by Isaac Petrov
“I’m dreaming!” Edda repeats with a smile. Ximena feels her wonder at the realization that her consciousness—her senses—are locked inside her own mind. Everything feels so… real, so vivid; even the fresh smell of the air; all a simulation created by some other part of her, a hidden part, outside of her control.
“What’s the big deal?” Ximena whispers at Mark. “She’s been, er, aware before many times, while training for the first step.”
“Lucid,” Mark says. “We say lucid now, not aware. And no, this is different. This time Edda was not artificially pulled into lucidity by the will of a Walker.” He waves a finger at Rew. “This time Rew is merely nudging, teaching Edda how to become lucid on her own, teaching her to wonder and reflect. Questions lead to awareness.” He smiles brilliantly at Ximena, more with his blue eyes than with his lips. “By asking the right questions. And finding the right answer.”
“I do congratulate you on becoming aware, Redeemed van Dolah. But do beware. Awareness is slippery, easy to lose—short-lived without discipline.”
Edda frowns in confusion at those words, but soon loses interest in Rew. Her eyes wander anew. Ximena feels how those copper-colored pyramids below reclaim Edda’s curiosity.
The scene begins to shake, shrinking and contracting in slow waves of surrealism, as Edda’s mind keeps wandering, sliding further into disorder. The bright daylight and colors of the desert begin to wane.
Edda is about to wake up! Ximena realizes.
“Your dream is ending prematurely,” Rew says. “Do not pierce the barrier. Do ground yourself.”
“Huh?” She barely seems to notice Rew. “What?”
“Do you feel the wind, Redeemed van Dolah?” Rew asks, her voice like a roar over the chaos of waking.
“The wind?” She raises her arms and closes her eyes—the breeze moves the tips of her short, curly hair, and the bottom of her gown. “Yeah, I can feel it.”
“Do you hear the wind?”
“Uh, yes—a whisper.”
“Do spin your body and feel the centrifugal force stretching your limbs.”
She obeys, her gown opening like a flower.
“Do kneel and touch the ground.”
She does so, without questioning. The waving has stopped and the scene is slowly recovering its vividness.
“Do feel the warmth on your fingertips, the dryness, the fine texture of the traces of sand.”
Edda rubs her fingers together and closes her eyes as if embracing the sensation. Then she turns to Rew with sudden realization. “I’m dreaming!”
“You are indeed dreaming, Redeemed van Dolah. You did lose your awareness, but you did also ground yourself in the dreamscape and your awareness has come full circle.”
“Yeah…” she says, fingers still rubbing sand, thinking hard about what just happened. “I knew I was dreaming, and then… Whoa! Totally forgot about it. And I almost woke up!”
“Your deep-mind wants you to forget—but a disciplined high-mind can stay aware. You must train your mind to constantly engage your senses, to ground yourself into the dream—like you just did, with your touch, your hearing, your sight.”
Edda looks around, nodding slowly. Ximena feels her engaging all her senses. She approaches the edge of the rock bridge and kneels down, slowly poking her head out.
“I could jump down—I’d just wake up, yeah?”
“An undisciplined mind would. But with awareness, you simply ground yourself to the sensation. A free fall caters for intense feelings. Go ahead, do jump.”
“Uh, why am I scared? I know it’s just a dream.”
“A disciplined mind would not be afraid, because it is indeed a dream.”
“You’re saying I’m not disciplined, yeah?”
Rew regards her in meaningful silence.
Edda laughs.
And jumps.
The scene in the auditorium hastily follows her fall as she dives headfirst. Ximena and many of her fellow students lean back and gape in vertigo as they feel Edda’s body thrusting through the air into the chasm. Mark is laughing like an adrenaline addict. The wind is loud and moody, pushing Edda unpredictably to the sides, never straight down; growing louder the farther she falls—her face stricken with exhilaration, staring down with a grin on her face. Engaged.
“I’M DREAMING!” she screams.
The fall seems to take forever, and yet, the ground is still far away below her, the dunes of the desert and the rocks around the lower mountains still invisible from the distance.
“May I suggest landing next to a pyramid?” A large albino raven—larger than a real raven could ever be—is diving beside her, the deafening noise of the fall weirdly unable to drown her calm voice.
“Can I fly? Or control the fall?”
“You could. But easier is to simply be there. Traveling in dreams does not require the slow movement through space that you must suffer in the wake—that would make your awareness slip of sheer boredom. Dreams are like tales—they skip the needless bits. Just move this dream to the next… chapter.”
“Like a tale. Oookay…”
An instant later Edda and Rew are standing on the soft sand of the desert.
“So sexy!” Edda says, grinning wildly as her eyes slide over the landscape. The sand is bright yellow and orange, thin as to be almost dust, and hot enough to make the air above dance. A few steps beside their short shadows rises a large pyramid. Well, not large. The Great Pyramid of Giza is large. This pyramid is so… gigantic that the edge of the base gets lost beyond the farthest dunes in the horizon. It looms as high as a mountain. Its texture is metallic, shining golden scarlet under the reddish light of the sun, and yet it feels ancient, decrepit. “What in Goah’s Name is this thing?”
“Do not get lost in the sight. Do mind your awareness.”
“Yeah, I know I’m still dreaming, no worries. As long as I, uh, focus, the dream stays, and I know I’m dreaming, yeah?”
“We name it grounding, the second step of the Path, but… Yeah,” Rew says. “Grounding your senses into the dreamscape—engaging them with purpose to remain aware—that is what shall be put to the test in the second trial.”
“The trial, uh… right. I remember. Only twelve of us will pass to the… third step?”
“Very good, Redeemed van Dolah. Your memory pierces the wake barrier with impeccable precision. You truly are mastering the first step already. Now I shall attack your awareness until you equally master the second step.”
“Attack?!” Ximena feels her sudden anxiety. Edda drops the grains of sand and takes a step back.
“Do not fear, Redeemed van Dolah. It is only your awareness that I shall remove.”
“How?” Her eyes flinch nervously. She takes another step back.
“By willing it,” Rew raises an arm towards Edda, and an invisible wave of… something crashes against Edda’s dream body.
She gasps and then looks around in confusion. Her thoughts are tumbling, mixing in a tornado of chaos. She blinks, sees Rew, and smiles. “Oh, hi.”
An abrupt wave of… something rips across the dream. The desert, pyramids and red sun all cease to exist to be replaced by Edda’s bedroom.
“Oh, pure sin! Sorry, must go,” Edda says, as if she had been in this room for too long. Ximena feels her sudden hurry. She walks to the door. “It’s my turn to take Hans to daycare.”
Rew makes another gesture at her.
Ximena feels Edda’s thoughts gathering in harmony, like a crashed glass coming together in reverse motion. She stops dead in her tracks and turns slowly to face Rew. “Fuck,” she says, and grins apologetically. “I slipped.”
“That was… less than impressive, Redeemed van Dolah. My attack was the lightest I am able to muster.”
“Sorry,” she says. “You caught me by surprise.” She walks to her bed and takes the blanket in her hands, feeling the doughy texture of the cloth. Grounding herself.
“Do engage your dream senses with more discipline. Deploy
your will if you must. We do only have two practice sessions before the trial.”
“Oh,” Edda says, and Ximena feels the chill creeping up Edda’s spine. “Not much, yeah?”
“Not indeed. Furthermore, Overseer Yog did insist in personally designing the arena for the second trial. Be assured she will not be as… lenient as I am.”
“Oh,” Edda says. She wets her lips. “Fuck.”
Seventeen
Plants and Ashes
“The trial of the second step is about to begin,” Professor Miyagi says, gesturing at the dreamsenso scene floating across the auditorium. It is the empty, black-skied landscape of the staging permascape, where the twenty-four human apprentices have gathered in scattered groups. “For those of you unacquainted with the history of the Three Trials of Worth and Soul, watch carefully, because today’s session doesn’t end quite like Edda expected.”
The dreamsenso camera zooms in slowly towards what seems like an arbitrary part of the flat landscape, where a group of people dressed in their usual tunics and gowns stand around an instructor, avidly extracting the last drops of wisdom before the second trial. The same is happening within the other groups not far away. The difference with this particular group, Ximena realizes when details become apparent, is that the instructor is human. Oh, there is a mare as well, of course, but she stands aside, and watches the interaction with usual mare impassiveness.
“Now, pinch your noses, and shut your mouths, like this.” Edda blocks her mouth and nose with a hand, and then, seemingly impossibly, takes a deep breath—Ximena can feel Edda’s lungs filling with the dry air of the permascape. Edda removes the hand and laughs. “Try it!”
Aline exchanges an amused glance with Pieter, and both repeat Edda’s feat. Janson—Pieter’s younger brother—stares at them and, with visible hesitation, imitates them.
“I can breathe!” Aline laughs, hand still covering her mouth.
“And speak!” Pieter says. “Pure evil.” He grins. “These damn dreams are so real, they can’t shut you up, love.”
Aline laughs and slaps his broad chest.
Janson is drawing slow, controlled breaths behind his own hand. He is unusually large for a fourteen-year-old, almost as much as his sixteen-year-old brother. Now that Ximena sees them side by side, she is struck by how many similarities they share. Yes, he has brown hair, where Pieter’s is lighter. Janson’s eyes are green, Pieter’s blue. But other than that… Same muscular body frame, same protruding jaws. They must be genetically related! Ximena realizes. Such an unusual family. First, two siblings of the same gender. And now this!
Janson turns to Edda, wide-eyed at his capacity to breathe behind a hand. “How did you discover this… magic?”
“Ah,” she changes her weight to the other foot. “I was with Elder Rew, you know, in one of her lessons, like yours with Elder Qoh.” She gestures at the watching mare next to them. “At one point we were under water, and I could breathe. So then when back on land, I experimented, and…” She shrugs.
“Yours is a family of teachers, dowry sister,” Gotthard says. He just walked in. His group is nearby, training with their mare. “But you have the heart of a scientist.”
“Nobody is perfect,” Edda says, grinning at him. She gestures at Gotthard’s group. “You bored already of the alien’s teaching and looking for something more… stimulating? Oh,” she turns to Qoh. “Sorry, didn’t mean to—”
“We are marai, Redeemed van Dolah,” Qoh says. “Not aliens.”
“Sorry.” Edda smiles. “We appreciate your support, Elder Qoh. And that you allowed me to join you when Elder Rew went to,” she waves a hand in the air, “whatever.”
“To complete the preparations for the second trial,” Qoh says.
“Right.” She claps loudly. “Come on, mensas. Who’s next? Oh, hello.” Edda smiles and stretches out a hand at an older man, already in his early twenties, who has just approached the group. “I’m Redeemed Edda van Dolah, a Juf in Lunteren. And you are?”
The man, short and stocky—and quite ugly, Ximena thinks—shakes Edda’s hand without the shade of a smile. “Elder Luuk Smook. A humble farmer in Oosterbeek. Hope you don’t mind me looking at how you specialists prepare for the trial.” His voice is deep and coarse.
“We’re not specialists,” Pieter says, throwing a finger at his brother. “Much better. We’re fishermen!” He laughs, like it was a joke.
“You sure are, Ledeboer,” Gotthard says with a smug smile. “Your smell gives it away—even in dreams.”
“Shut up, Gotthard,” Edda says, and then smiles widely at the stocky man. “You’re welcome to stay, Elder Smook. You made number two in the first trial, yeah?”
“Yes.” His eyes pierce Edda’s. “And you, number one.” He says it like it is not praise, but sin.
Edda shrugs and laughs modestly. “Lucky, I guess.”
Luuk Smook doesn’t reply. He just stares at her in silence, like an iceberg at a passing ship.
Edda clears her throat. “All right, let’s…” she turns towards her friends. “Who was…? Ah, Piet. Come.” She takes Pieter’s muscular arm and pulls him away from the rest, onto an empty spot. “And you, Elder Qoh,” Edda walks to where the mare is standing, puts her hands on her white, leathery skin, and pushes firmly, “over here, please.” With Edda leaning on Qoh, her elongated body slides until Edda stops her right in front of Pieter. “There. Now, Elder Qoh, please attack.”
“With which intensity this time, Redeemed van Dolah?”
“Medium, Goah’s Mercy! Please stop asking. If I say nothing, it’s always medium intensity, yeah?”
“Acknowledged.” Qoh raises an arm at Pieter, who stumbles in sudden confusion.
“Piet!” Edda shouts at him. He looks at her, eyes blinking. “What you are feeling right now, that chaos… Remember, remember!”
“What?” He stares at her, his frown deepening.
Gotthard rolls his eyes. “No fish biting, eh, rat boy?”
“Shut up, Gotthard,” Edda says, and then to Pieter, “Remember, Piet. That feeling—your head spinning—associate it with the question.”
He blinks again, and then scans his surroundings, his wide blue eyes stopping a second on Aline’s. “The question,” he mutters. And then, as if following an impulse, he sinks his head to inspect the palm of his hands.”
“Excellent!” Edda claps.
“The lines,” he raises his head at Edda, “they move!”
“Yeah, they do, huh?” Edda exchanges a satisfied glance with Aline.
Pieter then covers his nose and mouth with the hand and breathes in.
“Excellent, Piet. You remembered!” Edda says.
Pieter looks back at Edda and his lips stretch to a hesitant smile. “Whoa, this is a dream!”
“It is, yeah?” Edda claps again. Aline joins her, and Janson cheers loudly.
“Oh, everything is coming back.” Pieter joins in the laughter.
“That’s the first step at work, mensa,” Edda says. “You remember.”
“Thanks, Edda,” he says, a warm smile on his lips. “Your techniques—they really work!”
“You almost lost it there, Ledeboer,” Gotthard says. “And that was just medium intensity.”
“You think you can do better?” Pieter asks.
Gotthard laughs. “Some of us need no fancy tricks, rat boy.”
“Who’s a rat boy?” Janson walks towards Gotthard, his green eyes glowering.
“You and your brother,” he snorts, “and your two dead fathers. No place for women on your fishing boat, correct?”
Janson cringes and charges forward, pushing Gotthard hard on the chest, who falls back on his buttocks, laughing hard.
“Jans, no!” Pieter grabs one of his arms. “It’s not worth it.”
“Always a pleasure debating with you, Elder Ledeboer,” Gotthard says, like the name is an insult. Without losing his smirk, he stands and dusts off his tunic, as if there was dirt on the staging permascape
. “Who can compete with such persuasive arguments?”
While this little piece of drama unfolds, Ximena notices that not everybody is looking at Janson.
Luuk Smook is staring fixedly at Edda.
And his look sends a shudder up Ximena’s spine.
The auditorium’s point of view follows Edda as she paces to her assigned spot at the edge of the arena.
The trial of the Second Step is finally here.
It is all or nothing once more, twelve will stay in the race, twelve will be gone forever. The fate of her father is in the balance, and yet, with a pull of brutal willpower, Edda puts the nervous twitching of her hands firmly under control. Ximena nods in admiration at her mental discipline—it is incredible how far she has come.
Edda stops at the rim of the arena and looks down at the perfectly circular depression the size of a small lake carved on the infinite flatness and filled with fog to the brim—concealing the inside from her dream eyes.
“Do ready yourself in position, human candidates.” Yog’s soft female voice reverberates mentally across the amphitheater as if whispered in every ear simultaneously.
Edda steps directly onto the top of a giant metallic slope that plummets steeply down into the mist and loses itself in the mysteries below. Except for the scale, the slope is not unlike those playground slides Ximena loved to throw herself down as a little, unruly girl.
She looks around the edge of the round lake-like arena, where the other twenty-three candidates have taken positions on equidistant slopes, identical to hers. The slopes are numbered sequentially. Hers is slope number one—the number emanates telepathically from that spot like her ranking did after she nailed the trial of the First Step. Next to her, on the right, number two is manned by Elder Luuk Smook, who gives her a cool side glance, and then exchanges a grin with his sister, next around the rim on slider number three. Aline and Gotthard are standing beyond, number four and five respectively, their faces too far to see. And so, each candidate is placed along the perfect circumference of fog, ordered by the rank they achieved in the first trial. The last one, on Edda’s left, is a nervous-looking Valentijn van Kley. Although also from Lunteren, she doesn’t know him well, but exchanges a nod of support.
