All tagged Madelyn
Master Mind takes two steps forward, grabs Joy around the torso, and steps back.
“Hey!” Joy says.
Amahle’s spooky music rises.
“Guys, guys, there’s no need for panic,” Justin raises his hands. “This mummy is not going to move!”
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Colin, Madelyn, and Yumio enter our living room first. Then Justin does. Then Charlie and Joy, holding hands. Joy and Justin are the only ones who don’t seem afraid. Justin, perhaps, because it is his mummy. And I’m not sure why Joy isn’t more cautious. But at least she’s protected by five Dreamers who will leap to her aid if one Dreamer goes crazy.
Master Mind follows next. Suzy peeks through.
“Oh, my,” Suzy says. “There is a mummy in our living room!”
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It’s a busy morning on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge. We have all our dreamers here at once when Justin arrives: Amahle, Madelyn, Yumio, Charlie, Colin, and now Justin has joined.
Joy, Charlie, Madelyn and Yumio have been playing Catch in the Clouds, all wearing Yumio’s mechas. Colin has been drinking tea with Suzy and me on the deck while waiting for Justin.
When Justin appears, everyone gathers and tells him the plan.
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We wait for the Dreamers.
Madelyn appears first on Bonny Revenge’s deck. She says she heard nothing and knows nothing about the broken mirror.
Yumio comes next, flying in from her dream inside the body of one of her flying mecha robots that Joy had made permanent for her.
Yumio says she knows nothing.
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“Madelyn, please get rid of the babies,” Justin implores her. I’ve counted fifteen babies on the limo seats and floor. Suzy is holding two of them, Madelyn another one, I took another one, but it’s not helping. And the babies are beginning to cry.
“Get rid of the traffic jam, Justin,” she tells him. “We have to get to Bordeaux, not Paris!”
“The babies, Madelyn!”
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As Madelyn descends with her super wheelchair towards the convertible limo, Justin suddenly returns to normal size.
He cups his face in his hands. “This is so embarrassing,” he says.
“Dad, why’d you turn into a baby?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says quickly.
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Can you create Glen Beach?” Madelyn asks Amahle.
Amahle exhales, and suddenly beyond Suzy’s and mine small island, Justin’s ocean is covered with a beach bustling with people. Suzy gasps. The sand is a different color, the beach umbrellas are colorful, too, and there are so many people here, families, friends, people who came on their own.
How could Amahle create such detail and such colors when she’s been blind from birth?!
“It is… magnifique,” Madelyn says. “I adore this place! And there is no need for suntan lotion!”
Amahle laughs. In a second, her clothes are replaced by a one-piece bathing suit with a kind of - I don’t know the name for it - the kind that has a kind of a skirt around it at the bottom.
“What is this?” Madelyn asks.
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“Stop,” Madelyn tells Amahle. “Stop with the music! Stop with the panic! Stop!”
Amahle looks desperate and the distant drumming doesn’t stop. “It is how I feel. I can’t help it.”
“I do not care how you feel,” Madelyn tells her. “I only care about you.”
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As usual, Amahle and Elvis appear on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge while Joy is still asleep.
“Amahle,” I call her from the porch, where Suzy and I are sitting. “Let me help you down.”
“I am perfectly fine, Walter.” She uses Elvis and her blind stick to lead her down the ramp which she already knows so well.
As she’s halfway through, Madelyn appears behind her on her wheelchair.
Amahle stops and listens. After a second, she says, “Hello, Madelyn. Comment ça va?”
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I can see Justin waiting for the exact right second.
It’s been a day for those in the waking world since the kids rode the flying elephants and since Justin decided it was time Joy somehow meet girls her age.
Madelyn appeared first. She rolled down the ramp to the shore of the small island of our small suburban home. After a few nice hellos, we helped her off the wheelchair. On her two arms she went into the sea and began swimming.
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Charlie has been on the flying elephant for a good fifteen minutes now. The elephant is flying right above the deck, just the way it was before Charlie fell and woke up.
Madelyn leaves for another corner of Justin’s dream to have her own dream. She takes Amahle with her, to leave at another corner of Justin’s universe and have her own dream.
“You can do it! You can do it!” Joy cheers him on from below.
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It turns out it’s not that easy to get off flying elephants.
Justin returns, all smiles, just as Joy and Charley want to get back to Bonny’s Revenge, but the elephants’ wings prevent them from getting too close to the deck of Bonny’s Revenge while we’re all flying among the clouds.
No one’s really worried. Justin or Charley could just summon something up. Amahle and Madelyn, who have joined our dream in the meantime, could do the same. And Joy has the jetpack in case all Dreamers disappear. But the kids want to find a way to jump off.
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Charlie and Joy are still riding the flying elephants. Following from behind on Bonny’s Revenge, Justin is lost in thought, and Suzy’s and my attention turn to him completely. Master Mind, next to us, watches over the kids.
“Um…How do I do that exactly?” Justin says.
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“I am practicing for the Paralympics today,” Madelyn tells us. She just appeared on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge and came down to our small home on the island, where Joy is sitting with Charlie and Justin and eating breakfast. “Do you want to come? Justin? Zhoy? Charlie? Suzy? Walt?”
Madelyn is going to participate in the Beijing 2008 Paralympics with her team, and she’s been practicing every day.
“I would like to see that,” I raise my hand.
“I want to–” Joy says with her mouth full, then clams up, looking guilty of something.
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Master Mind has brought Amahle from her dream back to Justin’s dream, where we’re all waiting for her.
Back on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge, Elvis, her seeing eye dog reappears. Along with the cane in her right hand, which she moves to her left.
We wait for her to explain what the danger was that she sensed around us before she disappeared and woke up.
“I do not know what it was,” Amahle says. “I have never felt anything like it. It felt like someone was hitting me in the head.”
“What?” Joy is concerned. After all, nothing had been close to any of our heads.
“It was a pounding,” Amahle continues. “From inside my head. Like something was pushing me to the ground.”
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There is a deep sense of strangeness when Amahle disappears. Johannesburg disappears. The sunset disappears. And the full light of the two suns return. The half-darkness, was caused by Amahle. Now that I think about it, its creation was also aided by Joy holding Amahle’s hand.
And then there’s silence. Strange, awkward silence.
“What the hell happened?” Colin asks.
Joy is looking at her own hands.
“Joy,” Justin moves closer to her. “Do you know what happened? Do you know what she was talking about?”
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Amahle puts her right hand to her temple. “I will try.”
The last sunset disappears and all around us, on top of the permanent ocean, the streets of Johannesburg appear.
“Can you see it, Joy?”
We all look around. “We see Johannesburg, Amahle,” Madelyn says. “But there is no sun.”
Joy reaches out to hold Amahle’s left hand, but Amahle raises it to her temple as well. “Sun,” she says. “Sun.”
And a sun appears right above the horizon. An orange sun about to set. Unlike all other sunrises, this time the sun’s light does not influence the sky. The blue sky doesn’t change color. Just there, at the bottom, there is powerful, setting orange sun.
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“Joy, do you want to see a sunset from Japan?” Yumio says.
“Yuh-huh.”
Everything around us changes. In front of us is a river. Far ahead is a mountain, and the sun is setting behind it, its orange colors spreading across not only the sky but the mountain and the river.
Joy stares at it with eyes agape. Suzy gasps. Madelyn takes in a deep breath.
“Fantastic!” Colin said. “Where are we?”
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“Why are we here, Madelyn?” Justin says.
She had asked to take us to the middle of the ocean.
“I think it is time to show little Zhoy the things she cannot see in this world.”
“Like what?” Joy says.
“Zhoy, in this world you can see anything. But one thing you have never seen, I believe, is a sunset.”
“What’s a sunset?”
“In the…uhm…waking world,” Madelyn says. “The sun rises on one side, goes up, and goes down on the other side.”
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After all the congratulations and the happiness at Amahle’s news, Madelyn wakes up and disappears. Immediately afterwards, Amahle disappears.
Justin puts his hand around Joy’s shoulders, “How was the Girls’ Night, Joy?” he asks with a smile.
“It was fun! Amahle let me taste a little bit of something called ‘Liquer’.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Just a little bit!”
“How was it?”
“I spit it out!”
Justin laughs.
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