The Cure for Dreaming(4)

Heat tingled down my thumbs and spread across my hands.

“And then it will move into your wrists and slowly, slowly up your arms.”

The warmth glided through my blood, past my elbows, and up to my shoulders in a strange, pacifying wave. Henri’s blue eyes continued to hold my full attention.

“You may feel your arms grow numb, and that is perfectly fine,” he said, and my arms indeed felt strange and heavy. “The heat and numbness will make you tired. Very tired.” He inhaled a deep breath that inspired me to do the same. My lungs expanded with air that soothed me down to my bones.

“As the warmth pours down through your torso like heated milk,” he continued, “and travels slowly, gently across your hips and to your legs, you are going to find yourself so relaxed, you cannot keep your eyes open.”

My eyelids fluttered.

“Close your eyes.”

They fell shut.

“Keep them closed. Fall into a deep, deep sleep.”

My hands, weighing several tons, dropped away from his fingers, and my chin slumped to my chest. I sank deep inside the darkness in a languid, dreamlike fall. Nothing hurt or troubled me any longer.

I felt divine.

“As I pass my hands over you,” said Henri, “you will travel farther into this wonderful stage of sleep and be unable to open your eyes. Keep going downward, downward, and hear only my voice. Turn off all your other senses. You will only hear, taste, feel, smell, and see if I tell you to do so. For now, just focus on my voice and the magnetic force of my hands passing over your body. Sleep. Sleep. Keep going farther into sleep.”

Downward I kept sinking. Downward, downward, downward. Gentle nips of heat sizzled across my skin, all the way to my toes, and my body melded into the chair until I became a part of the batting and the nails and the wood.

I continued to hear Henri’s voice, directed to the audience. The word test came up, and cymbals, and Remarkable, isn’t it? But nothing else mattered until he told me, “Stand up, Miss Mead.”

I did as he asked. My eyes remained closed, and my body may as well have been made of stone, but somehow I was able to get to my feet.

“I am going to press my hand against you, and my touch will cause every muscle inside your body to go rigid.”

His fingers cupped the back of my head, and a hardening sensation spilled down to my feet, as if he had unscrewed the top of my skull and poured a fast-drying plaster inside me.

“Rigid!” he called near my ear. “You are an iron bar that cannot bend. Every part of you is stiff. Nothing can cause you to falter. You are as solid as a board.”

He spoke again to the audience, calling up “strong male volunteers.” Firm hands lifted me into the air, beneath my shoulders and legs. I rose up high, my arms glued to my sides, and settled across two bars, one behind my neck and the other below my ankles.

Henri’s voice whispered inside my mind. “Lift yourself out of your body, Miss Mead. Float up to the top of the stage, and I will return you safely after you have had some time to enjoy yourself. You can hear Genevieve’s organ music again . . .”

The organ filled my ears with a rich and dreamlike melody.

“Open your eyes.”

I did.

“See the shine of the lights. Let their radiance beckon you to them. Allow Genevieve’s music to carry you away. Do not fight it, lovely girl. Just go.”

I rose out of my petrified bones.

“Yes . . . go.”

I drifted upward—a weightless feather immune to the burden of gravity, lured by the pull of the vast ceiling above with its rows of metal catwalks and blinding lights that breathed wispy plumes of smoke. Genevieve’s music carried me up to the bulbs and allowed me to lie in a foggy bath of golden rays without a worry or a pain. Henri disappeared. Memories of gaseous eggs on my chest disappeared. Fears of what Father would say about the courthouse rally slipped away. I was nothing but a feather.

I floated for hours . . . or so it seemed.

I could have drifted much longer if Henri’s voice didn’t call up to me. “Miss Mead,” he said. “Are you ready to come back now?”

I tried to hold myself up there in that luxurious land of electricity.

“I need to bring you back so someone else may have a turn. You have done beautifully, but it is time to wake up.”

“No,” I said, but I felt myself deflating. A withering hot-air balloon with the gas turned low.

“I am going to sweep my hands upward, starting at your feet, and count from one to ten.”

“No.”

“Yes, Miss Mead . . . and by the time I reach ten, you will feel wide awake and rested.” His presence burned at my feet. “One, two—you feel the magnetic force between us fading—”

I sank back to the ground, closer to the stage.

“Do not fight it. Three, four—you are slowly stirring back to life. Five—your senses are returning to your body. You can feel the heat from the stage lights again . . .”

My hair warmed, and my mind was able to recognize the music playing: “Evening Prayer” from the opera Hansel and Gretel. The sheet music was part of my collection back home.

“Six, seven—do not fight it, Miss Mead, please do not fight it. Eight—very good, you are almost there—nine . . .” He placed his hot hand against my forehead. “Ten. Awake.”