The Red Thread of Destiny

By Pam Martin-Lawrence

An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place and circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.

ancient Chinese proverb

22/06/22

I had the dream again last night. As always, she was skiing towards me on the narrow track, following a twisted tangle of bright red ribbons, shocking against the snow, which ended curled and coiled around my ankles. Her long pale fur cape was drawn around her, face shadowed under her hood. When she came to the bend she stopped, framed by bare silver birch branches and deep green yew. She lifted her head, and even though I couldn’t make out her face, as always I knew her gaze was fixed on me.

The snow was falling hard from a sky the colour of bones and ashes, and I heard the wind whistling around her. That's new – all these years, and I could never hear anything. It has always felt like an old silent movie, right from that very first time.

My sixteenth birthday. I was allowed one glass of Pappa’s homemade bilberry wine. I sneaked a second, and the room started spinning like a fairground ride, and when I went to bed, my bed felt like a magic flying carpet.

Then the dream came, strange and haunting: a woman in a long traditional cloak skiing along a snowy track towards me. All the details were hazy and slightly-out-of-focus as if someone had draped a veil over a lens before filming the scene, but the way she moved and the shape of her felt so familiar that I had the strongest feeling that I knew her. She stopped and looked up, and although her face was hidden inside her big hood, I could feel her eyes fixed on me, searing my skin.

She dropped a skistav and held out her arms to me, beckoning me forward. I couldn’t move. I tried with all my strength, because I knew I had to get to her. But I was frozen, and she wouldn’t come any closer.

The harder I tried to get to her, the harder my heart rocketed, and it felt like there was a steel band being tightened around my chest with every breath I took. My vision started to fade, until I couldn’t see her anymore, and I was certain I would die.

I woke up gasping for breath and in the middle of a full-blown panic attack. I woke up “knowing” that I had to get to her, and if I didn’t, there would be awful consequences. Mamma blamed it on the sneaked glass of wine, and I tried to believe her. Until a few days later, when it happened again. Every last detail identical. Down to the panic attack.

Over the years it came less often. But always exactly the same, including the panic attack. I’ve thought a lot about what that dream means, and I believe that one day I’ll find her, because she's real, and she's for me. My soulmate, as romantic-novel-ridiculous as that sounds, even to me.

Even when I was seeing someone, it didn’t stop the dreams. Even with Elinn. Not at first, but gradually, as things got worse between us, they came more often. I knew they meant it wasn’t her, but I refused to believe it for far too long.

The changes began this February. I can even pinpoint the exact date: the night of the twenty-seventh. This time little pink flowers fell mixed up with the snowflakes, and all around her the white ground was covered with rosebuds. And for the first time, when she beckoned me, I could move! One single step towards her, before I woke up, gasping but not panicking.

And I know that date so definitely, because the very next day she wrote her first comment on a post I put up on my fan page. 1971blomster. Two tiny, ordinary Norwegian words, but they stood out immediately, because they glowed vivid pink on the screen, the exact shade of all those rosebuds. And every comment since then it's the same. So it's her, then. 1971blomster is my soulmate; we are fated to be together.

I visited her page, and found a video from her birthday: the floor was strewn with pink balloons tied with long curly red ribbons. She was messing about, hitting them out her of her way carefully with a single pink crutch, trying to clear a path without breaking them (and å gud, she has a single ski pole).

Then something caught her attention. She stilled for a second, staring straight at the lens. And she was looking directly into my eyes! In the millisecond that I felt an enormous explosion whooshing through my veins, I saw her gasp and her eyes widen, and I knew she was feeling the exact same sensation. It’s ridiculous, but I have no doubt: she saw me! And I ‘saw’ the woman on the track from my dreams – I instantly recognised the shape her shoulders took, and the way she held herself.

Since then, there are slight differences in the dream each time: I get a few steps closer to her; one time I saw huge pawprints in the snow beside her; and now there’s the sound of the wind. She’s walking down that track to me, and I have to get to her. If I don’t, I’m going to end up alone forever.

One night her hood slipped back for a second, and I swear I saw a glimpse of the softest of baby pink hair, before she pulled it forwards again, and the wind snatched away the sound of her voice calling to me.

I know it sounds stupid, but all I've ever wanted is a woman who fills my gaps, whose gaps I fill. I can’t explain why, but I believe that special woman is the woman in the dreams. The English fan whose words glow on the screen. The woman I call Rosa, because she is pretty and pink. 1971blomster. We are meant to be together. I feel it in my gut.

23/06/23

I messaged her, like a silly teenager, but she responded, straight away – as if we were just picking up an old, comfortable conversation. She even called me by a pet name. Mr Wolf. But of course, I already knew that it would be that: last night, over the sighs and moans of the wind, I heard her voice clearly for the first time. She called out to me to come to her. She called me by name: ‘Ulv,’ and two wolves paced at her side, her protectors.

Tonight is the night for the old magic. When I dream tonight – and I know I shall – I’ll reach out to her and finally pick up the ends of those tangled ribbons, letting them twist themselves tightly where they belong, stitching her into the Rosa-shaped holes in my soul. Nothing will ever be stronger than that magic, and nobody can keep us apart now.

For this is neither our first nor our last life together. It is as it always must be, for fated soulmates.

END

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