Wireless

It wasn't real, none of it. It had felt real. The ladles of reheated stew scalded their tongues, the steam carried the hearty smell right up their noses. (Can you eat in dreams? Can you smell things? Are you sure?)

The water hadn't been warmed, and the washcloth was as harsh as their mother's expression. The way her frown deepened when they asked about Wild Edric, her hissing "Shhh!" It was all too specific. It had to be real.

The pyjamas were clean, the milk warm. It tasted a bit funny, but their parents wouldn't throw it out until it had actual lumps in it, so they asked for more honey, and gulped it down with hardly a grimace.

It should have been real.

Sinking into the pillows was when they realised that they hadn't truly left the hillside at all. It had followed them somehow, got under their skin, or inside their heads.

It was like waking with a start to the unsettling twilight, tangled in that wretched fog like bedsheets. Plunged back into the confusion, the chill, the odd sounds coming from all sides. Men yelling, metal clanging, hooves clattering. Threading around it all, the weeping of a woman...

And the worst? When it all went terribly quiet, the chest tightened, and they knew he was close by. At any moment they'd catch sight of him. Or, just as frightening, not see him at all, but know just as surely that he's there somewhere. Certain of it, but not knowing when, or where, he might appear.

Joanie was sprawled on the path again, rocks digging into her back and stabbing pains in her ankle. Her own scream echoed in her ears.

No! No this is not real, we made it home! I know we did! I remember it!

"Ned! Ned!"

There was no answer.

Any moment now, Ned would burst through the fog, he'd be standing right in front of her, larger than life and twice as vital. Carrying a big stickand asking her if she was alright...

But no, the moment for that had passed already, hadn't it?

The fog shifted, rearranged itself around the suggestion of a man... Tall. Cloaked.

No! Joanie screamed again, scrunching her eyes tight and opening them again. When that didn't work, she pinched and clawed at the skin on her arms. This, surely, should wake her from this nightmare... but it didn't. The fog coiled around her, sticky, tar-like and clinging, keeping her here...

It had Ned in its clutches as well. He could hear his sister's scream, but he couldn't move to go to her, to help her. Was it fear that kept him rooted to the spot? Was he a coward, then?

He looked down, and his feet were stones, half-sunk into the ground, and impossible to shift. He stared in horror. Not real, he told himself, Can't be real...

The air was chilly against his skin, and the moment he noticed it, he felt it prickling. He screamed, too.

*

Both stayed swamped in nightmares, like flies caught in spiderwebs.

"What's wrong with them?" Their father looked gaunt, as if he hadn't slept himself for a week.

"I don't know," their mother said.

"Maybe we should call for a doctor?"

"There's no fever. No sickness. I think they're just frightened half out of their wits." Their mother looked down at them, watching every grimace and every squirm. Had she put too many drops in their milk? Or had whatever happened up there on the hillside somehow left a mark on their minds?

There was a bulging pause. It tasted of accusation.

"I didn't tell them any stories about Wild Edric," she said, defensive and snappish.

"Then you think they really did see him?"

"Well... no... of course not. It's only a story. How can they have seen him? But they do say he rides when-"

"I know what they say!" It was his turn to snap. "It's nonsense."

"Well, the country is-"

He stalked away, back to bed.

*

The morning stretched long before either child finally stirred.

Pale and exhausted, Ned emerged, still in his pyjamas, hair uncombed. Joanie shuffled down the stairs on her bottom, and hopped to the table.

Another day, her father might have carried her, to save her sore foot. He'd have lifted her onto his shoulders and said, "Mind your head," when they came down the stairs. He'd have called her "my little chicken".

Not today. Lately his face was too stern, and this morning he was busy.

While their mother slid toast and jam onto their plates, he tweaked the dials on the wireless, trying to get a clear signal.

"Eat up you two, you look ever so peaky." Their mother stirred some porridge, and set an apple next to each breakfast plate. "I've boiled some eggs, she said, "And there's tea in the pot. Or you can have milk."

"No milk," Ned and Joanie said together "Um...thank you," added Ned with a glance across the room. Their father had a pipe clamped between his teeth and seemed not to have noticed the lapse in manners.

The children ate mechanically, drooping over their toast and yawning through their porridge.

The parents shot bitten looks at each other. Half of them bounced harmlessly off the back of that blue-striped shirt.

The crackling from the radio coalesced into a clear voice at last, right as the mother was rinsing dish soap from the plates.

"Stop your clattering!"

...

"...that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

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