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

tears running down her cheeks. They were right. She hadn’t interacted with Beatrice or with Emma at all. Everything was a sham, a make-believe. A dream. This whole Tarot thing and the psychic powers she had assumed she had, the curses, were a load of hooey, a pretence to make her feel good and in control of her life. None of it was real. In the past she had enjoyed having power over people, frightening them, glorying in their gratitude when she pretended to do things for them in the psychic realms, and she loved it when they paid her without question for her services.

She had believed it. She had genuinely believed it was real.

And those two calm confident women in their green uniforms had told her it was all a dream.

She looked down at her spread of cards, still lying neatly arranged on the table and with a howl of anger she swept them onto the floor. Her life had been no more than a scene from a film. Alice in Wonderland. When the Queen of Hearts and all the other characters at the tea party changed and dissolved and fluttered around Alice’s head, nothing but playing cards.

48

Dad had spoken to her. And Felix. They knew where she was. Rescuers were on their way. All she had to do was wait. Emma stared round in the dark, her eyes wide, trying to make out the details of her surroundings. There were gorse bushes up here, their flowers blazing gold, even in the dark, smelling of warm coconut and sugar. Again she heard a wolf howling in the distance. Further away now. She bit her lip, trying to hold back her tears. She wanted to run away, hide in some cranny in the rocks but there was nowhere. The moor seemed to spread out before her eternally, rising gently towards the summit of the mountain, a clear silhouette against the stars and she didn’t dare move. Her phone battery was down to 12 per cent and she didn’t want to turn on the torch. Without it, she couldn’t make out the path and any moment the phone was going to die. Overhead the stars blazed down over the high moors and she could hear a curlew in the distance, its eerie call echoing across the heather in the dark. She heard a movement behind her and she spun round, her heart thudding, poised to run. There was a man standing only feet from her. She stared at him, frozen with fear, trying to make out his shape, but he didn’t move, he didn’t make a sound and she realised at last it was an old thorn tree, twisted and tortured by the wind into the shape of a human torso.

‘Elisedd,’ she whispered. ‘Where are you? Please, help me.’

Her tears were scalding on her cheeks, her hands freezing cold as she brushed them away. ‘Please, Elisedd. You said we would come here together.’ She drew in a deep breath, trembling. ‘Please.’ There were demons in these hills, giants and trolls, spirits flitting across the moorland towards her. She could feel her panic building.

A few minutes later she saw another figure near her. Not a tree this time, a woman, moving towards her, drifting across the ground in the starlight. She felt a stab of visceral fear. She had expected her rescuers to have torches but the woman was coming straight towards her without hesitation, surefooted in the darkness.

‘Emma?’ The wind was rising now and Emma could hardly hear what the woman was saying. ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you. Rescuers are on their way. You must stay still. Nothing can harm you. There are no wolves here. No demons. Here take this.’ The woman had long, silver-streaked hair and a dark scarf over her head and round her shoulders. She held out her hand and pressed something into Emma’s cold fist. ‘Your angels are watching over you, child.’

‘And Elisedd?’ Emma stammered. ‘Where’s Elisedd!’ But the woman had gone and now she could hear shouting in the distance and the excited barking of a dog and see the light of several powerful torch beams far away below her down to her left, emerging from the trees.

When Simon’s phone rang he was leaning against the stone wall of the church, staring out into the darkness while listening to the dawn chorus, the sound pouring from the trees around the church, from the blackbird in the yew tree and the robin in the thorn and a thousand other birds from the depths of the woods on the slopes of the hills.

‘Mr Armstrong? This is the police. Your daughter has been found. She is safe and well. They will be taking her down the hill to Llangynog if you would like to meet them in the car park there.’

She didn’t want to go to hospital.

‘Take me to the church, Dad. Please. After all that, I have to go there.’

‘Emma!’

‘No. I mean it.’ Her voice was hoarse and she was still shaking with cold, wrapped in a space blanket in the back of the car. One of the mountain rescue team had been a doctor and had given her a quick check-up, squatting by the car door with her stethoscope, listening to her chest, taking her pulse. ‘We can’t make her go to hospital,’ she said as she stood up again. She looked at Simon with a weary smile. ‘She’s been very lucky. She’s uninjured and she’s not hypothermic. All she needs is to get warm and have some hot food and rest with her dad there to look after her.’ The doctor herself looked worn out. Simon felt a pang of guilt. ‘I am so sorry you were all dragged out like this.’ He glanced back at Emma, whose eyes had closed as she leaned back in the seat, shivering.

‘It’s our job.’ The doctor was packing her gear back into her bag. ‘We’re very happy to help. Things