Pandora's Box: The Deleted Scenes
Seven
(From Chapter Twenty-Three)
Amelia could feel herself moving forward into the strange indigo cloud, so much like the one that had hung over the school at various intervals during the past hours. Her mind was moving towards the sound of Davina's voice, up through the levels of sleep and into full consciousness.
"Amelia!"
The voice seemed sharper, closer. She was nearly there, thought Amelia, willing herself forward despite the fact that she knew she was not physically moving anywhere.
"Amelia!"
Davina was speaking to her directly in her ear now, the words almost deafening, not deadened by the unknowable barrier between her and the waking world. Could it be possible that she was trapped within her body, her mind alert but her limbs unable to move? Amelia scanned her surroundings desperately, her consciousness looking for some route, any route, by which she could escape from her semi-paralysed state. Something caught her mind's eye to her left, and she followed naturally to see a small black-and-white creature looking up at her inquisitively.
It was a porcupine.
The fact that a porcupine had invaded her dreams for no apparent reason was odd enough in itself, but it was exacerbated by the fact that this particularly spiny mammal was wearing what appeared to be black lace-up tap shoes on its hind legs. Amelia blinked. Why was there a porcupine here in this mysterious, swirling lilac wonderland? What had she been thinking of before she went to bed? What had been in that miniature camembert she had been nibbling on before she lay down for the night? She had been going through the strange behaviour of her deputy as she had dropped off, wondering what could have happened to Constance to make her so on edge at the receipt of a, what Amelia now knew to be, deceptively simple letter. But something else had pervaded her mind just as she descended into slumber. Davina had talked about a dream in which she was teaching porcupines to tap dance, and in the true magic spirit of enquiry, Amelia had been trying to divine what such an apparently arbitrary dream could possibly mean for her scatterbrained friend.
"Amelia!"
This time Amelia reacted proactively to Davina's clear, fluting voice; her head turning automatically to the source of the sound and finding herself face to face with Davina, who was surrounded by several other porcupines, all wearing tap shoes and some adorned with skirts and sweat-bands as well.
"Come on Amelia, you're late for the lesson!" exclaimed Davina. "Altogether now, from the top."
From nowhere, a gramophone began to play thirties swing music, and Amelia found her feet moving out of her control as she tapped and jumped in time with the porcupines, under direction from Davina's baton.
The sooner she woke up from this dream, the better…
Well, I had to make SOMETHING of Davina's porcupines.