Lightbringer

“Dad?” Wendy called, shading her eyes against the grey glare of the sky and twisting to squint up and down the beach, hoping to catch sight of him. “Eddie?” There was nothing, not even his footprints in the sand; the dream had erased him.

Confused, but more curious about the door than her companion’s disappearance, Wendy knelt down and ran her hands over the shells, finger tracing the mystery words like a child first learning to read. For a time the door grew brighter, almost bright enough to make out the words, but then a horrible thing occurred: every place her fingers touched, the shells grew black and cold. They crumbled as she watched, horrorstruck.

The words faded, became ghosts of themselves, and a wave washed across the beach, taking the blackened shells with it. The sand underneath these holes in the shell door was black as pitch, sticky to the touch, and foul smelling—a ripe, turgid scent like old mushrooms grown in rotted hollows that have never seen the sun.

Wendy drew back, stared avidly at her hands. Her fingers were trembling, sure, but her hands were as they should be—ten roughened fingers tipped with ten blunt and ragged nails. Silver bangles at each wrist jangled together, and two silver rings—one at each thumb—glinted in the pale, grey morning light.

Tipping her head back, Wendy looked up at the sky. The expanse was uniformly grey as far as the eye could see. A crowd of ramshackle huts crowded the shoreline, set far enough back from the beach for safety, but only a few dozen yards from the cool expanse of sea. Gulls cried and circled overhead, but no feathers clung to their outstretched wings; they were floating, darting skeletons dancing on the breeze.

As Wendy watched, one bony gull swept wings back and dove straight down, breaking the waves with a writhing creature grasped tightly in its beak. Squinting, Wendy could make out the shape of a fish being gulped down almost whole, but it was a fish nearly out of a cartoon, all spiky bones and eyes, extended from a scaly but fleshless head.

“I’m dreaming,” Wendy said aloud, realizing it for the first time. “This is a dream.”

She pinched herself. “Wake up. Wake up, Wendy, wake up.”

Though she pinched until her wrists and arms were tender, Wendy found herself no closer to waking than before. At a loss for what to do, Wendy examined the stretch of beach on all sides. The houses were gone now, swallowed by thick white mist rolling in from the ocean. Some miles distant, probably far out at sea, Wendy heard a foghorn boom across the water and the answering call north of her position, a mournful reply that split the silence in twenty-second bursts.

As Wendy examined her surroundings the mist finally reached her and enveloped her. A faint breeze pushed the mist against her face, tickling her neck and cheek like warm, wet kisses, dragging her curls down so they hung lank against her shoulders, sodden and dripping.

“I know this place,” she said, and she did. With the mist had come the memory of a mother-daughter trip to Santa Cruz for breakfast on the beach years before, in the early months of her reaping. The sun had burned off the mist after only a few hours, but the memory of her mother sitting beside her, the cool morning air, and the world dressed in clouds, had always stayed with her. For a moment Wendy imagined that she could smell her mother’s perfume. Her eyes filled with tears.

Swathed in the white and blinded by her memories, Wendy turned and turned, at first seeking some escape from these memories-within-a-dream, and then seeking even the faintest hint of a direction. The sound of the sea surrounded her, the foghorn boomed all around. The warm feelings disappeared in a rising wave of panic.

This isn’t that beach. Mom is gone and I’m lost, I’m lost, she thought desperately. Wendy knew she was still at the edge of the sea—cool waves rushed around her ankles, the sand sucking greedily at her toes—but she could make out no outcropping of stern rock or figure out from which direction she’d come. I can’t do this anymore.

Eyes straining against the white, Wendy believed at first that the figure floating towards her was her imagination. It bobbed in slow synchronicity with the swells around her ankles, drifting closer and closer through the mist, but it wasn’t until Wendy heard the rhythmic thump of waves against a hull that she put two and two together. The figure, whoever it was, was approaching in a boat.

Glad for the company in this spooky expanse of dreamland, even if it was unexpected, Wendy stepped backward, away from the shifting shadow in the mist. The bow scraped sand and the figure, lean and lithe, leapt nimbly over the side with a little splash and guided the tiny sailboat higher onto the shore.

“Mom?” Wendy asked. The figure was slim like her mother, and about the right height. But then she spoke and the raspy voice told Wendy that this woman was not, could not, be her mother.

“A little help?” Up close, most of the figure’s face was obscured by a deep, heavy hood, but the shape of her body was feminine, and she was only slightly taller than Wendy herself. The waves tugged at her cape and the shift beneath, pulling the sodden fabric toward the sea.

Wendy’s heart sank. Dream or not, some small part of her had been hoping that it was her mother. Even dreaming her face was better than the pain of the real, waking world.

“Um, yeah, sure,” Wendy surprised herself by saying, and helped tug the boat free of the sucking waves, leaving them both all foam and damp from foot to knee. The act of hauling the boat in had cleared her head, however; Wendy felt calm, in control once more, and grateful to the newcomer for the distraction.

“My thanks,” the woman said. She had a knapsack slung across her chest, hanging loosely from shoulder to opposite hip, and she reached into it almost to her elbow, searching until she found a largish silver flask with a deeply tarnished edge. The woman spun off the top and drank deeply, wiping her mouth with the side of her hand when she was done. Then she offered the flask to Wendy. “Portable heat,” she said. “The wind is cold; it eats my bones.”

She was right, the seashore was icy, but accepting felt strange. “No, thank you.”

The woman shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said and began slogging through the mist and away from the ocean. Wendy followed.

Keeping the line of the boat in sight, they moved until they’d reached the tide line before the woman sank to sand and tucked her feet beneath her. Patting the space beside her, the woman did not relax until Wendy settled by her side. They were, Wendy realized, seated not far from the remains of the door in the sand. The surf rumbled, the mist eddied, and they sat in silence, listening to the fading boom of the foghorn and occasional cry of a distant gull.

“I think,” the woman said when the flask was done, “that it’s time we had a talk.”

“So talk,” Wendy said, wishing that it were her mother sitting beside her. The quiet contemplation had cleared her mind until Wendy felt pleasantly light, open and airy, but lonely and very, very young. The sun was either rising or setting on the horizon, burning away some of the mist and setting the rest to glowing; infinitesimal rainbows refracted and shivered at the edge of Wendy’s concentration, distracting her. “We can chat about anything you want.”

“It’s best if you begin with a question. That’s how these things are done, I’m told.” The woman scooped a handful of sand high in the air, tilted her hand, and let it fall in a steady stream. The sand hitting sand made a subtle swooshing noise. She brushed the crumbling beach off her hand and waited.

“Me? But this is a dream. Hello, why would I have questions? Especially from some chick I dreamed up?”

“Is it, now?” The woman wrapped one arm around her knees. “Or is this space something more?” She chuckled. “Even if this is a dream, ask anyway. Call me the genie in the lamp. The mysteries of the universe are yours for the asking.”

“Right. Okay, fine, a question, a question…” Wendy couldn’t imagine anything that she’d want to ask this stranger. It was a dream, nothing more. Then she realized that there was one thing she was curious about. “Why’re you wearing a hood?” Wendy demanded. “Let me see your face.”

“I don’t think so,” the woman replied, tugging the hood further forward. “I had an accident when I crossed over and my face isn’t—” here she laughed unexpectedly, “pretty to look on.”

“Crossed over?” Wendy snorted. “This isn’t the Never. I’m only dreaming… aren’t I?” The light, dizzy feeling left in a rush, leaving Wendy chill and tense and wishing her male dream companion from before could have maybe stuck around a little longer. “Aren’t I?”

“‘Iam vero videtis nihil esse morti tam simile quam somnum,’” the woman replied, drawing her knees up and resting her chin upon them. “Cicero’s De Senectute.” Her head inclined towards Wendy. “Roughly translated, it means, ‘Now indeed you see that there is nothing so like death than sleep.’ An apt description, wouldn’t you say?”