by Sarah Noffke
With a calm resurgence, Mum threw her large shoulders back and raised her chin. A twitch of a smile touched the side of her mouth. “I think what you meant to say, Lyza, is that you misunderstand the Middling race, is that right?”
Too much patience. Mum always had too much patience for everyone. Me. Lyza. The bloody locals. She should have told us all to go to bloody hell ten times over. But she never did.
“No, that’s not what I mean, Mary,” Lyza said to our mum. She hadn’t called her “Mum” since she came into her Dream Travel gifts and realized Mum was a Middling. Lyza narrowed her eyes at our mother and then reached out and pushed the cutting board and the vegetables on it to the ground. Dozens of tiny diced onions sprayed onto the ground, sending a pungent odor through the small cottage. “What I mean is that if you don’t soon get a leash on your little Renny then that psychopath is going to cause real trouble, and not the kind that you can get the vicar to cover for. You may not see it but he’s trouble. He may be powerful, but he doesn’t need coddling. He’s in need of a heavy hand. When are you going to see that?”
“For all the king’s men,” my pops said, walking through the open door, closing it behind him. “I can hear you clear on the other side of Peavey. What’s got your knickers all mussed up this time, Lyza?” Tall and lean, my father made his way across the house in a few strides. Gently as ever he leaned over his daughter and touched her shoulder. She softened, but only slightly.
“Ren,” she said through clenched teeth.
Pops turned and surveyed me. Raised a curious eyebrow in my direction. “Ren, what have you done now?”
“All right, well, I might have told a fib about Lyza watching me bathe,” I said. “But to be quite honest I read her thoughts that one time and know she’s curious about the male anatomy.”
“Boys tell fibs!” Lyza screamed again. “What he’s doing is abusing his powers and you have to make him stop. He made Dr. Simon think—”
“That you’re an abusive little witch,” I said, cutting her off. “Was that wrong? Do you not throw Mum’s food back in her face every chance you get? Don’t you make side remarks to Pops about how he’s a prat for marrying a Middling? And don’t even try to play the innocent card by pretending you haven’t wanted a one-off chance with Jimmy even though he’s three years younger. That does make you a bit of a perve, doesn’t it? And isn’t it a bit hypocritical that Middlings aren’t good enough to make your food, but you’ll entertain the idea of snogging one?”
I knew that would do the trick and right on schedule Lyza lunged for me, but my pops, who was all arms, reached out and pulled her back before her claws caught me. “Now, now,” Pops chided in a soothing tone. “Lyza, I think you need to take a few steadying breaths.”
With her pale arms locked in his grasp she shuddered out tattered, angry breaths and regarded me with a cold stare. “You,” she snarled. “One day, I’ll make you pay.” Then she skirted her eyes around my features and her eyes perked up. “Actually, I won’t have to. For all your talents you’re still going to end up miserable and alone. I’m sure of it.”
Lyza had one gift as a Dream Traveler. She could see people’s fortunes. Or as in my case, destinies. Fortune didn’t sound like the right word, since I was sure she was right. I knew I’d end up alone.
“That’s fine,” I said, bolstering myself against my sister’s angry standoff. “I’d rather be alone than a part of a circus, which is the only place I see fitting for your type. You can tell Middling children how destitute they make the earth by living on it. What a glorious life for you. Then you can curl up with the fire-breathing man or whatever other serpent takes you in for breeding.”
She shook my father off her. He let her go, probably sensing she was retreating a bit. “Ren, one day, I’ll make you pay for this.”
“Ditto, dear Lyzie. Ditto,” I said, a calm superiority written on my face.
Chapter Four
“You don’t have to antagonize your sister, you know,” Mum said, kneeling down to scoop up handfuls of the onion Lyza sent to the floor and into various nooks and crannies. She’d flown out of the house in an angry rage, slamming the front door behind her, almost busting it off the hinges.
I crouched down and grabbed pieces of mushy onion from the floor. “No, I don’t have to, but it sure gives my life meaning,” I said.
“Reynold, how do you want to deal with this?” my mum said to my pops, who was standing and leaning, both his hands on the dining room table. With a grunt Mum stood from her kneeling position. Her back looked to be bothering her again. She pinned a hand on her lower spine and stretched, a grimace pressed onto her face.
“Well, I’ll talk to the vicar and the school, but honestly I think some counseling wouldn’t hurt dear Lyzie. Though she’s going to be on a real war path after this, worse than usual,” my pops said, turning and giving me a disappointed stare.
One might think my sister would cool off and find forgiveness for my naughty behavior. That stupid git would be wrong. Lyza wasn’t the forgiving type. She also wasn’t the “cool off” type. That hotheaded redhead took all anger, stuffed it inside, and let it simmer. Then one day when her hostile emotions had broken the boiling point she’d deposit a bucket of manure in my bed. That’s what she did to me for my last stunt. In retrospect, I thought the whole thing was quite entertaining. It must have been absolutely awful to carry that mess all the way from Gretchen’s farm. But the idea that my poor mum had to clean it up was absolutely infuriating. Lyza probably realized our mum wouldn’t allow me to risk getting sick cleaning up such a mess. It was a win-win prank for my sister.
For spreading the lie that she was a pedophile Lyza would simmer for a long time, waiting for the perfect opportunity to exact her revenge on me. I guess I never realized how scarring that particular trick of mine was on my poor sister. It must have been a big deal for her to later risk manslaughter charges.
“Renny, what are we going to do with you?” Mum said, chunking another handful of onions into the waste bin. She looked at a complete loss, like any option she was considering was ridiculous. And it was. My parents stopped trying to punish me a long time ago. It’s not just that it didn’t work, but also that it seemed to pain them. Usually they shrugged off my antics and assigned me more bible studies. They were absolutely convinced that if their faith remained steady then one day I’d atone for my past misdeeds and live a life of purity.
And shockingly, half the time I think they were slightly proud of my behavior. My parents were boring people who lived boring lives. Sometimes they actually looked relieved when they heard about one of my stunts, like they finally had a bit of entertainment after all these lame uneventful days. I pictured it gave them something to chat about in front of the evening fire.
One time my father told me that people were who they were and trying to change them was futile and only caused unnecessary heartache. That’s probably why they didn’t try to change Lyza and make her not be such an evil bitch. And it definitely explains why they never guilted me or gave me long lectures for creating chaos in Peavey. I’d get a heavy sigh and a slight smile. That was the extent of my punishment from them. However, my tricks were getting elaborate enough that now the town was trying to punish me. But so far my mother had persuaded the townspeople to keep my punishments to counseling sessions with Dr. Simon. This worked for me because I found psychoanalytics rather fascinating. Psychoanalysis is a useful tool and who better to learn it from than a psychiatrist.
Mum knelt down to grab more onion that she’d just spied lying under the toe kick of the cabinet. Pops laid a hand on her shoulder, making her rise. “Let me, Mary,” he said, scooping the three pieces into his hand. He was the same age as Mum, but since he was a Dream Traveler he aged a bit slower. My parents had Lyza and me later in life. When I was fifteen, my parents were in their sixties, but Mum looked ten years older than Pops. Gray streaked her vibrant red curls and she wore quite a few more wrinkles than her husband. Pops still had m
ostly brown hair, although it was starting to thin in places.
Mum mopped her hairline beaded with sweat. She was cool as a glacier during confrontations with Lyza but afterward her true nervousness came out. Never would Mum allow Lyza to spy her hurt and disappointment. She gave the air of not caring that her only daughter detested her for the simple fact that she was a different race of people. And even though half that blood ran through Lyza’s veins, it didn’t matter. Lyza was incredibly brilliant at poor logic.
“Why don’t I take you both to McGreggor’s pub for dinner?” Pops said, wrapping an arm around my mum’s shoulders, probably sensing her state growing slightly more fragile.
“That would be lovely, Reynold,” she said, casting a disappointed glance at the empty cutting board.
“Well, then it’s settled,” he said with a wide smile. “And Ren, you can invite Jimmy to join us.”
We never went out for a meal. It just wasn’t something people in town did too often. Probably because we were all poor as shit. My father could have made more than a meager living, but he chose to live in a town that had no economy.
The food at McGreggor’s wasn’t something I’d classify as edible. Old farmers mostly went there to drink. That’s what people who live in the holy pits of hell do. The wealthy and successful drink to celebrate. The people in Peavey drank to forget they made the wrong decision to live in the backwoods of England. But that’s not what kind of people my parents were. Actually they were neither losers nor winners. They were just simple people. That’s it. All logic fails to explain why they did half the things they did, but they weren’t losers.
“Firstly, Jimmy can’t go to dinner and secondly neither can I,” I said, not looking forward to the disappointment I knew was about to plaster itself across my mum’s face. And it showed up only seconds after I finished my sentence.
“But Renny, you have to eat dinner,” she said, her Irish accent suddenly more pronounced. It always got stronger when she was upset. Even after all those years of her working to hide it, it still flared up, especially when she was tired. And by the look in her pale green eyes, she was growing more exhausted by the minute.
“As a member of a first-world country I’m proud to say I actually don’t have to eat at every mealtime. I’m not hungry and definitely not at risk of wasting away,” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest. I was neither skinny nor fat. My body compensated for my ridiculous hair and eye color. I was exactly average in height, weight, and build.
“Oh, but you could still join us, couldn’t you?” Mum said, her voice bordering on hope. “You wouldn’t have to eat.”
“Yeah, but the thing is I don’t like to watch other people eat,” I said.
“Since when?” Pops said, giving me a skeptical glare.
“Since now,” I said, returning his look with my own stubborn one. The truth was that I might have used mind control to convince the bar maid, Sally, to mess around with me behind the old, dirty pub. One of the many problems with having telepathy linked to touch is that it usually spoils most foreplay. Girls just can’t keep their thoughts neutral. They always have to be thinking about the future and babies and marriage. I ended things with Sally a bit prematurely and had been avoiding her ever since. I was fairly certain she wasn’t going to take a polite “thanks, but no.” The thing about people is they love being rejected. They are always begging for more.
“And how come you already know that Jimmy can’t join us?” Mum asked, obviously not wanting to drop this. “Maybe if he joined then you wouldn’t mind watching us eat. Or maybe you’ll get hungry and change your mind.”
See, people love being rejected. Dodging these questions was getting me nowhere. I gave a long, fake yawn. “I’m not changing my mind because I have other plans. And Jimmy can’t make it because his old man usually gets drunk about right now. He’s probably knocking old Jim around presently which means he can’t make dinner,” I said plainly.
Mum’s red curls swayed on her head when she shook it, exasperated. “Oh, Renny, I really wish you wouldn’t make such bad jokes. They aren’t funny.”
From the cracked expression on my pops’ face I think he disagreed. Unable to control it, he finally burst out laughing.
“Oh, Reynold, don’t laugh,” my mum said, slapping him gently on the arm. But then she too let out a small chuckle.
“It’s just that he delivers these lines with such coolness. It’s almost like he’s telling the truth the way he says these things so blankly,” Pops said, hooking his long arm around my neck and affectionately pulling me into him. He ruffled my spiky hair with his knuckles. “You’ve got that deadpan routine down and I love it.”
I was telling the truth. I never lied to my parents. Not once. But they mistook my eloquent style for humor. And since I didn’t want to spoil what would probably be a nice meal for them, I didn’t tell them otherwise.
“You said you had other plans,” Mum said, not asking the question that was piquing her interest.
“I did,” I said, shrugging off my father, who was one of few people who I didn’t mind touching and hearing his thoughts. There wasn’t much to them. Nothing nefarious. Nothing interesting. Just regular thoughts. I strolled for my bedroom at the back of the house.
“I think your mum was curious what these plans are that are keeping you from dinner,” Pops said to my back.
“I gathered that much,” I said, continuing my trek.
At the door to my room I turned and faced my parents, who were still staring at me, unreadable expressions on their faces. “Oh, fine,” I said with a tired sigh. “I’m popping off to Jamaica for the night.”
“Now?” Mum said, eyeing the clock on the wall. “It isn’t even close to bedtime.”
“Right, well good thing I can dream travel no matter the time. Have a nice meal,” I said, shutting my bedroom door behind me.
Chapter Five
When I was growing up we never went anywhere. Ever. Not to London or Sussex or Hampshire. I’m pretty certain crossing the English Channel would have been out of the bloody question. It would have been likened to taking a rocket to the moon. My father, as a Dream Traveler, could go anywhere in place and time but I sensed he probably didn’t use our God-given talent too much. He preferred to sleep. Just plain old sleep, like a Middling. I think he honestly felt guilty. He didn’t want to go off having adventures my mother couldn’t enjoy. I think he preferred to believe that one day his dreams would link with Mum’s. And hell, they could have. Anything is possible. Dream interaction happens way more frequently than most people realize. That’s right. That lovely lady you dreamed about who tore off your clothes was also dreaming about you. I firmly believe there are a lot of one-night stands going on in dreams but most can shrug the whole thing off as “not really happening.”
Here’s the thing, folks. Listen up, because I’m not repeating this. Dreams are real. For Dream Travelers they’re absolutely real. We can do and go anywhere when we sleep. But even for Middlings there’s lucid dreaming. And what happens in a Middling’s dream can affect their physical body and mental state. That sounds real to me. Still, with all the cool potentials I can obtain with my dreams I find pure dream travel to be the best.
After hearing the door shut, and knowing for sure my parents had continued with their dinner plans, I laid myself out on my brand new mattress. I closed my eyes and allowed my conscious mind to direct my path. This is the skill that connects me to my other gifts of mind control, hypnosis, and telepathy. It’s harnessing the consciousness of dreams that allows for Dream Travelers to have higher-functioning brains.
There are a lot of laws that govern dream travel and not all of them are firm, but there are a few that I know are. The first is that the experience of dream travel is the same for everyone. One closes their eyes. Keeps their thoughts focused on a time and location. And with a firm intention the Dream Traveler will fall into what in essence is the delivery device. It’s a silver tunnel. A worm hole. If the Dream Tr
aveler gets this far then they can sit back and relax. The tunnel does all the work. It’s the fabric of human consciousness. There’s only one. One mind. One consciousness. It creates this universe. And the dream travel tunnels are its pathways. They can deliver a human’s consciousness to Morocco or a random cornfield in Nebraska. And they aren’t linear so they also have the dimension of time built into them. I have the privilege of watching any point in history and catching every sunrise in the last century.
However, for that night’s adventure I stuck my consciousness in the present. What most newbie Dream Travelers learn the hard way is that time travel is riddled with potential threats. Going too far into the past kills brain cells. If a Dream Traveler goes back in time to watch Christ walk on water then they will wake up a vegetable, if they wake up at all, that is. And if a Dream Traveler goes into the future then they can create splits in the folds of time. Most know them as déjà vus. They happen because some imbecile decided to spy on the future and created holes. And a real idiot will try to make changes to events that have already happened or affect events that will happen. We can thank those assholes for earthquakes and a whole host of other natural disasters. That’s right, mess with time and the earth destroys itself. It’s called a built-in fail-safe. God thinks of everything.
Thankfully most buffoons don’t do something so severe that it messes with the whole ecosystem. Most just create schisms in their own consciousness with past or future self-interaction. Why people supposedly as intelligent as Dream Travelers think they can go back in time and spy on their younger selves continues to elude me. And these first-class morons are the ones who travel into the future to spy who they become. Imagine their surprise when they find their future selves in a catatonic state, drooling on their paper nightgown. They wonder how they ended up in a mental hospital. Well, dumbass, the trip you just took to the future is responsible for zapping the life right out of your body. Yes, some of these laws can be flexed but there’s hardly ever a good enough reason to chance it. I’m way too brilliant to risk a single brain cell.