knew better than to thank the grumpy old house imp.
Her own socks, picked up from the floor where she'd dropped them the night before. She remarked on how thoughtful he was to bring them, how warm they were.
Macavity had made it clear early on that there were things that could be forgiven a child that couldn't be allowed from an adult and now that she'd 'become a woman' as the literature said, she had to mind the rules.
Rules. That caught up a thread of dream memory. There was something about the rules.
Macavity rumbled a request at her. She laughed, quietly and replied. "It'll have to be milk. We only have that non-dairy creamer stuff and you know you don't like that." He grumbled a disgusted agreement as she went to get him a saucer of milk. Trixie appeared a few minutes later and had to have her own saucer. Sarah would tidy them away when she was done, leaving no trace of her nighttime activities.
Then she sat down at the table, book opened to the next clear page, and she let her thoughts disengage in the unfocused concentration required to tease the threads of dreaming from the tangle of waking memory.
Macavity spoke.
"Shh. I need to think."
Not that she was speaking English to him. Macavity spoke no English that Sarah remembered, and her earliest memories were of him playing with her. It was clear that he understood it well enough but he preferred his own language and so, perforce, Sarah had learned it as well.
Macavity was what some call a brownie and others a house elf, though the thoroughly repudiated the descriptions of the latter in book and film. He preferred the term taigh-stic so that was what Sarah used. It translated into English as 'house imp'. He'd followed her father's family from Scotland to Ireland and from thence to the new world, always chosing one member of the family to whom he revealed himself. Sarah in this generation. He'd once had another name, but a great-uncle had pinned the name 'Macavity' on him years ago and the old imp had liked it, so that was that. Once Sarah learned it was from poem, she looked it up and she could understand why.
'For when the crime's discovered then ... Macavity's not there!'
That summed him up in a nutshell. He loved to play tricks but sometimes not even Sarah could find him.
Her breathing slowed. Deliberately, she turned away from outside thoughts, real life needs, concentrating - without thinking about it - on the amorphous mass from which dreams emerge. She needed a thread. A clew to follow.
Rules, the importance of not breaking them, that was one. Too general, leading back to Macavity.
Trixie's growl. Yes. That was it. That was the first thread.
Her breathing slowed. Slowly she drew out each thread, twisting it, weaving them together, twining a yarn to draw out the whole.
Hounds, growling. Circling. The Hunt.
The Huntsman. His prey in a trap, praying.
Amber eyes, full of anger ... not anger? Not fear, though she expected it. She almost lost it then but caught herself and considered again. Amber eyes, glaring up at her.
She had it. Drawing the book toward her, she began to write.
"Bha mi coiseachd anns a' choille bha geal leis sneachd ... "
She thought about the dream from time to time during the day, even tried to draw a picture of Hearne, the hounds and the man they caught, but she made the mistake of working on it at lunch and Robin grabbed it away, showed it around the table. They laughed. Said that the horse looked more like another dog and the hounds looked like poodles. Robin showed her how a horse should be sketched but Sarah's pleasure in the drawing wsa ruined and she shoved it away in the back of her book.
Later, sitting in class, her attention wandering ... why were teenaged boys so stupid? Did they all lose their brains when they hit puberty? She started sketching the man in the margin of her notebook; trying to catch the moment just before she woke up. Him standing beside the horse, looking up. Those eyes. Such an odd colour. Yellow, like a hawk, like a predator. Not prey.
If only she could figure out what was behind them.
This image she hid away, showing no one and later she tore it out and taped it into the dream journal, opposite the description of the dream itself.
Time passed, other nights brought new dreams and Sarah ... didn't exactly forget about the incident in the snowy woods, but she didn't exactly remember it either. It was just another dream, preserved in words in a small book hidden beneath the mattress of her bed.
She never forgot those eyes, those amber-gold eyes with their hawklike intensity, not entirely. For years after, when she imagined herself attracted to this boy she met or another, she always found them lacking. Even so, it was years before she understood why. Years before she saw them again.
Four years, to be exact. And when she did, she didn’t recognize them at all.
Prologue, part 4