Dreamwalker

by C. S. Friedman

  “Come,” he said suddenly, rising to his feet. “Enough for tonight. Jessica has had some sleep, but the rest of you haven’t. You don’t want to go into battle without being well-rested: Trust me on that.” He indicated the cave. “There are blankets in there; take whatever you need to make yourselves comfortable. I’ll wake you in the morning.”

  I got up to follow the others, but before I took my first step Sebastian said, “Jessica, your clothes should be dry by now. Why don’t you help me take them down?”

  Help him take two pieces of clothing down from a clothesline? Was he serious? I glanced at where my things were hanging, so far from the fire one could barely make out the outline of them. And then I got it.

  “Sure,” I said, and I followed him in that direction.

  My clothes, as it turned out, were not completely dry yet, but with the others rummaging in the cave for blankets and the darkness of midnight closing in, we had as much privacy as was possible in this place.

  He took out a folded piece of paper from his coat. It was a large piece when opened out, and drawn on it in red and black ink were a series of diagrams. The first few looked like the floor plans of a building. Beneath that were some spider-like sketches that reminded me of a metro map. Everything was labeled, but in the darkness I couldn’t read it. Should have kept my flashlight, I thought dryly.

  “Those are the plans for Shadowcrest,” he said, “as best my memory serves. The route labeled in black is the way I travelled when I escaped my own imprisonment there. Follow my steps back to their source and you will come to the place where your brother is likely being held. The details in red indicate things that others have reported to me since then. I can’t vouch for their accuracy, but I included them in case you are forced to choose another path. Better unverified information than none at all.” He paused. “This is what you wanted from me, yes?”

  I suddenly had a lump in my throat, that made it hard to speak. “Yes,” I whispered. “It’s … more than I dared hope for. Thank you.” I looked up at him. “But why talk to me alone? We’re all in this together.”

  He shook his head. “Three of you are in this together. One is a boy you picked up en route, whom you know nothing about. And yes, I know your instinct is telling you to trust him—that’s clear from the way you look at him—but trust me, people from this world may look just like the folks back home, and we may want them to be like the folks back home, but there’s more dividing our two worlds than a mystical barrier. You have no idea where his loyalties lie. You can’t begin to name the prejudices that drive him. You don’t know his real feelings about what you’re planning to do. So for your safety, and that of your friends, you should part from him as soon as possible. And until that time, share no information with him upon which your life might depend.” When I said nothing, he put a finger beneath my chin and tipped my face up until I was looking in his eyes. “Promise me that, Jessica.” When I was still silent he pressed, “for Tommy’s sake.”

  Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. Finally I nodded, because he was right. I didn’t want him to be right, but I knew in my heart that he was.

  “Good, then.” He glanced back to make sure we were still alone, then took a small object out of his pocket. It was a glass sphere, maybe an inch in diameter, hanging from a thin chain. Clear glass with tiny golden threads running through it, that glittered in the moonlight. “I want you to have this. Guard it with your life, because if the Shadows find out you have it that will indeed be the price.”

  “What is it?” I murmured.

  Silently he placed the marble in the center of his open palm and focused his attention on it. After a few seconds, ribbons of golden light began to swirl out from the depths of the glass. A glowing pattern perhaps three feet across took shape in the air above his palm. Familiar, it was so familiar … could it be the pattern I had seen at the Gate? No, not quite that, but something similar.

  Then he closed his hand about the marble and the light disappeared.

  “The portals don’t actually transport you from one world to another; they simply allow you to enter the formless chaos that lies between the worlds, from which you exit elsewhere. Some worlds, like this one, have a powerful attraction, and tend to draw travelers to them, but if you want to go anywhere else the journey is much more precarious. Many have become lost between the worlds, trapped in a terrible darkness from which there is no return.” He held up the marble before me. “This is a codex. It’s a kind of fetter the Shadows create to facilitate travel between the worlds. Activate this one when you step through the Gate and it will help you reach Terra Colonna safely.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “No guarantee on the time frame.”

  He took my hand, pressed the marble into my palm, and closed my fingers over it. “I risked much to obtain this,” he said, a tremor of emotion in his voice. “Now I give it to you, for your brother’s sake. Guard it well.”

  I stared at him. For a moment I was speechless. “I can’t,” I said finally. “I can’t take this from you.”

  “I want you to have it.”

  “But if you did want to go home someday … wouldn’t you need it?”

  He touched a hand gently to my cheek. There was a terrible sadness in his eyes. “I told you before: I’ll never walk that road again. Better this should be in the hands of someone who can use it. Someone whose family is still alive, and needs them.” His hand fell away from my face. “I failed to rescue my loved ones, Jessica. Let me seek my redemption in helping yours.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. “Sebastian, I can’t ever—”

  “Shhh.” He put a finger to my lips to silence me. “Just say thank you. I ask for nothing more.”

  I whispered it from the depths of my heart: “Thank you.”

  He turned away before I could say anything more, and probably that was a good thing. My throat had become so tight from emotion I couldn’t have gotten another word out.

  After he left me I stood there for a long while, feeling the weight of the codex in my hand. The weight of this whole mission on my shoulders. Tears began to flow freely down my face, but they were good tears. The kind that wash away pain.

  Tomorrow the final leg of this journey would begin. Tomorrow I would rescue my brother or die trying.

  Slipping the chain over my head, I dropped the codex inside my shirt so no one would see it. Then I headed back to the cave to see if I could get a few more hours of sleep before we started back to Luray.

  24

  VICTORIA FOREST

  VIRGINIA PRIME

  THE BLACK PLAIN beneath my feet feels solid enough, but this time I know that it isn’t. Beneath my toes I can sense the thrumming of a terrible chaos, that measureless void where nothing is real, which my dreaming mind has frozen into solid form. The realm between the worlds. That’s what my dreams have always been about. I sensed the truth without understanding it. I witnessed a multiplicity of worlds without knowing their names.

  How much of what I see is real, how much is metaphor, how much is just illusion? The glassy surface beneath my feet feels solid enough, but I sense that’s just a feature of the dreamscape, an image my mind supplied to mask a reality I can’t yet comprehend. Now that I don’t need the mask as much as I once did, it’s becoming less substantial. Reality is seeping into my dreams. I recall the darkness that engulfed me as we passed through the Gate, and I shudder. Will it come to the point where my dreams deposit me directly into that void, without any familiar images to serve as anchor?

  All about me I see doors. This time they all look like the entrance to the Green Man’s cave, burlap curtains hung from stone archways. The stone surrounding them doesn’t end suddenly, but bleeds off into the darkness on all sides. And the curtains waver as I look at them, as if they are fading in and out of existence. It’s as if the whole place is becoming less solid as I look at it. Less real. Clearly the constructs of my dreaming mind are beginning to break down. But what lies behind them: reality or madness?
>
  I walk to the nearest curtain and pull it aside. Beyond it I see a dark room with a small boy huddled inside. Tommy. I watch him for a moment as he sleeps, his body twitching like a kitten’s as some unseen nightmare wracks his brain, and my heart aches. Is this a world that is merely possible, or one that actually exists? If I had the right codex and a Gate to transport me, could I travel to the place where he’s sleeping, right now, take him up in my arms and bring him home? Or am I only dreaming things that might come to pass, but which, like Schrodinger’s cat, are not yet realized?

  I walk to another curtain, but I don’t open it. I don’t need to. The worlds that are clustered together will all be similar; the ones that are farthest from me show the greatest variance. So if I walk for miles in this place, what will I find? A world where Australopithecus Afarensis rules supreme? Where soaring pterodactyls still fill the sky? Or perhaps where the landscape is so alien and the life forms so incomprehensible that I won’t be able to make any sense of it at all. Behind me I can see that I’ve left a thin trail of golden fire, marking the path I have been walking. It reminds me of the pattern I sensed within the arch back home, just before the Shadow passed through it. Are the two connected? Will manipulating one affect the other? Or is the similarity a fantasy, conjured by a mind that is desperate to discover meaning in such things?

  Too many questions. Too many questions. I sense that the truth is out there, waiting for me to discover it, but I’m not sure that I can face it and still remain anchored in reality. A world needs boundaries. A soul needs limits. In a place where everything is possible, nothing can exist.

  No wonder dreamers go mad.

  • • •

  I woke trembling; it took me a minute to remember where I was. Fortunately Sebastian had brought some embers into the cave just before we all retired, so we weren’t in total darkness. By their dim orange light I could see three dark, blanket-swathed bundles on the floor. It took my sleep-addled brain a few seconds to remember that Sebastian had insisted I take the bed. I’d been wounded, he said, and needed it more than he did.

  The pterodactyl was asleep on my chest. Apparently it liked me.

  As I looked around the room, it struck me that something was wrong. Why were there only three people on the floor? I could see the spot where a fourth blanket was lying, but there was no one underneath it. Who was missing?

  I pushed aside my blanket gently, nudging the snoozing creature (bird? reptile? dinosaur?) off my chest as gently as possible, then sat up and looked around. Everything looked normal, except for the missing person.

  I got up and padded out of the cave as softly as I could, trying not to trip over any sleeping bodies. Maybe Sebastian had just gone off to do some hermit-type errand. He’d probably berate me for worrying, when I finally found him.

  Hopefully that’s all it was.

  Most of the sky was still ink-black, stars glittering overhead like diamonds. But to the east the first light of dawn was rising, and a thin line of pale blue was edging up from behind the mountains, outlining them in dramatic silhouette. As a city girl I wasn’t used to such sights, and for a moment I was so entranced I almost forgot what I had come out here for.

  Almost.

  I headed to the campfire area to see if anyone was there. Along the way I caught sight of a figure standing off to one side of the path, near the edge of the shelf. He was staring at the sunrise, so focused in his observation that he seemed unaware of my presence.

  Isaac.

  Conflicting emotions churned in the pit of my stomach. On the one hand I felt overwhelming gratitude toward him. Without him, Devon would have probably been killed in the raid, and God alone knew where Rita and I would have wound up after that. On the other hand, Morgana had talked about things she could only know if there was a spy reporting to her, and how many people in our party were in a position to fill that role? Seyer had suggested that she could influence whether I went back to the Warrens or not, and wasn’t it Isaac who had tried to talk me out of doing that? It was too much coincidence for comfort.

  A cold sadness filled my heart. I liked him. I wanted more than anything to be able to trust him. But if he really was spying on me for the Seers, how much of our relationship was even real? Maybe the chemistry I’d imagined between us was just a game to him, something he was fostering in order to manipulate me more easily. How much did I really know about him?

  “Why are you doing all this?” He spoke so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that it made me jump.

  “Say what?” I stammered inelegantly.

  Slowly he turned to look at me. “This trip. Crossing over into an alien world without any real preparation, taking crazy chances once you get here … why do you do it?”

  “You know the answer to that,” I said. “I’m trying to find Tommy.”

  “Why?”

  I wasn’t sure what his point was, but the intensity of his expression told me that it wasn’t just a casual question. “Like I told you before. He’s family.” I shrugged. What more could you say? All my hope, dreams, motives, and fears were wrapped up in that one statement. “I know you had a falling-out with your family, but if you heard they were in trouble, wouldn’t you want to help?”

  He hesitated. “Crossing over into an unknown world, knowing I might never come back?” He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you’d do it.” I was trying not to think about the “knowing I might never come back” part. Of course I’d go back home when this was all over. And Tommy would come with me. Someday soon, God willing. “It’s natural to doubt that now, especially with what’s happened to you. But you still love them, right? So I’m sure you’d do whatever was necessary to keep them safe.”

  A haunting sadness filled his eyes. There were volumes of things not being said, and I sensed behind them a sea of sorrow so vast and deep you could drown in it. Just for a moment, and then they returned to their usual unreadable state.

  “Love isn’t the same for us as it is for you,” he told me. “Passion isn’t valued by my—” he hesitated. “By my family.”

  “How can loving your family be bad? Other than when it makes you run off to strange worlds to rescue your kid brother… .” I forced a smile to my face, trying to ease the mood.

  He shook his head tightly. “It’s not just family. Any strong attachment is bad. To people, to things … even a love of beauty can betray you. Anything that makes you lose focus.”

  He turned away from me, back toward the sunrise. A thin band of gold was creeping into the sky. Soon the sun would breach the mountaintop and molten light would flood the valley. Maybe he didn’t want to miss that sight. Or maybe he didn’t want me to look in his eyes any more, for fear of what I would discover there.

  “What’s it like to care that deeply about someone?” His voice was little louder than a whisper. “Does it change who you are?”

  I wasn’t totally sure I understood the question. “Why would it? Nature meant us to love. It’s part of being human. Look at how long Sebastian has held onto his passion, even though his family passed away long ago. When we connect to other people… it’s what makes us real. It’s what keeps us alive.”

  I thought I saw his shoulders tremble slightly.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked softly. When he said nothing I dared, “Do you miss your family? Is that it?”

  I knew nothing about his background save what Ethan had told me—that he’d left home to escape an arranged marriage. I couldn’t imagine anything my own family would ask of me that would cause me to abandon them for so long.

  “You don’t understand,” he whispered. “You can’t understand.”

  “Maybe not … but I do know that it’s okay if you’re conflicted about it. You left home for a reason, right? Not because you didn’t care about your family. And I’m sure that deep down inside they know that. Maybe someday you’ll go home, and things will work out. If you showed up on their doorstep tomorrow—”


  Suddenly the words caught in my throat. I was remembering that terrible day when my dad left us. Years later I came to understand why that had happened, and the rational half of me recognized that it had been coming for a long time. But we’re not purely rational beings. There was a part of me that would never understand or accept it.

  As far as I knew, Isaac didn’t hate his family or his home life. He left because his parents had wanted him to do something he found untenable, and he thought that was the only way out. But there had to be another way. No family on the face of the earth—any earth—wants to lose a kid over something like that. Oh, sure, they’d yell and scream if he showed up on their doorstep without warning, and he’d probably be grounded until Doomsday, but they’d get the message. When a kid cares so much about something that he’s willing to give up everything he loves for it, parents have to listen. Right?

  But I couldn’t tell him that. No one could tell him that. It was the kind of thing you had to discover for yourself.

  Quietly, I walked up to him. He stared out at the sunrise in silence and said nothing, but I knew that he was aware of me. He had that look on his face that guys sometimes do when they’re feeling so much emotion they don’t know how to process it. At times like that there’s nothing you can do but stand by their side, share their space, and just let them know they’re not alone.

  At one point I took his hand, or maybe he took mine. I’m not sure. We watched the dawn together, sharing the beauty of a world being revealed to us inch by inch, mile by mile, as golden sunlight flowed across it, purifying and awakening every living thing in its path.

  I still didn’t know how I felt about the spy issue. But the chemistry was real.

  25

  SHADOWCREST

  WHEN THE SHADOWLORD ARRIVED Tommy was at the far end of his cell, looking as miserable and forlorn as it was possible for a thirteen-year-old boy to look. He was tucked into a rocky niche barely larger than he was, with his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms wrapped tightly around them, staring into space and muttering inaudible things to himself. Soul-shards flitted about him like flies near rotting meat, and occasionally he lifted a hand to swat at them. On those rare moments when he connected with one, his hand passed right through it.