Awakening (Children of Angels)

FOREWORD

D
reams are one thing that we all have in common. Everybody dreams, and yet no two dreams are exactly alike. Sometimes, we know we’re dreaming, but even the knowledge that we will wake up soon is not enough to dampen our enjoyment of a pleasant dream - or to allay our fears in a nightmare. There are other times when we don’t realize we’re dreaming, when the happenings seem so real that when we wake it’s with shocked relief, or disappointment.

Some people put great stock in the content of dreams, analysing them to figure out what they mean, and what our subconscious is trying to tell us. Sometimes, we wish we could escape back to the world we were living in in our dreams - other times we are afraid to sleep, in case our dreams take us back to that terrifying place. A dream can leave you content, excited, sad, frightened - or, in some cases, curious enough to prompt you into taking action...

CHAPTER ONE

For weeks, Mia had been dreaming about the same place, over and over, with only slight variations on the dream’s events each time. Regardless of where she was or what was happening at the beginning of a dream, be it a good dream or a bad one, events would always shift abruptly, and she would find herself standing in a circular room, the walls and floor bare stone, with very little light coming in through one small window. Each time she found herself here, she thought of the towers that had been the prisons of countless fairytale princesses in the stories her mother had read to her when she was younger.

She would stand alone in the stone room, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness and try to make out anything else in the room, but the walls were always bare, save for that one small window. No furniture adorned the room, and she could see no door on the wall - no way in or out. She would stand there for several minutes, waiting, but it seemed that no matter how long she stood there, nothing would happen, except that a damp chill would settle on her, as the light steadily grew even dimmer in the room.

Finally, Mia would move from her spot perfectly in the centre of the room, cross to the wall opposite her, then walk around the perimeter of the room, dragging her hand along the stone wall as she went, feeling for a door or a catch that would release her - but she never found one.

Eventually, she would have walked the full room and find herself at the window, and always afraid to look out of it. She knew she had to eventually, because that was the way the dream worked. If she didn't look out of the window, she would simply remain alone in the room, in the darkness and the damp, until she awoke in her bed in the morning, cold despite her blankets, and tired despite the long sleep, and lonely, despite hearing her mother’s voice calling up the stairs.

The view beyond the window changed each time she dreamed, which only added to Mia’s apprehension each time she was forced to look out of it - she never knew what she was going to find out there.

On this particular night, as she approached the window with bated breath, she was surprised to see nothing at all outside it. Puzzled, she leaned forward slightly, in her curiosity somehow forgetting what always happened next. As she stared hard into the night, she realized there
was
something outside the window - a thick black swirling fog, which blocked the view of anything beyond the window and below the tower. It would have blocked out the stars, but in this place, Mia knew, there were no stars - just a blank black night sky that seemed to be pressing down on the whole place like a heavy blanket, hiding it from the world - or the rest of the world from it.

She was startled when a silky voice reached her ear, and felt instantly foolish, her face flushing red. She was grateful for the darkness now, to hide her embarrassment.

“
Come away from the window,” the voice had said in an almost whisper “don’t touch the fog.”

Mia took a deep breath and turned to face the owner of the voice, a beautiful woman dressed in a floor length deep crimson dress with gold patterns swirling across the skirt. The woman smiled back at Mia, and as usual, Mia vaguely realized that the woman was the only thing in the room not hidden by gloom. She was clearly visible, as though she stood in a spotlight, only not so harshly lit – Mia often wondered if perhaps the glow came from within her. It certainly didn’t touch any of the rest of the room, and Mia knew that throughout the rest of the dream, the woman would remain the only thing in focus.

“
You came again!” The woman smiled brightly at Mia “I always fear that you won’t.”

“
It’s not by choice.” Mumbled Mia, looking down at the woman’s dress skirt now, tracing the patterns with her eyes, suddenly struck shy in the presence of the elegant and somehow regal woman standing in front of her.

There was silence from the woman, and Mia waited for her to speak again. The conversations were different each time she dreamed, almost as though they were actually happening and neither wanted the interactions to get boring for the other.

“
Look at me, Mia” the woman commanded gently, and reluctantly, Mia obeyed.

The eyes she met with her own were strikingly familiar - because they
were
her own. The rest of the woman’s features were unfamiliar to her, she bore no resemblance to them, but the eyes were exactly alike. She hastily averted her gaze from the familiar sky blue eyes, and began her nightly search for more similarities between the two of them. Mia's own hair was dark brown, and had a playful curl to it. This woman had blonde hair, so pale and fine it was almost white. While Mia was short and petite, this woman was taller, with a picture perfect figure – curves in all the right places and a slim waist.

Mia knew all too well who this woman was. This was her mother- at least, this was the image her subconscious had conjured of the woman Mia had never met. But surely there should be other similarities? Other common features? As ever, Mia felt slightly disappointed when she found none. She was constantly surprised that her mind didn’t adjust the image, so that there were more resemblances between mother and daughter.

The woman was, at any rate, too young to be Mia’s mother. She looked to be no older than in her early twenties. Perhaps, Mia often thought to herself, this was the age her mother had been when Mia was born.

The regal woman had a placid smile on her face, as she allowed Mia to conduct her nightly examination.

“
Still just the same old me.” She spoke lightly, with a teasing smile.

Mia did not reply, simply pondered, as she did every night, whether she looked more like her father than her mother. And a sadness settled on her heart, as it did every night since she had been dreaming of the tower, that she would never know.

“
You look more like
you
than you do either of us,” her mother replied to her unspoken thought fondly “the nose and the ears, that’s your father. The rest is all you.” She smiled proudly as she gazed at Mia.

Mia said nothing, she simply stared back at the woman she imagined to be her mother, wondering what it was that she was supposed to do, why she kept being brought back here to this place. A look of alarm crossed her mother’s face then, as she started at something behind Mia. This was new. Nothing had ever been behind Mia while they spoke before, in any of these dreams. Something about the expression on the woman’s face told her instinctively that she did not want to turn around and see what was behind her. Her mother began to back away from whatever it was, although she no doubt knew as well as Mia did that there was no way out of this room.

Mia herself remained rooted to the spot, unsure what to do. She took a breath, and was about to turn to see what it was that had frightened the woman who was usually so serene, regardless of any scene Mia created, or any reaction she tried to provoke. There was no need for her to look behind her though, as she caught sight of a movement out of the corner of her eye, instinctively twitching away from it. As she moved, an icy blast hit her, as though she were walking out out of a warm room and into a snowstorm.

She whirled around to see what she had hit - although it felt like a freezing blast, it somehow felt solid at the same time. All that was there was the black fog from outside, which had begun to wend it’s way in through the window, swirling around her in a bizarre and icy cold shroud.

Mia moved to step out of the fog, but to her surprise found herself held tight in place. She looked questioningly at her mother, feeling panic rise inside her, and was surprised to find sadness in her mother’s eyes.

“
So they know” whispered her mother softly.

Mia wanted to ask who knew, what they knew, what this fog was, but as she opened her mouth to ask, the black fog rushed down her throat, freezing her insides and leaving her unable to speak. She half expected to choke, and began to panic, but quickly found she could breathe quite easily, despite the peculiar feeling that her throat was filled with ice cold foam.

The woman who Mia dreamt of as her mother simply stood and watched as the fog wound around Mia’s arms and legs, and held her in it’s grip. Tendrils of the fog began to swirl out towards her, and she tried to back away further, but found there was nowhere to go - she was already against the door-less wall.

“
Let her in Mia!” her mother cried, as the fog finally reached her and began to envelope her as it had Mia. Mia had no idea who her mother was talking about, or what or who she meant by “Let her in”, but was powerless to ask. She was powerless to do anything but watch as the woman was completely obscured by the black fog.

Suddenly, Mia found herself released, and the fog was sucked from the room, as if by a vacuum. The place her mother had been standing was now empty, as was the rest of the stone room. She was completely alone, even all traces of the fog gone from the room. Mia sat down heavily, cross legged in the middle of the room, and that was where she stayed in silence for the remainder of the night, waiting glumly to be taken home by whatever forces brought her here every night. When the first rays of sunlight began to dance through the window, she was still there. She had never seen a sunrise from the tower before, usually she woke from her dream in the middle of the night in her own bed, whilst it was still dark in the tower, snatched away and returned home as abruptly as she was always taken there to begin with.

Curiosity got the better of her, and stiffly she rose from her spot on the floor, to look out of the window at what this place looked like in the early morning light. The sky was beginning to brighten, although it didn't look like the dawn sky at home. It looked like the ‘finished article’ when the sun had risen would be more of a pale violet than blue. It was pretty, there was no denying that. Mia looked down from the tower, to see what was below, and found nothing. There was just a great blankness, the likes of which she had never seen. Pure white, like a blank canvas. She looked back up to the horizon, and found that too was fading into nothingness, and very quickly, the only thing that existed in this strange dream place was the room of the tower that she was in. Mia backed away from the window, tripping over an uneven stone in the floor, and braced herself for the impact of landing on the hard stone floor. It never came - instead, she awoke in her bed, with the sunlight peeking through a gap in her curtains.

CHAPTER TWO

T
he following day passed slowly and sluggishly. Mia was tired and unable to concentrate on her lessons at school, and found it impossible to shake away the chill of the tower, which seemed to have seeped into her very bones. Mia was usually so lively, chatty and cheerful that her mother worried she was coming down with something. Gratefully and gladly, Mia agreed to take a hot bath and get an early night. Her mother said the sleep would do her the world of good - Mia doubted it, if last night’s dream was anything to go by.