Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(107)

Hennessy was as sullen as Opal when she didn’t get her way. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Control your thoughts or we’re getting the fuck out of here,” Ronan said. He stepped down to the edge of the clearing again. “We go again.”

Rinse.

Repeat.

The glen dimmed. The music played. The woman lifted the gun.

“Don’t let it open,” Ronan said. “Don’t let it play through.”

The door opened.

“Mum?” said Hennessy.

“You won’t miss me.”

“Wait—”

Another Hennessy appeared again, splitting immediately off the first, as if she were peeling the memory like a skin.

“Lindenmere, take it away,” Ronan said impatiently.

The dream fled; the extra Hennessy seeped into the soil.

Hennessy squeezed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

“Did that happen?” Ronan asked. “Or are we playing let’s pretend?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Hennessy said.

“What are we even here for today? Are you even going to try?” Ronan strode to the center of the glen and cupped his hands over one of the knocked-over mushrooms until he felt it grow tall and sturdy beneath his palms. “Again. The actual dream this time.”

Rinse.

Repeat.

The clearing went dark. Jazz filtered in. The gun, lifted. The doorknob, turning.

“Not you,” Ronan said. “Anyone else. Santa Claus. A dog. No one at all; an empty room. You’re not even trying to control it.”

The door opened.

“Mum?” said Hennessy.

“You’re not even fucking trying!” Ronan said, and shot the extra Hennessy.

The real Hennessy came to with a start, gasping, fingers clawing the grass. She stared at the gun in his hand.

“How did you get that?”

“Lindenmere is a dream,” he snarled. “I told you. All you have to do is try. It’s only doing what you ask it, and you’re asking it for that. I asked it for a gun. Now I’m going to ask it to take it away. Lindenmere, take this shit away.”

The gun and the dead copy melted away.

“Why are we doing this? Where’s the dream?”

“I’m trying.”

“I don’t think you are.”

Opal leaned against Hennessy, chewing on a watch Adam had given her long ago. She spoke around it. “She is trying.” But she couldn’t be trusted. She had a soft spot for the downtrodden, being one of them.

“Again,” said Ronan. “At least have the guts to get rid of the other copy. This is everything, do you get that? We have all this, we can do so much. It means we have to be ready to do what we need to do to make sure we don’t fuck everything up. No one else gets it. This is what we live with. Again.”

Rinse. Repeat.

Darkness, jazz, a gun, a trigger.

“Do not let a copy survive this,” Ronan ordered. “If you won’t change anything else—”

“Mum?” Hennessy said.

“You won’t miss me.”

“Wait—”

Hennessy gasped and curled on herself. Ronan knelt beside her, put his gun in her hand, pointed it at the newly formed copy. “This is what you do in the dream. No one’s going to help you with this.”

Hennessy made a helpless sound as he squeezed her finger on the trigger. She began to cry without tears, just the ragged, hopeless sobs.

“Lindenmere,” Ronan said angrily, “take it away.”

The duplicate copy seeped into the ground.

“I can’t,” Hennessy said.

“Did this really happen?” Ronan asked.

“I can’t.”

Ronan sat back in the grass. “Fuck.”

Opal whispered, “Bryde.”

The name felt enormous spoken here in this place. It was the same word it always was, but here, in Lindenmere, it meant something different. Here in Lindenmere, he could say Bryde and possibly call the real Bryde, or he could say Bryde and invoke a copy, everything Ronan thought Bryde ought to be, like Hennessy and her copies.

He supposed Bryde would say that both versions were real.

Opal was still peering up at Ronan intently.

“Okay,” he said. “Yes.”





68

I had a dream last night,” Bryde said. “That’s what everyone says. I had a dream last night, and this is what it was about, it was crazy. It was about a hospital for zombies. It was about my fifth birthday party. It was about a space station but all the astronauts were actually you, isn’t that crazy?”

His voice came from somewhere very close in the trees. He had not said don’t look for me but the sense of it hung in the dark, shaggy mist that moved between the tree trunks of Lindenmere. Hennessy couldn’t tell what kind of a person he was from his voice. It could be any age. It was sure of itself, though, calm. Wry. It had seen things, the voice implied.

“Everyone thinks their dream is about something else,” Bryde said. “It’s just you. You’re not dreaming about your mother. You’re dreaming about how you feel about your mother. Your mother’s not there. You’re not that powerful. You aren’t pulling her from the afterlife to reenact her death scene for you. You’re just up your own ass.”