Best Medicine

Kate looked over the rim of her coffee cup and into the eyes of
Elias, the busboy, who was removing the empty bagel plates from in
front of herself and her "best friend", Lisa. A thin and perfect
blonde, Lisa was sitting at the perfect table in the trendy cafe,
rambling on and on about the latest sale at Bonwit's, and boring Kate
to tears. But then, everything seemed to bore Kate these days.

More and more she was starting to get the impression that this world
she was living in was not real, that there was something bigger,
something deeper.. something that made this all look so... well. So
mundane.

Shopping, Lisa was rambling, was just to die for. There was no finer
feeling in the world than getting hold of the latest Scaasi fashion at
10\% off of its exhorbitant price, no sense of accomplishment greater
than finding the perfect sequinned evening bag to go with that Coco
Chanel evening gown from Saks, blah blah blah. Kate just nodded and
made the appropriate noises as her mind took a stroll to a quieter
place.

These dreams she had been having lately, they were strange, almost
eerily realistic, and yet they weren't frightening. She was finding
herself looking forward to bedtime, a first for her. Going to bed in
her youth had been something to fear, her nightmares had been far too
real, and bedtime had not been something she had relished.

Now, though, hmmm. It was strange.

-------------------------------------------

Her thoughts wandered on to the first dream. She had fallen asleep, and
found herself in a small room, containing a cot, a stool, a few hooks
on the walls, and a chest of drawers. The door was closed, and she
walked over and opened it.

Voices hung in the still air of the hallway, a jumble of mismatched
sounds that she couldn't filter, although the occasional word leaped
forward, words like, "Another ale!", "....he said", nothing that she
could really string together to make sense of.

Stepping into the hall, she had pulled the door to the room closed
behind her. Turning back suddenly, the door had disappeared, and in its
place was a narrow flight of stairs leading downward. The voices were
coming from the bottom of the steps. She took the first step
hesitantly, and found that each succeeding step was all the easier to
take.

The bottom of the stairwell opened out into a large room, a tavern
filled with people of all shapes and appearances. A long bar ran the
length of the room, a small white kitten sitting quietly at one end of
it, its eyes sweeping the room as if it understood everything being
said in the place, but that was impossible, wasn't it?

Kate stepped up to the bar, close to the kitten, and absentmindedly
reached out a hand to stroke its soft fur as she tried to catch the eye
of the bartender. The kitten backed away somewhat, watching her closely
as she requested a Coke. The bartender glanced at her, then filled a
tall tumbler from a spigot, plopped a cherry into it, and handed it to
her. Reaching for her purse, she discovered it was missing, and began
to hand the Coke back. That's when the kitten spoke.

"We don't use money here," it said. "Don't worry about it."

Kate jerked as if struck, some of her Coke sloshing onto the bar, which
the barman quickly wiped with a damp rag.

"You're new here," the kitten said (and this was a statement of fact,
not a question).

Kate looked around, fighting the panic that was welling up in her
breast, as she suddenly hit on the strange thought that maybe she was
Alice and maybe she had fallen through the looking glass after
all.

"What's your name?" asked the kitten.

And Kate found her voice. "Bronwen."

She didn't know where the name had come from. It just came, and that
was that, it was her name.

"Nobody comes to the White Kitten who doesn't need to be here, Bronwen.
You'll find your own answers soon enough."

Saying that, the kitten hopped behind the bar and disappeared.

Bronwen looked around at the people in the tavern, and then at the
tavern itself. Spotting an empty table in a corner, she took her Coke
and sat in one of the chairs surrounding it, then jerked again,
startled, as she realized that the table was not empty, there were two
men there, and both were familiar to her, although she could not place
their faces.

"And I say that it is wrong!" one of the men seethed, "Wrong to betray
a trust like that, wrong to bring harm to others, wrong to cause that
sort of pain!"

The other man sneered, "It was only dayside, and dayside isn't real,
you know that."

The first man, young and slight, glared across the table. "It is real
to those who live there exclusively. It is real to me, with a foot in
each. The damage you cause there is REAL to those people, and you sit
there and you declare that it is a playground for the darker side of
your soul. May you be cursed, Aarn!"

The older man glared back, "Those 'people', Jakob, are living less than
half a life, they don't know what lies beyond the gate, and they are
lower than the animals. Don't you even...!" and then he noticed the
small woman sitting at the table. "Where did YOU come from?"

Bronwen felt icicles piercing into her soul as Aarn glared at her. A
deep, primitive fear welled up inside of her. This man terrified her.
She knew that he had the ability to hurt her, and badly, and that he
would enjoy doing so.

She drew herself back into the corner as far as she could, trying to
hide herself in the shadows. Jakob reached out, grabbing her wrist,
pulling her back into the circle of light thrown by the candle on the
table. "THIS, Aarn, THIS is the result of your dayside work. LOOK at
her, you filthy SWINE!" And Bronwen suddenly saw herself as seen by
other's eyes in this tavern, scarred and small, hopeless and helpless,
frightened of her own shadow.

Then she saw something else, a flickering in Aarn's eyes, a face hidden
in their depths, a face she knew from childhood, from her darkest
nights, the nights of fear. She saw something else there too,
recognition in Aarn's own eyes, and a hint of fear in them as well, and
something began to grow inside of her.

Jakob looked into her eyes, and said, "You got it, now you need to
decide what you're going to do with the knowledge. I can't help you
with that one."

Bronwen sat there, feeling the THING in her gut swelling, growing, she
felt like she was about to explode, about to scream, about to do
something so totally unlike her that it would change her forever.

And she opened her mouth, and laughed.

She laughed and laughed, riotously, raucously, peals of laughter
ringing from her and bouncing from the walls and ceilings of the
tavern. Her laughter grew and grew, and as it grew, strange things
happened.. it caught on, spreading like wildfire through the tavern,
from table to table, until everybody in the bar was laughing, everybody
except for Jakob and Aarn..

And Aarn... well. He seemed to be shrinking. Growing smaller as the
laughter wrapped around him, forcing him back and down, away from the
table, away from Bron. He began to shriek, screaming.

And Bronwen stopped laughing. With her silence, the tavern quieted,
every eye in the room looking toward the table in the corner. The
kitten sat on his spot on the bar again, gazing straight at
Bronwen.

Looking at Aarn, Bronwen shook her head. "I know you, somehow. And yet
I don't know you at all. But this I know - You Are Not Worth It."

She looked at Jakob. "I know you too, I think.."

Jakob shrugged, "Here, we never know who we know, and we often know
those that we don't."

Bron smiled, "A riddle?"

"If you want it to be. This place," and Jakob gestured towards the room
in general, "it's different. There is magic here, and rebirth, for
those of us who want it. Do you?"

Bronwen nodded hesitantly, "I think so."

"Don't think, Bronwen. Decide. This is your chance, and it only passes
once."

Bronwen looked across the table at Aarn, and then said, "Yes, I want
it. I definitely want it."

Aarn stood up, slinking toward the door.

"Don't let it hit your rear on the way out, Aarn!" she shouted.

And the tavern exploded in laughter again, a different laughter, a
healing sound.

The kitten strolled over to the table and jumped daintily to its
top.

"Welcome to our world, Bronwen. You'll do."

--------------------------------

Lisa was still babbling, now about her new manicurist, who had messed
up her silk wrap and charged a fortune to fix it. Kate looked at her,
and a small laugh rose in her throat, as she said, "Oh Lisa, you are
just so full of yourself. I have no time for this garbage any more, I'm
sorry."

With those words, Kate picked up her purse, grabbed her keys from the
table, and walked out the door of the trendy cafe, never looking back
once, except to wink into the eyes of Elias, the young and slight
busboy, who was giving her a thumbs-up.