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Soft, white snowflakes fluttered down from an equally white sky and alighted upon the grass outside for a moment before they melted away. At the same time, white, glowing balls of light rose from the earth, flaring to soft oranges or blues before they were whisked away into the snowfall overhead.
Mai watched the spirits rise and the snow fall. She was at the center of a glade in a wood, and she felt like she should know where she was, but the knowledge escaped her. The snowfall seemed like it should be cold, but Mai felt warm inside, like the elements couldn’t affect her in this place.
I’m dreaming, Mai realized.
As if waiting for Mai to come to that revelation, one of the spirits rising from the earth paused in its path and swirled around her. Mai turned to watch it, spinning around and around, until the spirit spiraled up into the sky with the others.
It felt familiar.
It felt like that spirit had been trying to tell Mai something.
Mai had no clue what any of it meant.
Mai yawned and reached for another monitor cable to attach to the communications center. The office building had experienced a fuse blowing and a brief power outage (which Lin assured her was just the electric system and nothing “interesting” – Lin’s word – whatsoever). As a result, however, all the equipment needed to be checked to make sure it wasn’t damaged. Lin was locked in his office as usual, and Naru was out, so… Well, actually, the task would have fallen to Mai, no matter what.
The monitor checked out, so Mai unplugged it, yawned, and proceeded to the next one.
She’d been tired a lot of late, even in class before she came in to work. The dreams were preoccupying her more and more.
She’d mentioned them to Naru one day when he’d seemed more approachable than usual. He’d snorted, said there were no interesting cases, and not sensed anything unusual himself.
So, in the end, Mai was forced to conclude that the dreams were just her vivid imagination or a side-effect of one-two-many strange experiences working with the SPR.
Mai shook her head awake, plugged in the next monitor, and watched the screen flicker to life. The static zigzagged across the screen, random, yet with a seemingly indecipherable pattern to it, as well. It was mesmerizing, and Mai was very tired, and…
“Mai, Mai, Mai…”
Mai blinked open her eyes to find herself in the field with the snow and the spirits once more. I’m dreaming, she realized this time almost immediately. What happens next?
One spirit broke out from the rest as before, but this time it came to a halt before her, pulsing slowly just within arm’s reach.
Mai slowly extended her hand until her fingers were illuminated by the phosphorescent glow. It was warm, and Mai suddenly realized that the warmth in this field – despite the snow – was coming from the departed souls that swirled within the snow’s eddies.
They were beautiful, but Mai still didn’t know what to do. She looked around for guidance but, for the first time in one of her supernatural dreams, found herself without Gene.
“Mai, Mai…” the voice whispered like the wind in her ear. “Mai, this place is for you alone…”
The soul before her glowed brighter, brighter, hotter, and—
“Mai!”
Mai started awake with a jolt to find Naru looking as close to concerned as he ever got.
“Sorry,” Mai blushed, “I didn’t mean to take a nap on the job. I just haven’t been sleeping we—”
“Maybe we’d better run some tests,” Naru said, cutting her off, and vanished into Lin’s office.
“All…right?” Mai said, perplexed, and then yawned again for good measure.
By the time Mai finally went home that evening, every machine in the SPR, plus all of Naru and Lin’s abilities, couldn’t determine that anything supernatural was happening to Mai at all.
“Sometimes dreams are just a product of the subconscious,” Lin said and locked himself back in his office.
Naru looked less convinced, but Mai insisted she was all right. That was a bit of a lie, because Mai was starting to feel quite exhausted from her dreams. But whatever was happening to her, something told her that this wasn’t for Naru to investigate. This was private, personal – secret – and it was up to her to solve this mystery.
Mai, this place is for you alone, Mai’s dream echoed.
As a result, Mai was both excited and wary when she went to bed that night. So much so that she tossed and turned for half the night, trying both to fall asleep and not to. In the end, she wasn’t even aware that she’d nodded off until she felt the cold, wet drops of snowflakes on her cheeks. It seemed that, with every iteration, the dream became more real, as if she were stepping deeper and deeper into this other world.
“Mai…” whispered the spirits.
Or perhaps it was just the one spirit before her.
“Who are you?” Mai asked. “What do you want?”
“Mai, this place is for you…” the voice echoed. “Remember, Mai, remember…”
“I know this place,” Mai said. “I’ve been here before.”
“Remember…”
“But I can’t remember!” Mai sighed in frustration. “How do I know you?”
“Mai, Mai, Mai… I am part of you…”
“What does that mean?” Mai demanded.
The wind of spirits swelled like a revelation was at hand.
Which, of course, was exactly when Mai’s alarm had to go off, waking her up.
Mai slept through math that day, which wasn’t unheard of, but after school she was tired enough that she called Naru and begged off work. He sounded mildly concerned – or rather not mildly disdainful, which for Naru was the epitome of concern.
Instead, Mai went home early with the conviction that today, no matter what, she was going to get this matter sorted. Her life was too busy for her to keep going on like this.
Mai spent a few minutes setting up: closing blinds, lighting incense, and brewing an herbal tea that Masako had recommended to Mai as helpful for conducting mediumistic visions. Mai then sat in the center of her futon, sipped slowly at her tea, and watched the swirls of smoke as they rose from the incense.
She didn’t know if she fell asleep or whether she was just in a deep trance, but something irritated her eye, and she blinked it away to realize that it was melting water – a drop formed by a snowflake landing on her lashes.
She blinked away another and another, and her room faded around her to be replaced by the field of silent snow.
“Mai…” the voice caressed her. “My Mai…”
“I know you,” Mai said. “You are a part of me.”
“Yes…” the voice agreed. “My Mai…”
The soul before Mai hummed.
“You’re dead,” Mai concluded and cupped her hands to cradle the pulsing soul before her. “This is you.”
“Yes…”
“And you want me to remember. I’m supposed to remember something important that happened here, when I was in this place before.”
“Mai, Mai, Mai…”
Mai thought long and hard. She hadn’t been to places like this very often in her life. Most of those occasions had certainly been while she was a child.
“I was very young,” she suggested slowly, “and it was snowing.”
“Yes…” the voice agreed.
And then, slowly, something caught in Mai’s memory. An image of a small house in the countryside, an old worn teapot in graceful hands, and outside the snow was just starting to fall…
“My grandmother’s house,” Mai said in realization.
“Yes, yes, yes!” the voice sounded agitated now.
It had been Mai’s mother’s mother’s house, and they had come to visit when Mai was very young and Mai’s grandmother had just died. Mai’s mother had been pouring tea from an old pot with a sad smile on her face, and Mai had tried to cheer her up by saying…
“It’s snowing,” Mai said now.
“Spirits rise with the falling snow,” the voice whispered around her. That was what Mai’s mother had said then, as well.
“Spirits were rising,” Mai concluded, “back then. They were rising, but I couldn’t see them.”
“Yes, my Mai…”
It made some sense. With Mai’s grandmother’s death, souls would have been drawn – stirring and awakening to join Mai’s grandmother in the trip to the beyond. And then Mai realized something much more significant:
“She saw them. My mother saw them.”
“Yes…”
The familiarity hummed around Mai then, and something struck a chord within her.
“You saw them,” she addressed the spirit before her.
“Yes, my Mai…” Mai’s mother agreed.
Memories trickled back slowly then, of that day long ago forgotten, of words whispered by a mother to her young daughter in the secrecy of that snow.
Mai’s mother had extended her hand, and Mai had taken it and followed her mother out into the snow. “The spirits can warm you or chill you,” Mai’s mother said. “It all depends on how well you are in tune with them.”
Mai hadn’t been cold at the time, but she hadn’t understood, either.
“My mother once saw them, too,” Mai’s mother said. “Long ago. But the time when she needed to passed, as my time one day will pass as well…”
As a child, Mai had just laughed and held out her hands to catch the snowflakes on her fingertips.
“When you can see them at last,” Mai’s mother had said, “they will guide you along your path. They will protect you.”
Mai hadn’t understood a word, then. Now, however, the words held potent meaning.
“My dreams,” Mai said aloud. “I inherited them from you. That’s how you’re still a part of me. That’s why they always warn me and keep me safe.”
The soul light before Mai flickered.
“You wanted me to remember this now – now that I could understand,” Mai realized. “I…”
The soul flickered brighter, brighter, hotter, until it encompassed Mai entirely in a white halo, and then – suddenly – blackness.
Mai blinked slowly and saw the last wisp of smoke from the incense stick fade out. She was still sitting on her futon, hands clasped around her teacup, as if nothing at all transpired.
“Did that happen?” her voice resounded shockingly loudly in the dark. “Or was it all just a dream?”
There was nothing to answer her but the darkness.
“Did you finally get some sleep last night?” Naru asked the next day when Mai brought him his coffee.
“Yes, thank you,” Mai agreed.
Naru gave her a curious look. “Was it something, or just a dream?”
Mai shrugged. “I doesn’t matter,” she finally concluded with a wistful smile.