“But the dreams will come back, right?”
“They can, yes, but if they do they are often weaker and less frequent. Less vivid. A shadow of their former selves, if you will.” Madame Snowe’s nostrils flared, as if something about Caitlyn’s lack of dreams was somehow contemptible.
“That can’t be me! They have to come back,” Caitlyn said, desperate for reassurance.
“Perhaps you will be lucky,” Madame Snowe said grimly. “
Fortune rota volvitur
.”
Caitlyn had shaken her head, bewildered by the headmistress’s harsh tone and at the possibility of losing her dreams, and Raphael, forever.
“Screw Fortune,” Caitlyn muttered now, remembering.
“What was that?” Amalia said, looking up from the heavy tome she was reading.
“I was cursing the whimsies of Fortune.”
“Curse the typesetter who did this book, while you’re at it. The print is nearly impossible to read.”
Caitlyn, Naomi, and Amalia were seated around a library table they’d taken over for the past week. Using the excuse of Caitlyn’s history paper, they’d enlisted the librarian’s aid in unearthing every book in the Fortune School’s library that touched on Catherine de’ Medici’s era in France and Italy. It turned out to be a lot of books, the de’ Medici family having been an interest of Madame Snowe’s family, undoubtedly because of the portrait they owned of Bianca de’ Medici.
Another, much smaller stack of books contained one volume on the Knights Templar, three geology texts, a slim guide to cave exploration, and two books on hypnotism.
Whenever they had free time, Naomi and Amalia skimmed the books in French and Italian, while Caitlyn plodded through the ones in English. They were looking for any mention of the people Caitlyn had seen or heard about in her dream, but as the days went by without success, Caitlyn began to feel the weight of doubt. With the doubt came guilt at the efforts Naomi and Amalia were expending on her behalf.
The guilt had been chewing at her with increasingly sharp teeth, and she finally couldn’t stand it anymore. “Maybe this is pointless,” Caitlyn said. “Maybe there’s nothing to find. They were just dreams, after all. They seemed real, but—”
“But nothing,” Naomi said. She turned a page and kept reading.
“We don’t have any proof that anything I saw in my dreams was real. If anything, it’s looking like I imagined it all. I’m probably losing my mind.”
Naomi looked up from her reading. “Caitlyn, we felt that wind at the
gouffre
.”
“Madame Brouwer says now she’s sure it was some sort of microburst, a sort of reverse tornado from a storm cloud. They can be strong enough to flatten trees.”
“Then why didn’t it so much as snap a twig? Why did it only mess our hair?”
“Face it. You’re stuck with us,” Amalia said. “Stop whining and go back to reading.”
Caitlyn bent her head over an open book, but she didn’t see the words on the page. Instead, she saw herself sitting at a table with two girls who were willing to give all their time and energy to help her. It reminded her of her old friends back at home—Jacqui and Sarah.
“Caitlyn,” Amalia suddenly said in a quiet, strained voice, “tell me again the name of Raphael’s teacher.”
Caitlyn sat up straight. Naomi put down her book. “Beneto.”
Amalia shoved her book into the center of the table so they all could see. “This is the diary of Marguerite de Valois, Catherine de’ Medici’s daughter.” Amalia ran her finger under the French sentences as she translated aloud. “I was left to console the wards Giulia and Elisabeta, as they had learned that their brother was dead. His teacher, an insane old man named Beneto, was put to death this morning for the crime.”
“What! No!” Caitlyn pulled the book toward her, scanning the French passage for herself. She saw the words for
brother
and
dead
, and Beneto’s name. “It can’t be. It can’t!”
“Caitlyn,” Amalia said hesitantly, “maybe the reason you can’t dream about Raphael anymore is that he was murdered right after your last dream.”
“No,” Naomi said, shaking her head. “What would be the point of that? I think Caitlyn hasn’t dreamed because she had to learn about Beneto before she went back to Raphael. She has to warn him.”
Amalia pointed to the book. “But she doesn’t. Otherwise this book wouldn’t say Beneto was put to death for his murder.”
They looked at one another. Caitlyn pressed her fingertips against her temples, trying to think, trying to push aside the flushing panic that she was too late, that Raphael was going to die because she’d hit her head and lost her dreams. “This sounds like one of those paradoxes that keep showing up in science-fiction stories. If I warn Raphael and Beneto doesn’t kill him, then does the book change? Will any of us remember seeing it written the way it is now?”
Caitlyn shook her head, struggling through the warped logic. “Maybe we’re thinking about this the wrong way. We’re acting as if I’m going back in time, but I’m not. I’m dreaming. If anything, Raphael may be a ghost who is visiting my sleep and creating a dream world around me that he uses to tell his story. Maybe this isn’t about my stopping something that happened in the past. It could be about learning something that matters right here, right now. For some reason, I need to know his story.”
“Or maybe he needs to know his own story,” Naomi said.
Caitlyn dropped her hands. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know what happened to him. He needs you to help him figure it out.”
“Four hundred years after his death?” Caitlyn asked. “Why now? Why me?”
Amalia answered. “Because you’re the first person who could hear him. You’re a medium.”
Caitlyn dismissed the idea with a shake of her head. “No other spirits ever talk to me.”
“Those Screecher things are ghosts, aren’t they?” Naomi asked.
“I don’t know
what
they are. If they’re ghosts, they’re crappy, insane ghosts who spend all their time screaming.”
“Maybe that’s the type you attract.”
“Great.”
“Who knows what real ghosts are like?” Amalia asked. “Maybe a coherent one like Raphael is a rare exception.”
“That brings us back to the first point, doesn’t it?” Caitlyn said. “If he’s a rare exception, then there may be a purpose behind these dreams, beyond helping Raphael to the ‘other side’ or whatever it is that’s supposed to happen when we die. There may be something important about his story that will matter to us here, now.”
“Or matter to
you
,” Naomi said. “We’re peripheral.”
Caitlyn remembered the things Madame Snowe had told her about dream interpretation. Raphael—whether he had an external reality or was just a part of her imagination—might be trying to give her a message about herself. But what? And if she found out what, would Raphael stop visiting her, his work done?
She pulled Marguerite de Valois’s diary in front of her, looking again at the lines with Beneto’s name. “Something about all this is real, but I’m never going to figure out what unless I dream again.” She looked up at her friends. “Anyone have a magic potion to make that happen?”
“I don’t,” Amalia said, and hesitated. “But Brigitte does.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
“Zolpidem tartrate,” Amalia read off the label, and handed the prescription bottle to Caitlyn. “The magic dreaming potion, as promised.”
Caitlyn took the bottle and looked at it doubtfully. It was later that same evening, and she was sitting on her bed in her nightgown with Amalia and Naomi.
“It’s also known as Ambien,” Amalia said. “It’s a sleeping pill. I told Brigitte I was having trouble falling asleep, and she gave me the whole bottle. She hasn’t used any for months; she says it gives her weird, vivid dreams that she has a hard time shaking off in the morning. Apparently, it has a reputation for doing that.”
“Which means,” Naomi said, “that it has a good chance of giving
you
some dreams, as well. It might be the kick start your brain needs.”
“A
kick start
doesn’t sound like something you want to do to your brain,” Caitlyn said nervously. “Are you sure this stuff won’t hurt me?”
“Positive,” Amalia said. “And just in case, Naomi and I will take turns watching over you all night.”
“You’re going to be fine,” Naomi reassured her.
Amalia took the bottle back and shook out a pill into her palm. She considered it for a moment, then shook out one more. “Here.”
Caitlyn hesitated; taking sleeping pills worried her. Her brain was messed up enough as it was.
“You want to see Raphael, don’t you?” Naomi said. “You have to tell him about Beneto. You have to save his life.”
Her quibbles were washed away under a wave of renewed urgency. Raphael needed her. She wouldn’t—
couldn’t
—let him die! Caitlyn scooped up the pills, dropped them on her tongue, and took a gulp of water. Amalia and Naomi moved off her bed and she got under her covers. “How long until I feel it?”
“Fifteen or twenty minutes, if you don’t fight it,” Amalia said.
Naomi shut off Caitlyn’s bedside lamp.
“Fais des beaux rêves.”
Sweet dreams.
Caitlyn shut her eyes. They would be sweet only if she could save Raphael.
She floated bodiless in darkness, surrounded by silence. She lingered there for an unknown stretch of time, directionless, emotionless, until a faint spark of light formed in the distance. Her consciousness flashed her the image of Raphael.
“Raphael,” she whispered into the void, and from her heart she felt a surge of emotion. She was drawn toward the light that was he as if they were tied together by a golden cord. “Raphael, Raphael …”
The light expanded, blinding her for a split second, then the void was gone, and a sense of her body settled around her and gave her weight. Beneath her bare feet she felt the coldness of stone. The darkness had given way to the gray landscape of Raphael’s bedroom, the moonlight that came through the window so bright she could almost see color. She stood beside his bed, wearing her long white nightgown.
She saw him, and tears of mingled relief and joy stung her eyes. Her chest tightened, her heart feeling ready to burst.
He’s still alive! And I’m here! I’m finally here with him!
Raphael slept, one arm flung above his head, his hair spilling across the pillow, the sheet pushed down to his waist. His bare torso showed muscled strength even in sleep. He was gloriously alive and beautiful. She was almost afraid to believe that she had found her way back to him, and reached out to trace her fingertips over the planes of his chest and prove he was real.
Suddenly, Raphael grabbed her hand in a hard grip, and his eyes flew open. She gasped. For a long moment he stared at her in confusion, and then the veil of sleep cleared from his face. “I knew you’d come back to me,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. He tugged her down onto the bed and into his arms, and held her as if he would never let her go. She felt him shaking, and he put his hand on the back of her head, holding her close as he nuzzled his face into the corner of her neck, his breath warm against her skin. She felt his lips moving against her as he spoke. “I’m not going to let you disappear on me again,” he said into her hair. “I’ll find a way to keep you here with me.”
She closed her eyes, lost in the joy of being once again in his arms. She never wanted to part from him again. “How?” she asked, and wanted the answer with every fiber of her being.
“By never letting go.”
Caitlyn entwined her fingers in his hair. Being enclosed within his embrace felt
right
, as if she had been there a thousand times before and would be there a thousand times again. He kissed her neck.
“I want to stay here forever,” Caitlyn said.
“Can you? Do you know how?”
The question stirred the sediment in Caitlyn’s mind, and her waking life began drifting up into her consciousness, breaking through the surface of the dream. She shook her head and leaned back from him so she could see his face. “This isn’t real.”
He smiled and touched her lips with his fingertips. “Not in the sense that anyone else would understand. But you’re real to me. The Church would see this as the worst sort of sin, but I lost respect for it long ago. They can send me to Hell if they want, better there with you than in Heaven without.”
Caitlyn frowned, confused. “But—wait a minute.
I’m
real to
you
? Don’t you mean that you’re real to me?”
He smiled indulgently. “I’m not the ghost.”
Caitlyn’s lips parted. “Raphael. Neither am I.”
He stroked the side of her face. “I know you don’t realize it.”
“No, I’m alive, just not in this place.” She struggled to sit up, and he sat up along with her. “I only see you when I sleep; you appear only in my dreams. I’m dreaming right now.”