“Like Mum,” I say.

“Yes, like your mum. The storytellers were a group of scholars, teachers, prophets and mystics. They often were guided by the ancestors to explain or apply a story in a new way for a new time. It was, as far as I can tell from the written records we have preserved, a time of debate and creativity. There were many personalities, many ideas and messages and yet there was also unity; there was freedom and acceptance of differing views. It was a time of rich diversity and the community flourished.”

“This doesn’t sound like Saintstone,” I mutter. “I thought there was only one voice, one way.”

She gives me a brief, absent smile. I’m not going to provoke her tonight.

“Well,” she goes on, “automatic writing was something that was practiced by those storytellers who were mystics and prophets. They would sometimes go into a trance, or sometimes just be aware that a message was coming, and their hand would write words that their brain had no control over. Their ancestors would speak through them.”

I stare at her.

“It sounds dangerous,” I say at last. “Anyone could make something up and pretend the ancestors had told them to say it. I’m glad we’ve moved past it – it sounds primitive, ridiculous.”

“That is exactly what I have been taught,” Mel says. “I was raised to see the mystics as fools at best and dangerous at worst. I agreed.” She sighs wearily. “Yes, I agreed that it was all that you say – dangerous, primitive. Foolish. That’s what I thought, until…” Mel leans her chair back to reach something off her desk – it’s the notebook she’s been carrying around with her. “Until it happened to me.”

I open my mouth but I can’t speak. Her tone is matter-of-fact, but there is something embarrassed, proud, nervous in her expression. She believes this is true.

She goes on. “It started the day Mayor Longsight was attacked. At night, I always have this notebook on my bedside table – when I have too many thoughts going around my head to sleep, I scribble them down and it eases my mind enough to let me rest. I had a lot on my mind that day.

“I wrote down what happened – that the mayor was attacked by a blank terrorist, that he had died. That the town was in a state of turmoil and grief. Then I put my notebook back on the nightstand and went to sleep.” She leans forward. “But, when I woke up in the morning, the notebook was on my bed, open, and I’d filled pages with writing.” She turns the pages and I see tightly written text, in a slanting hand – it goes on for pages.

There is a silence. Then I say, “You must have been unsettled and written it when you were only half awake. People do all kinds of things in their sleep. Mum used to fold clothes.” I don’t know if I’m explaining this away for Mel’s benefit or my own, but I find the whole thing unnerving.