State of Grace Read Online Free PDF Page B

and underneath it my skin is totally clear, not a single dotmark, as if I’d never had any to begin with.
    Then the little creature cuddles up against me. The image in my head might be impossible but right then it feels completely real too. So real, I can feel a little body all warm and soft against my leg in the fuzzy red sungarb the creature’s wearing.
    I see him hand me a book like he wants me to read it to him. There’s a picture on the cover, a fat shape with whirring blades on top.
    Hector the Littlest Helicopter .That’s what the book is called.
    Then comes a voice.
    ‘Is Julius asleep yet?’ it calls. It sounds all crisp and efficient, the kind of voice people listen to. When me and the creation hear it, we swap this look .We giggle. The two of us could not be closer.
    ‘It’s time he was asleep,Viva.’
    Even though that’s not my name I’m still one hundred per cent certain it’s me the voice is calling. Somehow the sound’s as familiar to me as a dottrack. I even know who the voice belongs to.
    Someone named Mum .

06
    I JERK AWAKE , gasping. I say awake because I figure I must have been asleep. The things I saw, those prenormal images, were as dreamlike as it’s possible to get. And just because I’ve never had a dream with my eyes open before doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. It’s the only way to explain all those impossible, nonexistent things. Miniature creatures and strange beds and someone called Mum calling me the wrong name …
    That’s where I stop myself. It’s not even worth thinking about all that stuff because none of it is real. I must have imagined it. Somehow, for whatever reason, I made it all up.
    Relief cools my flushed, sweating skin.
    I’m still on the ground by the pond, next to Blaze. I feel like shaking him awake. A loose, wild kind of laugh is bubbling up inside me.
    Guess what? I want to say. Can you believe what I just dreamed? Isn’t that ridiculous ?
    But I don’t. I leave Blaze to sleep, curled in on himself the way ferns do when the light fades. Dreams are never as interesting to other people as they are to the person who has them. Better to keep the whole thing to myself. Better, actually, to get away from here, right now.
    So I creep past Blaze. All the way through the magnolias and back along the path, I remind myself it isn’t real, it isn’t real . But all the same I’m shaky and way overheated. Back at the huts, the open air is damp and the grass all wet with dew. Fern and Gil and Brook are sprawled out on top of each other near the cooling bonfire. I decide not to wake them up either.
    Sleeping would be a relief right now. But even when I’m back in my hut, I don’t drop off the way I usually do. Nowhere near.
    The Books are very clear on Dot’s creation. Dot made everything and everything stops at the fringe of trees and there’s nothing more past that except the beyond. Definitely nothing like all those things I saw. But what gets me is the pictures inside my head refuse to fade like dreams should. They keep hanging around, clear as they were the first second I saw them. I end up lying on my bed for ages, staring up at the carved butterflies and the fan on the ceiling, watching the light through my shutters turn from cool silver to the soft grey of early morning. When I can’t stand that any more, I pick up my Books from the table beside my bed. I touch the screen and the text jumps straight to the bit about chosen creations.
    I scroll past that and go to Communications, Chapter 6,Verse 6. Dot loves talking with her creations. And like Gil said, what kind of creator would Dot be if she asked us to talk to her but never talked back?
    Maybe she didn’t use words, but lying there I’m suddenly pretty certain Gil was right. That wren, it must have been a sign. I guess Dot was trying to prepare me for the dream she was about to send me. That would explain why the two things happened on the same night. Not that I have any idea what it’s all meant