Fairy Circle (13 page)

C
hapter 8

“
G
ood morning, Sun Goddess.”

Audrey yanked the coverlet from Saffron’s face, causing a beam of sunshine to shoot straight through Saffron’s left eye. She groaned and tunneled farther under her blanket. “I had a long night. Let me sleep in a little, would you?”

“
Not today, miss. I need your help.” Before she left the bedroom, Audrey turned, asked quietly, “Have you thought about what I said?”

Saffron stared at her mother.
She thinks you’re crazy. She wants a shrink to peel it off you like an orange.
Her reply was almost incoherent. “Yes.”

It had happened again, yesterday, when her mother picked her up at the end of her shift. Who the hell has such a crappy mother that they had that kind of talk with their kid at midnight? When she could not have possibly been any happier knowing Markis had come in the store, had smiled at her, and had invited her to hang out…here comes Audrey with her shrink talk. Again. Her mother had been trying to get her to go to regular shrink visits since the second year of cliff-walking. Sometimes, Audrey tried hard, and sometimes Saffron enjoyed a long, effortless hiatus from defending her privacy.

“
I’ll dig out the physician’s directory. Why don’t we try Boston? It’ll be a beautiful ride and there are supposed to be good doctors there.”

Saffron took her sweet time answering. The only sound in the room was the strange high-pitched squeals of two alpacas tussling and the tapping leaves in the apple tree just outside the window. Saffron brought her arms around herself, her shoulders rounded forward. This was entirely too humiliating. She wished her mother picked this morning to talk about sex or venereal disease…masturbation, for God’s sake. Even that would have been better than this little chat.

“
You don’t have to feel ashamed, Saffron. Lots of people seek physicians when they are having trouble…inside. Like, troubling thoughts.” She rubbed her palms down her embroidered skirt. “And you seem to be having more, trouble….”

Audrey lowered her head and frowned at the shirt in her hands; it was Saffron’s favorite. There was a seam on the inside usually hidden from view. It was coming apart. Audrey wanted to mend it immediately. Today. Before it got worse. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.” She sighed. “Maybe if you tell someone else how you’re feeling you’ll find a way to…come around.”

Saffron flushed bright red. Her ears rang. Now she felt ashamed
and
guilty. Her mother looked so beaten standing over there with her head hanging, playing with a loose seam in an old shirt. Why was her mother fidgeting with that shirt? Saffron didn’t even like it. Audrey turned and left Saffron alone in the room.

Saffron checked herself out in her mirror. She was genuinely shocked at what she saw. She wondered why she was always taken by surprise at her image in pictures and her reflection in the mirror. She never ever looked like she thought she looked. She didn’t know her eyes looked so sunken, that they were ringed in black.

She had been dreaming about Ny
last night. Something about when people used horse-drawn carriages and wore big dresses fitted close to the neck and wrist. Something about him laughing and holding a woman in his arms in a carriage that bumped along cobbled streets. The streets were in a park. A park in winter. His face was flushed as his hands worked under a fur drawn over their knees. Her dress was up over her face, her bustle askew, and her feathered hat crushed as they fumbled wildly. Through a small window in the back, the Eiffel tower stood staunch and dark.

Saffron tried to stop the tremors in her gut that threatened to spread and vibrate throughout her whole body.

That day, she went mechanically about her business. When night fell, there was another dream. She was walking through the forest with a baby in her arms. Through the trees, she caught glimpses of the dark, pea-green. The wind was shrieking in her ears. She wore only a thin nightgown. Everywhere, there were thick shadows.

The baby was crying and her pupils were dilated as she stared into the darkest part of the wood.

Saffron came upon a puddle. Even though she didn’t want to, she couldn’t stop herself from bending over the water. She wanted to see her reflection. A raven screeched. Saffron looked up, then down again, as a hand shot out of the puddle, all slimy and gray. It snatched the baby from Saffron’s weak grasp.

“
No!” Saffron screamed as her knees buckled and forced her to the forest floor. She sat there crying while her mind told her to get up and do something about it. But, she would not get up. She was too afraid to move. She sat there and cried until the dream turned into another horrible scene.

This time she was at school. As usual, the kids were laughing at her. The school was dark and eerie, and the other kids didn’t look quite human. Her cousin Mindy had some scales on her neck. One of Mindy’s minions gimped oddly as she walked, as if she had talons. Her eyeballs were completely white. Another girl had tiny horns that were trying to break through her scalp; the skin there stretched white, waiting for the growth to split it. Blood ran down one side of her face.

The school looked ancient, decrepit. The cheap flooring was brown, cracked, and lifting. The floor itself was missing in some areas, and the holes led to complete black oblivion. The lockers looked punched and dented, and the doors were missing or hanging half off their hinges. There was dust, so much dust everywhere that Saffron began to choke on it. And there was dirt; she could feel the slime of it on her neck, see it brown and clinging to the walls and floor.

“
Saffron!” It was Markis. He was at one end of the hall motioning for Saffron to come to him. “Run, Saffron! Run! I can help you!” She could hardly see him in the dim light of her dream. She started toward him, but the sludge of the dream bogged her down. All of her steps were in extreme slow motion. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she cried out, “I can’t. I just can’t.”

“
C’mon Saffron. Hurry!”

She tried and tried, but she felt so tired. Then all at once, she was by Markis’s side and he was hugging her and comforting her. He cradled the base of her skull in his palm and told her it would be all right. He was going to kiss her. She could tell. He closed his eyes and slowly moved toward her slightly-parted, waiting lips. But there was no kiss. He savagely grabbed her neck. With his head, he shoved her head aside so he could get at her artery. He bit down into her flesh. To Saffron, it felt like two needles were piercing her skin and sliding into the muscles of her neck. She began to scream and scream and scream. Markis threw his head back, laughed, and then howled as blood dripped off his fangs and chin.

The vision began to dim and blur. Colors melded together like hot wax in a kettle. She heard Ny calling her. He seemed to be very far away. No matter which direction Saffron looked, all was pitch black. She held her hand in front of her eyes and could not see it.

“
Ny?” In her dream, she suddenly realized she was dreaming. She told herself she had nothing to fear. She told herself this wasn’t real. Ny’s calls sounded closer. Saffron felt her heart swell and she thought it might burst. She loved Ny. With every ounce of her soul, she loved Ny. With complete clarity, she realized she always had. She could feel him around her, could sense him in her heart, mind, and body. She could smell him now, fresh water and sweat, his freshly-washed hair. She didn’t remember the women from her dreams. She didn’t remember herself. “Ny?”

“
I am here, Saffron. Come to me. Come to me over here.”

Through a shimmering haze, she saw him. He was leaning on a cherry tree. It was in full bloom and in the middle of a meticulous Japanese garden. A fountain bubbled behind him; the water ran down to a clear pool. Small birds flitted in and out of the tree. Baby rabbits cropped grass at his feet. His smile was sultry, wicked. He winked at her and waved her over. He disappeared behind the tree.

She ran to him, as fast as she could. When she arrived, she was breathless. He wasn’t there. She frowned and went to the other side of the tree. He wasn’t there. “Ny?”

“
I am here, Saffron. Do not keep me waiting! I want you with me."

He was several yards away, sitting in a field of daisies. The field grew to the edge of the sea where the sun hung like a white ball. His black, wavy hair glistened and his blue eyes shone. He had no shirt. The muscles in his neck and shoulders and chest were taut and gleaming as he sat straight and strong like a yogi.

“
Please Saffron, come to me.” He lay back among the flowers and vanished.

She ran so fast that her feet left the ground. She began to fly over the field. He was nowhere to be found, but below her she saw a woman with long hair. The world turned gray. She didn’t know if she was the woman below or if it was someone else; the big hair matched.

“
Saffron, I need you. I am waiting. It hurts.” But where was he?

Saffron floated down into the middle of a desert. It was night. The moon was full. Except for the towering, night-blooming cactus on her right, she was completely alone. She knew there was no one around, not for thousands of miles. He had left her.

“
Ny!” she screamed so loud her voice cracked. A gust of wind blasted past, followed by stillness so complete Saffron felt the entire world would shatter were she to expel her breath.

She woke up sobbing. Indistinct impressions of the dream lay in her mind like dirty rags. She lay sprawled against her locked bedroom door. She started to whisper, “Don’t come back for me. I don’t like this. I can’t take it. Don’t come back for me. I don’t like this. I can’t take it.” She whispered those words over and over again, wringing her hands like a frightened child, her eyes darting and searching the dark room without seeing.

Outside, there were the strangled screams of the woman as she bounced off the cliff on her way to the sea.

Chap
ter 9

T
he dreams increased in number and in intensity throughout the rest of the summer. She didn’t have to wait for the full moon anymore to dread the pain of them. They were with her every night, locked in her room with her. Saffron was okay with the bolt lock. She wanted the lock to keep her in, but begged her mother and Derek to respect her privacy and sleep in their rooms. When the moon wasn’t full, they acquiesced. But when the moon was full, and her nights were a full-out rampage where she went raging about her room, screaming and tearing at the drapes, they insisted someone stay with her to keep her from hurting herself.

The dreams left her weak during the day. Sometimes, she was so tired the next morning she’d slur her words just to force out a sentence. She tried not to talk to anyone.

She fell asleep one afternoon, intending to take just a little nap before her shift. Another dream slithered into her mind like a snake into a hole. Ny was teasing her. She was watching him with wide eyes, actually salivating in her dream as if he was some kind of roast and she was a starving creature. With the dream came the pressing emotions she never experienced in daylight, the unearthly need and indescribable want. The intensity of the visions woke her twice but she never fully came to. She just sat up and cried a little, then fell back into a dead sleep, too far gone for the dreams to touch her. She woke up hours later, late for work.

She didn’t eat and didn’t shower. When her mother dropped her off at work, she showed up with dark circles under her eyes and frizzy unkempt hair. For reasons unknown, Bea was still at the store, nosing into some paperwork while Coco fumed, arms across her chest, in the back by the coffee pots. Bea lowered her brow at Saffron. Saffron stared back, unresponsive to Marlboro-Teeth’s hostility.

On the ride over, Audrey had produced names and addresses of more doctors for Saffron to meet. With her eyes locked on the yellow line, Audrey missed how Saffron clawed at her temples and ground her teeth. Saffron had “considered” hundreds of doctors since she was twelve and had met seven, complaining to her mother after the torturous hour with each one. She was adamant; those doctors with their fish-eyed stares and monotone voices wouldn’t help her at all. The other doctors, the overexuberant ones who patted you repeatedly and held you in a bug-eyed grip, and said things like, “let’s talk about our truths,” were even worse. Saffron thought that a doctor who couldn’t have a conversation with a perspective patient without staccato blinking and stopping for breath every time she spoke in her high-pitched voice, then the doctor should get a doctor.

Audrey thought it was important that Saffron feel comfortable with the therapist she was to splay out her inner most feelings to. So, Audrey didn’t push any one of the professionals on her daughter, but hoped that soon, Saffron would find someone with whom she felt comfortable.

Saffron suddenly realized there was a little blue thing on her shoulder, like a hairless squirrel. It wanted to dig its paw in her ear. She slapped at it feebly, but could never connect with its clingy little body. It used her shirt and jeans as a cat uses a scratching post to scurry down her body and lope away across the dirty linoleum.

“
What is
wrong
with you?” Bea stopped fiddling with her papers. They were the lottery totals, and they probably weren’t working out, or Bea, as head clerk, wouldn’t have been called in. Now, because someone on first shift couldn’t add, Bea was fast becoming Coco and Saffron’s problem. Bea’s right hand was caught in midair, holding a pen above the clipboard.