Dreamseeker (22 page)

“This Shadow wants to talk to you.” He nodded toward Isaac. “Ten minutes.”

The girl was younger than he was, maybe fourteen, maybe less. The fear in her eyes was unmistakable.

“He just wants to talk,” the overseer assured her. He looked at Isaac; his expression was a warning. “That right?”

“That's right.”

Isaac turned toward the exit and gestured for her to follow. Another child scurried over to take her place, so that her loom never skipped a beat. Both children were like cogs in a vast machine, perfectly synchronized. Had Jacob worked here too? If so, then he had not been free even when he was alive.

Isaac led the girl out of the mill and a short distance away from the building, until the noise of the machinery was no longer distracting. Then he turned to her. “I bear a message from Jacob Dockhart.”

The brown eyes widened in surprise. “Oh my God! Is he okay?” A tentative smile lit her face. “Where is he?”

He'd braced himself for a display of sorrow, but the spark of joy in her eyes was unexpected and surprisingly painful. “I'm a Shadow,” he said gently. “Remember what our Gift is.”

The smile vanished. The moment of joy faded from her eyes, and fear took its place. “You . . . you speak to the dead,” she whispered.

He nodded. What pain there was in her expression now, what raw emotion! No one in Isaac's Guild would ever display their feelings like this, no matter how much they hurt inside. He stared at her in fascination, as if she were some kind of exotic animal.

“So he . . . he's gone?” Her small hands twisted in her skirt, her voice was trembling. “Dead?”

He nodded. “I am sorry.”

“Why?” she begged. She started to reach out to him but pulled her hand back quickly. “
Why?
” she pleaded, as tears began to run down her face.

There was no good answer to that, so he didn't try to offer one. Better honest silence than a poorly constructed lie. “I came to bring you a message from his spirit. Do you want to hear it?”

Eyes wide, she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”

“He said to tell you,
three steps from your mark.”
When she looked confused he pressed, “Does that make sense to you? I believe he was referring to something that belonged to both of you.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Oh,” she breathed. “Maybe. . . .” The words trailed off into silence.

“You know what he was referring to?” he pressed.

Biting her lip nervously, she nodded. Then, with one last glance at the mill, she started walking. Away from the factory, toward an area dense with trees and underbrush. She gestured for him to follow her. As the trees closed in around him, his long robe caught on a thorned branch, and he had to yank it free. Soon it was no longer possible to see the mill through the trees, or any other part of the orphanage grounds. Then the girl stopped, and she reached out to touch the forked trunk of an aged oak, her fingers gently caressing its bark. At the juncture of its two main limbs a design had been carved. At first glance it looked like some kind of abstract symbol, but then Isaac realized it was in fact two initials intertwined:
M
and
J
.

Unfamiliar emotions stirred deep within him. Sympathy? Compassion? The feelings were exotic, intense, uncomfortable.

“Three paces from this,” he said. The meaning of the rest of his vision was now falling into place. “Either due east or due west, directly from this point.”

Three paces to the west there was a mass of underbrush with poison ivy woven into it, so thick that it was clear no one had tried to walk through it recently. Three paces to the east was another tree. Its gnarled roots sketched out a V on the ground, its mouth pointed directly at the spot where they were standing. He pointed to it. “Maybe there?”

She went to the tree, hesitated, then knelt in the soil and began to dig at the vertex of the V. The dirt was loose, Isaac noted, as it if had recently been disturbed. Beneath the top layer of soil was a layer of old leaves, easy to move aside. As she brushed them away, a small hole containing a worn wooden box was revealed. She glanced back at Isaac, then pulled out the box and rested it in front of her. From the look on her face it was clear she had no clue what it was.

She opened it and gasped.

Inside the box was money. Not a lot of it by Isaac's measure, but no doubt a fortune to one in her circumstances. There were small coins, large coins, and a thin wad of bills wrapped in string. There were a few pieces of jewelry as well, one of which Isaac thought he recognized from the Warrens stash. A pocket watch, a pendant, a silver brooch . . . the kinds of items one could pinch from a person in passing. Isaac had lived on the streets long enough to know how that worked.

“We were going to run away,” she whispered. “He told me . . . Last time I saw him . . . he was almost ready. He said that he had everything we needed, and I could go with him. He said he would take care of both of us. Then the Shadows came, and took him away from me. . . .”

With a sob she lowered her head to her chest. The sight of her struggling not to cry broke through all the barriers that he had erected to guard himself from human emotion, and made his soul bleed.

We caused this human misery,
he thought.
My Guild. For no better purpose than our convenience.

“You have the power to leave now.” Isaac spoke quietly. “I'm guessing that's why it mattered so much for him to make sure you got this. But you shouldn't do so now. The masters of this place know that I came here, and if you disappear right away they'll make the obvious connection. It will help them track you down. You understand?”

“I understand,” she whispered hoarsely. The tear-streaked face looked up at him. “He's still around? You can talk to him?”

Isaac shook his head. “An echo of his soul remains, nothing more. Think of it as a recording of his last thoughts, that I managed to hear. Now that their purpose has been satisfied, they, too, will fade. There's no one for you to talk to.” At least part of that was the truth.

She lowered her head again and began to weep, this time without trying to stifle the sound. Isaac watched her for a moment, then turned and left. This was not the sort of scene a Shadow had any business being part of.

Love. Fear. Loss. Mourning. There were so many emotional energies swirling about him that it was overwhelming. Isaac wondered what it would be like to live with such emotions every day, like people outside his Guild did. To be at the mercy of those terrible tides each time one suffered a loss. No wonder the boy's identity had survived death, with so much emotion behind it. Maybe when his spirit learned that its final wish had been granted those emotions would fade, until all that would be left was a mindless and purposeless ghost, identical to every other slave spirit.

Or maybe this one would prove to be more than that, and with its help, Isaac could learn more about his own potential.

He looked back at the crying girl one last time, a strange pang of jealousy in his heart, then started down the path toward
home.

B
LACKWATER
M
OUNTAINS

V
IRGINIA
P
RIME

J
ESSE

D
URING OUR RIDE BACK TO LURAY,
I leaned my head against the train window and watched the scenery go by without really seeing it. The vibration of the glass against my forehead might have been soothing, had I been capable of being soothed. I wasn't.

“No one died,” Seyer reminded me. “That's a good thing.”

“No
people
died,” I corrected her.

I was bone-weary, soul-weary, almost too tired to remember my name. I did remember part of a dream I'd had the night before, and it played out again in my mind's eye as I stared out the window. When had I dreamed it? Right after I collapsed, as I lay half-dead at the edge of the chasm? Just before dawn, when Rita found me? All I knew was that I'd escaped the horrors of the night in the only way I knew how, and in my dreams, sought out one of the few people I still trusted.

The field of battle is still. The fallen bodies are gone now, but their imprints remain in the grass, along with their blood. The tang of black powder hangs in the air, mercifully masking
whatever human smells might cling to this place. It's lonely here. No, more than that: it is the archetypal embodiment of loneliness.

I see a figure standing atop a hill, a soldier with bands of leather crisscrossing his chest. The fingertips on his right hand are black from gunpowder, his boots are coated in mud up to the calves, and his youthful face is splattered with blood. Not his. He looks young, so young. I never picture him that way.

I start toward him, but my body is so drained from my recent experiences I can barely walk. I stumble in the wet grass and go down on one knee.

“When you talk to Her Grace—” Seyer began.

“I'm not talking to Her Grace.” I raised up my head with monumental effort and looked at her. “What's the point? We never found the mandala. We never found anything that even hinted at Dreamwalker activity. All we found were rumors about some boy who slept all the time, and maybe he had something to do with the mandala, or maybe not, but he's dead now, so no one will ever know for sure. I'll tell her all that and then she'll say, I'm sorry, that's not good enough to earn a Potter's service, and I'll say, but what about my mother? And she'll say, it's all very sad, but it's not my problem.” I leaned my head back against the glass and stared out at the landscape. “Might as well save myself the trouble.”

Did I sound bitter enough for that speech to be convincing? The part about my mom was true enough, though the part about failing in my quest was pure fiction. But I needed Morgana to think I was avoiding her out of despair, not because I feared her ability to sense deception. It was easier to stare out a train window and lie to Seyer—and Rita—than it would be stare into Morgana's eyes and try the same thing. I needed to play my part well enough for Seyer to report to her mistress that the failure of our mission had left me so overcome by despair that there was no point in her meeting with me, so that she wouldn't question why I avoided her.

“Just give us the tickets home,” I muttered miserably. “We'll find our own way.”

Private Sebastian Hayes is handsome in his youth, his hair still brown, his face still unlined. But his eyes . . . they are ancient, and they will always be ancient, no matter what form his dream body takes. Clearly he's startled to find me here, in this setting from his past. I see him blink as he struggles to make sense of it. “Jessica?”

I try to get back on my feet, but my legs are unsteady—and then he is right there, raising me up, lending me strength, my one certain anchor in a world where everyone and everything else has failed me. “What is it?” he says. “What happened?”

So I tell him the story. All of it. The dreams, the discovery about Rita, the nightmare in the compound, all of it. My delivery is halting and at times not wholly coherent, but he seems to get the gist of it.

When I'm done he's very quiet. I can sense that he's struggling to digest it all, so I wait. Finally he looks out at the blood-soaked battlefield and says, “So this . . . this is something my own mind created for me?” He looks back at me. “But you being here, in the midst of it, my dream . . .
is that real? Can you enter other people's dreams?”

I nod. It's unnerving to share that secret with anyone other than Tommy, but it's also liberating. A weight that has been suffocating me since the night of the toaster strudel eases ever so slightly. “I trust you,” I tell him. “I know you would never hurt me.”

A shadow passes over his face. “You shouldn't trust anyone on Terra Prime,” he says quietly. “Even me.”

I put a hand on his arm. “The children need help, Sebastian. They have some food and a general idea of where to go—and Moth has enough courage for a hundred children—but I'm worried for them. Please, can you help them? Bring them
some supplies and point them in the right direction? It isn't that far from your own territory. I . . . I have the means to pay for it.”

Those ancient eyes fix on me. So much pain in them. So much weariness. “There's no need to pay me,” he says quietly. “I can't go myself, right now, but I know someone who might be able to do so. I'll talk to him.”

“Thank you,” I whisper. Another crushing weight lifts from my soul. “Thank you so much. . . .”

“What will you do about your mother now? Morgana's not likely to help you if you won't do her bidding. And if I were you I would have second thoughts about meeting with her again. It's rumored she can sense when people are lying, and you're keeping a lot of secrets these days.”

I draw in a deep breath and look straight into his eyes. “I was hoping you could help me with the Fleshcrafters.”

“Me?” He raises an eyebrow. “The Potters owe me no favors. Nothing that I can use on your behalf, anyway.”

“No, but you have access to information. You can help me identify something they want, that I can get for them. Or do for them. Or . . . something.” He doesn't answer me right away so I press, “Is that too crazy an idea?”

There is a long silence. “It's not crazy,” he says at last. His expression is dark. “I do know something they want, and given what you've just told me about your Gift, it might be possible for you to obtain it. Maybe.” He sighs. “You go back to Luray. I'll make what arrangements I can for the children and look into the Fleshcrafter issue. Try to get some rest tonight; you'll need your energy tomorrow. I'll meet you at noon, at the pier where we left Isaac. Hopefully I'll have information for you then.”

I hesitate. “Sebastian . . . the creature that chased me . . . do you have any idea what it was?”

He shakes his head. “I've heard legends about a wraith
that devours dreams, but little more than that. Even if such a creature did exist, none of the legends suggest it would be able to manifest in the real world. The Shadows are the ones who study the dead, so they might know more.”

“Yeah. Like they're about to share their knowledge with me.” I sighed heavily. “So . . . what? If it shows up again, I just run away?”

A faint smile flickers. “I would.”

He leans over and kisses me on the forehead. There is warmth in the gesture but also tremendous sorrow, and I feel a lump rise in my throat. “Be careful, Jessica.”

“
I can't go home like this,” I muttered into the window. My breath frosted the glass. “Going through the Gate brings back such terrible memories . . . I need some time to pull myself together before I have to go through that again.” Maybe it was a weak excuse for delaying our return, but I could hardly tell them why I really wanted to stay in Terra Prime. Hopefully Rita would remember the agitated state I'd been in after our first crossing, and buy the excuse.

She looked at Seyer, “Maybe we could spend a night at the Guildhouse—”

“No,” I said quickly. “That's not right. We failed in our mission, so we shouldn't be asking Morgana for favors. And I . . .” I pretended to hesitate. “I really need some time alone, Rita. Just a few hours. I haven't had a minute to myself since we got here. I'm so sorry, it's got nothing to do with you. I just need to pull myself together.”

“I understand,” she said gently. “I've been feeling a little edgy myself. But where would you go?”

“We've got some cash, right? I guess I could just pay for a hotel room. Like a normal person.”

Rita glanced at Seyer—for permission, no doubt—then dug into her backpack. Taking out the wad of petty cash Morgana had given us, she divided it in two and gave me half. The bills were crisp, multi-colored, and had the face of some unknown queen engraved on them.
I flipped one over to look on the back and see if the little pyramid was there. It was, but without the eye in it. There were other symbols as well, that I didn't recognize.

Tucking the money into my jeans pocket, I rested my head on the glass again and let the vibrations of the train carry me away.