Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) (5 page)

I polished the carnelian and placed it in its box. I put the lavender oil away in darkness. I shifted the floor cushions into a pile at the side of the room.

Something fluttered from a cushion and floated to the ground. The scrap of paper Drea had written her question on lay like a moth resting before dark, still folded over and over.

A shaman must search out the hidden inside people. They see around corners, understand subtle energies. By being curious, questioning, they can bring back amazing answers. But me … sometimes I’m too inquisitive for a shaman’s good.
Nosey
is the word. There’s no helping it.

It wasn’t my place, as her therapist, to pry into anything Drea had not given me permission to know, but my whole being was burning up with curiosity. Anyhow, permission is a subjective term. If she’d not wanted me to know, surely she would have stuffed the paper into her bag.

I lifted it between finger and thumb and opened it as if it were ancient parchment. Drea had printed three words:

AM I SAFE

My mouth refused to shut.
I’ve never been as happy as I am now,
she’d insisted, but in my mind I saw the half-frozen girl on her shelf of ice, captive of her snake totem, pregnant with child.

This journey would be too distressing to relate in length to Drea. It was possible that she didn’t even know yet that she was pregnant, presuming my guess was right. It was a guess, after all—the swollen belly could be symbolic of an unborn event, or even some localized ailment. Usually, in a journey, I’m offered a tangible gift for a client; a symbol or icon from an otherworld being, some words of comfort or illumination, or something ethereal, like a shower of sparkles. This was no more than the hint of a gift, and I had to find a way that would allow her to accept what I’d been shown without scaring her.

I staggered upstairs and pulled on jeans, socks, and a warm sweater. I splashed and dried my face, staring into the bathroom mirror. I looked mangled. I went down into the kitchen, made myself a hot mug of crushed lemon balm leaves with honey. I cut thick slices of yesterday’s bread and topped them with banana.

I ate my scratch tea while my laptop booted up. I swilled my cup and plate and wrote a carefully worded letter for Drea. I asked if she had an affinity with snakes or serpents. I suggested she embrace the colour orange, the vibratory colour of the sacral chakra … orange scarves, for instance. I thought she might like to look for a carnelian of her own, perhaps as a piece of jewellery. Normally I’d recommend the appropriate essential oils, but as it was possible she might be pregnant, I suggested she treated herself to a bag of oranges or mandarins, instead. I suggested a single, elementary yoga position for her to practice. I chewed my pen. How could I describe my gift without describing the journey in all its ice-cold detail?
I think you might be pregnant
felt brusque to rudeness. In the end, I wrote …
In the journey I seemed to see something or someone unborn, a happiness not far from fulfilment.
I had a duplicate CD that featured mood music alongside the sounds of a running stream and chirping birds, and I slipped that into the envelope along with the letter. I grabbed a jacket. I needed to get this to her while the Reiki was fresh in her mind.

_____

It was already dark when I left the house. I noticed someone standing at the bonnet of my car. I hadn’t driven Mini Ha Ha for several weeks. She’d stayed by the kerb, a
For Sale
sign in her front and back windows. Up till now, no one had fancied a test drive, but it finally looked as if I had a bite.

I strode through my front gate. “It’s a good price for a 1970s Mini Cooper,” I began. “Classic paintwork in fair nick, racing strips still intact—” I trailed off. The chap gawping at my car was Drea’s other half. “Oh, hi. Andy Comer, isn’t it? I’m Sabbie—Sabbie Dare.”

He’d been smiling patiently as I’d gone through my spiel. “Ah, this belongs to you, does it? I did wonder. I’ve driven past it every night for weeks and I just had to walk back down and have a gander. Mini’s are inimitable, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. ’Specially if they’ve still got their badge, ’cause people tend to nick them.”

“I’m not really in the market for a new car, I’m afraid.”

“Heck no. You’ve already got a great little vehicle for driving round town.”

He nodded. “I need it for getting to Taunton every day. I work in that insurance office on Stonegallows with the big glass frontage?”

“Looks like you’re settling in.” It seemed weird that I’d managed to chat with both my new neighbours on the same day. “I’ve actually got something for Drea. I was just about to pop it up to her.” I pushed the envelope at him.

“What’s this?” he asked, turning it round in his hands.

“It’s …” I stopped. Client confidentiality is important to me, and just because they were married didn’t mean that I should be spouting off to Andy. “It’s … just a CD I said I’d bring round.”

And then, like a pop-up on a screen, I remembered her words.
No, don’t do that. I’ll pick it up
…

To my horror, Andy was peeling open the seal of the envelope.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s not for you!” He hardly seemed to hear. He shook the letter free of folds. “Has Drea told you about this morning?” I was suddenly sure she had not. “It won’t make sense to you.”

He glanced up from his reading. “It makes perfect sense.” He’d gone from chatty neighbour to cautious sceptic. The vibes coming off him suggested he was wavering between a natural tendency to politeness and an erupting anger. “It makes perfect sense because I’ve already seen the poster you have in your window.” He held the letter between a finger and thumb, as if it was impregnated with contagion. “I guess it’s a free country, after all.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m not asking you to stop whatever it is you do, but all this isn’t something Drea and I choose to be involved in.”

“All Drea had was a Reiki treatment. And yeah; that doesn’t give you the right to read her mail.”

“Whatever. Fact remains, I don’t want Drea mixed up with that sort of thing.” His voice shook as he reined his emotions in.

I tried to calm my own. “Reiki is harmless! It can bring amazing clarity to problems.”

“Well, luckily, we don’t have problems.”

Before I could stop it, my stupid mouth snapped open. “Seems like Drea’s got a problem—you.”

Andy’s face began to pink up. “I don’t want to row about this. I’m just telling you now that Drea won’t be coming to your house again.”

“You mean you’d stop Drea if she wanted to work with me? I’m sorry, but I can’t—”

“Drea is fragile in a lot of ways.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“She would agree, if she was here. She’d want me to say this to you.”

“Andy, for that to be true, she’ll have to tell me herself. Of her own volition.”

“You don’t understand. She doesn’t always listen to me, or even to her more sensible self. She’s easily led.”

“Didn’t you mention
free country
a minute ago? It’s been a couple of hundred years since wives were supposed to obey their husbands.”

His face went from pink to purple. My screensaver couldn’t have done it quicker. He was controlling his fury, but it was taking all his strength. His voice became a snake-hiss. “Believe me, I am well aware of that.” He seemed to make a decision. A second later, I discovered what it was. He tore at my letter, ripping it into strips, then squares. They flew from his fingers. He dropped the envelope and trod on it. I heard the CD crack.

My voice deserted me. All I could do was stare at the little squares of paper as they skittered along the damp pavement.

“Stay away from us.” He brought his face close. “It’s
codswallop
. Don’t you think people can’t see that? And it’s
dangerous
codswallop. I am never letting evil back in our lives.”

I managed a smile, to show him he’d failed to knock me off my rockers. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but, really, you can’t speak for another person, not even one you live with. I won’t believe that’s right.”

Andy turned and strode up the street towards his newly painted house. I didn’t bother to watch him go. I collected the CD and as many bits of ripped paper as I could, then I went in and threw myself onto the sofa.

Today had been a three-peak challenge: Police interview. Malevolent spirit snake. Raging husband.

I checked myself. No. Four peaks. I’d also screwed up with a nonboyfriend.

five
full moon

My therapy business has
always balanced on the pointed end of the financial skewer. People forget to turn up then expect to make another appointment. People don’t turn up at all; sudden nerves or a change of plan. In the run-up to Christmas, numbers were dropping drastically. No one could afford to take care of their spiritual health at all.

When I was paying rent on this place, the slow periods weren’t such a disaster. If there wasn’t enough in the bank, I’d stop meeting friends for a drink and eat last year’s freezer food, or even sting Philip for a loan because he knew I’d pay it back. But since I’d got the mortgage, I didn’t feel I could ask Philip for money; he’d been my biggest influence on how I should spend my sudden windfall.

None of my friends advised me to buy my house. They told me to travel the world—all except Debs, who wanted to take me to London and spend, spend, spend. A holiday was tempting. I had been no farther than the caravan Gloria and Philip keep at Brean since moving in to Harold Street. But I’m trying to build a clientele, so I didn’t want to be gone too long. In the end, I went away with Marianne, a former client. She’s from Holland and she showed me the bewitching towns and the wide flat vistas, rich with tulip fields. We met up with some pagans we’d been messaging on the web.

I came home and saw the man from the building society, who kindly organized things so that my monthly outgoings shot up. Shortly after that, I took the job at the Curate’s Egg. Working there nudges my balance from debit to credit.

Anyone who drank at the Egg already knew that Kev, the landlord, was tearing his hair out over staffing—a feat nigh impossible, as he lost most of it years ago. Even on Saturdays he ran the show
with the dubious help of a single barman called Nige, who resembled a member of the Doors and had the speed of a battery-operated
milk float. One night, after me and my friends had been waving our tenners for about an hour, I slid behind the bar and took my mates’ orders. Then I had to serve everybody else, of course, because the rest of the punters weren’t in on the joke. As it turned out, Kev hadn’t even known it
was
a joke, and I’ve been working there on Saturdays ever since.

Kev provided a taxi for his late staff. Nige always got dropped off first, so it was getting on for the witching hour when I climbed out of the minicab on this particular Sunday morning. I was knackered but stone-cold sober. The cab pulled away and Harold Street became silent and still. I glanced up it, towards Drea’s house.

Exactly two weeks ago, I had given Drea a Reiki treatment, and Andy had crushed my CD and transformed my letter into confetti. I suspected that Andy would have been happy to paint the words
Evil Whore
in red
across my front door, but in fact, I hadn’t seen either of them since that day. I hadn’t even spotted Drea on her way to the shops.

A fortnight had passed since the carnival too. Bridgwater was still in shock over Gary Abbott’s death. When a copper is killed in such a small, law-abiding town, it’s an extraordinary event. The local papers and websites were applying every angle they could to keep the story going. But all they could do was add to the bonfires of gossip and guesswork, because the police were keeping anything they’d discovered too close to their chests for it to get into newsprint.

The funeral had been massive. I’d wanted to go, to pay my belated respects to a man I’d loathed in life but found I could forgive in death. I had stood across the road in the crowds, hidden from view as Rey and five colleagues had shouldered the coffin into St. Mary’s Church, followed by Abbott’s girlfriend, draped in black and gripping the hand of a little boy. The massive crowd was entirely silent until the hearse finally drove away to the crematorium.

Bridgwater felt less safe without Abbott on duty. Sardonic and intolerant though he might at times have been, I also knew he’d been a good cop. I locked my doors with more care and had started to glance behind when I cycled after dark. And now, hurrying down my side path at quarter to twelve on a bitter mid-November Saturday night, I felt suddenly watchful and uneasy.

Inside the open porch, something moved.

I stopped in my tracks. In the dark, my house looked fragile—ready to be picked open and laid to waste. They were always warning you not to confront burglars on your own. I had once confronted a murderer on my own, and I never want to repeat that experience. Robotically, my hands went to my head, to the curls that were now just ten centimetres long. A flash of fear shot through me. I hadn’t meant to move. I’d meant to stay stock still until I had a plan. Now I’d lost the element of surprise and I still didn’t have a plan.

“Hey.” It came out all croaky with an unsteady waver at the end. “Hey!” That was better. I stepped off my path into the night shadows in the hope the intruder would hurtle past me, through the gate, and down the road.

A low
burr
of sound came out of the porch, but nothing rushed by. I crept closer. There was some sort of bundle in the corner. It stirred like an animal, but it was too big, even for a dog. I grabbed my bag and held it in front of me as protection, which on later reflection made it seem more like an offering.

Something white floated out from the darkness of the bundle. A pale hand. “Sorree … sorreee …”A form uncurled and stood. A slight frame, a narrow face veiled by a fringed shawl.

“Would you like to explain what you’re doing?”

“Sorree,” she said again. “I fall … sleep.”

“In my porch?”

“I … you … Sabbie Dare?” She had a strong, uncertain accent that reminded me of something.

“How d’you know …”

“My name is Brouviche.” I could see how slight she was, both shorter and skinnier than me. She still held out her hand. In the palm lay something I recognised instantly—one of my business cards.

“You were waiting for me?”

“Please.” She pulled off the head scarf. Her hair gleamed like jet. She flicked the hair out of her eyes. An image flashed into my mind. Carnival night. The wind along the street. The smell of cordite in the air. The dark, narrow lane. A gypsy dressing in frills of red.

There is danger. It starts with death
.

The death of Abbott.

“You were at the squibbing. You’re Kizzy.”

I’d given her my card, and she’d found my house. When had she got here? It could have been any time since I left early this evening. Underneath the wrappings her face was as pale as hoar frost.

“You’d better come in.” I unlocked the door. Every client I invite in begins as a stranger, and some of them are very odd indeed. I didn’t feel threatened by this young Romani.

The heating was off in the house, but it was warmer than outside. I put on the lights and filled the kettle. The girl hooched up against the arm of the sofa, her fingers knotted together, her brown eyes trained on my movements. “I am not Kizzy,” she said. “Kizzy is my sister. I am Mirela Brouviche.”

“Oh, gosh!” I could see now. Her eyes had less command than the fortuneteller’s and she looked younger, hardly old enough to be out at night. I pulled a stool from under the breakfast bar and sat on it, facing her across the coffee table. “So, why were you in my porch?”

“Is sister.”

“Gypsy Kizzy?”

“Is gone.”

“Gone?” I echoed.

She gave an abrupt nod. “One morning, I wake. Kizzy not in bed. Not in house. Not in work. No place. And clothe gone too.”

The kettle clicked off. I made some tea because I wasn’t sure how she’d take her coffee—maybe thick and black in tiny cups? She didn’t look up to explaining and I wasn’t up to asking.

“I count. One week. Two week. I ask, where can she be? No one know.” Mirela took fast little sips of her tea, like a bird at a fountain.

“She’s been missing for two weeks? But that’s when I saw her, two weeks ago. I saw her at the carnival.”

“Two weeks, yes. I count each day. Think: today, Kizzy will be back.” She paused to sip her tea, wrapping thin fingers round the mug to warm them. They seemed to me to be the fingers of a child; hardly longer or fatter than my niece Kerri’s fingers. “When we first come here, Kizzy say, ‘don’ worry, Mirela, I look after you.’ Then she say, ‘don’ worry, Mirela, I be back soon.’ But no back. I am stuck! Alone.” She put down her tea, mostly because she’d begun to weep, quite silently, the tears oozing and trickling. She wiped her wet eyes with a scrap of greying paper that might originally have been wrapped around a plastic knife and fork.

“How long have you been here?”

“Two month. It not like was promised.”

“What were you promised?”

“Good wage. Happy. But, no wage, no happy.” She pushed the tissue up the sleeve of her matted woollen cardigan.

“You don’t think your sister went home, do you?”

“No. Not home for Kizzy. She like it here. She say it better—Bulgarian gypsy not spat on here.”

“Even so,” I said, thinking that gypsies were unwelcome everywhere. “Your family must miss you both.”

She gave a wet sniff. “Itso miss me.”

“Itso?”

“My boy.”

“Your boyfriend?” I said, a bit cautious. “How old is Itso, Mirela?”

“He one year on me. Seventeen. We want join hands and marry. But Itso … no bride price for Tatta. So I go to bride market.”

“What’s a bride market?” I said. “Is it like a show where you can choose your wedding dress, the cake, all that?”

“No!” Mirela laughed, once. “Girl on show, not cake. Gypsy girl love it … talk, talk, all time before, buy makeup; can’t wait. Wear best clothe. Dance. Nice day out, see many men. Hopeful men,” she added, with a touch of humour. “Make thousands
levs
if wealthy man. For family of girl.”

“Did you have to go to the bride market?”

“Yes. At Horse Easter in Zagora. Kizzy been before, but no good offer. Wait for best offer.”

“Would your family have forced Kizzy into a marriage?” I asked, recalling her sharp, confident movements when she read my palm. I didn’t think she’d agree to anything she didn’t want to do.

“Kizzy did meet man at Bride Fair. Stanislaus. He not Roma. Bulgarian-British. He say, ‘come England, work. Wage good. Four euro hour’.”

“Sounds like this Stanislaus deserves a whipping.”

“You have this punishment?”

I laughed. “We do have a minimum wage, and four euros is well below it. You should tell someone official about all this.”

“Yes. We saw man. We tell story. But him ask so many questions. Too many. He like stray dog; lick your hand then bite your hand.” Mirela crawled even farther into the corner of the sofa. For a second, I sensed the energy field around her body. It was shrunken, dank, and sliced thin, like canned mushrooms. I could understand why someone official, even if they wanted to help, would seem overwhelming; frightening.

“What did this person say they would do for you?”

“Nothing. Useless. Kizzy say if we go back to him, we lose job. Get thrown out work, get thrown out country.”

“Are you here without visas?” I asked, not wanting to use the phrase
illegal immigrant.

“We are EU in Bulgaria now,” she said, shifting a little. “But gypsy hard to get passport.”

“No wonder your wages are so low. They’re getting away with murder.”

“Kizzy say we move on. Go find better thing to do. More money. She say find save and go back head high. She say, ‘Mirela, take little risk.’ I don’t like. She say, ‘Mirela, you so
uncool.’
”

“Uncool?”

“Like I will never dip my toe.”

“In case the water’s too cold?”

“In case the water poison.”

I was piecing her story together as best I could. “So, Kizzy asked you to leave with her, but you wouldn’t, so … so she went without you.”

“Many days go by. No Kizzy. No phone call, no nothing. She in trouble. I know it. Know!”

“You think she’s in some sort of danger?”

“In my blood, yes, but this strangely. Kizzy like …
e balwal
… she go where she want, no asking.”

“
Balwal
?”

“The wind, yes.”

The skin of her face was drawn tight and looked sallow under my dim lighting. I didn’t think Kizzy was the one in trouble. She had run off and left her little sister behind in a strange and unforgiving country. In comparison to Mirela, Kizzy
was
the wind, following her own wild course.

I knew I should persuade her to speak to the police or seek some sort of official help. Surely she wouldn’t be blamed by the authorities for the mess she was in.

I thought about Rey. To be honest, I never needed much excuse to think about Rey. Could I take this to him? Despite my promise of boiled eggs, he hadn’t popped in for breakfast since I’d gone to confess that I had lost Gary Abbott’s iPhone.

“Sabbie?”

I was caught up with these thoughts, and it took me a moment to realize more silent tears were rolling down Mirela’s cheeks. “I have no luck, to find my sister. You try, for me. You have second sight. Kizzy told me so.”

“But it was her who told me my fortune, not the other way round.”

“You are shaman.” She looked at me directly, holding my gaze with her black eyes.

“I don’t work like a Romani might. I would travel into the otherworld and find gifts or advice that might point us in the right direction.”

“Yes. That is good.”

She seemed so sure that it was me she wanted help from. Instead of going to the police, or back to the person who had helped them before, she’d chosen a British shaman. I guessed it was what her culture would have done, if they’d needed such help.

I searched my memory cells for anything I’d learnt about Bulgarian shamanism. I had done a little round-the-world project, while I’d been studying with Wolfsbane. I was sure Bulgaria was rich in ancient culture, but the only thing I could bring to mind was that Orpheus had come from that region. And all I knew about him was that he was Greek god of music and had gone into the underworld to fetch home the wife he loved—not your average sort of bloke, then.