Fever Dreams

In her fourth spring, the little girl became ill. The moons turned quickly that year and the spring festivals were early enough that the nights were cool even in the Land of Three Rivers, which is not far north of the City of the Crescent Moon where the great river flows into the southern sea.

They hold two great celebrations there in the spring. It was on the day of the second holiday, the one on which there is a return to the eating of meat and chocolate and ladies pile their hats with flowers, that Luce sickened. She went to bed, feeling weak, when the sun was still in the sky. The adults murmured that little Luce must be suffering from a surfeit of chocolate and would probably be better in the morning.

The child closed her eyes and fell into a dark place. She was chained in a dark room in an old, derelict house. Luce could sense someone of something coming but the chains bound her fast and she could not escape. She did not scream but woke up and ran to the bathroom where she vomited. Stupid with sleep and sickness, she barely registered her mother tending to her and returning her to bed.

Luce fought against sleep but lost the battle. The creature entered the room, which was so dark she could not see clearly and that made it all the more terrible. It assumed the shape of a woman, then that of a man. It then turned into a large and terrible black dog with burning eyes, darker than the shadows.

In the grey dawn, Luce woke and found her legs would not support her and she was burning with fever. Her mother took her to the doctor and then to the hospital. The doctors at the hospital conducted many tests to determine the nature of her illness. They gave her medication to make her sleep through one of these procedures and that drug returned her to the room where the creature patiently waited. It finally reached her side.

Though she was not a cowardly child, Luce screamed. It would not be the last time. She was grateful when a needle in the back returned her to the waking world, even if that world contained needles and doctors. However, her time in that world would be brief. Weak as her body was, she could not avoid returning to dreams and the ministrations of the creature. What happened there is best left unrecorded.

After several days, the doctors could not determine the nature of Luce’s illness except that it was a virus and beyond their powers to cure. The girl was sent home where she lay fevered in bed and bled in chains in her dreams. Her body and mind weakened. At some point she may have been returned to the hospital but the waking world was a fog to her and she could never remember with certainty.

One night, she was in the dark room, in chains, but the creature was not there. The girl realized some or something new was there in the room with her. The soft fur of a small, white mouse brushed against her. Its whiskers tickled her cheek.

“Girl,” said the mouse, “you have to get out of here.”

“How,” asked the girl, “can I do that? I am chained, mouse.”

“You are in your own dreams, child. The creature may have taken control of them but you can get them back. If you do not do so and soon both your waking and dreaming will cease.”

Luce asked, “Why is the creature doing this? I have asked it but it just says it can do what it wants to me, so it will.”

“It exists to create darkness and snuff out light,” replied the mouse, “and that is all you need to know about it. It seeks to extinguish you. Quickly now, before it returns, you need wings. Think of any brave thing you’ve ever done and think of flying.”

Luce though of the time she punched a much bigger boy who was tormenting a cat. She thought of running into the waves. She thought of soaring birds and a good headwind blowing over a sunlit meadow. Her chains dissolved and, with wings the blue of a summer evening, she left the floor.

Luce could hear the creature returning. The mouse turned into a white raven to fly with her and rose up, cawing warning.

The raven-mouse said, “Now! Think of light! As bright as you can.”

She thought of the flowery meadow again and a day so bright that the flower petals and blades of grass seemed rendered into photo-negatives. Luce then recalled a beach with sugar white sand, the sky an intensity of blue above it and orange butterflies hovering over the dunes. High up, a window with light streaming through it appeared in the wall. The creature lunged to grab at her ankles but Luce and the raven escaped though the window.

When Luce lighted on the sand, her winds dissolved and she crumpled onto its softness, staining the pristine white with her blood. The raven was now a large, white cat which curled next to her and licked her cheek with a sandpapery tongue and began to purr.

“Now,” said the cat, “close your eyes and wake up.”

The cat purred against her and Luce let he vibration lulled her. She slept on the white sand and woke up in a hospital bed, her mother asleep in the bed next to her.

Luce’s fever did not return but she lost two weeks of spring that year and was never quite healthy again. She had always been a fair-skinned child but had bright roses in her cheeks. Now her cheeks and lips were as starkly alabaster as the rest of her skin and her baby roundness was gone never to return. As she went from child to girl, then to woman, Luce never slept more than she had to. Sometimes, in her dreams, she looked for blue wings or a white cat, mouse, or raven but never found them.