Leslie Brown's "Wake-Up Call": Fairy tale for children

This is not quite a story for grown ups - you really need to suspend belief. But if you have story sessions at home with little kids, you should be able to spin an interesting yarn based on this.

Full text of this story is available online.

Story summary.
A pregnant woman has a stroke & goes into coma. It is in this state that she delivered the baby girl, Dagmar - unaware of delivery. She will be in this state decades - in a nursing home. But she will periodically wake up during these years, & behave strangely.

The story is a first person narrative by Dagmar when she is 16, describing her encounters with her mother when she was briefly awake - just a half dozen of them over the years.

Turns out - while the mother is in coma, she is in another world - perhaps a parallel universe where she is a sorceress, married to a magician, has a son 2 years younger than Dagmar - by magician, & is fighting off some kind of a war of witches & wizards! Her brief wake up periods are to demand some things she needs in the other world - when placed in her hands around the time of awakening, these things vanish from this world!

Fact sheet.
"Wake-Up Call", short story, review
Rating: B
First published: First published: Strange Horizons, 30 July 2007

See also.

1. All stories from Strange Horizons
2. All stories involving parallel universes