by Kit Alloway
Will blinked. Everything was moving too fast suddenly. “Did you say that Beguiling Dream Walker should be False Dream Walker?”
Katia glanced back at the dictionary. “Yeah.”
“There’s a False Dream Walker? Could he be Peregrine?”
“Maybe. There are a few prophesies about him. Not much. They’re all about him fighting with the True Dream Walker, because the True Dream Walker wants to merge the three universes.”
Deloise’s jaw dropped. “That can’t be right.”
“It is,” Katia insisted. “This part about mixing all the skies in a cauldron? That’s what that means.”
“But…” Will had trouble forming the thought. “But that means that, instead of balancing the three universes, Josh will combine them, right?”
“Yeah,” Katia said again, seemingly oblivious to the implications of what she was saying. “There’s a good Sumerian prophesy about it, hold on.”
She climbed onto her knees on her chair so she could reach across the table and hunt through the files spread across the table. “Is that even possible?” Will asked Deloise.
“I don’t know,” she said. Her face was pale. “I don’t know anything about dream theory. But I know it’s not something Josh would ever want to do. All her life, she’s been obsessed with balancing the three universes.”
Katia held out another piece of paper. “This one is my favorite. The translation’s really good, too.” She read it aloud.
The child shaped her mouth and spoke.
“Mother, tell me of the world’s end.
Mother, tell me of the close of time.
Mother, tell me of the city’s fall.”
The mother shaped her mouth and spoke.
“Child, I will tell you of the world’s end.
Child, I will tell you of the close of time.
Child, I will tell you of the city’s fall.
When the sky is full of fire,
when the mothers fear for the children,
when the grandmothers fear for the grandchildren,
the door will be opened for the Dream Walker,
the entrance march will be played for the Dream Walker,
the rituals will be performed for the Dream Walker.
Then the choice will be made.
The water below will rise up.
The water above will fall down.
The water will swell over the city’s white walls.
Like the flood of old, the water will swell over the city’s white walls.
The Anzu bird will not know the sky from the sea.
The temple priests will not know the sea from the land.
The sheep will not know the land from the sky.
When the dam breaks, the fields will be flooded.
The spirits of the living will forget the World.
The spirits of the dreaming will forget the Dream.
The spirits of the dead will forget the Death.
That which is separate will be combined.
The honey will mix with the milk.
The milk will mix with the ashes.
The ashes will mix with the bread dough.
That which should be separate will be combined.”
“You sort of have to like Sumerian poetry to appreciate it,” Katia finished. “They were super into repetition.”
“Wait,” Will said. He was having a hard time with Katia’s ADD. “How many of the prophesies about the True Dream Walker say he’ll combine the three universes?”
“Umm … half? Maybe? It’s definitely the most common theme. The other prophesies are all sort of random, like the telepathic cow thing.”
“But that means the end of the World, right?” Deloise asked.
“No, it just means it would all go back to the way it was before.”
“Before what?” Deloise insisted.
“Before the first True Dream Walker.”
Will could tell Katia was getting annoyed by their anxiety. “Katia,” he said, “I know we must seem ridiculously stupid to you—”
“Not stupid,” she muttered. “Uneducated, maybe.”
“—but please remember that Del didn’t get your education, and I’ve been a dream walker for less than a year. Please, explain what you mean about the way it was before the True Dream Walker.”
She sighed and sat back in her chair. “Some people believe that before the first True Dream Walker came, the three universes were all one big universe, and that it was the True Dream Walker who separated them, and that one day he’ll return to make them one again.”
“Why would he do that?” Will asked.
“I don’t know. Why did he make one universe into three in the first place?”
“But not everyone believes that, right?”
“No, not everyone. Some people think he’ll create heaven on earth, some people think he’s Jesus, and some people think he’ll show up and have a giant showdown with the False Dream Walker, like at the end of Pacific Rim.”
Will stared at her and then covered his eyes with one hand. “Del, I can’t…”
“What Will’s trying to ask,” Deloise said, “is who wins?”
“The True Dream Walker. Of course. Otherwise what’s the point of the story? It’s extremely archetypal—good versus evil and all that.”
“What happens to everyone if the three universes merge?”
Katia shrugged. “There are a million different theories. I think we won’t sleep or die anymore. We’ll live forever, and when we imagine something, it will just happen.”
“A World without Death,” Will said. He felt like he was sinking through his chair and into the floor. “Wouldn’t Feodor love that?”
Deloise’s eyes widened. “You don’t think—”
“Katia, what are the chances that Feodor knows all of this?”
“Um, like one hundred percent. He literally wrote the book on medieval prophesy, remember? Also, I think he coauthored a paper that tried to mathematically prove the three universes were once one.”
What are the chances Feodor told Josh all of this? Will wondered, but he didn’t ask aloud because he didn’t want Katia to answer.
Any answer besides zero was wrong.
* * *
After they dropped Katia off—her mother was waiting for her on the porch, wrapped in a comforter—they actually did go to Waffle House.
They sat without speaking for a long time, Del’s hands wrapped around a mug of tea, Will shifting uneasily in the hard booth.
You wanted to be prepared to face Peregrine, he told himself. You wanted to arm yourself with knowledge. You wanted to feel like you could protect yourself. How do you protect yourself from the end of the world?
“We have to tell Josh,” he said, just like he had after they’d visited the prison.
This time, Deloise nodded. “Yeah.” She bit her lip and then said, “Just because something’s written in a prophesy doesn’t mean it will happen.”
“It’s written in a lot of prophesies.”
“Maybe one guy made it up, and then other people built on it. Maybe we’re interpreting them wrong. Maybe Josh gets a choice.”
What if she makes the wrong choice?
She had before. And Will was trying so hard to trust her—to trust that she knew what she was doing with Feodor, that she wasn’t letting him pull the wool over her eyes—but this was a big place to start.
“Josh would never merge the universes,” Deloise said. “Not unless it was what’s best for everyone.”
Will nodded like he believed her. He wanted to. He was just so afraid that Josh wouldn’t have all the information she needed to choose correctly.
“I’ll tell her,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t want to be the one to tell her. He just wanted to watch her when she got the news.
Hopefully she wouldn’t be surprised.
Nineteen
When Josh came out of the archway
, Will was sitting on a folding chair in front of it. His unexpected appearance startled her, and she slid across the floor on her wet shoes.
She caught herself before she fell. “Is that…” Will tried to ask, craning his head forward to get a better look at her.
“It’s pudding,” Josh told him. “And lasagna. And stewed green beans.”
“High school food fight?” he guessed.
“Retirement home riot.”
“Ah.”
He didn’t say anything else, just held out a towel. Josh wiped her face and, as best she could, her arms. Then she took her shoes off and wiped up the floor, and when she was finished, Will still hadn’t spoken.
“What’s up?” she said finally.
She didn’t know how to read him then. He looked more than serious, almost a little sick.
“We need to talk.”
“Is something wrong?”
He wet his lips, but they weren’t dry. Josh felt like he was stalling.
“I don’t know. But we need to talk about it.”
Dread filled Josh. This can’t be about us, she thought. But what else could it be about?
“Come upstairs so I can change.”
He said nothing as they went up to the third floor, but every step, Josh felt the stairway closing in around her. A memory of Feodor’s came back to her then, of the last time he had been alone with his lover, Alice. They’d met at the end of the war and moved to America together, and she’d stuck by him as he slowly went mad. Finally, though, it had become too much. He’d been running experiments in their basement, and the memory that came back to Josh was of how Alice had taken him firmly by the hand and led him up the stairs to the living room. He’d known she was going to say she was leaving, but he’d been so immersed in his own madness that he hadn’t cared.
Josh, though, could look back at the memory without the shadow of Feodor’s lunacy upon it and appreciate how tightly Alice had held his hand as she dragged him from his laboratory, how determined she had been to treat him like he could understand her.
I miss her, Josh thought, though of course she had never met Alice. It didn’t matter; the woman was a part of Josh now, the way she was a part of Feodor.
In her room, Josh pulled clean clothes from the basket Kerstel had left on the floor and went into the bathroom. After a moment’s hesitation, she left the door open a few inches. What did she care if Will saw her naked at this point?
Besides, she knew he wouldn’t look.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked, rubbing a wet washcloth over her face.
“Well … This is sort of awkward, talking like this.” She heard the springs in her recliner whine as he sat down. “You know I’ve been in counseling, working on my PTSD. One of the things Malina suggested was that I should try to build confidence that I can face whatever Peregrine throws at us next. I thought that maybe I could … sort of arm myself with knowledge. So Del and I went to the Pryliss Sanitarium.”
Josh’s washcloth stopped moving up her legs. “Where?”
“It’s the prison Snitch escaped from.”
Oh, Josh thought. She started washing again. As Will described his trip to the prison and his subsequent meeting with Aurek Trembuline, she slowly got dressed, but she was distracted from both his story and her clothing by a single question.
“Why?” she asked, opening the bathroom door. “Why didn’t you tell me you were doing any of this?”
She understood that he didn’t trust her. She understood that he thought Feodor’s memories had in some way corrupted her judgment. But not sharing potentially important information related to Geoff’s escape and—quite possibly—Peregrine’s latest scheme made no sense.
Will was sitting in her recliner with his elbows on his knees and a braced expression on his face.
“I wasn’t sure it was worth your time. I’m not even sure what any of it means.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess I knew I should have told you, but … You said you didn’t want to be friends.”
Josh couldn’t quite believe that was his reasoning. She went back into the bathroom, and he followed her.
“You’ve barely been speaking to me,” he said.
“That’s your excuse?” she asked. She yanked a brush through her hair, cursing the length of the strands. She wanted to cut it all off.
“I didn’t mean to go behind your back,” Will told her.
“Of course you did. If you hadn’t, you would have just come out and told me what you’d found.” She threw the brush down on the counter. “I don’t even care that you went behind my back. I don’t care that you don’t trust me. But like it or not, I am the point person on this Peregrine thing. Whatever my stupid destiny might be, there’s no doubt that he’s tied up in it.” Suddenly she thought of something. “Or were you going to track him down yourself and kill him before I could stop you?”
“No,” Will said breathlessly. “Of course not.”
She knew from the way he said it that he was telling the truth, and she knew that should have dampened her anger, but she wanted to be angry. It felt good to talk carelessly.
She went into the bedroom and put on a pair of sneakers.
“Josh, wait. I’m trying to—this isn’t how I wanted this to go.”
“I don’t know what that means, and I don’t have time to figure it out. I need to go.”
“Please, just stay for a minute.”
Then he was taking her hand and Josh was remembering Alice on the stairs and Mirren saying, “Will isn’t cut out for this work,” and the time he had kissed the inside of her wrist to make her stop freaking out—the first time he’d kissed her.
“I don’t want you to do this alone,” he said. “Whatever you’re doing, I want to come with you.”
“Why?”
“Because the truth is, regardless of the rest of the emotional stuff, I love you. And I want to be part of your life. Even when it’s dangerous and scary.”
Three months ago, three weeks ago, maybe even three days ago Josh would have thrown her arms around him. But today, all she could think was that their relationship problems were far less important than finding her grandfather.
Also, she didn’t believe him.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “You’re lying to yourself.”
The look on his face hurt her, quite unexpectedly. She would have thought she was angry enough now not to care, or that she had given up on him enough to accept the inevitability of their hurting each other. But no. He looked like she’d stabbed him in the gut, and she clenched her hands as if around imaginary hilts.
Then his face hardened. “How would you know how I feel when we barely talk? You’re mad that I didn’t tell you what I was doing—what are you doing, Josh? Where do you go all the time? Nobody even knows where you are.”
“I don’t have to answer to you.”
Will crossed his arms and nodded. “Because I’m just the apprentice, right?”
Now she was angry. “No!” she snapped. “Because you quit being my apprentice, and my partner! You quit showing up to train just like you quit showing up for me! You want to be an apprentice? Go ask Del to train you!”
She was across the living room before Will could even take a step. He followed her, though; she could hear his steps like echoes of her own in a dark alleyway.
“We need to talk about this,” he insisted. “Where are you going?”
She didn’t answer. Maybe she would never answer another question he asked.
Will grabbed her arm as she entered the stairwell. “I’m not giving up,” he said. “I’m not giving up this time.”
Again, the pain in his expression hurt her. He was afraid, she realized. Afraid that if she walked out this time, she might not walk back. At least, not back to him.
Maybe that was why she told him.
“I’m going to get Feodor, and we’re going to find Aurek Trembuline, and we’re going to find out what he knows about Peregrine.”
> Will set his jaw. “I’m coming with you.”
Josh sighed. The anger had already worn her out. “Fine.”
Twenty
Will waited in the car while Josh went into the chair factory to get Feodor. Will had never been inside it, and he was kind of curious, but Josh didn’t seem to be in the mood to give a tour. By the time she had disarmed the security system, Feodor was already walking out the door, pulling on a brown wool trench coat as he did.
He looked surprised to see Will when he climbed into the car, and he said something in Polish that Will gathered was probably a wry remark.
“No, we aren’t,” Josh said. “And speak English when we’re around other people.”
Will couldn’t figure out whether or not Josh was still angry at him. Probably. She hid a lot of emotions under the safe tarp of anger, emotions she didn’t know what to do with. He hadn’t done a great job making her feel safe to explore those feelings, he knew that. And he’d been so caught up in their argument that it wasn’t until he saw Feodor that he realized he had forgotten to tell her the most important thing.
It would have to wait.
Josh was right that Will had quit on her. And on dream walking. He hadn’t set foot in the Dream since they’d left Mirren’s universe. He’d destroyed the one tie between them that Josh had considered sacred, and he knew it was something she never would have done. Even after they’d broken up, if he had showed up for their usual morning run, she would have run with him.
How broken is too broken? he wondered.
The funny thing was, when he thought back to the meditation with Trembuline, or when he sat in the dark car and watched the passing streetlamps cast Josh’s face in light and then shadow, light and then shadow, he still felt the happiness he’d experienced when listening to his heart, like a little coal burning in his chest.
She’d put on the same sweater she had worn the night of the Valentine’s Day dance, when she’d confronted him in the school library. Will wondered if she’d done it subconsciously.
The drive to Trembuline’s house was an hour and a half long. Will pulled one of Trembuline’s papers up on his cell phone and gave it to Feodor to read. Halfway through the drive, after they’d stopped for coffee—and in Josh’s case, a twenty-four-ounce hot chocolate—he asked Feodor, “What do you think?”
