Dream Catcher, Heart Listener - Page 2

Then he began to sing the special song he’d composed for her, the one he said was her lullaby, her heart song. At first, she resisted, for she knew this meant the end of the dream. But then, she began to succumb to the warmth of both his arms and the song he sang; after all, all dreams must end, he could not stay forever. Sleep shrouded her like a mother’s quilt until she nestled completely beneath its covers...
 
Michaela Hania awoke. She opened her eyes, staring into the blackness, trying to picture it all, the colors, the flowers, the trees, her own face, using the scents and sounds and tastes and wonderful memories to bring it all back to her. After all, she’d have to wait a whole other day now to see more, to see him again. Because, after all, she was blind.
 
He’d been coming to her for the past few weeks now. At first, he’d just been a voice, and that white light outline of himself. At first, she’d been afraid, for it had felt like one of those very real dreams. Then she was afraid because while she knew it was a dream, she knew also that it was real, that he was really beside her, not just in her dreams, but somewhere in her mind, really talking to her, really taking her to wherever they were.
 
Gradually, the colors appeared, first as shapeless blobs of floating light, but soon they took form. The rose garden, a single ring of trees and within them plush grass and rose bushes. That was when she’d seen her first real colors and learned them. Red was the smell of a rose. Green was the scent of fresh fields. Brown was the odor of a forest. Even then, the scents had been more than real to help her make the connections, the correlations, so she could see the colors and remember even after he was gone.
 
Then the scenes grew longer—longer periods of time, vaster worlds. She was immersed in amazing color after amazing color, in brilliant world after brilliant world, all of his own creation. She tried to ask him who he was, and he said he was a painter, and, yes, he lived in the Swician camp, and so, yes, he knew her. She wondered why he did not talk to her in person instead of coming to her in dreams, and yet, she did not ask, did not want to offend him, for the dreams were that unspoken sign from him that he cared deeply for her; he expressed his love—for that was what she grew to feel for him, and, she believed, he for her as the weeks passed—by showing her all the wonderful things he knew she could not see by day in the real world, beyond the realm of dreams. He showed her trees and mountains and flowers and animals and buildings and books and taught her how to read without having to move her fingers across small, raised bumps. She memorized the letters until she could write them her own self, even without seeing, and she memorized as many colors as she could too, to keep her preoccupied and hopeful until his next visit. He had promised her towards the beginning that he would do all he could to figure out how he might be able to show her her own reflection in the dreams, for he said he knew how much she’d like to see her own reflection. She didn’t know how he knew this, but he did. He always knew many things about her feelings. He said even that if he could enable her to see her reflection, it might bring him a step closer to figuring out how he could use his talents to bring real sight to her eyes, though she said that was not necessary, and it seemed far too great a task to ask of anyone.
 
Somehow she felt that even if she could somehow miraculously see, and not just in the dreams, but really see like most other people, that it would not be as exciting, as exhilarating, as sweet, that the colors would not be as vibrant and wonderful, that none of it would mean nearly as much as it did in those short yet significant snatches of dreams he spent with her, he shared with her. True, there was also the fear that those snatches could someday stop, be snatched from her, cease to come altogether. But she hoped this could not be true. Because she did not need to see to see him to see that he loved her.
 
Because while the visions themselves may have been a dream, she felt now that he was real, that he sent the dreams to her and her alone. This secret she voiced to no one, kept it hidden in her heart, not because she might be thought crazy, for powers of the mind were a gift of her people. But they were not widely encouraged, as they had been misused in the past, and she wanted no unkind word from anyone to mar his perfection, for he was, she felt in her heart, perfect for her.
 
She wondered often why he did not show himself to her, not even in the dreams. Was he simply shy, or did he truly wonder about her own feelings, that she too might feel uncomfortable towards him using his gift of stealing into her sleeping mind, blessing her with unreal and yet realer-than-anything visions? 
As she drifted to sleep even now, she told herself that she must make sure he felt completely comfortable with her, that he knew she accepted him fully, for, unless it was some glitch of her real blindness, if she was able to see his face, she wanted to more than anything, for it to be the first, if only face, she ever set eyes upon.
 
Daily, when she wandered the camp, whether heading up the hillside into the woods to wash laundry in the pure streams, whether milling through the camp’s crowds of people with her mother to sell and trade baskets, garments, baked goods, or other such household creations, whether simply slipping to the tent next door to visit a neighbor or friend, whatever the case, she would listen, straining the delicate talents of her hearing, enhanced by many years of the necessity of relying on her ears where sight was not available. She would listen for that voice, his voice. Once or twice she thought she heard it, but it was muffled, almost distorted by the veil of cloth that had stood between them, and then, almost as suddenly as she’d heard it, it had ceased. Once or twice too, when she’d brushed against the hoards of people, she’d thought she’d heard it; his song, her song, made just for her. She’d thought, in bumping some unknown stranger, she’d felt that familiar spark, that the song had grown just a bit more intense. But then it would vanish, just as quickly, and she was never certain whether she imagined all these things, for, though they seemed so real in the seconds and half seconds in which they occurred, yet those moments seemed longer, and in seeming so, felt also intently real.
 
She sighed, closing her eyes, trying to settle deeper beneath her covers, trying to let their warm comfort soothe her back to sleep even though they did not share the same warmth as his arms around her, even though she knew he would not show himself to her a second time that night, even though she might never know who he was or if he was even really real, or if she was not just going crazy. Perhaps the loneliness made her crazy. Sure, everyone in the camp loved her. They all fancied her beautiful, sweet, kind, generous, strong. But though not alone, still she was lonely for that special connection, that connection that she shared with him.  That’s why she knew he had to be real, because of the connection, because it was so strong. Though, if he wasn’t real, if she really was crazy, than he was certainly a most wonderful way to satiate that madness...
 
“Michaela...Michaela, wake up, love...”
 
The words seemed distant at first, and they seemed to come too soon. Gradually, she stirred, realizing that she had drifted into a sort of half sleep after all in dreaming about him and lemonade and gardens and spring weddings.