Page 40 of Professor and the Seer

I’m sure his disembodied-ness would have had more to say, only I found myself suddenly jolted from my dream, an anxious John shaking me awake.

“Frieda. Frieda. Wake up.”

I blinked my eyes open to see a concerned John peering down at me. “Hi.” My shy response.

Relief filled his face. “You okay?”

I pushed myself to a sitting position, cheeks heating as I grabbed the sheet to cover my boobs. Never mind he’d seen them. The morning after, with him looking frazzled, left me feeling a little out of sorts. “Yeah. Sorry. Was I snoring or talking in my sleep?”

“More like you were a frozen ice cube, barely breathing. Scared the crap out of me,” he admitted, reaching out to stroke warm fingers down my cheek.

“Oh. Um. I think that might have been because of my dream.” I paused then said, “I think I travelled somewhere.”

“What makes you think that?”

“For one, it felt damned real except for the fact my hand could go through stone. I think I dream-walked.” A term I’d heard used in the fantasy books I used to devour as a teen.

His brows pulled together. “The technical term is oneironautics, although the arcane usually refer to it as astral travel. Have you done that before?”

“Nope. Pretty sure that was my first time.” Because the previous time I’d seen the cloaked figure had been more like a memory.

His expression went from worried to pensive. “If you did astral travel, it would explain your corpse-like state.”

I grimaced. “Sorry.” Way to ruin an awesome night.

“Don’t apologize,” he hastened to say. He grabbed my hands, which meant the sheet fell, but his gaze remained on my face. “I apologize for being so worried. I woke to find you cold and unresponsive. It frightened me.”

“I don’t even know how it happened. I went to sleep, and poof, I found myself somewhere else.”

“Where did you go?”

“A place I’ve never been. I didn’t recognize the tunnel, but I could tell it was old and only partially explored.” I went into detail about what I’d seen and told him of the being, including the first time I’d seen him. I finished with, “He claimed he gave me and my sisters our power and demanded we go to him.”

He didn’t interrupt or call me crazy. When I finished, he murmured, “You referred to the being as him.”

It only occurred to me then I’d been referring to him in the masculine. “It’s in the way he spoke. Any idea who he is?”

“No, but if he’s a god as claimed, we should be able to figure it out.”

My face squinched. “If that’s even true. I didn’t find him very god-like.”

“Do you think he emerged from the portal?”

“I mean it’s possible if what I saw actually happened. Or could be my anxiety is making up stuff.” I shrugged.

He shook his head. “I think we’d be foolish to ignore what you’ve seen. You said the markings in the most recent dream matched those of your back and the pillar.”

I nodded. “But there were other symbols, too. Ones I’ve never seen before.”

“Could you draw some of them from memory?”

“Maybe. I can try.”

“This cloaked figure, you’re sure he didn’t give you a name?”

“Nothing.”

“But he called you the prophetess, just like that old man in Mexico.”