The Waking Dreamer

by J. E. Alexander

  “William Blake?” Keiran asked.

  “Blade Runner,” Emmett flatly responded. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Keiran and Emmett’s fake identifications passed inspection as they queued for their train. Keiran kept Emmett close to him and continued to scan the crowd.

  “Won’t we know if one of them is close? It’s hard not to notice that I’m convulsing on the ground, you know.”

  “They are likely to use initiates who have not performed those things which make you ill,” Keiran quietly said. “Poor fools who are trying to prove their worth who otherwise know nothing of what they’re involved in. We have a term for them: cannon fodder.”

  Emmett checked their tickets as they exited one passenger car and entered the next, negotiating the narrow walkways and regretting the claustrophobic space. Checking his ticket again, he nodded at the door in front of them.

  “Seat number 237. That’s oddly fitting.”

  “How so?”

  “Room 237? The Shining?” Keiran’s blank face caused Emmett to sigh. “Getting the supernatural STD off my neck is priority number one. Amala, number two. Catching you up on basic pop culture is a very close third.”

  Sebastian and Ellie were already sitting in the compartment. Keiran nodded at them, guiding Emmett quickly into the compartment before casting one final glance down the corridor and closing the door.

  “Hey,” Emmett said. He saw that Ellie had purchased a plain yellow dress and white cardigan sweater, and she had combed her soft hair back out of her eyes to reveal a clean, if mournful, face. Sebastian wore dark mushroom-colored slacks with a black polo shirt, his heavily inked arms tensing underneath a coat draped over his lap.

  “All right?” Keiran nodded, noticing Sebastian’s rapidly tapping foot.

  “We were followed,” Sebastian said coldly, not taking his eyes from the window.

  “How do you know?” Keiran asked.

  “I just do.”

  “Did they see you board the train?”

  Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t think so. Ellie and I used a crowd of tourists to hide in. We purchased two sets of clothes and changed after we were seen. There was a short, older man with a pencil-thin mustache, and a tall, thin woman with a high nose.”

  “I don’t remember seeing either of them. What about you, Emmett?”

  Emmett shook his head. “Nope. Sorry.”

  “Then it is just as likely that we have eluded them.”

  “Except that they’ll notify others.”

  “We will take turns searching the train. If they are on board, we will exit at the next station. Agreed?”

  Sebastian nodded reluctantly, continuing to stare out the window.

  The morning passed uneventfully, and shortly after the train began its journey, Keiran left to tour the other cars. Emmett was thankful for Ellie’s presence, as he was uncertain whether Sebastian would want to engage him in conversation about what had been discussed. Yet his attentions were focused exclusively on caring for Ellie, touching her arm often in a reassuring way or whispering words asking how she was doing. Throughout their time, she alternated between a mute, catatonic glaze of an expression and rare moments where she took notice of Sebastian with a slight movement of her eyes across his chest. This did not go unnoticed by Emmett, who had to reassure himself that not every attractive woman was so entranced by muscles.

  I’m witty. Girls like snark and an encyclopedic film knowledge to rival IMDB.

  When Keiran returned, Sebastian left to do the same, careful first to don his sport coat and cover his broad, tattooed arms. Whether it was being on the train heading toward the Lighthouse or his time spent caring for Ellie, his singular focus was on protecting them from the people that he believed were following them. It was something of a game to intrude into other private compartments, and the two Bards told Emmett of how they had to find increasingly elaborate reasons to explain to the surprised passengers within.

  With Sebastian gone, Ellie sat mutely on the opposite side of the compartment, spending long stretches of time silently staring out at the passing countryside. Unlike Sebastian, Keiran seemed content to allow her the private space, looking introspective in the empty silence.

  Stifling increasing yawns with his hand, Emmett rested along one of the benches in their compartment, eventually tiring of watching her lifeless eyes stare unblinkingly out the window, and finally succumbing to a long nap. It was a restless nap, disjointed by the tumbling thoughts in his mind and interrupted frequently by errant bumps of the train. Upon finally waking, he felt as restless as before.

  Within a few hours of their departure, the coastal mountains and thick forests receded to vast, open plains. Emmett continued to drift in and out of a bored half sleep as the afternoon rolled along with little notice given to the passage of time.

  By the approach of the first evening, Emmett was growing restive with boredom. It appeared they had achieved a relative safety aboard the train, which permitted his mind to dive into various images and thoughts of the preceding days that he understood could only be quieted with distracting activity.

  “I’m going to see what I can get to eat,” he said after suppressing a rumble of his stomach. “And I seriously need to stretch my legs. Anybody want to come?”

  “Are you hungry, little sister?” Sebastian asked, looking first to Ellie. When she shook her head and stared out the window, Sebastian declined the invitation.

  “Keiran?”

  Rubbing his bleary eyes, he straightened and ran his hands through his hair. “Of course. Cheers.” He stood up with another yawn, and after a moment of disorientation that he cleared with a shaking of his head, preceded Emmett out of the compartment.

  .

  CHAPTER 14

  Keiran and Emmett walked down through the aisles into an empty dining car. Each table featured a miniature rosemary bush pruned to resemble a tiny Christmas tree wrapped in silver taffeta tied neatly into a ribbon.

  Emmett stared at the menu while Keiran stretched again, staring mutely out the dark windows at the passing countryside. “You reckon there’s anything worth having?”

  “That depends,” Emmett said, flipping the laminated placard over.

  “On what?”

  “On how picky you are.”

  When the server greeted them, Emmett ordered sandwiches for both of them and a hot chocolate for himself.

  “I’ll have a coffee, please. Black,” Keiran said.

  She reached for the pot on the counter and poured Keiran a cup.

  “Cheers,” Keiran thanked the server, taking a long draw and permitting himself a grimace only after the server was gone. “Can’t imagine that coffee would be to anyone’s taste.”

  Emmett thanked the server when she returned with his hot chocolate. With the past few days’ chaos, it was the simple things that brought comfort.

  Emmett absently twirled the Christmas ribbon on their table. “Death, darkness, and Christmas. How Kubrickian.”

  “Christmas makes me miss home,” Keiran said.

  “How’d you celebrate?” Emmett asked.

  “My family would drive north to Tenbury Wells for the annual mistletoe auction. Mum would select cut holly for all of us to fashion wreaths out of. And you had your traditional music, immense sweets, and Christmas crackers for everyone. Just wonderful memories, really.”

  Keiran watched him patiently, and in the silence Emmett realized that he had not spoken. “I had a different foster home practically every year. Never really celebrated.”

  “Sorry,” Keiran offered.

  “Nah, it’s cool. I’m not humbug on it. No need to go sending Dickens’s ghosts after me.”

  Keiran sipped his coffee. “Wouldn’t accomplish much, mate. They’re not much for haunting.”

  “What? Ghosts?”

  “Aye.”

  “Oh, I need to hear this. Details, please.” Emmett sat up noticeably.

  “They’re like images superimposed onto a photo
graph. They don’t interact, really—just sort of fill the empty spaces with their memories.”

  “So no chairs stacked on kitchen tables?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “That’s disappointing.”

  “I can show you sometime if you like.”

  “Pass. I have enough difficulty dealing with the living. And things that apparently like to eat the living.”

  “Fair play.”

  Emmett motioned with his hand for more. “What else is real?”

  Keiran blew out a long sigh. “There are more things that go bump in the night than I could likely recount for you here. Some are quite harmless creatures that disappear with deforestation.

  “Dude, I’m a sci-fi and fantasy nerd. Cumbersome world-building is my crack. Educate me!”

  “You’ve heard of fairies, yes? Nymphs, tree spirits, and tall, hairy beasts like that are found in some places left in the world. More often the forest creatures are Druids who have been subsumed by their Wisdoms and abandoned civilization. You find the same thing with Bards who embrace the Song at the sacrifice of their lives in tales of lake monsters, sirens, and merfolk.”

  “Delicious. I love it. So Champy and Bigfoot are you all running around going Where The Wild Things Are on us?”

  Keiran chuckled. “Not everything is so blessedly simple. There are the darker creatures, the rarer ones that still live in remote places; the sort of powerful beings that inspire a degree of terror in those who are unlucky enough to come across them.”

  “Like Revenants?”

  “Older. If such a thing is even possible.”

  The server returned with a tray of sandwiches that Keiran and Emmett set into. Watching the first orange patterns wash the horizon in the pre-dusk hues of a setting sun, Emmett turned and put his back against the wall, laying one leg across the bench. Both ate in silence, enjoying the reassuring motion of the train. For Emmett, it was the simple task of eating that felt somehow grounding to the earth against the whirlwind of thoughts that seemed determined to keep him aloft high in the air overhead.

  “I’m absolutely shattered,” Keiran finally yawned.

  “You said it would be some time before you were recharged.”

  “A full night’s sleep should do the trick, but this has me halfway there. You?”

  Emmett ran a hand along his covered neck. “I checked in the bathroom earlier. It’s down below my collarbone already.”

  “And the pain?”

  “I sometimes get this shooting pain in my chest, but it’s gone before I can think about it. It’s just ridiculously sore, like I’ve been punched too many times.”

  “You seem to be managing.”

  “Yeah, but the same can’t be said for Ellie. I don’t think I’ve heard her say more than a few words since last night.”

  “I’m not certain there’s anything I can do for her at this point other than to keep her physically safe. The tragedy of losing a loved one is compounded by witnessing death’s senselessness firsthand.”

  “So what are you going to do with her?”

  “Until she recovers, I have no way of knowing where she is from or where she should go to next,” Keiran said, sipping his coffee.

  “What about Dr. Hazrat? Can he care for her?”

  “Barring other circumstances, that is the safest course of action. I’d wager the Lighthouse would relish the opportunity to provide safety to her after the Archivist seemingly failed to do so.”

  Emmett deliberately paused, considering his next words. Omar Hazrat had finally been breached in the conversation. Alone from the others and seemingly safe from Revenant attack, he felt like he had the first true opportunity to extract from Keiran answers to so many questions swirling in his mind.

  “Keiran, about what you and Sebastian were talking about in the truck.”

  Keiran placed the coffee mug down on the table and clasped his hands in front of him. “Yes, let us discuss that.”

  Feeling his back straighten, Emmett sat up and tried to appear calm despite the urgency he felt toward the conversation. He waited silently for Keiran to begin.

  “As it goes, there are things I might choose not to discuss with you at this moment. Such as my time in the Himalayas. That is something I cannot share with you. I ask for your confidence. Do I have it?”

  Emmett had not forgotten that Sebastian pointedly said that the events had been kept from Amala. Considering this, Emmett remembered that Amala had instructed him to keep his unusual waking dream secret, too.

  What other secrets do you people keep from each other?

  “Of course,” Emmett answered. “We’ll just hang a lantern on that.”

  “As to Omar Hazrat and his Grove, the Lighthouse, it’s important that you understand that like any group, the Children face their own internal disagreements. The Great Preclusion would be an example.”

  “So what is it?”

  “Once every several generations, one of the Children is born with a special power to see into the hearts of men and predict their futures. We call them the Mara. Or the Dreamers. There is no foundation for the gift anywhere in ikkibu, which is the name we give to a collection of stories, traditions, and the taboos we maintain over forbidden things.”

  “So where’s the problem?”

  “Ikkibu holds that all humans have choice. There is nothing more sacred to the Children.”

  “Okay,” Emmett nodded.

  “The Mara claimed to divine the actions of men before they made the choice to act. The Mara punished people for crimes they had not yet committed—oftentimes years or even decades before the supposed future act.”

  Keiran paused to thank the server who had returned to fill his coffee.

  “Brutal civil wars were fought, one Grove defending their Mara from the other. It was bloody chaos, Emmett. Dark times. Eventually, the nine Elders—led by the Archivist herself—gathered at the ruins of one of the oldest Groves in the world, off Yonaguni Island. There they issued the Great Preclusion, forbidding all recognition and legitimacy of the Mara.”

  “I’m not connecting this with what seemed to be the earlier disagreement.”

  “Darkness is a euphemism. Because most need to deny its existence, darkness has spread now unabated.”

  “No doubt it’s Zombie Apocalypse time out there,” Emmett said.

  “Which is why Children are now openly questioning the Great Preclusion and whether we should reclaim the gift of the Mara.”

  “So what you’re saying is that some people want to use the Mara to predict who may kill or hurt others and stop them before they do so?” Emmett asked plainly.

  “In a matter, yes. The Archivist still teaches against it, as does Sebastian’s Elder, La Pastora de la Isla, the Lady Karina of the Grove Belladonna off the coast of Brazil. But the voices of opposition grow with every tragedy.”

  “So I’m guessing that this Elder, Omar Hazrat, isn’t playing on the same team?”

  “Omar Hazrat claims to be a Mara, Emmett.”

  “Whoa, points for a well-paced reveal,” Emmett breathed. “At least that explains the cage match.”

  Sighing with his eyes closed and straight back against the bench, Keiran took a deep breath. “Underdwellers are unable to rise to the surface unless they are called by their human followers—an act that requires both power and resources, but also significant bloodshed and suffering. Without their cabalists to summon them, the Underdwellers would essentially be trapped in the earth.”

  Emmett didn’t understand where Keiran was going. “So?”

  “If the Revenants were wiped out, we could effectively eliminate their darkness once and for all from the world. It would not remove the threat of other fell creatures, but one cannot underestimate the extent of Underdweller damage to our world.”

  Emmett finally understood the conflict. “No offense, K, but I’m waiting to hear something unreasonable. I mean, what’s the problem? I thought hunting down Revenants was what you did.”

&nb
sp; “Humans who follow dark paths—yes, we locate and eliminate them. The Great Preclusion forbids us from condemning someone for an act they have not yet committed.”

  Emmett’s mind raced through the discussion and tried to empathize with what Keiran was saying. Yet with the soreness from the Rot in his neck, he found himself struggling to not agree with the sentiments expressed by Sebastian.

  Keiran seemed to see this, and he leaned forward across the table toward him as he spoke. “We’re talking about an ability that is considered suspect even among those who advocate its use. It is erratic, unpredictable, and prone to manipulation if not outright error. What if an innocent person was convicted of a crime they had no intention of committing?”

  “Couldn’t you just put tails on everyone you suspect could be a Revenant?”

  “We’d bloody-well spy on every human being, then. Consider how that could be used against our own people. How could their visions be verified? It’s the word of the Mara only that you have as to the truth, and even if you were right nine times, what if the tenth person accused were innocent?”

  “You speak dismissively of the other nine that were evil as if their actions mean nothing,” a baritone voice sounded behind them. So focused on Keiran, Emmett all but jumped as Sebastian entered the room. He sat down beside him on the bench, setting his massive arms on the edge of the table. His jacket was off, and the scrolling artwork of ink around his arms caught the eye of the server who stared longingly at him.

  Keiran simply nodded. “All right?”

  “Ellie asked me to get her something to eat. She’s not feeling well enough to leave her bunk.”

  “They have sandwiches,” Keiran observed nonchalantly as the server stood silently awaiting his order. Scanning the menu quickly, Sebastian pointed to a pair of items and asked for them to be wrapped to take back to his compartment.

  “So, we’re introducing Emmett to the great, wide world, are we?”

  Emmett saw instantly in Keiran’s eyes that he did not want to continue the conversation with Sebastian present. Emmett made to say something to change the conversation, but Sebastian interrupted him before he could speak.