Nightpeople

by Anthony Eaton

  The sun continued rising, higher and higher, and still they walked. Saria knew that complaining about the increasing heat would be futile, so she simply pulled the hood of her robe up against the glare and kept her footsteps even with that of the old man. Below her feet the sand grew hotter and for a moment she wished for her shoes, but quickly pushed that thought to the back of her mind as a waste of energy. From the first morning, when he’d roused her from her sleeping mat, Dreamer Wanji had insisted she walk barefoot, just like him.

  ‘Can’t expect to reach the Earthmother properly if you go putting barriers between yourself and her.’

  The further they walked, the more sparse became the surrounding landscape. The sofly undulating dunes that surrounded Woormra gave way to flat, hard-packed sand. The occasional patches of scrub that dotted the dunes became fewer until eventually there was nothing but emptiness out to every horizon. Finally, Dreamer Wanji stopped.

  ‘This’ll do.’

  Sinking to the sand, he unslung a water-skin and took a long draw from it before passing it to Saria. As she drank, she risked reaching quickly outwards. The dog was still there. Without the protection of the dunes, it had fallen further away, but it still ghosted along behind, just out of sight.

  ‘Alright then. Somethin’ different today.’ Dreamer Wanji gestured to her to sit beside him. ‘Today, we’re gonna see how strong you really are, eh?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Today, you’re gonna do the reaching, just like normal, but out here there’s nothin’ for you to reach into. Right? That’s why we’ve come this far into the plains. Nothin’ living out here ‘cept for you and me. And I won’t be letting you reach me in a hurry. Close your eyes now, girl.’

  Saria did as she was told.

  ‘Good. Now just do like you normally do. Concentrate on findin’ the earthwarmth and letting it flow up into you. Then you can start to reach, but this time you’re not reaching out to anything specific. Just reach out. Got it?’

  Behind, the dog’s mind beckoned her, bright and willing. It took a conscious effort not to simply slide into those eager, open senses.

  ‘You’re holding back.’ Dreamer Wanji broke into her concentration. ‘How come?’

  ‘I … don’t know.’

  ‘You gotta let go. Part of reaching is using the Earthmother to give power to your own senses. Then you don’t need to find animals every time you wanna touch her Now, try again.’

  Once more, Saria let the earthwarmth flow and tried to just expand her senses out, but again the easy lure of the dog’s mind was too much to resist and instinctively she started falling into it.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Wanji’s brow creased in consternation as she pulled back again.

  ‘Nothing. It’s just … too hard, that’s all.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be. Most Dreamers find this one easy, especially the ones with a lot of power like you’ve got. Out here most Dreamers can just reach right out through the Earthmother herself. I don’t understand why you can’t. Unless …’

  Abruptly, the old man’s eyes closed and Saria sensed as much as watched him pulling earthwarmth into himself. It took him only a couple of seconds before he opened his eyes again and nodded back to where the dog lay hidden.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘A dog. I didn’t call it or anything, it just followed me.’

  ‘From Woormra?’

  ‘Before that. From Olympic, I think.’

  ‘Olympic?’

  ‘I reached into it there. The first time I was there with Dariand. And then Dreamer Baanti used it to guard me while he had me tied up and …’

  ‘Dreamer Baanti’s dog? Skinny yellow bugger?’ A look of concern crept across the old man’s features.

  ‘Yeah. At least, I think so.’

  ‘It’s been following you all this way?’

  Saria nodded.

  ‘You been feeding it?’

  ‘A bit,’ she admitted. ‘It was so hungry when it came in from the desert.’

  ‘And it’s been following us every day?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  Dreamer Wanji shook his head.

  ‘Tell you what, girl, you got the reaching like nobody I’ve ever met. Never been a Dreamer who could lure another man’s dog from him. Not that I’ve heard of, anyway. Bloody amazing. Call it.’

  ‘He might not come.’

  ‘Try anyway. Reach for him when you do it, eh?’

  Saria reached for the dog a third time, and as their minds touched she shouted, ‘Dog! Come here!’

  The animal’s pleasure at her summons flooded through her and she felt it launch itself towards her and Dreamer Wanji. Pulling back into her own mind, she opened her eyes just in time to see a shape detach itself from the landscape and trot steadily across the hard dirt.

  ‘Bloody night spirits,’ Dreamer Wanji muttered as the dog came closer. ‘That’s Dreamer Baanti’s beast, alright. And you reckon he’s been following you since Olympic?’

  ‘I think so, yeah.’

  ‘Never seen anything like it.’ Dreamer Wanji shook his head as the dog stopped just a few steps away and regarded the old man warily. ‘Give him some water, then. Poor thing’s gotta be thirsty after that walk.’

  Saria squirted some water into the palm of her hand and the dog lapped it up gratefully then retreated again.

  Dreamer Wanji turned his attention back to Saria. ‘This makes your job harder, but we didn’t walk all the way out here for nothin’, eh?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good. You’re gonna have to just block him out, if you can. When you let the earthwarmth flow through you, try to just let your mind out past his. Don’t let the edges of his world be the edges of yours. Right? You gotta let your mind go out further, around the dog, right out through the Earthmother, get under her skin, so to speak.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  With the dog so much closer, she expected that reaching would be more difficult than before, but now Dreamer Wanji knew of the dog’s presence she found she didn’t have to fight so hard to avoid its mind, and, as the old man had suggested, she just let her own consciousness slip past it. Immediately, a warm wave rushed through her.

  Dreamer Wanji noted immediately her sharp intake of breath. ‘There, that’s it!’ He nodded encouragingly.

  She barely heard the old man’s praise. Reaching through the Earthmother directly was something else again, something … huge. It was finding the most enormous mind in the world right there, all around her. The size of it almost swamped Saria.

  ‘Steady now.’ Dreamer Wanji’s hand on her arm was as insubstantial as the fluttering of an insect’s wings against her skin. ‘Just keep breathing deep and get used to it. Don’t go rushing in.’

  Slowly, Saria sank into the land. Gradually, as she let her awareness expand, she began to sense things, further and further: tiny clicks and pinpricks of life dotted across the plains; cold fingers of water trickling deep through the rocks below the surface; the searing touch of the sun.

  Daywards, a bright cloud shimmered – a concentration of life – Woormra. And below it, the caverns and tunnels of the council chamber formed a cold, empty maze snaking deep into the earth.

  ‘Don’t push yourself too far.’ Dreamer Wanji’s voice seemed to slide into her thoughts like a dream, distant and disembodied. ‘Just take it slowly.’

  But she couldn’t resist the pull of it, the immensity of power that pulsed through the ground, and Saria let herself stretch even further out.

  She had no idea how far she’d reached when she hit it.

  Nightwards, like a cold, deep, gnarled scar, a patch of the earth was dead. Beyond it she could feel the vaguest hints of trickling earthwarmth, but what grabbed her attention was the expanse of nothingness that blemished the surface and reached deep into the bedrock. Just brushing her senses against the distant coldness sent a convulsion through her, and instinctively she pulled away, falling back into herself in a rush.

  Sudd
enly she was back in the empty plains with Dreamer Wanji and the dog, her world reduced in an instant to her own limited horizons.

  ‘What happened?’ The old man crouched anxiously beside her. ‘You alright, girl?’

  ‘There was … something. Out that way.’ Saria pointed nightwards. ‘Something cold.’

  ‘Out there?’ The old man followed the direction of her finger. ‘How far?’

  ‘Don’t know. A long way. Much further than Woormra is behind us.’

  ‘You reached Woormra?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And you felt something nightwards, too?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Dreamer Wanji was incredulous. ‘Only thing out that way between here and the Darkedge is the Shifting House.’

  Saria was trying to clear the fog that had settled in her head.

  ‘It was so … dead.’

  ‘That’ll be it for sure. The Shifting House. Night spirits, girl! That’s two days walk from here. Even I can’t reach that far.’

  ‘Why couldn’t I feel anything there? It was so empty.’

  ‘It’s an empty place. It’s where the Skypeople used to do their burning. There’s nothing at all left there – no life. Just a shell of earth so burned out it’s like a hole in the world.’ He passed her the water-skin. While she drank he continued to regard her with astonishment. ‘I seen a lot of things in my time, Saria, but I’ve never known anyone, not a single Dreamer, who could reach two days through the Earthmother.’

  ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘Don’t know, girl. But if there’s gonna be a Dreamer who’ll be able to find a way across the Darkedge, I reckon it’ll be you.’ He hauled himself slowly to his feet. ‘We’d better be gettin’ back to Woormra, if we don’t want to get caught in the dark.’

  They began retracing their steps daywards, the dog padding steadily beside Saria. As she walked, she tried to recall the energy of touching the Earthmother, but her thoughts kept coming back to the horrible coldness of the Shifting House. When they were close to Woormra, and twilight was stretching over them from daywards, she turned to her companion.

  ‘Dreamer Wanji?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Why hasn’t that place – the Shifting House – started to heal like the rest of the land? How come it’s still so empty?’

  Dreamer Wanji sighed. ‘Sometimes, when you burn a place too badly, when you pull too much earthwarmth out of it or push too much into it, you kill its life. Just like with people.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘It’s why you gotta be so careful reaching people. You push too hard against them and you can just burn them right out of their own minds. ‘Specially if they’re not strong-minded in the first place.’

  Saria stopped in her tracks.

  ‘What is it, girl?’ Dreamer Wanji threw a concerned glance in her direction. ‘You okay?’

  ‘But …’

  For a brief moment Saria’s face was a mask of horror, and then she was gone, running as fast as she could towards the lights of Woormra, the dog at her heels. Dreamer Wanji watched her go, puzzled, before he realised the implications of what he’d just told her

  ‘Ah, crap,’ he muttered, then set off behind her as fast as his old legs could manage.

  ‘What happened to Dreamer Baanti?’ It was a demand, not a question.

  Dariand regarded her coldly. ‘I’ve already told you ten times. He went back to Olympic.’

  ‘No,’ Saria snapped back at him. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Saria, listen …’

  ‘No. I want to know what happened to him and I want you to tell me. Now.’

  ‘He went back …’

  She’d had enough of this lie. ‘He didn’t. He couldn’t. I know it.’

  She recalled the coldness that had swept over the Dreamer’s mind as she let her earthwarmth pour into him, so much like the dead scar of the Shifting House out on the plains. ‘Something happened to him. I could feel it just before I fainted. I felt something go out of him. Out of his mind.’

  ‘Then you need to ask Dreamer Wanji about it. He’s the only one who can explain this sort of stuff properly.’ Dariand was trying to keep his voice under control, but Saria detected something else about him, some slight change in his manner.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘If he was going to, he’d have told me by now. He’s had plenty of time. You explain it.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s not my business. You’re asking about things that are bigger than me.’

  So he did know more than he was telling her. Saria considered this.

  ‘You’re always telling me to trust you, right?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Listen, Dariand.’ Saying his name aloud felt unnatural, as if she was trying to invoke a power she didn’t really have over him. ‘I know, know, that something terrible happened to Dreamer Baanti that night. It was the last thing I remember feeling. There was pressure and earthwarmth, it kept building and building until I just let it all go rushing back into him, and then there was …’ She struggled to find words to describe it. ‘Coldness. Nothingness. Like the deadest part of the night. Dreamer Baanti felt just like the Shifting House. And nothing you can say will change my mind about it. So if you want me to trust you, if you really mean it when you say that, you’ve got to prove it to me. Now.’

  An uncomfortable silence filled the hut. Dariand shuffled his feet in the dust.

  ‘I can’t tell you what you want to know, girl …’

  ‘Then I’m going.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Away. Back to the valley. I dunno. Anywhere but here.’

  ‘You’ll get killed.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I’m not so weak now as I was when you got me from the valley. I know things about the Darklands and about myself. I reckon I’ll manage.’

  ‘You can’t run away from this, Saria. It’s too important.’

  ‘Then stop lying.’

  ‘I don’t want to lie to you. I just …’

  ‘So, you’re here.’ Saria and Dariand swung round to face Dreamer Wanji as the old man shuffled into the room. ‘Bloody hell, girl, you move fast for somethin’ with such skinny legs, eh?’

  When his joke didn’t raise a response from either of them, Wanji sighed and lowered himself heavily onto the dirt floor.

  ‘I’m knackered. So, Dariand, you tell her anything interesting?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Saria answered before Dariand had a chance to say a word. ‘Not a single thing. So I’m leaving.’

  ‘Leaving, eh?’ Dreamer Wanji pretended to think about this. ‘Nah, girl. You’ve got too much of your destiny tied up in this place to be runnin’ off on your own. You aren’t leaving.’

  ‘You can’t stop me.’

  ‘True,’ Dreamer Wanji agreed. ‘We can’t. And we won’t go throwing you down a hole, either. Best we can offer is to try and explain what you want to know. But I can’t even make any promises about that.’

  ‘What happened to Dreamer Baanti?’

  She caught the momentary glance that passed between the two men. Dreamer Wanji’s answer wasn’t what she’d been expecting.

  ‘What do you reckon happened?’

  ‘You tell me,’ she snapped.

  ‘No need. You’ve already worked it out, haven’t you?’

  The quiet in the hut lengthened. Only the snap of the fire and the distant murmer of voices at the well outside penetrated the silence.

  ‘Did I kill him?’

  ‘No. Not as such.’

  ‘What then? He felt as dead as the Shifting House.’

  ‘That’s a good way to think of it.’

  ‘But he’s not dead?’

  Surprisingly, it was Dariand who spoke next.

  ‘I think we should show her.’

  Dreamer Wanji shook his head. ‘There’s nothing there to see.’

  ‘All the same, I reckon she needs to see it for herself. To understand.’

  ‘There’s no point. She
already knows what happened.’

  Dariand looked as serious as Saria had ever seen him. ‘Dreamer, she nearly burned me away out at the gorge without even knowing what she was doing. Then she actually did it to Dreamer Baanti a couple of nights later. She’s scared, she’s frightened and she doesn’t know what she’s capable of, so I say we let her see it for herself, and I reckon I’ve got a right to make that claim.’

  The two men locked stares for a long time, until finally the old Dreamer sighed.

  ‘Fair enough. But you take her, stay with her, and bring her right back here. And don’t let her listen to any of them out by the well, right?’

  ‘Okay.’ Dariand jerked his head at the doorway. ‘Come on.’

  They stepped into the darkening evening and crossed the common in silence. At this time of night most of the folk of Woormra were gathered in the common enjoying the growing coolness and exchanging tales and gossip. Saria could feel eyes following them as Dariand led her into the alleyways.

  After a few minutes of twisting and turning, they approached a hut that didn’t quite fit with all the other buildings of Woormra. It was just as dirty, and made of old sheets of tin, rusted and propped against one another, but it had no windows and only a narrow slot of a door She stopped.

  ‘You alright?’

  ‘What’s this place?’

  ‘You’ll see. Come on.’

  Dariand tapped lightly on the door shutter and footsteps scraped inside, then the shutter slid back to reveal Dreamer Gaardi peering out.

  ‘Dariand?’

  ‘I brought the girl. She needs to see him.’

  ‘Does Dreamer Wanji reckon that’s a good idea?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I think it is.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ The door slid open, and Saria followed Dariand inside.

  Initially she was blind. The only light came from a tiny dung-fire. The first thing to hit her was a sickly, sweet odour which made her feel ill.

  ‘You’ll get used to the smell.’

  Dariand’s hand rested on her shoulder, protectively, in an uncharacteristic gesture.

  Then she saw Dreamer Baanti.

  He lay on his side in the middle of the room near the fire. Someone had put a tattered old blanket underneath his head, but other than that he rested on bare earth. He lay slightly curled, his robes hiked above his knees, his bare legs and feet protruding from them. In the dull light they seemed pale, almost transparent.