by Kit Alloway
Haley tucked the book between his elbow and his side, and put his hands in hers. When he did, her rich blue aura enveloped him, and—with a start—he recognized the aura he had seen in a less pure state so many times before.
Dustine? he thought.
She sent him a burst of absolute love, so intense it made his breath catch. He tried to tell her how much he loved her, how she had been his grandmother as much as Josh and Deloise’s, but she knew.
She knew everything.
Haley, you are so worthy of life. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Never doubt it. Never doubt that the Universe loves you.
I’ll try to remember.
We all forget. We remember and forget, remember and forget. But over time, remembering becomes easier.
She was Dustine, and yet she wasn’t. She was Dustine without the baggage of life, the fears and desires that made everyone human. All that was left was her heart.
Haley’s fears, though, were still mostly intact, and his mind blurted out all the questions he had.
Will Josh and Mirren come back for me? Will Feodor help them? Will Ian finally let go?
Dustine’s heart smiled at him.
Ian is coming.
What? Haley gripped her hands more tightly. How?
Time moves more slowly the closer you come to the archway. Ian has been following you for many hours. He is not far away. If he catches you, he will take your body.
What do I do?
On the other side of the flames is a tunnel. Go through the flames and into the tunnel. Follow it.
Follow it where?
That is for you to decide. But remember, no one can pass through Death without being transformed. Go. Time is short.
Wait! I have to ask you about Josh—
Tell her that she will find the answers where the three universes overlap. Go. I love you.
Then Dustine released him, and when Haley opened his eyes, he couldn’t see her.
What he did see was Ian, climbing the last few steps up to the plateau.
Catching sight of Haley, Ian grinned, then bent down and picked up a big rock.
Haley bolted across the plateau, darting around people holding hands, even vaulting over one couple who were sitting on the ground. Pushing past a man walking up to the bonfire, Haley jumped off with both feet and sailed headfirst into the flames.
The heat was tremendous. For an instant he felt it lifting him up like an elevator, and he smelled burning hair. He waited as long as he could before tucking his head between his elbows and diving down.
He landed in an awkward forward roll with the book crammed into his stomach. His right hand landed on a coal, and he rolled over a burning brand as he came out of the dive. Pain bloomed in his palm and in a line connecting his shoulder blades, reminding him how human he still was, how physical his body was, and he was grateful for that.
He knew that Ian would run around the bonfire, and that doing so would cost him time. Haley needed to be gone before his brother arrived. The far side of the bonfire was curiously dark, and as he started to run again, he stepped in a hole in the ground he hadn’t realized was there.
On the other side of the flames is a tunnel.
Feeling with his hands, Haley climbed into the tunnel. It was too low for him to stand, he had to crawl, and the darkness there was as complete as he had ever imagined.
His heart began to pound. Maybe Ian was right and he was a coward. He didn’t want to be here, crawling into a sightless abyss on his hands and knees, his burned palm protesting as he clutched the book of his life to his chest.
Be brave, he told himself. You have to be brave.
But he wasn’t brave, was he? He never had been.
You were brave to stay in Death, Mirren’s voice said. Don’t lose yourself now.
He kept crawling.
Was that a light up ahead? Or were his eyes playing tricks on him in the darkness?
From somewhere behind him, a voice echoed down the tunnel.
“Haley!”
Haley scrambled faster. Loose rocks cut into his knees. The tunnel went deeper, the air growing colder. He switched the book from one hand to the other; laying his palm against the ground felt good now that the stone was freezing. In the silence, his frantic breaths sounded like flapping wings.
Be brave.
The echo of his breathing changed, and he rose up on his knees to feel above him. The ceiling was too high for him to reach, so he gingerly stood up, knowing he would make faster time on his feet. Waving his arms ahead of him so he wouldn’t run into anything, he stumbled forward.
“Haley!”
Was Ian’s voice closer this time? Haley’s name bounced around too much for him to know.
The air kept getting colder, and once he slipped on loose gravel and slid a dozen feet down an incline. He had to be near the heart of the mountain.
He began to see light again, but this time it grew stronger instead of vanishing. The light was orange, and it glowed against the red granite walls on either side of Haley.
The light illuminated his feet first and then climbed up his legs as he descended into a low chamber. A woman stood before an archway carved into the stone wall, and although she was not a large woman, Haley couldn’t see past her to where the archway led. On either side of her, a torch hung from a sconce in the wall.
The woman’s aura was as black as the tunnel had been. So were her eyes.
“HALEY!” Ian screamed.
Haley skidded to a stop before the woman. She was beautiful, with thick black hair that hung to her knees and copper-brown skin that glowed in the torchlight. She wore a purple linen dress that covered her from neck to ankles, leaving just her bare toes peeking out from beneath the many fringed tiers of her skirt. Hanging from her neck were a dozen or more beaded necklaces made from blue stone flecked with gold.
Haley had never seen an aura so completely, utterly black, and for a moment he wasn’t sure what to make of it. But when she held out her hand to Haley and he took it, he felt instantly that she was like the fire: an agent of transformation.
She smiled at him, and her smile was benevolent despite her black teeth and her black eyes that stretched forever into darkness.
Choose, she whispered.
What had Dustine said? That it was Haley’s choice where the tunnel led?
“I want to go to Mirren, wherever she is,” Haley told the woman.
She let go of his hand.
“Please,” Haley said. “Please let me past. Send me to Mirren.”
She said nothing, did nothing. Her smile was gone.
“Haley,” Ian said.
His limbs stiff with dread, Haley turned around. Ian was standing at the other end of the chamber, breathing heavily.
“Well, little brother,” Ian said with a smile. “Looks like this is the end of the road.”
“If you kill me, you won’t get my body,” Haley pointed out.
“I don’t need to kill you. I just need to make you give up.” He pulled the rock from his pocket. “I need to convince you.”
He’s going to torture me, Haley realized, just like Feodor tortured Josh.
“Yeah,” Ian said, as if reading Haley’s mind. “I definitely learned a few things from Feodor. Did I mention that we hung out, before Josh came to get him? Smart guy. Really smart guy.”
Haley wanted so much to live. He looked away from Ian, back to the woman standing before the archway. Her black eyes were unreadable, but Haley thought he heard her voice in his head.
Transformation.
He realized what he had to do at the same moment Ian bashed his head with the rock. The burn on his back pained him when he landed, but not as much as his head, which bounced off the stone floor with a sickening thwack.
The chamber went black, but Ian’s laughter reached Haley through the darkness.
“God, Haley, you’re making this too easy. What the hell were you thinking when you offered to stay here? That you’d impress everyo
ne with how brave you were? That you’d be the big hero?”
Haley opened his eyes. The light felt like it went right through his eyeballs and pierced his brain, and his stomach swam.
“Well, don’t worry,” Ian said, crouching down beside Haley. “I’ll make good use of your life.”
He picked up his rock again.
Haley forced himself to sit up. He had the book pressed to his chest, both arms strapped over it.
Don’t lose yourself, Mirren said, but Haley understood now that the statement had a second meaning, one he hadn’t contemplated before.
The story of his life had been beautiful, but it wasn’t who he was. Just like he’d told Ian, his soul was indestructible. Even if Ian’s poison ate away his energy, his soul would remain. He didn’t have to cling to the book because it wasn’t who he truly was, it was just the story of this incarnation.
He offered the book to the woman with the black eyes.
“What are you doing?” Ian asked, but when he tried to grab the book, an invisible force seemed to push him back.
The woman accepted the book reverently from Haley. Then she offered a fine-boned hand and helped him to his feet.
“Stop it!” Ian shouted. “What are you doing? Let me go!”
The woman stepped away from the archway, and where there had been only darkness before, now there was a red granite door with a handle made of gold. Haley barely had to touch it before the door swung open, surprisingly light. It opened into some sort of building lit with lanterns and full of stone bridges over calm waters.
Haley turned back only once, to see his brother fighting the invisible barrier, scratching and flailing like an angry cat.
“This life isn’t me,” Haley said. “You could take my body, and the true me, my soul, would be fine.”
“You’re crazy!” Ian shouted at him.
“I hope you find the courage to let go.”
The woman smiled at Haley.
No one can pass through Death without being transformed, Haley thought, and he stepped through the doorway.
* * *
Mirren woke from a strange dream. She could only remember bits and pieces of it, but she recalled Haley running and the flash of golden light on water. Had she been holding him, stroking his hair? Or had that been a fantasy?
Unable to sleep, she wrapped the cardigan Haley had given her over her nightgown and went out the farmhouse’s back door. The lawn was silvery with moonlight and dew, and the grass felt cool and prickly beneath her bare feet.
She had finished the royal trimidion two days before, and yesterday she had filled it with water. Retrieving a box of long matches from a box near one of the entrances, she went around to each of the nine doorways and lit the colored lanterns hanging there. Stone walkways connected each doorway to the platform in the center of the structure, over which the red granite trimidion hung. Instead of having three solid sides, the pyramid was hollow, and an archway had been carved in each side.
Mirren didn’t know why she had built it that way. That had been the design in her head, so that was how she had built it. Sitting on one of the walkways, she thought about how pointless the design was. So far, it didn’t even work as a trimidion, and the granite weighed more than a thousand pounds. Every time she looked at it, she was afraid it would fall.
Suddenly the lanterns flared—all of them at once. Mirren looked at them, alarmed, and she almost missed the movement in the red granite pyramid. Just as she looked back, silver light burst from the three doorways, and against it, a figure grew so fast that Mirren didn’t realize it was a person until it exploded out of the doorway marked Death.
Haley stumbled down the walkway, tripped, and landed on Mirren.
His weight pinned her to the stone. He was covered in fairy dust and there was blood matted in his hair and he was grinning like she’d never seen him grin before.
“Haley,” she tried to say, but his name caught in her throat.
He made no move to climb off of her, and she was glad for his weight, so glad to feel him pressed against her. With trembling hands she touched his face, making sure he was real, and she laughed when he smiled again, and then he laughed, and then he kissed her.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
He was home.
Twenty−four
The next evening, Young Ben Sounclouse came over to bless the baby. In a month or two, when Keri was stronger, the Weavers would throw a big party to introduce her to dream-walker society, but a seer traditionally blessed a baby as soon as she was born.
Will was right, Josh thought, watching Young Ben come through the back door. He looks ten years older than he did at my birthday party.
Young Ben had been old for as long as Josh could remember, but now he appeared ancient. His hair was nearly gone, and his eyes had grown rheumy. He couldn’t control a spasm in his left hand, so instead of holding the baby, he sat beside Kerstel on the couch to look at her.
“Well, aren’t you a beauty?” he said, and his voice had lost some of the boom and authority Josh had always associated with it. “Just like your mama.”
“Her name’s Cashew,” Winsor said, and then, “God dammit! It’s—I mean, her name is Cashew—I mean—God dammit!”
Looking confused, Young Ben fiddled with his hearing aid.
“Don’t worry about it,” Kerstel told Winsor, whose brain wouldn’t stop insisting that the baby’s name was Cashew. “Her name’s Karowena Irenia Kisamponi Weavaros. We’re going to call her Keri.”
Winsor beat her knee with a fist, something she did when she was frustrated.
“I think Cashew is a cute nickname,” Deloise offered, putting a gentle hand on Winsor’s fist to calm her.
“I don’t mind it,” Kerstel agreed.
There was lots of oooing and ahhhing over Keri, who had her father’s brown eyes and just a dusting of her mother’s strawberry-blond hair. As far as Josh could tell, she didn’t do much. Josh was already tired of watching her eat and sleep, and she didn’t know how many months would have to pass before the baby became interesting.
“You aren’t breast-feeding?” Young Ben asked as Keri finished off yet another bottle.
“Breast-feeding is a form of female slavery,” Kerstel told him.
Young Ben looked horrified, which only made Kerstel laugh.
The blessing was brief. Everyone present—the entire Avish-Weaver household—gathered around the baby, lit their lighters, and reflected the flame light onto Keri. Young Ben traced the five petals of the plumeria flower on her forehead, and said, “May you be blessed with compassion, commitment, courage, modesty, and might.” He traced a spiral, the symbol of the Dream, over her heart. “May the True Dream Walker watch over you, that you always walk safely.”
“Walk safely,” everyone echoed.
Josh wasn’t too attached to Keri yet, but she found the ritual beautiful. Another little dream walker is born, she thought. Another little link in the chain going back to the beginning of time.
She couldn’t imagine breaking that chain by merging the three universes.
Before Young Ben had arrived, she and Will had had a long talk. Not about their relationship—Josh wasn’t ready for another one of those—but about information they needed to share now that they were finally speaking to each other again.
She’d told Will about her vision of the Cradle and the Omphalos, and Will had told her about the prophesies suggesting that the True Dream Walker would merge the three universes and the possibility that Peregrine was the False Dream Walker. Although Josh wasn’t surprised that Feodor had withheld the information from her—she remembered it, of course, as soon as Will reminded her—she was surprised by the idea itself. Why would the True Dream Walker set up the three universes and a system to keep them in balance, and then return thousands of years later to destroy that balance and all the work dream walkers had done? Josh just couldn’t fathom it, especially not while she watched another l
ittle dream walker being welcomed into the fold.
“Are you crying?” Deloise asked her.
“No,” Josh said, and wiped her eyes.
Everyone laughed, and Deloise hugged her. “You softie.”
The gathering broke up when Keri began to cry. Lauren and Kerstel took her upstairs, and Saidy and Alex went up to their apartment, probably to watch game shows and argue, which was how they spent most of their evenings. Soon Young Ben was alone with the younger members of the household.
Josh was sitting on the love seat next to Will, and they were both pretending that it didn’t mean anything, that they weren’t aware of the places where their bodies touched.
But secretly, Josh was very aware.
She was also aware—for the first time—that there was a small white puppy in her sister’s lap.
“Where did that puppy come from?” Josh asked.
For some reason, Deloise blushed. “A bigger puppy,” she said innocently and buried her blush in the dog’s white fur. Whim began to laugh.
“What am I missing?” Josh asked Will.
“I’ll tell you later,” he said. “Ask Young Ben about your birth.”
“Oh, right,” she said, “Ben, I was talking to Feodor about Grandma yesterday. And, uh, well, he told me that you and Grandma had an affair.”
Suddenly the room went quiet. Ben started to smile, then caught himself.
“What?” Whim said.
“Who?” Winsor asked.
“What?” Deloise repeated. She stopped lifting the puppy for a kiss and just let it hang in midair.
“Dustine was the love of my life,” Young Ben admitted. “We were supposed to be married, before the war.”
“You and Grandma?” Deloise asked.
“She was the most amazing woman,” he continued. “So smart, and clever, and funny. I was … enthralled, from the moment I met her.”
Deloise gave her head a hard shake, as if to clear it. Whim took the dangling puppy out of her hands.
“Enthralled,” Winsor repeated.
“I wanted to tell you girls,” Young Ben said, “but Dustine was afraid of Peregrine. He’d have killed us both if he ever found out.”
