The Weaver Awakes

Chapter 3 - Callie

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Chapter 1
Chapter 2

***
Callie

The silver feather had cemented Callie’s decision to stay away. If Lucien wanted to talk to her then he could send another. “Stop lumping us into one person,” she’d told him once. “I am Callie. She is Penelope. Penny. We are two different people.”

Her jaw set, she flopped onto the sofa, pounded the coffee table with her heels, and threw them amongst the cluster of magazines covering its glass. She picked up a magazine, thumbed through it, and tossed it aside. Still fuming over an event that had happened half a lifetime ago, she found the one she was looking for.

She snatched the tech magazine and flipped through the pages, wishing she felt something. Anything. Her stomach growled. Yet another story about Oscar Duncan. What was it about this guy that kept drawing her in? Intrigued, she studied his picture with the practiced eye of an artist.

He had cerulean eyes with silver flecks which gave them an icy tone, but his tanned face was at odds with his stare. He could pin someone to a wall with those eyes. She shivered at the thought and smirked. She, too, could pin people to walls with a stare. The picture was too small to tell much more about him, but she wanted to know more. What was he working on? Some kind of machine? Stop looking at his picture and read the article. She flipped back a few pages to find the beginning.

“He’s gone. Let’s eat.” Penny sounded bright, if a little rushed.

“Not hungry. I’ll get something later.”

“C’mon, Cal. You gotta eat.” In a softer tone, Penny added, “I’ll make your favorite tea.”

“Really. I’m okay. I’m a big girl and can take care of myself. Who was on the phone? The docs?”

“No, Tom. Got a new cover photo shoot for Profiles.”

“Congrats! Who is it?” She was glad they could talk about something as innocuous as the weather. This kind of conversation she could maintain, and with Penny so distracted, she wouldn’t notice the lack of nuance. Hopefully.

“Umm, yeah. It’s that tech guy. The one you told me about. Oscar Duncan,” Penny said. Callie shook her head, laid one arm on the back of the sofa, and turned to face her sister.

“Tell your editor to give it to someone else. I don’t…like that guy. Something about him.” You like him fine. Why do you care if she takes his picture?

“I don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing. Honestly, the guy kind of gives me the creeps.” Penny came around the sofa and stacked the magazines, then fanned them out. Callie bristled.

“I know that! He’s supposed to be at my gallery showing. ‘A key patron,’ the owner said.” She paused, forcing back a chuff. “Seems he has a taste for art and may be looking to add a piece or two. One piece, Pen, and we’re golden. Solvent.”

“Thought you didn’t like him,” Penny said, looking at Callie sidelong, a smile teasing at her lips.

Don’t patronize me.

Callie shrugged. “Call me curious. There’s something about the name that seems so familiar. I hate it when I can’t remember something as simple as where and why I know a name. This name.” She jabbed her finger at the title of the article, rolled up the magazine, and clutched it tight.

“So, you collect magazines with his name and picture trying to figure it out?” Penny asked, jutting her chin at Callie’s hand. “So, what’s his story, anyway?”

Callie closed the magazine and put it back on the table. She just needed a little more time and then they could breathe a little easier. Penny could go back to her photography for fun and watch the world from behind her camera. Callie would figure out a way to get their mom out of her comatose purgatory, the shadows would recede, and everything would be back to normal.

“Are you kidding me?” There was an edge to Penny’s tone that unsettled Callie.

“I’m only trying to protect you.”

“You always say that. It’s your platitude on repeat. You’re trying to protect me from what exactly? Life. I just had one hell of a catchup with Lucien, and I don’t have the capacity to battle you, too. If you’re not hungry, fine. But I’ve got to go. I have work to do.”

“Go on, then, and leave me alone. You’re not mom. Stop trying to act like her.” They’d had this discussion before. It didn’t end well. Callie waited until she heard Penny open the back door. “Besides, the gallery show just might settle the bills, if all the right people show.” She offered a fake smile, tied her hair up into its messy bun, and slung around her neck a dappled apron with tones of Jackson Pollock. It was time to paint.

The door slammed shut. Callie closed her eyes and beamed. “Alone at last!” She listened to her voice echo in the now empty house.

Clasping her hands over her head, she stretched her obliques. She bent and twisted like a blade in the reeds. Stay in shape. Stay sharp. She flexed her toes. Butterfly feet. Bend. Parry. Twist. She repeated the words her mom had taught her and imagined herself at each stage, but the shadows darkened the corner of her mind, and she fought to find the light. Painting. Light. Home. Penny. Light? Her brain turned fuzzy, and the tips of her fingers tingled. “No. No. No. Not. Now.”

The timbre of church bells filled her ears, and she clamped her hands to the sides of her head. She sat up straighter and looked at her hands. She could almost see them as though they were in that other place—elongated, gray, skeletal. Translucent. “No. Please. I’m so tired,” she said. “I won’t. I can’t.” Her words unheeded, she slumped farther into the sofa’s embrace. The tech magazine dropped its pages, making a sound like a crackling fire.

****

It was dark. So dark.

As Callie moved through the tunnel, kaleidoscopic images engulfed her. Fire. Water. Silver. Colors in a prism. Her head pounded. Her heart raced. The vibration of her body charged with tension. One wrong picture. One stray thought. One wrong message and she would snap in two.

A path revealed itself, and the images once disjointed sharpened. Callie’s stomach clenched. Was she in her own nightmare or someone else’s? And if it was another’s dream, whose could it be? Who had called her to fight their demons for them?

Please be someone else’s night terror.

As she started to round the corner, an old familiar tune came unbidden. It’s slow phrase softly repeated until she wanted to cover her ears. Not only was the tune familiar, but something else as well.

Footsteps in the hallway. Shadows in the dark.

That voice. Callie knew that voice and shivered. This was not someone else’s dream. It was hers. Her nightmare. Not good. Good. Nightmares are bad. Fight the demons. She shook her head, but the shadows raged in the fire’s reflection, and her step slowed. Her legs were heavy. Her mind was fuzzy. She reached for something solid. Something to ground her. Stay sharp.

Her mind raced, her heart keeping tempo, her body tense as her fingers found purchase against a cold, rocky wall. . The tune long dissipated, she heard footsteps growing louder. Bolder. When she stopped, the footsteps stopped, but the voice did not. It spoke to her.

“The shadows will not remain quiet much longer. They will not remain hidden. Fear and chaos are what they demand.”

Callie had to focus, or she would be lost. Lost forever. Searching for a way out, she stumbled into the memory of her mother and Lucien talking to her and Penny. Something about living in two worlds.

“You girls must understand,” their mother had said, glancing sidelong at Lucien.

“You cannot live in both worlds at once. To live in both leaves you open to vulnerabilities. You must choose your world. The night, she is patient. Her demons will wait.”

Callie caught movement out of the corner of her eye and squinted for a better look. Silhouette forms with no shape, and no features. They did not run from the shadows but came in step with them. Darkness descended as she watched them, seeming to swallow the black silhouettes who melted into their shadows or stayed close to the edge of the fire flanking her path.

****

Callie woke up in a cold sweat, tears welling. She didn’t understand the dream’s meaning, and if she didn’t understand the dream, she couldn’t fix it.

But something was coming for her.

She wished she could run from her dreams, her nightmares, but she was helpless against the shadows that advanced whenever she closed her eyes. She pressed her hand against her eyes to stop the flow of tears. Weakness. Alexander women don’t cry. She steadied her shaking hands. “Get it together, Callie,” she said, and pushed wet hair from her brow. Sweat streamed down her face. Had she been in the fire?

She heard voices; one distant and tinny, the other clear and soft as the gentle lapping of a lake. She strained to listen unable to comprehend whose voices or what they were saying. Callie shivered as the voices grew louder, but still unintelligible, except for two words that pierced her thoughts. ‘Dusgadh Death.’ Maybe the voice was meant for someone else. It couldn’t be for her, could it? Her heart sank. She did know one thing; she’d gone too far. She’d strayed too far. Gone against the rules. The Council’s iron resolution barred her from something. Someone. She strained to remember, but that gate that blocked her from her sister slammed, now, against her dreamscape memory.

I know what I am. I didn’t realize the cost, that terrible night. That resolute rules could be broken, or that I would be the one to break them.

The dream and the voices shook her. Only one thing would keep her centered. She got up from the sofa, as if in a trance, and climbed the creaky, wooden stairs to her art studio. Her legs and arms were stiff from sitting and not sleeping well, but some of her stretches were to angle her ear toward the kitchen. Curiosity killed the cat. She entered her inner sanctum, her safe space, and opened the double French doors to reveal the neatest art studio. “You’re the neatest, and I mean that literally, artist I know,” Penny had said when she’d showed her where not to enter. Why show her then? I don’t know. Just to prove something was mine and mine alone. Let her stay behind her lenses and filters. I know the realities of dreams and nightmares.

Callie went toward her easel. There was a single canvas as yet untouched waiting for its first bloom of life. “I can’t paint until I see the image in my mind’s eye.” She’d told Penny the same night over dinner. It was the first conversation they’d had that didn’t revolve around their mom and why she might be in the hospital.

How do I tell her I know why? “Stop it, Callie. Focus.” Caught in her own head, only painting chipped at the mental wall. Each tip of the brush to canvas, a nail pulled out to loosen its hold.

Muscle memory took over, and she reached for her palette. The colors smoothed into perfect ovals. Her palette was as clean as her painting when it was finished. Cobalt green, first. Mix in veridian so dark it looked black. The darkened green debuted as the backdrop with long, strong brushstrokes. Cerulean blue, silver, and cool white mixed toward the bottom left corner. A dash of yellow ochre set back among the trees, and the image began to reveal itself. “I know this place.”

Callie stepped back and studied what she’d done, her brush steady on its palette, and quirked her mouth. Something was missing.

A slash of red. Here. And here.

Portland Cool Gray. Cadmium lemon. Why yellow? Don’t know. Don’t care. Just go with it.

Callie took another step back. Black dots. No forms. There. And there. More red. Transparent Orange.

“Callie!”

She jumped. Her palette and brushes tumbled to the floor. When she turned, she saw the look in her sister’s eye and took a step back. Off balance, she stumbled into the easel and caught its edge before it followed the palette and paintbrushes.

Penny rushed in and pried Callie’s hand from the corner of the painting. Still holding her sister’s hand, Penny used the other to pick up the palette and paintbrushes from the floor and set them gently down on the worktable.

“Callie,” she said, quietly. “Please tell me that’s red paint.”

***

©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.

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