In the Dark of Dreams

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “Dreams,” he continued. “The Kraken sleeps because of dreams.”

  Jenny began shivering. “Peaceful dreams. Okay.”

  Perrin frowned, gripping her arms, then her face. He reached around to touch the kra’a, and was slammed with an overwhelming wave of uncertainty and fear.

  I can’t do this, he heard Jenny think.

  “You can,” he told her.

  “Just take the damn thing,” she snapped, trying to pull away from him. Perrin refused to let go and drew her tight against his chest, nearly losing his footing and sinking them both.

  “We talked about this,” he said urgently. “The kra’a doesn’t makes mistakes when it chooses a host. It picked you. You, Jenny. Never mind the link between us. It wanted you. It rejected A’lesander when he tried to steal it, just as it has rejected many others over the last seven hundred years. But it sees in you the strength that’s required. And so do I.”

  Jenny dragged in a deep breath. “I think you’re wrong.”

  “And I think you don’t have a choice.” Perrin focused on the kra’a, which wasn’t in his mind, though he felt it close, in hers. Can’t you help her?

  Open your mind, it replied. Show her what she needs to understand.

  Open his mind. Open himself so she could see all the ugliness inside him.

  If Jenny was disgusted afterward, if she hated him, the bond would not dissolve. She was stuck with him. Neither would be able to venture far without being pulled back to the other’s side. Cage or bliss. A bond like theirs did not require love, though it usually led to such. Or for others, he had been told, a need so profound that it masked as love.

  Perrin knew better, with her. No masks for what he felt. He had loved Jenny before he even realized what love was, or need.

  He had taken the punishment for that. Would do so again, in a heartbeat.

  Perrin heard a splash behind them. Rik surfaced a moment later, golden light streaming from his eyes. His jaw was set, earlier smiles gone. Cold now, faintly mocking—perhaps to hide a split-second glint of uneasiness.

  “I’ll watch the waters,” he said, and without another word, sank below the surface. Golden light shimmered beneath, and seconds later a dolphin appeared, sleek and blue-gray. Rik dove again out of sight.

  Jenny didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were closed.

  “You can trust me,” she said to him, quiet. “I won’t judge.”

  She had heard the kra’a, realized Perrin—and felt like a fool for forgetting that she would. He was not a Guardian any longer. He was not a host. Just an exile with a hole in his head and a bond that allowed him to share a part of what he had lost.

  Not just a part, said the kra’a. We are together.

  Together, he replied, and inside his head he heard Jenny whisper, You lost nothing.

  “Jenny,” he said.

  “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours,” she said, floating close against his body, burying her face in his throat as though she couldn’t stand the sunlight. “I don’t know what to do and we don’t have time. Words won’t be enough.”

  Perrin hesitated. Jenny said, “Please.”

  Please, no, he remembered saying once, eight years ago. Please, no.

  His throat burned, and so did the base of his skull. His chest felt hollow. Live or die, he told himself. Live in the past, or live now.

  Live, whispered the kra’a.

  You’re not alone, said Jenny, her presence spreading through his mind, filling the dark places, drawing him close and warm. You will never be alone again.

  Perrin closed his eyes and drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Come in,” he said.

  And the world turned upside down.

  Perrin lost his body. He lost his mind. Merging with another was overwhelming—in the same way that being hit in the ribs with a baseball bat tended to hurt, just a little.

  He found himself, though, all the disparate pieces of his soul sliding into place, stitching together like a human quilt of patchwork memories. He was surprised it looked like a quilt until he realized that the symbol was important to Jenny. He didn’t know how, just that it was.

  He felt her with him, her own patchwork wrapped around her like a shield. He sensed her uneasiness—that he would see too much and not want her.

  Minds were never meant to be this close, she said, inside him.

  Perrin surveyed the patchwork of his life, shimmering dark blue, with silver stitches that pulsed as though filled with strange blood, or maybe just the sea. Both of us have been alone for too long. We’re used to our own company.

  And then he folded her into a memory.

  Perrin found himself back in his body, only he was much smaller, and the world was dark. Fifteen in human years, resting on the seafloor, drifting in any direction the current pushed him. Not much current where he was, which was sandwiched between rocks. Crabs scuttled. Fish brushed against him. In the distance, he heard whale song.

  He was barely conscious. Sinking into dreams.

  Look, Perrin said, feeling Jenny draw close. These are the dreams a Kraken needs.

  Dreams of the sea, songs of the sea. Music flowed through him, a natural harmony born from the slow rumble of the earth, and the hush of deep waters, and the hum of minds all around him: fish, distant Krackeni, migrating whales, and, somewhere, dolphins. Notes and shards, drawn into him, filtered through the kra’a into the Kraken, which he felt beneath him, sleeping so still and warm.

  Perrin’s younger self slipped deeper into dreams, and the music faded.

  Until there was nothing but a silver beach, and silver waves, and a girl sitting beside him, with her hands held tightly in his.

  “Hello,” she said, in the dream, and her voice was a younger, softer version of the spirit-woman who pressed close against his side. Even here, he could not see the face of the girl. But he felt her. He felt her as though she was inside his soul.

  Just as she was now.

  Oh, Jenny breathed. Oh, my.

  And the boy he had been said, “I missed you.”

  Perrin pulled Jenny away from the memory, but she went reluctantly. As did he. It was so real here, like this.

  Dreams, he told her. The kra’a gave the Kraken those dreams of us on the beach. I didn’t realize it, at first. And when I did, there seemed to be no harm. The beast slept.

  All it needs is dreams? It seems too easy.

  It’s not easy.

  Will I need to sleep?

  No, he told her. You just need to . . . be.

  Perrin tried to show her more, though it was hard to know which memories would be helpful. He had forgotten certain things, encounters with Pelena, who had journeyed with his family into these waters to train as a candidate; and A’lesander, who would tag along with her, and tease him. Sometimes cruelly, he realized now—though at the time, it had seemed like nothing.

  I was naïve, he said.

  You were so young, Jenny replied. You thought you were safe.

  Perrin felt the kra’a hovering on the edges of their minds.

  Show her, it said. Show her why you were stolen from me.

  No, he said.

  Show her, insisted the kra’a.

  Perrin resisted, with all his strength. The kra’a overpowered him.

  And he found himself in the old nightmare.

  Flashes only. He saw again that powerful, wild-haired Krackeni tutor, who trained the candidates, venturing down to him with her breasts bared.

  Her voice, haranguing him for not doing his duty to produce children who might carry singer blood, or bodies suitable to host a kra’a.

  Her hands, reaching out to touch his kra’a, determined to read his mind and discover his reluctance.

  She found you,
Perrin whispered, feeling Jenny crowd close, watching his memories. She found us. I did not know we were bonded, but she must have realized that, too.

  Perrin, Jenny said, but her voice choked into silence, and he found himself dragged down into his old body, reliving how that Krackeni tutor fled in disgust and panic, only to return with others.

  Ambushing him. Surrounding him. Holding him. Paralyzing him with poison so they could reach into his mind.

  Vile. Impure. How did this happen? When was he with the humans? We must speak with his father, someone will be punished, could the kra’a have been in error? No, yes, it does not matter, just the Kraken, the Kraken has been tainted, and we must not tell the others, we must not breathe a word, no one ever has to know a human was in the mind of the beast, inside the kra’a, inside him—and there, there it is, do you see—just snip it, cut the thread, cut her out, cut her out, cut her out now before he realizes what–

  But Perrin had realized what they were doing. And the rage that filled him in his memories was rich and cold, and ugly. Because this was all he had. She was all he had. And here they were, violating the mind of a Guardian, trying to alter his dreams—which was against the laws of their people. Laws that meant nothing, it seemed.

  He remembered the nimbus of blue light. He remembered the poison burning away and regaining his ability to move. He remembered power surging from his mind into the mind of the one about to make that final cut. A cut that would have stolen away the girl on the beach. A cut that would have killed his heart and destroyed the dream bond burning in his soul.

  He remembered destroying the Krackeni tutor’s mind, with a thought. He remembered reaching up, unthinking, grabbing that slender neck, and crushing it with his bare hands.

  He remembered feeling nothing afterward. No remorse. Nothing but the relief of a man who had survived attempted murder.

  Perrin tore himself away, but sank into another memory that was almost worse.

  The past bloomed like fire inside his head, pain like fire—hooks buried in his body, restraining him, dragging him to a slab of natural stone on the seafloor. He felt the stone beneath his brow and hands holding him down. He heard his father singing, and, when he screamed, no one tried to help him.

  Then, the blade. Digging into his head around the kra’a. White fire exploded in his vision, beyond agony. His soul was being torn in half. His soul was being destroyed. Every dig of the blade, severing him.

  Perrin knew he was going to die. At the last moment, he reached out—clinging to the dream, the reason he was being destroyed: the girl with the red hair.

  And the memory faded.

  Faded, leaving nothing in its place but pain.

  Perrin drifted in darkness. Aching. Heartsore. Alone.

  And then, he was not alone. Jenny’s presence surrounded him, the kra’a bound around them both. Both of them strong and warm.

  You were exiled because of me, Jenny whispered, and the sadness in her voice forced him to find his strength again. You killed to save . . . us.

  I killed. So did the kra’a.

  Righteous blow, said the kra’a. For not listening to the voice, and the dream. For presuming to know the heart of the Kraken.

  Perrin hesitated, having never heard the kra’a speak of that death. There had been no time to discuss what happened. The judgment against him had been almost instantaneous following the murder.

  He had never considered, not in eight years, that the kra’a had cared.

  But that was anger he heard in its dry voice.

  I was desperate, he told Jenny. She was so close to taking you from me. One moment more, and she would have broken us. I could not let that happen. I would not let them. I would have preferred death. I loved you.

  Perrin, she said, but her presence stuttered, like a flame going out—

  —and cold ripped through him, tearing him from Jenny—

  —into the sea.

  He had been standing, earlier, but now he was below the surface, breathing hard through his gills. Legs, bound together with scales that shimmered in the half-light. His heart thundered. For a moment he did not know if this was memory or reality, but he sensed movement on his left and saw a dolphin drifting on its side in the water, bleeding heavily from a gash in its stomach.

  He did not see Jenny.

  Perrin reached Rik in moments and yanked several small spears from his side. The shape-shifter grunted, but his golden eyes were dull. The paralytic had been used.

  He cast around a wild look and saw the fishing vessel. No sign of Eddie and Sajeev, though there were other bodies drifting in the water. Perrin swam hard to them, heart in his throat.

  But it was Krackeni he found. Dead. Charred, as though they had burned to death.

  “Jenny!” Perrin roared, but no one answered. He dove deep, searching, but saw no sign of her in the water. So he hunted for her inside himself, pursuing the presence that he had grown so accustomed to feeling—that warmth, that flutter of another soul pressing on the edges of his mind. He felt the bond between them, roped around his heart, and tugged hard.

  Jenny did not respond, but a dry voice whispered, Hurry.

  Keep her safe, he told the kra’a, sensing that it was still close. South, perhaps. Yes, south.

  Perrin almost left. But he saw Rik still drifting, now upside down, unable to right himself to breathe.

  Gritting his teeth, Perrin grabbed the shape-shifter by the tail and pulled him to the fishing vessel. He had to regain his human legs in order to haul him on board, and was not as gentle as he could have been when he pushed the dolphin across the deck. Rik would live, but it might be hours before he could move again.

  Eddie sprawled nearby, and so did Sajeev. Perrin checked their pulses. Thready, but alive. Also paralyzed. The young man’s clothes had partially burned off his body, and beneath him was a large ring of ash that had been part of the deck.

  He noticed something else, then.

  Another boat was drifting less than one hundred yards away. It had cut its engines early, he thought. Sidling in, quiet as the waves. He had been too distracted to notice.

  The vessel was small, but narrow—shaped like a dagger in the water. Men stood on board, dressed in black. Armed with guns. A very familiar dog sat between their legs. It jumped up and started barking when it saw Perrin.

  A woman stood with them. Tall, lithe, with short red hair and a black patch over her right eye. Even from this distance, he could tell that her good eye was the color of gold, and shimmering with a light that trailed down her strong hard face.

  She aimed a handgun at him.

  And fired.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jenny was paralyzed. And if she hadn’t miraculously developed the ability to breathe—badly—underwater, she would have been very dead.

  As it was, by the time she was ripped from Perrin’s mind, she was already being dragged beneath the sea, caught in a net that cut into her skin and crunched her into a ball.

  Each breath felt as though it might be her last. Whatever changes had been made to her physiology, she was still human. Her chest ached, there didn’t seem to be enough air in her lungs to feel comfortable—not that she was complaining—and her nostrils and throat stung. So did her eyes, but the paralytic prevented her from closing them. Her pulse rate should have dropped, given the water depth and pressure, but instead it felt like drums were pounding beneath her ribs. Unfortunately, she was caught in a net under the sea, being towed by three mermaids—and there wasn’t much she could do to tell herself to calm the hell down.

  If Jenny hadn’t already been an experienced free diver, the physiological and psychological effects of the water pressure alone would have made the experience unbearable. She had learned from the best, though—an old Japanese woman who had trained to be an Ama in the forties, back when
the women wore only loincloths on their free dives.

  At eighty years old, Chiyoko had still been able to dive one hundred feet on one breath—and linger there, looking for pearl oysters, seaweed, lobsters, and whatever else caught her fancy. Two weeks after moving in with her teacher, Chiyoko had forbidden Jenny to eat anything she didn’t catch on the seafloor. Fortunately, the seafloor, for a beginner, was at a considerably shallower depth.

  Jenny had ulterior motives for asking Chiyoko to train her. The old woman had seen a merman once, back in her twenties.

  She described him as long and lean, with dark hair tied at the nape of his neck. His scales had shimmered blue in the underlight, the same color as his eyes; and he had been alien and handsome, intrigued—so the old woman had claimed, with a smirk—by her nudity.

  “Intrigued” being a euphemism for hot, wild, ocean sex. Which Chiyoko had described, later, in enthusiastic detail.

  Chiyoko was rumored to have a daughter with blue eyes, and an uncanny ability to free dive—but she’d had a family of her own and lived in Canada. Jenny had never gotten around to making the trip to introduce herself.

  She would do that if she got out of this. Back to Perrin.

  Jenny could feel him inside her mind, his presence fluttering cold and frantic on the other side of the wall. Alive. When she tried to reach him, though, he slipped away, elusive. Not on purpose. It was though something prevented her from touching him.

  That scared Jenny. She might never have had anyone living in her mind before, but now that he was there, part of her, she could not imagine existing any other way.

  We have to escape, she told the kra’a. Is there anything you can do?

  You are paralyzed, it whispered. Wait.

  Right. Wait. Genius plan.

  So Jenny focused on breathing. She pretended she was not in the sea, and that the Krackeni who had captured her did not occasionally snarl, and beat the sides of the net with vicious strikes of their spears. She felt the blows and endured them.