Emerald City Dreamer (53 page)

A VOICE CALLED TO HIM from across the world. The elf Be Chuille spoke to him through the fathoms of soil and rock, from one point on the round earth to another. He arose and traveled the furrows until he stood once again in that dark cave beneath the basement of a simple house a hill, in the city of Seattle, in the New World.

His stooped head and shoulders pressed against the ceiling, causing crumbles of dirt to fall to the floor. He settled in against the wall.

Jett stood before him, and at her side, that girl, the kind one, Jina. Now she seemed so young and small, not powerful in the slightest. Her eyes were red, tear-streamed. Her name was...

"
Jina, isn't it?" he asked. "How nice to see you again."

"
Ezra?" she asked, tentatively.

"
Yes," he said with the patience of stone. "This is me, all grown up. In nykkform."

"
You're not dead," she breathed in relief. "I thought we'd killed you."

"
Not dead," he said, his voice feeling weary. "But no longer able to live."

"
I don't understand..." she said.

The elf wrapped her arm lovingly around the dreamer who was also a hunter. After thousands of years, one thing never changed: the stories kept telling themselves.

"
Here he is," Jett said. "And now I must contact Lady Triona without delay." She disappeared up the darkened tunnel to the surface.

"
I'm sorry," Jina said. "I never thought... I never meant to..."

Orven reached out to comfort her. "You destroyed a shell that contained me. I have had many such lives."

"
How can you be so dismissive?" she said. "What we did was a crime, a tragedy."

Ezra shook his head. "Your mortal mind cannot know what it is to live for thousands of years, to be reborn again and again, and to exist without material form. You do not understand the real tragedy."

"
What can be more tragic than death?"

"
Being exiled from birth.
May the body of man be terror to thee
. I have worn my last blaosc."

"
I can't imagine..." she whispered. "Is there any way I can repay you?"

With fingers the size of branches, he leaned down and picked up a small stone which had been dislodged from the ceiling by his own head. He pinched it until it dissolved into dust. "You can no more repay me than you can put together this pebble. Although if you listen to my tale, you may have my forgiveness. It would mean something to me, to confess my sins and sorrows to a dreamer."

Jina clutched her arms close to her body and sat against the wall, in a fetal position. Despite her closed posture, she smiled and warmly said, "I would love to hear it."

So he told her, all about Father Sigurd, King Olaf, and the gyoja, about being turned to stone, and his lives-long pursuit to fulfill his dream. He spilled forth his soul in the telling, and she listened carefully, accepting all of it, accepting
him
.

"
Thank you for telling me your story," she said when he finished. "I will treasure it always."

The gratitude of a dreamer exuded a special kind of aisling. Orven's heart filled with warmth and he smiled.

"
King Olaf stole a great gift from the world," she added. "People will do anything in service to their beliefs."

This made Orven remember the chanting in that candle-lit room. "They'll do worse when they're afraid," he said, heaving a forgiving sigh that blew against Jina's face. "My timthreall as Ezra was just another failure in a long string of failures. As a nykk, I cannot grasp the structure of reason, and the secrets of architecture are denied me. How will I ever rebuild the cathedral?" He drew each breath of sorrow from the earth, yet no matter how much he exhaled, it would never depart.

"
All those lifetimes, and you never solved your problem," Jina said, shaking her head. "Could it be you were looking for the wrong thing?"

"
What do you mean?" he asked.

Jina stood and began pacing, rubbing her arms with her hands. She paused and asked him a simple question. "From all the lives you have lived, what have you learned?"

It seemed to Orven a silly exercise. Yet there was a hint of toradh in it, like a clever riddle, or the spark of an idea not fully formed, so he reflected. "I have learned that priests were unsuccessful in completely destroying the ways of my people. Six days of the week are named after our gods: Tyr, Wodan, Thor, Frigg, the Sun, and the Moon. Many of the practices of Yule are observed at Christmas, worldwide. The people of my old lands still celebrate Midsummer. My own tale is still told as a fairy story in Norway. Only in it, Olaf is the hero, and I am a devil, trying to steal Olaf's soul. But what use is all this?"

"
There is more to my question," she said, a glint in her eye. "Sometimes when I fixate on the steps of a goal, I forget why I started in the first place. Then it turns out some of those steps were wrong, even though my goal is still right. For example, I once thought the best way to protect the earth from fae was to kill every one. Then I learned there are some worth saving, like you. So are you sure you want to learn architecture? Is that your real goal? "

Orven smiled a great, old smile. "You are as wise as I should be, little dreamer. What I really desire is a place of beauty to share, something magnificent to inspire men's hearts and the souls of the fae. I want mankind to remember their stories and dreams."

"
They say that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Perhaps you learned everything you need to know in a single lifetime. What did being Ezra teach you?"

It was the riddle, asked again, a different way. He thought aloud: "I learned that I have a tendency to run from a bad place to a worse place. That no matter how hidden my talents are, they will shine through. That I should be less trusting of some, and more trusting of others. These lessons are of no use to me now."

He leaned against the wall and puzzled for a long, long time. His timthreall as Ezra seemed like such a waste, and yet, when forced to reflect on it, he
did
find something of value. "The
Wanderers
of the Way reminded me of something ancient, something I'd forgotten: Worship need not be housed in a building. Reverence can be a shady forest or a cool breeze. That is something I knew well, before I met Father Sigurd, when I lived my long solitary life in that ancient wood."

Jina picked up a pinch of dust that was left from the stone he had crushed. She held it up in the palm of her hand. He noticed for the first time that her hands were red and knobby.

"
You told me I could never put this pebble back together, just like I could never give your life back." She dusted off her hands. "Yet here you are, alive. Isn't it just like your cathedral?"

Orven sighed a great, deep sigh like a mountain gust. "I see. The spirit of that cathedral lives, as I do. The bricks can stand without an architect's pen. They will not be real bricks, but bricks of its soul."

"
You can start right now. Build it again out of glamour."

"
No one will see it except the fae!"

"
And children. And dreamers, like me. We will go there and sense it. And when we squint just right, and believe hard enough, it will appear. We will see your magnificent cathedral. Anyway, what use is a cathedral to an unbeliever?"

Orven leaned forward just a little. A tear dripped down his creviced, stony face. "You did it. You found me a purpose when I'd lost all hope."

"
I didn't do it," Jina said. "You did." She came to him on unsteady legs and hugged him. He wrapped his great arms gently around her. She shivered and he felt the skin of her neck press against his belly.

It was as cold as a corpse.

"
You are not well," he said.

Jina stepped back and drew in on herself again. "I'm faestricken," she said. "I am slowly freezing to death from the inside out."

"
Who did this?"

"
A korrigan. Pogswoth. I think you knew him?"

Orven sucked in a breath. "Barely. A spiteful creature, a browbeater and a liar. He has a 'sick cat' locked away in his dwelling, that I doubt is a cat. Probably a dreamer he is rending." Orven shook his head. "I was so naive. I really believed he had a cat."

"
You know where he lives?" She sounded excited.

"
There is a red building on Capitol Hill. His dwelling lies behind the graffiti of a cartoon face."

"
Behind the graffiti? How?"

"
It is an elf door. You just... walk through the hole in reality."

"
Like Tir Nan Og?"

"
You understand."

Jina appeared uncertain. "I hope so."

"
Jett could show you how."

Jina's face darkened. "She wouldn't. She wants to protect me, and doesn't want me rushing into danger. She thinks there's someone who knows how to reverse this spell."

"
You should listen to Jett. She cares for you, and knows much."

"
No," Jina said shaking her head. "I can't just sit here waiting. I have to at least try, to save myself, and the dreamer you say he has."

The little dreamer did not look in any condition to fight. She had started shivering hard. He watched her pull out her phone and fumble at the buttons.

"
Sandy can't help me, but Trey will. If Pogswoth dies, maybe I live."

It might work. If she or someone else killed Pogswoth... Or if someone held that korrigan's neck beneath thick fists and made him whimper until he lifted the curse...

Orven rose to his feet, pebbles and dirt falling from the ceiling. He gazed at the drop falling from the stalactite into the silver pool. He could be at that red warehouse before Jina could blink.

When he glanced back at her to wave his farewell, her mouth hung open.

"
No..." she whispered. "Not Trey..."

JINA STARTED TO DIAL Trey's number, until she saw that she'd missed calls from him.

There were three messages.

"
Jina please pick up." He spoke in desperate tones. "The iron heart you gave me. It's gone. I didn't lose it. I left it hanging from my lamp when I went to take a shower. When I came out, it was missing. Call me back."

Maybe it fell,
she thought to herself,
and the next call is saying he found it under the bed.

Except from the beginning of the next message, Trey had a fearful tone to his voice that Jina had rarely heard in a man.

"
He's at the door. I saw him through the pinhole. It's locked, of course it's locked. Now I hear the sound of... a spray can. How did he get the iron if he's still--it doesn't matter. Jina, call me back now and tell me what to do!"

That call had come at 3:08 a.m. Three hours ago.

The final call had come from Trey's phone, but the message was not from Trey. At first there was a scuffling noise, and then a thump. Then Pogswoth's voice. "My old dreamer is all used up. Since I couldn't have you, I needed to get a new dreamer somewheres elsewhere. Got to be self-sufficient, get my own toradh, not mooch from the commons. But I would rather have you."

It was as if Pogswoth had run out of milk and gone down to the 7-11 to pick up more, to find they were out of 2%.

When she ran upstairs she found Jett sitting on the porch in a thin sundress sipping lemonade. "Lovely morning. I made you coffee." Jett gestured at a steaming mug on the rail.

"
I wish it was morning," Jina said, snatching it up. It warmed her fingers, a little, and soothed the shivering. She hoped the caffeine would be enough to tell her brain to stay awake.

"
Did you call Triona?" Jina asked, hoping she'd have one less thing to worry about when she went to rescue Trey.

"
Call? Lady Triona doesn't believe in phones. I sent a bird."

"
A bird? We don't even know if she can help me, and you sent a
bird
?"

"
The Lady of Undergrow Knowe is bound in the roots of her hearthtree; sap runs through her veins. She is set in her ways and runs on her own time."

That seemed to be the problem with a lot of faeries. A bunch of powerful, crotchety old people who couldn't seem to get with the times. "Can't we go visit her at least?"