Stacy--Part Thirty-Two

Splog # 119

Thirty-Two

   It was a relief to think that she was on a line toward her goal and she immediately turned back and resumed walking. As she travelled, she absent-mindedly took a bite of the apple in her hand. It was crunchy and not too sweet, nor yet too tart, and it suddenly reminded her that she had held an apple in the same hand last night while sitting and talking with Lane and Johnny. But, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember whether she had eaten that apple or not. She remembered eating some bread and cheese. And she had drunk something from a wooden cup. Cider, it must have been. There had been some strange sort of shooting stars. But she simply couldn't remember if she had taken a bite of the apple. And if not, then what had happened to it? As she pondered her actions of the previous evening, Stacy found herself confused about a few other matters. She had gone off with Lane and Johnny and they had told her a little about the Doolins and she had entered their underground home. But here she was walking across an endless plain. She thought backwards to the cauldron and beyond it. She had come here on...a butterfly? Before that her memory was somewhat hazy. It was all starting to seem quite dream-like and she entertained the possibility that she herself wasn't awake at the present moment.

   She took another bite of the apple and a drop of sticky fluid slid down her fingers. She noticed that her pace had slackened and brought it back to what it had been previously. If she was awake, she didn't want the children to have to suffer the results of her confused imaginings. She brought her left hand to her face and gently pinched her cheek. Everything felt fairly normal, physically anyway. The sky and plain were dream-like in their vast monotony and the cauldron and note and feather were oddities that might have seemed out of place at home in her garden. She slid her hand into her pocket and ran her fingers along the edge of the envelope to its sharp corner. She figured she was probably awake as in dreams the question rarely came up. As a dreamer she performed bizarre actions accompanied by an unlikely assortment of strangers and acquaintances and never concerned herself with whether any of the happenings were appropriate to her waking reality. Like that ba-bump-bum sound that she could once again hear in the distance behind her. In a dream she probably wouldn't even pay attention to it. But here she found herself wondering what it meant or what it could be. She planted her feet in their turning position so she could take a quick look. The cauldron was a mere speck far behind but there was something running between her and it. Not towards her. It was heading off at an angle to her right. It was orange and white and brown and looked like a...But it couldn't be! A tiger? As she watched., the animal, without breaking stride, made a sharp turn and was now running towards her left. Even though it ran on an angle, it was slowly diminishing the distance separating them. It looked fairly large and Stacy felt a sense of panic rising within her. The animal was running farther and farther to her left. She was hoping that it would run until it was out of sight. But when the animal (Stacy thought "animal" but she was almost positive by now that it was truly a tiger) again veered its course and started heading the other way, inexorably drawing closer to her, Stacy turned forward and began to run with all her might, her thoughts madly keeping pace with her legs.What was a tiger doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Tigers lived in jungles or maybe in mountains. Wherever they lived, this one didn't belong here and all she could do was hope it would run off somewhere to the right or left or even just past her and away. Was that what had jumped over her into the cauldron? It must have been. It had ignored her then. Why was it following her now? Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it just happened to be going in the same direction.