The Weight of Dreams

by Molly Lavenza

  "If you're trying to hit one or both of us, you're close. Reach a little more to your left . . ."

  I pushed myself up off my knee and swung my hand out, still coughing intermittently, and almost caught Lantis in the chest before he grabbed my fist reflexively, his smirk never faltering for an instant.

  "Now, now, I just told you that you had to go to the left to hit the imposter."

  His words were annoying, but his tone was infuriating, as usual. I would have sighed if I could have gotten enough air in my lungs to do so.

  "Oh, no. This is not happening," Not-Declan growled, his own voice low and upset. Either he had caught sight of my greenish-cast or there was something worse going on that I wasn't even aware of yet.

  "What are you on about?" Lantis frowned at his brother, but Not-Declan ignored him, reaching out to take my hand instead. He held it gently in his own, rubbing his thumb over the top of it and sending a shiver up my arm.

  Whether he was truly Declan or not, my body was affected by him, and I had to be careful not to let it lead me astray. Every time it seemed like I had passed some sort of test, another one was thrown my way, and I couldn't be distracted by my physical responses if I was going to make it.

  Make it. Whatever that meant.

  As I stood up, my stomach rebelled against my efforts and before I could turn away, a gush of water rushed through my mouth and nose, burning a path along the way where I was already sore.

  I thought I had coughed it all up earlier when I was first pulled from the lake, but clearly, that wasn’t the case, and now Not-Declan was wearing more water than he had already soaked in.

  “She can’t face her in this condition. Does anyone know how to reverse it?”

  Not-Declan didn’t seem upset by my impromptu regurgitation, even if it was all over his pants and shoes. His Converse were a soggy gray now, the grungy ivory just a memory after our underwater excursion.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as I tried not to wallow in the pain shooting through my chest and throat, tuning into the conversation beginning just over my head.

  If they thought I wasn’t paying attention because I was sick, they might reveal even more of what I should, no, what I needed to know before they took me to this mysterious, destined place.

  Before I met her.

  “If you had been here for the past eighteen years instead of tracking this child, you just might have the answer to your own question,” Lantis sighed dramatically after he spoke. I kept my head down and my hands on my knees, hoping they thought I wasn’t listening.

  “As if I had a choice!” Not-Declan’s hiss made me cringe involuntarily. He had acted as if he wanted to find me and bring me to Faerie, and I had believed him.

  Had it all been a lie?

  “Ah, do I sense a bit of resentment? Who are you, really, and how did you manage to tap into this reservoir of conflicted feelings?”

  My head popped up of its own accord, before I could stop it. There was no way I was going to miss Not-Declan’s explanation, even if it meant I would hear something else that would call Declan’s behavior into question.

  Even if it revealed that it had all been a trick, and everything that had tried to harm me in Faerie so far was nothing compared to what I would face next.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Guys, I seriously do not feel well.”

  I had waited for several minutes as the silence between Lantis and Not-Declan stretched out, realizing that watching them stare at each other was not going to enlighten me in any way.

  Not-Declan’s fierce gaze shifted drastically as he turned his head towards me, concern written all over his face. He was so overdramatic, whereas Declan had been so calm and collected. Most of the time.

  “Do you know if you swallowed any of the lake water?”

  I looked away from him, holding back from rolling my eyes. Of course I had swallowed a vat of that stuff, and while it seemed obvious to me after hacking it on the bridge and then more just moments ago, apparently it wasn’t clear to him.

  He wasn’t the one who felt like he had been barfing up his lungs.

  “My brother isn’t the brightest faerie in the bower, but truly, you are more dim than he is,” Lantis shook his head, rolling his eyes as he insulted the other boy.

  My own experience with Declan was so very limited, and while most of the time since this Not-Declan had appeared I was pretty sure he wasn’t the real Declan, there were brief instances when I wondered.

  What if he was?

  His hand on my back was firm and insistent, which definitely was not Declan-ish. I stepped forward and away from him, not wanting to confuse myself with my physical attraction to him.

  “Can we take a break, just for a little bit?”

  Lantis kept shaking his head, his gaze drifting over my face. Did he plan to drag me along with him as I gagged intermittently along the way?

  “The lake water. It’s poisoned, too.”

  This wasn’t welcome news, but it explained why I was sick, and maybe why my skin had that creepy green tinge.

  I rubbed a hand over my forehead, but it was cool, so I didn’t have a fever. Did faeries get fevers?

  “We need to keep moving. I promise you, it isn’t far.”

  Lantis wasn’t the first guy I would trust when it came to promises, and after I had spent the majority of my high school career being bullied, that was saying something.

  “But she’s in no shape to deal with her. We both know that she won’t spare an ounce of pity or decency on Hope.”

  As if my own body wasn’t rebelling against me, Not-Declan’s discouraging words made my stomach lurch. Nothing was left, though, so I dry heaved for a few moments until I felt his hand on the small of my back. Again.

  Why did he think he could just keep touching me?

  “I really don’t feel prepared for whatever meeting is lined up for me,” I tried to be snarky as I complained, but I sounded more whiny than snotty. “This was definitely added to my agenda for today.”

  Lantis’s smirk returned, and I felt a small surge of triumph. I didn’t even like the guy, so it made no sense, but nothing about this day did.

  “I need to know what’s going on. There’s some expectation that I can do something to help Faerie, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that if I have no clue. About anything.”

  Now I was the one being dramatic, but I hoped that my words and tone would make them pay attention.

  If I just sat down, right there on the grass where we stood, would they pick me up and carry me? How impressive would that be?

  Did I need to be impressive?

  “What you need to know is that this sickness you have now, after ingesting the lake water, is going to get worse.”

  Lantis looked up at the robin’s egg blue sky just as a cotton ball shaped cloud lazily streamed by, creating a picture perfect view. He didn’t seem too worried about me and how much worse I would get.

  I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t, so I turned to Not-Declan. His white eyes freaked me out so much more than Lantis’s, and I blinked a few times after our eyes met briefly.

  “It’s a poison, and the immediate reason we need you in Faerie.”

  Not-Declan followed Lantis’s gaze towards the sky and I took a deep breath, fighting another wave of nausea and annoyance. Neither one of them was giving me much to go on or think about, and I didn’t see how I could do anything to help anyone.

  After all, I had been a dying faerie girl in the human world only hours earlier, but now I was expected to know how to save Faerie from poison?

  Meanwhile, the only two people, or faeries, I guess, who could help me were staring up at the impossibly perfect sky like it was just another day, and maybe we were all on a happy little picnic.

  Either they were in a rush to get me where they wanted me to go, or not. I shook my head, but before I could admonish them for their ongoing confusing and frustrating behavior, I was slammed into the ground and Not-Declan was ho
lding me down.

  His hand was on my head and all I could see was the dirt under the grass. The grass I now had in my mouth.

  “Hey!” I sputtered.

  “Shhhhhhh,” both of the boys hissed at me, like I was an unruly child in a library. Lantis’s knee was close to my face, but that was all I could see until Not-Declan removed his hand and moved over to lay down in the grass beside me.

  His face was pale, and he looked so terrified that I kept my mouth shut. What were we hiding from, and how had it come up on us so quickly?

  Lantis was still on one knee, and I could hear his breathing, heavy in the silence. Whatever it was that was threatening us was incredibly quiet.

  A rush of giant, flapping wings bore down on us right before I was going to look up, saving me from losing an eye to a thick, sharp talon. It wouldn’t have been my first interaction with a talon that day, but I was determined not to add the encounter to that list.

  “She’s not going to let Faerie go without a fight!”

  Not-Declan called out, his voice muffled in the tall grass. Did he think that this creature had something to do with the role they wanted me to play here in Faerie? Was it sent by the oft-mentioned but never explained her?

  Lantis began speaking, but the noises he made didn’t make sense. The creature cawed and shrieked, and I turned my head to try to get a glimpse of what I assumed was a gigantic bird.

  I was wrong.

  Of all the things I could have imagined in Faerie at that moment, the one that made the most sense was the last.

  Not-Declan gripped my arm as I stared, speechless, at a dragon the size of the house I shared with my human parents. It snorted, and huge puffs of smoke trailed from its nostrils as it glared at Lantis, who didn’t seem scared of it at all.

  He was shaking his fist at it, which seemed not just dangerous, but a little silly. What could Lantis do against a beast with that temperament and size?

  I almost buried my head back into the grass, but before I could, the dragon, with its bronze scales burnished bright in the sunlight, began to back away slowly. It didn’t seem afraid of Lantis, but instead it was responding to whatever he was telling it.

  Not-Declan didn’t seem to share my surprise, but kept silent, his hand on my arm and his head down.

  “I’m really Declan,” he murmured after a few moments, when the dragon had stepped even farther away from us. At any minute, though, it could have jumped on us without warning, and I worried that any sound or movement might provoke it.

  So I ignored him. I couldn’t really deal with a dragon, Lantis speaking to a dragon, and Not-Declan turning this into a situation about himself.

  I wished that I could have brought Corrie to Faerie with me. She would have at the very least been able to manage the boy drama. Dragon communications, maybe not.

  My hair fell across my face and I lifted my hand to push it out of my way. For a short time I had forgotten that I was slowly turning into a shade of Kermit the Frog, but now, reminded of my condition, I wanted to see what the boys could tell me about this poison.

  Or boy, rather. Not-Declan had made it clear when they were arguing about it that he knew nothing. And what had Lantis said? That Not-Declan should have been in Faerie instead of looking for me?

  To which Not-Declan said that he hadn’t had a choice?

  “Hey,” I dared to whisper, after turning my head to face him. Our faces were closer than I expected them to be, and his smile was as charming as it had been hours ago when we first met.

  No, no, no. It wasn’t this boy I had met. Or had it? It didn’t matter. I wanted him to answer one question, one question only. For now.

  “What did you mean when you said that you didn’t have a choice but to look for me?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Not-Declan’s smile faltered, then faded completely. I waited, listening for anything else that might come up or over us with fangs or wings or talons. Nothing would surprise me anymore.

  Or so I thought.

  “Not now,” he spoke so quietly and seriously that I barely heard him well enough to understand the words. I couldn’t look at his face for very long because of his eyes, so I rolled over onto my back, slowly and carefully, and found Lantis staring down at us.

  “What!”

  I kicked out at him but didn’t make contact, my legs weaker than they had been before our swimming expedition. Lantis just smiled, satisfied that he had annoyed me.

  For a moment I wondered if this what it would have been like to have a troublesome brother, and it made me appreciate being an only child all these years.

  Maybe I wasn’t really an only child, I thought, the idea hitting me hard as Lantis watched my expression.

  Not-Declan was on his feet now and offered me his hand to help me up. As much as I wanted to refuse his assistance, I didn’t feel like I could make it on my own so I put my pale green hand in his and let him pull me up as Lantis took a step back.

  “Do I have any brothers or sisters here?”

  Both boys frowned at me, then looked at each other, their timing almost comical. As if on cue, they both started to laugh, and Lantis waved one of his hands at me, as if he was dismissing the idea.

  “You can’t be serious!” He managed to sputter as his laughter continued. I didn’t understand what was so funny about it. The two of them were brothers, or so they said, so it wasn’t as if faeries didn’t have multiple children.

  “I’m sorry,” Not-Declan spoke up, taking deep breaths as if he was trying to calm himself down after so much laughter. I narrowed my eyes at him, feeling as if I had been doing that a lot with both boys.

  “Once you know, then you’ll understand,” he went on slowly, shaking his head. It was absolutely infuriating.

  “That’s the problem! I don’t know anything! Declan didn’t tell me much, and you two haven’t been helpful.”

  I was yelling, which I probably shouldn’t have since there may have been a dragon close by, but I couldn’t help it. The only thing keeping me from hunting for a way back into the human realm was my death sentence.

  On your eighteenth birthday, you won’t wake up.

  Declan had told me that much, at least, so I knew that whatever awaited me here, at least I had a chance at survival. My fate might be more violent than dying in my sleep, though, and I wanted to have every opportunity to avoid that.

  After all, Declan had brought me here to save Faerie, so it was at least fair to ask that I live through my attempts to do so, wasn’t it?

  “We need to keep moving. I’ve put off the dragon for now, but she sent him, so we know for sure that she’s aware of us. Of Hope.”

  Slapping Lantis wouldn’t help, but the urge was nearly uncontrollable. They were ignoring me, and I wasn’t going anywhere until I got some answers.

  Hadn’t I thought that before? And here I was, still blind to what was ahead.

  “I’m not going anywhere until I know what this poison is, and how I’m supposed to help.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and lifted my chin, daring them to continue to act like I hadn’t said anything.

  Lantis closed his eyes and shook his head, but Not-Declan’s white eyes grew larger as his shoulders rose and he grew stiff, his body falling forward onto his hands and knees. I thought of an old werewolf movie my dad and I had watched once on late night TV, where the man had transformed, complete with cheesy special effects, into a wolf.

  Without thinking, I dropped on my knees beside him. He might not have been my Declan, or maybe he was. I wasn’t sure, but he looked enough like him for my response to be instinctual.

  “I couldn’t do it. Tell her, Lantis, that I just couldn’t do it.”

  He must not have realized that I was with him as he spoke through gritted teeth, his face turned towards the ground.

  Did he want Lantis to tell me something, or was it the other her? I wished that I had a name instead of just a pronoun to go on.

  I looked up at Lantis. His mo
uth was set in a thin, firm line, and I remembered the first lux Declan and I had faced. Hadn’t she called him a failure?

  Did that have a connection to what this boy was telling, begging, Lantis to do?

  What if this really was Declan, changed by something inexplicable into either something horrific or . . .

  His true self.

  I wished I could stop thinking for a few minutes and just be. Just absorb the gorgeous landscape, and bask in the new health I enjoyed here in Faerie.

  Or had enjoyed, until I had dragged us all in the lake.

  My hand was on Not-Declan’s back, and I let it rest there, not really sure when I had reached out to touch him. He made a strangled sob and dropped flat onto the grass, his eyes closed as his head turned to the side, facing me.

  “We have to go, right now.”

  Lantis spoke immediately after Not-Declan’s collapse, but I couldn’t just leave him. If it really was my Declan, then I hadn’t even known the real one. Whoever it was who had brought me to Faerie was some sort of mask he had worn. A mask with beautiful, icy blue eyes and a trustworthy smile.

  Where was that smile now?

  I shook my head and shifted closer to the boy on the ground beside me. My hand didn’t move, not even a little as it should if his chest was moving.

  “He’s not breathing,” I looked back up to Lantis as I spoke, my voice loud and panicked. I couldn’t freak out, though, not when Lantis was standing still as if nothing was the matter.

  If I couldn’t count on anyone else, I had to rely on myself.

  The wind kicked up around us as I pushed at Not-Declan in an attempt to roll him over, and I tucked my chin down to my chest to ward off the force of it.

  Lantis called out, but I couldn’t hear him clearly enough to understand what he was saying.

  Why wouldn’t he help me? Even if he didn’t think this was his real brother, there was a chance, wasn’t there?