by Shannon Page
I stood on my front porch and pulled out the cell phone again, trying to figure out the Lyft thing. It was hopelessly complicated. What even was an “app”? Why did humans have to change things all the time? I’d just gotten this new-fangled phone when I was dating Raymond. Last year.
Finally, I gave up and sent a burst of magic into the phone. Moments later, a gray sedan pulled up in front of my house and a slightly addled young man drove me to Raymond’s apartment.
I magically added money directly to the driver’s bank account before hopping out of the car. Well, not hopping, exactly, in my condition; more like levering myself out. In any event, I made it to the apartment door and rang Raymond’s bell. He buzzed me up, and then I was at his apartment door.
“Hi.” He stood in the doorway, looking good enough to eat. His red-blond hair tumbled down loose over his shoulders, a little damp and smelling freshly of his shampoo. I smiled at him, genuinely glad to see him. Remembering very well what I’d seen in him in the first place.
He looked me in the eye a moment, then, with a small shrug, opened his strong arms for a hug.
I went for it. As I got there, my belly pushed against him. He tensed and pulled back, looking down. “Oh. Oh.”
“Yeah.” An awkward blush colonized my face. No matter how much I’d anticipated this moment, nothing could prepare one for actually being there. “I’ve got lots to tell you.”
“I guess so.” He lifted his gaze to mine. His face was a cascade of emotions—surprise, fear, curiosity—happiness? We stood there a moment longer, then he collected himself and said, “Uh, come on in.”
I followed him into his cluttered studio apartment. He’d clearly made some attempt to tidy up since our call—most of the laundry was in a pile in the corner rather than strewn everywhere, and I saw a few dripping dishes in the drainer—but it was mostly how I remembered it.
He closed and bolted the door behind me before stepping back and looking me over. “How far along?”
I lowered myself to sit on the futon and tried to ignore my conscience. I knew what he was really asking. “Almost seven months.”
I watched him do the math. “So it’s…?”
The moment of truth. Except I had to lie. Gregorio had made that perfectly clear. I had to lie even to humans…and most particularly to this one. Did I imagine I felt the ring heating up on my finger, just the tiniest bit? It had to be my imagination. The magic didn’t work that way.
Unless Gregorio wanted it to, of course.
No matter. “No. You are not the father.”
“Oh.” He sat down at the other end of the futon, a good distance from me. “Um. Congratulations?”
I gave him a sad smile. “Thank you. I’m really excited, actually. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“Yeah. Okay. Wow.” He glanced at my belly again. “So…you wanna tell me about…the father?”
I nodded. “His name is Jeremy. You met him once, actually.” He looked confused, which was when I remembered that I’d blanked his memory of that whole terrible evening. Rats. “I mean, I think you did,” I backtracked. “It was right when everything was so crazy. When Logan died—my friend, who I told you about.” That was true, at least.
“Yeah. Oh.” He relaxed a bit, his natural sympathy bubbling up. Making me feel even worse for the lie.
But I pressed on. “He’s the son of one of the important leaders of our intentional community. But our relationship…” I’d thought all this through, I’d been thinking it through for days now, but telling it to Raymond’s face was not the same as rehearsing it alone at home. “It’s not…I’m not sure where it’s going, exactly. This wasn’t something I planned, or chose. There’s a lot up in the air.”
“Ah.” An arranged marriage, I could almost see him thinking. And she’s not happy with it. Oh, why did I have to do this? Why couldn’t he be furious with me? Why did he have to be so kind, so understanding?
Why couldn’t I just have made it work with him?
Yes, I know, I know. But it still didn’t make any of this any easier.
“I still live alone,” I blurted out. “But I’m—you know, concentrating on this right now.” I patted my belly.
“Right, sure.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but didn’t.
“Anyway, I wanted you to know.” I gave him a gentle smile. “It was hard to think of how to tell you, which is why it took so long. I know that doesn’t make it better.” Big old coward that I am. “I can go now, if you like.”
“No, no, stay,” he said quickly. “I…I guess I just need a minute to get used to it. I knew you said you had something to tell me, but…that’s kinda not what I expected.”
“I bet not!” I laughed, nervously, but also relieved. He shifted awkwardly on the futon. “Well, it’s good to see you.”
“I always like to see you, Callie.” He was smiling, but his voice was sad. “You look good. You look really good.”
“Um. Thanks.” More silence ensued, until I remembered what else he’d said on the phone. “So, what’s your news?”
He suddenly brightened. “You’re not gonna believe this!”
“Try me.”
“Okay, so, remember my band?”
“Of course.” I laughed. “How could I forget? The Warm Nuggets will always have a place in my heart.”
He snickered. “Yeah, sure. Well anyway, we got asked to open for Demonhead on a big tour! All the way through So-Cal and then the Southwest after that.”
“That’s amazing! When do you go?”
“We got back two weeks ago.”
“Oh!” Right. We had been very thoroughly out of touch. “So…how did it go?”
“It was awesome, major awesome.” He relaxed against the back of the futon, his face filling with delight. “Everything went right—Demonhead was awesome, the crowds were awesome, the cities were awesome, the reviews were awesome, the money was awesome—”
“Yes, that all sounds very awesome.” I tried not to giggle.
“Oh, sorry—I’m doing it again. Peter says that’s why I can’t write the lyrics. Okay—it was incredible, amazing, extraordinary, super-duper. How’s that?” He cocked his head at me. Oh Blessed Mother, he was adorable.
“Much better,” I said, forcing down inconvenient warm and tender feelings. “But don’t let Peter boss you around. He’s no poet himself.”
“True that. But hey, I don’t care. ’Cause you know why?”
“No, why?”
“It’s the best part of all! Just before the end of the tour, this dude comes to meet with us, and guess what! We signed a recording deal with TCA! They want three albums, and they’re giving us huge piles of money! We already dropped a single on SoundCloud, and they’ve made a YouTube channel for us. I’m gonna be a rock star!”
“Oh my god that’s amazing!” I said. “You guys totally deserve that!” I’d always thought they were pretty good, but when did that ever make a difference? Any big city had a wealth of talented musicians, and San Francisco was no exception. “So you get to quit construction?”
He laughed. “I kinda already did, by not coming home when I said I would.”
“Your own father fired you?”
“Well…we agreed to go our own ways in this, is kinda what he said.” Now he looked sheepish, but still very happy.
“Raymond, this is fantastic. Congratulations.”
“Thanks! So of course we’re gonna have a huge mad party! Everyone’s coming, everyone. We’re renting out the Rat’s Nest Bar for the night, my sister’s springing for the food—cuz, well, we haven’t actually got the first check yet.”
“Ah.” Oh, no, I thought. I hope this is real…
“But on SoundCloud, a little bit of cash has started to come in,” he went on, still excited.
I nodded, though I had no idea what he was talking about. “Great.”
“So the band’s gonna play a set, and the audience will all vote on what tracks we should put on the fi
rst album.” He looked at me earnestly. “Will you come?”
“Yes, that sounds like fun. When?”
“The 17th.”
A week and a half from now. “I’ll be there.”
His excitement was infectious. It was such good news, such a one-in-a-million shot—at something he’d always dreamed about. It was probably real. He’d said they’d signed a contract, at least, and that money was coming in from some cloud thing. Still smiling, I leaned toward him, almost without thinking. He pulled me into his arms again, side-hugging me around all this baby.
And I tried to ignore that familiar, comforting scent.
After a minute, I drew back. “So—”
“Yeah, I know, I know.” He looked sadly at my belly, then into my eyes. “Jeez, I didn’t even offer you anything to drink! Except, um…” He looked at my middle again.
“Raymond, it’s all right, I don’t need anything. And I really can’t stay very long; it’s late, and, you know, I need more sleep than I used to…”
He snorted. “That’s a change! Can you stand it?”
“Yes, I might almost need as much sleep as you now.”
What a dumb thing to say. Now we were both remembering being in bed together, and feeling even more sad.
If I didn’t know I was forty-five years old, I’d think I was fourteen.
I hugged him again and took my leave before the awkwardness could bloom further.
— CHAPTER SEVEN —
I probably shouldn’t have even tried sleeping the night after I went to see Raymond; I was too stirred up, with emotions and memories, second-guessing myself up one side and down the other. Usually when I can’t sleep, I head up to the lab to poke around with my Petri dishes, or go harvest things at the secret night garden, or read a book. But my belly felt heavy and my legs were tired; I knew my body needed sleep.
I just couldn’t convince it to fall there.
So I tossed and turned, and rolled onto my side and eased a pillow under my bulge, and then shifted around and redid the whole arrangement on the other side.
Eventually, I did fall asleep, and then I really wished I hadn’t.
The dream started innocuously enough. I was walking through some sort of retail space, clothing maybe, looking for something but not finding what I wanted. I came across two small white cats. They were lying on one of the shop’s shelves and started that cute rolling-over-and-gazing-at-you thing that cats do when they want you to pay attention to them. They were adorable, and identical; I walked up and petted them both. They squirmed with delight under my hand. “Nice kitties,” I said. “Pretty kitties.”
I suddenly became aware of a human woman standing behind me and just a little off to the side, as if she wanted to talk to me but was hanging back. Shy, or polite; reluctant for some reason. I turned to look at her, but I was also still looking at and petting both cats, in the impossible-is-also-normal way of dreams.
“You have to adopt them,” she said.
“Oh, no, I can’t, I have a cat at home.”
The human woman moved closer, almost menacingly close. Though in my waking life, such a thing wouldn’t frighten me at all—I could zap any human unconscious with a flick of my fingers—I grew scared in the dream, unable to move away or to do anything to stop her. “You must take them home,” she said.
“I told you, I can’t. I’m sure someone will take them. They’re very nice cats.” All this while, the cats were still rolling around, being adorable, enjoying my petting. Ignoring the strange human woman.
“They came from an abusive home,” she said. “I rescued them. The man was hitting my sister, and he was going to kill the cats.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that. I’m glad they’re safe now.”
She leaned even closer to me. I could see the pores on her face, smell the cured meat she’d had for dinner, plus a whiff of stale wine. It turned my stomach, but I still could not move or do anything besides pet the cats. “You have to adopt them.”
“I can’t,” I protested yet again. Weak. Ineffective. She was not hearing me. I wished someone could come help me…I tried to think about calling out, about reaching for my magic, reaching through the æther, but it was like I was in a magical straitjacket.
And part of me wanted to help! They were adorable cats; I didn’t want them to suffer. I certainly didn’t want them to go back to an abusive home. (And dream-me didn’t even think about the weird woman’s sister, wonder why she was only concerned about the cats…) But I couldn’t. It was simply impossible. But I could not make her understand that.
Callie? It was a familiar voice, pushing through the fog. I couldn’t place it, though.
“You have to take the cats.”
I struggled as hard as I could to pull away from the entire situation, to get even the tiniest bit of movement out of my limbs…I managed to take one step. It was as though I was drowned in syrup.
Then I felt a sharp pain in my hand. I wheeled around, suddenly able to move very well. Both cats were biting me, sinking their sharp fangs into my hand, drawing blood. Neither of them looked so sweet or cute anymore. “Hey!” I cried out, trying to take my hand back. But the cats hung on tenaciously. The pain grew.
Callie!
“Who’s there?” I called out, and now I was aware I was in a dream. I was not usually a lucid dreamer, but it had happened before. Usually when I went into a dream state intentionally—but it seemed like a good development now. “Who is it?”
“Callie!”
It was Sebastian! Now I could hear his voice in the real world, but I was still being attacked by the cats, and it really, really hurt.
“Sebastian!” I tried to yell. It came out as a sort of weird warble; I heard it both in the dream and in my physical-world ears.
Needle-teeth sank into my hand, into my fingers…into one finger particularly. I cried out again, without making a sound this time.
Then both cats suddenly let go of my hand. They stared me in the face, opened their mouths, and in unison said, “You have to listen to the cats.”
I stared back at them—none of this made any sense—and I lost all my words. I didn’t even know how the cats had spoken to me; it wasn’t in language, but they did speak, and those were their words. I felt myself running out of air, no longer just struggling to speak but even to breathe—my body started to shake—
My shoulders were shaking. I had no control over my movements. Just as I was about to go under, I sprang awake—and Sebastian was here, leaning over me, shaking my shoulders. “Callie! Oh, thank the Father.”
“Oh Blessed Mother,” I gasped, trying to catch my breath. “Oh, oh.”
“Callie!” he cried again, putting his face close to mine, still shaking me.
“You can stop pummeling me now, I’m out of it,” I finally managed.
Sebastian let go of me and sat down on the side of the bed. He was still looking hard at me, obviously very worried. “What in the world was going on there?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Just an awful dream, I think.” I picked up my right hand with my left, as if the right had no strength. Maybe it didn’t, for all I knew. I didn’t trust it; I expected to see blood dripping from it. Of course there was no blood, but it still hurt.
Right where that horrid gold ring sat.
Sebastian took my hand and peered at it. “What’s this red mark?”
I looked too. “Um, I tried to magic the ring off a while back…it didn’t work. I guess this must be from that.”
He frowned, but didn’t say anything, just keep inspecting the area.
“How did you get in here?” I finally had the presence of mind to ask. “And, why?”
The young warlock looked up at me. “Your wards are down. Don’t you set them when you go to sleep, at least?”
I shrugged. My heart rate was slowly returning to normal. “Not usually. The, uh, reason for making them isn’t really a thing these days.”
He gave me a puzzled look. I didn’t
elaborate, just reiterated, “Why are you here? I mean, I’m always happy to see you, but…”
“I felt—something, I couldn’t define or explain it, but I knew you needed help. I tried to call to you, but you didn’t answer. So I came over and knocked, but again, nothing.” He glanced around my bedroom and looked sheepish. “Sorry, but—”
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “I’m glad you did. That was awful.”
“Just…a bad dream?”
“No, it was probably more than that.” I shivered, remembering it. Still feeling the pain in my hand, though it was starting to fade. “It was sort of a lucid dream, but I didn’t have any control.” I told him about the human woman, the cats, and what the cats had said. “I don’t know what to make of it.”
Elnor walked into my bedroom, gave Sebastian a look, and jumped up on the bed.
“Where have you been?” I asked her, suddenly freaked out all over again.
She just looked up at me, in her silent way of asking for a scritching.
“She usually sleeps with you, doesn’t she?” Sebastian asked.
“Of course. And even if she didn’t, she should have known I was distressed.”
Now, at least, she was sending her calm feline energy into me, letting me pet her while she purred and nudged her head against me. But it was as though nothing was out of the ordinary. As if she’d had no idea anything had been wrong; as if she’d simply heard voices and wandered in for some attention.
“Too weird,” Sebastian said.
I took a deep breath and swung my legs over the bed, setting Elnor aside. There would be no more sleeping for me tonight. “Can I make you some tea?”
“Sure thing.”
Downstairs, we talked over every detail of the dream, but neither of us could make much sense of it. “There’s a human,” Sebastian mused, “but a woman, not a man, so it can’t be your human ex.”
“Could be,” I said. “I just saw him yesterday. Maybe I had humans on the mind.”
“You did? Saw him…how?”
I chuckled. “Not like that. I wanted to see how he was doing, and tell him about the baby.”
“Ah.”