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Chapter Twenty-five
In Flames
WhenIwastwelve, I had the same dream every night for a month. A broken cuckoo clock went off every ten minutes. Snow fell so deep it came up over my knee. Our neighbor dropped a boiling teapot on her foot.
No one slept that month, especially my sister. She resigned herself to sleeping not only in my room, but in my bed. I would stir and she would sit up, rub my back, and wait for me to wake up. She was a nurturer from a young age - born to be a mother. Every time I was startled awake, she spoke to me in a calm voice and told me everything was alright.
By the end of the month, her patience waned, and who could blame her? She was barely a teenager with her own emotions and problems and a crazy baby sister that kept her up all night.
She had paced the room one night when I shot awake from the nightmare. I sat in the bed for what felt like a long time to a twelve-year-old watching her sister wear out the carpet.
Back and forth and back and forth, her arms wrapped snugly across her chest. The white nightgown she wore flowed behind her as she walked and spun around.
She stopped and turned to face me. “Why do you fight the premonitions?” She raised her arms in thought like a schoolteacher in mid-lecture. “Have you ever tried to concentrate on the images or meditate on what you see? Do you know what meditate means?”
I shook my head no, scooting closer to the edge of the bed.
“Meditation is when you sit in silence and you let your thoughts go. You relax your mind. Sometimes people repeat a word or phrase when they do it. You could… repeat the images. See if your mind opens more. Try to make yourself see more. What if you could control this? Could you try?”
“Okay,” was all I could say. The idea terrified me. I would never do what she asked, but she was so tired and worn out. I didn’t want to disappoint her.
She smiled, and the worry left her face. “Yes, I think this could work.” She brought her hands together in a clap. “I know you’re worried about it, but something is calling to you, Rowan. You put forth no effort, and yet you see all these things.” She stepped closer to me and rested her forehead on mine. She was smiling now, her burden temporarily replaced with hope. “What if you tried? What if you focused on this as a gift that could help others? Oh, wow, what will you see?”
“Okay,” I repeated. “I’ll try.”
I fidgeted when our eyes met. I wanted her happy and freed from this turmoil we now shared, but I would never do what she asked.
That was the first time I lied to my sister. It was the first time of many.
I’d prayed that night my dreams would stop forever. They were something I wanted to get rid of, not learn more about, or control.
We had recently discovered my dreams were premonitions. Traumatic events circled these visions, not events I wanted to think about more. I never saw kittens or couples walking on the beach. I saw blood, pain, and fear. That my sister wanted me to experience more visions showed me how desperate she had become for either sleep or relief.
I saw my sister’s face when I landed on the walkway below. I had blacked out for just a moment, and she was there, wearing that white nightgown, telling me it would be alright.
I had injured my hip, crashing into the handrail of the shaky steel grate. Beau had tumbled into the center of the walkway. He would have a few bruises but was alright.
Unfortunately, I had landed directly on my pelvis, folding over the side as hands from behind me grabbed my shoulders and arms, throwing me back to safety.
It had knocked the wind out of me. My sister had been a flash of a forgotten memory, and I opened my eyes to frantic faces.
Eventually moving to my knees and then standing, I started our walk and everyone followed behind me like ducklings. The wind kicked up, but it was manageable. I heard Captain Matthews’ voice over the dull roar that filled my ears.
“We need to address another issue that will not be tolerated on this vessel. I hate to even say the words and bring attention to this, but we must be vigilant and swift with our no-tolerance policy. There are those among us with wishes to reestablish the Assembly of the Eternal.”
An audible gasp came from the crowd above. We continued our path down the side of the ship. When he mentioned the AOE, my step faltered for a moment, but I continued. I had a general sense of where we were and how far we needed to go, and I used Matthews’ voice as a guide.
The speech grew louder at the halfway mark. We had to be right next to where he was standing. “This kind of insubordination will kill us all. It was brought to my attention that a senior member of our staff has become involved. I do not show favoritism. We went to discuss the matter with the individual and found AOE paraphernalia. When we located him on the ship, he was stealing supplies.”
I stopped, overpowered by the words, unable to move forward. Lori’s boys stumbled behind me. When I turned, Lori’s face flashed with the panicked expression I felt in my gut.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The sound of bullets rang out, and I felt my legs falter beneath me. Lori was too far away and the walkway was too narrow to reach me, so I fell to my knees in shock. “Up,” Lori barked. “We don’t even know… We have to keep going.”
I gripped the side rail and brought my numb body back to standing, turned, and kept going. Those were gunshots. I knew it, and no one could convince me otherwise. It had to be Sam. He had the symbol branded on his body, and Dean must have seen it at some point. Those pins had been Dean’s. He planned this all along.
The crowd cried out in uproar, silencing Matthews’ words.
