Juliet had a terrible day the day after the wedding--the house was desolate. Everything reminded her of Douglas. Douglas, who was a husband, with a wife to tell his secrets to. He did not need a twin. She spent exactly one day moping. She went into his bedroom and rearranged the old shoes in his closet. They really should probably have been thrown away--they were old sneakers, and work boots. But it gave Juliet a feeling of comfort to see them there, arranged in neat rows. As if Douglas would soon be coming back.

The next day she was a bit low in the morning, but in the afternoon went to the pictures with Joy and Trudy and came back laughing and merry. The day after that, Juliet had almost forgotten Doug had gone away. So what if he had! Next week he and Bella would be in Guelph--she'd call him on the telephone then. In the meantime, she'd write him a long letter. Mother and Father exchanged sighs of relief. Juliet would be fine. They heard her sweet, clear voice singing as she washed the supper dishes:

Would you like to swing on a star

Carry moonbeams home in a jar?

Emily woke that night to find a shivering Juliet standing by her bed.

"Oh, Mother!" she said. "I'm so frightened, Mother!"

"What is it, Juliet?" Mother said. "Did the telephone ring? Is it Allan? Doug and Bella--"

"It's not that," said Juliet, wrapping her arms around her thin, shaking frame. "They're all fine. Only--I had the most terrible dream, Mother. I know it's silly, a grown person like me getting scared of a dream! But, Mother, it was so real."

Mother--dear, comforting Mother-- pulled the covers back and made room for Juliet to climb in next to her.

"Darling, get close to me," Mother said. "Now tell me about this dream that's frightened you so."

"I was standing on the shore in my old bathing suit," Juliet began. "You remember my old, raggedy, striped suit, Mother?"

"Yes, beanpole," said Mother, with a smile.

"Well, I was looking out at the ocean. It was dawn, and there were faint streaks in the east, on the horizon. I stood there, waiting and waiting for the sun to come up, but it didn't! All of a sudden the sky went very dark, and as I watched, men began to rise up out of the water. Dozens of them--hundreds, thousands even! There was blood on their lips--on their clothes--the water was red from it. I wanted to run, but I couldn't--I was rooted to the spot. The men got closer and closer--one touched my arm--I looked down to see that he was a soldier. There was an American flag on his breast. 'This is the end,' he said, his eyes hollow and blazing. 'This is the end of it all.'"

"That sounds terrible indeed," said Mother, shivering too, now.

"The strangest thing, Mother, was that I didn't feel especially frightened while it was happening. Only when I woke up and thought about it. I have the eeriest feeling that something is going to happen."

"It was only a dream," said Mother. "'Full of sound a fury, signifying nothing,' as Shakespeare would say. Darling, nothing is going to happen. Hush, now, and sleep."

Juliet did sleep, peacefully now, with a smile on her lips, but when she woke it was to the news of the Allied Forces most historic invasion--the one that would turn the tide of the war. Juliet stared, aghast, and Mother eyed her grimly as the radio announcer described it--a thousand men, rising from the sea, and storming the beach at Normandy.

"The waters of the English Channel were red with the blood of the fallen men," said the radio announcer valiantly. "But the able ones went onward--toward victory!"

"Red with blood," Juliet said through white lips. "Red with blood?"

"This is D-Day!" said Uncle Perry, slapping his knee, and turning the sound on the radio up. "By George, I never knew Eisenhower had it in him. I feel bad now, criticising him for doing nothing when the whole while he's been planning this."

"This is very--like--your dream, isn't it, Juliet?" asked Father, his brow furrowed.

"No--no," Juliet said, and grabbed her pencils and paper, and fled upstairs.

"How did she know?" breathed Mother. "Oh, how?"

"The same way you knew my mother had fallen into the well, Emily," said Auntie Ilse. "The same way that you found that little boy locked up in the house all those years ago"

"Oh, Ilse, please," Emily implored. "Those were merely coincidences. I'm being silly--Juliet didn't know. She couldn't have. It is another amazing coincidence."

"Very amazing," said Uncle Perry. "I told you it was Jewel on our lawn the night Allan was found."

"It was not," said Emily. "Juliet was in bed, so ill with scarlet fever that she could hardly breathe, much less walk cross-lots to your house in the snow! She did not predict D-Day. Stop being foolish, Perry."

Uncle Perry nodded complacently, and they all listened quietly to the news. But when Uncle Perry and Aunt Ilse stepped out to go home, Uncle Perry said to Emily,

"If that girl of yours has any more of her dreams, alert the media. Ha ha!"

"Do you remember when I almost sailed on the Flavian?" Teddy asked his wife when they were gone.

"That was nothing like this!" said Emily.

Teddy looked coolly at her. "Like it or not, Emily," he said. "That child's inherited more from you than just her pointed ears."

* * *

It is an amazing coincidence, as Mother said, Juliet wrote to Allan. That I should dream a dream like that--the night before this! I always used to think I had the second sight when I was young. Do you remember how I tried to guess your thoughts? And then Bea told me you were making them up, making them easy for me to guess, because you didn't want to hurt my feelings. How I wished I had the ability to see into the future then! Would it snow and cancel school tomorrow? Would we have a math test next week? But now--I don't know. I think I'd prefer not to have that particular ability, if this is what it's like. I've had a shivery feeling--like a bird--perching on my spine all day. Your father insists that this supports his theory that it was me on his lawn, telling him about your safety all those months ago. But I said to him, with my best Murray haughtiness, 'Uncle Perry, I have decided that it was only my subconscious. I must have, from listening so much to the radio, figured out the most likely military maneuvers in my sleep.'

'Well, girl,' Uncle Perry said, 'This military maneuver was completely unexpected by anyone, so if you're figuring that out in your sleep, you deserve FDR's job. Can a Canadian lass be President of the United States? I'd give you my vote--with a talent like that!'

I did have a horrible feeling about the dream when I woke up from it--'This is the end,' the soldier said. It sounded so--apocalyptic. But I realize I was misconstruing him--he meant it was the beginning of the end of the war.

That is, if my dreams means anything, which it doesn't. It was just a dream, Allan, and I won't have you teasing me about it! You are a dreadful tease sometimes. Just a dream. That's all. And I hope I don't have another like it.