by Silver, Anna
London let her dark eyes trail up the muscled definition of Zen’s arm, over his black-clad shoulder, until she looked him full in his face. Had she ever noticed how pouty his lips were? Or how solid and square his jaw? His eyes—she’d always noticed the deep, gray pools that were his eyes, like molten silver. But they’d never looked at her like this. London felt suddenly more alone than she ever had in all her life.
“It doesn’t bite,” he said, shaking his hand. “I would never hurt you, London.”
A chill passed over her and London shook off the swarm of feelings and uncertainties clawing at her heart. She put her hand in Zen’s and let him pull her to her feet. He didn’t let go as they started back for the truck. For a moment, she didn’t either.
* * *
SI’DAH PULLED HER long fingers through the jet tresses of her hair that were kicking up in the playful wind the Astral greeted her with.
“Stop,” she commanded and the wind died down. She did not feel playful right now. She felt troubled. Something was bothering London and it had followed her into the Midplane.
Around her, the green blades of grass began to run together, melting into a watery landscape to reflect her mood. The Astral was sulking like a scolded pet. If she didn’t watch it, she’d sink straight through to the Lowplane and have to wade her way through the marshes. These were setbacks she didn’t need.
In the time they’d recovered their memories and taken up training with Hantu-Degan, she’d become so intertwined with the Astral itself that she impacted it often when she didn’t want to. Hantu called it “warping”. It was a show of power, but also a display of how little control she had. What she needed to learn was how to help London pull the Astral into their world and shape it to fit their needs. Not how to warp the Astral planes like wet paint.
“I see something is on your mind.” Her teacher’s kind voice floated to her.
Si’dah looked up to see Hantu at her side. She never noticed his approach. He was good at that. “How can you tell?” she asked facetiously. This was London’s dour humor coming out in her.
Hantu smiled. “You are so much like one another now. It’s funny to think you were ever apart from her.”
Si’dah squinted into the distance where great walls of rock were springing up on the horizon, a spontaneous mountain range. “It gets harder to keep myself separate,” she said, and the mountains plummeted back into the ground of the Midplane, a cloud of dust rising in their stead.
Hantu was untroubled by this. “So don’t. Surrender to her, Si’dah. You are one now. Accept it.”
Si’dah sighed and looked at Hantu. His proud lines were forever changed by the Other’s presence. He no longer looked like the Hantu she knew, nor the Degan London had known, but an eerie combination of both. “As you have?”
“Yes,” he said. “You know that’s what’s holding you back. You must open yourself fully to London as she must open herself fully to you. For all your power here, for all your learning, you cannot bring that into her world until you drop the barriers you keep erecting.”
“I don’t want to lose myself…again.” It was the truth. Waking up to remember after sixteen years of forgetting was too hard on both of them. If she let go, would she slip away again? Disappear?
“You won’t,” Hantu assured her. “You can’t lose yourself in London because you are London. Just as you can’t lose yourself in the Astral, because you are the Astral. It is the fabric you are stitched from, understand?”
She didn’t understand, but she was trying. She looked down to see her once stick-straight hair bunch into rippling waves. Si’dah gasped and they relaxed— some. Soon she would be like Hantu-Degan, a seamless blend of London and herself. Who knew where one began and the other ended?
Hantu took her hand kindly. “Si’dah, you are the most gifted among them. You know this. See how even now the Astral bends to your whim? Yet when you cross back over, you leave all your power behind. Why do you think this is?”
“Because here I feel like myself. There, I feel like her.”
Hantu patted her hand, a gesture that made him seem so much older than his years. “Here and there. You and her. There are no separations Si’dah, except the ones you make.”
It reminded her of something London had said to Geode’s Other only that evening: We didn’t have concepts like that. Mine. Yours. Everything was shared. Everything was ours.
Hantu was right. It wasn’t London that was holding her back, it was she who was holding London back. She gripped Hantu’s hand tighter, “Please, Teacher, tell me how.”
Hantu withdrew his hand and flourished it until two squares of fabric appeared before them. He was good at manipulating the Astral. “This piece,” he said, pointing at the bottom square, black and heavy like wool, “is London’s world. You see?”
Si’dah nodded.
“And this piece,” he said gesturing to the top square, sheer and delicate as smoke, “is the Astral. They lie atop one another.”
The two squares came together until it was impossible to tell one from the other anymore.
“Dreamwalkers create a hole in their world,” he explained. “A rent or a tear. You are one of these as Anya, and even more so as London.” As he said it, a straight cut appeared in the heavy, bottom fabric.
“They must learn to reach up and pull the Astral through.” Now the hole widened, and the smoky fabric began pouring through it.
Hantu clapped his hands and the fabric disappeared. “Do you understand? If you stop separating yourself from London, she can reach into the Astral and pull out what she needs, whenever she needs it.”
“Like the rain,” Si’dah suggested. When London needed to steal their truck from gangsters, Hantu helped her manage to pull down a thunderstorm into their world that would disguise the sound of the engine starting and allow them to get away.
“Like the rain,” Hantu confirmed.
“But Hantu,” Si’dah continued, “I only ever utilized the Astral in the dreaming as a Traveler. That is what I was taught. All I was taught. How can London acquire what she needs from the Astral without going to sleep first?”
Hantu’s lips curled in a knowing smile. “Like the Seer. She must learn from the Seer how to move through herself to the space she finds while dreaming and from there, she can manipulate the Astral and warp her own world.”
“I think I see.” Bright flowers burst around Si’dah’s feet. “But the Seer is very inexperienced, can she teach this?” The flowers withered and died back into the grass.
“Can I teach what?” Tora asked, moving toward them across a vast field.
“Ask her yourself,” Hantu said with a grin.
Si’dah did not like when the Seer followed her into the Astral. With Tora around, she felt less like herself and more like London. “You followed me,” Si’dah said to her.
Tora frowned. “I didn’t mean to. When you get upset, it pulls me here. Besides, you don’t have exclusive rights to the Midplane, you know.”
Si’dah knew Tora was right, but her foul mood had returned. This was London coming out in her, too—always brooding. “I don’t want to train tonight,” Si’dah said.
“Suit yourself,” Tora answered with a shrug. “Hantu and I have some stuff to catch up on. But I’m not the only one who followed you.”
“What?” Si’dah peered around but saw no one else.
“You may as well come out now,” Tora called and Geode, tall and lithe, emerged from behind a dark cloud, trailing several feet away.
Hantu and Tora began walking away, their heads close as they chatted, until the Astral rose up and blocked them from view, leaving Si’dah and Geode alone.
“Why did you come?” Si’dah asked Geode as he neared.
“You know why,” he returned.
“You won’t find her here. She never shows herself to us anymore,” Si’dah told him. None of them had seen Avery in the Astral since she showed herself as a Luna Moth over seven months ago.
“But she is here, isn’t she?” he asked.
Si’dah nodded.
“Walk with me,” he said and she joined him as they began to stroll, a kaleidoscope of landscapes whirring by.
“Why did Avery betray us, betray the Circle?” he asked her point-blank.
“Is that what you really want to know?”
Geode shook his head and his hood waved in the air. “No. Why did she betray me?”
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Si’dah felt for him. She knew this pain of loss. There had been no one like Roanyk in her world. She had found love in the Astral and still she had lost it.
Geode nodded.
“I don’t know why, Geode. She is a coward, but I understand it. I wish sometimes myself that I’d never come. Or that I could just give it up and ease my way through that life until death came and my soul could move on. Once, all I ever wanted was to join my mentor on the Highplane.” Si’dah picked anxiously at a fold in her skirt. Geode’s nearness made her restless now. It didn’t always.
“And now?” he asked.
“I just want to see Roanyk again,” she admitted.
Something of a snarl came from behind the soft blue of his hood.
“You don’t like my answer?”
“My feelings toward Roanyk are…conflicted.”
“Why?” she asked him.
“I can’t tell you.”
Si’dah placed a hand out to stop Geode. She turned him toward her, their faces nearly matched in height here. His bold, feline features were all grace and fierce predator. “What are you keeping from me?” she asked him with some command in her voice.
“No more than you kept from me,” he replied and with that, he was gone, vanished into a fog that had risen around them.
Chapter 5
* * *
Slaves
LONDON STARED OUT the windshield, pretending not to notice the proximity of Zen’s taut arms and broad shoulders. She’d agreed to drive this morning in order get away from him for a bit. She needed to clear her head. But at the last rest stop they made, he hopped in front next to her with Kim beside him. Every time the truck bounced, the soft cotton of his t-shirt rubbed against her and the heat of his thigh warmed her own where they touched, driving her to distraction. She couldn’t even find peace in her dreams.
Not that she ever had.
They didn’t speak about their encounter in the Astral last night. And London didn’t know how to address it, or if she wanted to. It was obvious he was keeping something from her, something about Rye. That was the most she could ascertain. But she didn’t want to talk to Zen about Rye anymore. Not now that she felt flushed whenever he was close. Not now that she was compelled to look away every time his haunted gray eyes searched out hers. So she ignored what had occurred between them and their Others, and tried to focus on Kim’s droning.
“I just don’t get it,” Kim kept saying.
Zen shifted slightly and his arm brushed hers, skin to skin. London squeezed her eyes shut for a second and took a breath. She could not do this today. “What? What don’t you get, Kim? For the sake of all that is holy, what is bothering you?”
“Bark much?” he snapped back.
“Sorry. I…I’m just a little on edge this morning,” London confessed. She thought she saw the corner of Zen’s mouth curve up ever so slightly. He’s enjoying this. She wanted to ask him what he was grinning about, or better yet, smack it off of his face, but she didn’t need any more sordid confrontations with Zen to mix her up.
Kim let his hair down and scratched at his head. “I just don’t get why they’d take Eric and the other dreamers. I thought they wanted to kill us. Wasn’t that what that whole message from Kingsnake was all about? Taking our heads or some such nonsense?”
London remembered the threatening netcom from Kingsnake on the night Degan was murdered all too well: Now you lay your head to sleep, pray to God your life you keep. To steal your dreams, your head we’ll take, and leave you dead before you wake. As it turned out, Avery was responsible for it. Either she’d given London’s netaddress to Ernesto, and he’d sent it under Tycoon order, or she’d done it herself and set it up to look like him. They’d probably never know for certain, but either way, London blamed Avery for it all.
“Maybe they’re hauling them off to kill them,” Zen suggested.
“No, that doesn’t make sense,” London said, shaking her head. They had a nice stretch of road lined up before them, and she relaxed into the drive as much as she could. It wouldn’t stay like this. It was obvious that the Tycoons kept a lot more of the Outroads up than they wanted to let on, but either they didn’t care enough to do more than a half-ass job in some places, or they were overwhelmed and under-resourced for the task. With all their vehicles running on tanks of water, it couldn’t be a fuel shortage.
The Houselands that surrounded the walled cities were usually the worst. London’s theory was that they wanted to keep the Wallers and Scrappers under the illusion that escape wasn’t worth it because everything outside the cities was in decay. Between cities though, there were often long stretches of paved and at least semi-cleared road. Some were even quite fresh, like the road to New Eden. Some, of course, were totally abandoned and grown over. And then there were the districts—whole sectors operating outside city walls to service the Wallers inside, like the Ag districts, where the farmlands were maintained, or the Plant districts where reprocessing took place, or the Pit districts, where her father had been shipped off to mine the trash of lost generations. Those were always well-paved, but they were also risky. Only city-issue trucks traversed those roads, and their Tigerian hybrid was pretty obvious and easily spotted there.
“Why not?” Zen asked.
“Because, why would they haul them away? You think they care about upsetting the Outroaders by killing them in front of their faces? They had no trouble hanging criminals and escapees out on the Old Green in Capital City as an example to the rest of us,” London pointed out.
“I guess you’re right,” Zen agreed.
“Then why?” Kim asked. “I just don’t get it.”
London rolled her eyes. “You said that already.”
“Like a hundred times,” Zen added.
Tora stirred in the back where she’d been napping. After Geode vanished, Si’dah left the Astral and London slept the next few hours in peace, but Tora apparently had quite a lot to go over with Hantu and she didn’t return until near dawn. Kim never did get his lazy butt to the Astral.
“What’s a matter? What are you guys talking about?” she asked with a yawn.
“Your lesser half is puzzling over why the Tycoons would take Eric and the other dreamers instead of killing them,” London informed her.
Tora stretched and blinked, scooting closer behind the bench seat where they all sat waiting for her answer. “Slaves,” she said simply.
“What?” Kim asked. “What do you mean, slaves?”
London punched the break and brought the truck to a purring stop, shifting into P so she could turn and face Tora. “Tora, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I discussed it with Hantu last night. They’re taking the dreamers as slaves.”
London stiffened. “Don’t you think that’s something you should have discussed with all of us?” She resented any independent action after being burned by Avery. Avery had let on that she was doing research into dreaming by herself before she betrayed them and disappeared. London didn’t need a repeat of that experience.
“I’m sorry,” Tora told her. “You and Geode—‘scuse me, Zen—vanished off on your own. I guess you guys were having some kind of personal discussion. And Kim never showed. We needed to understand what was going on, so I talked to Hantu about it myself.”
London and Zen both looked away as though they’d been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
“Personal discussion? In the Astral?” Kim asked. “What’s going on with you two?”
“Nothing,” Lo
ndon said a little too quickly.
“Okay, sure. I’ll buy that…when Keziah’s gators learn to fly,” Kim replied.
“It’s nothing,” Zen said this time. He seemed to grow broader between them, if that were possible.
“There you go again, running to her defense. I am getting so tired of you two and your little broken-hearts club.” Kim began fidgeting with the window handle on his door, useless since he’d knocked the window out with his head outside New Eden.
“You know what I’m tired of?” Tora bellowed from behind them. “I’m tired of all three of you.”
Kim looked stung.
“You’re just as bad as they are,” she told him. “All any of you do half the time is mope around and whine about the Tycoons and how powerless you are. It’s crap! All of it. I lost someone, too. Someone I really loved. My brother is gone and I could be blaming you, but instead I’m here, trying my damnedest to make sure his death wasn’t in vain. Instead of crying over who lost what, we should all be figuring out what the hell the Tycoons are up to and what their next move—and ours—is going to be. Hantu’s right, you know. You’re all just stalling.” She finished by crossing her arms with a big huff.
“He said that?” Kim asked.
“Yes, he did.” Tora bit at her nail.
“It’s pretty much what he told me, too,” London said.
“He’s right,” Zen agreed. “We’ve been running when we should have been fighting.”
London wrapped her arms around herself. Seven months and they’d never once gone back to see if Rye was maybe still alive. They weren’t any closer today than they were the night they left New Eden. All they had to show for themselves were a few dreaming Outroaders and London’s uncanny knack for warping the Astral when she was there.
“I can’t believe he said that.” Kim’s brown eyes were wide. He rubbed at the Trigram tattoo his parents put on his wrist when he was young. It marked him a pure blood—Korean through and through. “Bugger.”
“Don’t start that again,” London warned. Kim spent the better half of his adolescence speaking in a fake British accent as some kind of rebellion against his parents’ obsession with being Korean.
