The Waking Dreamer

by J. E. Alexander

  THE WAKING DREAMER

  J. E. ALEXANDER

  Copyright © 2013, Joshua Elijah Alexander.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Published by Mechanical Owl Media.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-615-84811-2

  ISBN-10: 0615848117

  For my mom, a fine skylark.

  “Every night and every morn

  Some to misery are born,

  Every morn and every night

  Some are born to sweet delight.

  Some are born to sweet delight,

  Some are born to endless night.

  We are led to believe a lie

  When we see not thro’ the eye,

  Which was born in a night to perish in a night,

  When the soul slept in beams of light.

  God appears, and God is light,

  To those poor souls who dwell in night;

  But does a human form display

  To those who dwell in realms of day.”

  William Blake,

  “Auguries of Innocence”

  “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”

  Lewis Carroll,

  Alice in Wonderland

  CHAPTER 1

  Under a moonless sky distended with December rain, the well-dressed young couple passed boarded-up storefronts and broken windows; an amber-eyed little girl skipped between them, laughing gleefully at the serpent wrapped in her long hair. They passed drug dealers and their entourages, who said nothing, making no move to harass the white couple with the bronze-skinned girl. Those who hunted the streets knew to fear the strangers who had come to Detroit three days prior. The gangs of the Motor City had declared temporary truces to warn each other about the odd but lethal strangers.

  Just leave ’em alone.

  The message had not been heeded by all: one street boss, intent on establishing his presence in Detroit, disregarded it. Only a lone survivor fled to tell the story of the red-haired woman in the black satin dress and stiletto heels who had disarmed and broken all four limbs of the nine men found assaulting a homeless man. Her young male companion, in a tweed suit and bowtie and seemingly disinterested, had leaned against a nearby building while the red-haired woman easily dispatched the attackers. That the little girl, shoulders draped with the serpent, had sat and studiously watched the fight had only added to the mystery and terror the three now inspired in the city’s ganglands.

  They’re looking for something.

  That was the consensus, and the city’s worst elements had agreed to leave them alone and let them look.

  The trio wandered Detroit’s most dangerous streets by night without any sign of concern. The couple showed no interest in displaying bravado or strength to those they passed, yet they did not fear their presence being known. Crack houses. Rundown buildings. Even sewers. Never finding what they sought.

  Now the three walked down another unremarkable street, the abandoned, hollow buildings on either side offering silent testimony to a forgotten neighborhood. The homeless huddled in corners that held small fires burning in trash cans. Cars stripped of all value sat as rusted metal frames along the curbs. The lone remaining business, a liquor store with half-blinking neon signs, went dark as it closed for the night. The wheelchair-bound old man who slumped in front of the store wheezed into his hands before lighting another cigarette and coughing hysterically.

  As he passed, the young man withdrew one hand from his tweed coat’s interior pocket. He checked a silver pocket watch and smiled, returning both hands to his tailored slacks.

  “Eleven o’clock. Another hour and it’ll be Christmas,” he said. His blue-eyed, dimpled countenance drew wide with a sparkling white smile as a gust of Lake St. Clair wind parted his short, black hair. “Are we certain we’re in the correct part of the city, Rhiannon?”

  The red-haired woman beside him nodded in affirmation, motioning for them to stop and turning toward the little girl. The woman’s pale face was framed by a fiery waterfall of scarlet curls that cascaded down beyond her narrow shoulders. Her sparkling emerald-green eyes stared unblinkingly at her young friend.

  “Amala,” the red-haired woman said as she drew her lithe frame down toward her knees so that she was eye-level with the child. Rhiannon pulled the folds of the satin dress and black overcoat inward against the bracing winter storm. “As Druids, we must come to understand when to let our Wisdoms guide us and when we must guide our Wisdoms.” She motioned with her hand to the serpent. Seeing both effort and confusion in the girl’s face, Rhiannon tilted her head to the side and caught the gaze of the thin serpent bobbing its head next to the girl’s cheek.

  “Your Wisdom experiences her surroundings in ways you cannot, but as Druids we may share in that experience with them. Yet, our Wisdoms would give in fully to their nature and inevitably lead us back, beyond civilization, if we did not provide them with the necessary focus.”

  Listening intently, the little girl’s round face looked again to the serpent. The intensity of mastering a new skill twinkled in her amber eyes. There was silence, the woman and man watching wordlessly, the only noise the low howl of wind through the inner city’s streets.

  “She’s in there,” the girl finally said. The serpent’s head had turned a moment before Amala’s, and they both now stared in the same direction across the street to a ramshackle building.

  “Excellent, Amala,” the man said with a satisfied, approving smile, much like that a father bestows on his daughter when she learns to walk.

  Rhiannon laid her hand on the child’s head, stroking through the long tresses of rich chestnut hair. The girl’s chest swelled with the comfort of a familiar touch, and as one, the trio began walking toward the new destination Amala had provided.

  “Are you nervous, Amala?” the man asked as they walked.

  The little girl shrugged. “Dunno. What’s she like?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met her. But I hear she’s a fearsome terror to evil men everywhere. It is said she is as great as the endless oceans whose tides ebb and flow by only her whim. She is the fiercest Ovate in the world.”

  Amala’s frightened expression earned Rhiannon’s rebuke. “Stop that, Oliver.”

  “But I took too long to find her. Will she be mad at me?” Amala trembled.

  Oliver’s face brightened with a sincere smile. “No. She will positively adore you. Almost as much as I do. If that’s even possible.”

  “I hope so,” Amala said, relaxing at Oliver’s words. “She does, too,” she added, indicating her ophidian friend who raised its head to taste the night’s air and watch behind them as they crossed the street.

  A deep bellow rolled across the city as the engorged sky erupted in a torrent of rain, scattering the huddled homeless to the surrounding buildings. The sudden storm suffocated the noise of the falling footsteps and colorful exclamations. Still, the trio maintained an unhurried approach to their destination’s entrance.

  Rhiannon was the first to step through the broken door, gracefully contorting her supple frame over and underneath the splintered beams and jutting pipes on eit
her side. Amala and Oliver followed. Together, the two Druids appraised the empty, low-ceilinged lobby of what appeared to be an abandoned hotel, their glittering eyes lighting the darkness. Broken furniture and debris littered the room, with only the faint sound of scattering rodents to accentuate the dull booming of thunder outside.

  The serpent’s head stared forward, flicking its tongue several times as it bobbed to the left and right. When it had swept the entire room, it returned to a resting position against Amala’s cheek.

  “Where is the Archivist, Amala?” Rhiannon asked, a teacher patiently awaiting her pupil’s answer. “Where is our Elder?”

  Amala took a steadying breath and closed her eyes. The serpent responded, half of its body whipping around in the air, forked tongue extended.

  “She doesn’t know,” said the girl with a voice that trembled despite her company and her own power.

  “She doesn’t know, or you don’t know?” Rhiannon asked reprovingly.

  Amala looked into the red-haired woman’s eyes with the kind of hurt a child feels when they disappoint a parent. After a moment, she turned to face the young man. “Oliver?” she asked.

  Oliver’s face warmed as he knelt. “You cannot rely on your Bard Companion to tell you what waits in the darkness.”

  “That is why you must focus your Wisdom,” Rhiannon added. “She may be distracted by the rats. You need to focus through her primal urges. Calm yourself. Druids and their Wisdoms share anxiety as well as thoughts. Fear is confusion and the hiding place of evil.”

  Rhiannon reached across to Amala’s hand and grasped it firmly. “You have nothing to fear. The darkness hides no enemies your Wisdom cannot sense. Be still and listen as she listens, not as you would listen.”

  Nodding, the child closed her eyes again with a determined grimace on her smooth, round features. Even as she stroked a hand through the girl’s hair, Rhiannon scanned the room for signs of movement.

  Once more the thunder roared overhead, and the sound of pelting rain leaking through holes in the roof echoed sharply in the distance. Amala’s serpent swayed, its tail slowly moving around the child’s slender neck as it lengthened itself farther into the air.

  “She senses someone else,” Amala said. “But she … I can’t tell …” her voice trailed off, her eyes opening again and looking to Rhiannon for approval.

  Rhiannon and Oliver shared a momentary look before he nodded and closed his eyes. Tilting his head, he was silent and still as the storm outside raged on. “Below us … there is someone … but … they are … hidden?” he said as his face registered confusion.

  “Then we shall reveal what is hidden,” Rhiannon said. Moving toward the broken door, Rhiannon reached one arm into the rain and waited. After only a moment, a rush of wind responded. Rhiannon retracted her arm to reveal a copper-headed hawk shedding its wings of water.

  The hawk’s narrow beak angled back and forth as its glowing eyes scanned the room. Amala’s Wisdom buried itself tightly into the folds of her hair. Rhiannon waited as the hawk beat its wings once more before folding them inward and perching stoically on her shoulder.

  “There is someone else here,” Rhiannon finally said. “Possibly a third, but it’s unclear.”

  Oliver reacted one moment before either Druid heard a muffled cry piercing the rhythm of the pattering rain. His head tilted to its other side, mouth slightly agape, and eyes closed.

  “A woman … mid-thirties … pained with effort …” he said.

  “We cannot know how our Elder may test us. Always be cautious, Amala.” Stepping forward, Rhiannon strode across the lobby toward a dilapidated staircase along the far wall, testing the rotting wood with one hand before motioning for Amala and Oliver to follow.

  Into the darkness they descended. Rhiannon paused every few feet to listen silently to the urgings of her Wisdom and the continued screams that seemed to be increasing in both frequency and intensity somewhere below. Oliver frequently whispered confirmations of their direction. The stairwell continued deep beneath the hotel; the depth quieted the storm outside to reveal a woman crying out in agony.

  The staircase opened at the end of a narrow hallway composed of moldy brick walls. The air was stale and damp, tasting of rodent feces. The group’s slow steps echoed in the corridor along with the sound of glass and syringes cracking underneath Rhiannon’s heels or Oliver’s polished loafers.

  None spoke as they negotiated the black. The Druids guided their hands against the narrowing confines of the brick walls to navigate, and the Bard intuitively followed the echoes and vibrations of the screams ahead. The hawk stared forward from Rhiannon’s shoulder while the serpent’s head emerged from Amala’s hair, its infrared vision ready to be called upon.

  “Twenty feet,” Oliver whispered. “Ten feet … five …”

  As they turned a corner, the contracting oppressiveness of the hallway suddenly gave way to an open boiler room. Several points of candlelight shone perched atop a crowded shopping cart of garbage, cans, and clothes, the light casting dancing shadows along the ceiling’s rusted pipes. Splayed on the floor was a panting, sobbing woman with her legs spread before her. And kneeling there, coaxing the pained woman’s swollen stomach with her aged, black hands, was an old woman layered in the rags and tattered clothes of a bag lady. A dozen green luna moths danced in the air above her head.

  Without looking up, the old woman chuckled to herself. “And the three arrive at the moment they were meant to.”

  Amala saw confusion in Rhiannon’s face as her mentor looked from the old woman to the pregnant one, and in her protector’s confusion Amala suddenly was afraid.

  “Hold the mother’s head, Rhiannon. Comfort her,” the old woman said without turning to look at them.

  “Yes … Archivist,” Rhiannon finally said after several breaths during which she looked again upon the pregnant woman. She then stepped forward and knelt down, lifting the woman’s head into her lap and brushing the hair from her face.

  Amala felt Oliver’s hands reassuringly cradle her shoulders from behind. She watched mutely as the pregnant woman’s frail, needle-ravaged legs bucked upward with each swelling contraction. She cried with the approaching birth, seeming desperate to free her body of the child within. Her sunken eyes searched the room through tears and sweat that beaded down her abscess-marked face.

  She cried a desperate, hollow wail that begged for release. “Get out of me!” she growled as the next contraction’s wave tore through her.

  “Yes, he’s almost here, child,” the Archivist cooed, her wrinkled hands moving over her stomach. Thin black skin sagged on her homely face, layers of old scarves covering most of her features and holding back a mass of unkempt hair, in which the luna moths seemed to find refuge.

  The woman’s breathing grew shallow and forced, and with a body too weak to withstand the pain any longer, she found the strength to push one last time with every bit of rage and fear within her.

  “Ah, here we are,” the Archivist chuckled, withdrawing her hands from the woman’s legs and cradling the newly emerged infant. The woman moaned once more and then went completely limp in Rhiannon’s hands.

  “Oh, yes, look at him. Wide-awake and a look of wit in his eyes,” the Archivist whispered, staring down into the infant’s face. Alert hazel eyes stared up, rolling around to the rhythm of a soft whimper. The infant squirmed a little, though entirely silent and transfixed by the old woman and the bright green wings that now fluttered around his face.

  Rain was now falling through the broken ceiling, and the Archivist pulled one of her own scarves—a red one with gold-and-white five-petal flower patterns—from her head and wrapped the naked infant in it. She placed a single finger along the length of the umbilical chord. A blue arc of light passed underneath her finger, and the cord immediately fell away from the infant’s body, bloodlessly severing the last connection to the mother.

  “Elder,” Rhiannon said as she looked with pain at the mother. “We brought Amala to
night as you instructed.” She motioned to the girl, who stood uncomfortably still, her small hands fidgeting within the folds of her muted orange dress. “But what is—”

  “The mother,” the Archivist interrupted. “Poor thing will never fully recover. Find a hospital for her, Oliver. See that she remembers nothing of this or us.”

  Amala looked up at Oliver and saw him shaking his head at Rhiannon. “Of course, my Elder,” he said slowly, as if unsure whether to obey or not.

  “Amala and Rhiannon will stay with me. We have things to discuss. We will return to our Grove together,” the Archivist said, not looking up from the infant still cradled in her arms.

  Oliver looked like he was about to object when Rhiannon subtly shook her head. Still the Archivist did not turn to look at him as he sighed and stepped over the pool of birthing blood to kneel beside the mother.

  Nine months of various abuses had robbed the mother of her natural beauty, transforming a once-petite face into a death mask with skin now stretched across a gaunt frame. Her long, dark hair was brittle and prematurely gray at the temples. As Rhiannon stroked the backside of her hand over the skeleton-like body, the mother roused and gripped the Druid’s wrist.

  “Get … it … away … from … me …,” she slurred, eyes fluttering as the rise and fall of her chest waned dangerously.

  Oliver bent and lifted the woman easily out of Rhiannon’s hands. He pursed his lips and hummed a short series of tones softly into her ear. Her shivering body calmed immediately, responding to a wave of warm air.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Oliver whispered as Rhiannon stood. “Be careful, my morning flame. I couldn’t bear the darkness without your light.”

  Amala recognized the tension release from Rhiannon whenever Oliver called her his morning flame. The two kissed before he winked at Amala. Bowing his head curtly at the Archivist’s back, he carried the bloodied mother in his arms out of the boiler room.