Читать книгу A Pocketful of Stars - Aisha Bushby - Страница 10

I whip my head up. I had been sitting next to Mum’s hospital bed, my head resting just next to her right arm.

‘Sorry to wake you,’ the nurse, Amanda, adds. I try to make sense of my surroundings again. ‘I’ll give you five minutes,’ she says, before retreating behind the curtain.

What a strange dream, I think as I try to reorient myself. It felt so real – like a hallucination, or something. Every time I blink it feels like I’m still in it, like my body and mind has been split into two. It was warm there, and I feel hot in my coat, even though it’s freezing outside.

From the corner of my eye I see silver branches crawling up the wall and along the floor, reaching for me. I look down and see sand. But then I blink and I see the branches are only wires from Mum’s monitor, and the sand is the shine from the fluorescent lighting.

I try to shake off my sense of panic, but it feels as if there are party poppers going off in my chest. I check my phone. It’s been twenty minutes since Elle texted me. How did so much happen in that time?

A violent shiver passes through me as I make to leave, and suddenly I can feel the midwinter chill again. It’s like I’ve been dunked in ice-cold water. It slams against my chest and for a second I can’t breathe.

I lean against the curtain rail next to Mum’s bed. My limbs feel tingly, like they’re not quite attached to me, and my head is swirling with the dream.

Eventually, after I say goodbye to Mum, I make my way back to the reception desk, where I find Dad, and notice again the room with the old man in it. It feels like a lifetime since I first saw him. A young woman and two children surround him now. He’s chatting and smiling with her while they play with the settings on his bed. He has a pile of books on his bedside and a tartan blanket by his feet. They make the room look alive.

I’ll bring some of Mum’s things next time, I think.

When we get home I still feel a little strange. I wave my hand in front of my face and I swear it blurs, just like in the dream. It makes me wonder if I’m still asleep. I blink once, then twice, and hope that everything becomes normal again. But nothing’s normal any more, is it?

I want so much to go back to last week, before everything went wrong. We’re going to see Mum again tomorrow after school, but what am I supposed to do until then?

My feet tread the familiar path up to my room, and I automatically jump on to my computer, without really meaning to. But as soon as my headphones are on, it feels like the rest of the world disappears.

I click on the button, which resembles an old scroll, and wait for the screen to load.

My bedroom walls pull apart brick by brick, and in their place sprouts an ancient fairy palace; my bed folds up into a giant nest; and, instead of street lamps and terraced houses, my windows show me a dense forest as tall as the eye can see. And, all at once, I feel calm.

The world of Fairy Hunters unfolds around me. I’ve been playing it since I was ten, and I’m getting pretty good at it now. It’s an online game where you’re put into teams to battle it out – fairies against wizards. I always choose Team Fairy. The aim of the game is to protect our nest of eggs from the wizards, who try to steal them to make potions.

There are four kinds of fairy on each team – earth, fire, water and wind. Earth fairies are the protectors; they go in first as they have the best defensive spells to protect their team. Then come the fire fairies – the close-range spellcasters. They need to cast quickly and attack the wizards before they have the chance to defend themselves. Next are the water fairies, the long-range spellcasters. Their job is to cast spells that take more time to conjure but are more powerful. They usually hang back. Then there are the wind fairies. I’m one of them. Our job is to help the rest of the team. Most people don’t like playing as wind fairies, because they think we’re useless.

We’re not. A lot of the time we’re the difference between winning and losing the game.

As I walk through the map and see the ruined palace in the distance – ivy growing all over it, walls cracked – I can’t help but remember the house from my dream with the silver branches. The park, too, looks similar. Except, instead of palm trees, in Fairy Hunters, the trees are oak; and, instead of a corner shop, there’s the Wicked Woodlands where the wizards live.

Almost an hour later I’m just about to be crowned most valuable player when Dad’s voice floats up from the living room beneath me. ‘Safiya!’ he calls, piercing the bubble that my headphones have formed. ‘Dinner!’

And, just like that, the spell is broken.