Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
NOTHING MAKES A LOT OF SENSE
Something tugs at my subconscious, stirring through my dreams and dragging awareness with it. Part of me knows I’m dreaming; strangely, I also know I’ll remember this in the morning.
Burning incense paints the room with its thick smoke. The slightly sweet cloud is full of citrus and silky wood notes, but there’s also something else, a combination of sandalwood, sage, myrtle, and thyme that makes me think of homecoming and protection.
Sounds filter in slowly, gathering volume and pulling my focus.
People, or more specifically beings because I know they’re not humans, are with me.
The sound is chatter, though I don’t understand what they’re saying, as the language they speak doesn’t register.
But it doesn’t matter, as the sounds they make reinforce what I felt from the scents—that I’m surrounded by love.
Finally, what I see registers. The view is breathtaking, and I walk toward it, safe in the knowledge that I won’t fall.
A soft breeze blows against my face, and again, like the noises and smells, it solidifies the joy from before.
I could stay and look out at the horizon, and the valley below it, for hours and never get bored.
The crystal blue stream running through the middle meanders like a giant sleeping snake through a manicured landscape, featuring trees that reach the clouds and an ocean of greenery stretching over the vista.
It’s like someone copied the designs from the world’s most exquisite gardens, yet melded them into one.
Turning away from the outside, it dawns on me where I am, though my imagination is incredibly lush and fanciful because instead of a house, I’m inside a mountain that’s been carved out to look like a palace.
The space is enormous, but it doesn’t feel overwhelming.
Perhaps because it’s decorated in richly colored fabrics and furnished with lounges and chairs that look as soft and as comfortable as clouds.
From a corner, the beings I first felt wander closer. I can hear their steps echoing, and they share the same warm love that I’ve felt since I woke. But then it twists, and everything about the dream shifts.
“Who dares?” Their voices circle around, gathering speed and purpose as they race forward in presence and person.
The calm atmosphere disappears, as the pretty space I was standing in fills with darkness, bringing warning and unease.
Though behind the spreading unrest, I’m drawn by someone’s desperation. Again, what I see makes no sense, because for the first time in all of this, I cannot discern the features of the man. How I know it’s a man, I have no clue, but deep down I know. I also have no way to stop moving toward him.
He lies injured, gravely so, and before I take another breath, I’m on my knees beside him, while behind me rages a storm, the darkness growing into a violent tempest. I should seek safety, I know that, but at the same time, I’m not scared for me, because all my focus is directed at the injured man.
I lean forward, my hands moving slowly. Then my dream twists again.
Something sharp tears at my wrist, splitting my veins, and my life force pours from the cut.
I can see it dripping over his limp form.
My ears hurt at the fierce volume of an animal that snarls from somewhere I can’t see, but wherever they are they’re so close their fur brushes against my skin.
It should scare the shit out of me, but it’s the opposite as I know the rage isn’t directed at me.
My energy wanes in my dream, and I feel like my limbs are filling with concrete, but not before painful ties settle around my limbs and physically drag me away.
“No. Please. No!” I wake myself up with my shouts.
It takes a second for me to realize that I woke up not due to escaping the dream, or rather nightmare, but because an alarm is blaring. From somewhere inside the building, I hear doors slamming and shouting.
I tuck myself into a smaller ball, ready to ride out whatever is going on outside, hidden within the safety of my room. Something that sounds like rolling thunder nears, and I slap my hand over my mouth to stop my scream when there’s a thud on my door.
“Hey, it’s Orion. I wanted to let you know that’s the siren for lockdown. It’s probably a false alarm, but I need you to stay exactly where you are and not go outside. Check your tablet for updates. And no matter what, do not go outside, okay?”
“Okay,” I say through the door.
He speaks without panic in his voice, which I take as a good sign. If he’s not panicking, I don’t need to be either. “I didn’t want you to be freaking out, wondering what’s going on. I promise, Maya, Thales is the safest place to be. See you in the morning.”
I hear him racing away, and a few moments later, it’s followed by the faint sound of a door slamming. Orion made it back to his room.
And any hope of sleep goes with him.
Using the moonlight streaming in from the bathroom window, I go to grab my bag off the desk to have a look at the tablet. Though I wasn’t in the right headspace for anything but sleep before, it’s different now.
As I stand up and reach for the bag Master Maddern gave me at the hospital, something brushes against my hand.
I swallow my screech before reassuring myself, I’m just being jittery because of the nightmare and the alarm.
Either way, I move slowly, pulling my bag with me as I sit-down with my belongings surrounding me on the bare mattress.
Rummaging through the bag, I pull everything out and lay it on my lap.
Like he and Orion said, there’s a tablet inside and a phone, along with a collection of other supplies I need for studying.
The tablet turns on as soon as I touch it.
I have no clue what kind of technology they have; all I did was pick it up, and it starts up with a personalized welcome.
The light shining off the device isn’t bright enough to read any of the books by, but it makes the shadows in my room disappear.
The glow from the screen gives me the chance to see what I felt before. On my desk, staring me down, is a raven. Like, an actual bird.
The bird caps off a ridiculous run of things that have happened that defy logic. I don’t bother listing them off again. Instead, I turn off the device, wiggle down on the mattress, and turn over to face the wall.
I have to work really hard to stop my racing thoughts, and I only succeed by basically holding my breath until I pass out.
Hours later, I wake again. This time, it’s my awareness that drags me from sleep.
I’m not generally a nervous person. I like to think I’m confident, but not so much that it comes across as being cocky. The fact is that I have relied on myself for years, and as far as I am concerned, I have done a great job continuing on the path my parents showed me was the right one.
The shadows in my room have lost their depth as the new day creeps up the horizon.
I close my eyes and try to slow the roiling worries from intensifying; a lot of what I am feeling has to do with what is still to come.
Dealing with new situations makes me anxious, which doesn’t mean I can’t cope with change.
I just don’t like it. Once I know what I’m dealing with, I’ll be fine, but the void of not knowing what’s coming consumes my mind.
I hear my mom’s encouragement filtering through my mind, urging me to focus and be grateful for what I can control, leaving what I can’t to play out how it was always going to. Simply thinking of her helps.
“I’m thankful I didn’t have any more crazy dreams or nightmares,” I say to myself quietly, my lips barely moving. “Or emergency situations. And I’m hopeful I imagined the other thing. I’ve got this.”
The last of my pep talk relates to the raven.
I sit up and scour the room for any sign of the bird, taking a huge sigh of relief when I don’t find any sign of it.
“It was the medication and my concussion,” I offer up the explanation, and my inner voice agrees.
I shift my focus to other things now that my worries are currently manageable.
Pulling down my bags, I unpack everything, laying them out on my bed.
It’s a mix of things I grabbed before leaving home the other morning, along with stuff crammed in from the clinic, plus new items from Master Maddern and the lady in the infirmary.
One of the strangest things I find is a small, dark purple velvet bag. I suspect it fell out of the second bag I picked up after climbing the fence, though I’m surprised I still have it. Seriously, I thought whoever took my other bundle would have reclaimed this too.
The drawstring pouch is obviously a coin purse, given the jingling sound it makes as I lift it.
Opening it, five gold coins, no bigger than a half dollar, fall out.
They’re heavy, and the stamped image of a woman’s face is no queen I’ve seen before.
The crown she wears is what makes me think she’s a queen, but at the same time, you know someone is regal without knowing who they are.
On the back, a laurel decorates the edges, along with a series of letters and symbols across the rest of the coin.
I want to say it’s old, like ancient, but considering I know nothing about the world the others inhabit, a bit presumptuous of me.
I go to put the coins back in the pouch, except there’s still something in there.
So I tip the contents into my palm, and another five coins exactly the same tumble out.
Dropping the pouch, I check them against the others, and they’re identical.
I don’t know how I missed them before. It’s a later problem.
Now I need to get ready for breakfast and my first day at Thales.
Lifting the drawstring pouch again, the jangle of coins has me feeling like I’m being punked.
This is illogical. I just emptied the bag, and now it’s got something in it again?
Tipping the purse, another five coins fall onto my palm.
This time, though, I turn the pouch inside out to triple-check, but it’s empty as empty can be.
Setting the pouch aside, I collect all the coins and go to put them back inside, but when I lift it, the same thing happens again—five coins fall out.
“I’m losing my mind,” I whisper as I fill the small bag with all the coins that are in my hand. They all slide back inside easily, though oddly, the weight doesn’t increase when I put them back in.
When I’m done, I rest the pouch on my mattress before snatching it back up as quickly as I can, tearing it open and emptying it out. Only five coins tumble out.
As fast as they fall out, I put them back in, then I hide the pouch in the tea chest with the leather bundles, making it a mystery for later.
The other items that were in the purple bag are equally puzzling—a small antique mirror and a posy of dried herbs.
Instead of hiding them in my bag, I hop up and put them on my desk.
Then I decide I’ve spent enough time on fantastical things and shift my attention to normal, human actions like showering and getting ready.
Thankfully, Master Maddern provided some toiletries. Not much, but enough to get me clean. There’s no towel, but I figure one of my old T-shirts from home will do the job just as well.
I also sacrifice another T-shirt as something to stand on in the shower because until I’ve scrubbed the tiles with bleach, there’s no way I’m putting my feet on them.
The water is cold, not freezing but cold enough to make my skin goose.
My shower helps me stay on track, then I go from one mindless task to the next until I am ready.
At just before six-thirty, I wait at the bottom of the stairs for Orion.