by Anna Silver
“Do you think there’s more? Other dreamers, I mean. More Otherborn out there besides us?” Zen asked.
“Doubt it.” Kim shrugged. “This city’s practically comatose. Besides, we’d know. We found each other, didn’t we?”
London dropped her head under the weight of the guilt. There couldn’t be other dreamers because she’d been the first, she was sure of that. And from her the symptoms had spread to others like Rye, people with a certain proximity to her, friends and classmates. But when London started, there’d been no one else. No one around her who knew, who understood. No one contagious. She was the freak who’d started this chain reaction. She was the spontaneous mutation. But she couldn’t tell them all that. Couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. “Kim’s right,” she mumbled instead. “We’d know.”
They’d been sitting at the electric rail station all morning, watching the trains pull in and out, watching the people press on and file off like zombies. During stops, the commuters swarmed around them, but in between, the station sat starkly empty, a skeleton of chipped tiles, bolted down benches, and open tracks.
“Okay, even if they were able to figure it out, why would they kill us over it? What could possibly be threatening about the dreams? All they’re good for is making sure we don’t get enough sleep. They’re useless,” Kim argued.
“No, they’re not,” Avery said softly and everyone knew what she meant. It was because of the dreams that they’d discovered Avery was Otherborn. They hadn’t been useless then.
Kim looked down at a scraggly weed pushing up through a crack in the concrete, his shoulders sagging. “I didn’t dream last night,” he said finally.
London stopped pacing abruptly and turned to him. “I know.”
Four faces looked up at her, a matching set of questioning expressions. The dreams came in cycles which rarely overlapped each other. There was only one way she could know Kim’s dreams had stopped.
She cast her eyes away nervously, not wanting to relive this part of her night, but knowing she had to. “I did.”
Three cigarettes later, London managed to fill the group in on every detail of her dream. They were stock-still, digesting the impact of her confession, puzzling over Degan’s surprise appearance. Rye spoke first.
“What do you mean by portal?” he asked, scratching at his sharp chin, his navy t-shirt hanging loosely from his square shoulders. He always looked pole thin, but a surprising strength hid behind those muscles pulled like taffy.
“I mean a gateway, a door. It wasn’t where I am, and it wasn’t where I’ve been, but it was every bit as real as both. As solid as the ground I’m standing on now. It wasn’t a memory; it was an experience in real time. I…traveled.”
“How?” Zen questioned.
“I don’t know really.”
“That’s all he said? We’ve been waiting for you?” Rye was obviously deep in analytical mode. London could practically see the gears grinding behind his eyes.
“Yeah. Then I woke up.”
“That makes no sense.” Rye rubbed at his forehead. “Why would he leave it hanging like that?”
“I don’t think he did,” London supplied.
“What do you mean?” Kim asked.
“I think I kind of snapped out of it. I think I panicked. I lost it.”
“That’s never happened before, has it?” Kim asked now.
“No. But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. This wasn’t like before. It wasn’t a memory. I wasn’t reliving something from the past. It was happening. I had control of it. I wasn’t witnessing some place and time I’d known before, like a 3D movie you can’t escape. I was living in the dream. Choosing, deciding, acting. I was lucid.”
London was getting frustrated. It was always so easy before. Each of the Otherborn had the dream-memories, knew exactly what they were like. There was no need to explain. This was unique, and she had no words to describe it. She needed them to have it for themselves. Could they? Would she again?
“But you were her,” Avery pointed out.
“Yes,” London nodded, scuffing her heel against a blackened patch of old chewing gum. “And he knew me. Knew us both.”
Kim shook his head as though he were trying to erase the words like a scrapped Etch A Sketch. “That’s impossible. Even we don’t know her. We’ve never seen one another’s Otherborns. I don’t get it. Can you prove it somehow? Show us?”
“Prove it? It’s not my fucking imagination, Kim! Can you prove you’re Otherborn? Can you prove that, night after night, you relive a past life in another place where you were someone else? Someone maybe not even human? Can you prove that, as you travel, again and again to that place and time, you bring a little of that person back with you? Here? That slowly they are overtaking you? Reminding you, becoming you.” London spat the words at him, bringing a fist down on the bench beneath her. It was hard enough to be whatever they were. She didn’t need her friends treating her like a liar or a lunatic.
“All right, all right. Relax already. I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant, is there some way you could help us feel what it’s like? Take us there, maybe?”
Rye’s head shot up. “He’s right, London. Maybe you could take us there somehow, if it’s in the present and not the past. Maybe we can dream together.”
London exhaled a heavy sigh. “I don’t even know how I got there, Rye. How I could possibly show you? Any of you?”
“What if we sleep together?” he suggested.
“Don’t be gross.” London rolled her eyes, hoping the heat rising beneath her skin didn’t show. Rye didn’t know she had feelings for him. No one did.
“You know what I mean,” he grumbled.
“No, Rye’s right,” Zen said. “We’ve never tried that before. What if by sleeping together we could share the dream space?”
“I don’t know,” London tapped the toe of her boot on the pavement. “Where would we even do that? Only Avery’s place is big enough, and there’s no way her parents are going to let us all over there to spend the night.”
“No,” Zen agreed, “but you and Rye are in the same building. You two could try it out first, like an experiment.”
“I’m game,” Rye said.
“You would be,” London told him. “I don’t even know if it’ll happen again,” she complained.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Zen insisted.
~
Her tiny room was moist, dampened by Rye’s breath and sweat coupled with her own. Her mom’s shift at the drugstore wasn’t over yet, and when it was, she’d just come home, watch her garbled shows, and pass out. So sneaking Rye in was hardly a challenge. Making him comfortable in the tight space was. A lumpy pallet of old sheets and blankets was the best she could offer.
He looked at her calmly with his red-clay eyes, and London tried to affect an air of ambivalence. She’d spent years attempting to convince herself these feelings didn’t exist. The fact that he could be so close and appear so completely underwhelmed by it infuriated her. But she could express none of this. They’d been friends for too long. Next to her mother and Pauly, Rye was her only family, the most stable presence in her life. She wouldn’t risk losing that to satiate teen lust.
And he never appeared to look at her in any manner deeper than brotherly affection. Rejection was not an experience altogether unfamiliar to London, but rejection from Rye would be. She didn’t think it the sort of thing she’d recover from, at least not easily.
Deciding the diversion of a quick smoke would help, she wrapped her throw around her shoulders and threw up the little window. Rye ignored how unsettled his hostess was, but he watched her quietly from his place on the floor.
“You promised,” he said, taking stock of the bandage wrapped around her left arm.
“It was just once,” she insisted. Her eyes met his. “I didn’t mean to. The Degan thing had me so shook up. It was a mistake.”
Rye didn’t appear convinced, but he decided not to press
the issue, for the moment anyway. “So…what’s she like?” he asked instead as he watched London smoke, huddled in her blanket.
“Who?”
“Your Otherborn?” He cast his eyes downward, afraid to meet her gaze.
Their Otherborns were extremely personal. It wasn’t something they shared freely, even with each other. It was enough just to have dreams. That, in and of itself, set them apart from everyone else in Capital City and bonded them together. Aside from a few insignificant details, London had never told anyone—not even Rye—about her Otherborn. The fact that he was asking made her blush. He might as well have asked to see her naked.
She shrugged nonchalantly, trying to ease past the question gracefully. “I dunno. She’s tall, you know, and older. She looks a lot like us, just longer. Long legs, long fingers, long hair, long nose. Willowy, I guess.”
Rye soaked all this in, unable to hide the curiosity on his face.
She should have been embarrassed, but London liked the way her words made Rye look at her. She continued, “Except her eyes. Her eyes are…different.”
“Yeah? How so?” He said it like it was a casual question, but it was more than anyone knew about London’s Otherborn besides London herself.
“They’re slanted, kind of, and they’re black. I mean, not just the colored part. The whole eye is black. Like big, shining, obsidian almonds.”
“Whoa.” It escaped before he could stop it.
London glanced bashfully away. “Yeah. It’s kinda beautiful actually. I like…I like her face better than this one, I think. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does. To me.” He nodded. “Is she human then?”
They were moving past the awkwardness of it, falling into a sort of delicious rhythm of questions and answers. There was something liberating in the experience, and London found herself not only willing to divulge more, but wanting to.
“I’m not sure. I mean, she’s not like us, of course. I’ve never seen humans like her. But she’s not that different either. So, I guess she’s sort of human. Er—I dunno.”
Rye scooted closer to the bed. “What’s it like where she’s…where you’re from?”
His eyes were broad and open, fixed on her in a way they’d never been before, and London broke out in goose bumps in spite of herself.
“It’s not like here,” she said scowling as she exhaled her last drag and flicked her butt out the window. “It’s just…so…so green. You know? And it’s wild. Kind of like the wilderness beyond the Houselands. I mean, she—er—we live comfortably there, but I think that’s because we’re kind of wild, too. Not savage, you know. We’re not dumb brutes or anything. We’re really smart actually. She’s really smart. She knows things before they happen. But, there’s something untamed about the whole place. It’s like those pictures of the jungle you used to stare at in that storybook your mother gave you—the one we scrapped for the computers, remember? Not exactly, but close anyway. Full and dark like that. And green.”
“So, there’s more of you? I mean, more of…of her type there? The sort-of humans?”
“Yeah, lots more.” London lit another cigarette. She hoped it would ground her nervous energy. She felt buzzed from sharing so much about her Otherborn with someone else.
Rye hopped up on her bed unexpectedly, leaned back against the wall next to her and took a drag off her smoke. “There’s more like mine, too.”
“Really?” she asked. She hadn’t wanted to pry, but she could see he was eager to share now, as she had. “What’s yours like?”
“Well, you know, I’ve told you that he’s different, real different. Human looking and all, but he has these markings on his face. At first, I thought they were tattoos, but then I realized they couldn’t be because everyone had them. Adults, children, babies even. So they must be…they must be like birthmarks or something, right?”
“I guess,” London reassured him. “Could they be freckles, like the ones you have now?” Rye hated his freckles, though they weren’t that obvious, just a smattering of tiny, russet, pin-sized dots across his nose and upper cheeks. London, on the other hand, found them irresistible.
“No. They’re not random like that. They form patterns. And every person’s pattern is unique to them, like a fingerprint. And they’re red, this crazy, DayGlo red, if you can imagine, all around the edges of his—my—face. How is that possible?”
London shrugged, “Beats me. How can a whole eye be black and still see?”
“Exactly! Anyway, he’s older, too. A lot older. I mean, compared to us. But they live longer, much longer. So there, he’s not so old. I don’t even really know how I know that, I just do.”
“Yeah, I get your meaning,” London agreed. “When you’re them, you know what they know, feel what they feel. It’s crazy.”
Rye never passed her cigarette back, but she decided she didn’t need it after all. Having him so close to her, on her bed, no less, was enough stimulus to process for the moment. She picked at the unraveling hem of her faded gray tank. The red, spray painted X made the fabric a little stiffer across her chest. Self-conscious, she pulled her blanket tighter around her.
“So,” she questioned, “is he good looking? Your Otherborn?”
“I guess,” Rye shrugged. “He’s got a lot of facial hair, a long beard thing, with tassels and crap woven into it. But he’s strong, real strong. All muscle. He’s a warrior. A leader of some kind. Everyone respects him. He’s got kids and stuff, so they must find him attractive.”
“Kids?” London had never considered this possibility before. Her Otherborn was clearly single, childless. She’d just assumed they were all that way.
“Yeah, bunches of them. But they don’t really marry there, like here. It sounds weird, but they just kind of mate.”
London coughed. “Gross, Rye.”
“I can’t help it,” he grinned. “Seriously, it’s not like that. It’s not gross there. It’s just how it is. They all look out for one another. Family is…well it’s…it’s just a bigger concept than it is here. Everyone is family there.”
London understood that. Her own people—the people of her Otherborn—were a lot like that, too. Everyone watching out for everyone else.
“What’s his name?” When she asked, her voice was so still, so quiet, that it barely came out as more than a whisper. It was unthinkable before this moment, asking something like that. She looked at Rye expectantly, wondering if she’d gone too far, knowing that if he answered, it would mean she was closer to him than anyone else on the planet. And he wanted her to be.
He looked down at his hands, considering whether to respond. Then he met her eyes dead on and said, “Roanyk.”
Feeling braver than she ever had, London reached out, took Rye’s hand in her own, and smiled. “Nice to meet you, Roanyk. I’m Si’dah.”
FIVE
Outroaders
“Rye,” London nudged her bunkmate with a bare foot. “Rye, wake up. Come on, it’s morning. We’ve got to go tell everyone what happened.” Her eyes were bleary. She’d only just woken up herself.
“Wha?” he responded, still half asleep.
Rye had taken his t-shirt off during the night, and London flicked the blanket up over his chest before he could catch her staring. “Come on, man. It’s morning. We’ve got to meet everyone else and tell them what happened.”
“What happened?” Rye repeated groggily.
“Nothing happened, that’s what. Now get up. We gotta get dressed and get out of here before my mom finds you.”
Rye sat up and tugged his t-shirt back on. A blast of sun was coursing through London’s little window. Morning already. No dreams. “What do you mean nothing? You didn’t dream? No Degan? No portal?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “You either, huh?”
“No. Not a thing. Weird.”
“Yeah. Usually the dreams come for several nights in a row. I guess someone else was visited by the Spirit of Degan Past last night.”
“Come on,” Rye said standing. “Let’s go see who it was.”
They’d agreed to meet outside their favorite corner coffee shop that had a little patio scattered with a few aluminum tables and chairs showered with pigeon droppings. London could see as they approached that everyone else was already there waiting. She pulled up an extra chair while Rye leaned casually against the wall.
“So?” Zen asked expectantly.
London was almost sorry to disappoint him, though secretly she was glad not to have seen Degan again. It was so unsettling the first time.
“Nothing,” London announced.
Zen’s face fell. Kim sighed heavily, but Avery actually looked less nervous than a moment before.
“Rye then?” Zen cut his large, watery gray eyes up at Rye now. Hopeful. Expectant.
“No man, sorry.” Rye shrugged.
“Damn,” Zen swore. “I really thought it would work.”
“So you didn’t dream either?” London asked as she lit her morning cigarette. A cup of coffee sat waiting for her on the table, courtesy of Avery, no doubt. She doctored it with a little of the sugar from the dispenser, stirring thoughtfully.
“No,” he said quietly.
London looked from Zen to Avery, who shook her head.
“Me neither,” Kim offered when she looked from Avery to him.
“Wait a minute, let me get this straight. I didn’t dream last night and neither did Rye. Or Zen, or Avery, or you, Kim?” She pointed at each with her sugar spoon.
“Nope,” Zen confirmed.
“None of us?” she questioned again.
“None of us,” Zen said.
“What the hell does that mean? I dream for one night about Degan and this creepy portal and now none of us are dreaming?” London scratched at her head, more annoyed than anything. Rye was silent beside her.
“There’s always been someone dreaming, right?” Avery asked calmly.
“I think,” Zen said.
“Yeah Ave, there’s always been someone dreaming. I should know; I was the first.” It was rare for more than one of them to dream at the same time, but it was just as rare, now that they’d started, for no one to dream at all. London took a sip of the strong, bitter coffee and shook her head. “I just don’t get it.”
