The Waking Dreamer

by J. E. Alexander

  “How are you holding up?” Keiran whispered.

  Emmett looked at his hands and cleared his throat, wiping his eyes and pushing his hair out of his face in one motion. “No idea.”

  Keiran drew a hand through the gentle current and refreshed his face with the cold water. There was exhaustion evident in his eyes, green eyes that had until now brightened with the promise of adventure but had been dulled by the darkness they had witnessed.

  “We’ll reach Portland by sunrise.”

  “And then what?” Emmett asked.

  “Amala wanted you hidden somewhere safe.”

  “But shouldn’t we go back for her?” he asked, concerned that his almost pleading sounded accusatory.

  He watched a dark shadow pass over Keiran’s face.

  “My word means everything, and I gave my word to Amala that I would protect you. Even if it meant abandoning her. And she knew that it might be so.”

  If it weren’t for me, you would have stayed to fight with her. Closing his eyes, Emmett lowered his chin to his chest.

  Though he had said nothing aloud, he felt somehow that Keiran’s silence confirmed what he was thinking. Emmett laid his head in his hand, feeling the approaching emotion. In the encompassing silence, he swallowed his own guilt and found the taste bitter in his uneasy stomach.

  You wanted an intrinsically alien life.

  He’d gone searching for answers about his mother, for meaning in a journey he’d seen in countless films. What he’d found, though, were people acting of their own interests, interests he did not know and whose outcomes he could not fast-forward to the end to determine.

  With all that he had already learned, and with so little he was certain that he yet knew, Emmett wondered how the Children of the Earth did what they did … when even he, with so little to offer the world, found himself lacking any belief that he could make a difference.

  Emmett shook his head as he looked down at his hands, willing the nihilism to leave his thoughts. He needed to be strong. Now is not the time. Not now.

  His inner reflection was punctuated by raindrops, as if the sky were tapping him on the head to distract him from contemplation. The raindrops fell heavier and more frequent. He looked upward. The night was still relatively clear above, and farther down the river he saw no significant storm clouds, either.

  “What the hell?” Emmett began, turning his head around to look to Keiran and gasping as his eyes grew wide with the sight forming behind them.

  Directly above the mountain’s pinnacle, a swirling mass of turbulent clouds as black as an oil slick spiraled inward toward a central point. It was as if a great titan in the heavens were drawing the whole of the sky to it. Lightning sparkled across the edges of the storm as the spiral grew, winds seeming to pull the trees from the ground and fling them into the air. As Emmett stared at it, he felt once again small and insignificant, dwarfed by a raw power that was greater than anything he had experienced before.

  “It looks like a hurricane,” he said, his eyes unable to steal away from the terrifying scene. Wind churned the river around them, and Keiran rotated his hand on the motor to the highest setting.

  “It’s the fulmination of the Dark Fire. It is not of this world, and so when it is conjured, it consumes itself in a storm like that.”

  Lightning strikes fired down as if the angered heavens meant to rend the mountain in two. The earth growled in response, and with a heavy grumble that seemed to upend the world around them, a sheer face of the mountainside separated and raced downward in a landslide of rocks, trees, and snow.

  Emmett felt like he might vomit, watching the rock rain down the mountainside. He watched in mute horror as the clouds loosened, slowed, and suddenly dispersed. As the mountainside still heaved with falling debris from the landslide, the storm overhead disappeared into the otherwise clear, starry winter night.

  He felt numbness, a total lack of any semblance of feeling. Not only from the bitter chill on the air and the smattering of rain but also from the awareness of wholesale destruction witnessed. No film, no matter how grotesque or violent, could ever match the reality of what had just occurred. Never again.

  Emmett wondered if Amala had been trapped in the landslide, yet even before he could acknowledge the wrenching horror of losing her, he dismissed the thought entirely from his mind. Only the untold death of so many nameless faces remained in his thoughts, chilling as much as the Oregon winter air. Emmett’s fatigued body drew another long yawn and shuddered with the discomfort of the Rot, the danger of their predicament and uncertainty of their destination accentuating both the pain and loss.

  CHAPTER 12

  Sebastian awoke soon after Ellie, the color having returned to his face. Her continued incoherent whimpering echoed in the otherwise empty morning twilight. Though Emmett had little success in quelling her with comforting words, Sebastian’s imposing physicality seemed to reassure her, Sebastian holding Ellie’s shuddering shoulders as she cried into the space between his pronounced shoulder and bicep.

  The river’s current quickened as they approached the Columbia River. Emmett heard the hollow rush of wind as a timber-rich breeze touched the edges of his chattering teeth. As the river bent around a copse of trees, the Columbia finally came into sight. Keiran guided the boat toward the muddy banks, and as they neared, he motioned for Emmett to jump out and help pull it up onto the river’s edge.

  Sebastian lifted Ellie’s small frame effortlessly in his thick arms as she nestled against his chest. Keiran stepped out after Sebastian and, knee-deep in the river, led the rowboat back out into the channel. Emmett watched as the Columbia’s faster-moving current caught hold of the bow and claimed it for its own.

  Keiran submerged his head under the river’s waves for several moments before returning to the shore. Chattering, too, as Emmett did from the icy water, Keiran stepped next to Emmett so that their feet were touching. He released a single note from his lips that blew a rush of hot air down their bodies, quickly drying their wet clothes.

  “Did you send the warning out to the other Groves?” Sebastian asked.

  Keiran nodded. “I could hear a pod of Pacific grays just off the coast migrating south. But I don’t know if my song reached them. Too many bloody dams.”

  A rustle of feathers sounded in the distance. It was barely audible to Emmett and yet obviously heard by the two Bards who both turned their heads at once in its direction. A single brown-feathered hawk circled overhead, making several narrow passes before gliding down silently and landing directly in front of Keiran. Its brown wings were accented with layers of copper and snow white, its alert, glowing eyes regarding Keiran and Emmett as it looked between them. Lowering its head to the ground and opening its beak for only a moment, the hawk released something before crying loudly and sweeping back up into the night.

  At Keiran’s feet, a pair of white pebbles had been left, and he bent down and ran his finger over them as he closed his eyes and nodded. He said nothing, but already Emmett could connect what the message was likely to mean.

  “Do we wait for her?” Sebastian asked.

  “No. They’ll lead them away so we can escape.”

  Sebastian stiffened his shoulders. “Escape to where?”

  “The Portland train station. They won’t attack us in a public setting.” Keiran looked up at the stars and turned around twice on his spot before settling on a specific direction. “The highway should be in this direction by several miles where we can get a ride. Let us be moving quickly.”

  Keiran led the weary group through the forest, and after several hours of numbing darkness, reached a long stretch of empty highway. Sebastian seemed content to carry Ellie, who remained silently tucked in his arms. Emmett found the exertion focusing on his mind. Despite a silence that normally would have felt maddening, the forest’s chilled air combined with the panting of his own breath as he trekked over uneven terrain kept Emmett’s mind blessedly occupied. That the Rot was aching and his body groaning un
der the weight of its own fatigue made Emmett long for a warm bed far from forests, rivers, and the shadows of pursuing Underdwellers.

  The first big rig truck to pass pulled tentatively onto the shoulder as Keiran waved it down, the other three remaining behind a growth of shrubs at Keiran’s behest. Rolling his window down only partially, the driver maintained a safe distance as he called out from the cab of his vehicle and asked Keiran if he needed help. A moment later, the driver opened his door and waved for them to get into the truck.

  Emmett climbed into the rear of the truck, helping guide Ellie in and followed by Sebastian then Keiran. The truck driver was a burly man in his mid-forties with a mane of reddish-brown grizzled hair that covered most of his face. Keiran settled Ellie into the passenger seat up ahead of them. The three men adjusted themselves to the narrow space between the packaged freight in the cargo hold.

  “Should we leave Ellie alone up there?” Emmett asked.

  “The driver won’t do anything to her, and he won’t remember anything of us, anyway,” Keiran said. “Bardic persuasion. It’s forbidden to use it except in the most dire of circumstances. This would qualify.”

  “She can get some sleep in the front. She needs the rest more than we do,” Sebastian said to Keiran as he attempted to find a tolerable position. Whereas Emmett’s lanky frame easily folded itself up to sit down and Keiran’s athletic frame had to make some adjustments to the confining, limited space, Sebastian’s wide shoulders barely fit even as he sat at an angle.

  “And how is she, then?” Keiran asked as he, too, stretched his neck sideways and rolled his shoulders forward and downward in a shrug that released an audible pop from his obviously fatigued muscles.

  “What we would expect,” Sebastian answered, and the three in turn put their hands on the floor to steady themselves as the truck lurched forward.

  “Do we know who brought her to Silvan Dea? In the confusion of the attack, I don’t believe that was ascertained.”

  Sebastian struggled to stretch the length of his thick arms above his head. “I don’t think she even remembers. Shock will do that.”

  “Aye,” Keiran nodded as he looked to Emmett, as if to confirm Emmett’s own condition relative to what Ellie was experiencing. Shock was accurate if blunt, Emmett thought, and yet he could not help but feel a measure of strength in Keiran’s concern, and he did not want to be a further burden than he already was.

  “She’ll survive, and one day she’ll be okay,” Emmett said plainly, wishing to indicate that the same was true for him—even if he did not presently know how that might be possible for either of them.

  The expression on Keiran’s face told him that he understood what Emmett was attempting to communicate, and he reached his hand out and clapped Emmett’s shoulder in response. “Indeed.”

  Emmett yawned again, though this time it felt fuller and lasted so long that he had to shake his head once and blink heavily afterward to focus a tired mind. As the truck gained speed underneath and set the cabin to a gentle sway, Sebastian whistled softly and filled the narrow space between them with a warm, tropical breeze. Emmett’s cold skin relaxed as he felt himself slip down the steep slope into the dark ravine of unconsciousness. He felt nothing in his fatigued body or in the discomfort caused by the Rot as his mind released its ever-loosening grasp on wakefulness and submitted to the immobility of sleep.

  Somewhere in the periphery beyond the murky somnolence of half-sleep, Emmett heard a pair of voices in heated argument.

  “I simply refuse to believe that,” one of the voices said. It was Keiran. “The difference is that we have choices. The freedom to choose defines us.”

  “I don’t share your faith in humanity, brother.”

  “I place my faith in individuals, Sebastian, like you.”

  Through the haze of half-sleep, Emmett could hear Sebastian scoffing. “And where does one find faith in our world? That the things we fight for are even worth fighting for anymore?”

  “Oh, Sebastian, how do I return you your faith?”

  “You can’t. And I don’t blame you, brother. It’s not your fault that Paulo is dead. It’s theirs. I understand this.” Sebastian was clearing his throat, and Emmett sensed movement as if he were repositioning his body. “But it’s all of our faults, too. All the Children. And our Elders. We deny ourselves the right to seek them. Revenants kidnap, rape, torture, and murder. We tell ourselves that not doing more is for the greater good. That to act in a way like them is to somehow become them?”

  “Is there any point in our arguing the Great Preclusion?”

  “I am going to him,” Sebastian said as if in answer. “Today. You can come with me or not,” and this last word’s emphasis felt almost accusatory.

  “I’m not certain what benefit there is,” Keiran replied. Even in his murky half state of sleep, Emmett heard the anguish in his voice, a tone suffused of the despair one feels without hope for reconciliation. “I have always been patient in listening to your feelings on this matter over the years, more so than your own brother.”

  “We cannot reach Belladonna without travel by air, which we could never accomplish with Emmett’s Rot. There is only one Grove we could reach by land. His.”

  “I would not turn to him unless I had no other choice or was a bloody fool. His help does not come without a price,” Keiran said with seriousness in his voice that caught Emmett completely off guard.

  “You would call me a fool after the number of times I have saved your life?”

  “And I couldn’t say the same? No, Dr. Hazrat is not the answer to your grief. It is not my place to speak for Ellie, but Emmett is not going to him. He has been called by the Archivist herself, and he will be afforded that opportunity.”

  Emmett’s mind lifted itself fully into wakefulness, his eyes still closed and body unmoving.

  “That’s a decision for Emmett to make, Keiran. You know the rules we live by.”

  “What value is there in a decision if not made in the proper context and with a complete understanding of what is at stake?”

  “Choice defines us, Keiran.”

  “How does one quote ikkibu—the affirmation of choice and free will—only moments after quoting Omar Hazrat—a man who openly defies it? One might say you were trying to have it both ways.”

  There was a sudden rush in Sebastian’s breathing that was audible even over the low roar of the truck’s many tires along the highway. It was the heavy pattern of someone overcome by an excitement that felt intrusive and aggressive. “We all have choices, Keiran. I’ve always believed in that.”

  “And yet you question the Great Preclusion, Sebastian?” Keiran pleaded.

  “I advocate balance. I don’t blindly adhere to dogma for the sake of dogma. You may laud the free will of the ignorant, but choice isn’t noble if people choose the wrong thing,” Sebastian said bitterly.

  “There are moments that define our lives. Rarely they are grand; often they are small. In my world, there is hope; hope that each moment gives life to another opportunity to make the right choice. I cannot resolve a world where we punish those for actions they have yet to take.”

  “Empty words,” Sebastian cut.

  “I believe, perhaps desperately and even a bit foolishly, that there exists some small measure of opportunity—finite and small, yes, but an opportunity nonetheless, that something could intersect in the normal trajectory of a person’s life—someone could intercede knowingly or unknowingly, causing that individual to make the right choice.”

  “Your optimism is blind,” Sebastian said.

  “Perhaps, but it is my hope. It sustains me as the Song sustains me, and from my admittedly limited experience of life’s mysteries, they are one and the same. Which is why this conversation always pains me—that there is no room for hope in your world.”

  Keiran fell silent, and with the silence there was emptiness where the words and emotions behind the words hung still in the unmoving air. Emmett heard desperation in Keir
an’s words, and yet an acceptance that whatever he was saying, he doubted would make any difference. Emmett understood this somehow, and in doing so wondered if Keiran was saying all of this for Sebastian’s benefit or his own.

  “They make their choices,” Sebastian growled, and Emmett was certain that their discussion was finally drawing to its own bitter, disparate end. “Humans covet the darkness. What else is there to say? Philosophy is only convenient until you have to bury the corpses of your fallen. All I want is to use whatever means we can to punish them for those choices! How can you not understand this? Even with everything you have seen?” Sebastian nearly yelled.

  Emmett felt his own pace surging. Even without knowledge of their argument, he understood by their voices that their disagreement had reached a climax from which a physical confrontation might be the eventual conclusion.

  “My brother, please,” Keiran said in a calm, measured voice. Even for Emmett, who was not involved in the conversation, Keiran’s lower tone had a calming effect. “Regardless of our disagreements, Sebastian, I wish no ill will between us. We should be close to the train station, and now that Emmett is fully awake, we can make final preparations to depart.”

  Emmett wanted to sigh with exasperation. Feeling foolish with his eyes closed, he opened them to see that both Bards were staring directly at him.

  “Your breathing and pulse had changed,” Keiran said without prompting, raising one finger to the side of his head and tapping his right ear. “How are you feeling?”

  Stretching his neck, he pushed himself upright to a full sitting position, cramped by the freight surrounding them.

  “Fine,” he said as he adjusted his shoulder and felt the raw soreness of the Rot. “What did I miss?” he asked, not wanting to directly confront Keiran on what Sebastian and he had been discussing. He was not so arrogant to believe that the conversation was entirely about him, and yet he understood that in some way Sebastian wanted Emmett to make a choice that Keiran did not believe him capable of making.