Mariel's Magic

Chapter 4. Messages

By the sixth week, morning sickness had caught up with Adriana, but it wasn't bad. She was still undecided about whether to terminate the pregnancy or not. She was visiting a therapist to help her manage the trauma of being violated, but it lingered. One of her concerns was that the child could look like Michael, and that she would never be able to love it. Then there was Jonathan. She loved him and did not want to hurt him. Would a child of Michael's be an ever-present reminder? Would he be able to love the child?

At the beginning of the tenth week of pregnancy, after talking it through with Jonathan and her therapist, she had made the decision to terminate. She was incredibly sad about this decision but felt it was the right one.

On the night before the procedure, Adriana had a lucid dream. In it, she was wandering through an ancient forest, guided by a child's voice. The voice felt like that of the little one who was still tiny, growing in her womb. Through the mists, she wandered, following the voice until she reached a patch of red flowers that glowed with a light of their own. She picked one and inhaled a sweet perfume. Then she was awake, lying next to Jonathan.

This dream disturbed her, and she lay in bed, wide awake until morning.

When Jonathan woke, she said, "I'm canceling the appointment. I can't go through with it. Not now." This is when she told him about the dream. The narrative of the dream did not disturb Jonathan that much, but the raw emotion she exhibited in her reaction to the dream convinced him that she was right to cancel the procedure.

The next night she had another lucid dream where a toddler of perhaps two was sitting quietly by an old woman wearing a shimmering coat, who spoke softly to the child. Adriana could not hear the words but was sure they were important.

Then, a few nights later, in her dream, she saw the child, now perhaps four, standing in front of an easel, drawing a vivid and realistic picture of a vineyard, with a couple sitting nearby. The couple seemed to be herself and Jonathan.

Adriana believed these dreams meant something. She was starting to think that the child in her was trying to tell her something. Neither she nor Jonathan knew much about mysticism, psychics, or anything similar but were open to these things. Her logical mind was skeptical, but her heart seemed certain.

One morning she finally talked about it with Jonathan. "The baby is speaking to me, Jonathan, I know it."

Uncertain, and likewise skeptical, he said, "It's possible, I guess. Maybe the baby is sending you messages of some kind through dreams. There have always been stories of receiving messages like this. I have a friend, a woman I work with, who told me about someone."

He reached out to his friend, who gave him the name of a psychic she knew and had used once or twice when she had had odd dreams. He and Adriana both thought that there was much more to the human mind than most people thought, and these dreams seemed to demand an explanation that would not come from the world they both worked in.

They made an appointment to see Jennifer Manette, who met with people in a special room of her home in Mill Valley. When the woman answered their knock they both gazed at her, not knowing what to say. There was something about her that neither had ever encountered. For one, they could not guess Jennifer's age. It could have been 40 or it could have been 70. Also there was an energy surrounding her that they had never experienced in anyone that either had ever met. Jennifer was dressed in an ordinary manner and would not have been out of place in a supermarket aisle. But her energy, sitting in that room, made her different.

They gathered at a round table, with a scented candle glowing in the middle as the only light in the room. It was, they had to admit, like something in a B movie scene. But when Jennifer started talking, any skeptical thoughts vanished.