This is Chapter one of my novel. I ask everyone here to not reproduce or copy this in any way. All writing, ideas, and concepts are created by me, Anarya, and are copyrighted by me, Anarya. Thanks guys and enjoy!
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the grey clouds in the sky threatened rain, but the air felt dry and warm. I stood next to my mother and father, my hands tightly clenched at my side. The mahogany casket was lowered slowly into the hole as the priest stood at the foot of the grave with a red book in his hand. The wind tugged at my brown jacket and black slacks, blowing strands of hair into my face. I brushed the hair away, only to feel my cheeks wet with tears.
“In the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” the priest began, “may Christ lead Kia Fergusen into His eternal, loving embrace. Christ, Heavenly Father, may the light of your spirit envelope us, who grieve for this young girl’s death, and may we remember the hope and love her life brought to us all. In Christ’s Name, Amen.”
“Amen.” The crowd intoned. I said nothing. I couldn’t speak.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The priest shut his red book and gestured to Kia’s parents. Her mother cried openly while Kia’s father dropped the first handful of dirt onto the casket. The priest dropped his own handful of dirt, and then it was my turn as Kia’s best friend. I grasped a handful of dirt from the pile next to the grave, and stepped forward to the edge. The wind tugged at my hair, bits of dirt fell between my fingers, and the soil in my hand felt soft and almost hot to the touch. I held out my hand and closed my eyes.
Kia lay in the hospital bed, her long, black hair gone from the chemotherapy, and her eyes sunken. Her dark brown skin had a grey cast to it, and it scared me. I sat on the edge of her bed, my fingers tightly clutching the wooden flute I had smuggled into the room with me. I had tried playing her a song, but my fingers trembled too much.
“Kate,” she had said with a faint smile, “Don’t worry. I always hear your music. Even when you get all jittery.”
“It’s our song,” I clenched my flute tightly in my hands. “Finished finally.”
“Without me?”
“Never!” I grasped her hand and placed the flute in it. “You wrote the ending yesterday. I just tied it together.” My eyes stung with tears, and I rubbed at them with my left hand. “But stupid old me is freaking and can’t play.”
“Oh stop it.” Kia grasped the flute and sat upright in her bed. “I’ll play it then, you big wimp.” She blew into the flute, but her breath was weak. The sound frail and tenuous. She struggled through the first few notes, but then ran out of breath. The flute slid from her fingers onto her stomach as she lay back down against her pillow. “See?” She laughed weakly. “I’m no good either right now.”
I couldn’t look at her. Not with her sunken cheeks, her shallow breaths. “Please, get better.”
Kia weakly grasped my hand. “You know what’s going to happen, Kate.” She sounded so serious, so full of pain. “Now, you remember those plans we made the other day?” The light, playful tone returned to her voice. “Don’t you despair on me once I’ve gone to heaven. You got a job to do.”
“But..” I didn’t want to start bawling, but I couldn’t stop the tears that trickled around my nose. “We were supposed to go together… find out why together… Please, you have to get better. I can’t do it alone.”
She smiled, “If it’s God’s will I may. Now stop being silly. Between you and my mother, the world’s supply of Kleenexes will run out.”
I was startled into a laugh, but it soon crumbled into a hiccupping sob.
“Kate…” Her face twisted in pain, and she turned her face away, her breaths shallow. “Promise me something will you?”
“Katherine?” Mom’s voice cut through the memory, and the dirt fell out of my hand onto the casket. I stepped away from the edge. My breath felt heavy, and it caught in my throat. The wind tugged at my hair and jacket, blowing a bit of the dirt into the hole and onto the casket. A few other people threw dirt on the grave and then two men with shovels dug into the mound of dirt and threw it onto the casket. The dirt thumped against the wood until the casket vanished from view. The priest sprinkled oil onto the grave, saying another prayer, but his words seemed to blow away on the breeze. The world deathly silent. The last of the dirt was smoothed onto the grave, the headstone already in place with her name and dates already carved into the grey marble. Flowers fell against the newly shoveled dit.
“Promise…”
“Kate, Kate, it’s time to go.” Dad gently took my arm. I shook off his touch.
“Let her be, Ri,” Mom said. “We’ll wait by the car.”
A light drizzle sprinkled from the heavy black clouds. Kia’s father handed me an umbrella. Her mother gently grasped my shoulder. A few other people walked past me with whispered condolences, but I didn’t hear their words.
The image of my last day with Kia burned in my mind. How frail and sick she looked as she grasped my hands tightly. “Promise me something.”
“Al- Alright.” I felt scared, scared to lose her, scared to hear what she wanted.
“Promise you won’t give up until that rift is ended, okay?” She glanced at me with overly bright, almost glazed eyes. “It’s stupid, we all know its stupid, maybe they do too. You have to find a way.”
“How?” I whispered. “Aunt Ren won’t talk about it… nor talk with Mom…”
“You’ll find a way.” She smiled faintly. “You know, your dreams of dragons must be infecting me, for I dreamed of them too. I always knew you were special, Kate, and I know there’s a place you belong.” Her eyelids started to flutter. “A place with dragons I bet… Kate… please promise…”
“Kia…”
“Promise!” She suddenly leaned forward, her fingers squeezing my own. “I won’t be here much longer… and I won’t have you fading away after I’m off to heaven, you hear? Now promise!”
I was startled into a stuttered, “I promise.” Those two words pacified her, and she collapsed against her sheets, her eyes closing. “Kia…please…” I started to say, but she shook her head, the smile still present.
“Get that surly cousin of yours to help too,” she murmured. “Bet she just wants to end the pain too…”
“I don’t know…”
“Don’t fuss, silly. You two will be friends someday…”
Thunder clashed and lightning lit the grave in a blue glow. I jumped at the sound. The drizzle had turned into rain, and my jacket was soaked. I looked at the unopened umbrella in my hands, and then back at the grave. Already tiny rivulets of water trickled down the sides of the mound of dirt that covered the casket. I flicked open the umbrella, it’s fabric a deep blue. As I held it above my head, I saw the name, Kia, written on the metal just above my hand. “You two will be friends someday.”
“How, Kia?” A sob escaped and I breathed deeply only to cough and rub at the tears that dampened my cheeks. “I need you.” Thunder crashed again, and this time the lightning flashed almost directly overhead. In the distance, I could hear my name being called. My hand reached into my pocket and pulled out a small white cross. The same cross carved into the grey marble just to the left of Kia’s name.
I sat on my bed, my knees against my chest, and my arms tightly hugging them. A plate of potatoes, peas, and chicken sat on my desk, most of it untouched. I didn’t feel hungry or anything. I just felt numb, like something had died with Kia.
A knock sounded at my door. “Katherine?” The door creaked open, and Mom walked inside. She pulled the curtains to one side, allowing the sunlight to stream through the glass. I turned my head away, the sudden brightness hurting my eyes. “You didn’t eat.”
I shut my eyes and turned away from her.
“You need to eat, Katherine.”
“Go away.” I laid down on my bed and shoved my pillow onto my head. “Just go away.”
“Katherine Rae Kirwan, you can’t live like this. In this dark cave of yours, with the curtains holding back the sunlight, your food uneaten. You’re wasting away!”
I pushed the ends of the pillow hard against my ears. “Just go away!”
“No. It’s been a week. A week in your room. You need fresh air. You need food. Now get up. All you have to do is sit on the porch for ten minutes. You think you can handle that? Or do I need to drag you down there?”
I sat upright and threw my pillow against the floor. “Will it shut you up?”
Mom didn’t reply. She stood in front of my desk with her hands on her hips. Her white hair with the gold streak down its left side was tightly pulled back into a braid, but wisps of gold fell against her face. Red and orange flashed in her irises. Usually, her eyes were a plain brown, but the faint swirls of red and orange admist the brown showed her anger. I met her gaze, my jaw clenched tightly. A smudge of yellow appeared in her irises. It swirled around the red and orange, which had faded back into the brown. I looked away, unable to hold her gaze any longer. Yellow meant sadness. That I couldn’t face.
“Fine.” I stood, kicked the pillow back toward my bed, and walked downstairs.
Dad stood in the kitchen, talking on the home phone. I bypassed the hallway that led to the front door and living room, and instead skirted around the dining table and to the screen door to our porch. I opened it and stepped outside for the first time in nearly a week. As I shut the screen behind me, I could see Mom walking into the kitchen with my untouched plate in her hand. She placed it next to the sink and shook her head. Dad’s shoulders drooped and his left hand brushed the top of his auburn hair. He spoke into the phone, but his words were soft.
I turned away and walked across the cedar beams to the edge of the porch, the railing firm against my touch. The ground was only a foot away from the bottom of the railing, and the tail of the neighbor’s cat stuck out from under the porch, in that small opening only a cat could fit. A few clouds scuttled across the sky, pushed along by the slight breeze that tugged at my curls and the sleeves of my t-shirt.
I grasped one of my curls between my index and middle fingers. In the light of the sun, I could see the blue-violet strands intermixed with a few white hairs and a thick set of brown hairs. The combination gave my hair as a whole a rather muddy brownish color, but in the light of the sun, the blue-violet strands seemed to shine. I pulled on the curl until it stung my scalp and then released it. The wind blew it away from my face.
Kia had always called my odd hair, dragon hair, mostly because my mother’s stories held dragons with similar colors to my hair – blue and violet dragons, brown and green, white dragons – and to make it even more bizarre, Mom’s own hair was white. Pure white with golden strands intermixed. She always had a special story about a golden dragon with white streaks on its nose.
I pressed my hands against the top of the wooden railing. Kia’s last words haunted me, and I kept dreaming of our last moment together in that hospital, except, in my dreams, she didn’t fall asleep after she said her last words. Instead, she’d play a twelve tone melody, with major intervals, on the wooden flute at the same time she pushed me off of her bed with her feet. I would fall through the floor, through dirt and rock until I hit hard stone. There I lay as fire and ice seemed to fall from the sky, both impossible, both painful. A man with dark brown skin stood within two feet of me, and in his hand, he held a bugle. A low F would explode from the bell of the bugle. A man in golden armor with a helmet of interlocking wings atop his head would appear from the mist of fire and ice and hold his sword toward a blood drenched sky. The low F then spiraled through an arpeggio until it hit an F nearly four octaves higher. The sound crescendoed until it hurt my ears, and underneath the tumult of noise, harsh chords would clash in a terrible dissonance. I’d close my eyes, push my hands against my ears, only to wake up in my bed, gasping and shaking with fear and sweat.
I laid my forehead against my hands. That same dream, over and over again each night. Sometimes Mom would rush into my room, and try to hold me, but I’d push her away, slide under my covers, and hide my face in the pillow. I think those nights, I might have screamed in my sleep.
“Kia,” I whispered, “what does it all mean?” My eyes felt dry. Maybe I had already cried away all my tears? The sunlight felt too bright. I wanted to just go back to my room and sleep.
“Kate.” My Dad spoke from behind me. I lifted my head. “Someone’s here to see you.” He tried to smile, but his furrowed brows betrayed his worry.
“Okay.” I let him lead me back into the house, through the kitchen, where Mom still stood next to my untouched plate, and into the living room.
“Hello, Kate.” Kia’s father, Mr. Fergeson, stood from where he had been sitting on the couch. His black hair was neatly combed to the left, and he wore a suit. He must have come directly from work, except he held in his hand the wooden flute I had left on Kia’s hospital bed. “My wife and I found this in Kia’s belongings.” He held the flute out to me.
“It’s hers.” I felt numb at the sight of it. “Not mine.”
“I think she’d like you to have it. Along with this.” He pressed the flute into my hand, and then reached down and placed his briefcase atop the couch. Opening it, he pulled out a small brown box. “Had your name on it.” He held out the small box with my name written in Kia’s tidy handwriting on each of its sides. I grasped the box in both hands.
“She knew, all along, didn’t she?” I spoke in a whisper. Afraid if I spoke louder, I’d burst into tears.
“Some people do.” Mr. Fergeson’s voice sounded tight. I met his gaze and saw a sheen of wetness in his eyes. “Just take it in steps, Kate. It’s all any of us can do.”
I nodded.
“I have to go.” Mr. Fergeson turned to Dad and held out his hand. “Thank you, Ri, for all you’ve done this week. Don’t know what we’ve do without you.”
“Welcome. If you need anything else, just call.” Dad walked Mr. Fergeson to the door and opened it for him. “Take care, John.”
“You too. And Kate,” Mr. Fergeson turned to me again. “Thank you for…” He paused and breathed deeply, his voice starting to shake. “Thanks for being there for my daughter.”
I nodded again, unable to speak. He nodded back and then left.
The box felt heavy in my hands. I looked down at Kia’s handwriting, how her letters flowed into each other, almost like a river of lines. I pulled off the cover and there in the center of the box lay a photo of Kia and I sitting on a swing. My fingers shook as I lifted the photo and saw the drawing of a dragon, the details of its skin and the fur, the crystaline eyes that glowed with colors, and the huge, strong wings extended toward the sky. It was the splitting image of the dragon from Mom’s stories, the dragon that sometimes visited my dreams when I was a little child. The dragon that Kia and I had imagined in our games together, ever since we were old enough to run. The colors she used were so bright, vibrant. It made the picture seem too real, as if the dragon would leap out of the page at any moment.
“Furred dragon?” Dad looked over my shoulder. “That’s from your mother’s stories.” He pointed to some of the details of the fur on the dragon’s forearm, how we could almost see the different hairs. “Funny, isn’t it? Your mother’s dragons never followed the usual myths of scales and fire-breathing and treasure-hoarding, did they?”
“Kia said that too.” I pulled the picture out of the box, and laid the box atop the arm of the sofa. “Dad, why are we so weird?” I looked at him and held up the drawing. “Even Kia was affected. Why is that?”
Dad sighed. “That’s your mother’s story. You know that.”
I scowled and pivoted on my heel. “Fine.” My fingers tightly clenched the photo and drawing. “I’ll just ask for the millionth time.”
“Kate, wait.” Dad grasped my arm. “You can ask, but now isn’t the time to show her that drawing.”
“And why not?” I pulled free of his grasp. “Why shouldn’t I show her Kia’s last drawing? Why shouldn’t I share my last link with my best friend?”
“Katherine Rae Kirwan.” Dad frowned. “I told you not to show her the drawing. For her own peace of mind, and for yours as well, please keep that to yourself.”
I held his gaze, his blue eyes against my own brown. What finally broke the staring battle wasn’t Dad’s stern expression, but the soft sound of Mom crying in the kitchen. I turned and ran up the stairs.
I spent the next three days writing down harmonies and melodies in my music journal. If I couldn’t escape my nightmares, then I would record every snippet of music I heard, no matter how disjointed. The first to be recorded was the arpeggio of the bugle player, next the soft melody Kia played, and finally the harsh harmony that always appeared at the end of the dream, right when the man in golden armor raised his sword to the sky. How the clash of two harmonies – one in a major key and the second in a minor – always startled me awake. I wrote each song onto a different sheet of paper and then reordered the songs so that they were in chronological order. The soft melody from the Kia part of the dream held too many similarities to Mom’s bedtime song, the one she sang to me when I was really young. The second one seemed to bridge the gap between the bedtime song and the harsh harmonies of the finally image.
It was late evening on the third day when I finished. Seeing the songs in order on one page, it troubled me, for it felt like I was seeing a summary of a story. Of something important, but I didn’t know what it was. I pulled the flute out of the drawer in my desk, where I had stowed it the day Mr. Fergeson had given it to me. I put it to my lips and then pulled it away. I couldn’t play it. It was Kia’s.
With a sigh, I stowed it back in my drawer, grabbed my music journal, and walked down the stairs, past the kitchen, where Mom was bent over, her oven mitt covered hands inside the oven, to the living room, where the piano sat underneath the window on the other side of the sofa. I pulled the bench out from under the keyboard, and pushed the cover up. Sitting down, I arranged my journal on the music holder above the keyboard. My fingers laid against cool, white keys. I breathed deeply, and pushed down the A key, to the right of middle C. The note rang in the living room, and I winced at the volume. I lifted my hands and shook them. For some reason, I felt afraid of the music of my dreams. As if they held some sort of secret I wasn’t ready to see.
If Kia were here, she’d push me to one side and she’s play the left hand harmonies, until I worked up the courage to play the right. But she wasn’t here. I couldn’t share these dreams with her, and the promise I made to her echoed in my mind. Her father had told me to take it one step at a time, and for me, this meant dealing with the music that haunted my dreams. Maybe then I could face the reality of facing this rift between Mom and Aunt Ren alone, without Kia there to remind me that no matter how silly adults acted, they usually had arguments out of pain more than anger. And that all I had to do was find out what pain my Aunt Ren held against my Mom.
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against the keyboard. My fingers automatically ran through a few scale exercises, and I could feel the tension easing in my shoulders. My right foot rested next to the pedals, and the shaking in my hands finally faded away. I breathed deeply, opened my eyes, and began to play the song from my dreams. As the melody rolled forth from my fingers, I felt warmth rise from the keys. The melody seemed to swirl in the air, caressing my eardrums, and wrapping me in warmth. My fingers danced through the arpeggio, and the warmth faded and the room seemed to turn a few degrees colder. The harsh harmony suddenly pounded out through my finger tips, the clash of keys dissonant, almost painful, but my fingers didn’t stop, my foot, pressing the dampening pedal, didn’t seem to end the loud, dissonant harmony. It echoed, screamed, thrashed until finally the last chord rang, and my fingers lifted from the keys. I sat there, shaken. The room felt ice cold.
A crash sounded from the kitchen. I jumped. Grabbing my journal, I stumbled over the piano bench and ran past the sofa, around the wall separating the kitchen from the living room, and slid to a stop in shock. Mom lay on the ground, the oven mitts still on her hands. Her entire body shook, and she pressed the oven mitts against her face. A pan of chicken sat on the counter next to the stove top.
“Mom?”
She abruptly sat upright and turned to me. Her eyes held a feral look, the usual brown gone, replaced by a mixture of grey and dark green that seemed to overtake her pupils and even seemed to leak into the whites of her eyes. She reached out to me and abruptly grabbed my wrist. “It’s time,” she said, and then she spoke a language I couldn’t understand. The words seemed to dance in the air like the melody I had played in my dream song, a melody that began in a major key and then ended in dissonance.
“Mom?” Fear curdled in my stomach. She was having a fit. “Mom, please.”
She shuddered at my words, closed her eyes, and fell back against the cupboards. She breathed deeply, but her hand still tightly gripped my arm. “Little one, please, get…” Her grip loosened on my arm, and she shuddered again, this time her face whitening. She was in pain.
“The Kvamme herb, I know.” I pulled free from her grasp and leapt toward the cupboards above the sink. I wrenched them open and grabbed the glass jar marked with a blue ribbon. I tugged the cork out of the top, and grabbed a cup from the cupboard between the sink and the stove. One handful of the slightly sticky herbs went into the cup. Shoving the cork back into the glass jar, I replaced the jar in the cupboard, and turned the faucet to its hottest setting. I didn’t have time to boil water. I filled the cup to its brim, and stirred the concoction. Turning, I dropped to my knees next to Mom. Her hands pressed against her chest, and she breathed in gasps. “Here.” I pressed the cup against her lips, and she dutifully drank. Her left hand reached up and grasped the cup, but I waited until she sipped again before I let her hold it herself. I clenched the spoon in my hand and watched her slowly drink the mixture. The whiteness in her face receded, her breaths evened, and she opened her eyes – normal brown, the strange coloring gone.
“Thank you,” she said. She drank the rest of the herbal tea and sighed. “Sorry, Katherine. It hit so suddenly.”
“The… the fit?”
“The pain.” Mom handed me the cup and pushed herself off the floor. She grasped the counter to steady herself as she stood. “I heard you playing, and then it hit me.”
“The fit.”
“If you insist on calling it that.” Mom sighed and pulled the oven mitts off her hands. “I didn’t scare you too much, did I, little one?” She reached toward me, only to drop her hand against her side.
I shook my head and placed her cup in the sink. “Can’t the doctors cure it?” Her fit scared me more than I wanted to admit. Even though Mom’s fits only happened once a month for as long as I could remember, it still frightened me. What if the day came when one of her fits killed her? Killed her like cancer killed Kia?
Mom sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Kate. Doctors cannot help me with this.”
“Then what can?” I gestured to the cup in the sink. “Every year, Asa sends you this, and every month you need it to stop the pain. How is that not something wrong?”
Mom pressed her hand against her forehead and closed her eyes. “That is something I’ve had since I was a young child, little one. It won’t kill me. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it is frustrating to be chained to this herb. But it cannot kill me.”
“How do you know?” I could hear the whine in my voice, and it frightened me even more.
“Katherine Rae, do not yell. This is something I know. Now please, go sit down, drink some water, and calm yourself.” Mom pointed to the dining table behind us.
I grasped my journal tightly and abruptly left the kitchen. I couldn’t handle Mom’s stern tone. How she acted like her fall, her weird words, and her pain was nothing. I couldn’t handle it, not with Kia’s death so fresh. I ran upstairs and slammed the door to my room.
A cold breeze hit me the moment I faced the window. The curtains fluttered violently, their hems hitting the windowsill and the wall. I walked over and shut the window. Outside, the tree in our front yard swayed, some of its leaves fell to the ground. A blue mustang pulled into our driveway, and Dad exited the driver’s side. He shut the door and walked to the front door. I turned away from the window and threw myself on the bed.
I grabbed my pillow and shoved it against my mouth. I let loose a scream, but it was stifled by the fabric and down feathers. My shoulders shook, and I curled my knees against my chest, my music journal still in my hand. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t escape the dreams. As soon as I fell asleep, they would come. And then Kia’s promise. How many times had I tried to call Aunt Ren, only to get Jill, who hung up on me with maybe a few angry words in Norwegian, or Reidir, her brother, who just told me all about the sheep. He seemed like a nice kid, and I didn’t mind talking to him. But Aunt Ren never answered the phone, and the one time her husband did, he couldn’t answer my questions. Told me that was Aunt Ren’s story, and I best forget about it.
I slammed my fist against my bed in frustration. Asa Kvamme would just ask me about Mom and then we’d talk about her family until I lost all nerve to ask why the rift started. “What’s the point,” I growled, beating my fist against the bed in time to each word. “I can’t do this, Kia.” I threw my music journal across the room. It hit the wall with a thump and then slid to the floor, its pages open to the air. I pressed my face into the pillow, exhausted by my turbulent emotions. Closing my eyes, I attempted a nap.
Fire exploded in a flare of brilliant orange and yellow, the sudden heat a slap in the face. Ice fell from the sky like daggers, hitting the ground around me and melting from the roar of the flames. Men with red eyes, fangs and leathery wings rushed forward, swords in their hands. One leapt into the air, it’s wings pushing it upward, and its sword slicing toward the helmet of a man in silver armor. Flames roared behind me, buildings and people alike being swept in its wake. The stench of smoke, sweat, and death assaulted my nose, and I coughed.
“Raul! Abia furu aktori!”
I turned to see the speaker directly behind me. He had silvery-white hair and piercing green eyes. Golden armor adorned his chest, forearms, thighs and feet. Atop his head, his helmet was fashioned into the shape of interlocking dragon’s wings, which glittered gold in the light of the setting sun. He held his sword toward the sky as suddenly a bugle blew to my left. I spun again to see the man with the bugle, his brown skin half hidden by his silver armor. The notes spun into an arpeggio, and just as he reached the highest note, scene exploded in a blaze of fire.
I awoke with scream. Sweat soaked the roots of my hair, and I sat upright, gasping, and pressing the palms of my hands against my ears. The door to my room swung open, and suddenly Dad was at my side. He wrapped his arms around me, and this time I didn’t pull away. I whimpered and hid my face in his shirt.
“Kate, are you alright?” He stroked my hair, gently.
“I… I’m okay.” I felt afraid. The dream was still too vivid. “Just had a bad dream.”
Dad pushed a strand of hair from my face. “A nightmare it seems. What scared you so?”
“It… it was a battle. Lots of death.” I shivered and pulled away from Dad’s embrace. “And it doesn’t go away.” I stood and walked to my window. The glass felt cold against my forehead. “Every night I dream of her, Dad. I dream of Kia, and then I fall into this nightmare. This battle. A guy always plays this bugle and the songs in that dream. I wrote them down and played them today, Dad, and then when I stopped, Mom was having her fit. But she already had her fit this month. It’s too soon. It’s just too soon!”
Dad stood and grasped my shoulder. “Kate, everything’s going to be alright. You just need to calm and try to eat some food, okay?”
I jerked free from his hold. “But Dad! The dreams, it won’t go away. None of them!” I reached down and grabbed my journal. “I can’t escape them. No matter what I read before bed, or what music I listen to. It always comes.”
Dad gently grasped my shoulder again. “I believe you. But right now, you need to eat. You’re white and shaking. Come downstairs, eat something, drink some juice, and then we’ll talk with your mother concerning your dreams. Perhaps she’ll have some ideas to help combat them.”
I nodded numbly. “Alright.” I followed him downstairs and into the kitchen. Dad opened the fridge and pulled out the pitcher of juice. He poured me a glass, handed it to me, and glanced at the oven.
“Look’s like dinner isn’t quite done.”
I sipped my juice, confused. “But the chicken was out the last I looked.”
“No, your mother was just putting it in. You slept for quite awhile, Kate.” Dad opened a cupboard and took a granola bar out of a box.
“Here, this should tide you over for now. How about you practice a bit? Dinner should be ready in about an hour. Then your mother and I can talk with you about these dreams.”
“Alright.” I knew Dad was just pacifying me, but I ate the granola bar and drank the juice. I did feel physically better, but at the same time still felt upset. Maybe Dad was right. Music usually did calm my nerves. I walked into the living room just as the phone rang. The ring cut off in midtone. Mom or Dad must have gotten it. I sat down on the piano bench for the second time that day. This time, I wouldn’t play the song. Just practice.
I stretched my fingers then rested them against the keyboard. I started with my usual exercises. My fingers crunched through the scales, the finger exercises, the chord progressions, and then my favorite of Chopin’s Nocturne.
“Kate.”
I kept playing, my mind focused completely on the music; my fingers danced along the keys, pulling the song out of the piano, my pain and fear explosive with each cadence.
“Katherine Rae Kirwan. I need to speak to you now.”
I lifted my fingers, the music stilled. “What?” I turned with a scowl. “I’m practicing! Just like you asked me to!”
Dad sighed. “I know. Kate, Asa Kvamme is on the phone. Can you play the songs from your dreams as loud as you can? I know the musical quality will be greatly reduced, but the phone cannot pick up soft sounds.”
“Why?” I flipped open my music journal and then paused in mid-turn. “Wait, you, you told her about my dreams!”
“No,” Dad shook his head. “She asked if you dreamed of a battle. Your mother said yes, you did. Asa then asked if you had written down any melodies from your dreams. Both your mother and I know you have, Kate. So she asked to hear it.” Dad sat down on the sofa and ran his left hand through his thinning hair. “I know this doesn’t make sense right now, but please, play the song.”
No, it didn’t make sense. How did Asa know about my dreams? I sat there, staring at the notes written on the page. “Dad, this is crazy.” I glanced at him with a scowl. “Wouldn’t Mom have to hold the phone next to the piano?”
Dad shrugged. “Asa seems certain she will be able to hear. Don’t worry too much about it. Please play.”
I turned back to the piano and breathed deeply. The last time I played this song, Mom had a fit in the kitchen. I was almost afraid to play it again. My fingers brushed the keys. Yet, if Asa was on the phone, she only had twenty minutes. Her calls never lasted longer than that, mostly because she didn’t have enough money to buy calling cards that lasted longer. So I better start playing.
I stretched my fingers and then plunged into the song. As the melody rolled forth from my fingertips, the warmth I felt before returned. It seemed to boil from under my fingers, and this time with the increase in volume, I could feel the warmth through my entire body. I felt as if on fire. Sweat dripped down my forehead. The arpeggio leapt from the keyboard, and suddenly the room turned ice cold. The heat vanished, and my teeth chattered. The piano rumbled and steam rose from my fingers that still burned with fire. The dissonant harmonies of the final cadence ripped through the air. Glass from the nearby window suddenly exploded outward. I screamed, jerking away from the piano, as I brought up my hands, but the glass didn’t fall into the house, but outside, onto the lawn.
“Here.” Dad was suddenly at my side. A steaming cup of tea in his hands. “Drink this, Kate.”
I struggled to breath, but my lungs felt constricted, my fingers still on fire. Dad grasped the back of my head and brought the cup to my lips. The warmth liquid splashed into my mouth, some of it dripping down my chin. I swallowed it. The fire, the pain in my lungs, all of it just vanished and I sagged against my father in tears. “What… what was that?”
“Your mother can explain, but for right now, please finish your tea.” Dad pushed the cup into my hands again. My fingers trembled as I grasped it and took another sip. The tea was bitter. Horribly bitter. I wrinkled my nose, but I drank it.
“This is Mom’s… the stuff Asa always sends.” I put the cup down and stared at the remains of the herbs, the small residue of leaves at the bottom of the cup. “But Dad… I don’t need this stuff.”
“You do right now.” Dad smoothed the hair back from my forehead. “Kate, please, you need to sit down and relax. Your mother is still talking to Asa.”
“But, but Dad!” I turned to him earnestly. “What was that? I mean, I felt fire. Like I was burning up, and then it was so cold, and there was steam rising from my fingers… and that window! Dad, it exploded!”
“I know, honey, I know.” He wrapped his arm around me again. His calm assurances only scared me more. First Kia’s death, then the dreams, Mom’s fit, and now this? I couldn’t take it any more. I wanted it all to stop. “Take deep breaths, honey, just deep breaths,” Dad said softly.
Deep breaths. I could do that. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. Except the image of the window exploding kept invading my thoughts. It was hard to concentrate. I slipped my hand into my pocket, and my fingers touched the white cross Kia had given me years ago. Gripping it tightly, I felt my breathing slow, my muscles relax.
“Ri, how is she?” Mom said from somewhere behind me.
“Calming down. Dany, what did Asa have to say?”
“What I feared. Katherine, are you alright?” I felt Mom’s hands slide around my own.
“Mom…” I opened my eyes and blinked back tears. “Please, what’s going on? I’m scared.”
She crouched in front of me and held my hands tightly. “Asa has bought some plane tickets. You’re going to Norway for the summer. Perhaps longer.”
“Why?” I felt a panic rise in me. I wasn’t ready to go to Norway yet. How could I leave Kia’s grave? How could I meet with relatives that had caused Mom so much pain? Kia and my plan involved Mom, Dad, her, and I going together when we were ready, when I had managed to talk to Aunt Ren on the phone. I couldn’t go. Not yet! “Why can’t I stay here? Mom! Dad!” I turned to my father desperately. “Tell Mom this is crazy. I can’t go. I want to stay here.”
“Your mother and Asa have a good plan, Kate. You can’t stay here. At least not right now.” Dad tried to hug me again, but I jerked away from his hold and pulled my hands free of Mom’s tight grip. I tried to stand, but my legs felt like jello and I fell against the sofa.
“Katherine, calm.” Mom stood and met my gaze. Her brown eyes seemed to almost glow as a thread of gold and violet flashed through her irises. “I know you are confused. Scared. But I cannot fully explain what is happening. I can tell you that something has awakened. I know the timing is less than perfect. I know you still grieve for your friend, but this cannot wait. You have to go, and you will pack your bags tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“But… but, you’re coming too, aren’t you?” I looked at both her and Dad. “Right?”
Dad shook his head. “I’m sorry, Kate. We can’t leave yet. Asa booked the plane for only one person. And right now is not a good time for your mother to return.”
“It’s that rift isn’t it?!” I stood again, and this time my legs held me. “That stupid rift.”
“Whether it is or not, does not concern you.” Mom met my gaze again, and the violet in her eyes increased. “Katherine, you know something is unusual about our family. Something that even Kia saw. What happened between my sister and I has caused great pain, yes, but right now, if I returned to Norway with you, it would cause far greater pain, and could put you and your cousins in danger.”
“Then I’m not going!” I clenched my fists and stood my ground, despite the swirl of colors in my mother’s eyes. “Not without you and Dad.”
“You will go. Now is not the time for my return.” Mom abruptly closed her eyes and began to sing. The reaction startled me, and I took a step backward. The words she sung were foreign, but at the same time, they seemed almost to translate themselves in my mind. Travel far, travel near, the time will come, but not now. Not now. What was broken will be renewed. But not now. Not now.
I pressed my hands against my ears, but it didn’t stop the torrent of words in my mind. “Stop it. Stop it, please!”
The song cut off in mid verse. “Katherine, look at me.”
Trembling, I opened my eyes to see Mom’s eyes back to their normal brown.
“You heard it, didn’t you?”
I shook my head.
“You did.” Mom sighed. “Ri, do you think she’s safe to travel alone?”
Dad sat down on the sofa and glanced at me. “Asa is meeting her in London or Chicago?”
“She may not be able to. We have to be prepared if she cannot find a route there before Kate leaves tomorrow.”
“Hey! Stop it! I’m standing right here!” My shoulders shook, my fingers tightly clenched in a fist. “And what is this? Tomorrow? Don’t I get any say in this?”
Mom reached over and took my music journal off the piano. She held the journal between us, her hand outstretched. I snatched the journal out of her hands. “Right now, none of us have a choice,” Mom said with a sigh. A thread of yellow appeared admist her brown irises. “The Kvamme farm has more protection that Iowa. There is also the rift. I can’t reach my sister, Katherine. However, you have a better chance.”
I looked down at my journal unable to face the sadness in her eyes. “I, I did promise Kia. That I’d find a way to end the rift. But, Mom, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. We were supposed to go together. All of us and Kia.” Tears stung my eyes. “With Kia.”
“I am sorry.” Mom lightly touched my shoulder.
I jerked away from her touch. “Fine. I’ll go. But I’m not doing this for any of you. I’m doing this for Kia.”
Chapter 1
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the grey clouds in the sky threatened rain, but the air felt dry and warm. I stood next to my mother and father, my hands tightly clenched at my side. The mahogany casket was lowered slowly into the hole as the priest stood at the foot of the grave with a red book in his hand. The wind tugged at my brown jacket and black slacks, blowing strands of hair into my face. I brushed the hair away, only to feel my cheeks wet with tears.
“In the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” the priest began, “may Christ lead Kia Fergusen into His eternal, loving embrace. Christ, Heavenly Father, may the light of your spirit envelope us, who grieve for this young girl’s death, and may we remember the hope and love her life brought to us all. In Christ’s Name, Amen.”
“Amen.” The crowd intoned. I said nothing. I couldn’t speak.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” The priest shut his red book and gestured to Kia’s parents. Her mother cried openly while Kia’s father dropped the first handful of dirt onto the casket. The priest dropped his own handful of dirt, and then it was my turn as Kia’s best friend. I grasped a handful of dirt from the pile next to the grave, and stepped forward to the edge. The wind tugged at my hair, bits of dirt fell between my fingers, and the soil in my hand felt soft and almost hot to the touch. I held out my hand and closed my eyes.
Kia lay in the hospital bed, her long, black hair gone from the chemotherapy, and her eyes sunken. Her dark brown skin had a grey cast to it, and it scared me. I sat on the edge of her bed, my fingers tightly clutching the wooden flute I had smuggled into the room with me. I had tried playing her a song, but my fingers trembled too much.
“Kate,” she had said with a faint smile, “Don’t worry. I always hear your music. Even when you get all jittery.”
“It’s our song,” I clenched my flute tightly in my hands. “Finished finally.”
“Without me?”
“Never!” I grasped her hand and placed the flute in it. “You wrote the ending yesterday. I just tied it together.” My eyes stung with tears, and I rubbed at them with my left hand. “But stupid old me is freaking and can’t play.”
“Oh stop it.” Kia grasped the flute and sat upright in her bed. “I’ll play it then, you big wimp.” She blew into the flute, but her breath was weak. The sound frail and tenuous. She struggled through the first few notes, but then ran out of breath. The flute slid from her fingers onto her stomach as she lay back down against her pillow. “See?” She laughed weakly. “I’m no good either right now.”
I couldn’t look at her. Not with her sunken cheeks, her shallow breaths. “Please, get better.”
Kia weakly grasped my hand. “You know what’s going to happen, Kate.” She sounded so serious, so full of pain. “Now, you remember those plans we made the other day?” The light, playful tone returned to her voice. “Don’t you despair on me once I’ve gone to heaven. You got a job to do.”
“But..” I didn’t want to start bawling, but I couldn’t stop the tears that trickled around my nose. “We were supposed to go together… find out why together… Please, you have to get better. I can’t do it alone.”
She smiled, “If it’s God’s will I may. Now stop being silly. Between you and my mother, the world’s supply of Kleenexes will run out.”
I was startled into a laugh, but it soon crumbled into a hiccupping sob.
“Kate…” Her face twisted in pain, and she turned her face away, her breaths shallow. “Promise me something will you?”
“Katherine?” Mom’s voice cut through the memory, and the dirt fell out of my hand onto the casket. I stepped away from the edge. My breath felt heavy, and it caught in my throat. The wind tugged at my hair and jacket, blowing a bit of the dirt into the hole and onto the casket. A few other people threw dirt on the grave and then two men with shovels dug into the mound of dirt and threw it onto the casket. The dirt thumped against the wood until the casket vanished from view. The priest sprinkled oil onto the grave, saying another prayer, but his words seemed to blow away on the breeze. The world deathly silent. The last of the dirt was smoothed onto the grave, the headstone already in place with her name and dates already carved into the grey marble. Flowers fell against the newly shoveled dit.
“Promise…”
“Kate, Kate, it’s time to go.” Dad gently took my arm. I shook off his touch.
“Let her be, Ri,” Mom said. “We’ll wait by the car.”
A light drizzle sprinkled from the heavy black clouds. Kia’s father handed me an umbrella. Her mother gently grasped my shoulder. A few other people walked past me with whispered condolences, but I didn’t hear their words.
The image of my last day with Kia burned in my mind. How frail and sick she looked as she grasped my hands tightly. “Promise me something.”
“Al- Alright.” I felt scared, scared to lose her, scared to hear what she wanted.
“Promise you won’t give up until that rift is ended, okay?” She glanced at me with overly bright, almost glazed eyes. “It’s stupid, we all know its stupid, maybe they do too. You have to find a way.”
“How?” I whispered. “Aunt Ren won’t talk about it… nor talk with Mom…”
“You’ll find a way.” She smiled faintly. “You know, your dreams of dragons must be infecting me, for I dreamed of them too. I always knew you were special, Kate, and I know there’s a place you belong.” Her eyelids started to flutter. “A place with dragons I bet… Kate… please promise…”
“Kia…”
“Promise!” She suddenly leaned forward, her fingers squeezing my own. “I won’t be here much longer… and I won’t have you fading away after I’m off to heaven, you hear? Now promise!”
I was startled into a stuttered, “I promise.” Those two words pacified her, and she collapsed against her sheets, her eyes closing. “Kia…please…” I started to say, but she shook her head, the smile still present.
“Get that surly cousin of yours to help too,” she murmured. “Bet she just wants to end the pain too…”
“I don’t know…”
“Don’t fuss, silly. You two will be friends someday…”
Thunder clashed and lightning lit the grave in a blue glow. I jumped at the sound. The drizzle had turned into rain, and my jacket was soaked. I looked at the unopened umbrella in my hands, and then back at the grave. Already tiny rivulets of water trickled down the sides of the mound of dirt that covered the casket. I flicked open the umbrella, it’s fabric a deep blue. As I held it above my head, I saw the name, Kia, written on the metal just above my hand. “You two will be friends someday.”
“How, Kia?” A sob escaped and I breathed deeply only to cough and rub at the tears that dampened my cheeks. “I need you.” Thunder crashed again, and this time the lightning flashed almost directly overhead. In the distance, I could hear my name being called. My hand reached into my pocket and pulled out a small white cross. The same cross carved into the grey marble just to the left of Kia’s name.
#
I sat on my bed, my knees against my chest, and my arms tightly hugging them. A plate of potatoes, peas, and chicken sat on my desk, most of it untouched. I didn’t feel hungry or anything. I just felt numb, like something had died with Kia.
A knock sounded at my door. “Katherine?” The door creaked open, and Mom walked inside. She pulled the curtains to one side, allowing the sunlight to stream through the glass. I turned my head away, the sudden brightness hurting my eyes. “You didn’t eat.”
I shut my eyes and turned away from her.
“You need to eat, Katherine.”
“Go away.” I laid down on my bed and shoved my pillow onto my head. “Just go away.”
“Katherine Rae Kirwan, you can’t live like this. In this dark cave of yours, with the curtains holding back the sunlight, your food uneaten. You’re wasting away!”
I pushed the ends of the pillow hard against my ears. “Just go away!”
“No. It’s been a week. A week in your room. You need fresh air. You need food. Now get up. All you have to do is sit on the porch for ten minutes. You think you can handle that? Or do I need to drag you down there?”
I sat upright and threw my pillow against the floor. “Will it shut you up?”
Mom didn’t reply. She stood in front of my desk with her hands on her hips. Her white hair with the gold streak down its left side was tightly pulled back into a braid, but wisps of gold fell against her face. Red and orange flashed in her irises. Usually, her eyes were a plain brown, but the faint swirls of red and orange admist the brown showed her anger. I met her gaze, my jaw clenched tightly. A smudge of yellow appeared in her irises. It swirled around the red and orange, which had faded back into the brown. I looked away, unable to hold her gaze any longer. Yellow meant sadness. That I couldn’t face.
“Fine.” I stood, kicked the pillow back toward my bed, and walked downstairs.
Dad stood in the kitchen, talking on the home phone. I bypassed the hallway that led to the front door and living room, and instead skirted around the dining table and to the screen door to our porch. I opened it and stepped outside for the first time in nearly a week. As I shut the screen behind me, I could see Mom walking into the kitchen with my untouched plate in her hand. She placed it next to the sink and shook her head. Dad’s shoulders drooped and his left hand brushed the top of his auburn hair. He spoke into the phone, but his words were soft.
I turned away and walked across the cedar beams to the edge of the porch, the railing firm against my touch. The ground was only a foot away from the bottom of the railing, and the tail of the neighbor’s cat stuck out from under the porch, in that small opening only a cat could fit. A few clouds scuttled across the sky, pushed along by the slight breeze that tugged at my curls and the sleeves of my t-shirt.
I grasped one of my curls between my index and middle fingers. In the light of the sun, I could see the blue-violet strands intermixed with a few white hairs and a thick set of brown hairs. The combination gave my hair as a whole a rather muddy brownish color, but in the light of the sun, the blue-violet strands seemed to shine. I pulled on the curl until it stung my scalp and then released it. The wind blew it away from my face.
Kia had always called my odd hair, dragon hair, mostly because my mother’s stories held dragons with similar colors to my hair – blue and violet dragons, brown and green, white dragons – and to make it even more bizarre, Mom’s own hair was white. Pure white with golden strands intermixed. She always had a special story about a golden dragon with white streaks on its nose.
I pressed my hands against the top of the wooden railing. Kia’s last words haunted me, and I kept dreaming of our last moment together in that hospital, except, in my dreams, she didn’t fall asleep after she said her last words. Instead, she’d play a twelve tone melody, with major intervals, on the wooden flute at the same time she pushed me off of her bed with her feet. I would fall through the floor, through dirt and rock until I hit hard stone. There I lay as fire and ice seemed to fall from the sky, both impossible, both painful. A man with dark brown skin stood within two feet of me, and in his hand, he held a bugle. A low F would explode from the bell of the bugle. A man in golden armor with a helmet of interlocking wings atop his head would appear from the mist of fire and ice and hold his sword toward a blood drenched sky. The low F then spiraled through an arpeggio until it hit an F nearly four octaves higher. The sound crescendoed until it hurt my ears, and underneath the tumult of noise, harsh chords would clash in a terrible dissonance. I’d close my eyes, push my hands against my ears, only to wake up in my bed, gasping and shaking with fear and sweat.
I laid my forehead against my hands. That same dream, over and over again each night. Sometimes Mom would rush into my room, and try to hold me, but I’d push her away, slide under my covers, and hide my face in the pillow. I think those nights, I might have screamed in my sleep.
“Kia,” I whispered, “what does it all mean?” My eyes felt dry. Maybe I had already cried away all my tears? The sunlight felt too bright. I wanted to just go back to my room and sleep.
“Kate.” My Dad spoke from behind me. I lifted my head. “Someone’s here to see you.” He tried to smile, but his furrowed brows betrayed his worry.
“Okay.” I let him lead me back into the house, through the kitchen, where Mom still stood next to my untouched plate, and into the living room.
“Hello, Kate.” Kia’s father, Mr. Fergeson, stood from where he had been sitting on the couch. His black hair was neatly combed to the left, and he wore a suit. He must have come directly from work, except he held in his hand the wooden flute I had left on Kia’s hospital bed. “My wife and I found this in Kia’s belongings.” He held the flute out to me.
“It’s hers.” I felt numb at the sight of it. “Not mine.”
“I think she’d like you to have it. Along with this.” He pressed the flute into my hand, and then reached down and placed his briefcase atop the couch. Opening it, he pulled out a small brown box. “Had your name on it.” He held out the small box with my name written in Kia’s tidy handwriting on each of its sides. I grasped the box in both hands.
“She knew, all along, didn’t she?” I spoke in a whisper. Afraid if I spoke louder, I’d burst into tears.
“Some people do.” Mr. Fergeson’s voice sounded tight. I met his gaze and saw a sheen of wetness in his eyes. “Just take it in steps, Kate. It’s all any of us can do.”
I nodded.
“I have to go.” Mr. Fergeson turned to Dad and held out his hand. “Thank you, Ri, for all you’ve done this week. Don’t know what we’ve do without you.”
“Welcome. If you need anything else, just call.” Dad walked Mr. Fergeson to the door and opened it for him. “Take care, John.”
“You too. And Kate,” Mr. Fergeson turned to me again. “Thank you for…” He paused and breathed deeply, his voice starting to shake. “Thanks for being there for my daughter.”
I nodded again, unable to speak. He nodded back and then left.
The box felt heavy in my hands. I looked down at Kia’s handwriting, how her letters flowed into each other, almost like a river of lines. I pulled off the cover and there in the center of the box lay a photo of Kia and I sitting on a swing. My fingers shook as I lifted the photo and saw the drawing of a dragon, the details of its skin and the fur, the crystaline eyes that glowed with colors, and the huge, strong wings extended toward the sky. It was the splitting image of the dragon from Mom’s stories, the dragon that sometimes visited my dreams when I was a little child. The dragon that Kia and I had imagined in our games together, ever since we were old enough to run. The colors she used were so bright, vibrant. It made the picture seem too real, as if the dragon would leap out of the page at any moment.
“Furred dragon?” Dad looked over my shoulder. “That’s from your mother’s stories.” He pointed to some of the details of the fur on the dragon’s forearm, how we could almost see the different hairs. “Funny, isn’t it? Your mother’s dragons never followed the usual myths of scales and fire-breathing and treasure-hoarding, did they?”
“Kia said that too.” I pulled the picture out of the box, and laid the box atop the arm of the sofa. “Dad, why are we so weird?” I looked at him and held up the drawing. “Even Kia was affected. Why is that?”
Dad sighed. “That’s your mother’s story. You know that.”
I scowled and pivoted on my heel. “Fine.” My fingers tightly clenched the photo and drawing. “I’ll just ask for the millionth time.”
“Kate, wait.” Dad grasped my arm. “You can ask, but now isn’t the time to show her that drawing.”
“And why not?” I pulled free of his grasp. “Why shouldn’t I show her Kia’s last drawing? Why shouldn’t I share my last link with my best friend?”
“Katherine Rae Kirwan.” Dad frowned. “I told you not to show her the drawing. For her own peace of mind, and for yours as well, please keep that to yourself.”
I held his gaze, his blue eyes against my own brown. What finally broke the staring battle wasn’t Dad’s stern expression, but the soft sound of Mom crying in the kitchen. I turned and ran up the stairs.
#
I spent the next three days writing down harmonies and melodies in my music journal. If I couldn’t escape my nightmares, then I would record every snippet of music I heard, no matter how disjointed. The first to be recorded was the arpeggio of the bugle player, next the soft melody Kia played, and finally the harsh harmony that always appeared at the end of the dream, right when the man in golden armor raised his sword to the sky. How the clash of two harmonies – one in a major key and the second in a minor – always startled me awake. I wrote each song onto a different sheet of paper and then reordered the songs so that they were in chronological order. The soft melody from the Kia part of the dream held too many similarities to Mom’s bedtime song, the one she sang to me when I was really young. The second one seemed to bridge the gap between the bedtime song and the harsh harmonies of the finally image.
It was late evening on the third day when I finished. Seeing the songs in order on one page, it troubled me, for it felt like I was seeing a summary of a story. Of something important, but I didn’t know what it was. I pulled the flute out of the drawer in my desk, where I had stowed it the day Mr. Fergeson had given it to me. I put it to my lips and then pulled it away. I couldn’t play it. It was Kia’s.
With a sigh, I stowed it back in my drawer, grabbed my music journal, and walked down the stairs, past the kitchen, where Mom was bent over, her oven mitt covered hands inside the oven, to the living room, where the piano sat underneath the window on the other side of the sofa. I pulled the bench out from under the keyboard, and pushed the cover up. Sitting down, I arranged my journal on the music holder above the keyboard. My fingers laid against cool, white keys. I breathed deeply, and pushed down the A key, to the right of middle C. The note rang in the living room, and I winced at the volume. I lifted my hands and shook them. For some reason, I felt afraid of the music of my dreams. As if they held some sort of secret I wasn’t ready to see.
If Kia were here, she’d push me to one side and she’s play the left hand harmonies, until I worked up the courage to play the right. But she wasn’t here. I couldn’t share these dreams with her, and the promise I made to her echoed in my mind. Her father had told me to take it one step at a time, and for me, this meant dealing with the music that haunted my dreams. Maybe then I could face the reality of facing this rift between Mom and Aunt Ren alone, without Kia there to remind me that no matter how silly adults acted, they usually had arguments out of pain more than anger. And that all I had to do was find out what pain my Aunt Ren held against my Mom.
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against the keyboard. My fingers automatically ran through a few scale exercises, and I could feel the tension easing in my shoulders. My right foot rested next to the pedals, and the shaking in my hands finally faded away. I breathed deeply, opened my eyes, and began to play the song from my dreams. As the melody rolled forth from my fingers, I felt warmth rise from the keys. The melody seemed to swirl in the air, caressing my eardrums, and wrapping me in warmth. My fingers danced through the arpeggio, and the warmth faded and the room seemed to turn a few degrees colder. The harsh harmony suddenly pounded out through my finger tips, the clash of keys dissonant, almost painful, but my fingers didn’t stop, my foot, pressing the dampening pedal, didn’t seem to end the loud, dissonant harmony. It echoed, screamed, thrashed until finally the last chord rang, and my fingers lifted from the keys. I sat there, shaken. The room felt ice cold.
A crash sounded from the kitchen. I jumped. Grabbing my journal, I stumbled over the piano bench and ran past the sofa, around the wall separating the kitchen from the living room, and slid to a stop in shock. Mom lay on the ground, the oven mitts still on her hands. Her entire body shook, and she pressed the oven mitts against her face. A pan of chicken sat on the counter next to the stove top.
“Mom?”
She abruptly sat upright and turned to me. Her eyes held a feral look, the usual brown gone, replaced by a mixture of grey and dark green that seemed to overtake her pupils and even seemed to leak into the whites of her eyes. She reached out to me and abruptly grabbed my wrist. “It’s time,” she said, and then she spoke a language I couldn’t understand. The words seemed to dance in the air like the melody I had played in my dream song, a melody that began in a major key and then ended in dissonance.
“Mom?” Fear curdled in my stomach. She was having a fit. “Mom, please.”
She shuddered at my words, closed her eyes, and fell back against the cupboards. She breathed deeply, but her hand still tightly gripped my arm. “Little one, please, get…” Her grip loosened on my arm, and she shuddered again, this time her face whitening. She was in pain.
“The Kvamme herb, I know.” I pulled free from her grasp and leapt toward the cupboards above the sink. I wrenched them open and grabbed the glass jar marked with a blue ribbon. I tugged the cork out of the top, and grabbed a cup from the cupboard between the sink and the stove. One handful of the slightly sticky herbs went into the cup. Shoving the cork back into the glass jar, I replaced the jar in the cupboard, and turned the faucet to its hottest setting. I didn’t have time to boil water. I filled the cup to its brim, and stirred the concoction. Turning, I dropped to my knees next to Mom. Her hands pressed against her chest, and she breathed in gasps. “Here.” I pressed the cup against her lips, and she dutifully drank. Her left hand reached up and grasped the cup, but I waited until she sipped again before I let her hold it herself. I clenched the spoon in my hand and watched her slowly drink the mixture. The whiteness in her face receded, her breaths evened, and she opened her eyes – normal brown, the strange coloring gone.
“Thank you,” she said. She drank the rest of the herbal tea and sighed. “Sorry, Katherine. It hit so suddenly.”
“The… the fit?”
“The pain.” Mom handed me the cup and pushed herself off the floor. She grasped the counter to steady herself as she stood. “I heard you playing, and then it hit me.”
“The fit.”
“If you insist on calling it that.” Mom sighed and pulled the oven mitts off her hands. “I didn’t scare you too much, did I, little one?” She reached toward me, only to drop her hand against her side.
I shook my head and placed her cup in the sink. “Can’t the doctors cure it?” Her fit scared me more than I wanted to admit. Even though Mom’s fits only happened once a month for as long as I could remember, it still frightened me. What if the day came when one of her fits killed her? Killed her like cancer killed Kia?
Mom sighed. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Kate. Doctors cannot help me with this.”
“Then what can?” I gestured to the cup in the sink. “Every year, Asa sends you this, and every month you need it to stop the pain. How is that not something wrong?”
Mom pressed her hand against her forehead and closed her eyes. “That is something I’ve had since I was a young child, little one. It won’t kill me. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it is frustrating to be chained to this herb. But it cannot kill me.”
“How do you know?” I could hear the whine in my voice, and it frightened me even more.
“Katherine Rae, do not yell. This is something I know. Now please, go sit down, drink some water, and calm yourself.” Mom pointed to the dining table behind us.
I grasped my journal tightly and abruptly left the kitchen. I couldn’t handle Mom’s stern tone. How she acted like her fall, her weird words, and her pain was nothing. I couldn’t handle it, not with Kia’s death so fresh. I ran upstairs and slammed the door to my room.
A cold breeze hit me the moment I faced the window. The curtains fluttered violently, their hems hitting the windowsill and the wall. I walked over and shut the window. Outside, the tree in our front yard swayed, some of its leaves fell to the ground. A blue mustang pulled into our driveway, and Dad exited the driver’s side. He shut the door and walked to the front door. I turned away from the window and threw myself on the bed.
I grabbed my pillow and shoved it against my mouth. I let loose a scream, but it was stifled by the fabric and down feathers. My shoulders shook, and I curled my knees against my chest, my music journal still in my hand. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t escape the dreams. As soon as I fell asleep, they would come. And then Kia’s promise. How many times had I tried to call Aunt Ren, only to get Jill, who hung up on me with maybe a few angry words in Norwegian, or Reidir, her brother, who just told me all about the sheep. He seemed like a nice kid, and I didn’t mind talking to him. But Aunt Ren never answered the phone, and the one time her husband did, he couldn’t answer my questions. Told me that was Aunt Ren’s story, and I best forget about it.
I slammed my fist against my bed in frustration. Asa Kvamme would just ask me about Mom and then we’d talk about her family until I lost all nerve to ask why the rift started. “What’s the point,” I growled, beating my fist against the bed in time to each word. “I can’t do this, Kia.” I threw my music journal across the room. It hit the wall with a thump and then slid to the floor, its pages open to the air. I pressed my face into the pillow, exhausted by my turbulent emotions. Closing my eyes, I attempted a nap.
#
Fire exploded in a flare of brilliant orange and yellow, the sudden heat a slap in the face. Ice fell from the sky like daggers, hitting the ground around me and melting from the roar of the flames. Men with red eyes, fangs and leathery wings rushed forward, swords in their hands. One leapt into the air, it’s wings pushing it upward, and its sword slicing toward the helmet of a man in silver armor. Flames roared behind me, buildings and people alike being swept in its wake. The stench of smoke, sweat, and death assaulted my nose, and I coughed.
“Raul! Abia furu aktori!”
I turned to see the speaker directly behind me. He had silvery-white hair and piercing green eyes. Golden armor adorned his chest, forearms, thighs and feet. Atop his head, his helmet was fashioned into the shape of interlocking dragon’s wings, which glittered gold in the light of the setting sun. He held his sword toward the sky as suddenly a bugle blew to my left. I spun again to see the man with the bugle, his brown skin half hidden by his silver armor. The notes spun into an arpeggio, and just as he reached the highest note, scene exploded in a blaze of fire.
I awoke with scream. Sweat soaked the roots of my hair, and I sat upright, gasping, and pressing the palms of my hands against my ears. The door to my room swung open, and suddenly Dad was at my side. He wrapped his arms around me, and this time I didn’t pull away. I whimpered and hid my face in his shirt.
“Kate, are you alright?” He stroked my hair, gently.
“I… I’m okay.” I felt afraid. The dream was still too vivid. “Just had a bad dream.”
Dad pushed a strand of hair from my face. “A nightmare it seems. What scared you so?”
“It… it was a battle. Lots of death.” I shivered and pulled away from Dad’s embrace. “And it doesn’t go away.” I stood and walked to my window. The glass felt cold against my forehead. “Every night I dream of her, Dad. I dream of Kia, and then I fall into this nightmare. This battle. A guy always plays this bugle and the songs in that dream. I wrote them down and played them today, Dad, and then when I stopped, Mom was having her fit. But she already had her fit this month. It’s too soon. It’s just too soon!”
Dad stood and grasped my shoulder. “Kate, everything’s going to be alright. You just need to calm and try to eat some food, okay?”
I jerked free from his hold. “But Dad! The dreams, it won’t go away. None of them!” I reached down and grabbed my journal. “I can’t escape them. No matter what I read before bed, or what music I listen to. It always comes.”
Dad gently grasped my shoulder again. “I believe you. But right now, you need to eat. You’re white and shaking. Come downstairs, eat something, drink some juice, and then we’ll talk with your mother concerning your dreams. Perhaps she’ll have some ideas to help combat them.”
I nodded numbly. “Alright.” I followed him downstairs and into the kitchen. Dad opened the fridge and pulled out the pitcher of juice. He poured me a glass, handed it to me, and glanced at the oven.
“Look’s like dinner isn’t quite done.”
I sipped my juice, confused. “But the chicken was out the last I looked.”
“No, your mother was just putting it in. You slept for quite awhile, Kate.” Dad opened a cupboard and took a granola bar out of a box.
“Here, this should tide you over for now. How about you practice a bit? Dinner should be ready in about an hour. Then your mother and I can talk with you about these dreams.”
“Alright.” I knew Dad was just pacifying me, but I ate the granola bar and drank the juice. I did feel physically better, but at the same time still felt upset. Maybe Dad was right. Music usually did calm my nerves. I walked into the living room just as the phone rang. The ring cut off in midtone. Mom or Dad must have gotten it. I sat down on the piano bench for the second time that day. This time, I wouldn’t play the song. Just practice.
I stretched my fingers then rested them against the keyboard. I started with my usual exercises. My fingers crunched through the scales, the finger exercises, the chord progressions, and then my favorite of Chopin’s Nocturne.
“Kate.”
I kept playing, my mind focused completely on the music; my fingers danced along the keys, pulling the song out of the piano, my pain and fear explosive with each cadence.
“Katherine Rae Kirwan. I need to speak to you now.”
I lifted my fingers, the music stilled. “What?” I turned with a scowl. “I’m practicing! Just like you asked me to!”
Dad sighed. “I know. Kate, Asa Kvamme is on the phone. Can you play the songs from your dreams as loud as you can? I know the musical quality will be greatly reduced, but the phone cannot pick up soft sounds.”
“Why?” I flipped open my music journal and then paused in mid-turn. “Wait, you, you told her about my dreams!”
“No,” Dad shook his head. “She asked if you dreamed of a battle. Your mother said yes, you did. Asa then asked if you had written down any melodies from your dreams. Both your mother and I know you have, Kate. So she asked to hear it.” Dad sat down on the sofa and ran his left hand through his thinning hair. “I know this doesn’t make sense right now, but please, play the song.”
No, it didn’t make sense. How did Asa know about my dreams? I sat there, staring at the notes written on the page. “Dad, this is crazy.” I glanced at him with a scowl. “Wouldn’t Mom have to hold the phone next to the piano?”
Dad shrugged. “Asa seems certain she will be able to hear. Don’t worry too much about it. Please play.”
I turned back to the piano and breathed deeply. The last time I played this song, Mom had a fit in the kitchen. I was almost afraid to play it again. My fingers brushed the keys. Yet, if Asa was on the phone, she only had twenty minutes. Her calls never lasted longer than that, mostly because she didn’t have enough money to buy calling cards that lasted longer. So I better start playing.
I stretched my fingers and then plunged into the song. As the melody rolled forth from my fingertips, the warmth I felt before returned. It seemed to boil from under my fingers, and this time with the increase in volume, I could feel the warmth through my entire body. I felt as if on fire. Sweat dripped down my forehead. The arpeggio leapt from the keyboard, and suddenly the room turned ice cold. The heat vanished, and my teeth chattered. The piano rumbled and steam rose from my fingers that still burned with fire. The dissonant harmonies of the final cadence ripped through the air. Glass from the nearby window suddenly exploded outward. I screamed, jerking away from the piano, as I brought up my hands, but the glass didn’t fall into the house, but outside, onto the lawn.
“Here.” Dad was suddenly at my side. A steaming cup of tea in his hands. “Drink this, Kate.”
I struggled to breath, but my lungs felt constricted, my fingers still on fire. Dad grasped the back of my head and brought the cup to my lips. The warmth liquid splashed into my mouth, some of it dripping down my chin. I swallowed it. The fire, the pain in my lungs, all of it just vanished and I sagged against my father in tears. “What… what was that?”
“Your mother can explain, but for right now, please finish your tea.” Dad pushed the cup into my hands again. My fingers trembled as I grasped it and took another sip. The tea was bitter. Horribly bitter. I wrinkled my nose, but I drank it.
“This is Mom’s… the stuff Asa always sends.” I put the cup down and stared at the remains of the herbs, the small residue of leaves at the bottom of the cup. “But Dad… I don’t need this stuff.”
“You do right now.” Dad smoothed the hair back from my forehead. “Kate, please, you need to sit down and relax. Your mother is still talking to Asa.”
“But, but Dad!” I turned to him earnestly. “What was that? I mean, I felt fire. Like I was burning up, and then it was so cold, and there was steam rising from my fingers… and that window! Dad, it exploded!”
“I know, honey, I know.” He wrapped his arm around me again. His calm assurances only scared me more. First Kia’s death, then the dreams, Mom’s fit, and now this? I couldn’t take it any more. I wanted it all to stop. “Take deep breaths, honey, just deep breaths,” Dad said softly.
Deep breaths. I could do that. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing. Except the image of the window exploding kept invading my thoughts. It was hard to concentrate. I slipped my hand into my pocket, and my fingers touched the white cross Kia had given me years ago. Gripping it tightly, I felt my breathing slow, my muscles relax.
“Ri, how is she?” Mom said from somewhere behind me.
“Calming down. Dany, what did Asa have to say?”
“What I feared. Katherine, are you alright?” I felt Mom’s hands slide around my own.
“Mom…” I opened my eyes and blinked back tears. “Please, what’s going on? I’m scared.”
She crouched in front of me and held my hands tightly. “Asa has bought some plane tickets. You’re going to Norway for the summer. Perhaps longer.”
“Why?” I felt a panic rise in me. I wasn’t ready to go to Norway yet. How could I leave Kia’s grave? How could I meet with relatives that had caused Mom so much pain? Kia and my plan involved Mom, Dad, her, and I going together when we were ready, when I had managed to talk to Aunt Ren on the phone. I couldn’t go. Not yet! “Why can’t I stay here? Mom! Dad!” I turned to my father desperately. “Tell Mom this is crazy. I can’t go. I want to stay here.”
“Your mother and Asa have a good plan, Kate. You can’t stay here. At least not right now.” Dad tried to hug me again, but I jerked away from his hold and pulled my hands free of Mom’s tight grip. I tried to stand, but my legs felt like jello and I fell against the sofa.
“Katherine, calm.” Mom stood and met my gaze. Her brown eyes seemed to almost glow as a thread of gold and violet flashed through her irises. “I know you are confused. Scared. But I cannot fully explain what is happening. I can tell you that something has awakened. I know the timing is less than perfect. I know you still grieve for your friend, but this cannot wait. You have to go, and you will pack your bags tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“But… but, you’re coming too, aren’t you?” I looked at both her and Dad. “Right?”
Dad shook his head. “I’m sorry, Kate. We can’t leave yet. Asa booked the plane for only one person. And right now is not a good time for your mother to return.”
“It’s that rift isn’t it?!” I stood again, and this time my legs held me. “That stupid rift.”
“Whether it is or not, does not concern you.” Mom met my gaze again, and the violet in her eyes increased. “Katherine, you know something is unusual about our family. Something that even Kia saw. What happened between my sister and I has caused great pain, yes, but right now, if I returned to Norway with you, it would cause far greater pain, and could put you and your cousins in danger.”
“Then I’m not going!” I clenched my fists and stood my ground, despite the swirl of colors in my mother’s eyes. “Not without you and Dad.”
“You will go. Now is not the time for my return.” Mom abruptly closed her eyes and began to sing. The reaction startled me, and I took a step backward. The words she sung were foreign, but at the same time, they seemed almost to translate themselves in my mind. Travel far, travel near, the time will come, but not now. Not now. What was broken will be renewed. But not now. Not now.
I pressed my hands against my ears, but it didn’t stop the torrent of words in my mind. “Stop it. Stop it, please!”
The song cut off in mid verse. “Katherine, look at me.”
Trembling, I opened my eyes to see Mom’s eyes back to their normal brown.
“You heard it, didn’t you?”
I shook my head.
“You did.” Mom sighed. “Ri, do you think she’s safe to travel alone?”
Dad sat down on the sofa and glanced at me. “Asa is meeting her in London or Chicago?”
“She may not be able to. We have to be prepared if she cannot find a route there before Kate leaves tomorrow.”
“Hey! Stop it! I’m standing right here!” My shoulders shook, my fingers tightly clenched in a fist. “And what is this? Tomorrow? Don’t I get any say in this?”
Mom reached over and took my music journal off the piano. She held the journal between us, her hand outstretched. I snatched the journal out of her hands. “Right now, none of us have a choice,” Mom said with a sigh. A thread of yellow appeared admist her brown irises. “The Kvamme farm has more protection that Iowa. There is also the rift. I can’t reach my sister, Katherine. However, you have a better chance.”
I looked down at my journal unable to face the sadness in her eyes. “I, I did promise Kia. That I’d find a way to end the rift. But, Mom, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. We were supposed to go together. All of us and Kia.” Tears stung my eyes. “With Kia.”
“I am sorry.” Mom lightly touched my shoulder.
I jerked away from her touch. “Fine. I’ll go. But I’m not doing this for any of you. I’m doing this for Kia.”
