Dream Weaver (Dream Weaver #1) (9 page)

             
At this, he finally looked up and smiled sheepishly. “Figured it out, have ya?”

             
“Oh yeah.” Of course, I had. In the night, while I slept peacefully, after Nick chased away the bad dreams, he worked with Eddyson on new commands. “I do have a few questions I’m not sure on, though.” With this, his eyes dropped again.

             
Nick shook his head, muttered under his breath—something about Sabre not liking this. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced and drew in a bracing breath. “Okay. What is it you want to know?” Eddy waddled back across the couch to cuddle up against my side. He yawned again, tilted his head back to look up at me with a plea that, perhaps I might remain still for his late-mid-morning nap. His puppy-blue eyes blinked once, and then closed.

             
“Well, do you just implant the memory into his mind so he remembers a command?”

             
Nick chuckled softly. “No. Dog’s brains aren’t as complex as human’s brains. They’re wired differently, more instinctive than humans.”

             
“I read a quote once, something about how instinct is just a kind of memory. That doesn’t sound right. My dad used to say that animals are ‘hard-wired’ from birth. They just know stuff.”

             
“I think your dad is more accurate. Animals may learn instinct, and yeah it would be a memory, but no one teaches a salmon to swim upstream…or a fawn not to move when danger is present.”

             
I smiled at Nick. He’d found that memory of the fawn down by the creek. He glanced up and returned my smile. “I was just thinking about that fawn the other day.”

             
“I know. That memory helped you remember me,” he said. “I was hoping that memory would help you not to be afraid of me—if you drifted.”

             
“Drifted?”

             
“Um…you had vague memories of my visits despite my efforts to erase them. Your memories drifted.”

             
I just nodded, not sure what to say to that. “So, training Eddyson…”

             
“Well,” he continued quietly, “it comes down to plain, old-fashioned training to teach him a new command.” He paused, “Then I implant the command in your head.” He glanced up to gauge my reaction, watched me mischievously from under his dark lashes.

             
I ran my hand down the length of Eddy’s warm little body. I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of Nick rummaging around in my memories uninvited, though he hadn’t harmed me in any way.

             
“Once you’re asleep, I nab him and bring him into the living room for a training session. When I’m done, I tuck him back in and transfer the info to you, as though you were the one doing the training instead of me.”

             
“Aw, poor baby,” I cooed sympathetically, and caressed the pup’s fur. “I knew he seemed over-tired, even for a baby.”

             
Nick chuckled. “He’s smart and learns fast. I didn’t keep him up long.”

             
“Are you responsible for plowing my drive so I could go puppy shopping?”

             
“You make it sound like a bad thing—but yes. I needed…I wanted you to have someone, something warm to be with you—so you weren’t so alone. Humans aren’t meant to be alone.” He bit the inside of his cheek and looked away from me.

             
“Are you human?”

             
“I bleed like any other human. I just heal fast. And I’ll live longer. Age exceptionally slower.”

             
“So, how do you make me go to sleep?”

             
“We believe it’s just part of the magic. A safety mechanism so you don’t know we’ve been there. Kind of like a mosquito bite.” He scowled at himself and I heard him breathe the name of Sabre, again, like a curse on his lips.

             
“So, who is Sabre and why do you give a flip what he thinks?” I challenged him.

             
“Sabre’s my friend—my mentor. We’ve been together for decades, a century here in another four years or so.”

             
“Together?” I eyed him significantly with a teasing tone and a playful smile.

             
That broke the ice. He laughed a little more freely, “Not like that. We’re friends. Buds. Best mates.”

             
“Aw. So what’s the big deal?”

             
“Sabre is of the old school of Dream Weavers. ‘We’re not meant to associate with humans,’” he said in what I was sure was a fair interpretation of what this Sabre sounded like, just a hint of some forgotten dialect. “Any good immortal knows that. It’s the unwritten code. ‘There are mortals and there are immortals and never the twain shall meet.’”

             
“I see. And you? You don’t agree with Sabre?”

             
“I do. I did, until recently. I guess I’m starting to wonder.”

             
“Why is that?” I pressed, like an investigative reporter digging for the dish.

             
His face flushed and his eyes darted away. He was cute when he was embarrassed, more human. His silence stretched several moments, as he wrestled with a confession that struggled for release. A small smile twitched on his lips. “Because of you.” His eyes found mine, in search of my response.

             
It was my turn to blush. “Me? Really?” I searched his face for the truth—and I found it, even when his shy eyes darted away.

             
“Ha. Yeah. Really.” He chanced a bigger smile, but it vanished when our gazes locked. “I only meant to chase away the nightmares.” The remorse overflowed his voice, so deep and devastating it puzzled and pained me. His words wrenched unwillingly from his heart, as if he regretted his decision to continue visiting me. “There was just so much pain. You were so—alone—hurting
so
badly.” His words tumbled and broke like a stream over winter snows. “I just couldn’t leave you.” His voice quavered and he stared out the window in silence for a few moments to collect himself, and gather the confidence to continue. I was starting to realize just how much he was putting his trust in me. “And then, I…” The words broke off, a murdered thought.

             
“You, what?”

             
“It’s nothing.” Nick huffed a quiet, humorless laugh.

             
“So, you don’t think it’s some sort of saviour—complex—thing?” I asked.

             
“I’m not out to save the world, Emari, just you.”

             
“But how can you know so much about me?” I felt the canyons form between my brows.

             
“I’ve been in your head enough. I know you better than you realize.” He sat for a long, quiet moment, his elbows on his knees, his fingers spread. His fingertips tapped together in a nervous twitch.

             
“And I know virtually nothing about you.”

             
“I can show you.” His blue-black eyes penetrated my soul. My heart raced, a fearful creature skittering for safety.

             
“Show me?” My voice quivered with anxiety.

             
“It’s how the memories are transferred. Physical contact.”

             
I thought for several long moments, contemplated my fear of touching him. Finally, I reached for his hand.

             
“Emari?” His hand hovered above mine, his voice barely a whisper. “There’s something else. That day, at the creek, that wasn’t the first time we met.”

             
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Show me.”

             
His fingers brushed across the palm of my hand with a series of tiny erratic electrical impulses. His skin was warm and smooth, but did little to assuage the tension inside me. “Relax,” he whispered, so soft and gentle it stroked my heart. I leaned back on the couch, closed my eyes, and opened myself to him.

             
I saw myself at the old cemetery down by the football stadium overlooking the fire-thinned forest and the rolling Spokane River. A morbid favorite of my early teen haunts. Ancient towering pines shaded the narrow undulating lanes that wound through aging headstones. The sun hung low over the horizon casting elongated shadows of pine trees and monuments. White contrails and wispy clouds littered the arcing blue sky. Nimbus clouds piled up along the northwestern horizon, nearly as blue as the early evening sky. Only the sun reflecting off the uppermost billows stood out, glowing silver, in contrast against the celestial blue.

             
A squirrel chattered his annoyance at my presence. Ravens cackled, and cawed, their voices echoing across the hallowed grounds as the winged shadows bounded from limb to sepulcher to lawn in search of shiny treasures left by mourners. The sparrows and swallows chirruped and chattered in the trees; the starlings added a chorus of vibrant tattoo.

             
The ‘old’ section of the cemetery was adorned with an array of tombstones, from the simple wooden cross so weathered that its hand-carved inscription was no longer legible, to towering angels with wings and hands outstretched, welcoming the lost into the arms of God. Grey mosses and lichen grew into the carved names. It filled in the remembrances, much as time fills in the memories of the progeny of the dead. Pine needles and pinecones littered the lawn that rolled in lush green waves from the up-growth of roots.

              One tombstone had mesmerized me from the first moment I saw it; Felicia Morrow. She had enthralled me, as though drawn by some unknown force. Thoughts of her had obsessed me, invaded my waking and sleeping dreams. So I’d haunted her grave in return; gone back, again and again to sit by her upright headstone that was etched with a leaning cross on its face; its inscription read ‘Our Beloved Felicia’.              

             
I would sit by her grave, braid pine needles, and talk to her as though she were my closest confidante. I’m sure the other cemetery visitors thought me strange, being so young and visiting the grave of someone who had died nearly eighty years before my birth. My obsession even drove me to the cemetery office to check the microfiche and giant archaic funeral tomes to discover as much about her as I could.

             
“We met there, first,” Nick’s voice broke into the vision, and he brought to my remembrance the cold wind that had angrily whipped around my body, driving me to the warmth of my car. “Sorry for that,” he whispered to my soul.

             
“The wind? That was you?”

             
He murmured apologetically. “I was a bit—protective.” The wind became a gentle breeze on my next visit, and vanished altogether my next—though the air still pressed against me, warm and safe. Perhaps it was one of the reasons why I returned time and time again.

             
I opened my eyes to find pain etched on his beautiful face and it broke something inside me to see. “Who was she?” I asked.

             
“She was my wife.” He plunged ahead as if he paused too long he might not be able to continue at all. “She and our first child, my son, Samuel, died from complications during his birth.” We were both silent for several long moments. There was nothing for me to say and I could tell his throat had constricted around his memories before he could give them a voice. I didn’t press, I just sat there holding his hand in mine, caressing his knuckles with my thumb. Perhaps a little compassion on my part would be okay.

             
When he finally continued, his voice was strained and unsteady. “She contracted typhoid fever during the 1917 outbreak when she was seven months pregnant. The illness caused her to go into premature labor, as well as hemorrhaging in her womb. She bled to death and our son was not able to survive on his own.” Flickers of gruesome and bloody images of his lovely bride and tiny, helpless, frail baby etched themselves indelibly into his memory, but they were not images he wanted me to witness. Grief he did not want me to share. I felt a palisade erected around those memories to dissuade intruders.

             
“I’m so sorry.”

             
His head dropped slightly and he was silent again. “Thank you,” he whispered. “No one has ever said that to me.”

             
I squeezed his hand. “No one? Ever?” I wanted so badly to take away his pain, to ease the torment as much as he had done for me. His loss was as great as my own and despite the passage of time the memories were still serrated enough to wound him.

             
He just shrugged and continued. “I became distraught. She was my life….” His voice quavered. “We’d only been married about a year. Her parents never approved of me,” he confessed, but now there was a hint of anger mixed with his grief.
“
They blamed me for her death.”
I wondered if Nick blamed himself for her death.