Free The Sword of Straw by Amanda Hemingway Page B

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D.”
    “I wasn’t going to tell him any such thing,” Bartlemy objected.
    “I want him to be just a normal boy,” Annie went on. “The adolescent years are difficult enough without adding otherworldly complications. I know we can’t stop the dreams, but as long as his—his journeys stay in dream form they’re manageable. He still sees them as a kind of storybook adventure, not the main focus of his life. Let’s keep it that way.”
    “You want Narnia to stay in the wardrobe,” Bartlemy said. “But Narnia was the kingdom of childhood; when the children grew too old, they weren’t allowed to return anymore. The universes in Nathan’s head are rather different. The signs show his dream journeys are intensifying, not diminishing, as he grows up. Without the knowledge he needs, you may endanger him.”
    “Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” Annie said. “I think of it all the time. It’s bad enough worrying if your children are out at night—what they’re doing, who they’re with, all the usual—but I have to worry when Nathan’s home in bed. Barty, I don’t know if I’m right—maybe I’m just a coward about telling him the true story—but I think he’s better off dreaming in ignorance. Once he gets it into his head he’s carrying some huge doom on his shoulders, the weight of it could crush him. Let him walk lightly for the moment. Let Narnia stay in the closet where it belongs. We don’t know who his father was, or what he intended.”
    “There are indications—”
    “We
don’t know
. We’re just trying to—to second-guess fate. My recollection of…what happened…is closed. Maybe that’s deliberate, to protect me, or Nathan. Anyway, I won’t tell him until I
know
it’s necessary—if it ever is.”
    “By then,” said Bartlemy, “it may be too late.”
    Annie averted her gaze, and he said no more, sensing the muddle of her thoughts—hope, doubt, dread—unsure of his own arguments, or if he was in the right at all.
    Later, left alone, Annie’s mind returned to that sealed door in her memory, and what lay beyond. The anger she had never told rushed through her like a brush fire, so she was shaking with the force of it. She had passed the Gate between worlds—the Gate that opened only for the dead—in a moment of selfless love, seeking one who was gone, and in that moment another had taken her, violated her, sending her back with his seed in her womb and his lie in her heart. It had been thirteen years before she could open the door even a crack and let a fragment of memory through—thirteen years of wondering and secret fear, searching in vain for Daniel in her son’s face and form. Now, whenever she dared to think about it, the anger leapt from a flicker to a flame, all but consuming her. Perhaps that was the real reason why she avoided telling Nathan—because she was afraid he might see it, and misunderstand, thinking it was directed at him. Or because her anger was a thing so deep, so private, that no one must know it was there—no one must see her damaged, betrayed, revengeful—until the moment came when she could let it out, and it would rage across the barriers of the worlds to find the one who had done this to her.
    She wondered if other victims of supernatural impregnation had felt the same. Rosemary with her baby; Leda, ravaged by a swan (she had often wondered about the technicalities of that). And Mary, who had been honored and overwhelmed, according to the Bible—but then, Annie reflected, the Bible was written by men. Maybe she, too, had known that instant of raw fury because her body had been used without her permission, invaded by a superior being who thought he was above the rules, and humans were his creatures, to do with as he pleased. Annie had been brought up a Catholic, and, like anyone who lapses from a stern religion, God was real to her, both her Father and her Enemy. Her relationship with Him was Freudian, a matter of love and hate,