Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet (49 page)

She took a deep breath. “The site of The Gate is on the border, inside a big O that someone has inscribed on the ground. For years rangers have supposed that the O stands for ‘ouest’—the French word for west. They think that because there’s also a big N on the ground in the north. N for ‘nord.’ But when I saw the O, and Sandy told me about the N, I knew what it really was. What the Place really
is.
Why didn’t you tell me that it’s a Nown?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“That isn’t an answer. Once I’d freed you, why didn’t you tell me? You must have understood that it was something I needed to know.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you, then?”

“I didn’t know what would happen.”

Laura reached out, put her knuckles against his rock-hard shoulder, and gave him a hard shove. He didn’t stir.

“I couldn’t foresee the consequences for you and me if I told you.”

“Couldn’t you just act in good faith?”

“My freedom isn’t like yours, Laura. I think that whenever I have to choose what to do, I have to know what will happen. My free will has laws, it seems. Because I cannot lose my soul, my free will must have laws.”

This somehow all made sense to Laura. It made her feel terribly tired, but better. She’d been wrong to resent him—she was always wrong when she expected him to act like a human. She sighed—she had just realized that she’d missed the coach. She asked Nown, “Why didn’t you come to find me in Founderston?”

“It was only yesterday that I was able to dig myself out. They had finally moved enough of the debris to make the ash loose around me.”

“I thought you’d been destroyed.”

“I fell into a pit of coal. It was burning. There were hours when I thought I might not be able to go on. To go on distinguishing myself from the burning coal. We were the same temperature, and I became confused about where the coal ended and I began. Then I felt myself melting, and as I melted I reduced and found myself, my limits. I drew some air into me so I wouldn’t shrink too much. I didn’t want to be small. And, as I took that breath, I remembered that Laura had made me, and that I’d promised to watch Laura, and never to hurt her. I kept myself together and cooled. And then I had to wait.”

Laura looked at him. The sun was bristling through him now, broken by the shadows of the trees across the river. “All right,” she thought, “this is my life.” What she said was, “Father needs me. I have The Gate for him. Can you get me to Founderston before midnight?”

“Yes.”

She studied him. He wouldn’t be too visible in the dark, but by daylight he was conspicuous. He could no longer pretend to be a stone. She was sure that, although he could move, he could no longer stretch or flatten, or make a comfortable sling of his arms to carry her in. Then she had an idea. She knew where she could find clothes he could wear. She had a moment of confusion about her plan—it was practical, but it made her a little queasy. “You stay here,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

Laura left him. She hurried back to the village and to Mrs. Lilley’s boardinghouse.

She asked her landlady about the trunk she was storing.
George Mason had asked Grace to tell Mrs. Lilley that he would drop by in a day or two to collect his nephew’s belongings. Laura said to the landlady that George Mason had told her she could have one or two of Sandy’s things. Conveniently, tears filled her eyes as she spoke.

Mrs. Lilley patted Laura’s shoulder, took her to the trunk room, and gave her the key to Sandy’s trunk.

Half an hour later, Nown was clothed in trousers, a knitted hat, and Sandy’s long dreamhunter’s duster coat. Laura saw that her sandman hadn’t totally managed to combat the shrinkage of his change from river sand to glass, despite the frog spawn skeins of bubbles he’d drawn into his body. He was nearer to Sandy’s size now—a little over six feet and as slender as a young man. He’d kept all his proportions, but there was less of him.

As Laura stood gazing at Nown and wondering about the change, he finished buttoning the coat and slipped his glass hands into his pockets, to see how much bright surface he could hide. Something in the pocket rustled, and Nown drew out a piece of paper. He gave it to Laura.

It was a yellowing newspaper clipping. It was a photograph of her, looking fearfully through the veil of her new hat, into the blast of a photographer’s magnesium flash, on the day of her Try, a year ago.

Laura folded the picture and put it in her own pocket. Then she held her arms out, and Nown picked her up and began to run with her, upriver, away from Doorhandle.

4

AURA DIDN’T GET TO FALLOW HILL TILL AFTER MIDNIGHT, SO MISSED SPEAKING TO HER FATHER. IT WAS NOWN
who held her up at the end of their journey, by arguing about leaving her. She had to insist that she’d be all right, she’d be with her father. Nown had finally let himself be persuaded and taken himself off to Market Bridge.

Laura settled into the room beside the one she’d always shared with Sandy. They’d liked the room whose single bed was against a wall, so that they could share it with less danger of tumbling out. Laura chose to sleep in the adjacent room, in a narrow iron bed. She dreamed The Gate and woke to find sunlight filling the room, because she’d forgotten to close the curtains. She got up and went to find her father, who, it turned out,
hadn’t
checked in the night before.

Laura was alarmed. She said no thank you to breakfast and set off for home.

She caught a streetcar. It was early, but the usually packed Monday morning coach was as empty as a Sunday evening one. Laura got off in the market. The farmers’ stalls were full, but the market wasn’t. Laura didn’t notice the anxious vendors; she was intent on getting to her favorite pastry shop, on a corner near her house.

But when she arrived at the shop, she was disappointed to find the trays under the counter almost empty.

“Do you have any pinwheels?” she asked the woman behind the counter.

“I have cream cornets, almond puffs, and lemon tarts. All the ones
I
like best,” the woman said, and beamed.

“All right, I’ll have eight almond puffs.”

The woman slipped them into a bag. She passed them to Laura and left Laura’s money lying on the counter, though a little change was due.

“What a beautiful day,” the woman said.

Laura said, “Mmmm,” and waited a moment longer for the woman to ring up the sale and give her change. Then she blushed, and left.

The awnings were still closed on the news kiosk opposite Market Bridge. Bundles of the
Founderston Herald
lay beside it, the strings fastening them still uncut. Laura steered around the bundles and dashed down the steps by the bridge. Before she got to the first arch, she saw a pile of clothes lying in the bottom of a boat tethered to a ring by the steps. She recognized the knitted hat on top of the pile. Then she saw, against the submerged steps below her, a clear patch in the river, like raw egg white dropped in milky tea. The patch stirred and unfolded, and water rose up out of the water, shedding water. Nown walked up the steps.

“It can’t matter to you that your clothes stay dry,” Laura said, pointing at the bundle in the boat.

“They’re not my clothes,” said Nown.

Laura went back up onto the embankment and looked around, both ways. She could hear traffic on the bridge, but there was no one in sight. She told Nown to put his clothes—
the
clothes—back on.

She took him home and into the backyard. She planned to smuggle him up to her room later. “I can always run a bath and hide you in it,” she said. Then, “Can you
see
water now?”

“No. And I can’t see through it either. I felt you on the steps by the river. I can always feel you as you come toward me.”

Laura stood with him, thinking about what he’d said. She knew she should go in. She needed to know what had happened to keep her father from his appointment at Fallow Hill. But the yard was quiet and familiar and private—and she wasn’t unhappy. She laid her palm against her servant’s side. His shirt—Sandy’s shirt—was damp, having blotted the river water from his surface. He felt like stone under the cloth. “And what do I feel like as I come toward you?”

“Laura,” he said.

She removed her hand and went toward the back door.

“Laura,” he said again, and she turned back to him. But he was only finishing his answer. “Laura, who is life,” he said. “But not
just
Laura.”

“I should hope not. There’s life everywhere,” Laura said, somewhat primly. She lifted the latch, pushed the door, and went inside.

“Laura and someone else now,” Nown finished, speaking to the closed door.

Laura found boiled eggs broken and mashed into the flagstones of the kitchen floor. She stopped and stared at them, then hurried on into the hall. She called, “Hello!”

“Hello, darling!” Rose called back.

Rose was lying on the window seat in the morning room, in her robe. She was playing with the tassel of the curtain, catching it and tweaking it with her toes.

“Are you all right?” Laura asked.

“Yes. Isn’t it a lovely day?” Rose stretched, arched her back, relaxed again, continued to pluck at the cord.

“Have an almond puff.”

Rose sat up and took one. She bit into it and gave a little grunt of happiness.

“Where’s Da?”

“Don’t know,” Rose said, muffled and scattering flakes of pastry.

“Isn’t he up yet?”

“He was up for breakfast,” Rose answered. Then she giggled. “We forgot the eggs, and they almost boiled dry. They were bouncy.”

Laura went to look for her father upstairs. His door was open, and he was asleep in a tangle of bedclothes. He looked peaceful, so she left him.

Chorley was in the library listening to his gramophone. He too was in his pajamas and robe. He had little purple dots of spilled jam on his front. The top of his desk was clear except for a row of gramophone cylinders lined up across it. All his papers, notebooks, even his inkstand had been pushed to the floor.

“Laura, listen to this!” Chorley said. He raised a hand to conduct the tenor’s squeezed voice for a few bars of the song. “This music reminds me of eating dinner outdoors,” he said.
“Alfresco.
Surrounded by family. How wonderful it is to be surrounded by family.”

“Well—yes,” Laura said. She couldn’t believe she was looking at her uncle wearing food stains. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him drop food on himself. He could even eat ice cream in a stiff wind without mishap.

He kept his hand up, conducting, his arm moving just a little off the beat. “It was all worth it,” he said, dreamily. “I
put in the time and ended up with this—all the time in the world,” he said.

Laura backed out of the room and into the hall. She leaned on the wall, her legs watery.