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

‘That’s what Felix said.’

She could see the boy through the door, hunched over the computer, every inch of his body trying to convey the fact that he didn’t care and wasn’t upset.

‘Can I see her note?’ Bea could see Simon’s hand shaking as he reached into his pocket and brought out the crumpled sheet of paper. She took it and turned away from him, staring out across the hills, holding it tightly, trying to connect.

Behind her Simon sighed and threw himself down on one of the wrought-iron chairs by the little terrace table. He said nothing as Felix came outside and pulled out the chair opposite him. They sat there in silence, waiting.

Bea could feel the panic and the anger that was all Simon’s. She was trying to probe further, feel Emma in the untidy pencil scrawl. The girl had responded to blind impulse, to some kind of imperative she didn’t understand herself. Bea closed her eyes, concentrating. Waves of emotion were coming off the piece of paper: love and longing, loneliness, fear, regret, and over it all a deep enduring sense of loss. None of these were Emma’s emotions. They belonged to someone else.

And then, suddenly, hope. Emma. Emma was back and she had thought of something, seen something, that had filled her with excitement and longing, something out there in the countryside below the ridge. It was something important, fateful. Not too far away. Something to do with the person whose emotions she had been feeling so intensely. The Emma who had walked out of the gate had been responsible enough to write a note, but powerless to ignore the longing that had filled her whole being.

Bea turned towards them. ‘She’s gone to find Elise,’ she said, ‘the man she should have married, the man she has been looking for for over a thousand years.’

‘She. You mean the voice,’ Felix put in. ‘It. That woman, has possessed her and they’re looking for this man together.’

‘And you think this is Offa’s daughter, Eadburh, don’t you.’ Simon looked at her hard.

She bit her lip. ‘She is certainly hanging around.’ Bea closed her eyes, conscious that she should be protecting them all with every means known to her. Not just the bubble she had demonstrated to Emma and which the girl had clearly forgotten or ignored, but with incense and prayers and incantations, and yes, with Mark. She needed Mark. ‘I am going to set guards on this house and garden and then—’

‘Stop it!’ Simon lurched to his feet, pushing the chair out across the flagstones on the terrace. ‘No more of this stupidity! If you hadn’t encouraged her with all this crap, this wouldn’t have happened!’

‘Dad.’ Felix looked up at him pleadingly. ‘Bea is the only one who can help with all this.’

‘Well, she hasn’t helped so far, has she? She’s made it worse!’

To Bea’s horror she saw there were tears in his eyes. She took a deep breath and ploughed on. ‘Emma is dreaming about someone whose misery and loneliness has been written into the memory of time itself. I think she’s getting flashbacks and nightmares and yes, beautiful dreams that are not her own and I have a sense of where she’s gone.’ She clutched the note to her chest. ‘She had had a vision of a church tower, spotlit by the sun and this morning she remembered seeing it. Was that in her dreams or in reality? I don’t know but I think Emma has gone to find that little church because she and Elisedd dreamed they would one day marry there. It’s still there. It isn’t far away. One can see it from the top of the ridge.’

‘You mean you can scent her there, like a bloodhound. Is that another of your amazing gifts?’ Simon was bristling with hostility.

Bea had lost his confidence and she couldn’t blame him for that. She should have sensed what was going to happen. ‘I’m going to go and look. I’ll ring you if I spot something.’

She didn’t wait for a reply. She knew where she was going. Eadburh and her prince had looked down on the tower of a little chapel as it emerged into the sunlight from the mist and he had promised one day to marry her there. Eadburh had remembered that moment. Remembered it and treasured it for the rest of her life.

She took the car.

The clas was now an isolated country church some three miles by car from the cottage, but probably far less via the footpath Emma would have followed, straight down towards the valley. She and Mark had been there together once a long time ago. It was a very special place and somehow she knew it fitted into this story. It still clearly displayed its Saxon origins in its low rounded doorway and heavy stone vaulted roof and above all in the ancient round tower. Pulling up onto the grass verge she climbed out of the car and stood looking up the path between the ancient yews. Had Hilde called there too? In her dream of Eadburh’s hapless messenger, the yews were already ancient. It was an early stop on the obvious route into the Welsh hinterland.

There was a torn notice in the porch saying the church was open and that there was a service once a month; the door was an enormous lump of solid oak, bound by huge elaborate hinges that seemed as old as the tree from which the door had been hewn. She pushed it cautiously and peered in.

Emma was sitting in the front pew. She turned at the sound of the heavy latch. ‘I knew you would come.’

‘Are you OK?’ Bea walked up the aisle and sat down beside her. The church was ice-cold and smelled of ancient hymn books and stone.

She nodded. ‘I thought he might come to meet me here. He promised me that one day we would be married here.’

‘Elise?’

Emma nodded and Bea saw the tears leaking down her cheeks. ‘What’s happening to me?’

‘You