It came to me that night like a flash­back, but it was of mem­o­ries I didn’t have, mem­o­ries I’m not even sure she had. The way she’d left the vil­lage one morn­ing, another lit­tle girl the same age as me, tak­ing a trip to the nearby town with her par­ents. I knew that in my wak­ing mem­ory I could not even remem­ber what she looked like then, but as I sank deeper into the dream the scene became coloured in and more detailled, putting her in a light-blue dress and plaited hair, smil­ing hap­pily as their cart rat­tled away into the valley.

The dream skipped ahead.

“What’s that noise?” Lilac asked, in a squeaky six-year old voice.

“Prob­a­bly just thun­der,” said her father.

“But the sky’s-”

My heart raced faster and faster, I knew what was com­ing next. The eyes of my dream ascended to the top of the cliff, where stones rum­bled and clat­tered together, gath­er­ing momen­tum, pick­ing up big­ger rocks, crash­ing and leap­ing and falling, falling ever down­wards to where a rick­ety old cart rolled along, unsuspecting…

The shock nearly woke me, I could feel my sweat and my rapid breath­ing. But my eyes did not open; still I saw Lilac emerge from the wreck­age of shat­tered stone and splin­tered wood, tear­ing inef­fec­tu­ally at it, cry­ing tears of rage and tears of sad­ness for a loss she did not fully understand.

After hours, sleep over­took her, and once she awoke again, she no longer cried. I knew that those tears had been her last, and in all her life since that day she had never cried again. She sim­ply looked around her with her vacant eyes, and as if she had not even noticed the rub­ble that buried her fam­ily, and walked off into the for­est and down the valley.

What flashed next before my eyes was more hor­ri­fy­ing in its inco­her­ence than the rock­fall had been in its graphic detail. I remem­ber only feel­ings, imagery. Fear and the calm beyond fear. Deter­mi­na­tion. Anguish. Blood, bones, tear­ing flesh. Darkness.

And then my first real mem­ory of the girl. Her return to the vil­lage after four weeks in the wilder­ness. The search had been long since called off, the rub­ble shifted and her par­ents buried. Though they’d not found Lilac’s body, every­one assumed the worst, and heavy snow­fall all but con­firmed it. And yet, one day, out of the woods she came.

Her dress was in tat­tered, the brown colour of dried blood. That same colour coated her hands and her arms, while fresher and red­der blood was painted on her face like some macabre hor­ror incar­nated as lipstick.

“Demon child,” they called her. “Mon­ster.” The boys, even the adults. Even my mother. They all looked at her and could only see the blood and the blank star­ing eyes. Was it only me that could see the kind­ness locked up inside her, still sur­viv­ing some­where despite her ordeal?

Cer­tainly, in my dream, I was the only one. Maybe there were oth­ers that I don’t remem­ber, we were both so lit­tle. But it was me, a six-year-old girl, who took her in.

I dreamt of the out­house where she had to live, after my mother said Lilac wasn’t allowed in the house for fear of bring­ing bad luck upon our fam­ily. Of the blan­kets and hot stews I took her, keep­ing her warm through the long win­ter. Of the day nearly two years later, when she uttered her first word since the acci­dent. “Hun­gry.” But it was a start. I dreamt of the school that wouldn’t teach her, and of all the lessons I tried to pass on to her. Of the first time I saw her still-vacant eyes framed by an hon­est smile.

With a rush of emo­tion I dreamt of the day she left the vil­lage. There’d been thefts from the vil­lage shops, and though all the kids knew it was Jason, the adults blamed the Demon Child. My mother packed food for her, the one and only nice ges­ture she ever per­formed for the girl, and then Lilac was gone, a con­fused teenage girl sent out into the snow to meet what­ever fate had in store for her. I recalled my angry tears when I found out, my rush­ing after her, fol­low­ing the foot­steps even as new snow­fall cov­ered them. The howls of the wolves, the panic, the chase, trip­ping onto frozen ground, the hun­gry beast tow­er­ing over me, the sud­den solemn knowl­edge that I was going to die… And then Lilac, sharp­ened stick thrust through the wolf’s throat, blood pour­ing down on me–

At last the dream shoved me from its grasp. My heart pounded and I gasped for air, throat so tight I couldn’t fill my lungs prop­erly. I let min­utes pass until my breath­ing slowed, and reached across to Lilac, need­ing some vague reas­sur­ance that she was still there. She mur­mured and rolled over in her sleep, leav­ing me star­ing at the ceil­ing as dawn broke and the con­jured mem­o­ries receded for another day.