Lucidity

Chapter 7 - Spinning Tales

Alex patted the bed beside him and Grace stretched out, her left arm circling his shoulders. “Once upon a time,” she fumbled, trying to decide what came next.

She stopped as the three girls from the playroom sidled in through the open door. Their chemotherapy treatments finished, they now roamed free from their IV lines. They nodded to Alex, who didn’t seem at all surprised to see them, and crowded together on the upholstered chair, one of them swinging her legs over the arm.

“Not a fairy tale,” he complained. “Those are for babies.”

“A love story,” one of the girls chimed.

“Nothing sad,” her neighbor put in.

“Happy ending,” the last said, her heels bouncing off the side of the chair in emphasis.

Grace frowned. “A love story with a happy ending—”

“But nothing gushy—and it’s okay if there’s monsters and space aliens and stuff,” Alex told her.

“A monster and space alien love story with nothing gushy or sad and no fairy tales, is that it?” she asked, more uncertain than ever that she could appease her discriminating audience.

“Well, we maybe don’t need the space aliens,” Alex allowed.

Grace took a deep breath. She was no good at this. Where was Jimmy with his blarney when she needed him?

The chime of gold on gold came as Jimmy’s hand covered hers, their wedding rings touching with a tone of pure harmony. She looked over to see Jimmy sitting on the other side of Alex. His right hand reached behind the boy and suddenly the three of them were snuggled together like family.

Alex sighed with contentment and his eyes closed, his breathing eased. The three girls beamed. Grace wondered for a split second if they could actually see Jimmy.

Of course not, he was her hallucination and hers alone. It was still nice to have him here.

Tell them our story, love, he said, turning his wide smile on Grace.

Of course. Not a fairy tale and it had everything except for the space aliens. Which were optional in any case.

“Long ago and far away,” she began, her voice steady and clear. Jimmy nodded his encouragement. “There once was a Queen named Maeve. She was a good Queen, a warrior as well as a diplomat. Some said she was a witch, others tried to call her a god, but she was just a woman. A woman who was strong and proud and worked hard to keep her people safe.”

“Yeah, Maeve!” One of the girls cheered. Alex’s face creased in a smile so Grace knew he wasn’t asleep yet.

“Do you want to hear more?” Grace asked, now enjoying her role as raconteur.

“Where’s the love story?”

“Well now, that happens much later—more than three thousand years later to be exact. You see, there was a great plague that fell upon Maeve’s land. They didn’t know it at the time, but a volcano had exploded and the cloud of dust blocked the sun all around the world.”

The children stared at her in rapt attention as Grace formed a large sphere with her hands.

“You mean the whole world was dark, no sun?” one of the girls asked.

“Like an ice age?” Alex put in.

“Almost. This happened in the fall. That winter was the worst ever seen and it seemed never ending. Spring just never came.”

“That’s not good.”

Grace nodded. “Not if you want to eat. So Maeve moved her people to the coast, hoping the sea would sustain them. She had to fight off many tribes of other starving people, people who wanted to survive as much as her clan. But she had to put her people first—that was her job as Queen.”