Toby rushes after Ama and almost stumbles as he takes two steps at a time. “I think the bad man liked seeing children crying. He smiled when he hurt Maddie. I hate him. When I’m all grown up, I’ll catch him and throw him into our dungeon.”
He’s out of breath when he holds the doll up to Ama. “Maddie forgot Madeleine.”
“Thank you, Toby. You are a sweet boy.”
Ama opens the door to the common room and puts Maddie on the enormous grandfather chair. It’s already late and most child parts have retired to their rooms. After they finish their chocolate drink, Toby skips into his room and Ama puts Maddie to bed in her room.
“Phew, that wasn’t too bad. Thanks, Ama, for helping with Maddie.” I can stop worrying. For now, we averted the worst.
“But that wasn’t all, was it?” Ama all but whispers to keep the conversation from eager ears.
“I’m afraid not.”
“It was good that she heard auntie defending her.”
I thought the same and smile at Ama. “Yes. It makes all the difference. Auntie Mandy’s house became a safe place after that. But it won’t protect her from the flashback about the Gateway compound. I hope we have more time and get stronger before that happens.”
Ama tucks Maddie in and covers her with the snuggle blanket. “When she wakes up tomorrow morning, she’ll feel safe among the pink flowers and white unicorns that cover her walls.”
They are her friends. I often watch her spending hours playing with them and building houses with the pillows strewn all over the floor in all sizes and shades of pink. I look up when Lilly enters the room and sits on a pillow next to Maddie’s bed. She is the best singer of all of us and often sings for the little ones with her beautiful, warm contralto voice.
“Twinkle, twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are.”
“Lilly? Am I a Schtar?” Maddie lifts her hands and wiggles her fingers like twinkling stars.
“You are a treasure, and treasures need to close their eyes and go to sleep.” Lilly smiles and continues with the song.
“Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky…”
Maddie is asleep before Lilly finishes and we all leave the room. It was a long hard day, and everyone is tired. Ama’s shoulders slump with the weight of looking after our physical needs. I don’t know what we would do without her. It took years of persistent effort to change what was a hostile, disconnected group into something resembling a caring family. We don’t get it right all the time, but we never stop trying.
“Thank you,” I mouth to her.
The day is over, but our problems aren’t. We can’t allow events we have no control over, like today, to rule our life. Living day to day hoping that nothing untoward happens, is naïve and careless. We need a plan of action. It’s time for another tribal council.
Tomorrow!
Chapter Twelve
Elise: 20 November 2015, Early Morning, Wright’s Homestead
I’m sitting in a pitch-dark cinema. The credits chase each other over the screen and white blips that try to register in the corner of my mind turn into flashes of a petrified young child in a nightgown, being devoured by a tree. Seized by horror I watch the lights come back on, cone by cone illuminating more and more of the cinema… which isn’t a cinema at all.
Where am I? I have a terrible headache and I’m freezing. Something sloppy and wet is working up my leg. Tired to the bone, I lash out at the uncomfortable wetness. Let me sleep a little longer.
I want to get out of bed and have a shower. But I can’t move my legs. They are ice-cold and don’t respond to any commands my brain is giving them, as if someone snipped the connection between head and legs. My whole body is rock-hard like a block of ice. Hideous fear hits me. I can’t breathe because my lungs can’t expand in this frozen body.
A violent shiver runs through me, making every muscle scream in pain. Awake now, I’m gasping. I wish I were still in that space between sleep and wakefulness, where everything is possible, and fairytales come true. Fairytales? I try to push away the feeling of horror spreading through me. I gag and throw up on the grass next to me.
Grass?
I’m not in my bed?
A light breeze springs up, swirls gently through the sluggish morning mist, and carries me to the treetops. I’m floating like a weightless feather in a landscape of dreams of shifting colors and forms, waving and nodding like seaweed in the tidal current. Down on the ground, my body lies, collapsed at the foot of the big tree in my backyard.
The pain is gone. It belongs to my body down there while I’m up here in the tree. How is that possible? Am I dead? Prince is stretched out next to the body, nudging it with his nose and licking its leg as if he wants to say, “Are you okay?” He looks at the body with his soulful, brown eyes, whimpering softly as he nudges it for a response.
I want to throw my arms around him, bury my head in his warm fur, and give him all the petting and behind-the-ear-scratching I have in me. As soon as that thought enters my mind, I’m no longer floating in the air but being locked back into the confines of my body. I gasp for breath and my throat hurts as I breathe in the crisp morning air. The pain in my legs and the headaches are back, too. I peel my arms off the tree trunk and start rubbing to get the blood in my limbs circulating again.
“Did I spend the whole night clutched to the tree?” I startle hearing my voice rasping into the surrounding silence and the words drop to the ground like drops of morning
