Bring Me to Life: II
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I had bewildering dreams that night: half-shadowed glimpses into a yawning confusion. It was the sort of dream not easily classified as nightmare, as no monsters or obvious perversions of life were seen, nothing more than a stretching winter scene. Fragile ice decorated the one tree in the centre of the field (or what I assumed was the centre, from my perspective), slender, knobbed icicles shivering along the brittle black sticks twining out from the trunk. Whispers of people passing me made me uneasy, as though I could hear spirits but not see them. Reaching out to grab onto the tree, clasp it for support, I slid through it: the tree was, in accordance with the reality of dreams, intangible. Falling through the tree, I plunged into an iced river that sprang from the ground, twisting unendingly through the snow banks.
Ice snapped under my slender weight and I snarled my fingers in the tree roots as the trunk leaned toward me. Shock presented itself with the textures cutting into my bare hands, suddenly aware of the freezing chill of the water; I had never before had a dream wherein I could feel pain, anything tangible that could serve to root imagination with reality. Catching the largest root again with my weakened grip, I tried to drag myself up even as my skin crawled from both the coldness and the realization that I was feeling the cold. But my numbing fingers began to slip, tired; and the root bucked under my tiny chubby hands, twisting free as the bark scraped over my palms.
"No," I moaned, catching my fingernails in the ridges. "No, I'm scared – I don't want to, please." The root, as if mocking my plea, rippled under my rapidly tiring grip, shifting shape to an oily curl smooth and unblemished. "I don't want to fall, please don't let me," I continued desperately, kicking my feet frantically in the water. "I'm scared of the water, I can't fall in, I won't come up, I won't come up; I won't I won't I'll stay down!" In the water, I thought as the coldness spread to my belly; if I let go, if it makes me let go, I won't be able to come up.
I knew with certainty that I would die, I would plummet into an endless (pit of dirty rainwater) river of immeasurably chill water and drown, unseen and unheard by anyone but the whispering voices. No one was here to save me, as the tree slowly eased the root out of my right hand, leaving me to claw at the snow as I held on with my left; I couldn't feel Amidamaru and knew he would not be able to warn anyone (as the dream swerved further and further into my grasp of reality), felt with terror that this time Daddy would not be able to save me.
When I was two years in age, I was curious about the sheet of smudged glass just out of sight of our family home. I leaned over, saw my face blinking owlishly back at me with the same round features, and was promptly fascinated. Reaching over, crouching and leaning forward on my toes as my cracked sneakers protested, I tried to touch the hand echoed in the glass; fingers touched, breaking the surface as my hand merged with my tepid reflections, and then I screamed, tumbling headfirst into the water. Up and down reversed gleefully as I tried to recover my balance underwater, frightened and scrabbling slowly about, and as I tried madly to reclaim the surface, Amidamaru had thankfully seen me fall into the pit.
I remembered as the river tugged at my legs and the root tried to fight me off, that Daddy had plunged his long arms into the water, caught me by my arms and pulled me out. Crying and confused, I had burrowed toward him, hiding my face in his shirt and whimpering raggedly; he had sighed heavily, then laughed (a jittery laugh, I would realize later) and restored my confidence. "Whew," he sighed, and nodded with relief at Amidamaru, "you scared me half out of my mind. I don't want my daughter as a ghost! And," Daddy leaned back with a heavy exhale, like that of a marathon sprinter after the Olympics, "you know I only want excitement once a week; quota's been filled. No more excitement!" He fell to the ground with an exhausted huff and, shrieking, I joined him.
"Daddy?" I asked weakly as the snow crumbled under my right hand. "Daddy, I'm scared – I'm really scared, Daddy." I sobbed, once, as the root ripped from my hand and, too worn to scream, I slipped quietly to the river.
-
In contrast with the dream, my room felt overwhelmingly warm though the November air was creeping in. The sudden shift in temperatures, from imagined to real, was enough to bewilder and irritate my mind; I shoved my blanket off and stumbled to stand on my futon, toes curling in the folds of the cloth. As though to dispel the sensation of strong heat from my flannel pajamas, I did an awkward hopping dance to burn adrenaline and fidgeting excitement, shaking my arms. I knew there were sticky tear tracks on my cheeks, rapidly drying and drawing the skin taut with a filmy glaze, and at a brief spark of remembered fear, I tossed my head around in a mockery of giddiness.
A choked whisper of something from my lips, and the shuffle of the cloth slowed gradually as my paces grew less frenetic and, grounded back in reality, I stopped. My shoulders slumped and I poked at the blanket with my foot. "I'm scared, Daddy," I repeated, softly, and swallowed thickly before stiffening my back and glowering at the wall. I spat, "Stupid Nemuri, it's just a dream; you're not supposed to act like a baby. Just a dream, and a stupid one." My resolve wilted toward the end, with my voice slipping into a timid whisper as I wrapped my arms around my front, flannel wrinkling up with the movement.
"But I'm still scared," I whimpered, and plopped directly onto my rear, legs sprawling before me, and tears coming anew. "I'm scared of the water; I hate it, hate the water." I kicked my foot out angrily, and wiped at my face with the side of my palm. In the dark, as I tried to brush away the tears and felt frustrated at myself, I wanted the night to pass and reveal the morning light; in the morning, everything would be normal again: Mother would still be calm and cold, and Daddy would be home today to play with me, and Uncle Manta was coming over (I didn't know why, but assumed it was something boring and grown-up). Amidamaru would coddle and worry over me, and the t.v. would be on, blaring, even though no one would be watching it.
"Amidamaru?" I asked, as the thought struck me. What if Mother and Daddy had decided I was ready to be unsupervised? "Can I talk to you?" I crossed my legs and dropped my hands to rest hopefully on my ankles. "I mean, if you're listening, 'cause I don't wanna bother you." Wrinkling my nose, I leaned forward in the dark and squinted into the shadows of the hall stretching past my room. "Please?" I added, as an afterthought.
Silence for a long moment, the sort that stretches into a sleepy oblivion; the sort where as soon as one's eyes begin to drift shut, more out of a warm numbness than any boredom or strong urge to sleep, the thing (or person) asked for appears. In this case, it was a swirl of mist as my eyes grew lidded, quickly shifting into the familiar important adornment of the samurai. "Oh," I said after a moment as he stared, eyebrows lifted expectantly. "Hi."
He looked at me with disgruntled affection. "Mistress Nemuri," spoke Amidamaru gravely, "are you in any pain or, perhaps, danger? Have you felt anything troubling approaching that might merit my speaking to your father?" Mother had her quelling looks, sharp and nearly daggers in their warning, and Daddy had thin-lipped glares that were unsettling, but Amidamaru had this entirely belittling look that could make me feel like an insignificant speck; considering he was usually quite a fun, excitable ghost, it was strange that he should be so capable of squashing any "foolishness," as Mother had put it succinctly once (and Daddy, I think, agreed to keep her from smacking the back of his head again).
Feeling silly, I admitted sheepishly, lowering my chin to my chest, "Not exactly, Amidamaru." Then, hopefully, I perked up and smiled weakly, "Um, I had a nightmare?" I picked at the string dangling from my sleeve absently.
His expression softened enough for me to look up; I realized, albeit lately, that he had been teasing me. "Ah, nightmares," he nodded solemnly. "Most dangerous things for a young child; when I myself had nightmares, I often spoke to someone else. If you would like to, I might be able to assist you, Mistress Nemuri, in conquering this evil." He gave me a sturdy look tinged with faint hope, and I knew he wanted to help as he might be able to – if I were to fall head over heels into another pit of water, guardian or no he wouldn't be able to haul me out himself.
I grabbed at my toes, frowning in consideration. "Well," I said after a moment, "it didn't really feel like a nightmare. There weren't any monsters or people or scary things at all." Except, I thought grimly, for the river, but who was afraid of water? I kept it to myself and forged on. "But it did," I faltered, "feel weird and I was kind of scared anyway."
Amidamaru replied firmly, "There are many things that are frightening other than that which you see." He paused a moment to allow my brain time to unravel his sentence, and a grim shadow crossed his long face in memory.
"You have to see something to be afraid of it!" I protested quickly, thinking of every horror movie Daddy, Amidamaru, and I had watched as Mother darkly prophesied sleepless nights to follow. "Like in that movie, with the hand that crawled around," I jerked my wrist in illustration, writhing slightly, "and choked you in your sleep? Nobody was scared of it 'til they saw it, and then it was always too late."
He opened his mouth to retort, then paused to grimace with thought, grasping his chin reflectively. "Yes, such was the case in that particular movie, but it is not well to confuse the unreal with the real." A sage expression and nod, and I began to miss the Amidamaru who liked playing with me (as well as he could). "Many people are frightened by spirits as they cannot see them," he continued, "and it is a matter that is widespread: what isn't seen is often more frightening than what it is."
I felt irritable and curled my toes sharply in my fingers, before releasing my feet. "It didn't mean anything anyway," I snapped hotly, crossing my arms tightly around my chest. "It was only a stupid dream, it's not like you have to make a big deal out of it. Besides, you haven't had dreams or nightmares in forever." My finish was rude and calculated; I knew he had by way of death lost even that simple detail. Childish cruelty led me to throw it in the face of the spirit I had long held in light of an older brother, of a most unusual sort.
"That is true," his eyes narrowed and I glanced immediately to the ground; he concluded stiffly, "I am still not as wise on shamans as I might, but I have met those who had portents of what was to come. You are of divining blood. Maybe you sense darkness coming?" he prodded gently.
He had a troubled expression when I again looked up at him. "Something kept me from coming to you and Lady Anna when you asked me to come," he said worriedly. "A strange sensation, like being pulled underwater by something most powerful."
I rested my head on my chest and bit my lip sharply, feeling the swell of tiny beading copper in my mouth; crying had already taken its toll on me, and I did not want to do so again.
-
I woke in the morning to silence, an eerie shift from the usual chaos of the morning in my family's house; it was rare for the house to be empty but for my immediate family. The past few mornings I had also pulled from sleep to be disoriented: I could not understand where Miss Tamao had gone, why Grandmother and Grandfather were off to their respective journeys. In a matter of five months I had assumed they were part of my life and would be living with us, and no matter how many times Mother had sharply explained it, I still did not understand.
But usually sounds could be still discerned; Daddy singing loudly in the kitchen to old tapes and compact discs, as Mother growled at him to turn the music down was the ritual. Sleep faded gradually as I grew uncomfortably aware of nothing, holding my breath and opening my eyes as if doing so would restore sound. I could think of nothing that might dissuade my parents from their morning traditions and so wondered fearfully where they were.
It took several minutes for me, in the aftermath of a confusing dream before I woke, to screw up the courage to sit up. When I did so it was slowly, wary without knowing why and feeling anxious. I clasped my hands tightly around the tangled, wrinkled cloth of my futon's blanket and held myself poised. Swallowing, I was acutely aware of the knot in my throat shifting, of the muscles in my arm tensing lightly and relaxing as it passed. My body was carefully taut, waiting for the delicacies of remembered noise, and a natural creak in the floor was like a gunshot.
Jumping slightly, I checked my room hurriedly for Amidamaru and upon finding no trace of his presence I sucked in a deep breath. I was unsure why my heartbeat seemed strangely awkward, and exhaled a loud huff of air. Peculiar nightmares, a lack of comforting sound (I placed so much importance on the faint sounds I had long awoken to), and the scratches on the side of my head stinging lightly beneath the band-aids: twisting together, they filled me with worry. I was pinned into stillness by the fear and my arms trembled under my weight, fingers biting deeply in my futon. Finally, with some effort, I was able to carefully draw up to my feet, stepping tentatively toward my bedroom door.
A terrible thought clawed at my mind then: what if, it whispered, the thing in Mother is hurting Daddy, just like it hurt you yesterday?
Pushing aside the fear as best I could, I clutched my hands firmly around the doorway and gingerly poked my head out in the hall; turning it slightly, I caught a glimpse of a face hovering beside mine and instinctively screamed. Clumsily, I tumbled over, hitting my leg on the doorway and collapsing to the ground as I tried to recover my breath. My heart trilled anxiously in my chest, drumming swiftly as I gasped repeatedly, clutching at my leg.
The other face had also made a startled sound and the figure – a small man perhaps three inches taller than me – took a perfunctory step back, out of reflex. "Nemuri," he gasped at me, holding a massive tome to his chest. "Please don't – scream like that." He gave me a look posed between stern and pleading.
"Uncle Manta," I wheezed on the floor, still clutching at my leg almost painfully. "I'm," I paused and closed my eyes, breathing in. "I'm really sorry," I finished meekly, and slowly unclamped my hands from my leg. "I didn't mean to scream. I'm sorry." Stumbling to my feet, I looked apologetically at him, hooking my hands together and staring hard at the floor.
"Just don't do the screaming thing," he said, face stressed, "please. You almost gave me a heart attack!" He had a slightly trite expression and I slouched my shoulders, guiltily.
"I didn't mean to," I apologized and glanced up quickly, feeling a bubble of excitement. "Do you know where Daddy is, then?" I asked eagerly. "Or Mother? I couldn't hear them, and they must've let you in. Is she okay now?" I nearly bounced on my toes, perhaps thinking to see if Mother was behind him though as he was hardly any taller than I, it would have been unnecessary. "Mother was sort of scary yesterday," I explained as he glanced down at me a bit. "She didn't act like herself when we were making breakfast."
Uncle Manta nodded seriously, and joggled the tome he held, somehow keeping it in his grip (and not dropping it on my head, thereby crushing me flat). "I know," he answered briefly. "Your mother asked me to find you and bring you to the kitchen." The sour look on his face suggested it had not been willing on his part; I took no personal offense.
"Why didn't she just ask Daddy?" I asked, curious. A small patch of skin on the back of my neck began prickling, distantly. Ignoring it, I added conspiratorially, grinning, "Mother always makes him do things for her. It's really funny."
Uncle Manta gave me a strange look. "It's comforting to be reminded you're Anna's daughter," he said sardonically. "Now, come on, this," he joggled the tome again, "is heavy, and I'd like to try and get to the bottom of this all as quickly as possible." The slightly fanatical glint in his eyes resigned me to his being once again in his solving mode, the one determined to complete a problem swiftly or to at least glean as much knowledge from said problem as he could.
"Okay," I sighed despondently, and obediently trailed after him; it took little time to arrive in the kitchen, where Mother was chopping a large knife through a carrot. Her face was irritated as she sliced the orange vegetable and resolutely ignored Daddy singing loudly an inch or so from her ear. I considered warning Daddy that Mother did not look very happy about it, and decided by the way he was leaning a bit away from her, he already knew.
I never understood why Daddy liked teasing Mother so much, especially when she usually hit the back of his head; sometimes I thought maybe that was how they told each other 'I love you,' which made me think my family was irreversibly fractured, considering most of my friends had parents that would just say 'I love you.'
"Lord Yoh," I heard Amidamaru say and glanced to find him lurking by the toaster in his small ball form, face distorted in a stoic glower. "Lord Manta has brought your daughter." I caught the uneasy expression that flitted over his tiny face and understood it: Mother was glaring sharply at Daddy.
Daddy, thankfully, stopped singing and straightened from teasing Mother. "Nemuri," he said cheerfully. "You're almost as tall as Manta, aren't you?" Mother snorted, amused, and Uncle Manta looked with an air of surliness at her. "Come on, I'll help you up to the counter." Daddy jerked his head slightly, dark brown hair shifting around his swarthy face and smile as sunny as it always remained in my memory.
I stepped forward and hesitated, unable to keep from nervously glancing at my mother and the spot near the sink where I had sat when she changed. "Daddy?" I asked in a tiny voice. "Do I – do I have to?" I studiously avoided meeting Mother's cool gaze, though I could nearly sense disappointment and something else about her – faint sadness, maybe.
"Well, uh," Daddy squinted helplessly and scratched at his hair, "I'm not really sure you absolutely have to." He shuffled his foot slightly and, in a baggy white t-shirt and worn jeans, was the image of comedic solemnity with his serious expression. "I mean, it seemed like a good idea, right, Anna?" Mother turned and raised her eyebrow at him; he grinned sheepishly at her. "That is, uh, I think Manta could explain it. Right?" Even I could not dare compete with the cheesy grin he aimed at my uncle, and Mother rolled her amber eyes tellingly.
"Most crime scenes," Uncle Manta began explaining promptly, and I shuddered, once, at his choice of words, "have witnesses; one of the tactics used to jumpstart details in the mind of a witness is to stage a loose reenactment of what happened, based on someone else's account or what the witness remembers." He staggered to the counter and shoved the book on it with some effort, turning around to stare seriously at us all. "If a detail is wrong, it may cause the witness to recall it correctly."
"That!" said Daddy triumphantly, pointing at Uncle Manta with an aura of victory. "And since none of us were present except for Anna and Nemuri, we need you," he looked at me and smiled gently, "to help us by doing everything you can remember. If you can remember anything about what happened to your mother, it'd be perfect." I wanted to cry, seeing Mother and the counter and Daddy smiling so carefully at me.
"Nemuri," Mother said. I looked at her, as did the others; she raised her eyebrow eloquently. "Nemuri," she continued coolly, "get over here right now. I am not going to hurt you, and this is very important." Her stony expression did not waver, nor did her wrist as she scraped the useless end pieces of the cutting board with the knife. "I have no memory of what happened yesterday morn, which leaves you and Amidamaru. And," her eyes flitted toward him, as he looked downcast and rather guilty (though I was not sure why), "Amidamaru has said he was not able to enter the kitchen at the time."
After a moment, as I nearly shriveled under the pressure of their gazes, my feet began shuffling forward rather against my will; I still cannot understand why I began to walk to the counter when I most certainly did not wish to. The distance was quickly crossed though it felt immeasurably long, and to steel my nerves for those hideously drawn out seconds, I watched Daddy and Mother both: Daddy's grin, infectious and encouraging with its lackadaisical cheer; Mother's savagely serene face, somehow conveying a feeling of factual belief without sentimentality.
"Okay," I barely managed a whisper, holding my arms out like uneven rods. "Okay, Daddy."
He scooped me up, warmer than Mother, and squeezed me in a brief mid-air hug. "It's okay, Nemuri," he said quietly, effortlessly. "You don't have to be so glum all the time." With a laugh, he bounced me up once, and as I giggled in reflex, swung me to the counter. "Nothing to it," he said breezily and winked, lightly; Mother made her amused snorting sound again as Uncle Manta flipped the book open with an audible bang.
"Same position, Mistress Nemuri," Amidamaru reminded me. "Where did you sit yester-morn?" I sighed grievously, my sense of humor still stubbornly clinging to me, and scooted backward on the counter until I carefully positioned myself beside the sink.
"Start remembering," Mother said brusquely and with a smile I turned to her, the smile slowly dwindling as the hairs began rising from my neck to my arms.
Those regal amber eyes of hers – cold, enigmatic, and somehow kind – were emptying before me, a blank distance settling within.
-
Notes: I know it doesn't seem like the plot was moved at all…but it really did advance! Next chapter will be a bit longer (and more plot-heavy), and I'll follow that with a gratuitous Yoh/Anna interlude. Because I love you. ;|)
Feedback: Cover it with chocolate and I shall give you endless affection.
Disclaimer: Takei Hiroyuki (Keeper of the Way of Writing Kickass Shonen Manga Females) owns all. Surprisingly, I don't begrudge him that.
Thanks: Kirax105, Baka-Cupid, Moonwind, cirquemouse1, Lacewood (*faints*), Luna Carta, and Briememory. A thousand thank-yous! (And I hope you're still enjoying it.)