The Lord of Dreams

by C. J. Brightley

  Claire sighed. “Sure, Mom.” She put aside her book and stood up, stretching her stiff shoulders and neck. She slipped on a pair of bejeweled sandals that set off her summer tan and hurried down the stairs before poking her head into the dining room.

  Her mother glanced over one shoulder as she ripped a piece of blue painters’ tape off the roll. “Thanks, sweetie.”

  “I was going to help with that,” Claire said. “I like painting.” She pushed down a vague resentment that her mother had started without her.

  “You can help when you get back. Thank you, dear.” Her mother's curly head bobbed as she stuck the tape to the trim.

  “All right. See you later.”

  The school practice fields were only a few miles away, and Claire sang along with the blaring radio, thumping the steering wheel with her thumbs in time with the music. The air was still warm at the end of summer, but the hint of crispness promised that autumn was only a week or two away.

  Practice was over when she arrived. Gravel crunched under her shoes as she got out of the car and walked toward familiar crowd of parents and players.

  The boys crowded around the piles of bags, guzzling water from plastic bottles, sweat darkening their shirts. They tore into granola bars and oranges as parents and siblings waited tolerantly.

  Ethan pulled off his shin guards and cleats and slipped on sandals while she waited, then they headed toward the car.

  Ethan flopped tiredly in the seat.

  “Don’t get sweat all over my car!” Claire teased.

  “Coach ran us hard,” Ethan groaned. He upended his water bottle and sucked at it, then sighed. “I’m out, and still thirsty.”

  “You can survive until we get home.”

  Claire left the windows rolled down as they drove out of the parking lot and down the street. She turned the music up and hummed along, ignoring her brother’s rolled eyes. The sun was setting and shadows stretched across the road. Her hair blew in the wind, and she flipped it with one hand, luxuriating in the feel. Sometime in high school, her hair had become curlier, exactly as she’d wanted when she was younger. I look like a movie star.

  Ethan leaned forward to change the radio station. She slapped his hand away. “I’m driving! I get to decide on the music.”

  He grinned and reached forward again, and she pushed his hand aside, stomping on the gas in irritation.

  “You’re going a little fast, don’t you think?”

  “When you can drive, you can critique my driving,” she shot back, glaring at him.

  Something flashed in the corner of her eye. She jerked the wheel, seeing the white of a deer tail disappear into the underbrush beside the road.

  The car fishtailed, and she stood on the brake.

  The car spun. One tire dropped off the edge of the shoulder into the soft loam, and then the whole vehicle seemed caught in a blender. Claire would have screamed, if she’d been able to catch her breath, but something hit her head and everything went dark.

  A spacious vaulted ceiling soared overhead. Both walls and floor were stone, lending the air a vague hum of almost-lost echoes of every sound. The walls to her left were covered in tapestries depicting words she could not read. She wondered for an instant whether it was because she didn’t know the language, or whether it was because she was dreaming. She’d read once that it was impossible to read in dreams. She’d found the idea fascinating, and always wanted to try, but in her dreams she either couldn’t find anything written, couldn’t find a writing implement, or couldn’t remember that she’d wanted to try at all.

  Ethan stood just beside her. His eyes were wide as he looked over the room and its occupants.

  Beds stretched along the left wall, each some few feet apart as if in a long hospital hallway. About half the beds were occupied. All but one of the occupants looked more or less human, though something unidentifiable about them struck her as odd. Five figures seemed to be tending the patients; they were similarly humanoid but slightly strange in a way she couldn’t identify. They moved from bed to bed with quiet efficiency; Claire couldn’t tell what they were doing for the patients. Their clothes seemed strangely foreign and old-fashioned, not at all similar to the medical scrubs she might have expected. Their shirts were dark burgundy, their sleeves rolled up to their elbows beneath dark leather vests. Their trousers might have been black or perhaps charcoal grey, and were tucked into dark boots.

  Sconces and chandeliers flooded the room with light.

  The right wall of the room was lined with tall, pointed windows like those of a chapel. The glass in them was clear and filled with graceful arcing patterns of what she assumed to be leading. One window was open, the glass swung inward on invisible hinges. Outside a storm raged; thunder rolled overhead and the rain on the pavement sounded like ocean waves, shifting with the wind.

  Their entrance did not seem to have been noticed, but then Ethan took a deep breath and one of the doctors looked up.

  The quiet murmuring vanished, and all the figures appeared frozen in momentary disbelief. Then the doctor stepped forward, motioning the others to continue their work.

  He strode toward them, stopping some four feet away. He was pale and dark haired, with bushy eyebrows over brilliant green eyes. A dark cloak fell from his shoulders to his waist. Gemstones glinted on both sides of his collar.

  “Who are you?” His voice was musical and resonant. “How have you come into my lord’s house, and for what purpose?”

  Ethan’s eyes widened and he stood up straighter. “You talk like a king in one of my books!”

  The man’s eyes flicked between their faces. “You have not answered the question. Is that an innocent breach of courtesy or is it by design?” His fingers flexed as if aching to reach for the sword hung at his hip.

  “Um… We’re kind of here by accident,” Claire ventured. Her voice sounded small in the vast space.

  With a rush of cold air and raindrops, of wind and storm and power, something—someone—flew through the open window, dark wings folding up behind him.

  Everyone turned toward him. Those on their feet bowed, leaving Claire and Ethan standing, shocked and awed.

  He barked something in a language they didn’t understand, and everyone sprang into action.

  He wore black, an unsettling pattern of shadow that shifted and resolved into a shirt and dark trousers tucked into black boots. A cloak hung behind him; it might have been made of tattered cloth and raven feathers, but as she blinked it slithered up his shoulders and vanished, leaving only an impression of dark pinions folded up and equally vanished. His cloud of white-blond hair was plastered to his head by rain, and he shook a spray of water from it with an irritated gesture.

  His arms were full, and it took Claire a moment to decipher the shape of the figure he held. The boy was black as night, skin and clothes and hair; not the dark of a human boy from Africa, but the black of coal, the black of India ink. The palm of one hand, hanging helplessly downward, was not pink or warm brown but ink-black.

  Ethan shifted closer to her. “That’s not a human, is it?” he breathed.

  The king’s eyes snapped toward them, flashing blue and gold and silver. He said nothing to them, only murmured something under his breath to the man who had confronted them first.

  The doctor prepared a bed for the boy, and the king laid the boy down carefully, watching with sharp eyes as the doctor bent over the child.

  The boy was clothed in what appeared to be black feathers (or was it ragged cloth?), and his inky hair was as fine as down, the dripping strands splayed across a cream colored pillow.

  The Fae king strode to the window and closed it. The roar of the storm outside was suddenly muffled and distant.

  The floor was wet; the king was drenched and dripped water with every step.

  The head doctor, or so Claire assumed he was, approached the king with a bow, indicating Claire and Ethan with a graceful gesture and began to speak in a low voice. She imagined he was asking what
to do about them.

  The king studied them over the doctor’s shoulder. His eyes were dangerous; Claire felt her insides turning liquid as she tried and failed to meet his gaze. Her pulse pounded in her ears.

  “Why are you here?” He stood in front of them, power and authority and magnetism. His voice reverberated in her bones, threading her veins with light.

  How did I not feel that before? Was I so young and stupid I missed that?

  Claire had to clear her throat before her words were audible. “I don’t know.” She frowned, trying to think. Something about autumn, and driving, and perhaps Ethan’s soccer practice. “I… I don’t know how we got here.”

  “Do you often travel between worlds unintentionally?” The dry humor in his voice made Claire glance up.

  The king’s gaze flickered over her face, lingering on her pendant for an instant before meeting her frightened gaze. “Perhaps… yes.” A strange light appeared in his eyes, something like hope, or the memory of hope. “The mask came off much too easily. You were rejecting it, and had almost entirely succeeded. And you functioned well enough, even with it on. There is more to you than there seems.” He let out a soft breath. “But I fear there is not enough time.”

  Ethan, apparently having missed the humor of the king’s first words or the gravity of his latter comment, said, “Is this some stupid prank?”

  The king’s eyes flashed. Terror shot through Claire, and she put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder, digging her fingers in. “Don’t make him angry!” she hissed into his ear.

  “Why not?” Ethan’s voice rose.

  “Indeed. Why not?” The king raised one elegant eyebrow, blue-gold-silver eyes flashing like heat lightning.

  “I… I just don’t like it,” she whispered. Don’t turn him into a newt! Or eviscerate him. Or whatever you do.

  The king turned away. She couldn’t read the expression that flickered over his face; she was trembling, and her stomach felt sour with fear.

  “What’s up with him?” Ethan whispered as the king spoke with the doctor or servant or whatever he was. Her brother twitched his shoulder against her grip, and she loosened her hand a little.

  “Just don’t be rude,” she breathed. “This is serious, Ethan.”

  “Fine,” he muttered. “I get it.”

  I don’t think you do, she thought.

  The king spoke over his shoulder. “I will send you back where you came from after I have addressed some more pressing concerns.” Blue drops dotted the floor around him, smeared by water and footsteps. He stared at the ink-black boy on the bed while the servant spoke quickly to him in low, urgent tones, then nodded once. He turned toward Claire and Ethan.

  Ethan had, apparently, just began gathering his courage and youthful impertinence. He straightened his shoulders and raised his chin. “Who are you, anyway?”

  The king gave a slow, dangerous smile, showing teeth that glinted white and sharp in the lamplight. Claire realized with a shudder that there was blood in his teeth. No! I’m imagining that! she told herself frantically, but she knew it was a lie.

  “I’m the villain,” he murmured. He twitched two fingers in a slight, graceful gesture, and Ethan gasped. He had barely begun to turn to Claire, his mouth open in a soundless cry, when he faded, growing ethereal and then invisible in a breath.

  He was gone.

  “What have you done?” Claire cried.

  The king raised one eyebrow at her, a thin, mirthless smile playing over his lips.

  “You monster!” She wanted to slap him, to punch his supercilious face in, and force him to bring Ethan back. But she felt frozen, caught in grief she had no strength to endure.

  The king’s gaze grew distant for a moment, and then focused on her, his lightning eyes flashing. His eyes flicked to her necklace, and he twitched his fingers again.

  Claire tried to scream as the world shattered into a hundred thousand bits of spiraling chaos.

  Chapter 12

  Claire groaned, tears springing to her eyes at the all-consuming ache that gripped her body. Pressure and pain were indiscriminate, and she tried to control her ragged breathing.

  “Good. Very good,” an unfamiliar voice said reassuringly. “I’m sure you’re in quite a bit of discomfort, but you’re a very fortunate young lady. Please don’t try to move yet.”

  The bright fluorescent lights seemed to beat through her closed eyelids. “Where am I?” she croaked. Or tried to croak; the words weren’t as clear to her ears as they were in her head.

  “Oh honey, don’t worry about it now.” Her mother’s voice was soft. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “What happened?” She imagined that her words were more clear, stronger.

  The unfamiliar voice said, “You’re in the hospital. You were in a car accident. Your brother is fine. He has a broken collarbone but he’s recovering very well. No one else was hurt, except for you.”

  “Is he okay?” Claire whispered.

  “He’s fine, Claire. It wasn’t even a bad break.” Her mother sounded like she was on the verge of tears, and Claire forced her eyes open.

  “Mom? Are you okay?” Her voice sounded raspy and strange.

  Her mother choked out a laugh. “I’m fine, dear. You’ll be fine too.”

  “It will take some time, though.” The voice belonged to a nurse wearing cupcake-patterned scrubs. She smiled down kindly at Claire. “Your car rolled twice and hit a submerged piling in the ditch. Your side of the car, and you, managed to take most of the damage. We got you stabilized, but you had some pretty serious surgery to go through. We induced a coma and you’ve just come out of it. You’ll feel strange, but you’re healing very well. If you continue this way, you should make a full recovery.

  Claire frowned. Everything seemed hazy, both her eyesight and her sluggish thoughts.

  She went home a week later, home being her parents’ house and not the apartment she’d been planning to move into when she started graduate school. A broken collarbone, three broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a cracked pelvis, some internal injuries that she mentally summarized as “liver and stuff got squashed,” and, the most serious, a traumatic brain injury. The swelling had been controlled only with a medically-induced coma lasting just over a week.

  Her mother had taken a month off of her job at the boutique to take care of Claire, and after a week being pampered at home, Claire insisted that she could go back.

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  Her mother studied her worriedly. “Claire-bear, you look like you got run over by a truck. You’re so pale, and you’re barely eating. And don’t pretend that you aren’t hurting.”

  Claire grimaced weakly. “The drugs make me blah. But Ethan’s here to fetch me the remote and snacks. I can go to the bathroom by myself. There’s no need for you to stay stuck at home every single day.”

  “No more than an hour of television.”

  “I know.” Claire wasn’t even tempted to watch more; she’d pushed the limit once to try to finish a movie. Not long before the end, the headache rose like a great, throbbing ocean of pain, drowning out any other thought. “I’ll be fine. I’ll lie on the couch and veg.”

  After a kiss on her head, and a chat with Ethan, her mother felt reassured enough to drive away for a half-day shift.

  Claire closed her eyes, trying to decide if she felt up to reading or whether focusing on a book would be too much. Maybe a nap would be better.

  “Did you have any weird dreams while you were in the coma?”

  She opened her eyes to see Ethan staring at her from where he sat on the oversized ottoman.

  Claire considered the question. She did have strange memories, but it was hard to piece them into any sort of logical narrative. There was the king, all shadow and danger and malevolence. A boy clothed in black whom the king had carried. Blue ink spots on a marble floor.

  “I think there was a crow-boy,” she said finally. “And a nightmare king who disappeared you.”

  Etha
n’s grew wide. “And he flew through the window like a bird of prey,” he whispered.

  Claire closed her eyes, suddenly aching and dizzy. “It was just a dream.” She toyed with the familiar pendant on its chain around her neck.

  “I’ve never had a dream like that before,” Ethan said. “Lots of dreams feel real, but that one felt important. Like I was supposed to understand something but I don’t get it yet. You remember it, right?”

  “I don’t know if what I remember matches what you remember.”

  “How long was it for you in the dream after he disappeared me?”

  “A few seconds.”

  Ethan frowned. “Dreams are so strange,” he muttered. “I was only out for a few minutes. I woke up right as the ambulance arrived.” His voice changed, and Claire opened her eyes to see him brushing away tears. “It was really rough, Claire. There was blood and everyone was shouting and I was so scared.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words seemed inadequate, and she reached out to put her hand on his arm. “I wish I’d been more careful.” Her throat closed with emotion. I almost got my little brother killed. “I’m so sorry, Ethan.” She rubbed the side of her thumb against the edging on his sling. “Does it hurt much now?”

  Ethan’s eyes widened. “It’s fine, Claire. It was scary to see you like that!”

  Claire smiled faintly. “Yeah. I’m sorry about that too.”

  Claire was more or less mobile six weeks after the accident, but she was hardly up to moving by herself. Graduate school started in two weeks. She’d been reluctant to postpone entering graduate school for an entire semester, so after some serious discussions with her parents and with her doctor about recovery, she had decided to attend this autumn semester, despite the lingering headaches and fatigue. She’d picked out a studio apartment by looking at pictures online; technically her mother had done most of the searching and just presented her with a few options, since she wasn’t supposed to look at a computer screen for more than an hour a day yet.

  Everything hurt, but she was off the painkillers aside from the occasional over-the-counter ibuprofen to push the aches aside long enough to fall asleep. She was nearly bald. An arc of fresh, red scar tissue edged by the dots of staples marred the left side of her head just behind her ear; that was from the longest laceration from the car window. The surgeon had used the same wound to drill into her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. They’d shaved her entire head to stitch up the other lacerations, so now she looked like… well… she wasn’t sure what she looked like. Not a punker; she was too shy and boring for that. Not a cancer patient; the fuzz they’d left over the rest of her head was too dark and thick. But she didn’t look like herself, or what she imagined she ought to look like.