The Hidden World

Chapter 7

"What a perfect day,"sighed Maeve.

"Yes," agreed Thomas. "I think summer has really begun at last."

They were strolling together along the well-trodden path that led to the shore, Cordelia capering along ahead of them. Maeve had been here for two weeks now—or rather, what felt like two weeks. But I will go back, as I did before, and it will have been only a few minutes—if that. She could put it all off indefinitely: the divorce and the move, everyone's pity and the "kids her age." I could spend a year or more here, I'll bet, and still everything there would wait for me. Well, let it wait!

Thomas had been waiting for her when she had returned to his world. She'd gone straight to the Nemeton and there she had found him, lingering by the stream. He had gone there on and off since her disappearance, he had said, hoping that she was all right, that she would return.

"I wondered if you might come here," he had told her, and pointed between the tree trunks. "Look, these roses bloomed in the forest just today. I took it for a sign."

And Maeve had stared at the rose-bush growing up improbably through the mossy forest floor. It was covered in flowers, soft pink at the centre with creamy-white outer petals. "The villagers say that this rose-bush has been here for years. No one knows who planted it," Thomas continued, "or why they would put it in the middle of a wood. Some say it is magical. I never believed that myself. But when I came here this morning and saw that it had bloomed, I wondered if it had anything to do with the Shadow-world, and you."

"It looks like the rose-bush my aunt planted on Grandma's grave." The cemetery was right next to the church, as this part of the forest was next to the Nemeton. But why would the rose-bush be here in Annwn as well, in two places at once? What could it mean? Don't be stupid, she had scolded herself. It doesn't mean a thing. This is a dream! Dreams were made up of such things: little, inconsequential snippets of memory and experience that were thrown together without rhyme or reason.

She had said warmly, "I'm so glad to see you again, Thomas."

He had looked shy at that. "I am happy to see you too. I was afraid you would never return, and leave me always wondering what had become of you."

She stole a glance at him now as they walked through the village, noting his sensitive face and dark, long-lashed eyes, his long brown hair moving restlessly in the breeze. If Lisa and the other girls could see this guy, they'd go crazy over him, she thought with a smile. It was a pity she couldn't really believe in Annwn's reality this time around, but on the other hand there wasn't any stress or worry about getting home.

Perhaps this hallucination could become like a drug, an addictive-thing—but so what? Brandon was always having beer with his friends, and probably the occasional joint; Mom had her cigarettes, and Dad his daily drink. They indulged themselves in these comfortable addictions without apology. Why shouldn't she indulge herself too? And the Annwn dream was benign; there were no side effects, no headaches or dizziness or blurred vision or anything like that. It took nothing from her, not even time.

Once, when she had found herself alone in Branwen's kitchen, she had taken a knife and run the blade along her arm, feeling the cut and watching the blood well up from the broken skin. Pain, she realized, existed here as well as pleasure. She would have to be careful. But any hurt she received would be unlikely to harm her actual, physical body. This body, real as it felt, could only be a projection of her own mind.

And there was more pleasure here than pain. She fed upon Annwn, sating hungers she had not even known were there.

"Maeve," Cordelia said one day, "I feel as though you have always been here." Maeve had begun to feel the same. She slept now in Cordelia's tiny, narrow room, on a mattress placed on the floor. Cordelia did not mind; seemed, in fact delighted to have someone to talk with at night. "I have never had a sister," she observed.