Dreamfever (18 page)

Too soon, they had to descend to the basement.

“This place is massive,” Will said in a low voice when they were deep enough underground that Mirren felt comfortable turning on a light.

“It starts to seem small if you spend enough years here,” Mirren assured him.

She led them into a vast carpeted room filled with row after row of red filing cabinets that matched the red-and-gold carpet and the pale gold wallpaper.

“Whoa,” Will said. “How much do you have down here?”

“This isn't everything,” Mirren said. “There are other rooms like this. But the files on Feodor will be in here.” She took a basketball-sized ring of keys off a brass hook on the wall. “Remind me what we're looking for precisely?”

“Feodor's last manuscript.”

Josh and Haley went to examine some of the gilt-framed portraits hanging on the wall, but Will followed Mirren into the stacks and stayed glued to her side.

“Do you mind stepping back?” she asked. “There might be things in this drawer that—that I shouldn't share.”

Will frowned as he took two small steps back. “I need to know—”

“I brought you here, didn't I?” Mirren asked. “I think I've earned a little trust.”

Will looked abashed. He took two much larger steps back. “You're right.”

Mirren spent the next ten minutes digging through files, looking for anything relevant to Winsor's condition. “This is just Feodor's history,” she told Will, feeling guilty for making him wait. “Do you want a transcript of his trial?”

“I already have one,” Will said.

They moved on to other drawers and other disappointments, but finally Mirren saw a note tucked in a file on Feodor's translations:
For light harmonics, see file #8938007.

Rising through the file numbers, Will and Mirren ventured deeper into the maze of cabinets and to the far end of the room. One of the chandeliers had burned out above them, giving that row a darkened, ominous feel. Mirren hesitated before unlocking the drawer.

“Step back, Will.”

When he had backed up a full yard, she turned the third key.

Compared with the other files in the drawer, the one labeled “Kajażkołski—Theory of Greater Evolution” seemed out of place. As she flipped through the first ten pages, she saw nothing on the same scale as in the other files. She was noticing mathematical errors while just leafing through.

“I think this is a manuscript, or at least part of it.”

Will took the file as if she were handing him a premature infant and immediately carried it to an area with enough light to read.

Alone with the drawer, Mirren glanced through the files again. At the back was a thick collection of papers labeled “Staging.”

She knew what the pages inside said. She knew that she was risking her life to keep those pages' secrets.

With a sigh, she began to close the drawer. Then her eyes caught on another file.

“Death,” was all the label said.

Death?
Mirren thought.
I don't remember a file on— Oh, wait.

The key ring slipped from her hand.

Inside the file was the oldest known copy of a ritual, held safe in protective plastic. Beside it was an Italian translation from the sixteenth century, also enclosed, and beside that, a slightly fragile English translation from the early 1900s.

Would I?
she wondered.

After reading the page through, she glanced at Haley. He and Josh were examining a jeweled trimidion in a display case, and he was wearing his little Haley smile.

What wouldn't I do?
she asked herself.
If it means staying in the World, living my life, being with Haley, what wouldn't I do?

Mirren removed the English translation, folded it into eighths, and tucked it in her bra.

Through a Veil Darkly

Princess Passes the Learning with Flying Colors

Princess Mirren appeared before the junta today and gave a phenomenal performance. Over four hours of questioning, she answered questions regarding dream-walker history, government, culture, and mission and proved that she knows everything there is to know about being a dream walker. Even Emfyte Kresskadonna couldn't stump her.

The princess again demonstrated remarkable poise, despite her voice becoming more and more hoarse as the interview went on. She even sang a few bars from
Opan Omgritte,
the only dream-walker opera ever written. (Who listens to that? I never have.) And who isn't impressed by a young woman who can actually understand dream theory? She even speaks fluent Hilathic! The junta didn't even bother taking a vote before declaring that she had passed the trial.

Comments:

Byzantine_m993 says:
No one speaks “fluent” Hilathic. We only know the meaning of a thousand words in Hilathic, so anyone can memorize them and then call themselves fluent, when in reality they probably don't know enough words to have a conversation.

2400jokes says:
She sounds stuck up. Just like Byzantine_m993.

amynewhousen says:
She's not stuck up. She's just a nerd.

tetracycline says:
I had this dream last night that I was a priest and she came to confession and told me she helped Webishinu fake his own death and she knew all along that he didn't die in the Dream.

babykim says:
She probably DID know. Didn't Webishinu work in dream theory? Maybe she wanted to keep him quiet.

tetracycline says:
I'm pretty sure she was in preschool when that happened.

Worchester_RWatson says:
The Learning is the easiest trial, hands down. We'll see how much all her book-smarts do for her when she has to go into the Dream.

pouter40242 says:
She wouldn't shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!!!!!!!

lochtess says:
You all shouldn't be laughing. The Dream is a dangerous place, and the smallest mistake can be fatal.

jshg_hammer says:
Go back to your loch, Tess.

 

Fifteen

Against the black-and-gray
ruins of Warsaw, the brightly lit house stood out like a blazing beacon of hope. Both the exterior and interior walls were made of glass, so Josh and Feodor could stand outside and see straight into the cozy yellow kitchen, where a plump woman in a ruffled apron was trying to force her son's hands into a cauldron of acid.

“No!” the boy was screaming. “You can't make me do this!”

“Stop fighting!” his mother admonished.

At the kitchen table sat on older man, smoking a pipe and perusing a newspaper. “Listen to your mother, Caleb,” he said.

Outside the glass house, Feodor chuckled. “The unquestionable wisdom of parents,” he mused.

The acid in the cauldron bubbled and spit, and its droplets burned tiny wormholes into the white granite countertop.

Caleb's mother had bound his wrists with cooking string and was pushing him closer to the cauldron. “Afterward you can have a big bowl of ice cream,” she promised.

Caleb's fear hit Josh like a chaotic crash of musical notes played all at once—too loud, too fast, too urgent.

“I have to save him,” she said. She attacked the exterior wall of the house with a sharp side kick, but the glass barely reverberated.

“Do you?” Feodor asked.

His placid, amused expression confused her. “Of course I do.”

“You're certain?”

She couldn't figure out what he was asking. How could she not save this boy from having his hands burned off? How was that even an option?

“But how will I play the piano with no hands?” Caleb wailed.

“You won't,” his mother replied. “Won't that be a relief? No more arpeggios.”

“No more paying for lessons,” Caleb's father added. “No more paying to get the damn thing tuned every six weeks. No more Bach.”

“Amen to that,” Caleb's mother agreed.

Feodor continued to look at Josh as if waiting for an answer. Holding her eyes, he gestured silently to a wooden table sitting outside the house. A black velvet cloth had been spread over the tabletop, showcasing the harsh metal forms of the circlet and vambrace.

“I thought you said I shouldn't use them,” Josh told him.

“Did I?” Feodor pondered.

Caleb's mother had succeeded in forcing him close enough to the cauldron that splashes of acid were nipping at his skin. “It burns!” he wailed.

Josh stroked the circlet. The metal felt unnaturally cold to her, and the idea of pressing such frigidity against her skin made her hesitate to put on the devices.

But Caleb screamed as the acid burned his fingertips, and the terror in his voice gave Josh the courage she needed to clamp the vambrace around her forearm. Immediately, the metal warmed against her skin. When she slipped the circlet around her head, a sensation of relief ran down her scalp. She aimed her arm at the glass house, and the power streamed into her hand like molten pleasure. Her mind expanded, beyond her skull, beyond the Dream, beyond space and time. From there, from God's point of view, she knew everything.

“It feels good, no?” Feodor asked, tracing the metal hinges with his fingertips. “So very, very good.”

Josh couldn't deny that it did. With a thought, she slammed a lid over the cauldron, sealing it tight against the acid.

“No!” cried Caleb's mother, staring at Josh through the glass wall. “You don't understand!”

But Josh knew everything. She
felt
everything. Her wisdom swept through her, unimpeachable. She would sit in judgment of the whole world.

With dancing fingers, she manifested a long strip of duct tape over the mother's mouth.

Caleb tore away from the woman with a gleeful shout and ran to the piano in the living room as the strings that bound his wrists fell away.

“You know what is best for them,” Feodor assured Josh. “Your field of vision is so much wider than theirs.”

“Yes,” Josh whispered as her thoughts bound Caleb's parents in splendid, weblike shrouds.

Caleb flung open the piano cover and began playing even before he sat down. “Poland has not yet perished!” he sang.

Josh barely recognized the tune. Caleb had rearranged it, changed its pace and key so that instead of the strident, honorable anthem Josh knew so well, what emerged from the piano was a mocking two-step fit only for a honky-tonk bar.

Feodor hissed through his teeth, and the piano lid slammed down on Caleb's wrists. Josh heard bones break beneath Caleb's rending scream, and she shook her vambraced arm at the house, but nothing happened. She thrust again, slamming her hand against the glass wall, directing her thoughts … nothing.

The devices had abandoned her.

The piano lid flew back up and sucked in Caleb's arms up to the elbows, the black and white keys chomping at his flesh.

With a desperate cry, Josh resorted to beating on the glass exterior of the house. Caleb screamed as the piano pulled him in, rivulets of blood running down the keyboard, and from the kitchen, his bound and helpless parents watched as the instrument devoured their child.

And Feodor laughed and laughed.

Josh turned on him, but before she could summon the power of her thoughts, he kissed the tip of her nose.

“Your wisdom,” he said. “All yours.”

*   *   *

In the morning, Josh called Bash Mirrettsio. She was anxious—anxious and hiding in the garage, where no one was likely to overhear her—but Bash sounded delighted to hear from her and not at all surprised. When she said she was hoping to discuss his Nicastro paper, he was even more delighted and invited her to his office the next day.

Josh had only been planning a phone call, but his office at Willis-Audretch was in downtown Braxton, and coincidentally, Mirren would be in Braxton at the same time, meeting with Anivay la Grue. The only difficulty lay in finding an excuse to go without taking Will. Finally, she told him that the elbow she had broken in February had been bothering her recently, and she was going to Braxton to see her orthopedist. Will offered to come along anyway—him being a good boyfriend—but she assured him that the trip would be boring and not worth his time.

It was easily the biggest lie she had ever told him.

*   *   *

When Josh walked into the lobby of Willis-Audretch, the World's only dream-walker think tank and research center, her knees weakened.

Feodor's memories bloomed in her mind, like a gray tint coloring everything she saw. Yes, the décor had changed, the reception desk was in a different place, and a metal detector had been installed, but she
recognized
this place and the bones of the building.

Not me,
Josh thought.
Feodor.

“Ma'am?” the man at the receptionist's desk asked. “May I help you?”

She gave her name at the desk, then paced the waiting area, and only a few minutes later, Bash appeared. He was both nerdier and better-looking than Josh had expected. His blue pants clashed with his red-and-brown shirt, and they all clashed with his orange tie, which he'd obviously yanked on a few times, but none of that distracted from his crow-black hair or the bright smile that revealed tidy square teeth. Despite his classic good looks, Josh couldn't get past his white Velcro sneakers.

As they headed up to his office, Bash made small talk without Josh's help, which worked well since she was too overwhelmed to carry on a conversation. Everywhere she looked, she saw not only the modern reality, but the past superimposed over it: doors painted two colors, floors with two different carpets, even two different series of creaks in the elevator.