The Dreamer (The Fall Series)

by Abbey, May Nicole

  Billy cried, and I set it all down to go to him. He had gotten his plump arm caught between the slats of his new headboard. We are trying to get him used to his new bed before the baby comes and takes his crib. It has been difficult for him.

  One thing after another followed, and it wasn’t until almost ten o’clock that night when I could return to the records.

  I gingerly removed the dry, cracked leather ring that held it all together and unrolled it on my lap. A single candle burned beside me, and I heard Mallory stir in our bed. I tilted the pad towards the light to read it. It was written in modern shorthand. It was barely legible.

  I had a dream once that I flew.

  I gasped and dropped the pad and the candle blew out.

  “Rachel?” Mallory asked sleepily. And then more sharply, “Rachel?” He sat up.

  “I’m here,” I whispered.

  “What are you doing?”

  “N-nothing important,” I said after a slight hesitation.

  “Come to bed then,” he mumbled sulkily and lay back down.

  I smiled. How much he can sound like our two year old sometimes.

  I couldn’t get to the ancient documents until the next day when Billy was napping and Jonnie was visiting the neighbor. With eager hands, I unrolled it. And there it was again. I hadn’t imagined it.

  I had a dream once that I flew.

  The document was worn and faded and impossible to read in places. But I studied it absolutely absorbed for hours.

  It told of a woman named Serena Metcalfe. She had been born in 1952. And at the age of 25, in the middle of her doctorate, she threw herself off the Empire State Building.

  She found herself in Egypt 2361BC.

  I read entranced as she explained how the Maharahi Tomb, instead of mysteriously empty — as it was when I had studied it — had actually been ransacked and utterly destroyed when she had been studying it in 1977. Things had not just been stolen, but the entire site had been destroyed.

  She had actually changed history! The pharaoh’s tomb had been ransacked when she studied it. And yet, when I had been studying it, it had merely been empty, utterly void.

  And now … I’d changed it again. His tomb was now at the bottom of the ocean. That is how it would be studied from now on.

  I continued reading.

  It was a very brief history. She explained that her jump back in time was for one purpose only, to ensure the safety of a precious stone and eventually to save the tomb site so that thousands of years in the future archeologists could unearth it whole and unmolested and study it. “The quest,” she explained, “being all important.”

  But when she met the man who would one day be pharaoh, whose possessions she had determined to protect, she fell in love with him, and he married her. And he married no one else, despite the culture permitting and expecting multiple wives.

  They had many children, and eventually the pharaoh died. His cousin hated him. She explained about her husband’s great belief in his gods, and how he lived in fear that his tomb would be disturbed by his vicious and vindictive cousin, preventing him from ultimate peace in the next life. Serena vowed to him that it would never happen.

  After his death, the ceremonies were carried out. But the night before the tomb was sealed, she told her son to take his father and his treasury far away. The bitter cousin was determined to destroy the tomb, only to disrupt the peace of the pharaoh. He would search and search. So the pharaoh must be taken far across the desert and into the sea. She knew of a place. And she drew a map.

  But to ensure that if the map ever got into the wrong hands, it would still be illegible, she made a key … in a language she knew only herself and her children could read. She had taught them shorthand.

  She wrote these records because she had to. She wrote because she was a writer. But she wrote in a language illegible to all, and placed the writings in the tomb, expecting that it would never be read.

  The son must have done as he was asked. But for one thing. He didn’t destroy the key, as she had asked him. I pondered how the map and key had survived all these years. The throne was overtaken by another branch of the Maharahi family … perhaps this hated cousin, not long after the pharaoh’s death.

  Serena died soon after the pharaoh. Maybe her son, ousted from his kingdom, his mother gone, had saved the map and key against her wishes for sentimental reasons. And from there they were passed down from generation to generation, even copied when the originals disintegrated. A lover’s story attached to them, perhaps. “Your great-great-great grandmother loved the pharaoh so much that ….”

  I re-read the last words. “I came to ensure the stone for myself, and the treasure would be found intact. And instead, I ensured it would never be found at all. It was what he wanted. And I loved him.”

  Last night Mallory and I hosted a dinner, including among our guests powerful politicians and magistrates in honor of Mallory’s latest post: he was entering Parliament.

  I watched him interact with men of power and their wives. He was poised and at ease. Our youngest catapulted down the stairs and attached himself to Mallory’s leg. He lifted the child and introduced him to the crowd with exaggerated seriousness and prestige, as though he were a lofty ambassador. People bowed good-naturedly and shook the boy’s chubby hand.

  I approached and collected my child and took him back to Bess, who was coming in search of him. An image flashed in my mind of that first day in the shop all those years ago when Mallory shouted at the shopkeeper and slammed his hand on the counter, frightening the young girls.

  On my way back to the gathering, Mallory came to meet me, lacing my arm through his. I looked at him and nearly froze.

  It was then that I knew … I knew why it all had happened.

  That I had a dream once that I flew.

  I smiled, my feet naturally following his, and I could feel the glow radiating from my face as I watched his profile. I had been born far away from him, led a life utterly from his reach, and I had a dream. A dream that consumed me, consumed my whole life, and I gave up everything I had to attain it.

  I had a dream once that I flew.

  I thought I had come to transform the world, a great calling and mission to do something enormous to change the course of history. And then the treasure exploded and disappeared, and I thought everything had changed. And that was exactly right. Just … not in the way I had anticipated.

  I had come for him.

  A single man. A sole person. He was my purpose.

  I had been dropped into the ocean, practically straight onto his ship, thrusting us fatally and inexorably together. Stumbling in search of my objective, I upset and toppled his austere, unhappy existence and offered him escape. I didn’t fear him, even when I had good reason to, so consumed was I with irrelevant things. I counseled and lectured him and, quite unconsciously, had shown him the path from cruelty and loneliness to safety and security … the life for which he longed. No one else in the world could have done what I did.

  And because of my influence, he might change the world. Because of what I have done.

  If it hadn’t been for me, he would most likely be out there still floating on the deep blue sea and into the endless horizon that goes on and on until there’s nothing left, sailing without purpose, with men he hated, simply because the sea was all he knew.

  I did that.

  And I –I alone – held this delicious secret.

  Not only of the miraculous and phenomenal truth of my appearance on his ship, but why I came and what I had done – and am still doing – for all mankind.

  I smiled at him.

  “What?” he asked suspiciously.

  I paused, and then looked ahead of me, nodding to a tipsy Marchioness. “We received a package today,” I murmured.

  “From whom?”

  “Do I need to remind you that our third child is due soon?”

  He stopped and looked at me, understanding dawning on his face. “Fredrick, blast him
,” he said with comical doom. “How on earth does he always know? What’s in it this time?”

  “A priceless diamond. Red. The rarest in all the world and the most beautiful thing I have ever beheld. At least twenty karats.”

  “The Sun of New Holland? Confound it!”

  “New Holland? Oh, you mean Australia.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Is that what it’s called? The Sun of New Holland?”

  “It’s only the most famous diamond in the world. Where is it?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “You didn’t take it to the authorities?”

  “Not yet!” I laughed.

  “Why not?”

  “Because of tonight.”

  “Good thinking. I wish he’d quit doing this to us.”

  “There was a note with it.”

  “What did it say?”

  “He must have heard of your nomination. He called you a … what was it? A ‘dastardly turncoat bent on self-destruction.’”

  “That’s nothing new.”

  “He vowed never to let the world forget of your connection with him, adding that you can only get so far into purgatory with him to thwart you. He would save you in spite of yourself.”

  We both laughed, Mallory with some reluctance.

  “What else did he say?”

  “There was a note for me. Moral support. He is anticipating a little Fredrick or Fredericka. I thought it was a nice idea.”

  “He can wait until h –”

  “Captain,” I whispered with a laugh. “Hush!”

  He shut his mouth.

  “We can return the diamond to authorities later,” I told him. “I believe they have come to expect us. Every time we have a child, something outrageous is looted.”

  That night as we prepared for bed Mallory asked me why I looked so smugly pleased with myself.

  As I coyly, though awkwardly, removed my stockings, I replied, “Just how do you expect the wife of the most handsome, most intelligent member of Parliament to look?”

  He smirked wryly. “Even when it’s all due to you?”

  “What a thing to say,” I added with a smile, “Not all.”

  There was silence. And when I clumsily straightened, I found him watching me soberly. “What?” I huffed.

  He came to me suddenly, a touch of fear in his eyes. He sat down and took me in his arms. “What is it, Captain?” I asked with some concern.

  He laughed brokenly. “You’ll think I’m mad … to feel like this just as everything seems to be going our way. I know you don’t want to tell me of your past, and I accept it. I sometimes suspect I prefer not to know. But … every now and then, when I wake up in bed and you’re not beside me, or when I lose sight of you in a crowded room, as happened once tonight, I cannot help but become afraid … afraid that you can disappear out of my life as abruptly as you appeared into it. And a fever seizes me, and I have to look for you.”

  I laughed in his arms. “I’m not going anywhere. You’ve seen to that. Look what you’ve done. I can hardly walk around the room.”

  He smiled half-heartedly.

  I sobered and touched his face. “I see. Levity is inappropriate. Forgive me. I thought I could laugh you from your fears, but that is not so. Of course not. Your unhappy past warns you to be cautious. And our unusual introduction does little to encourage feelings of stability. But I think … yes, I am sure it would comfort you to know that I very deliberately and forcefully thrust myself out of the life I knew, and it took every ounce of courage and determination I had to do it. You once said I ran away. You were right. I did run away. And surely you must know I would never run away from you … or the boys. How could I? When I would be lost without you, and you would be lost without me?”

  He smiled briefly. “Is it as bad as that?”

  I looked at him in all seriousness. “I think it is. Just look at what we were without each other. You were tormented and broken. I was even worse. Limping along, blindly unaware of my pathetic condition. But together we’re an impenetrable powerhouse. We’re unstoppable!”

  I had assured him. His face lost its strain as he laughed at my zealous choice of words. His eyes fell to the cross and lightly touched it. “You used to hate that.”

  I held it protectively. “I know.”

  “But not now?”

  I shook my head. “It was the answer to everything.”

  *** *** ***

  I make an end now. I had to finish the memoirs simply because every story needs an ending. But this story will never be read.

  Now that Mallory is on his way, we must tread carefully. He has enemies, those who would love to see him fail, love to utterly destroy him. They have, and will continue, to dig into his past … and mine. They are welcome to, of course. There is nothing regarding my history that they can possibly find.

  Except these notes.

  Imagine what would happen if they were found and interpreted. It would not be impossible … and less so as the years go by. Even if they go undiscovered for the rest of our lives, these papers can easily outlive us … as they outlived Serena Metcalfe, even though she buried them under the sea. They had still been unearthed.

  Everything Mallory has done or will ever do, would be questioned if they discovered his wife claimed to be a time traveler. Years later, generations later, no matter what he did or how he excelled, there would still be questions, even ridicule.

  I couldn’t bear that.

  I won’t bear it.

  So when I found these notes that needed an ending, I ended them. But no one will ever read my words. For when I have written the last sentence, I shall put all my papers into the fire and watch them burn.

  He is more important than anything else. Can you understand that? More important than fame, than acclaim. More important than academia and knowledge. Indeed, more important than truth itself.

  Against all odds, in rebellion of all established law and understanding, in defiance of my academic colleagues and associates, I once successfully traveled through time.

  I know it. And God knows it. And it is enough.

  I am greatly gratified.

  I had a dream once that I flew.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five