Free The Mind's Eye by K.C. Finn

didn’t know what to
do, but I felt I owed him some kind of explanation. I thought of
what my mother would do if she were addressing someone from foreign
parts.
    Hello , I thought, Do you speak English?
The boy let
out an audible cry as he scanned the corridor around him. It was
totally empty. So now he knew my voice had no body. I didn’t know
if that was a good or bad thing.
    “ Some English, yes,” he answered. He was more nervous now than
when the Nazis had arrived. “Please miss, where are you speaking
from?”
That was a
loaded question, but I decided on honesty.
    Great Britain , I replied.
    “ But that is impossible,” he whispered. I liked his accent,
the way he pushed his vowels out of his mouth with
stress.
Yes, but it’s
true.
    “ Why can the others not hear you?” he asked, his nerves
abating a little once more.
    I’m afraid I have used your mind to see what’s happening in
Oslo. It was true enough; he didn’t need
to know it had happened accidentally.
    “ You have powers,” he began uncertainly, “Synsk… I do not know
the English word. But this is very, very impossible.”
He understood
it better than I thought he would, which told me he had enough
sense about him not to think himself mad for hearing voices. He
believed that people like me existed, however afraid he might be of
the idea. I was about to speak again when that familiar cold shiver
started to creep up my spine, the dark little corridor was fading
in and out. I panicked, focusing hard to maintain for a few seconds
more.
    Your name , I demanded, Please, I have to go, but give me your name. I
can find you again with your name. I clung
desperately to Oslo, hoping what I’d just said was true. And then I
realised that perhaps he wouldn’t want me to find him again. I
started to sink away despite my efforts; almost everything in the
corridor was gone when one last sound reached my ears.
    “ Henri.”

I was too
exhausted from the length of the visit to focus on finding Henri
again right away. I went to bed that night hoping my mind might
take me there anyway, but had no such luck, and the next day there
was no peace to be found at all at Ty Gwyn. Mam was intent on
mending the impenetrable rift that had built up between Blod and I
during my eight months thus far in North Wales; she thought a nice
trip to the cinema was the solution. Blod only agreed because my
wheelchair meant that she would most likely get a seat right at the
front of the picture house.
    Unfortunately Mam also made the insane decision to break a
piece of bad news to Blod on the way to the cinema, namely that she
couldn’t have the dress she wanted for her
21 st birthday. Blod hit the roof shamelessly as we went down the
uneven streets of Bryn Eira Bach, but for all her complaints there
simply wasn’t enough money in the family to give her what she
wanted. Fabric was in short supply and necessary for the war
effort, so the few new dresses that remained in Evans the Tailor’s
window had more than tripled in price since the start of the year.
By the time we reached the ticket booth Blod had a face that could
summon stormclouds and though we did get our seat at the front of
the tiny screening room, she slumped back into her chair, crossed
her arms and stared at the screen determinedly even before the reel
started to run.
The first
thing that popped into life on the screen was a news reel detailing
the current state of the war. At first there were some flickering
images of our boys in ranks, saluting and waving their sweethearts
goodbye. People in the picture house cheered all around me. But the
atmosphere dropped into a sombre one as the great black and white
screen was overtaken by the Nazi swastika flying high. The narrator
of the bulletin erupted into a deeper, darker tone.
    “ But out in Greater Europe our allies are falling to the great
German threat.”
Still
photographs appeared of people being flung out of their houses by
German troops, children crying in the