WINTER SOLSTICE

Raphael sits on the bed in Galatea's little house. It's midwinter. He can hear the wind whistling up under the eaves and he's surprised by how cozy the house is. The fire is blazing and Woody the cat is curled up on the hearth.

Galatea stands by her table looking through an extensive selection of her homemade herbal remedies. The bottles are an odd collection of old medicine, makeup and drink bottles she's found washed up on her beach. She is arranging them, sorting them into two groups, though Raphael isn't sure why. He isn't really thinking about that, he's looking at her. Despite the cold she seems to be wearing only a size 22 shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a sock. Just one, with a big hole in it and all her toes hanging out.

Her hair has grown surprisingly long in the short time since her illness. She's a tribute to those herbal remedies she is always using. Raphael watches her shadow, the steady movement of her hands. The last rays of the winter sun shine for a moment through an old beer bottle in the window and she is lit by golden aura that gives her a glowing halo.

'There!' she turns and smiles at him. 'I knew I had some.' She holds up a bottle that had originally been made for very expensive scotch, though Raphael is sure the oily yellow liquid in it contains no alcohol now. 'It's Vitamin E oil. If you let me rub it in every day it will keep the skin supple and no scar will form.'

She pours a little of the oil onto her fingers and slides them down Raphael's left shoulder into the space under his plastron where he had been cut. The thud of his heart shakes his whole body. He's been known to kill without apparent conscience, but the touch of her fingers makes him feel faint. 'I dunno,' he half reaches as if he's about to move her hand away.

'Still hurts, huh?' She bends over him, stroking at the raw places under his plastron. She puts her left hand onto his right shoulder to hold herself steady and he realises there aren't that many buttons down the front of her shirt. She's also somehow more voluptuous than he remembers. Suddenly her face is very very near to his. He can feel the warmth of her cheek, smell the salt and seawater scent of her.

'Well don't worry,' she says. 'I'll be gentle. You know I'd never do anything to hurt you, Raphael, because...'

Their eyes lock and her arms go about his neck in a sudden convulsive hug. He draws back as she begins to slide down between his thighs, her face bumps down the plates of his plastron and finally comes to rest in his lap. It's only then that he sees the bright flower of blood on her back, the handle of a knife rising like a stem from amongst the red petals.

He's transfixed by the sight. In slow motion his big hands reach for her but tangle in her hair. They grip spastically at the knife, trying to undo what's been done. For long seconds he is unable to look away, and when he does it is Hideo Yoshiwara he sees, looming over him the great axe in the man's hands already on its downward trajectory, slashing through the air to Raphael's head...

...and waking him.

Raphael must have made a sound as he woke because in the faint light he could see Leonardo's eyes, scanning the room. 'You okay?'

'Yeah. Nightmare.'

Leonardo grunted and his eyes closed again, but Raphael was awake. Unable to bear the dark, he wandered down the hallway towards the dim light. Splinter, calm and centered, was standing just inside the dimly lit living quarters. 'Another nightmare, my son?'

Raphael shrugged, trying to play it down, not quite able. 'Yeah.'

'The same as the other dreams?'

Raphael nodded and slumped onto the sofa. 'More or less.'

Splinter followed but did not sit, he crouched before the turtle, looking up into his eyes. 'Your body is young, Raphael. It heals quickly, but there are other scars that do not show.'

Raphael tried to squirm away from the commanding gaze of the rat's black eyes. 'I'm not crazy!' he snapped.

'You are hurt. I wish to see you healed. Lie down, Raphael. I will sit with you. I will walk your dream paths beside you. Perhaps together we can overcome the pain.'

Raphael paused for a moment, unwilling to show just how vulnerable the injury had left him. Then he moved. It was midwinter and although the turtles didn't hibernate, they tended to sleep more deeply and more often. Splinter slid onto the sofa beside him and Raphael lay back with his head in his master's lap...

...only to be suddenly aware of the sound of footsteps. Raphael turns. Not far behind him is Splinter. Even though the two of them are on the beach, walking on soft sand, Splinter's footsteps reverberate as though he's wearing boots and walking a paved street.

Raphael walks on, reassured by the sound, but when he turns the second time to see his master, Splinter is being surrounded by the city and slowly engulphed by a heaving mountain of garbage. He wades through the increasing levels of trash, but with each step forward the rubbish becomes deeper and deeper. Like quicksand it gathers around him finally overwhelming. He disappears...

...and the trash has somehow become the clutter of Galatea's home where once again Raphael is sitting on the bed.

'Here it is,' she holds up the bottle so that it catches the light. 'Vitamin E.'

'No,' he puts up both hands as if he's warding her off. 'I don't want it.'

'Don't worry Raphael, this won't hurt, I promise.'

'It's not me I'm worried about, it's you!' He edges across the bed trying to get away from her.

'Raph...' she puts the bottle down and steps across the little room reaching out to hug him.

Raphael backs desperately away. There has to be help. Woody the cat, curled by the fire, raises his head and his face elongates into the familiar features of the rat.

'Splinter, help me! He's here...'

Like a preprogrammed automaton, Galatea reaches for Raphael, puts her arms around his neck. He wraps both arms around her, trying to cover her vulnerable back. Trying to protect her from the inevitable knife, but she suddenly becomes dead weight in his arms. He brings up one hand and from wrist to elbow it is covered in blood. Hers.

Once again Hideo stands before him and delivers the slashing blow...

...that once again wakes him.

He felt himself falling through space and woke with a thump, beside the sofa. Splinter was crouched on the back of the sofa, watching from a safe distance. 'Why didn't you help?'

'I followed as closely as I was able, my son, but in your own dream you alone are the master. I could only watch from a distance.'

'What did it mean, master?'

Splinter climbed down from the back of the sofa to the seat and sat thinking for a long while. Finally he spoke. 'Many of our dreams are allegorical. The machinery of the brain deals with situations in its own way. Some of our dreams are simple account keeping, a way for our brain to store away a day's memories. But there are three kinds of dream, Raphael, and the third kind is prophetic.'

'You really think I'm seeing into the future? That this could actually happen?'

'I do not know. What I do know is that this dream is hurting you in its present form. You are experiencing a kind of sleep deprivation that can be quite dangerous.'

Raphael reached for his sais and twirled them around his hands for some minutes. Since the nightmares had begun he had been leaving his belt and weapons on, as if that might help. 'But what can I do?' he said finally. 'How do you fight what isn't real? How do you win against a dead man?'

'By following your dream, Raphael, and as it was in your dream, you must go alone.'

Between the midnight grey of sand and sea a shape emerged from the sewer tunnel and into a swirl of snow. He walked along the beach towards an old shack made of sticks, like the untidy nest of a seabird. He wore no disguise but the shadows and his own silence. Raphael's tracks were washed away by the sea.

Despite the late hour Galatea was still awake. She hardly even seemed surprised by her visitor. 'Raph! Come in quick while the ad's on, they're running an all-night Johnny Weismuller Tarzan festival.

'Is there any other kind?' He followed her into the house. She wasn't quite as he had seen her in his dreams, she was a lot thinner and her hair was short and scruffy. She wore a long nightgown with a holey old knitted jumper over the top for warmth, and two socks; one red and green stripes and the other one purple and about four sizes too big with a hole in the heel. She also had on a pair of fingerless mittens and a ridiculous knitted stocking cap that was over a metre long and striped like a rainbow.

'Come'n sit down. What are you doing here at this time of night, anyway? Did Leo throw you out for snoring too much or something?' She plonked herself back onto the bed, almost spilling a cup of hot chocolate she was holding, and was immediately transfixed by Johnny Weismuller again.

'Uh, no...' Raphael looked about. The cabin was, if anything, even messier than he remembered. As well as the usual assortment of washed up 'treasures', Galatea had made a sort of attempt at Christmas decorations. Bits of tinsel hung from driftwood and decorated the crabshells, bone and seashells all about the walls. The fire was blazing and Woody was curled before it, a bowl of warm milk beside him.

Raphael edged towards the chair.

'So why the late night visit?'

'I...I haven't been sleeping too good lately.'

Galatea frowned. An admission like that was enough to bring the healer spirit out in her. She gazed critically at him. 'Come to think of it, you do look kinda bleary. Here,' she patted the bed beside her. 'Sit down and I'll make you some hot milk. That'll help, I bet.' She jumped down and headed towards the stove.

He left the chair and edged himself to the corner of the bed. She turned back to him, 'Nooooo, I know what it is. It's those cuts under your shell. They're hurting, aren't they? Just hang on a sec and I'll get some Vitamin E to rub on them.'

'NO!'

'Well it's okay, you know. It won't hurt or anything. I'd never to anything to hurt you, Raphael, because...'

'Shut up! Shut up! Stop saying that!' And he lunged at her, pressing his hand over her mouth because he couldn't think of any other way of stopping the dream. He held her against him then, afraid he might have hurt her. 'I'm sorry,' he stroked her hair. 'I'm sorry. I came here to help you. I was scared for you. Worried about you.'

'Why?'

'Because I had a dream. I know it sounds stupid, but I kept having it, this same one over and over and it was about you.'

She felt his heart thudding right through his plastron. 'Uh, should I be flattered?'

'Look this isn't easy for me to talk about.'

She let herself relax, still bracketed in his arm. 'Would it help if Splinter was here too? Could you talk easier then?'

He shook his head. 'No. I've let him down enough already.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

He smirked as if it was selfevident. 'There's always a weakest link in every group, and I'm it.'

'Sez who?'

'The facts. Just the facts, marm. I do the opposite of everything Leo says. Unless I just ignore him. I'm always getting Mike into trouble and messing up Don's stuff and being disrespectful of Master Splinter. I don't mean to be like that, it's just how I am.'

'Teams are built on the strengths and weaknesses of their members, and the awareness of each other's qualities. Leo's judgment needs your impetuosity for balance. Without you he'd be overcautious. Mike's lightness needs your darkness.'

'He'd get on better without me.'

'Nope. We need the dark. If it didn't get dark we'd never see the stars. Besides, Mike needs you to help him unwind. As for Don's machines, he has some great inventions, an he's in control of all of them. I don't think it does him any harm to be reminded that machines can be controlled but people cannot.'

'And Splinter?'

'The good teacher has much knowledge to impart. The great teacher has much more to learn from his students. Besides, he loves you too much to truly be bothered by what you call disrespect.'

But Raphael wasn't convinced. 'They're a good team and I'm their weak link. They'd be better off without me.'

'You want to come and live with Woody and me?'

'I don't belong anywhere.'

'You belong with your brothers.'

'Once I called Leo a coward. It wasn't true. He's never been scared in his life, he's just patient. I nearly got myself killed that time, and now it's happened again and this time I'm afraid. I'm really afraid and that makes me a coward. How can I ever be part of the team again?'

Galatea put her arm around him, holding onto the edge of his shell. 'Oh, Raph! You're so big and tough and so little and bewildered and all I've wanted to do since I first found you was take care of you.'

'But I came here because I was worried about you and...and because I was afraid to sleep.' The final admission was too much for Raphael. He let his head fall to her shoulder and he began to cry.

She pressed her hands against his shell, feeling it shudder beneath the weight of his sobs. 'You're feeling so bad and blaming yourself for no reason. Half the problem is that you haven't slept properly for who knows how long and the other half is that you were badly hurt and you still haven't recovered. It takes a long time, trust me. I know.' As she spoke, Galatea reached behind Raphael to the bottle of Vitamin E oil that was sitting on the table. She poured a few drops onto her fingers and slid them beneath his plastron, rubbing the healing oil onto the ridge of his scar.

'Of course you're scared. That doesn't make you a coward though. It's plain logic that if something hurts you you make an effort to keep away from it.'

Raphael's voice came very small. 'But Mike killed him. I saw it happen. I'm afraid of a dead man. I'm afraid of a ghost.'

'You're afraid of a man who threatened to vivisect you and very nearly did. His present state of health is of no consequence. What matters here is your state of health.' She poured a few more drops of oil onto her fingertips and then put the bottle into his hand. 'Here, hold this.'

She reached across to rub more of the oil onto him and he read the label on the bottle. 'Noooooo!!!'

He grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and flung her across the shack, bouncing her off the far wall and back onto the bed. This time his reflexes were fast enough. The knife that was meant for her came an instant too late. It hung in the air before him and he tapped it so that it spun about. He grabbed it by the hilt and flicked it back to where it came from. It embedded itself into the throat of Mr Hideo, pinning him to the wall.

'No. Oh cheez. Oh, no. This is a dream. This has got to be another dream.'

Impossibly, Hideo began to move, twisting away from the knife, ignoring the terminal nature of his wound. 'I come for this disciple of Gaia,' his voice erupted in bloody spurts. 'I find little Ninja protecting her. This very quaint.'

'Try this for quaint!' Raphael's sais came flying at Hideo. He had no chance to duck away. This time he was slammed against the far wall, pinned through the eyes. But he continued to move. His hands crept up and rested on the hilts of the sais and he began to inch them out.

Galatea slid down from the bed. 'Raph, I think we need to get out of here.'

Raphael armed himself with a couple of hefty lumps of firewood, keen to see if pulverising would work where simple mashing had failed. Galatea grabbed him by his arm and tried to drag him towards the door. 'Raph, I don't know what your problem is but let me tell you, it ain't cowardice. We need to get out of here. We need to get somewhere that there's people about.'

Raphael swung the wood. 'Nothing stops him.'

'You're wrong. He's part of Nemesis, the antithesis of Gaia. In order to overcome him we need to be where there's lots of people.'

She convinced him through the door and into her back garden. Raphael headed to the lean-to holding her motorbike. 'Come on!' If they needed escape, this was the fastest way of getting out. He was in the saddle and kicking the side stand out of the way.

'No! Not that! No artefacts, no machines.'

As Galatea spoke the bike began to change. The petrol tank became a torso, the handlebars, arms and the speedo began to blur, changing into the face of Hideo. Even as he watched, the twist grips turned in his hands and reached around to grasp at his wrists. Raphael fell from the bike and threw it away from him.

'This way!' Galatea reached for his hand and led him into the shadowed depths of her garden.

'I thought you wanted somewhere populated.'

'Yeah, but we need fast transport. Uh, can I ask you a personal question? Are you a vir...' But she was interrupted when a unicorn stuck its head over Raphael's shoulder.

He stared into the animal's face. 'Okay, that's it. This has got to be a dream. Am I a what? What were you going to ask?'

'Trust me, doesn't matter. C'mon.' She got a leg up from Raphael and sat perched on the unicorn's back and he jumped up after her. He barely had time to settle when the unicorn took off, its shining body lit by the moon, leaving hardly a hoofprint in the snow.

Galatea's long stocking cap streamed out behind her. She held on with all the strength in her legs, and her hands tangled, clutching the unicorn's mane. Raphael put his arms around her middle and his legs around the unicorn's middle. The ends of his mask ripped in the wind like flags behind him.

'Where are we going?'

'Somewhere populated. Somewhere there are people. Nemesis can't control people. Mind you, neither can Gaia, but on the whole the presence of people tends to tip the scale in Gaia's favour when she needs help.' The wind whipped her words around his ears before tossing them away.

'How can she help us?' He squinted through a patter of snowflakes.

'Very occasionally she takes human form.'

They raced on through the increasing noise and light and traffic of the city until they finally stopped, in the middle of New York all cold and crisp and colourful. There were people milling about, crowds emptying out of theatres and cinemas. They were scarved and hatted against the cold but cheerful despite the weather. It was nearly Christmas. Trees were full of pretty lights and every shop window and street corner hosted a Santa. It was snowing, a real postcard Christmas.

So how could the happy people of New York not stop to look when a little green pixie wearing a red headband and one of Santa's elves came riding a reindeer into town? Especially when the reindeer reached its antlers into a street decoration and drew down tinsel and red balls. The pixie wrapped the decorations about the reindeer's neck before she and the elf jumped down from its back.

The show began when a horribly ugly gremlin jumped out of a nearby rubbish bin and began to advance on the elf and pixie. 'You think you have safety in number? You think all these people protect you?'

The pixie shrugged. 'Something like that.'

'It not work. Here I am. There is no hope for you!'

But even as he spoke the gremlin could see that things were not going quite as he had planned. Before the eyes of the fascinated onlookers the elf suddenly became a great queen.

She is taller and larger, an Amazon of a woman who had been hidden in the frail pixie body. Her limbs are golden and powerful, her hair long and curly and thick as merino's wool. She's a warrior and a mother, Boadacea and Joan of Arc. She is the simple peasant diligently tending the garden that will feed her family through another year. She is the matriarch of humanity. She is the Earth, Gaia, and she's damned if she'll see her children fucked around with by this little deviate any more.

Fear flickered in Hideo's eyes for a moment before its was replaced by determination. Raphael was completely overwhelmed by the transformation of Galatea into the Goddess. His jaw dropped and so did the handfull of shurikens he had been about to throw at Hideo.

'Little Yoshiwara,' the Goddess's voice washed across the crowd like a warm wave. 'You have caused much pain to my children.'

'Gaia! Face to face we meet, but it does you no good. I am already killed. I die many years ago at Hiroshima.'

She smiled down at him, a little patronisingly, perhaps. 'Yes and really, Yoshiwara, I think that's your whole problem. Rendered discorporeal at the heart of a synthetic sun you were gathered by Nemesis. You were turned into a synthetic creature. Perhaps once I return you to your true form you will find your soul.'

'My soul? This is nonsense. You talk all fiction!'

'We'll start at the top. Hair,' she commanded and Hideo's bald, deformed skull was covered instantly in a downy growth which only seconds later became thick, lustrous hair. His skull began to change shape and a metal plate came sliding out. It fell to the ground with a 'clank' like a closing sewer access lid and left him with a normal looking head.

The Goddess raised one finger and the milkbottle glasses dropped away from Hideo's face. For a moment his eyes were visible as pus white cataracts but he closed them as if in pain and when he opened them again they were normal. Plain brown eyes that blinked in surprise as teeth erupted from his gums, forcing him to spit out the dentures he'd worn for so long. As the real teeth grew, his jaw changed shape and his face simply looked human.

The Goddess paused to appraise her work. 'That's a little better. At least you look presentable now, but you've got not guts and no backbone. Well, the solution, my dear, is alimentary...'

He fell, twisting and writhing in the snow as Gaia worked at straightening out the bits of him that weren't visible. 'Get some balls, Yoshiwara, and instead of acting like an arsehole, just use one occasionally. Well, I think that's about it. Oh...the ingrown toenail...' she cast a dramatic bolt of energy at the man standing before her. 'There you go.'

He was a presentable, if somewhat anachronistically dressed young man. He stared up at the Goddess, awestruck by her.

'Now you are one with me again, Yoshiwara. If you put radioactive material into my oceans, you will get sick. If you cut down my rainforests, there will be no air for you to breathe. There will be no rainfall and your crops will not grow. Eat bad food, Yoshiwara, and your belly will ache and your arteries will clog and your heart will fail. I give you my gift, Yoshiwara, and my only punishment. I give you life. Use it to your advantage.'

And then she vanished. The great Goddess shrank away leaving only the little pixie standing beside the elf and the reindeer. Both the elf and pixie look somewhat stunned by the performance, though perhaps not quite as much as the man. The reindeer is the only one apparently unimpressed by the performance. He removes the stocking hat from the pixie's head with the tip of one antler and moves around the crowd, offering the cap to the onlookers.

They of course drop money in and he finally returns to the pixie with the hat jangling with coin. She takes the hat and climbs onto his back. The elf picks up the Christmas stars he dropped and jumps up behind the pixie. They ride off into the night, leaving the confused man and the wildly applauding audience.

A woman in the crowd turns to the man. 'I just love street theatre. It's so...spontaneous.'

The unicorn returned them to Galatea's garden. They slid down from his back and Galatea fed him a handfull of herbs, still growing despite the cold. Raphael removed the tinsel from his neck and hung it on the bare branches of the trees.

'I always thought you were just kidding around with all that unicorn talk.'

Galatea shrugged and grinned. 'I know. Everyone does. I prefer it that way. I'd sooner be thought of as a bit eccentric than deny my friend here.'

'I'm not sure I believe what just happened.'

'Things just got put right, that's all.'

'All those people saw me.'

'Trust me, they thought it was a Christmas thing. Come to think of it, I always thought you were rather Christmassy, red and green,' she tugged at the dangling ends of his mask.

'Watch it!'

Galatea laughed and looked into her stocking cap, counting their take.

'How much?'

'Enough for a couple of giant family size pizzas.'

'I don't think I'm that hungry.'

'I'm sure these guys would be happy to help.'

Raphael turned, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello came silently through the garden, grinning at their brother. He looked about but the unicorn had vanished.