The Dream Weavers by Barbara Erskine (books you have to read txt) 📕

‘Are any of us still alive?’ The reply was mocking. ‘Are you not wandering in the place of the dead?’

‘Stop it!’ Suddenly Bea was angry. ‘This is my vision! Why are you taunting me? I thought we were allies.’

She clutched at her collar, trying to find her cross. It wasn’t there. In her rising panic she turned round, flailing out into the darkness. Then she heard a voice, a second voice, almost drowned out by the tumult of the elements.

‘Bea? Bea!’

Her own name cut sharply across the raging noises in her head and Bea opened her eyes to total, shocking silence. She was out of breath and shaking as she looked blankly round the room, not recognising where she was. She heard herself give a little whimper. ‘Are you all right, darling? Here. Give that to me.’ Mark was kneeling on the floor beside her and took the stone out of her unresisting fingers. He looked down at it with distaste and put it down on the table, then he took Bea’s hands in his. ‘You’re freezing. Come downstairs and let me get you something hot to drink.’

She found she was staring at him. She knew who he was, of course she did, and yet he seemed out of place.

Out of time.

She tried desperately to focus her thoughts, her gaze going past him, round the room, towards the window where a benevolent blue sky hung gently behind small white clouds.

‘The storm has gone.’ She heard her own voice, strangely flat and without resonance.

‘Yes, my darling, the storm has gone.’ After a moment’s hesitation Mark put his arm round her shoulder and pulled her against him. He held her like that, close, until he began to feel some warmth coming back to her body.

‘Where were you?’ he asked at last.

She closed her eyes. ‘The place of the dead,’ she murmured.

His arms tightened round her. ‘Christ be with us,’ he whispered, ‘Christ within us, Christ behind us, Christ before us.’ He glanced round the room. Was there something there? An atmosphere, a lurking demonic presence? ‘Can you stand up?’ He spoke more loudly now. ‘Let’s go downstairs.’

‘She isn’t here.’ Bea responded to his change of tone.

‘She?’

‘Nesta. She is there in the mountains. In the rain.’ She straightened a little and he moved back so she could stand up. As she struggled to find her feet there was a small chink of metal as her cross fell at her feet. They both looked down at it. ‘The chain broke.’ She was staring at it blankly. ‘That’s why I couldn’t find it.’

Mark stooped and picked it up. ‘We’ll find you a new chain,’ he said. His mouth was dry.

She held out her hand to take it and stood looking down at it as it lay on her palm. She had not gone into her meditation seeking to see Nesta again. The woman had sneaked in under her radar and come between her and her goal, to find Elisedd. She felt a sudden visceral fear. Her quest was becoming dangerous; she had met someone who could with ease slip past her safeguards, someone who knew how to move between the worlds, who worshipped the ancient and powerful gods who had ruled this land long before Christianity arrived on the shores of Albion and who might even now be here in the room with them, watching. She looked up, unaware that Mark was watching as her gaze flitted from one corner of the room to another.

‘What is it?’ he asked gently. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘Nothing!’ she jumped guiltily. ‘I’m still feeling a bit shaky. You shouldn’t have woken me like that, Mark!’

‘Sweetheart, you were shouting.’

‘Shouting?’ Her gaze came back abruptly to his face. ‘I wasn’t!’

‘Yes, you were. You sounded so frightened. What was I supposed to do? Stand and watch?’

She could feel her heart beginning to pound again, her breath struggling in her chest. Closing her fist around the cross, she swallowed hard. ‘No. Thank you for being here.’

‘Please stop this, Bea.’

‘I don’t think I can.’ She gritted her teeth. ‘This is something I have to finish, Mark. I have to find out where Emma fits in. Until I do that she might be in danger.’ She saw his face and hastily rephrased her comment. ‘From herself. She has run out into the countryside twice now, Mark. She is frantically looking for something, but she doesn’t know what, or who she is looking for, and he isn’t there any more.’

‘So, she is looking for someone.’

‘Yes, she’s looking for someone.’

‘And you know who.’

She nodded.

‘And Simon knows what is happening?’

‘Yes, we discussed it this morning.’

‘And he’s happy with this situation?’

‘No, he’s not happy, but the situation is as it is. He knows it’s probably his own reading and research that has stirred up this swarm of bees—’ She stopped abruptly. Bees. Somehow bees were central to this story.

‘And how does my nun fit in?’

She had forgotten that Mark too was involved in this strange conundrum. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Has she reappeared?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

He sighed. It was his turn to walk over to the window and stare out as though seeking inspiration in the garden. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I am going to do nothing for a bit while I think. My dream, my meditation, took me to a horrible place just now. The kingdom of the sons of Vortigern. I suppose it was somewhere in Wales, but it seemed more like some Arthur Rackham-type version of what hell would be. I don’t want to go there again. I have grown over-confident and that leads to carelessness.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘I will come to you for help, Mark, I promise, and in the meantime, please, hold me in your prayers. I will follow you down, my love, but first I have to cleanse this room and light some incense.’ She saw him hesitate, saw him frown, but he nodded slowly and turned back to the door.

‘Don’t