Chapter 218

#Chapter 218 – Don’t Go to Sleep Angry It’s a subdued night that evening by the fire. The ghosts don’t bother us, or perhaps they’re not here to bother us – perhaps they live in a different part of the forest.

But either way, the four of us are alone as we sit by the fire, eating our little dinner in silence. The boys glance between us, but they don’t say anything, perhaps sensing that a quiet dinner tonight is for the best.

I can’t seem to get rid of my anger and worry from this afternoon. I should probably focus on bigger things – like the ever-increasing ache in my muscles and joints – but I can’t seem to get Amelia off my mind.

Mate. Mate. Mate.

The word repeats over and over again, a terrible refrain. I grit my teeth, sick of it – sick of being in my own mind, listening to my own terrible thoughts.

So, I make a decision.

“I’m going to bed,” I say, standing up in a rush, tossing my plate down on the ground and turning away to the tent. I know I should clean my plate but…well, some nice possum will get a good meal tonight.

Or a bear. I can’t muster up the energy to care at this moment.

“Evelyn,” Victor calls after me, his voice low and serious.

I turn to him at the door to the tent, my face expressionless.

“Don’t you think we should talk?” He says, staring at me, clearly frustrated.

“No,” I say simply, not bothering to give more than that. I just…can’t. Not right now. I need to sleep on it. So, I turn and enter the tent, zipping it shut behind me.

It doesn’t take long for the boys and Victor to come in. I lay with my eyes closed, my back towards the door and the rest of the tent, but I can still hear them. The noises of them cleaning up, murmuring soft goodnights to each other, changing quickly into their pajamas.

Victor quickly turns the lantern off and I feel Alvin climb into the sleeping bag next to me, pressing his back against mine.

As he does, I marvel, a little, at the difference between last night and tonight. How warm and kept and magical I’d felt last night. As opposed to the cold, anxious, distant me that I feel tonight. I sigh, frustrated with myself again.

But…well? Wasn’t I entitled to my emotions, no matter how complicated they are? I don’t have to be bright and sunny every day. Not for myself, and certainly not for the rest of them.

I sigh, though, and turn around in the sleeping back, wrapping my arms around my little boy, working hard to push the worries out of my mind.

The truth is, I don’t want to be like this. I’ve never been like this – not really. I’ve always been someone who has been able to push the anxiety aside and concentrate on the moment.

But I suppose that in a time like this, when my moments of life are running low, it’s time to pay the bill after all. To finally face some of the things that I’ve been pushing off so long. But damn it, I was just so tired…

“It’s okay, mama,” Alvin whispers next to me, reaching his little hand up to rest against my face.

“Tomorrow it won’t be like this.”

I smile at my sweet boy in the dark, turning to press a kiss to his hand.

“How did you get to be so sweet,” I murmur to him. “Is it all that chocolate I ate when I was pregnant?”

Quietly, I feel him nod his head on the pillow next to me. “Yes,” he says. “Which is good reason for you to give me more chocolate. Like, a lot more. Or else I will turn nasty and cruel.”

I laugh a little, and I cherish the sound, the feeling. Then, I let out a big breath and let myself relax.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I would apologize to Victor, try to close that door.

Because he’s right – it doesn’t really matter. It can’t.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back to us.

And so I drift back to seep, feeling my son’s steady breathing next to me. Hearing Victor and Ian’s light snores across the tent. It’s a lullaby I could sleep to every night, for the rest of my life, and never grow sick of it.

As I drift off to sleep myself, I feel a low chill come over me. Starting at my feet and slowly rising over me. But still, it’s not bad. I just snuggle deeper into my blankets.

My dreams that night are…odd.

I dream of us, in the tent. Which is strange because I hardly ever dream of myself in the present.

Usually I’m in my childhood home, or in the woods behind our house, or just somewhere else entirely.

But tonight – damn, but it’s a vivid dream. The dream world around me, for all purposes, looks precisely like the tent which I had set up only a few hours before. Except, it’s light with a bright golden light, like noon sun. And filled with fog, like we’re sitting in clouds.

Not a breath of me is frightened, though. Instead, I stand in the middle of the tent, turning slowly around in the fog, the smoke of it turning and twisting as I run my fingers through it.

As I look around, I realize that I’m alone in here – no Victor, no boys. Just me in my dream tonight.

I turn to the open door of the tent, then, and step outside.

There’s no sky, at least none that I can see. Instead, the white trunks of the birch trees – had they been birch yesterday? – stretch high into the air, disappearing into a blank whiteness when they get too high to see the tops.

Over the ground and between the trees stretches more of that fog, looking for anything like a billowing white sea. My eyes catch on a figure, then, standing a short distance away on a rock in the middle of that foggy sea, laughing.

“Mama!” Alvin calls, waving his hands to me. I smile and head his way.

“Hello, boy,” I say, looking up at him on his rock. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” he asks, smiling down at me. “This is my dream, after all.”

“Lies,” I say, laughing and narrowing my eyes jokingly at him. “You are a figment of my imagination.

After all, you’re way cuter than my real son.”

“No,” he says simply, climbing down from the boulder and coming over to me, wading through the chest-high fog. “I am precisely just as cute.”

“Okay,” I say, laughing and looking around, taking his hand. “What should we do?”

“Explore!” he says, eagerly pulling at my hand. I smile and follow him, listening to my little boy chatter as we move through the woods. He tells me pretty much every thought that comes into his head, I think, and I’m happy to listen along as he wonders about where this fog came from, and whether fog is just clouds flying low, and whether it would start raining on his feet.

We go for hours, I think – but then, time I so hard to process in a dream. Hours, days, weeks, minutes – I don’t really know what has passed.

I come to myself, though, when Alvin stops his talking mid-sentence and comes to a dead stop in front of me.

“Mama,” he says quietly. “I think we’re here?”

“Where, baby?” I ask, smiling down at him.

“Here,” he says, pointing. I follow the direction of his finger and blink in surprise at a beautiful cottage standing in front of us. It’s wooden, and brown, with lovely gingerbread trim painted white. Cheerful paintings of flowers and birds grace the door, the lintel, the windowsills. It’s the sweetest house I think I’ve ever seen.

“Wow,” I say, leaning down so that my face is level with my son’s, not taking my eyes off of the house.

“Who do you think lives here? A witch?”

“I’ll be Hansel,” he whispers, smiling up at me. “You be Gretel.”

I laugh, then, and I must laugh in real life too because I can hear it in my own ears. My body stirs, then, and I feel myself jolt awake, as if from a nightmare.

I gasp, my eyes fluttering open, and am surprised to see that my hand is indeed in Alvin’s.

But…I wipe the sleep away, looking around.

And I realize that I’m standing on my feet. And that Alvin is standing next to me, blinking up at me as well. We both stare at each other in wonder and then, as one, turn our heads in the direction of the cottage.

It’s there.

But instead of the sweet, charming little house of our memory, it’s a dilapidated old ruin.

“See, mama?” Alvin says quietly, moving closer to me and squeezing my hand. “I told you it was my dream.”

“Alvin,” I say, looking around and hoping, desperately, that I’ll see Victor and Ian standing there behind us. But, as I knew it would be, the forest is empty. “Who brought us here.”

“Mama,” he says, shaking his head up at me. “You know the answer to that.”

And, inside of me, I do. I know who brought us here.

She did.

And she left Victor and Ian behind.