Three

I woke up to a soft voice murmuring my name. I’m not dead! I realized. It was a dream! “Cass? Cassie? Cass? Cassie?” Sadie? But that voice wasn’t hers. Mom? Something was wrong. And then I realized: it wasn’t one soft voice but a myriad of murmuring voices. “Cass? Cassie?” My name sounded strange, as if a foreign tongue spoke it.
Then—feather-light fingers fluttered across my cheeks, my forehead and lips. I struggled to open my eyes and heard a delighted chorus of voices “She wakes, she wakes!”
Immediately the voices and their owners scattered, their shapes, blurred in my groggy vision, scurrying frantically in many directions. By the time I’d had time to blink, half a dozen hands were thrust into my face, each bearing what I thought must be food. “Eat, eat! Try!” The voices insisted, but my eyes couldn’t concentrate on anything. My head wobbled as I tried to focus on the bits of food. Everything was moving constantly, soft hands pushed the food toward me then hesitantly drew it away. “Yes, no, yes? Try? Like it?”
“Wait,” I protested, my voice barely a whisper of a cough. “Hang on.” I brought my hand up to rub my eyes and the wavering offerings withdrew. Again the voices scattered all over the room “Not now! Tired! Can’t see? Tired, not hungry. Not hungry!” All the voices were arguing with one another, even though they all seemed to be in agreement. I sat up a little, and suddenly I felt an ache throughout my entire body. It felt like I had been hit with a giant wrecking ball, like I had run full-speed into a wall, or…the ground. I groaned. It was real. It was all real.
At my pained sound, the voices started up again, “Oh! Oh, Cass, Cassie. Oh, oh, oh.” They fluttered back and hovered around me, reaching out and pulling back as if afraid to touch me. I could see them now, but what I saw was unreal. My eyes grew wide and I gasped. They pulled back in a circle around me and hid their faces with long, skeletal fingers. “So ugly, so ugly. Unsightly.” They apologized. “Turn away.”
I couldn’t understand why they hid. They were so beautiful: slender, willowy women, or at least something like women. They were taller than any woman I had ever seen, their bodies stretched far up above me; the arms covering their faces were long and graceful. Their hair hung down in silvery sheets that at once seemed like a glimmering rainbow and a slippery shadow. But it was their skin that had shocked me the most, the way it shimmered. At first I thought it was pale green, but the next moment it seemed a light lavender, then a silvery blue. The colors in their hair and skin shifted so delicately I hardly noticed the change. They wore simple shifts, the color of dry straw, but I couldn’t imagine a garment that would not look muted and weak compared to them.
“No,” I whispered, surprised at my own bravery. “Please don’t hide.”
“Ah, she is kind,” one spoke, the first time one had spoken without the others, though a whispered chorus agreed: “So kind, so kind.” They peered down at me, smiling shyly, and a few still covered their faces with a few slender fingers. They pressed in a little closer, but none spoke. They just looked at me expectantly.
“Um, who are you?” I asked finally.
The same solitary voice spoke; the others seemed to expect this and no one interrupted. “We are the unsightly demons,” she said. “And you are Cass Cassie.”
“It’s just Cass,” I said, though it didn’t feel right to correct her. And though many questions filled my mind all at once, the first one I blurted out was, “How do you know my name?”
“The other one spoke it, many times in his sleep in this way: Cass Cassie, Cass Cassie,” she answered.
“The other one? Michael! Is he here?” I tried to push myself up to see him, but gasped again in pain and many hands reached down to restrain me from rising further, delicate but firm.
“He sleeps still,” her voice soothed, and she pointed to a shape not far from where I sat. The other… demons, they had called themselves…parted to one or the other side to let me see clearly. It seemed we were in a cave, or maybe you’d call it a cavern. The walls were smooth, but they were definitely some sort of stone, cold and dark, shimmering grey. Michael’s still form was lying on a thick fur, and I realized I was too. There was little furniture, just a small table, and the same thick furs were spread across the floor in several places. My head spun, and the throbbing ache all over my body seemed to intensify the longer I held myself up.
“Rest, Cass Cassie,” the demons murmured, and again their hands fluttered around my face, calming me and brushing my eyes closed as I slowly lowered myself back onto the soft furs. The demons began to murmur and hum, and they began to stroke my hair. Their feathery fingers grazed my face and arms so softly, but they seemed to lift the pain away, leaving me feeling lighter and somehow cleaner. I think they expected me to fall asleep, but I couldn’t. I lay there quietly, trying not to move and invite the pain back, and the demons drifted slowly away.
What is going on? I knew I should be panicking, this was not normal, but something about the continued hum of the unsightly demons kept my heart from racing in terror. I wonder why they call themselves unsightly, I mused. I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life. And what do they mean by demons? I lay there for a while, thinking those calm reflective thoughts until my nose itched and I reflexively reached up to scratch it. The ache was gone!
I sat up slowly and quietly, trying not to attract any attention, but soon a demon turned and saw me and they were all upon me instantly. They knelt beside me and helped me sit up, then once again thrust food toward me. This time I tried it, and though nothing was familiar it tasted good, just down to earth good …maybe hearty is the best word for it.
“Thank you,” I said between bites, and they tittered happily. After a short while they stopped offering food and just sit back and stared at me. Finally, the demon—the one who had spoken before—asked me, “Why have you come Cass Cassie?”
Instinctively I looked toward Michael’s still form. “I’m not sure, really,” I answered slowly, “but I think we’re looking for Eden.”
The demons broke into soft questioning murmurs, “Eden? Eden?” The head demon frowned slightly and tilted her head in confusion.
“Eden? We know not of it.”
“Not it,” I sighed, “Her.”