Visioness (6 page)

“I suppose you’re right
there,” Adabelle said, “but by the time I actually see him it might be too
late.”

Mrs. Abeth’s eyes rolled.
She inhaled deeply, the kind of breath that preceded a rant.

“Well I do not mean to be
rude or tough on you. Heaven knows you’ve been through enough for five people
in your life. But you need to hear this. Yes, the Oen’Aerei are going to try
and enlist you in their ranks, and that’s because you’re quite good at what you
do. There is no use denying what you are, Adabelle, because it’s who you are,
it’s who your mother was, and it’s who your aunt was. They and your father were
immensely powerful Dreamers, and simply by way of blood, you are powerful
yourself. But you have to trust others more. Stop putting so much weight on
your own back and let someone else shoulder it for a time. Go to the Professor
Oakley to talk, and then once you’re done decide what you want to do after
that. And I know what you should do. Go to the Oen’Aerei and ask for their
protection. They will send Dreamers to protect you—they are on your side, after
all—and they will keep everything normal enough for you so you can sleep. I can
pull some strings so that you can dip into your inheritance for the payment.”

There had been a rather
sizable sum of money left by her mother and father in her and her sister’s
name, with the parents as signatories as account holders. After their death, it
stayed in all their names, as a family trust until Adabelle turned twenty, when
her half would be given. She was not far off twenty, but she didn’t mind any
way. Mrs. Abeth was an authority on the account, and was allowed to withdraw on
all their behalves. Adabelle had her job at the café, which offset most of
their daily expenses.

“Now that’s only if you
really
are ready to deal with the Oen’Aerei. I’m not going to force you, but I think
it’s about time you faced your own fears and deal with them personally.”

There was silence in the
room for a few seconds, during which Adabelle didn’t know whether to be angry,
offended or happy. What she spoke was sense—utter and complete sense. But the
hard part would be facing her fears.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Abeth
said, rather bluntly, “but it needed to be said.”

Adabelle nodded. “Not at
all. It needed to be said, you’re right. But I will talk to the professor
first, and decide after that.”

“Very good,” Mrs. Abeth
said, smiling. “Now I do have quite a bit I have to finish before the evening
cleaners come in, so if you would please leave. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Adabelle said,
rising to leave. She stopped at the door, holding it open. “What do you think
mama would say were she here? About me? About what I should do? What would she
do?”

Mrs. Abeth considered the
question. “She would marvel at your bravery, and then she would face it, too.
She never backed down. She always fought when she could. You are both so very
much alike.”

If only she was here to hold
me.

She reached for her
handkerchief as the familiar choking feeling that came before tears rose from
within.

I would love that so very
much.

She left Mrs. Abeth, closing
the door behind her.

Adabelle had been way off
the mark in what would be the hardest thing to do. It was not going to the
Oen’Aerei, or even going to sleep that night. It was telling her sister that
her father might be after them. Charlotte had never known him as Adabelle
had—and even then, her knowledge of her father was a distant one.

But was there any need to
even trouble her little sister? She could not dream, so she was safe. Wasn’t
she?

Over dinner, as she sat next
to Charlotte, she ate slowly, distractedly. She cut apart the potatoes with
some difficulty, struggling to pull apart a steak that was almost so tender,
she was sure she could tear into it with a bread-and-butter knife. Every now
and then, she glanced at her sister, and Charlotte would look back, confusedly.
It was only after she dropped her knife for the twentieth time that Charlotte
piped up.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You’re all over the place tonight. You seem distracted.”

Adabelle took a long time to
respond, staring at her sister, forgetting for a time that she was meant to
reply. What was wrong, exactly, with keeping her sister in the dark? Ignorance
was bliss, wasn’t it? No need to burden her mind with the troubles of others.
She had enough to think about herself.

“Nothing,” she finally
replied. She sat her knife and fork down on the plate, wiping her mouth on a
napkin and then rising. “I’m sorry. I think I’m not feeling too well. I might
go to bed early.”

Charlotte rose an eyebrow.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with visiting cousin Larraine, does it?”

If only it didn’t,
she thought. She forced a
smile to the surface and shook her head.

“Not at all,” she replied.
“Just…a little out of it is all.”

Charlotte shrugged,
returning to her own dinner.

It wasn’t a complete lie.
Not really.

She went up to bed, and
surprisingly, did manage to fall asleep rather quickly. She didn’t bother
Dreaming that night. She thought it better to keep her thoughts and mind to
herself.

But she did dream.

She and her sister were
running from her father, and he was catching up, and no matter how fast they
ran, they could go no further.

But this doesn’t make sense,
she thought.
We’re in
the real world. We’re not dreaming!

And then she woke up.

Outside, it was raining, the
sun covered by overcast clouds spewing forth blankets of rain. She had a
multitude of matters to tend to that day, and it would not take long for them
to be done. To do them would involve the rain though, and, therefore, galoshes.

“You’ve slept in,” said her
sister, who entered their bedroom fully dressed, books in hand. She had
tutoring most days, as was usual in Odillan households, but she had hers with
university professors rather than her parents. “Didn’t you have to post off
those letters?”

“I did,” Adabelle said,
glancing at the clock. “And I will have missed the morning post. I’ll have to
have it in quickly if I’m going to meet the midday sorting. Then, off to work.”

 “Also, I don’t know
why, but Professor Oakley left a note for you requesting a meeting tomorrow
afternoon.” She looked confused, as she took the note from within her pocket.
“Why would you be seeing that oddball? He’s all silly-talk, I think.”

“I just want to see him
about my nightmares. They’ve been getting bad lately, and I want his opinion on
what that could mean.”

Charlotte nodded, shrugging.
“I suppose that makes sense. Don’t you usually go to Mrs. Abeth about things
like that?”

“Usually,” Adabelle said,
“but there’s only so far she can go before it’s out of her knowledge. This is
one of those cases.”

Charlotte didn’t press any
more. Thankfully. Adabelle didn’t want to have to lie to her sister, so
skirting the matter entirely would be easier.

Adabelle got out of bed, changed
out of her pyjamas and into a nice dress for the day, before skipping breakfast
to deliver the letters. She carried her small change in a clutch, using the
silver within for the stamps for the letters, leaving them at the post office.

She wandered down the avenues
and wide-open boulevards, rather than taking the tram, and the walk was only a
short one. Short, but long enough for her to clear her mind. There was a gentle
breeze blowing down the cobblestone roads, a cooling spray carried off any
fountains she passed, or a billow of dust and leaf-litter from streets that
hadn’t been swept. The pleasant weather and surroundings led her mind to wander
darkly into nightmarish notions of her father.

It was frightening always
thinking of her father. He was the reason her life was as hard as it was, he
was the reason Charlotte and her were alone.
He
was the reason her
mother was gone. Mrs. Abeth had explained about the abuse her mother had faced
after falling pregnant with Charlotte, of her mother’s fear, and of the man who
used his Sturding powers to murder people in their sleep. He was a sick man,
and she was quite astounded Charlotte and Adabelle emerged alive and untouched.

“He was an odd man, your
father,”
she
would sometimes say.
“And yet despite all his oddities and dark turns, he
seemed wholly enamoured by his creation in you and your sister. He scorned your
mother when she began to defy him as she did, but you girls; I don’t know. He
just seemed…like he cared.”
And when she spoke of such things, she appeared
distant…reminiscent.

Some would argue that
madness leant itself well to such odd attributes, yet Adabelle did her best to
ignore that. She couldn’t imagine anyone with the ability to murder to also be
capable of loving anything or anyone. He had performed his evil deeds, and now
he was being punished.

And yet somehow he had
escaped. It’s seemed improbable, impossible even! But there was only one
conclusion to which she could draw. He had somehow freed himself.

But the dream spheres were
unbreakable, from the inside, at least. That’s was why the Oen’Aerei used them
in the first place. Once something was sealed away, there was no way out. Yet
her father had broken that rule. Somehow, he had bent the laws of reality and
broken out from the inside.

The Halls of the Oen’Aerei
abruptly stoppered her thoughts. It appeared in the corner of her gaze, a mass
of sandstone towers and domes on the other side of the Odilla River, connected
to the road she walked upon by a wide stone bridge. At the end of that bridge
was a gate and through that gate were the Halls, filled with any Dreamer who
had stepped forward for an education in the Frequencies. She felt those
Dreamers on the fringes of her mind, a mass of people running through that
shadow world that somehow overlapped this one, and connected all of the world’s
minds together into one, massive space of shadow and life and light.

How did he escape that place
without being seen? How did a man as infamous as he is, ever escape? Surely his
face was well-enough known to cause some kind of alarm. Even a small one.

A dark, terrifying thought
crossed her. It sent a cold spike of fear up her spin, her entire arm breaking
out in goose bumps, her mind fluttering lightly.

How could he have ever
broken free?

But there was some small
comfort in knowing that her father’s escape was still all just speculation.
There was still a tiny ray of hope, a small, vestigial chance that her father
was still imprisoned. That his appearance in Larraine’s dream was something entirely
left to the Sturding Nhyx’s own presence.

Once she had pushed aside
the thought and was able to straighten herself up, she continued along the road
towards the University. She used her afternoon to practice the violin, though it
was difficult to concentrate on the sheet music when her mind wandered so far
elsewhere. Then, once the time came around, she dressed for her afternoon at
work. In a black shirt and skirt, she wandered down to the Café on the Rue Larrais,
where she found some kind of peaceful distraction from her worries at hand.

She always kept a
professional manner at work, though naturally personal matters bubbled to the
surface every now and then. She knew, though, that matters involving her father
and her worries there were nothing to trouble her co-workers over. Georgette, a
kindly young woman who seemed occasionally inappropriate, was quite jovial
today, enjoying her time behind the counter, grinding the coffee with a strong
arm. Anna, her manager—an older woman with short hair and a playful manner—was
in a good mood, too, and Adabelle found it infectious. She smiled warmly with
each customer that entered, forgetting entirely for a time any of her troubles
at home.

She found herself wholly
distracted, though, when a young handsome man entered. He was a regular at the
café, with a sweet smile, dark, neat hair with slight curls throughout, and a
tall, thin frame to him. She knew his name was Rhene, from discussions she had
had with him on occasion, during times when he’d been more talkative than usual.
She didn’t know much about him, aside from his name, and the fact that he was
about as gorgeous as any man could get. Georgette, who was occasionally a tad
free with her words, would mutter dirty musings from behind the steamer, her
words lost to the hiss and bubble of the milk. Most of these explanations of
intent were usually combined with an utterly too animated presentation, with
the steam arm as proxy. Adabelle nearly always ended up hitting the woman for
some of the words that came out of her mouth, and yet a part of her couldn’t
help but agree with those seldom-innocent outbursts. She occasionally laughed,
too.

“Hello, Adabelle,” he said,
as he left his order at the counter.

“Hello, Rhene,” she replied,
smiling. It took her a moment to notice that she’d missed the cup into which
she was meant to be pouring the milk. She swore quietly as she dashed to clean
it up, cheeks turning hot. Rhene simply laughed and found a seat across the
room.

When she glanced at
Georgette, as she cleaned up the milky spill, the woman simply winked at her,
and returned to her work.

Pull yourself together,
she thought, as she
returned her attention to her work.

The afternoon sped by,
customer-after-customer coming and going. Coffees were brewed, sandwiches
sliced, and tip collected. Before long she was hanging up her apron and
beginning the walk home, bidding Anna, Georgette and Nicholas a good evening.

Nighttime in Odilla was a
brilliant display of lights afire with life and the glow of the lamp-lined
streets. Lamps illuminated busy avenues of diners enjoying their evening meals,
and sent radiant beams through droplets of water unleashed by the multitude of fountains.
They revealed the gentle texture of the sandstone monuments and brass statues.
Yet with these lights came deep shadows. The darkness cast against houses,
hiding terrace gardens and owls perched on rooftops. Shadows settled over the
river’s depths, the surface shimmering with a ghostly reflection of the city, and
hiding all that shifted deep beneath it all. It was all strangely magical and
frightening; Adabelle loved it all. The walk home at night was nearly always
the highlight of her day. There she saw people emerging to enjoy Odilla’s
nightlife, at the jazz clubs and bars and gambling houses, the scents and
sights encapsulating the artistic and soulful essence of Odilla. She smelled
cigarettes and pipe smoke, and a wafting scent of fine wine and cheeses,
depending on the direction in which the wind blew. In the distance she could hear
music. Drums and brass blasting out some jazz. She imagined people dancing,
dresses swirling wildly. Atop it all was the chiming of church bells and clock towers.

As she entered the
University, this all ended. She could smell dinner coming from the cafeteria
and the sounds of chatter from the students who had spent their day entrenched
in scholarly focus.

That night, she was restless
in bed. Her sister was quick to drift off, but Adabelle put that to not having
to worry about her father seeking her out in the Frequencies. She hated not
getting enough sleep, but if it meant she could avoid her father, then that
price was fair. Nevertheless, she kept her mind open. She sought out the scent
Larraine had warned her of, her lucidity decreasing as she searched. Soon, she
lost herself to the tugging tides of fatigue and drifted deeply into sleep.

She awoke startled, but
relieved and thankful that the scent of her father’s powerful cologne hadn’t
appeared. She knew not what to expect, but she had a small idea of what it
would smell like. She imagined shaving cream, mixed with a strong scent of
musk. Perhaps even a hint of mint.

After breakfast, with her
morning entirely to herself, she chose to go and visit Larraine in the
hospital. The walk up to the hospital wing wasn’t a long one. She made herself
meander about, choosing the longer path each time. It wasn’t till she reached
the same floor as the hospital that she noticed her own drifting. A gentle cry
echoed up the hallway. She stopped. That voice sounded terrified, whoever it
came from. She started walking again, steps light. Her heart began to race
within her chest, her breathing slowing. She recognised that voice, despite the
ragged distress with which she cried. Her steps quickened. As she neared, the
cries grew louder, more desperate.