The Silver Feather

Chapter 1 - The Weaver Awakes

Penny

Opportunity came knocking a bit early for my liking, and I was in no mood to be neighborly. It had been a rough night, and the rat-tat-tat grated on my senses. Late-night hospital visits will do that. And since sleep was a frenemy at best, well, it better be freaking important to knock on my door at that hour. Okay, it was 9 am. Sue me. If someone was going to wake me up, though, the least they could do was bring caffeine.

“Who is it?” Callie called from her room as I made my way down the stairs. Probably still in bed. She’d been up again all night, pacing in her studio. The walls were paper thin in this old house, and the creaky floor kept no one’s movements secret. She had something on her mind, but we hadn’t had a chance to talk.

“I don’t know. All I know is it better be good. Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Not much,” she said.

“Yeah. Same.” She didn’t ask, but I said it anyway. Not sure why. Empathy? Maybe. Jealousy? A little if I was honest. She had the relationship with mom, and I was fighting battles on two fronts, neither of which seemed to faze Callie. I wanted to stomp my foot and throw a tantrum. I was younger by a few minutes, but I felt older, bearing a burden I didn’t want and never asked for. Alone with my camera, watching the world through a lens with filter options was what I craved.

I didn’t call out, “Who’s there?” but flung the door open wide, mouth open to tear the poor sod who’d woken me up a new one. I was surprised to find no one was there. Just a single silver feather. Silver. Great. Just what we need. Lucien is coming, or more likely, already here. The silver feather was his version of texting. The last time I’d seen it, I’d been fourteen, and before that seven. Otherwise, he was a ghost.

I have enough on my plate. I do not need him interfering. Callie and I can handle it. Never mind, we’d taken to stuffing bills into drawers. Out of sight, out of mind. The house had a very … lived in look. Magazines, month’s old on the coffee and end tables, one half photography magazines. The other half were Callie’s—a mix of painting, DIY, and, for good measure, a few tech magazines that had caught her eye. Dishes drying or in the sink, and laundry that was clean but should have been put away. Time had not been on our side lately, and battling bills, we were too busy to care. We couldn’t afford to hire anyone to help. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a hovel. But we could have taken better care of the house. Mom would have had a fit if she saw the state of the place. I always felt a little guilty when I looked around our house.

Lucien’s feather rose with wind that wasn’t there. My left hand rose with it, unbidden. I forced my hand to my side, clenching my terry cloth robe with trembling fingers, only to have my hand rise again. Waiting. The feather wafted to my sightline, hovered, then descended onto my outstretched palm. It pressed itself into my hand with gentle pressure and a light pinching from its barbed vein. Or so I thought. As I lifted the feather and held it between my thumb and forefinger, the silver tip dripped a single drop of blood from its quill and colored the lines in my palm where it had made its impression. One word wove through the feathering. Dreamwalker.

A knot formed in my stomach. Dreamwalking is Callie’s world. She’s the oldest. She can have it. I don’t want it. I willed the word to be unwritten, but it had been inscribed in blood. What that meant, I had no idea. I closed my hand into a fist, wrapping it around the feather and its message digging in my nails until they made crescents in my flesh.

The silver feather lay like a flat river stone in my hand, and I dropped it onto the cold cement. Would it evaporate now that its job had been done? The job had been done, right? The message in my palm was proof.

I could hear Callie, now roused from sleep herself calling to me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the impression the feather had left. The cuts were deeper, darker. Was I still dreaming? I shook the cobwebs away.

“Who is it?” Callie asked. Her voice sounded almost normal, but I still jumped. She was right behind me. Her long straight, red hair gleamed against her green silk shorts and top. I’d long since stopped wondering if she got cold as new wonders came to mind. Had she seen the feather leave its message in my palm? For reasons I couldn’t fathom, I hoped not.

“Not who. What.” I frowned, closed my fist against the image burned into my palm, and buried it in my robe’s pocket.

She laid her hand on my shoulder, and I faced her. “Coffee?” she asked, holding up my favorite mug. She smiled, and I reached for the steaming cup. I wondered how long I’d been standing at the door, then, in my robe, giving her time to make coffee. Whatever. Not turning it down. I took a sip and raised the mug in approval.

“Nobody at the door. Just a feather. Silver.” I glanced down at the thing as I closed the door. “It’s—”

“I know whose it is,” she said, her teeth on edge, and her countenance darkening. Her features, for a second, seemed feral. But as quickly as the guise appeared, it was gone. She was as fresh-faced as if she’d been out for a morning jog. “Sorry. Sorry,” she said as she leaned against the wall next to the door and crossed her feet at the ankles. “Don’t know where that came from.” Straightening, she peered at me. “Pen, are you ok?” she asked. I strained to hear her. She reached forward with both arms, grasped my shoulders, and shook. Her voice was getting softer. Farther away. “Penny! Penelope.”

“I feel … funny.” My palm itched and I fought the urge to scratch it. “My skin. It’s buzzing. Vibrating.”

“Oh,” Callie said so softly I almost didn’t hear her. Or maybe I really didn’t. All I saw was her mouth shaping itself into an ‘O.’ The bells ringing in my ears were like church bells, drowning all sound.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard a thud.

****

The timbre of the church bells grew louder. The sound was deafening. I covered my ears, but the sounds grew darker, deeper, slower, seeping through the cracks of my fingers and into my psyche. A deep baritone and bass rose to high-pitched wails. Sirens. Lights flashed and burned images against my eyelids shut tight against the cacophony. The crackle of fire convinced me to open them. Burning flesh. Blood and bodies. Screams. Wake up. Wake up.

A woman begged someone for something. I strained but couldn’t hear. Then, my mother’s voice, quiet and calm, said, “It’s okay, Penelope. You’ll be okay. I trust …” I reached out to catch her fading voice, but my hands clasped air.

Strange creatures I didn’t recognize, faceless figures, and yet there was an odd sense of familiarity. But that didn’t mean I wanted to stay here. My heart beat faster. Why couldn’t I wake up? This wasn’t right. Something was wrong. I was drowning. Water. So much water. Callie. Help me, Callie.

****

Callie stood over me with an empty water glass. I reached up and touched my face. Liquid tickled my ear, and the back of my head was soaked. “Why didn’t you wake me up? The usual way.” She remained frozen, her hand with the glass in the air.

“Something wouldn’t let me.”

“You’re a Dreamwalker. The Priestess for crying out loud, why couldn’t—” She set the glass down on the sofa table and I almost said, “Better put a coaster or mom will have a fit.” But I saw that feral look again, bitterness coupled with sadness. After a quick survey of the room, I shrugged. What was a little water ring amidst this mess?

“You’re not listening, Penelope. I was stopped. Warned against helping you. Don’t know why. Probably the damn—” She clapped her hand over her mouth.

I was too tired and too scared to ask. My dreams were getting worse, and a recurring nightmare I hadn’t had since childhood resurfaced.

“Whatever. Help me up.” I reached for her to grab my hand. Again, she hesitated. “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” I grasped the corner of the sofa for leverage. She must have dragged me from the doorway.

The phone buzzed. As if I don’t have enough going on. Another thorn in my day. All I wanted was to go for a walk with my camera and discover photo-worthy moments. But nope, the day was having its way with me, and not on my terms.

The pile of bills spilling from the drawer and the empty place at the dinner table from last night spurred me to calm myself. The day rate of the intensive care unit was far more than we managed to pull in, and we’d been accumulating fees for a year. Even Callie, a Dreamwalker, couldn’t wake mom from her coma.

Was that why she hadn’t tried to wake me? Was she afraid that if she did, what had happened to mom would happen to me? I hadn’t considered the thought until now. But then again, my mind was a whirlwind of must-dos. Pay bills. Determine where my next job was coming from. Find someone who could figure out what was wrong with mom. I was burying myself in work, and seeing the world through a lens helped me process everything going on in my life.

If I wasn’t working, walking, or taking pictures, I was at the hospital haranguing nurses and doctors to figure out what happened. Callie was rarely there, and when she was, she let me take the lead. Which was so not like her. Should have been a clue month’s ago that something wasn’t right, but I’d let it slide. Just like when we were kids, and I got corralled into Callie’s adventurous mind, that sometimes went places it shouldn’t, I never told a soul.

Callie and I were close. Twins. But whatever had gotten into her had done so insidiously. The twin language we’d once shared, our telepathy, was blocked. Like a gate or door had been slammed in her mind, but she still acted like herself. Mostly.

I’d always figured the pressure to be the next Dreamscape Priestess and follow in our mother’s footsteps is what made her act differently. Callie was the one who would take up the mantle. Fine by me. I wanted no part of it. Our mother demanded much of Callie and of me, but she worked harder with Callie to channel her willfulness. I wasn’t much help. I’d left them to their Dreamwalking, and they’d left me to my own devices. Mom called me her ‘little cloud watcher,’ and that was all I needed to feel secure in our family. As these thoughts manifested, my palm pulsed. I curled my palm slightly until it revealed only the last half of the word etched in it.

I rolled my eyes and reached for the phone. “Wha—Yes?” I tried to keep my tone civil, but couldn’t quite squash my edginess or nearly dropping the phone when my editor’s voice came through the line. I glanced at the bills and mentally crossed my fingers.

I pictured my editor Thomas ‘Tom’ Pike’s short, squat form. He was a middle-aged man who fashioned himself something of a newspaper magnate and looked like Mr. Peanut, complete with a monocle and cane.

“Grumpy much?” I ignored his jibe and waited for him to get to the point. “Got an assignment for you.”

I set my mug down on the counter. Visions of a balanced bank account flashed through my mind. Unfortunately, I’d chosen that moment to not have a filter.

“Fluffy and Fido, the hatchlings are friends again after the fire?” I asked, only half-joking. Had I said that out loud?

“What?”

“Never mind. Weird dream.”

“Right,” he said, with a tone that said to stop being, well, me, and to act professionally. Wonder how he would act on little to no sleep that’s well beyond insomnia. “It’s Oscar Duncan, the tech billionaire working on his next invention. Said he wanted you, and only you, to take his photo for the Profiles shoot today.”

My stomach seized with a vise grip. Whether it was the subject or that it would be my first major assignment at the magazine, I wasn’t sure. We needed the money.

Hospitals weren’t cheap, and I did not want to go back to the corporate world. If I wanted to make this work, I had to think old school. Employee and employer, and with the bills piling up, the cementing of an official hire would offer relief. On the other hand, I didn’t answer well to others, and preferred to keep my own counsel. Plus, the freedom to work on my time kept the creative juices flowing, and no one tracked my sick days. Or rather, the days I spent visiting my mom.

If I could make a name for myself with high-profile clients like Oscar Duncan, then I’d have more control of my life. The unraveling that had started last year was spiraling, and something needed to catch and lock my life plan back into place. “Repair the rift,” as my mother would say. Except this was no dream. This was real life. Was it odd I felt more control in the dreamscape than I did in the real world? Probably.

©Lisa Rogers. This story has been written from my head by my hand for more years than I care to count. Completed December 2024. All Rights Reserved.

I have gone back-and-forth ad nauseum about whether or not to serialize this book and have decided to rip off the Band-Aid(tm) or plaster, if you prefer.

Warning: it’s not going to be perfect, but it has been storycoached, developmental, and line-edited, any typos or similar issues are mine and mine alone.