The Dream Gatherer

by Kristen Britain

  “Typical feline,” Marin said.

  “Who are you?” Danalong asked.

  Marin paused mid-stride. “Eh?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Marin.”

  “I mean, are you a witch?”

  “A witch?” Marin snorted. “Am I witch because I know the ways of moon and rain? I am Marin, and I know the Earth. I learn names. Events happen as they will, child, and I have little influence.”

  Danalong frowned, not sure his question had been answered.

  * * *

  Gardening continued over several days in rain, fog, and sun. Marin led Danalong along the shore so he could search for survivors of the wreck. He did not find any, nor did he spot debris. It was disquieting. Either his former life had been a dream or he was trapped in an enchantment. He touched his Rider brooch frequently, its cold contours reassuringly real for all he loathed its power to augment his magical ability. When he tried to question Marin about the absence of wreckage, she’d shrug and caper off, and once again he’d be drawn into her songs and lessons. She taught him the names of things, and how to feel the moss between his toes and sing to trees. Daily they greeted the loon, and in the evenings they pulled starlight from the sky so they could walk and listen to the sounds of nocturnal beasts.

  Gardening eased Danalong’s ardor for battle, and he’d finally come to the conclusion that Marin embodied no ill intent, that she was in no way aligned with Mornhavon, for Mornhavon represented only darkness, death, and destruction. Marin, it seemed, represented only the beauty of the natural world and its cycles.

  Peace so settled over him that he thought he would be content to remain on the island with Marin forever, away from the hatred and violence, no longer feeling the pain of losing those he cared about.

  * * *

  One evening Marin stared into the croft’s cold hearth. She’d allowed the fire to die, then piled fresh kindling on the hearthstone. She made no move, however, to light it.

  “I cannot boil water for my tea,” she said mournfully.

  “No, not without a fire,” he agreed.

  “Perhaps you could help.”

  He reached for the flint and steel on the mantel.

  “No, not that way,” she said.

  Danalong stared hard at her. “Then, in what way would you like the fire to be started?”

  She did not flinch at the coldness of his tone, nor did her gaze waver. “You could use your gift.”

  Anger shook Danalong’s body. Even his fellow Green Riders did not ask this of him. “No.”

  “But you’ve the power to ignite the kindling, child, and the fire will boil water for my tea.”

  He grabbed the flint and steel and thrust them at her. “Use these. Or rub sticks together.”

  She did not take them. Just sat there waiting.

  “Fine.” He threw them on the floor and stomped outside to cool off in the night air. How could she call his curse a gift? It was a weapon he’d used often in this long, terrible war against Mornhavon’s people, and not just the soldiers. He closed his eyes trying to stave off images of Arcosian villages his power had razed, of charred bodies of young and old. Although it was no worse than atrocities committed by Mornhavon against the Sacor Clans, he could not cleanse his mind of what he’d done or absolve himself of guilt.

  The door of the croft creaked open, and Marin stood beside him. He looked down at her, starlight silvering her eyes.

  “I am sorry I snapped at you,” he said.

  “I understand,” she replied. “I sense the many painful experiences you’ve endured in your life. It is a pity that such gifts should be harnessed for war.”

  “It is all I have ever known. Perhaps my ancestors used their abilities otherwise, but I do not know.”

  “Some of your ancestors, yes; some, no. It is the way of humans, always striving one way or the other. Magic, which is also called etherea, is an element of nature like the air we breathe. It does not have a mind of its own, nor is it evil or good. Humankind uses it for many purposes the way the ore of the earth is mined and worked into swords. The ore is not inherently evil, but it is subject to the will of the one who wields it.”

  Danalong gazed down at his feet. “Then I am evil.”

  “That is not the point I am trying to make, child. What else is the ore of the earth used for?”

  “Tools, pots, buckles, nails . . . I understand what you are saying, but all I see is blood on a sword.”

  “It takes time and healing and trying. Perhaps you will try to light the fire so an old woman can make a soothing cup of chamomile tea.” She returned inside.

  He struggled with himself, the loon’s lonely cry an echo of his own pain. She had no right to ask this of him. She had no idea the horrors its use conjured. Actually, she probably did. He had told her little, but she seemed to know so much about him anyway. Fire to light kindling to boil water for tea. It sounded simple. It was how he would rather use his ability, but it had been exploited for war the moment he became a Green Rider. He shook his head and entered the croft.

  Inside he found Marin sitting before the hearth, the kindling unlit.

  “You are not going to let this go, are you?” he asked.

  “Fire lights the night,” Marin told him, “on Earth and in the heavens. Ships navigate by stars. Fire warms us and heats our food, and helps us make things. It clears the land for regrowth and regeneration, and in fact some trees will not germinate without it.”

  It also kills, he thought, but he did not argue. Instead he sank to his knees beside her. This was one of her lessons, he knew. He would try. He would try to see other than the bloody sword. He would try to light a simple fire.

  He extended his hand toward the hearth. Normally his ability came with explosive rage. He could not do that here for it would burn down Marin’s croft and the near woods. He swallowed hard, reined back the surge of his ability. A puff of smoke rose from his fingers.

  Marin squeezed his shoulder. “You are doing fine, child.”

  He tried to push away the grisly scenes that played in his mind and concentrate on making a small flame. He’d once known such fine discipline; it had been his first training, but the battlefield had required no finesse, just brute force.

  Sweat slid down his face as he concentrated. He recalled Captain Ambriodhe’s calming voice talking him through his exercises, to ease into it. A small candlelike flame flickered to life on the tip of his index finger. He exclaimed in triumph and then used his ability to mold it into a tiny ball like a molten marble, and tossed it onto the kindling. He sat back on his heels and watched as the wood began to burn.

  “Well done,” Marin said. “See how the flame merrily dances on the kindling? It consumes the wood, yes, but it will help me make tea.”

  Danalong wiped the sweat off his face, relieved, for once, that the use of his ability hadn’t killed anyone.

  * * *

  The next morning, Danalong awoke to find himself alone in the croft. The table was set for breakfast as usual, but it was the first time Marin had left without him. He dressed and hurried outside.

  She wasn’t by the lake. He saw only the loon that barely rippled the water as it glided along, the white patches of its plumage brilliant against the dark, silken surface of the lake. Danalong followed the trails they ordinarily walked, but still there was no sign of Marin. The wind picked up and whispered through tree boughs. He wondered if they were in for a storm, but the sky was clear.

  The wind grew so strong that it forced him to stumble down a path he hadn’t yet walked. He tried to steer back toward the croft, but the wind blew him off course.

  “All right!” he shouted. “I’ll follow the trail.” He didn’t know to whom he spoke or why, but the wind calmed considerably at his words.

  The trail was rugged with rocks and twisting roots and climbed st
eadily to a headland that jutted out into the sea and ended at a precipitous cliff, and here the trees and shrubs grew squat to the ground as though to steel themselves against the battering of the wind and weather. The waves were loud as they dashed against the shore far below. Marin stood at the edge of the cliff, laughing in the wind.

  “Why do you laugh?” Danalong asked.

  Marin’s ivory hair streamed behind her and her arms were outstretched as if to embrace the world. “I laugh because the sea is strong, but has no muscle. I laugh because it pushes and pulls on the shoreline, and possesses the strength to sculpt something as ancient and unyielding as granite.”

  The wind changed direction. Gulls cried as their flight shifted with the air currents.

  “The wind,” Marin said, “moves this world as no human can.”

  A cormorant perched on a rocky ledge below with wings spread to dry.

  Marin laughed with childlike delight. “It is the purest magic of all, this alchemy of sea and wind and earth, and, of course, fire and etherea. People may use it in an ill manner, but in the end, the people will fade away, nary a memory, and the Earth shall endure without a care.”

  It was, Danalong thought, an oddly comforting outlook that the world would outlast any ruin wrought by human hands.

  “Come,” Marin said, and she led him back down the trail to garden.

  When they reached the lakeshore, the loon was silent. They could not spot it as usual.

  “Something has changed,” Marin said. “Perhaps autumn has called our friend away to the sea.”

  But it wasn’t autumn, and trepidation filled Danalong’s heart.

  They gardened. Afternoon clouds brought rain. Mist smoked from the forest floor and Bobcat appeared with prey clenched in his jaw. The loon’s head trailed along the forest floor, blood seeping into its white breast. Its wings flopped lifelessly, the perfect spotted pattern of its plumage soiled and in disarray.

  Danalong fell to his knees, digging his fingers deep into earth and moss. Tears washed down his cheeks. “How could he?” How could Danalong weep for a bird when he had never shed a tear for friends he’d seen struck down in battle or drowned in a shipwreck?

  Startled by Danalong’s outburst, Bobcat shied into the forest with his prey.

  Marin’s eyes were watery, but she did not cry. She knelt beside Danalong and folded him into her arms as if he were no more than a boy. She smelled of loam and sweet fern and the salt air. “It is hard, child, the way of the world. We will mourn for our friend, the loon, but before long someone new will inhabit the lake and life will go on. Yes, I know it feels as if Bobcat betrayed you, but he thinks of survival and food, not betrayal.”

  “Why couldn’t you stop him?”

  “Stop him? It is like telling the wind not to blow. I have no influence, child, just as you had no influence when your ship crashed into the sea shelf. If it had not been the loon, it would have been some other creature. It does not mean, however, we cannot express grief for our friend’s passing.”

  “It is so cruel.”

  “Cruel?” Marin seemed to ponder. “It is nature. Nature is not cruel, nor is it kind. It just is.”

  Danalong sniffed and rubbed his eyes. Marin was right. All the days of gardening had taught him about give and take, about balance and survival.

  When finally they rose to leave, a pair of wood ducks alighted onto the lake’s surface.

  “New neighbors and very colorful,” Marin said. “There’s a power in nature, you know.”

  Danalong thought of how rain bogged down soldiers, fire burned forests, and windstorms wrecked ships.

  “You’re thinking of the negative, child. Remember your lessons and think of the other side, and head for the ocean to see what the wind may bring.”

  Danalong turned away from Marin and gasped. His sword leaned against an oak tree.

  “How did you . . . ? How did you retrieve my sword from the ocean?” he asked. When no one answered, he looked over his shoulder. Marin was gone.

  “What? Marin?” He turned round and round, but there was no sign of her. Even the path they’d walked seemed to have disappeared.

  Why did she leave him? Was this some new lesson? She would reappear if she wished, but he’d a growing suspicion he’d never see her again, and he stood there with a heavy heart until his gaze fell once more upon his sword. An oak staff was propped beside it. Oak was the grandmother tree of peace. He hefted the staff, liking the weight of it. The sword, in contrast, felt strange in the hand it had calloused.

  Dusk followed Danalong as he bushwhacked through forest undergrowth. He let instinct guide him. The moon brightened the forest as it had the night of the wreck. Soon he heard the chuckle of the ocean and the tree line gave way to a cove with a beach of rounded stones. Waves sparked wildly with moonlight. His sea-soaked uniform chilled him.

  “What?” But before he could marvel over his uniform, movement on the beach caught his attention.

  “Rider Danalong—is that you?” someone called.

  Some of his comrades from the Windswift lived! But how? The Windswift lay gashed and broken on the sea shelf beyond the cove. He leaned on the oak staff that now appeared no more than a common branch, and pushed hair away from his eyes. He wept once more, but this time in gladness.

  “Rider!” It was Jaren, the young seaman, who led a few of the others toward him. “We feared you drowned. Many have.” His face grew troubled. “We’ve got injured on the beach shivering with the cold.”

  Danalong hurried to where they huddled together for warmth. Someone had collected driftwood for a fire, but it had not been lit.

  “We’ve no flint among us,” Jaren explained.

  Danalong licked his lips. The injured could perish from exposure if they didn’t warm up. He did not hesitate. He squatted before the wood and extended his hand. Flame grew to life over his palm and he sensed sailors and soldiers startle around him. Some knew what he could do and perhaps expected the volley of an explosive fireball to emerge from his hand, but he simply gave the flame to the driftwood and then pulled it back. As the fire grew, many drew closer to it to receive the heat. Gold-orange light flickered across grateful faces.

  Jaren’s face, however, was turned toward the ocean.

  “What do you see?” Danalong asked.

  “It is a ghost ship or I’ve gone mad.”

  Danalong squinted, unable to believe his eyes, but there a ship sailed from a fog bank looking very much a ghost ship with the unearthly glow of the moon upon it. It possessed the same gallant lines as Windswift. When signal lights blinked from aloft, he clapped Jaren on the back. “That is no ghost ship, it’s Wishwind. She survived the gale.”

  The survivors of the wreck shouted a hurrah. A rush of wind swept their voices away, as if to another time. Danalong glanced back at the woods. Had he been inland at all? Had Marin been real? He guessed that if he searched for the croft by the lake, he would never find it.

  At the forest’s edge, feline eyes flashed in the moonlight.

  * * *

  The next morning, the first mate of Wishwind told Danalong how the fire on the beach had caught their attention and that if it hadn’t been lit, they’d have just sailed on, never knowing the survivors awaited rescue.

  As crew from the Wishwind rowed Danalong past the hulk of the Windswift, he observed that seabirds had already discovered nooks above the water in which to roost. He knew that in time barnacles would spread along its side. Fish and other creatures of the sea would find homes and protection in the ship’s submerged regions, and, eventually, as the years wore on, the ocean and the weather would batter it relentlessly, causing its proud lines to rot and crumble and collapse. Ocean currents would scatter its remains on the ocean floor, and the Windswift would slip from human memory.

  “Give and take,” he murmured.

  “What’s tha
t?” one of the sailors asked.

  Danalong chuckled and thought he could hear another’s joyous laughter on the wind. Gardening had indeed healed his wounds, and now he would help bring peace to his troubled land, and when his bones crumbled to dust, other children would be born who would try to reshape the world.

  LINKED, ON THE LAKE OF SOULS

  From Karigan G’ladheon and the Green Riders: A History

  by Lady Estral Andovian Fiori, the Golden Guardian of Selium

  Vol. 6 Appx. R “Author Notes and Reminisces”

  (10) Fictional story, told to Karigan preceding the Battle of the Lone Forest

  It was following the wounding of Karigan at the hands of Second Empire’s torturer, Nyssa Starling, that Karigan requested me to tell her a story to keep her mind off her pain. A made-up story, she said. I must admit I was shaken at the time by the harshness of our captivity and in fear for my friend’s well-being, so it was not easy to turn my mind to the creation of stories. However, if it took making up a story to aid her, then that was what I would do. I would have done anything for her.

  Knowing that Karigan, as she grew up, had loved the Journeys of Gilan Wylloland, a trove of colorful adventure tales, I dove in and told her a story—inventing it as I went along—about two bickering friends whose situation grows more dire by the moment. To save themselves they must learn to cooperate and have the utmost trust in one another. In the end, their predicament serves to deepen their friendship. I only realized some time after the fact that I had told a story about friendship to my best friend when we ourselves were in such terrible danger, but so there it is.

  I have included this story, “Linked, on the Lake of Souls,” in these appendices for the edification of those who have heard me refer to it in passing and wanted to know the whole of it.