Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet (23 page)

Rose’s hands went numb, then her feet followed. For a moment she thought she might faint. She stared at her cousin, dumb. “Noun” was the word Laura had yelled at the Rainbow Opera. A monster had come running in answer to Laura’s call and had carried her away. The monster had NOWN inscribed on the back of its neck.

After a moment Laura seemed to realize what she’d said. She glanced at Rose’s face. She looked startled and sly.

“Your monster,” Rose said. “Whose name is Nown.”

“He’s not a monster. He’s a—” Laura paused and pondered. “He’s a soul called into different bodies, time and again, throughout history. Bodies made of earth, or fired clay. And once of ash—or so he tells me.”

Rose sat with her mouth hanging open. She wanted to ask why Laura was telling her this now when she’d denied it before, at the risk of Rose’s great resentment. She said, tentative, “Why did you—?”

Laura didn’t let her finish. She seemed eager to talk, eager now to tell. “Why did I make him?”

This wasn’t what Rose had intended to ask, but she was distracted by the question. “You
made
him?”

“Yes. That’s how he comes to exist. He’s made. I
said
that. He’s made of sand, or earth, or fired clay, and once of ash. And I think whoever makes him has to need him very badly. And they have to give something up. When Da got on the special train last summer, and I learned he wouldn’t be at my Try, I just gave up some of my faith in him. I think I understood that, even without knowing it himself, Da meant to leave me. He meant not to be there for me, at my Try, and then not at all.”

“Wait. What do you mean?”

“Da jumped off the pier at Westport. Didn’t anyone tell you that?”

“I thought it was an accident.” Rose was horrified.

Laura shook her head. “No. And I think I knew. I thought he was letting me down, but I
felt
he was leaving me. I gave up my faith in him. Or rather, my faith left me. But it didn’t just blow away like smoke. I saw that rock on the railbed, the rock I just had to pick up. I think I put my lost faith into it, without knowing what it was for. And without knowing what wanting to do that was for. What being
able
to do that was for. Then, much later, I put the rock into Nown’s chest when I made him.”

“Oh my God!” said Rose. To her eyes it seemed that her cousin was framed by brackets of blue light. Then black patches bloomed on Laura’s face and obliterated it altogether.
Rose bent and pressed her face into the coverlet. She felt nothing—for a moment saw and heard nothing. Then her sense of touch came back, and the texture of the embroidery under her cheek. Laura was stroking the back of her neck. “Oh my God!” Rose said again, muffled.

Laura reminded her cousin that she was an atheist.

Rose wriggled violently, like an infant trying to avoid being dressed. Then she sat up. “So your monster doesn’t just smash things and run off with girls?”

Laura smiled. It was one of her rare very happy smiles, which, having reached its physical limits in terms of crinkling eyes and curving lips, then seemed to go on to pump light into the air around her. She said, “No. Mostly he just does what I say, but all the time noticing the world in a way that’s entirely his own.”

Rose opened her mouth to ask something further but was disturbed by a knock on Laura’s door. Rose’s ma put her head around it. “Rose,” Grace said, “you should come say hello to your uncle Tziga. He has to go to bed right after we’ve had dinner.”

Rose clapped her hands to her face. She felt the heat come into her cheeks. She got up and ran downstairs. Laura and Grace came after her, talking—Rose caught snatches of their exchange. “You’ve grown an inch or so,” Grace said. “You’ll need new shirts and trousers.”

Rose’s da and her uncle were sitting in armchairs by the window of the lightless living room. The moon was coming up over the headland at the eastern end of the beach. Rose went to kiss her uncle and first saw the changes in his appearance by moonlight—which made them somehow less terrible. She crouched by his feet, and he took her hands in his.

Chorley said, “We’ve just been discussing Doran’s map and surplus rails.”

“Us too,” Rose said. She glanced at Laura. “That’s what we were talking about.”

“That’s nice,” said Grace, droll. “Now you two pairs of conspirators can get together in a pack. I almost feel sorry for Secretary Doran.”

4

E FAMILY HAD SEVERAL DAYS DURING WHICH, IN THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON, THEY WERE VERY CAREFUL WITH ONE
another. Rose was now keeping Laura’s secret and already felt she wouldn’t have much trouble doing so. She was hardly likely to talk about something she had such difficulty even thinking about. When she thought about Laura saying “He’s not a monster, he’s a soul,” Rose would get dizzy with astonishment.

On Boxing Day the cousins ambled along the seafront to Farry’s. They sat at their favorite table, looking out on Main Street and its traffic of vacationers in summer finery, ladies in new hats or gowns, men either dutifully or proudly wearing Christmas present ties and tie pins. The children had new toys, dolls and dolls’ carriages, bats and balls and sailboats, but they were blotchy and fretful, still recovering from Christmas Eve sleeplessness.

The cousins ate white chocolate and cardamom ice cream, and Rose told Laura about what she was now referring to as her “run-in with Ru Doran.” She said, “I don’t want to exaggerate how upset I was. Especially not with Mamie coming in a few days.”

“I would have been upset too, if it was me,” Laura said.

“I keep feeling I should have known how to handle him better. And I shouldn’t have complained to Mamie. It was Mamie who made a fuss. She’s very loyal to me.” Rose touched the high collar of her shirtwaist dress. “Anyway, the whole thing has me dressing differently.”

“There are nice boys, Rose. You might want one of the nice ones to notice your figure.”

“Maybe nice boys don’t notice those things,” Rose said.

“Huh!” Laura said. “What’s the first thing you notice about a boy?”

Rose scanned the room. The only young men in Farry’s that day were the waiters. One caught Rose’s eye and came over. “Can I get you ladies anything more?”

“Manners,” said Rose to Laura, answering her question.

“Manners are off today, I’m afraid,” the waiter said.

The cousins giggled. Laura asked the waiter to bring them some lemonade.

Rose looked sly. She asked Laura, “Do you think Sandy Mason notices your figure?”

Laura said, “I wrote to Sandy, and he didn’t write back.” She sighed. “I hoped at least he’d get angry at me about the nightmare. I’m sure he must have known it was me. Your ma hasn’t said anything yet either.”

“Perhaps you should say something.”

“I can’t say sorry without making excuses.”

“Yes, I know, you were only doing what your father told you to do.”

“Yes.” Laura laced and unlaced her fingers. “That’s my excuse. I followed my father’s instructions. But I wanted what came with his instructions. The spell. I wanted to make myself a sandman.”

Rose touched her brow. She could feel it coming—the dizziness, chills, a clench of disgust. It was as if her whole
body wanted to shrink away from the altered reality of the world she found herself living in.

Laura studied Rose’s face, then turned her eyes down to the tabletop. “I don’t have a figure,” she said, reverting to their earlier subject. “I think Sandy liked me only because I come from a famous family.”

“No, Laura, he really liked you.” Rose remembered Sandy Mason’s fiery blush, the intensity of his attention when he looked at her cousin. “You should write to him again. You could ask him to visit us at Summerfort. You need all your friends, Laura.”

Laura studied her cousin, then said, “I need people.” Cool and bland.

“Yes,” Rose said, innocent of her own meaning, and of the fact that Laura had understood her meaning—that she needed people rather than her monster.

The lemonade arrived, and they drank it and went back to their traditional summertime occupation of watching the world go by Farry’s big bay windows.

That evening Grace surprised her family by announcing over tea that it was time they all heard what she had to say. Chorley was possibly the most startled of all of them. He stared at his wife with the white-eyed look of a shying horse but kept his seat.

“Pass your father the sugar bowl,” Grace said to Rose.

Rose handed the sugar to Chorley, who helped himself to five lumps and sat back, stirring his cup. The sugar lumps thunked, and the spoon rattled sharply.

Laura got up, went to sit on the footstool beside her father. She took his hand and faced her aunt.

“All right,” said Grace. Then she set her cup down and stood up.

“Are you making a public announcement?” Rose said.

“Hush,” Grace said to Rose. She looked at her brother-in-law. “Tziga, now that you’re not catching those horrible, distorting nightmares, you must be thinking more clearly.”

“Yes,” Tziga said. “Though sometimes I forget what it is I’ve thought clearly.”

“I know that. But my point is, you must be able to see now that your plan, such as it was, wasn’t a very good one.”

“The papers didn’t publish Lazarus’s letters,” Chorley said, defending Tziga.

Grace stamped her foot. “I don’t want to hear any of you refer to ‘Lazarus’
ever
again. I might have to maintain that silly fiction in public, but I refuse to do so in my own home!”

Laura said, “I’m sorry I overdreamed you. It’s not Da’s fault.”

Tziga squeezed Laura’s hand. “It
is
my fault. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“But it’s also wrong to give a nightmare like Buried Alive to convicts to make them behave, and slave away in the Westport mine,” Laura said.

“Yes, Laura, but is giving the St. Lazarus’s Eve patrons a nightmare about being buried alive any way to change that?” Grace said.

“I think you’re being naïve, Ma,” Rose said.

Grace flushed. She glared at her daughter.

“Think of Doran’s map,” Rose said. “Think of what he’s planning to do.”

“What
is
he planning to do?” Grace set her hands on her hips.

“Use your imagination.”

Grace rounded on Chorley. “Are you going to let your daughter talk to me like that?”

“Rose, please be more polite to your mother.”

“And you—” Grace went on, speaking to her husband now. “You could ask your good friend the Grand Patriarch what
he’s
planning to do about Doran and the Regulatory Body. Except, of course, it isn’t the Body the Grand Patriarch dislikes, it’s dreamhunters.”

“That’s not true,” Tziga said, softly.

“The Regulatory Body has been around for a little over ten years,” Chorley said. “Have you ever heard of any institution becoming as powerful as the Body has within such a short time? Even Christianity didn’t manage it.”

“Napoleon?” said Rose, as though she were doing a quiz. She was ignored.

“That’s beside the point,” Grace said. “You seem to think Doran has a plan. And you also think—rather trustingly—that the Grand Patriarch has a plan.”