Mister Impossible

by Maggie Stiefvater

  “What did we do?” Ronan asked.

  Narrowing his eyes, Bryde shook his head a little.

  Ronan pressed on. “Haven’t we been trying? What more do you want from us? We go where you tell us to go, we do what you tell us to do. You asked me to listen, and I listened. What did I do? What did I fuck up?”

  Bryde’s expression changed. “I’m not angry with you. Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  “I don’t, either,” Bryde said. “Why does Adam keep trying to find you in the dreams these past few days?”

  Tamquam

  “And why,” Bryde went on, “are you keeping him out?”

  Ronan felt his face go hot, his hands go cold. He hadn’t thought Bryde would notice. “You don’t know him. He can’t put things down. He’s thorough. He cares. The fact he found a way to look for me in dreamspace as soon as we started getting more energy out there just proves it. If I let him meet up with me in dreamspace, he won’t stop researching the Moderators and all of this stuff until he’s solved it. I’m not going to be the one who gets him kicked out of Harvard.”

  “For his own good,” Bryde said, but not as if he believed or disbelieved, just as if he was anticipating the rest of Ronan’s sentence. Then he looked away, and as he did, he had that same expression that had made Ronan think he was upset with them. His eyebrows set, eyes tight, mouth tight. Not as effortless as the Bryde they’d met all the weeks ago. In a low voice, he said, almost to himself, “No, I’m not angry at you. You have done everything I’ve hoped. You and Hennessy are much different than I expected. Better than I expected.”

  Ronan’s mouth opened and closed. It was such the opposite of what he was expecting to hear that he didn’t have any words at all.

  “No, I am not angry at you,” Bryde continued. “I’m tired. I’m proud. I’m confused. I’m sad, because I know things can’t stay like they are now. We are working even now to change things and it will never be like this moment again. It is a ridiculous way to think, to be more interested in the present than the future, and if it were you or Hennessy, I would never permit it. I won’t lose my way. I know that. But I can imagine it. It is me—it is me I am angry with.”

  It meant more to Ronan than he thought to hear all these words, even if he didn’t entirely understand them.

  “We are nearly to the final step,” Bryde said. “There is only the dam left. Then it will be a different game entirely.”

  “Why are we here, then?” Ronan asked, and Bryde’s mouth turned rueful, which made Ronan think he had been expecting Ronan to ask something else, although he couldn’t imagine what that something else might be.

  “This is just a reward. This is just so you can see why we’re doing it and sleep a night on a real pillow and bask in the gratitude of one of the many voices who have your names on their lips these days. You’re a hero. Enjoy it.”

  A hero. It was an unfamiliar concept. Ronan had been the villain for so long, if he had been anything. The one in trouble, the one written up on the slip, the one being chased, the one being accused. And before that he had been the young dreamer. Secret. Forever. Now he was a hero to a family of young dreamers who would never have to feel alone.

  Both Bryde and Ronan jumped as they heard a trilling sound. It was Ronan’s dreamt phone. He’d nearly forgotten he still had it; he hadn’t used it since that first call to Declan.

  And it was Declan now. There was no way to identify the caller visually, of course, since the dreamt phone just looked like a tunnel piercing. But nevertheless, something about the ring strongly implied that it was Declan.

  It was a jarring interruption. Declan belonged to another world, a different timeline, but with a glance at Bryde, Ronan tapped his finger against his ear to answer it. “Deklo.”

  “Good, it worked.”

  Ronan said, “How did you do it?”

  “I had to get back the car I was in when you called before and find your call in the previous calls in its log. I couldn’t type in that gibberish, of course, that showed up as your number, but I could just ask it to return your call.”

  “Wait, what car were you in before?”

  Declan didn’t bother answering this. “I want you to come to Mass this weekend.”

  It took Ronan a moment to parse the request. It was a quite ordinary one, one Declan had made countless times over the past several years, resulting in Ronan rolling his eyes and leaving very early in the morning in order to make it to eleven o’clock Mass with his brothers on the other side of the state. Now it felt like someone else’s memories. A dream.

  It occurred to Ronan that something bad might have happened. “What’s going on? Is Matthew okay?”

  “Family meeting,” Declan said, a Declanism that never failed to rankle. Family meeting meant Declan shaking his finger at one of the other Lynch brothers.

  “About what?”

  “About the future.”

  “Are you fucking serious about Mass? That’s in two days.”

  “I have faith in you.”

  “A lot of people are on our tail.”

  “You tell us the church, the location, we’ll be there.”

  Bryde was waiting, eyebrow raised.

  “My brothers want to see me,” Ronan told him. It was making his pulse jack up for some reason, the thought of it, or the thought of telling Bryde about it. He couldn’t tell which. “This weekend.”

  Declan asked, “Who are you talking to? Is that Bryde?”

  “We have a date with Ilidorin,” Bryde said in a low voice.

  “I have to think about it,” Ronan told the phone. “I’m not close to Boston.”

  “What’s important to you?” Declan asked. “I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.”

  Bryde was still looking with his same expectant expression, hand on the doorknob to go to the dreamers they’d come to see.

  “I have to go,” Ronan said. “I’ll call you back.”

  He hung up.

  He thought he grasped what Bryde had just been talking about before the call, because he, too, felt somewhat torn between the possibility of seeing his brothers again for a few minutes, and the knowledge that the dreamers were nearly to the end of the first part of this endeavor and whatever would change once the final obstacle to Ilidorin’s line was removed.

  “I won’t tell you what to do,” Bryde said. “But I need to go on after this. I can’t stop this close to the end.”

  “I know,” Ronan replied.

  It was complicated to be a hero.

  Matthew was walking.

  Not wandering, this time, but walking determinedly. Declan had told him he’d talked to Ronan and to stay put while he went out to take care of errands. He hadn’t said the two things were connected, but Matthew guessed they were. He’d had to guess, because no matter what Matthew said, Declan still failed to have real conversations with him. He confided in Jordan if he confided in anyone, and just kept pointing out dogs to Matthew. This filled Matthew with bad feeling, and the bad feeling, on top of all his previous bad feeling, set him to walking.

  Not wandering.

  Walking.

  Like a human, not a dream.

  He marched, hands stuffed in the pockets of his bright blue puffer jacket, head down. Watching his sneakers slap one in front of the other just made him walk faster and harder, dark pavement and sidewalk disappearing beneath them. Declan thought these big white sneakers were ridiculous. Matthew knew that now. He hadn’t when he’d bought them, all excited about having put away enough money. Aren’t they super? he’d said, and Declan had murmured, They are the most memorable pair of shoes I’ve ever seen, and at the time Matthew had thought that meant Declan loved them as much as he did.

  How stupid he’d been, he thought, his ears burning red. How stupid he’d always been about everything.

  Even the idea that Matthew had been excited about finally acquiring enough money to get the shoes was ridiculous. The money wa
s from a weekly allowance that came from doing chores, a system started by Aurora back at the Barns and continued by Declan, even after they moved to the town house. Matthew had never questioned the correctness of this. Yes, of course he received an allowance for cleaning his room, vacuuming, unloading the dishwasher, spraying pine cleaner on the town house’s front door to get the pollen off, cleaning the trash out of Declan’s Volvo after school.

  God, he couldn’t bear thinking about it. He just couldn’t bear it. It had just been Declan’s money, just an older brother giving pocket money to a stupid little kid who stayed stupid even once he got big. All Matthew’s friends at school got jobs bussing tables and working cash registers and Matthew got bills in a mug on the kitchen counter. And now it was no different, he just collected the allowance from gallery owners who gave him odd jobs as a favor to Declan, because they thought Declan Lynch’s kid brother was cute and his love of ugly sneakers was funny.

  Matthew kept walking, walking. Stomping. He walked right out of their neighborhood, past restaurants bustling with diners and comely brick row houses bright in the evening, by a little convenience store that reminded him of the one Declan had sometimes stopped at back at home when he forgot to get milk during the week. He thought about the times they’d just sat there for several long minutes with Declan staring off at nothing with the receipt for the milk pressed between his hand and the steering wheel. Aren’t we going home? Matthew would ask. Play your game, Declan would reply, and Matthew did, he just played whatever stupid game he had on his phone while his older brother sat there at a gas station five minutes from home for sometimes nearly an hour rather than going back to the town house, and Matthew had never once asked him why they were sitting there or what Declan was thinking about or if he hated everything about his life.

  And now this thing about sweetmetals—this thing they were supposedly pursuing to keep Matthew safe while not talking to him about any of it?

  Everyone still acted like he was just a pet.

  Matthew’s feet kept on marching him along, farther from home. “Home.” With quotation marks, because home without quotation marks was either the Barns or the DC town house. “Home” was a Fenway apartment Matthew thought of as Old Man Eyebrows, because of how the detail work over the windows looked like fat, frowning eyebrows. It had seven rooms, which Matthew had mentally named. Twice. Once after the Seven Dwarves, and once after the seven vices. Happy Gluttony was the kitchen. Bashful Sloth, the living room. Grumpy Lust, Declan’s bedroom. So on. So forth. Declan liked the apartment. Matthew could tell Declan liked it. He liked everything about his life here, even though Matthew wasn’t exactly sure what his life here even entailed. He didn’t talk to Matthew about it. Declan didn’t say he was happier, but he clearly was happier. It made Matthew feel kind of bad inside.

  Enormously bad inside.

  He didn’t know why.

  His feet had taken him to a part of the city that seemed to be nearer to the water and farther from people and businesses. Beside him was a raised bit of highway that just ended in midair with weeds beneath it, ready for an action scene.

  Declan would have been extremely displeased to find him here.

  Back when Matthew learned he was a dream, Declan had told him that he was just as much a Lynch brother as the other two, but Matthew knew now that wasn’t true. Because he wasn’t being sent to school. He wasn’t being prepared for a future. He was being tended and loved and managed. The thing about this life of Declan’s, Matthew thought, the thing about it, was that Matthew was just a thing in it. A dream object. A puppy to be walked and then returned to “home” with some of the energy burned off.

  His eye was caught by an unoccupied crane, a spiffy one. It had one of those big boom things that looked like a ladder and at the top of it was a hook.

  Matthew thought, without hesitation: I’m going to climb that.

  He did. He clambered onto the body and then onto the boom, up and up and up. He thought how annoyed Declan would be. Good, he thought. Good, good. But I told you to stay in the house, Declan would say, confused. You’re supposed to stay exactly where I put you, like a toy.

  He kind of wished he’d never found out he was a dream.

  At the top of the crane boom, Matthew closed his eyes. He used to imagine that air was a hug that was always happening, but he couldn’t seem to conjure up that happy thought right then.

  It had taken Matthew a long time to understand that he was a boat anchor in Declan’s life.

  “Crumbs!”

  Opening his eyes, he realized there was a tiny person looking up at him. A tiny Jordan. Well, a regular-sized Jordan, far below.

  She shielded her eyes. “Yeah, I thought that was you!”

  “You can’t make me come down,” Matthew told her.

  “I sure as shit cannot,” she agreed, “but it is harder to talk this way, you up there, me down here.”

  “Don’t talk to me like a kid. I can tell you’re talking to me like a kid and I don’t like it.”

  Jordan crossed her arms, a posture readable even from up on a crane. “All right, here you go, then: Climbing up on a stick into the sky is a stupid way to process any kind of problem, but stupid’s your right, so if you want to stay up there, just lemme know how long it’ll be, so I can know if I have time to get a drink, or if I should just hang here.”

  “Why do I need to be watched at all?”

  “Because you climbed a crane, mate.”

  Matthew considered this and then considered it some more and then, with a sigh, climbed down to where Jordan waited. “How did you know I was here?”

  “You walked right by my studio. You didn’t recognize it?”

  He hadn’t. Stupid.

  “What’s the deal here?” Jordan asked as they began to walk back the way he’d come. “Are you giving rebellion a go? Is this about your brothers lying to you?”

  Because she just said it instead of mincing around it, Matthew told her. He told her everything. All the things that were bothering him, from big to small and back to big again.

  “That all sounds truly fucked up, and I’m sorry,” Jordan said, opening the door to Fenway Studios. Together they walked down the hall toward the studio she stayed in. “The problem as I see it is that some of that shit’s about being a dream, but some of it’s just about growing up, and honestly, both are sorry situations if you ask me about it.”

  “I did,” Matthew said.

  “You did what, mate?”

  “Ask you about it.”

  She laughed her enormous laugh as he smiled at her. She lightly high-fived him and then pushed open the door to let them into the studio. “Ah yeah.”

  “Whoa,” Matthew said. “This is good.”

  Since he’d been last, Jordan had accomplished huge amounts of work on her copies of El Jaleo and Madame X. Each canvas had a separate, smaller easel sitting in front of it, with reference photos and jotted palette notes and instructions and business cards taped all over them. But what he was looking at was the work she’d done on the portrait of Sherry and her daughter, the one he’d helped her with at the very beginning. It was still coming together, but their faces were very good and the colors were as understated and lovely as the John White Alexander paintings she had taped on the easel beside it.

  “Thanks,” Jordan said.

  “They’re way better than this other weird stuff.” The rest of the studio was full of the ordinary studio occupant’s work—colorful, elongated nudes with cucumber-shaped breasts.

  “Not really,” Jordan said. “I mean, Sargent’s better than Sir Tits here is, obviously. That’s why Sargent’s famous and this guy is just, you know, this guy. But these paintings of mine are copies. At least this guy is making original stuff. That’s part of it, I think. I don’t know much about sweetmetals, but I know I’ll never make one painting Sargents.”

  Matthew moved Jordan’s pillow to sit on the bright orange couch. “So what do you think will do it?”

  She
perched on the arm. “It’s what that guy said, isn’t it? Boat fellow, the one your brother took us to see. The art’s got to do something to the artist. It’s more about making it than what gets made. It changes them, I guess. If you’re a bang-up artist who always paints great work, it doesn’t mean anything when you make another great work. It’s got be something else, not trauma, exactly, it’s more like … energy and movement. One makes the other. There’s movement in their life, their technique, somehow, that captures that ley energy, its movement. I guess. I don’t know, really. I’m talking out my ass, and if my voice sounds desperate to you, it’s because of that, it’s coming from my ass.”

  Matthew liked that she was talking to him like he was a real person. “So you think making an—a not-copy, a, uh, an original, will make a sweetmetal for you? Because you always do copies?”

  She pointed at him, snapping her fingers. “Right. Right. That’s what I’m hoping. But I just won’t know if it works until I need it, will I? I’ve been working on an original, that painting of your brother, but I can’t tell, sitting here, if it’s working. I can’t feel any of the sweetmetals the same way these past few days, actually, because of whatever Hennessy and Ronan are doing with the ley line. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed you’ve had fewer of the episodes?”

  Matthew was so relieved to hear her say it, like it was just a normal, commonplace thing. “I haven’t been wandering!”

  “Right? When I first got here, I felt the sweetmetals so strongly. I could feel El Jaleo doing something to me, I guess because I needed it. Now it feels like there’s more energy to be had all around, so I just feel normal when I see it. I mean, I love it, yeah, sure. But I don’t know if I’d be able to tell it was any different than an ordinary painting if I saw it for the first time today. So I can’t feel if my painting is getting there or not.”

  “You could get another dream,” Matthew suggested. “A sleeping one. From a dead dreamer. Back at the Barns, there’s loads of my dad’s still, probably.”

  “That’s a really good idea.”

  She sounded like she really meant it, too. Because of this, he felt bold enough to ask, “Can I see it?”