The Forgotten Locket by Lisa Mangum

of her appeared wispy and faint, her eyes snapped with anger, and her pale face had two bright red splotches on her cheeks.
     
    “He’s mine!” she spat. “You can’t have him.”
     
    Stepping back, I blinked in confusion. My head still hurt a little from the changing pressure I’d experienced. My ears felt stuffy, the sounds reaching me on a delay.
     
    “Who?” I asked. “Who are you talking about?”
     
    “Don’t play stupid. You’re not stupid, and it will just make me madder if you play pretend with me.”
     
    “I’m not pretending,” I said, holding up my hands, palms out, in an effort to calm her down. I felt like I should remember her name, but even here in my dream the bulk of the block in my memory remained intact. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
     
    She laughed, a high, keening sound that circled up into the flat sky like a flock of birds. “When the Pirate King sings, and the Pirate King dreams, then we all fly away on the Pirate King’s wings,” she chanted.
     
    The hairs on my arms stood up.
     
    “And what the Pirate King knows, isn’t what the Pirate King shows, and we all must follow where the Pirate King goes,” she continued.
     
    I took a step back. Dream or not, I didn’t want to be any closer to this ghost-girl with the strange light in her eyes and the naked note of madness in her voice.
     
    “I don’t understand what you want from me,” I said. “Who are you?”
     
    “He kissed you. He made you his,” she cried, ignoring my questions. I wondered if she could even really see me, if she was even really here. “You gave him your heart!”
     
    My fingers automatically went to my throat, but my locket was gone. Given away by my own hand to a man I thought I knew, thought I remembered. A man this girl called the Pirate King.
     
    “And now you belong to him,” she said a little sadly, but I couldn’t tell if she felt sorry for me or for herself. Tears of hurt and anger shimmered in her eyes.
     
    A chill sense of dread circled in the air around me, close but not yet closing in.
     
    “But I will fix it.” The gleam in her eye shifted to something darker and more cunning. The outline of her body rippled like water. “I know how to fix it. I will make the River Policeman arrest him and throw him in prison. He belongs in prison. And once he is gone, everything will be all better.”
     
    She turned her gaze on me, and I realized she wasn’t a ghost at all, but a real person who could somehow see me even in my dream. The dread hit me full force, covering my body and stealing my breath.
     
    “Oh, yes, you may belong to the Pirate King now, but I will make the River Policeman mine. And then we’ll see. Oh, yes. Then we will see.”
     

Chapter 7
     
    I woke up with a gasp, my heart thudding in my chest and my hands reaching for something I had already lost. The locket I wanted to find was still gone, my fingers touching only the thin, interlocking links of scars looped around my neck.
     
    Unlike other dreams, this one was still clear and sharp in my memory. I could still see the strange girl’s piercing eyes, hear her fluttering laughter. I felt I should remember who she was, but I was exhausted and my emotions were tangled up in a messy mix of anger, confusion, and impatience. I was tired of living with so many questions. I wanted answers, and I wanted them now.
     
    I sat up and looked around at my new surroundings, surprised to see I was in a shop of some sort. A heavy cloak had been folded into a makeshift bed for me.
     
    The morning light spilled in from two round windows. Hanging outside one of them was a sign that read Casella Apothecary.
     
    I lifted my eyebrows in surprise. That was part of Orlando’s name.
     
    The sign was edged with an intricate band of squares carved into the wood, each one joined to the next in a repeating pattern of angles. Trying to follow the carved lines with my eyes made me dizzy and I blinked