Simon hadn't had a lot to give me, but just like every other time I'd gotten an energy fix recently, I had the dream.
It played out the same as always, starting with the dishes, going all the way up to when my dream-self looked into the living room to smile at the little girl. After a few more moments, my dream-self returned to her dishes. Silently, I screamed at her to look back. I couldn't get enough of the girl. I wanted to drink her in. I could have watched her forever, taking in those long-lashed eyes and wispy curls.
Then, as though she could hear me, my dream-self glanced back into the other room. The girl was gone. My dream-self jerked her hands out of the water, just in time to hear a thump and a crash. The sound of crying followed, and then I woke up.
It was late morning, and my energy was gone. That honestly didn't surprise me anymore. Coupled with that loss, however, was a new sensation. I felt cold, chilled to the bone. My skin also felt wet, like I'd been submerged in water. When I ran my fingers over my arm, it was perfectly dry. Nonetheless, I put on the heaviest sweater I could find, and eventually the chill abated.
Work was busy and not particularly eventful until the end, when Maddie casually reminded me about us hanging out afterward. I nearly walked into a display when she said that. In my haste yesterday, I'd gone ahead and made plans with both Maddie and Seth for after work. I had a tendency to do that kind of thing when I was stressed. I felt so popular. And, as I often did in this kind of situation, I solved it by combining both of my mistakes into one solution.
"Maddie wanted to hang out tonight," I told Seth. "I think she's lonely. Mind if I bring her in for the babysitting thing?"
"Sure," he said, not looking up from his laptop.
"Seth wanted help babysitting tonight," I told Maddie. "Do you mind if we sort of make that our evening activity?"
Maddie gave the proposition a bit more thought than Seth had. She didn't look upset so much as puzzled. "I haven't really been around many kids. It's not that I don't like them...just that it's always kind of weird."
"His nieces are great," I assured her. "You'll be a convert."
I felt a little bad about strong-arming her into the Mortensen family adventure. She stayed silent for most of the ride up, keeping her thoughts to herself. Seth's family lived up north of the city, in Lake Forest Park. Their house looked exactly like the other ones on the street, but I suspected it was a necessary sacrifice in order to accommodate two adults and five girls.
"Oh my God," said Maddie when we stepped inside the house. All five Mortensen daughters were there. They ranged in age from four to fourteen, all sharing their mother's blond hair and blue eyes. We seemed to have walked into the middle of an argument. "Maybe...this wasn't such a good idea..."
I looked around the room. Seth had gotten there earlier, and Terry and Andrea had already left to do their shopping. Fourteen-year-old Brandy tried to make her voice heard over that of Kendall, who was nine and the twins McKenna and Morgan who were six. Only four-year-old Kayla, sitting on the couch beside her uncle, listened quietly. I couldn't even tell what the others were fighting about.
"It can spin webs!" cried Kendall.
"No, it can't. That's just its name." Brandy looked weary. The others weren't paying attention to her.
"The horn would slice the webs!" cried McKenna. Morgan backed her by making a chopping motion with her hand.
"Not if the monkey trapped it first," retorted Kendall.
"The unicorn can run fast. The monkey couldn't catch it."
"Then it's a coward!" Kendall looked triumphant. "It loses automatically if it doesn't show up for the fight."
Both twins appeared stumped by this bit of logic.
"This is a stupid argument," said Brandy. "Unicorns aren't real."
The other three girls turned on her and started shouting their protests.
"HEY!" I yelled over the cacophony. Everyone fell silent and looked at me. I don't think the girls had noticed my arrival. "What's going on?"
"A debate over who would win if a unicorn got in a fight with a spider monkey," said Seth.
Beside me, Maddie made a strange noise that sounded suspiciously like a squelched laugh.
"It's been compelling and well thought out," added Seth, his voice deadpan.
Brandy groaned. "Unicorns aren't real."
"Spider monkeys aren't real!" McKenna shot back.
"Yes, they are," said Brandy. "This is all pointless."
Kendall glared at her. "It's hypocritical."
"Hypothetical," I corrected.
"Don't worry," Seth told Maddie and me. "It's downright civil compared to the mermaid-centaur debate."
"Guys," I said. "This is Maddie." I ticked off the girls' names for her, one by one.
"Hi," said Maddie nervously. She eyed each girl, then looked at Seth uncertainly. She'd been acting differently around him since the auction, and I made a mental note to harass him about their date. "This might have been a bad idea..."
He smiled one of those sweet smiles that could make anyone feel better. She smiled back, relaxing a little. "Nope. We need all the help we can get around here." He rose, scooping up Kayla as he rose. "What I actually need is a distraction while everyone under age nine gets put to bed." The twins cried out in dismay.
I glanced at Brandy and Kendall. "Sounds easy enough."
"Don't speak so soon," warned Brandy.
Kendall was already in motion. She tore out of the room and returned with a long cardboard box that she nearly shoved into my face. "Look what Grandma sent me." It was a Monopoly game.
"The Industrial Revolution edition?" I asked dumbfounded.
"It's about the only edition they hadn't made yet," remarked Seth. "I think they're kind of grasping at straws."
"You got that for Christmas?" I asked. "You wanted it for Christmas?"
"I want to be a real estate mongrel when I grow up," she explained.
"Mogul," I corrected. "And I thought you wanted to be a pirate?"
She gave me a pitying look. "They don't have very good health insurance."
I pointed to the box. "But why the Industrial Revolution? Wouldn't you have rather had, I don't know, the Barbie edition? Or the Sephora edition?" I kind of wanted that last one for myself.
"The Industrial Revolution was an important period in Western Civilization. The developments in production and manufacturing forever changed the face of our culture and socioeconomic status." She paused. "You wanna play?"
"Is one of the pieces a spinning jenny?" asked Maddie.
Seth laughed. "Actually, it is."
"I'm in," she said.
Kayla, who was in Seth's arms, appeared on the verge of falling asleep then and there. Her cuddly form reminded me of the dream girl, and my heart lurched. Suddenly, Monopoly held little appeal. I walked over to Seth. "Tell you what. You play, and I'll take bedtime duty."
"You sure?"
"Positive."
He passed her off, and she wrapped her little arms around my neck. With the twins in tow, I left the others to set up the game. Maddie looked distinctly uncomfortable at being abandoned, but I knew she'd do fine. Sometimes being forced to socialize was the best way to learn.
The twins were surprisingly easy to put to bed, probably because they slept in the same room. Going to bed wasn't such a big deal when you had a sister to whisper to and giggle with. I supervised the brushing of teeth and putting on of pajamas, then closed them in with warnings that I'd check back.
Still balancing Kayla on one hip, I carried her to the room she shared with Kendall. Kayla almost never said anything, so I wasn't particularly surprised when she didn't protest having a pink nightgown pulled over her head and being tucked under the covers. I sat on the edge of her bed and handed her a stuffed unicorn I'd found on the floor. She wrapped it in her arms.
"I think it could take the spider monkey," I told her.
Kayla said nothing but just watched me with those huge blue eyes. They were filled with such trust and sweetness - just like my daughter in the dream. How amazing would it be to do this every night? To tuck someone in and kiss her forehead, then wake up with her each morning?
Suddenly, fearing I might cry in front of a four-year-old, I started to rise. To my complete astonishment, she held out her hand and touched my arm.
"Georgina."
Her voice was small and soprano and sweet. I sat back down. "Hmm?"
"Don't leave," she said.
"Oh, honey. I have to. You need to sleep."
"Monsters will come."
"What monsters?"
"The bad ones."
"Ah. I see. Are they under your bed?" I was pretty sure that's where most monsters lived. Aside from the ones I played poker with and bought Secret Santa presents for.
She shook her head and pointed up at the ceiling. "They live there. In space."
"Are they aliens?" As much as I hated the thought of her being afraid to go to bed, I was rather enchanted to be having a conversation with her for the first time ever. She was as articulate as all the other girls - not that I should have been surprised by that.
"No. They're monsters. They swoop in the air and go in people's dreams."
I caught on to her reluctance to sleep now. "Have you been having nightmares?"
"No. But the monsters are there. I feel them."
Something about her words and the serious set of her face sent a chill down my spine. "You want me to stay until you fall asleep? Will that keep them away?"
"Maybe," she said. She touched my arm again. "You're magic."
I wondered then if Kayla might be a psychic in the making, like Erik or Dante. The way she spoke implied more than a childhood belief in magic. There was almost an authority there. She'd be worth keeping an eye on, but I wouldn't pursue anything now. I certainly wasn't going to start quizzing her about auras.
"Okay," I said. "I'll stay."
I lay down beside her, and she studied me in silence. I began humming an old song, which made her smile and close her eyes. When I finished, she opened her eyes again.
"What are the words?"
"Eh..." That was hard to answer. It was a song from my mortal life, one that had been composed in an ancient Cyprian dialect no one spoke anymore. My husband used to sing it to me. Knowing I couldn't reproduce the rhymes or any sort of good translation on the spot, I simply sang it to her in the original language. The syllables, familiar yet strange, came awkwardly to my lips.
When I finished, Kayla didn't say anything or move. I waited a couple more minutes and slowly got out of the bed. She continued sleeping. Turning off the light, I left the room and returned to the Monopoly players. Seth smiled at my approach and made room for me beside him on the floor.
"Luddites burn your mill. Pay five-hundred dollars." Brandy grimaced at her Chance card. "Weak."
"That's not as much as I had to pay when the Factory Acts cut my child labor force a couple turns ago," Maddie pointed out. As I'd hoped, she seemed perfectly at ease now.
Kendall rolled the dice and moved her miniature pewter Oliver Twist book ahead three spaces. "I wish I had a job, so I could save capitalism for my investments."
"Capital," the rest of us said in unison.
Kendall glanced up at me. "I could work at your bookstore. Under the table."
"Like stacking books under the table?" asked Brandy.
Kendall ignored her. "Don't you need extra help?"
I ruffled her hair. "Not until you're of age, I'm afraid."
Maddie moved her pewter spinning jenny. "Yeah, haven't you learned anything from this game? You'd get us shut down. Georgina doesn't need that kind of paperwork."
"How's your manager job?" asked Brandy. "Is it harder?"
"Mostly it's...different."
Kendall brightened. "I could have your old job."
"Sorry. No vacancy. Maddie took my place."
Kendall sighed.
Seth landed on a silk mill no one had purchased yet and began rustling up money. "The girls go to bed okay?"
"Yeah...Kayla had a hard time, though. She was worried about nightmares."
He looked up in surprise. "She told you that? She, like, spoke?"
"Yeah, we had a whole discourse. Laughed, cried, shared our hopes and fears. I think she has an oratorical career ahead of her."
"What's 'oratorical' mean?" asked Kendall.
"It refers to speaking in public," Maddie explained. "Giving speeches. Talking in front of others."
"Oh. Uncle Seth doesn't have an oratorical career."
We all laughed. "No," agreed Maddie. "He doesn't. I certainly don't either."
Seth high-fived her. "Introverts unite."
Brandy picked up another Chance card and groaned. "Cholera outbreak! Not again!"
When the night finally ended and Seth's brother and sister-in-law came home, I was happy to learn that Maddie had had a really good time.
"Kids aren't so bad as long as they're brainiac Mortensen offspring. Terry and Andrea were nice too. Good genes in that group."
"Yup," I agreed. Maddie definitely needed more socialization, I decided. She was cheerful and upbeat, her eyes sparkling and excited. This had been a good night.
I dropped her off at Doug's and drove back to my apartment. The parking gods weren't with me tonight, and I ended up about five blocks away. As I walked, I passed a newspaper dispenser for the Seattle Times. I usually read the headlines at the store but hadn't today. I paused in front of it, one article catching my eye.
It was a weird story about a local man who'd turned delusional. He'd had a dream that if he swam across Puget Sound, it would bring wealth and security to his struggling family. Sadly, he hadn't made it very far before drowning in the freezing waters. The ironic part was that although some might consider the feat suicidal, his massive life insurance policy was going to pay out. His family would get their wealth and security after all.
Staring blankly at the paper, I thought about the poor man succumbing and disappearing under the dark waves. I suddenly flashed back to this morning, and it was like I could feel the cold, wet sensation all over again. For half a second, I couldn't breathe. It was as though my lungs were filling with water, suffocating me. I shuddered and absentmindedly ran my hands over my arms, the d¨¦j¨¤ vu nearly overpowering me. Water. Water everywhere. Cold. Black. Smothering...
I shivered and finally made myself start walking again, needing to find someplace warm.