The Giver. Lois Lowry

commands and reminders read by the Speaker.

      ‘Do I have to report it?’ he asked his mother.

      She laughed. ‘You did, in the dream-telling. That’s enough.’

      ‘But what about the treatment? The Speaker says that treatment must take place.’ Jonas felt miserable. Just when the Ceremony was about to happen, his Ceremony of Twelve, would he have to go away somewhere for treatment? Just because of a stupid dream?

      But his mother laughed again in a reassuring, affectionate way. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It’s just the pills. You’re ready for the pills, that’s all. That’s the treatment for Stirrings.’

      Jonas brightened. He knew about the pills. His parents both took them each morning. And some of his friends did, he knew. Once he had been heading off to school with Asher, both of them on their bikes, when Asher’s father had called from their dwelling doorway, ‘You forgot your pill, Asher!’ Asher had groaned good-naturedly, turned his bike, and ridden back while Jonas waited.

      It was the sort of thing one didn’t ask a friend about because it might have fallen into that uncomfortable category of ‘being different’. Asher took a pill each morning; Jonas did not. Always better, less rude, to talk about things that were the same.

      Now he swallowed the small pill that his mother handed him.

      ‘That’s all?’ he asked.

      ‘That’s all,’ she replied, returning the bottle to the cupboard. ‘But you mustn’t forget. I’ll remind you for the first weeks, but then you must do it on your own. If you forget, the Stirrings will come back. The dreams of Stirrings will come back. Sometimes the dosage must be adjusted.’

      ‘Asher takes them,’ Jonas confided.

      His mother nodded, unsurprised. ‘Many of your groupmates probably do. The males, at least. And they all will, soon. Females too.’

      ‘How long will I have to take them?’

      ‘Until you enter the House of the Old,’ she explained. ‘All of your adult life. But it becomes routine; after a while you won’t even pay much attention to it.’

      She looked at her watch. ‘If you leave right now, you won’t even be late for school. Hurry along.

      ‘And thank you again, Jonas,’ she added, as he went to the door, ‘for your dream.’

      Pedalling rapidly down the path, Jonas felt oddly proud to have joined those who took the pills. For a moment, though, he remembered the dream again. The dream had felt pleasurable. Though the feelings were confused, he thought that he had liked the feelings that his mother had called Stirrings. He remembered that upon waking, he had wanted to feel the Stirrings again.

      Then, in the same way that his own dwelling slipped away behind him as he rounded a corner on his bicycle, the dream slipped away from his thoughts. Very briefly, a little guiltily, he tried to grasp it back. But the feelings had disappeared. The Stirrings were gone.

      

       Chapter Six

      ‘Lily, please hold still,’ Mother said again.