The Mind's Eye by K.C. Finn

thought ought to be different; I didn’t need him
pointing them out one by one like they were easy things to fix. No
matter how troubled the doctor was in private, at least he could
hide it behind his smart suit and smug face. I was troubled for all
to see and pity me for it, and so long as I was stuck in this chair
that fact was not going to change.
***
The first few
months of life at Ty Gwyn turned into a drab but comforting routine
from there on in. I devoted about a quarter of my free time to
Doctor Bickerstaff’s rotten exercises and my mobility in the chair
grew inch by inch until I could wheel from my bedroom door to the
edge of the bed unaided. It was about three feet, which was not
much use to me or anyone else, but it was enough to shut the rotten
doctor up, which meant I had the other three quarters of my time
left to train my other, far more important skill.
I went to
school with Leighton many times, mentally of course, but his
lessons in the winter term were simple things that I had learned
years ago and I grew tired of sitting in his mind listening in. I
tried to visit Mum’s mind plenty more times as the weeks went on,
but the psychic journey to London gave me unrelenting headaches for
hours after a trip. The headaches did get less the more carefully I
focused on the connection between us, but in all truth her growing
sense of guilt for our welfare and fears about the war made it hard
to stay in her mind for very long.
With my two
usual avenues of practice fast becoming useless, I decided that a
few other targets around me would be a better use of my time. I
deliberately avoided Doctor Bickerstaff for fear that his
depression might be catching, but if I could get into his head from
over the hill then the inhabitants of Ty Gwyn’s farmlands were
surely within my grasp. Ness Fach was easy to find; one thought of
her huge blue eyes and I was there with her rolling in the stiff
winter grass and flinging Dolly across the mud. I was there when
her Bampi picked her up by the ankle and told her it was too cold
to play outside. I watched the upside down world full of her
giggling joy as she was transported back into the house.
I tried
Blodwyn a few times before I actually got her, my own eagerness to
see what little miss perfect got up to in her spare time making me
all the more determined. I wasn’t surprised to find that she was
just as shallow in private as she was in public. Blod spent most of
her free time doing and re-doing her hair into different styles
from her magazine, trying on clothes and practising dance steps to
the radio in her bedroom. I also learned through these little trips
that the young farm boys Idrys had taken on for the winter were
throwing love letters into her window attached to little stones.
She laughed at them all, the boys were only about my age, and wrote
things back like ‘No chance mochyn’ and ‘When you start to shave,
we’ll see’.
I’d be lying
to say I didn’t envy the attention; the farm boys treated me like a
leper at worst and a statue at best, either way I was something to
be avoided. But then what chance did I have with a newly-adult
Celtic goddess flouncing about the place? The only thing that
really surprised me about Blod was that she was, sometimes,
actually nice to her sister. In the public parts of the house and
when she was doing her chores, Ness was just constantly in Blod’s
way and consequently was always being shouted at. But when Blod was
upstairs having a break Ness quite often wandered into her room
uninvited. The first time it happened I expected to feel Blod hit
the roof and order the little wanderer out forthwith. But despite
the huge age gap between them, Blod was actually quite a good
sister when she thought no-one could see. She let Ness put some of
her make-up on and let her bounce on her bed to the radio tunes.
Sometimes she even sat and talked to her.
When those
moments happened I let her mind go, too jealous of the sisterly
bond to stay and