The Dream Dealers of Percival Street—Lisa Voorhees

“Magic aside, it’s the healing that matters.”

Rain poured down the leaded glass windows of the sitting room at 26 Percival Street. A thunderclap shook the walls and inside the curio cabinet, the crystal glassware rattled. In spite of the warmth blooming from the fire in the hearth, Doralyn shivered. 

Storms always unsettled her. A presentiment of trouble to come, though her sibling gently laughed her off as superstitious. Of the two Shadowmend sisters, Fidelia was the more practical. Doralyn was the visionary, the one most attuned to promptings beyond what could naturally be perceived. 

Doralyn glanced at her older sister, sunk deep in the cushions of their grandfather’s old wingback armchair in the corner. Her bird-like hand swooped up and over her embroidery hoop, then below to catch the needle and place another stitch. Her movements matched the tick of the antique timepiece above the mantel. 

A hardbound copy of Elias’ 9th Guide to Recovering Shattered Dreams lay open to the first page in Doralyn’s lap, the ribbon she used to mark her place trailing down the fold of her muslin skirt. Fidelia was always telling her she needed to read more, to consult their grandfather’s texts in pursuit of more varied and intricate remedies, ones their forebears had practiced and perfected, and that may have been overlooked or forgotten with the passing of a generation.

Another boom shuddered through the walls. Doralyn snapped the dusty volume closed and peered past the mirrored reflection of the gas lamps in the window, deep into the shadowy darkness of the night. 

The metal knocker on the front door clanged once, then a second time, louder than the first.

Fidelia’s gaze lifted over the rim of her spectacles, her hand motionless above the needlework. “Who would come to see us on a night like this?” she said, her voice barely audible above the echoing thunder. 

Doralyn stood and smoothed her skirts. “I’ll go find out.”

She opened the front door. Rain hissed against the pavement and the damp smell of it filled the hallway. Against the wrought iron railing, a pale, lifeless woman lay in a heap, her petticoats drenched and stained. Swirls of raven hair clung to her ivory skin, winding across her neck and arms. Her lips were whitish gray, like chalk. Gruesome smudges under her eyes gave her a corpse-like appearance. 

Percival Street was otherwise deserted. There wasn’t a single carriage within eyesight, nor even the distant ring of hooves against cobblestones that could offer any clue as to how the woman had arrived. 

“You poor dear,” Doralyn breathed, her skirt billowing around her as she bent down. She pressed her hand to the woman’s cheek. As frail as an orphaned bird, the woman murmured one word against her palm.

“…Help…”

Fidelia appeared in the doorway, silhouetted by the light of the hallway. “Who is she?” 

Doralyn threw her a withering glance. “We didn’t quite get that far. Are you going to help me lift her or not?” She’d drawn the woman’s arm around her shoulder, the cold damp of the poor creature’s body sending ripples of chills through her own. 

With Fidelia’s assistance, they managed to transport the woman to the second floor bathroom, where they laid her gently on the tile. Doralyn stripped off the layers of wet clothing and Fidelia drew a tubful of pleasantly warm bath water. 

“She’s hypothermic,” Fidelia explained. “Best not to shock her with anything hotter.” 

After a considerable amount of effort, they succeeded in positioning the woman in the claw foot tub. Doralyn sudsed her skin with lavender soap and scrubbed away days’ worth of soot and grime. Fidelia lathered her hair with a honey-infused shampoo and delicately picked out the embedded brambles with a fine-tooth comb. 

The woman stared at them with mournful violet eyes, but said nothing. The warm water revived her enough to step out of the tub and stand quietly while the sisters dried her off and found a flannel nightgown to dress her in.

They tucked her underneath the sheets of the four poster bed in the spare room and, per Doralyn’s explicit instructions, Fidelia left to prepare a cup of healing tea. “I’ll use the warming tincture,” she said, casting a worried glance at the pallid face of the newcomer. “We’ll get her back, Dora. We always do.” 

Doralyn took the woman’s slim hand in her own and traced her thumb across the protruding knuckles. “You are safe within these walls,” she said, a nervous smile playing at her lips. “My sister and I are renowned healers, the Dream Dealers of Percival Street. Whether you were aware of this or not makes no difference. We will help you to the best of our abilities, but…the more we know about what drove you to our doorstep, the greater your chance for a full recovery.”

The violet eyes misted over, the pale lips a thin, unmoving line. 

When Fidelia entered, the woman made no move to glance in her direction; she stared at the far wall, mute, her freshly washed curls leaving damp spots on the sheets. 

“Has she spoken yet?” Fidelia placed a tray with a silver tea service on the dresser, poured a steaming cup, and held it to the woman’s lips. 

Doralyn shook her head. 

“My dear,” Fidelia said, coaxing the frail creature to accept her first sip. “We don’t even know your name.” 

When the woman had drunk her fill, Fidelia settled on the side of the bed. “If you won’t tell us, then I suggest ‘Lily.’ ‘Lily of the porcelain skin.’ Don’t you agree, Dora?” 

Fidelia’s best attempt at rousing a response out of the woman had failed. The newcomer was either too weak, disheartened, or traumatized to speak. Perhaps all three. 

Doralyn motioned to Fidelia to extinguish the gas lamps and together, they stepped out into the hall. “We’ll try again in the morning,” Doralyn said.

Fidelia agreed. “She needs her rest, poor thing.” 

They parted ways, each to their own room at opposite ends of the hallway. Long after the light under Fidelia’s door had gone out, Doralyn remained awake, a chill passing through her each time she heard Lily cry out in her sleep. 

The woman was caught in the middle of a nightmare. A vivid, terrifying one, by the sound of it.

The following morning, sunlight danced off the tips of the rain-drenched oak leaves outside the guest room windows. Bundled up in a crimson housecoat, her hair hanging in a loose plait down the middle of her back, Doralyn hadn’t taken the time yet to dress for the day. She watched as Fidelia spoon-fed Lily bites of thick porridge mixed with raisins.

They had infused the porridge with Doralyn’s special concoction for the dispeling of nightmares. One night spent listening to the woman’s agony had been enough to convince her only the strongest tincture would do.

She prayed the magic would work quickly, and help to loosen Lily’s tongue. Without knowing what trauma the woman had experienced, she could apply only the vaguest of remedies, treating the symptoms without being able to get at their root cause. 

They stayed long enough to observe Lily fall into a restless, albeit quieter, sleep. They closed the door behind them and Fidelia squeezed Doralyn’s hand. 

“Have faith in the magic,” Fidelia said. “That’s what you always say.” 

Doralyn smiled for her sister’s sake. Compared to the usual help seekers that called, Lily was an enigma. The cause of her turmoil was nowhere near as readily apparent as Doralyn was used to being able to intuit.

By that evening, Lily still had not spoken. Downstairs, inside the sitting room, the gas lamps cast crooked shadows along the walls. Doralyn stoked the fire with a poker. The logs snapped, sending a fizz of orange sparks up toward the chimney.

“She needs more time to rest,” Fidelia insisted, plying a silk handkerchief with the stab and flow of her needle.

“Her exhaustion runs deeper than the need for sleep,” Doralyn said, anxiety prickling at her fingertips. 

Fidelia stared at her over the rim of her spectacles. She set the hoop down in her lap. “What are you suggesting?” 

“The only tincture that can be used in such a case.” 

Fidelia tossed her sewing aside. Her eyes flared with purpose. “Name it, and I shall prepare it.” 

“She needs belief in magic, blended into a salve. As quickly as you can.”

Doralyn checked the time on the silver filigree pocket watch that had belonged to their grandfather, then replaced it in the hidden pocket of her skirts. It was not yet midnight. If Fidelia’s salve worked, Lily might open up before the day was finished. 

The woman lay asleep in the middle of the bed. Her breath came evenly, but her color had not returned. A waxen pall lent her the air of a fallen statue. 

By her side, Fidelia worked the salve into the pads of Lily’s fingertips, then up each digit, and across the palm. When she finished an application on one hand, she moved over to the next. 

The tinder in the fireplace snapped. A whoosh of sparks followed as the logs rearranged themselves. 

Fidelia was making close inspection of Lily’s fingertips, her brows ruffled. She squinted through her spectacles, a startled noise escaping her throat. “Dora, look at this.”

Doralyn approached the bed. Tiny green spots had appeared on each of the woman’s fingertips, lengthening and writhing underneath the surface of her skin. Small sprouts emerged, their leaves unfurling.

“Our sleeping beauty is a magicienne,” Fidelia whispered.

Lily groaned in her sleep. Sweat beaded her brow, and her body twisted among the sheets. 

With her agitation, the leaflets wilted and shriveled up, then fell from her fingertips, all remnants of them lost to dust within the twisted bedcovers. “…Nowhere to go…” Lily murmured, “…Cursed until I die…” 

Doralyn met Fidelia’s gaze, a thread of concern and hesitation strung taut between them. “You saw what just happened,” Fidelia said. “Another nightmare. Sister, you know what you must do.”

“Dream travel is a violation we swore against a long time ago.” Despite the fire at her back, Doralyn shivered. The hard knot of the pocket watch hung heavy at her waist. 

“She came to us for help,” Fidelia barked. “It was the first word on her lips. Just because she cannot grant you permission does not mean she will reject your presence in her mind. Please, Dora.” 

Doralyn pursed her lips and reached for the pocket watch. She allowed the chain to dangle from her fingers a few inches above Lily’s heart. Then she closed her eyes and spun the watch in slow circles, watching for the pinprick of light that would guide her into Lily’s mind, show her the woman’s dreams, or nightmares, while keeping herself at a distance. An observer, rather than a partaker. 

Her heels clicked along the crystalline floor tiles of a royal ballroom. Tall, arching windows stretched floor to ceiling. From dozens of mirrors, the reflection of cut glass chandeliers twinkled like diamonds. The raven-haired woman stood before her, deep in concentration, driving herself to weave garland upon elaborate garland of rare and exotic flowers. Nearby, the queen sat on her throne, threatening Lily with imprisonment and torture if each subsequent garland failed to outdo the previous one she had struggled to weave together. As hard as the fleuriste-magicienne strained to create newer and more complex kinds of flowers, her power was finite. She could not endure the sustained effort much longer, her magic already reduced to the barest trickle flowing through her fingers. She sagged to her knees. An agonizing fire swept through her, tearing her magic away with it…

Doralyn stumbled away from the vision. She had come too close to feeling what the other woman was feeling, and entering the dream herself. She blinked her eyes open. Fidelia knelt next to her, mopping her brow. 

On the floor beside her, the pocket watch chain draped loose between Doralyn’s fingers. An ache thrummed between her temples and Doralyn fought to recover her breath, her mind reeling. “I fear it’s worse than we imagined,” she said, recalling the searing pain Lily had endured. 

Fidelia pressed her cheek to Dora’s head. “What is, sister?” 

“Lily’s condition. She burnt herself out in service to the queen, fleuriste-magicienne to the royal household. All the salve in the world won’t help her now.”

“We will scour the texts,” Fidelia said. “This will not mean the end for her.” 

Doralyn searched her sister’s eyes. Behind the spectacles’ gleam, she perceived determination, as well as a tumult of fear.

The gas lamps in the sitting room hissed, burning bright. The fire had long since fizzled out, the embers blackened to ash behind the grate. In her corner, Fidelia had replaced the embroidery hoop with a thick, little-used reference volume from their grandfather’s collection. She sat poring over it, her finger tracing lines on the page while her lips murmured out the words. 

“You won’t find any answers in our library.” Doralyn’s statement came out grumpier than she intended, but Fidelia could be hard-headed when it came to believing in her research efforts.

“Shush.” Fidelia waved her off. “I’m concentrating.”

“We’ve been through this before. The collection applies to humans, not magiciennes.” Doralyn was piqued. Fidelia was searching for answers in all the wrong places.

“I might have missed something before.” Fidelia was adamant. 

“Burnout has never been reversed,” Doralyn insisted, assuming the air of a stuffy university scholar. Her spine rested ramrod straight against the back of the armchair. Fidelia paid her no mind, but Doralyn continued regardless. 

“It leads to a slow wasting which will, over time, progress to death. As you and I well know, a magicienne’s power, as well as their ability to express it, is a vital component of their life force. Without it, they simply cannot survive.”

“Cannot, or will not?” Fidelia snapped, her spectacles catching the lamplight, both lenses reflecting the illumination.

“Is there a difference?”

“When it comes to a matter of will, yes, there most certainly is a difference, Dora.” 

Fidelia’s words struck a chord deep within her, one that resonated long after the first painful pluck. While nothing could convince Doralyn the answer lay within their means of discovering it, she was a Shadowmend. 

When it came to saving the lives of those who sought out their help, the Shadowmend sisters never gave up.

Fidelia’s footsteps creaked along the second floor hallway overhead, and Doralyn heard her sister’s bedroom door click shut. On their grandfather’s armchair, Fidelia’s spectacles rested atop the page where she’d abandoned her research, too tired to continue studying.

Doralyn heaved herself out of the opposite armchair, extinguished the gas lamps, then lit a taper and positioned it inside the lantern she used for late night walks in the garden. She hesitated inside the kitchen, assuring herself there were no sounds of nightmares being had upstairs, then slipped out the back door.

The lantern’s glow bounced off the puddles between the stepping stones. She reached the stone bench surrounding the central fountain and set the lantern on the ground. Dozens of fireflies danced in the night air; water trickled from the fluted stone cup at the center of the fountain.

Fidelia was right not to abolish hope that Lily’s ability could be restored. They’d both witnessed the nascent sprouts at her fingertips before they had withered away.

Yet if there was ancient knowledge of any kind of reversal, it would have been lost generations ago. Those kinds of natural remedies were largely handed down verbally, anecdotal formulations that had never been precise enough to be recorded in the formalized collections.

It would not be fair to Lily to lead her to believe her condition was anything but permanent and irreversible, but delivering the truth to her while she suffered would break her spirit. 

Doralyn stifled a sob and rubbed her hands down her face. Her foreboding the night of the thunderstorm had not been unfounded. Her greatest challenge had arrived, one she had little stomach for. Aiding humans was one thing, saving her own kind quite another.

The light of the lantern flickered, highlighting a small white flower by the stone border of the walkway. Heavy with moisture, the delicate petals draped forward, obscuring the heart of the flower. 

She crept closer and pushed one damp petal aside, revealing a golden circlet at the flower’s center. Doralyn’s hand froze and her heart contracted. 

“It’s not possible,” she whispered.

The flower was a complete anomaly. An inexplicable paradox had sprung to life in the middle of her garden, in front of her very nose. 

Stormflowers existed only in fables. In fireside tales, they were considered a sign of hope from the wise ones. A symbol of how a storm could ravage a landscape, and new growth would always follow.  

Doralyn took a moment to recover her breath. Then she bent down and plunged her fingers into the moist ground, tunneling deep below the stormflower’s roots, careful not to tear a single one.

The dirt bulb of the tiny flower sat encased in a piece of burlap in the center of the wooden table, the flower itself considerably less waterlogged after having been brought indoors. Doralyn bustled about, familiarizing herself with the contents of Fidelia’s workshop. 

The windowless cellar had an earthy smell to it, combined with the pungent scent of herbs left out to dry. A series of shelves along the back wall held glass jars filled with tinctures, each carefully labeled, dated, and organized according to Fidelia’s unique system of color coding: red for newfound passion, yellow for artistic elation, blue for peace-giving mindfulness, and so on.

Doralyn took a mortar and pestle, then reached for the dirt bulb and extracted it from the burlap. She shook the delicate roots free of soil and ground the flower, roots and stem included, into a fine mash.

She allowed her promptings to guide her, adding in components of Fidelia’s collection of remedies—a pinch here, a dash there—until certain she had the workings of a balanced formulation. 

She mixed and tested, boiled and drained off the solution, then concentrated it further and placed the final product in a small vial topped with a glass dropper. 

Doralyn swept a hand across her brow, forcing her hair out of her eyes. Feet aching, she climbed the rickety wooden stairs to the kitchen, then proceeded to the second floor. 

She eased open the door to Lily’s room. Doralyn turned on the gas lamps and adjusted them to their lowest setting. 

The woman lay between the sheets, pale as a moonflower. Her skin had a bluish tint Doralyn had not noticed before. Her breath was shallow, and shadows played across the apparent calm of her face.

Doralyn gently prised the woman’s mouth open and placed a drop of the solution under her tongue. She also applied the remedy to the inside of each ear, nostril, and at the corners of Lily’s eyes. Finally, she rubbed a minute amount on each of her fingertips. 

When finished, she pocketed the vial, turned off the gas lamps, closed the door, and fell into bed in her own room, not bothering to change out of her clothes. Exhausted though she was, sleep did not come. She lay awake and stared at the moon’s reflection on the ceiling.

Half expecting to hear the dreadful cries sparked off by the woman’s nightmares, an hour ticked past before Doralyn realized she hadn’t heard a sound coming from Lily’s room. She forced herself out of bed and paused in the darkened hallway. 

She pressed her ear to the guest room door. “Lily?” 

The knob turned silently under her hand, and her skirts swished as she closed the door behind her. A deadly hush had descended over the room. Not a log crackled in the hearth, not a whisper of movement came from underneath the covers of the bed.

The woman’s cheek felt starkly cold against Doralyn’s fingertips. “Oh, my dear,” she said. Lily had breath in her yet, but she lay still and quiet as a corpse.

Doralyn added a log to the fireplace and stirred the embers to life. When the flames had taken the edge off the chill in the room, she reached for the vial in her skirt pocket. 

A swift fear arose that she should have consulted Fidelia about the preparation of the extract. Perhaps she’d gotten the distillation wrong, or the balance of other ingredients alongside the stormflower. 

Her hand shook, one shining droplet poised above Lily’s mouth. 

Doralyn needled past the chorus of misgivings, pinched the woman’s chin, and placed another drop below her tongue. 

“There is life beyond magic,” she whispered, then pressed Lily’s mouth closed with her hand. 

She drifted off in the rocking chair shortly after, her thoughts awhirl with the words that had seemed to come, unbidden, from somewhere outside herself.

The next morning, Doralyn awoke, groggy. Her sister’s firm, bony grasp on her shoulders was urgent, her pleas insistent. 

“Doralyn, wake up!”

The room shivered with sunlight. A freshness filled the air, the heady scent of crushed petals after a rainfall. 

Doralyn stared straight ahead and gripped the arms of the rocking chair. The bed was empty, the sheets mussed, the covers tossed aside. “Where’s Lily?” 

Her panicked eyes met her sister’s. Fidelia stared at her, smiling, her face aglow. “She’s right here. Just look at her.”

Doralyn turned to the window seat, to the figure leaning cross-legged against the cushions, her dark hair spilling past her shoulders in ebony curls. From the tips of her fingers, delicate white flowers sprouted and untwined in long, spiraling vines. 

A ghost of a smile played across the woman’s lips as she unwound a garland of them, paused to break it off, then began another. On the seat next to her, multiple chains lay heaped in a pile.

“She wants us to continue calling her Lily,” Fidelia said. “I’m surprised her chatter didn’t wake you earlier.” 

At this, Lily arched an eyebrow. “I do not chatter.” A gentle accent softened her t’s. She grinned, a fetching thing with a slight dimple. The violet eyes sparkled. 

“She says she dreamed about flowers, fields full of them,” Fidelia said. She tilted her head, studying Doralyn like one of her texts. “Lily, tell Dora what you told me,” Fidelia’s gaze was still pinned on her sister.

“I-I was in the worst kind of agony,” Lily faltered, her expression pained. “The queen’s desire was insatiable. I was capable of envisioning the kind of decadence she longed to decorate the palace with, but she mistook my ability for power. She wanted to create an image for herself and drained my magic instead.”

A profound wistfulness overtook her. “There must be meaning behind a fleuriste’s work. The beauty of what I create is meant to be felt, not simply admired on the surface.

“After I burned out, I wandered in darkness for a long time. I do not know how I arrived on your doorstep. I only know what I saw, and continued to fight my way toward, inside the darkness. It was the promise of flowers, at first merely the scent of them. A faint whiff, followed by the feel of them against my fingertips, my skin, even my face.” 

The fleuriste touched her eyelids. “I followed the sensation of the flowers until the moment they became real in my dream. When the darkness faded away, I was surrounded by them. An entire valley of them, white flowers such as I have never seen before. I can only describe them as ethereal, though to look at them, they were the simplest creation. Four white petals with a golden crown in the middle.”

“A stormflower,” Fidelia said, “is believed to exist only in legend. Is that not so, Doralyn?” 

Doralyn eased her tired bones out of the rocking chair. “So are sleeping beauties,” she said, stretching the curve of her back, “yet ours has awoken. It is good to see you looking so bright, my dear.”

With a clever smile directed at Fidelia, Doralyn said, “I apologize for the mess in your workshop.” 

Behind the spectacles, her sister’s eyes sparked. A flash of recognition, followed by a respectful nod of her head. Fidelia would pester her for details later: the exact ingredients of the formulation she had concocted, in what quantity and order she had combined them, the boiling point of the extraction, even down to the specific implements she had used.

…Where she had procured the stormflower…!

Doralyn wasn’t sure she would remember any of it, or if her garden would ever repeat the miracle of the night prior. She’d worked by instinct and intuition, the burning desire to help Lily the solitary fuel firing her inspiration. 

Lily had finished another garland. She gracefully dropped it onto the pile with the others, then plucked up the entire lot in her arms and slid off the window seat.

When she flung them in the air, they remained suspended, the petals fluttering above their heads like miniature butterflies’ wings. 

If, amid her happy laughter, the tears flowing down the fleuriste’s cheeks could have been bottled, they would have been the most delightful shades of saffron joy and lilac relief Doralyn could have imagined.

For that brief moment, Doralyn would have been the first to admit: the magic didn’t matter, but the healing did.

photo by inspiredimages (via pexels)