Exit Light
Authors: Megan Hart
Tovah Connelly would rather be asleep than awake. Since her accident, she’s become a shaper in the dream world, the Ephemeros, where she can manipulate places and people with just a thought. Tovah’s friends there, Ben and Spider, encourage Tovah to develop her skills, but the one ability she doesn’t want is to control the dreams of others—it’s a power she’s wary of, and a responsibility she’s not ready for.
Nobody can sleep all the time, though—not if they want a waking life that bears a semblance of normalcy. And Tovah’s waking life is vastly different from her dream life: she’s rebuilding and regaining her sanity after nearly losing it in the accident’s aftermath.
But when nightmares begin rocking the Ephemeros, Tovah’s two worlds begin to collide. As those she cares about are threatened, Tovah may discover that the one responsibility she doesn’t want is the only defense she has.
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Megan Hart
This book could not have been written without the support of my family, friends and critique partners. Thanks to everyone who believed in it, and me.
In dreams, anything is possible.
A crowd ripples just like the ocean, if it’s got a force pushing against it. Tonight, here and now, Tovah Connelly intended to be that force. She concentrated, drawing strength from the myriad individual consciousnesses surrounding her. From one she plucked the beat of a song while another provided the taste of a tropical drink, sharp in the back of her throat. From yet another she drew the feeling of silk, a dress, hanging short upon her thighs.
Around her, the club grew brick by brick, created from the mingled desires of many but woven together from the force of her will. That was the way things worked here in the Ephemeros, the land of dreams. The landscape bent to the individual will of those who knew how to shape it. Some were skilled with it. Others, like Tovah, had only just discovered their abilities to move and shape the world they entered when they slept. And still others, less fortunate, would never know how to shift their bodies or mold the terrain to suit them. They would never know that in dreams, they could control the world.
Now she pushed outward with her will, seeking what she needed from the sleepers around her who wanted, needed, but couldn’t shape this for themselves. The walls formed, and the floor. A bar. A DJ, spinning tunes she didn’t need to know to enjoy. Tovah opened herself to the ever-constant push and pull of desire and, like a conductor, took the jumbled mass of notes and made them into a symphony.
It would be easy to lose herself in it. Even now she felt the tug of another’s will upon her, urging her body to shift and change to fit someone else’s vision. She shielded herself from it, turning the tug into a push of her own and using it to create another slew of small details to bring realism to this scene.
“Hey, hey.” The voice pricked her ears even above the writhing, pounding music surrounding her, and Tovah turned.
She didn’t see him at first, shrouded as he was in shadow. The darkness rippled the same way the crowd had when she teased it with her will. Spider, the size of a large cat and striped with bands of crimson and gold, flicked his mandibles at her. He pulled the darkness back around him, his will stronger than hers, and she moved forward so as not to lose sight of him.
“Spider, how do you expect me to learn if you keep balking me?”
“How do you expect to learn if you’re never pushed?” Spider’s feet clicked on the tile floor. The crowd parted around them as he backed up, and Tovah followed.
The current of mingled desires flowed around her, tendrils reaching out to caress as she passed, but she ignored them. She followed Spider out of the club and onto the grass, a place where even an arachnid the size of a household pet would feel more comfortable. She didn’t want to lose the club and so kept the doorway fixed behind her. The Ephemeros never stayed the same unless it was held in place by desire. She could talk to Spider and hold the door, but she had to be careful not to get distracted or else anything could shift. It was a balancing act, one she was only slowly learning how to perform.
Spider squatted in a tuft of purple grass. His coloring had changed, now banding his round, hairy abdomen with green and silver. A lamppost of filigreed iron slid out of the mist and highlighted a circle of earth around him. Tovah didn’t think spiders could preen, but this one did.
“Very nice,” she said.
“Thanks.” Spider smoothed one jointed leg over his head and set of eight wee ruby eyes. “How
you
doing?”
A
Goodfellas
spider. Tovah laughed. “I’m fine, Spider. How are you?”
He bounced lightly on eight legs, his colors swirling again before settling into a pattern of mottled blues and greens. “Fine. Fine. You been practicing?”
Tovah looked at the lamppost, which became an old-fashioned gaslight under the subtle pressure of her will. “A little.”
It wasn’t a lie. She did, sometimes, spend her time in the Ephemeros practicing the complicated task of building and destroying worlds. Just not as often as Spider thought she should.
“You should practice more.” Spider didn’t look with even one of his eyes at the post, and it changed back. “You’re too easy to push. Almost as bad as a sleeper.”
She frowned. “Hey.”
Spider managed a shrug without shoulders. “I’m just saying. You take too much from them instead of making it yourself. You rely too much on them. Anyone can come along and push you, that’s all. Not all of them are as nice as me.”
Taking from sleepers was different. They couldn’t do it for themselves, and yet they still needed whatever it was their minds were trying to create. Tovah knew there were shapers who didn’t play by the rules, those who used their skills to force their will on those weaker than they. But most shapers she’d encountered were careful not to use their will on other shapers without permission. It would have been rude, like peeking at someone in the shower. They might be sharing the same dream space, but they weren’t necessarily sharing the same dreams. She’d met a few rude sons of bitches who’d tried to convince her she wanted bigger breasts or blonder hair, but she’d been able to put them off without any trouble.
“You know, Spider, there are assholes in the waking world who think they have the right to push other people around, too. I get by.” She looked over her shoulder at the doorway of the club. It had been a plain wooden doorframe a moment before; now it arched and featured a bolted door padded with crimson satin. Someone had done that, not her, but as long as there was a door, she didn’t care what it looked like.
“This ain’t the waking world, Tovahleh. I’m just looking out for you.”
Tovah looked back at Spider, who’d become her dear friend in a time when she’d desperately needed one. “I know. You’ve taught me a lot, and I appreciate it. Really.”
“But you want me to back off.”
“A little, yeah.”
Spider made a low noise but didn’t argue further. From behind Tovah the door flew open and a woman stumbled out. She was represented as having blond hair and a slim form. Barefoot, clad in a long white nightgown, she was the epitome of a gothic heroine, complete with a rose clutched in one hand.
Spotting Spider, she shrieked. Again and again she cried out, hysterical, sobbing. She cowered against the doorway, her fingers scrabbling at the wood but never letting go of the flower. Though the air and earth rippled around her, nothing changed. She wasn’t a shaper.
Tovah remembered how it felt to be powerless against fear. The first time she’d met Spider, Tovah had been as terrified as this woman. She looked at him. He’d grown larger. No help, there. “Spider, c’mon.”
Spider did nothing. With a disgruntled sigh, Tovah turned back to the blonde woman. “Shh. You’re having a dream.”
The woman screamed again and covered her face, though Spider hadn’t moved toward her. Tovah bent and put a hand on her shoulder, shaking gently. The woman stopped screaming and looked up, eyes wide and mouth lax with fear.
“You’re having a dream,” Tovah repeated. “What’s your name?”
“Princess Pennywhistle.”
Tovah laughed, though she knew she shouldn’t. The woman might be representing as a gothic heroine but she thought she was in a fairy tale. “Princess. This is a dream, okay? That spider isn’t real. This is all a dream.”
Strands of midnight suddenly streaked the sunshine of Pennywhistle’s hair. Her nightgown shortened over a body fuller in the hips and breasts than it had been a moment before. She dropped the rose.
“A dream?”
“Yes. It’s just a dream.”
The woman looked around, eyes still wide. “Are you sure?”
Tovah nodded and gave her a confident smile. “Absolutely.”
The other woman closed her eyes briefly. “I’m not here.”
“Well…” Tovah shot Spider a look, but he was no help. She fudged her answer a bit, not wanting to get into a deep philosophical discussion about the technicalities of being “here.” “You’re dreaming. Which means you can go anyplace you like. Wouldn’t you like to dream of something nicer than a big, ugly, hairy spider?”
“Hey!” Spider complained. “I’m not ugly!”
The woman flinched when he spoke and turned her face away. “I would love to dream of something nice.”
“Then all you have to do is do it. What do you want to dream about?”
The now-dark-haired woman didn’t answer in words. She stood, her body changing once again. The front of her nightgown swelled. Her hair grew lush and long, swirling around her. She ran her hands over the bump of her belly and smiled with an uncertainty that made Tovah’s throat close with emotion. She’d had the same dreams, once.
Spider had been the one to teach Tovah how to escape a nightmare. Now she painted letters with her finger in the air above the door. They became a blinking neon sign, familiar to most people.
“See? Look there. It’s an exit light. Just go back through that door,” Tovah prompted. “You’ll be all right. And remember, you control your dreams. They don’t control you.”
The woman nodded, already losing sight of Tovah and Spider as she turned and went through the door. It closed behind her with a snap. Tovah looked back to her friend. It was impossible to read his expression, since he had no mouth or nose and was an arachnid, but she guessed at his mood anyway.
“She was terrified. What was I supposed to do? Just let you scare her into apoplexy?”
Spider chuffed. “She needed to be scared.”
“Spider,” Tovah sighed. “Who really ever
needs
to be scared?”
“Lots of people. Why does anyone need anything? I dunno how it works, Tovahleh, just that’s how it is. In here, everything that happens to you is because you need it for some reason.”
“Who decides that?” She threw out her arms, wide, and turned in a circle with her face turned up to the night sky her will had shaped and Spider’s had pricked with stars. “God? Who?”
“I don’t know.” Spider sounded sad. “Believe you me, kiddo, I wish I did.”
Tovah shot him a sharp look. “I couldn’t just let her scream herself sick because of you. What harm does it do to tell her she can control what happens here? She can, you know. We all can, if we try.”
“She wasn’t a shaper.”
“She shaped.”
“You guided her.”
“You guided
me,
” she reminded. “Maybe she’ll learn.”
Despite what she’d just said, Tovah knew that was unlikely. Dreams arose from individual experience, thoughts, memories. Fears. But it took desire to shape the dream world to one’s own purpose. Conscious desire. And remaining conscious in the land of unconsciousness wasn’t a talent granted to everyone.
Spider got a little bigger, his front legs rubbing against each other. Another chuff, this one sounding like a laugh. “You done good with her. Helped her out. You’re a good guide.”
Now she knew where this was going. She waggled a finger. “Ah, ah, ah. No. We’re not going there. I don’t want to be a guide. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone else but me. That’s too much pressure, Spider.”
“Too much work, you mean.”
“That, too.” She reached behind her to touch the wood of the door, making sure it hadn’t gone away while Spider distracted her with discourse. “I’m going back to the club.”
Spider sighed, a sound so human and so at odds with his inhuman features Tovah stopped. “So much to do here and all you wanna do is play.”
Good friends can get away with saying things like that, and Spider had become a very good friend. Still, Tovah’s back stiffened and she clenched her jaw. “I’m a grownup, Spider. I know the rules. I’m not the only person who wants to play.”
He snorted, his body turning completely black. “That don’t make it good.”
Exasperated, she snapped, “Why does it make it bad?”
Spider said nothing for a moment. This wasn’t their first argument. She knew him. He was thinking of a way to zing her.
“It’s dangerous,” he said, surprising her.
His concern touched and irritated her. She didn’t miss the irony of him warning her against danger and urging her to become a guide—which would mean deliberately opening herself to the shaping of others. Talk about dangerous.
“I can take care of myself, Spider.” She softened. “Really. I promise. You taught me, remember?”
Spider sighed. “How could I forget?”
Tovah blew him a whimsical kiss, the pair of red lips like a butterfly fluttering from her fingertips toward him. “I’ll see you later.”
Spider grunted, low, and scuttled forward. “I haven’t seen you in a while. You been avoiding us?”
“Of course I haven’t.” Guilt pinged her. She had, maybe a little. She turned the handle of the door but didn’t open it. “I saw Ben just a few days ago. And look, I’m here with you, now. Besides. You know you can always find me if you want. It’s not so easy to find you.”
“Ben does.”
Geographically, the Ephemeros had no boundaries. It was as likely for her to meet someone who lived in China as it was for her to bump into a man she’d passed that day on the street, or her neighbor, or a friend. It didn’t matter where their physical bodies existed. The only requirement was that the other person be dreaming too.
Add to that the ability to shape your surrounding reality, and the Ephemeros offered limitless opportunities for interaction. Shaping your reality meant shaping your companions, too. Creating a past lover’s face on someone didn’t always mean that lover was really there.
That’s what guides did. Filled in all the empty places, the roles in others’ dreams. A good guide was also a good shaper, able to mold a cast of thousands from nothing but the gray mist of the Ephemeros, and all based upon the desire of the person they guided. Guides helped sleepers finish what they started.
It was too much work. Easier to…not steal, exactly. Tovah didn’t consider what she did as theft.
Nipping
was a better word. She nipped bits and pieces of what others wanted or needed and used that to create what she did. If that meant there were sleepers out there haphazardly populating their dreams with half-formed figures and uncompleted tasks, well…that wasn’t her problem.
Tovah forced her gritted jaw to relax before she answered. “Ben’s a better shaper. I get it, Spider. Ben works hard. Ben’s a good guide. Ben can make the Eiffel Tower out of a couple of toothpicks. Yeah, I know.”