Daughter of Time 1: Reader Read Free

could walk, I was playing with the animals, rolling in hay, and happier out in the air with the earth under my feet than anywhere else. How cruel is the irony when I think back on what has happened to me. What I would give now to see the sky again, to feel the earth underneath, or to run through my hands the fresh soil after it was plowed. To even know it was still there, that it existed somewhere —that would be enough, more than I would ask for after this terrible journey.
    But normal, no, I guess I can’t say I was ever really normal. Normal means seeing things and reacting to things like most people. Looking like most people. Being treated like most people. One after the other, I lost all these things.
    First to go was seeing things like most people. Even early on, I think my mother knew something was different about me. When I got old enough to notice such things, it seemed that she was always looking at me like someone would an artifact from another world. She loved me, but she sensed there was something other about me that even a mother’s love couldn’t get beyond. Maybe it was her own sixth sense. But somehow, she knew .
    In a way, that was good, because I never had to worry about surprising her or letting her down. I don’t think my dad ever really knew, not even when they came to “cure” me. Which was good in its way, since his love never had to get through any walls and always reached me.
    But the first time I realized I was a freak was when my dog died.
    When I was eight years old, I was already experiencing many wild and strange dreams. After I described a few to friends and my parents, I learned by their reactions that some of my dreams disturbed them and were best left inside my own head. Crucified unicorns, roaches crawling out of my eyes, light beams causing holes to sprout and blood to pour from my arms—that kind of thing. But I had learned by then the difference between reality and dream. Or so I thought.
    One night I dreamed that our sheepdog Matt died. Matt had been with us from a few years before I was born. In the dream, he was running around in a thunderstorm, barking like he does at the deep subsonic roll that drives some dogs crazy, and in a flash of lightning, he seized up, just fell over, dead. In the dream, I could see inside him, saw the clot in his heart, watched the life like some light dim in his mind. I woke up shaking and afraid, but I didn’t tell anyone. Another dream to keep to myself. One I could slowly forget.
    Three weeks later, a storm front rolled in from the west. When relatives would visit from other parts of the country, my dad would always talk about the weather and make his flat joke (as my mom called it): “Well, it’s really flat out here this time of year.” Nebraska is really flat, and you can see the storms coming for hours in the daylight, an express train made out of dark, gray mountains pushing like a tidal wave across the planes. I started shaking again, not because I am afraid of storms, but because I was afraid of this storm. Because I had seen it before.
    Then the sun darkened, and the rain poured down on us like syrup, and I watched like I might a horror film on TV the replay of my dog barking and running and falling over dead in the grass. This time I couldn’t see through him. But I knew. I knew what was inside.
    And I knew I was a freak.
    It’s hard to be normal when you don’t see things like other people. In my case, I saw things that no one else could see. Visions in Time. Not intuitions, not a vague sense of doom or excitement – visions . They began in dreams but soon came even in the waking day. Not only visions of the future – for a Reader, it’s actually a lot easier to see into the past. Visions of what was and sometimes, what was to be, came more and more frequently, disturbing my days and my nights, pushing me further and further from people, walling me off from the normal world. Believe me, when you have seen your own birth,