4. A Small Request
I was once again in the golden field. I looked around myself in wonder, my mouth slightly open so I could breathe in the scented, sweet air of this magical place. My fingertips brushed against the tips of the barley. An emotion rose in me, threatening to bring me to my knees with the sheer might of it. My breath caught in my throat and I looked up into the bright sky. The brilliant, bright blue sky. There was not a single cotton cloud in sight. The sun was dazzling; it shot out fingers of white light in every direction. It shone so fiercely I could barely glance out at it from the corners of my eyes. It shone down on the feathered heads of the barley, turning them silver.
“Lady Amelia,”
I turned at the sound of Alonsa’s voice. She was standing about an arm-length away from me. She surprised me, and fear punctured my initial sense of wonder. Anything could be hiding in the corn. Something could be creeping towards me. Millions of dead things could arise from the golden corn. Shivers slipped down my spine and I looked all around me, searching for any dark shapes hiding among the barley.
There were none. Well, none I could see. I forced myself to calm down, push my irrational fear to the back of my mind, and look at her once again. For the first time I saw her clearly, vividly. In my dreams she was blurry from distance and forgetfulness. Lately, the only time I had seen her was in a foggy mirror and as tiny images in raindrops. This was my first time to really look at her. She saw me examining her and looked shyly down. The corn stretched up to her hips, hiding her legs like she was standing in golden water. My gaze ran over her torn, murky-brown dress. She looked like she’d had wild dogs set on her. I couldn’t help but wonder next if that was how she died, but after a second I struck that ridiculous thought from my mind. I studied her delicate, grey arms next. They hung limply at her sides. How grey her skin was! She didn’t look at all well. Maybe it has something to do with the fact she’s dead, I thought sarcastically a moment later. Her hair… Her hair looked … damp. Perhaps that was why it was that dull brown colour, because it was slightly wet. Had she died after a shower or something? It was dry at the top and grew wetter until rat-tails formed at the ends.
How contrasted she was to the beautiful place which surrounded us. That was initially what I noticed about her when she first came to me. How she did not fit in with this enchanting landscape.
“What is this place?” I looked away from her, instead preferring to gaze out in wonder at the surrounding, magical scenery.
“A dream,” she replied. I turned back to see her smiling mysteriously, slightly turned away from me. “Will you follow?” She held out one of her slim hands to me.
“Follow you to where?” I asked, suspicious. The World of the Dead? The Grim Reaper’s sprawling mansion? The land equivalent of Davy Jones’ locker?
“Why, your room,” she smiled, lowering her hand as she turned away.
“My room?”
She started to walk away. The corn parted before her like beggars stretching out their thin arms towards a passing queen.
With an open mouth, I watched her get further and further away from me. What did she mean follow her to my room? We were nowhere near my room, or my house, or even my village. I’d only ever seen this field before in a dream. Hang on, hadn’t she told me I was dreaming? So if I followed her to ‘my room’ it would just be me dreaming of my room and I wouldn’t actually be there, right? Okay, I was so confused. If this was a dream then she couldn’t hurt me for real, just scare me. Just… lest It swoops down upon your vulnerable, dreaming soul… Oh God. Was this her ‘swooping down’ on me? Asking me to follow her because she couldn’t be bothered to drag me there? ‘There’ either being a dream of my room or a pit filled with screaming, tricked souls like me. But then again at least I’d know what she was really like. If I stayed here I’d be safe – probably – but I would still be as oblivious as I’d been before. As much as a large piece of me wanted to stay here, another, smaller, piece wanted to follow her and find out what she wanted at last. To finally find out why she haunted me…
She was getting smaller and smaller as she became lost to the haze of distance.
“Wait!” I called after her, charging through the corn.
As I ran the strangest thing happened. Everything around me started to blur, the colours and shapes shifting into one another. Then my legs started to grow numb until I could hardly feel them. I no longer felt like I was running anymore, it was more like I was flying. The strange blur around me faded into grey. It grew darker and darker until I was wrapped in a black which would never fade.
The only thing I saw was her. She stood quite a distance away, her slim figure no bigger than my thumb. A light seemed to radiate from her. Nothing brighter than the pale glow of the moon; yet this made all the difference in helping me recognise her for what she was: a ghost. Amelia, don’t trust her, I thought, can’t you see she’s no longer human, no longer trustworthy? No one human would glow like that, only a ghost. And, as Disney pointed out, there was only one friendly ghost and his name wasn’t Alonsa.
She seemed to grow, as if she were flying towards me, getting bigger and bigger until her face hovered inches from mine.
“Ah!” I cried out. Panicked, I tried to back away, but I only ended up floundering in my bed. In my bed? How on earth did I end up there?
I jerked into a sitting position and looked around my room, but she was nowhere in the blind darkness. Yet I could feel her presence. She was here – I just couldn’t see her.
I pulled the duvet up to my chin and drew in a shaky breath. “W-where are you?”
“Here,” said a voice right next to my ear. I clamped a hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…
“Dear Lady Amelia, I apologise – I could wait no longer. I have already waited so long.” Was she apologising for frightening me? She gave me a freaking heart attack so she should be.
“W-what d-do you mean?” I managed to say after a brief pause in which I managed to get my heart to beat again.
“I have waited so long for someone like you!”
“Like me? W-what do you mean?” What was so extraordinary about me? The only thing which set me apart from everyone else was that I saw her all the time. In other words, I was crazy and they weren’t.
Sure enough, her voice answered: “You are special.”
As in nuts.
“H-huh?” Soon I wouldn’t even manage an ‘urghhh?’
“You can hear me. You can see me. It is wonderful! We can communicate.”
I frowned, confused. “I can’t see you,” I said.
There was a brief pause. Then I heard her voice, further away this time. “Yes, it is too dark for you to look upon flat, reflective surfaces.” Her voice sounded sad. I had no idea what she was talking about. I was dangerously close to uttering that ‘urghhh?’
She must have sensed my confusion because she spoke to me again. “I can project an image of myself onto reflective surfaces, like the looking-glass in your washroom. I can also appear in your dreams – that is how I woke you.”
Yes, she woke me a few minutes ago, which meant that my mind wasn’t working yet. “Huh?”
There was silence for a moment, like she was thinking of a better way of phrasing it. “Some people say how they are able to put thoughts into others’ heads. I suppose that is what I do; only I put images into your mind. When you are awake I cannot do this so easily so I manipulate the reflective objects around me, forcing my image upon them like a reflection.”
Maybe I would understand if I were more awake. Images in my mind. Manipulating objects. A reflection. Yeah, whatever. Let me get back to sleep.
“And what do you want? Why do you do this?”
“What I want…” she paused and I heard a soft sound, like an intake of breath. “I would very much like to talk to you, Lady Amelia.”
“Why?”
really
