Читать книгу The Dream Weavers онлайн | страница 30

What should have been a routine visit, a gentle exploration of a situation, a reassuring encounter with a lost soul who needed guidance and love to send him or her on their way, had turned into an unsettling and frightening experience, over almost before it had happened, followed by something that seemed to be a dream but was so lucid and meaningful that it had to be a part of some message from the past.

She pulled the stone out of her pocket. Seeing it suddenly there in front of her outside the cottage, she had subliminally recognised it as a signpost into the narrative into which she had been led by Simon’s book. It was part of the story. She didn’t know how yet, but she had sensed it strongly.

Lighting a candle, she sat down on the cushion, the stone between her hands. On one of the courses she had been on they had made a study of psychometry, the science – she smiled to herself at the word Simon would have balked at – of conjuring the past through the touch of the fingers, by connecting to something tangible, holding an artefact – a piece of jewellery, a comb, a lock of hair – and using it to focus the mind on the person or place to whom the artefact was linked. This was something she had practised instinctively as a child, not realising then that what she did was anything more than her imagination, that the ability was a reality and a very precious gift. She had tried it before with stones from castles and ancient sites, from gardens and ruins, always conscientiously returning them when she had finished with their story. With this stone perhaps she could link to the past of the cottage, safely, here at home without a sceptical historian looming over her. Stones had always been there; stones were brilliant witnesses. They were as old as the ground around them and perhaps if she had found the right one it would provide the link she needed to whatever had so frightened the woman at Simon’s house. If she had been guided to the link, she owed it to that lost soul to find out what had happened.