Page 4 of Hidden Kingdoms

“No, you’re not. You fell asleep,” she said, a knowing look on her face as she watched me rearrange her furniture.

“It’s the fire, it makes me sleepy. Plus, I’ve been up late working the last few nights.”

By the way her eyebrow arched, I knew I hadn’t fooled her, but I’d long since given up telling her about any of the things I saw. I shoved all that down inside pretending it didn’t happen. She preferred it that way, and life was easier withNanna thinking any ability I may have exhibited as a child was long gone. I took some subtle deep breaths hoping my heart would return to its normal rhythm so I wouldn’t have to break out hyperventilating techniques, which would have definitely proved that I was way more shaken from a daydream than I should have been.

The truth was, when Ididfall asleep, my dreams had become so horrifically vivid that I wasn’t getting much rest, which meant I would drift off during the day at every inconvenient chance possible. I’d read that eating cheese too close to bedtime could cause bad dreams, cutting it out for two whole days before I decided that I just wasn’t going to punish myself in that way.

Like fuck was I going to live without cheese.

“Those dreams have been keeping you awake again, haven’t they?” She narrowed her eyes slightly, studying my face before reaching to pick up her dainty cup decorated with delicate blue flowers and taking a sip. I knew what she was holding back, what she wouldn’t speak out loud, unlike the final part to our crazy trio. Briar would have proclaimed my dreams as visions and convinced me to recount it in excruciating detail so that she could interpret the future.

Nanna would have absolutely none of that.

Neither would she want to hear about how I had spent the last two weeks at home, not risking the heart-wrenching glimpses of the deaths of complete strangers that crossed my path that had started up again. I could only handle being around Nanna, Polly and Titan right now.

Nanna’s hair was pulled into a messy ball on top of her head, braids weaved through it and whisps escaping in a way that mirrored my own. Though where her hair was a mousy brown, mine was bone white.

Leaning back in her wooden rocking chair she pushed with her toes, the curved bottom creaked against the patterned rugthat covered the wooden floor in front of the fireplace. The mantle was high, almost the height of a person, though she kept the fire low. Bundles of herbs and flowers hung from it, drying out of reach of the flames, and the rows of candles she would light at night which lined its edge, their waxy drips forming intricate patterns as they cooled.

Her eyes were bluer than the sky on the clearest day, capable of seeing through all my bullshit and currently intently focused on mine. I schooled my features into indifference as I gave her a slight shrug, picking up my own cup and forcing myself to gulp down the rapidly cooling liquid. I was more of a coffee girl.

Maybe if Nanna had made me a cup of that, I wouldn’t have fallen asleep.

She planted her feet, halting the rock of the chair, more than aware of my attempt at indifference as she locked me in her gaze. My hand rose automatically to the chain I wore around my neck, my fingers finding the intricate gold and rose quartz pendant she had given to me many years ago.

Never take it off, she had warned me, and I hadn’t—ever.

Apparently deciding to let me keep my secrets for now, she turned her focus to the dregs of tea at the bottom of her cup, swirling it gently. I wondered if she was thinking about Briar, how she would have jumped at the opportunity to read the message clumped at the bottom.

Briar claimed that reading tea leaves could tell you all you ever needed to know about a person, had warned me many times how easy it was to take the first thing you saw as the only message they held. Nanna said that was down to intuition and not divine intervention. I had to admit Briar had a knack for it, but believing she could see into the future by staring at some soggy leaves was just a step too far for me.

She was into it all—tea leaves, palmistry, tarot cards—and she was good at it, though for me I felt that was just down to luck and having a good knowledge of the person she was reading.

Briar said it was because of the magik that ran through our veins and while she was right about that, nothing she said would convince me she had the gift of precognition despite her insistence I did, too.

They had both taught me the magik and folklore that they claimed was our history growing up. I learned at Nanna’s knee, dark nights spent sat before one of the many fires that would be lit here, wrapped in blankets as her voice soothed me to sleep with the stories she could weave; even as a child, sleep had never been easy. I still held a fondness for the crystal magic and folk tales she had shown me, but reading people's future held no interest to me. Something Nanna was pleased with.

The one thing I did hold onto—that I decided against telling her—was that I drew a tarot card every day. Mostly dismissing how scarily accurate they were.

It’s just wish fulfilment; you could make any reading fit into your life if you really wanted to.

Gathering both our cups, Nanna stood, interrupting my thoughts for a moment as she moved to the counter. A soft clink of porcelain followed as I settled deeper into the armchair, the heat of the fire now a soft caress on my skin as I breathed in the incense burning in the room.

To keep the fairies away,Nanna always said.

Whatever that meant.

And just like that my mind flashed to the dream; it had been so clear, so vivid. I’d felt that fire as if my body really was burning in those flames, the heavy smoke choking me. Different to the dreams I had been trying to keep a track of recently. They were just snippets of things, faces, voices, a darkness so thick it felt like its own entity. Gone before I could get any real idea onwhat they were. I thought sleep was getting easier, but I guess I had been wrong.

It didn’t matter because that’s all they were—a dream.

Certainly not no vision, no telling of the future.

My fingers stayed closed around the pendant, calming my nerves as Nanna retook her seat, eyes locked on mine as she reached her hand out towards me.

I let her take mine, recognising the touch of her finger on my palm for what it was, a small sigh escaping my lips at where this could end. Her distance to all the things Briar loved was something I always accepted though I knew she could do it all, too. It was rare that Nanna would read my palm, and when she did, there was always something that would blow us off course for a while.

Like when I had been suffering from migraines in secondary school. According to her, my palm told us we needed to leave the manor house and live in a freezing log cabin that was so close to the arctic circle, the aurora borealis was visible at every hour of the continuous night we had found ourselves in. It was beautiful, and I had enjoyed my time huddled by a fire with Nanna’s attention solely on me for the weeks we were there, but it was things like that that made me a little wary when my hand was in hers and she was frowning down at it.

---