Raven

by Suzy Turner

CHAPTER TWENTY

  As the end of January drew near, so my dreams began again. It had seemed like so many weeks since I'd had such vivid experiences during my sleeping hours that I had almost forgotten about them.

  As the dreams intensified, one night I found they had an altogether different effect. I awoke to find myself sleepwalking through the house. Although it worried me a little, I decided against telling Gabriel. I didn't want to concern him, and the fact that I'd woken up while still within the house reassured me that I probably wasn't capable of opening the front door.

  I was wrong.

  Just a few nights later I had one of the most vivid dreams to date...

  Voices called to me from within the forest. Ethereal voices sang my name, beckoning me to follow.

  Before I knew it, I found myself approaching the tall trees that swayed in the softly blowing wind. I couldn't stop myself from following the sounds. Peering through the trees, I tried to see who the voices belonged to. My vision seemed blurred and I couldn't quite see but I did catch sight of a figure dressed in white. I pushed through the long branches and gently tiptoed through the cold mossy ground beneath my bare feet.

  It's strange that in dreams I could walk barefooted in the snow and I didn't feel the slightest bit cold. In fact, the snow felt more like soft balls of moist cotton wool, squelching underfoot. I looked ahead and saw the figure moving like an angel in front of me. Or a ghost. She was not stepping but gliding along, almost as if she was on roller skates being pulled along on a smooth surface.

  She didn't turn so I was still unable to identify her, yet the smooth tones of her voice continued to sing my name, beckoning me to follow.

  “Lilly.... Lilly.... come Lilly.”

  The forest soon became darker as the trees thickened ahead, the path we walked upon disappeared completely and I was forced to climb over huge tree roots that exploded from the ground underneath my toes. In areas it was slippery and I stumbled a few times but managed to stay upright.

  Although I was vaguely aware that I was dreaming, I was conscious that the cast on my leg had only recently been removed so I had to be extra careful on my delicate bones.

  “Lilly... Lilly...” sang the voice. Soon I heard another voice and she too sang out my name. I quickened my pace, feeling like I needed to know who was calling me, and why.

  Just as I was close enough to see, I noticed that both women had long black hair. They turned and I gasped. Serena and Neleh stood before me, reaching out to me. My mother and my sister had called me this far but why? I tried to speak but no words would come out of my mouth. At the same time, they put their fingers to their own mouths, indicating that I shouldn't make a sound. Then they pointed ahead of them and as I tried to reach out to them again, I stumbled. But that time, I couldn't stop myself and I fell to my knees.

  The jolt woke me immediately, but I found myself not in my bed. Not even in my home. But in the forest. In exactly the position I had dreamt I was.

  I shivered uncontrollably and as I looked down I saw why. I had sleepwalked out of the house and into the forest in nothing but a pair of thick cotton pyjamas.

  I panicked, thinking if I stayed out there like that, I would surely die of hypothermia. I would find myself with the same fate as my mother. Looking around, I tried to see a way back home but I was well and truly lost. Why would Serena do this to me? She wouldn't want me dead, so there must be a reason for her and Neleh to bring me here.

  I recalled the dream and remembered that they had been pointing in the opposite direction. I had no choice but to go where they had told me to go. After a minute of stumbling through the freezing cold, something caught my eye. A flicker of light. I quickened my pace. It wasn't just light, it was fire. Warmth.

  I began to run, not caring about the scratches my poor feet and ankles were picking up as I went. Warmth was much more important to me at that point. As I approached, I could hear another voice. It was the voice of a man humming to himself, in perfect tune. Because it was a kind voice, I didn't feel afraid.

  I approached him. He hadn't heard or seen me so when a few twigs broke underfoot, he jumped and hid immediately behind the large tree he had been leaning on.

  “Who goes there?” he asked.

  The moment the words escaped from his lips, I felt even more at ease and so I rushed towards the fire and sat down, rubbing my poor feet and hands in an effort to warm up as quickly as possible.

  “My name is Lilly Tulugaq,” I responded.

  “You shouldn't be here, Lilly Tulugaq”, he said, “it is not safe for you here. You should be frightened.”

  “Why would I be frightened... of the man that saved my life?” I questioned, recalling that stormy day when I had become trapped beneath an oversized log. Someone had rescued me and carefully placed my unconscious body somewhere safe where he knew I would get immediate attention. That person was the same person that hid behind the tree in front of me. I would have recognised that gentle voice anywhere.

  As he stepped out from his hiding place, although the light did not allow me to see his face, I could see his silhouette and I was not prepared for what I saw.

  His profile was that of a fit man in his early 30s but as he moved to the side, he had something else that should have terrified me. Two huge black wings jutted out from his shoulder blades.

  “What are you?” I whispered, “Are you a raven?”

  He laughed then and shook his head. “I wish I was. I am neither a raven nor a man. Not any more,” he said sadly.

  “I don't understand.”

  “I was once a man but an evil woman cursed me with these wings and now I am neither one thing nor another,” he said, sitting opposite me. It was then that he noticed I was wearing only pyjamas and he stood abruptly, making me jump in the process.

  “Lilly... you could freeze to death like that. What were you thinking walking in the forest with hardly any clothes on? Not even any shoes? Are you insane?” he said as he rushed into what looked like a cave that was well hidden by the trees. Returning, he had old thick socks, walking boots that were several sizes too big and a large woolly blanket.

  As he came closer to me, I caught a glimpse of his face and jumped backwards, suddenly very afraid.

  “You... you're... Sammy Morton,” I muttered, confused and frightened.

  He nodded in response and placed his hand gently on mine.

  “Please don't be afraid of me, Lilly. I am not the killer that some people think I am. Neleh was everything to me. I loved her more than anything in the world. Come, sit closer to the fire and get warm. I will explain. I will tell you the truth about what happened to your sister... and to your mother.”

  His voice was so gentle and soothing, that I believed every word that he said and I instantly found it impossible to believe that someone like him could ever be thought of as a killer.

  As I sat next to the fire, Sammy produced some hot tea for me, made, he said, from herbs he picked from around the forest. Over the years he'd had little choice but to learn to fend for himself – teaching himself all about the different plants and animals. He had to learn how to hide from prying eyes and to defend himself from predators.

  “But before I tell you about any of that, how did you find me here?”

  I explained how I had been led to him by Serena and Neleh. How they had come to me in a dream.

  “I understand now that they led me to you. They want the truth to be known... as I do,” I said, before letting him continue his story about how he ended up in the forest all alone.

  “Neleh and I used to spend a lot of time here in this forest. Although we never dared come this far. Jack and Gabriel would have gone mad. We would just hang out... do what young lovers do,” he said sadly, before going on, “we were going to get married you, know? Neleh and I. But then that awful day happened and our dreams were snatched from us. From all of us. Not just from me and Neleh but from you, your father, Gabriel. All because of that evil witch.”

  Of cour
se that's when things started to click into place. That evil witch. He was talking about Vivian. She had been responsible for a lot more than we had initially thought and I was about to find out just how evil she really was.

  “She killed Neleh,” he said and then he stood in front of me, his wings spread out majestically to his sides.

  I realised that he had probably never spoken about it before. In fact it dawned on me then that I was probably the only person he had spoken to in fourteen years. Fourteen lonely years with no company except for the animals that lived within the trees surrounding us.

  He had kept the heartbreak to himself for a long, long time and it would undoubtedly hurt him immeasurably just to say these words, but I didn't interrupt. I knew the benefit of talking about things. Hopefully this would be the start of his healing process, if it was still so raw.

  “I had never known that Neleh was... was different,” he stuttered.

  “Different?” I asked.

  He looked at me, his wings finally slowly closing behind him, while he appeared to wrestle with something within his head. He nodded and asked me if I knew anything unusual about my family. A family secret, he asked.

  It was then that I understood. Neleh had the gene. She could change – the family just hadn't realised because it hadn't happened before she died. At least if it had, she had never had the chance to tell anyone about it.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “I understand what you mean. Could... could Neleh change?”

  “I never knew about it until that day. In fact I'm not even sure that she knew herself. I'd heard tales of such creatures but believed them to be nothing but fairy tales. We'd ventured a little further into the forest. Neleh was so happy because you'd just been born – she'd always wanted a baby sister and so we were just hanging out together, having fun on our own. We'd left the hospital because we thought Serena and Jack should spend some quality time with you. We had taken a different path than usual and decided to investigate the area a bit more. That's when we found the run-down old cottage, well hidden within the forest.”

  “Neleh was so excited so we'd approached it, assuming it to be empty but it wasn't. When we got closer we heard a woman's voice chanting. I remember Neleh saying the voice was familiar so we'd looked through the window and we'd seen that nurse from the hospital. Vivian. She was wearing a long black robe and was reading from a thick heavy book. It wasn't your average book, either. Some kind of spell book, I'm guessing now,” he said, sighing as he gently threw some more wood onto the fire.

  “What was she saying, Sammy?” I asked.

  “None of it made any sense to me. It sounded foreign. Latin, perhaps. We wouldn't have really thought that much about it but then we saw the photos... all those photos,” he cried. “They were all over the cottage. Photos of Jack, your father. She was clearly obsessed. Neleh became angry and wanted to confront her. I tried to stop her but it was too late. She burst through the door and shouted at her. She was asking 'What the hell are you doing?' over and over. Vivian was taken aback but she just laughed, saying 'He's mine'. Neleh shook her head and said, 'Never. He loves my mother. He'll never leave her'.”

  “What happened next?” I asked, afraid to hear the truth.

  Sammy looked away from me for a moment and closed his eyes, shaking his head. I placed my hand on his shoulder to reassure him. He turned, smiled sadly and continued.

  “Vivian's eyes. They ch... they changed – they became completely red, like the devil's and she just said, 'Well I'll just have to get rid of her... and you'. Vivian lunged forward and grabbed at Neleh's hair. She must have pulled out a handful of it because she yelled in pain. Vivian started laughing and laughing. This evil laugh. I'll never forget it. I tried to pull Neleh away but she suddenly became really strong. Then she changed. Neleh changed right in front of my eyes. She became this... this... big cat. She swiped at Vivian and caught her face. But Vivian killed her. She threw something at her, uttered a few strange words and the cat, Neleh, she just fell to the ground. She was dead. As I picked her up, she suddenly changed back into human form. But she was dead. She was dead,” he cried, devastated.

  Tears slowly fell down my cheeks too as I realised that the woman I had thought was my own mother for years had actually been responsible for the brutal murder of my only sister.

  “How did she do this to you? How did you get these wings?” I asked, horrified.

  “I don't remember exactly what she said to me but I do recall her saying that she had something 'special' in store for me. She lunged at me and pulled at my hair. But I was so devastated about Neleh that I couldn't do anything. I didn't even try. I just picked up her body and walked out of that cottage. She didn't even try to stop me. I carried on walking until I got to Gabriel's house. When he opened the door and saw me there with her dead body, I know he thought it was me. I knew he thought I was responsible. I could tell from his eyes. I laid Neleh's body on the bed and I left. Gabriel was crying by her side and he didn't notice me go. That's when I decided to go back and see if I could catch her myself, but as I walked back through the forest, the most horrendous pain started in my back. It lasted for hours and hours and I couldn't do a thing. I couldn't move. I've never experienced pain like it,” he said.

  “You were growing the wings,” I added and he nodded.

  Sammy explained that he knew perfectly well that he could never return to the town, nor go anywhere near civilisation. Already people thought he was a killer and if they saw his wings, it would have just made things even worse. They would see him as the devil himself.

  “Sammy, I'm so sorry about what happened to you. But we must tell Gabriel the truth. He will believe you now.”

  “Perhaps he will but I can't go near the town. Not like this.”

  “But you did when you rescued me,” I said hopefully, “Why did you do that?” I asked, not having realised the implications before.

  “I couldn't save Neleh but I'll be damned if I let anything happen to her sister,” he said, with a smile.

  I leaned my head on his shoulder, “Thank you”.

  Sammy told me that occasionally he would fly or walk a little closer to town, keeping himself very well hidden where he would listen to the conversations of hikers, just to feel human again. One day he had heard two women talking about a young girl who had returned to live with her grand-father in Powell River. “When they mentioned Gabriel by name I knew it was you,” he said.

  “Sammy, did you know that my mother had died too?” I asked.

  He nodded, “She was murdered too. I think that was the spell Vivian was casting that day. She was trying to get rid of your mother and she succeeded. I'm so sorry, Lilly. If only I had managed to stop her.”

  I reassured him that it would have been impossible. Nothing could have stopped her. Nothing at all.

  For the next few hours, Sammy and I talked about what life had been like for the two of us over the years... me growing up in a kind of prison but not realising it until recently and him living in his own prison, hiding in the forest. We felt like life would begin to change again for us both, now that we had found each other. He was an important part of my family and I had to convince the rest of my family that this was so. But more importantly, I had to convince them that he was no killer. That Vivian was responsible for much more than just taking me and my father away from them.

  But first, I had to get home.