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Alice touched her. It was nothing at first, a movement as tentative as the brush of a butterfly wing. Julia saw it, but barely felt it.
“That’s good, honey,” she whispered. “Come into this world. It’s been lonely in yours, hasn’t it? Scary?”
No part of Alice moved except her hand. Very slowly she reached out and petted Julia’s thigh in an awkward, almost spastic motion.
“It’s frightening to touch another person sometimes,” Julia said, wondering if any of her words were being understood. “Especially when we’ve been hurt. We can be afraid to reach out to someone else.”
The petting smoothed out, became a gentle stroking. Alice made a sound that was low in her throat, a kind of purr. She slowly lifted her chin and looked up at Julia. Those amazing blue-green eyes were pools of worried fear.
“No hurt,” Julia said, hearing the catch in her voice. She was feeling too much right now, and that was dangerous. Being a good psychiatrist was like reading a novel at forty. You needed to keep the words at arm’s length or everything became a blur. She stroked Alice’s soft black hair again and again. “No hurt.”
It took a long time, but finally
Alice stopped trembling. For the rest of the morning Julia alternated between reading and talking to the girl. They broke for lunch and went to the table, but immediately afterward Alice returned to the bed and hit the book with her open palm.
Julia cleared the dishes, then retook her place on the bed and resumed her reading. By two o’clock Alice had curled up closer to her and fallen asleep.
Julia eased off the bed and stood there, staring down at this strange, quiet girl she called Alice.
They had made so many breakthroughs in the last two days, but perhaps none held as much potential as the dreamcatcher.
Alice had reacted so violently to the trinket; it had to be of critical importance.
Julia knew what she needed now was a way to both release Alice’s fear of the dreamcatcher and to explore it. Without, of course, having Alice so terrified she hurt herself. It was the best weapon in her arsenal right now—the only object she had that elicited strong emotion. She had no choice but to use it.
“Do you cry, Alice? Do you laugh? You’re trapped inside yourself, aren’t you? Why?” Julia drew back. She went over to her notes and wrote down everything that had transpired since breakfast. Then she read back over the words she’d written: Violent reaction to dreamcatcher. Extreme bout of anger and/or fear. As usual, patient’s emotions are entirely directed inward. It’s as if she has no idea how to express her feelings to others. Perhaps due to elective mutism. Perhaps due to training. Did someone—or something—teach her to be silent always? Was she abused for speaking out or for speaking at all? Is she used to scratching and hair pulling as her only emotional display? Is this how pack animals express emotions when out of view? Is this a symptom of wildness or isolation or abuse?
Some realization teased her, danced at the corner of her mind, moving in and out of focus too quickly for her to really see it.
Julia put down her pen and stood up again. A quick look at the video camera assured her that it was still recording. She could study the footage of the dreamcatcher incident again tonight. Maybe she’d missed something.
She checked Alice again, made sure she was asleep, then left the room. Outside, in the hallway, the dogs lay coiled together, asleep. Julia stepped over them and retrieved the dreamcatcher.
It was a poorly made trinket; the kind of thing they sold at local souvenir shops. No bigger than a tea saucer and as thin as the twigs that formed its circular perimeter; it was hardly threatening. Several cheap, shiny blue beads glittered amidst a string web. She suspected they usually came with a designer tag that detailed their importance to the local tribes of the Quinalt and the Hoh.
What was its connection to Alice? Was she Native American? Was that a piece of the puzzle? Or was it not the dreamcatcher in total that had frightened her, but rather some piece of it—the beads, the twigs, or the string?
String. A cousin to rope.
Ligature marks.
Perhaps that was the connection. The string could have reminded Alice of being tied up.
There was no way to know these answers until Alice herself revealed them.
In ordinary therapy, bound by the normal conventions of time and money, it could take months for a child to confront such fears. Perhaps years.
But this case was far from ordinary. The longer Alice remained in her solitary, isolated world, the less likely it was that she would ever emerge. Therefore, they didn’t have the luxury of time. She needed to force a confrontation between the two Alices—the child lost in the woods and the girl who’d been returned to the world. These two halves needed to integrate into a single personality or Alice’s future would be at risk.
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
There was only one thing to do, and it wouldn’t be pretty.
She went downstairs to call her sister. Fifteen minutes later Ellie and Peanut walked through the front door.
“Hey,” Peanut said, grinning broadly and fluttering her bright pink star-spangled fingernails.
Julia reached into her pocket and pulled out the dreamcatcher. “Either one of you recognize this?”
