Tower of Dove

Chapter 8: The Caged Dove

Tower of Dove Chapter 8: The Caged Dove

Lilyana dreamt that night, and the feeling that the dream left her with was so nasty that she should have considered it a nightmare. She woke in a sweat, her blankets strewn across the floor and her pillows pushed far beneath her mattress.

She sat up and rubbed the perspiration from her forehead and neck. Her breaths were labored and fast. She turned her head to check the face clock hanging on her wall.

Three thirty-seven in the morning. No way in hell was she going back to sleep just to thrash around like a dying fish for another two hours. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she recalled her dream.

A white dove flew through the sky, a matching daisy held between its feet. Her dreamer’s eyes had viewed it with such a calm, weightless feeling as the sky faded from blue to the low oranges and pinks of the sunset. The dove continued to fly higher and higher into the air, as if striving to one day reach the stars.

A nasty, croaking noise sounded. It had been such a horrible, cracking sound that, even in the dream, Lilyana had felt a cold shiver race down her spine. A raven appeared next to the dove as if it had formed from the surrounding air. Panic had filled Lilyana as it attacked the helpless dove. She wanted to scream at the small animal to fight back, but it was so determined to keep its hold on the daisy and couldn’t use it’s talons to defend itself.

The raven pecked and clawed and ripped and the dove’s dying cries curdled the air and made Lilyana’s blood run cold. The raven screeched in victory as the bleeding dove fell from they sky.

The drop was long and the dove screamed, but still, it clutched the daisy it held, as if it were trying to save the last lovely thing it owned. Lilyana wanted to reach out and save the poor animal, but she could only watch as it fell through the sunset, its blood spilling into the warm colors and streaking the sky red.

It landed on top of a white tower that was built high in a beautiful grassland. The dove’s bright blue eyes began to cloud over, and then it lay still atop the tower, the daisy still clutched tightly between its claws.

Lilyana buried her face in her hands and took deep, calming breaths. That had been such a disturbing, vivid dream. It had left her head pulsing and her ears ringing.

A bath, that’s what she needed, and she should wash off the sweat making her nightgown stick to her body. She picked her blankets off of the ground and tossed them back onto her bed before crossing to her bathroom. Ms. Corine would be annoyed with the state of her room, but she was too frazzled to tidy it or to care.

She pulled the string of the lamp hanging by the bathroom door and squinted as her eyes adjusted to the room in front of her. The bathroom was large, with a chestnut-colored marble tub to the left and a dark purple rug running along the white tile floor. The lights were set low and a long, rectangular mirror sat above the sink which was directly in front of the door.

She grimaced as she caught her reflection—she looked horrible. Bags were heavy beneath her eyes and her skin was pale and shining with a light sheen of sweat. Besides the braid Posy had woven, her hair was wild and frizzy. She turned away from the mirror, approached the tub, and turned the knob for the hot water.

She lasted in the bath for less than ten minutes. The water was scorching and it felt as if she were in a pot of boiling soup, but even when she added cold water, the temperature didn’t go down.

Maybe this was God’s doing. He must be scorning her for her idiocy in handling her problems with Hiero and Simeon. Well, if that’s how those things worked, then she’d burn alive gladly.