Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(41)

Now they’ve built the whole thing inside out. Conscious, that’s what they call being awake. Unconscious, that’s what they call dreaming. Subconscious, that’s what they call everything in between. You and I know that’s bullshit.

But thus spake Zarathustra or whatever and now they gave us spirituality and took actuality for themselves.

The audacity of it.

In this dream, this confident and powerful older Adam, still boyishly wiry but with jawline brindled with handsome scruff, put a ripe, ripe cherry tomato in Ronan’s mouth. Warm from the sun, skin taut against his tongue. Shockingly hot sweet-savory seeds exploded as Ronan crushed the flesh against the roof of his mouth. It tasted like summer felt.

You need to understand this: They need you to be broken. They can’t stand it otherwise. If you could do what you do, but without any doubt?

Don’t tell me you don’t have doubt.

Don’t tell me you have it figured out.

Your heebie-jeebie nightmare crabs are on you, not me. It wasn’t my birthday printed on their bellies. You don’t yet believe in the reality of your dreams. Of you.

I don’t want you to think this ever again: It was just a dream.

That’s a good way to get yourself killed.

“Tamquam,” said Adam.

“Wait,” said Ronan.

“Tamquam,” he said again, gently.

“Alter idem,” Ronan said, and found himself alone. The garden had vanished and now he stood on a ragged shoreline, shivering, bent against the wind. The air was frigid but the ocean was tropical blue. The rocks rising behind him were black and rough but the shore was creamy beige sand. He was filled with desire. The dream was made of longing for things just out of reach. It floated in the air like humidity. It washed up on the shore with the salt water. He sucked in more longing with every inhale, he exhaled some of his happiness on the other side. How miserable.

No. Ronan was not at the mercy of the dream.

“Happy,” Ronan said into the air. He said it with intention, so that the dream would hear him. Really hear him. “Fucking dolphins.”

Smooth gray backs surfaced joyfully a few yards out from shore. Dolphins squealed. The misery lifted from his chest somewhat.

There you are. You’re not without skills. I think you’re getting intrigued, aren’t you?

“I don’t like people who don’t show themselves,” Ronan said out loud.

You heard how it was last night. Everyone wants a piece of me. You’re going to have to come toward me a bit first. Remember our game? Throw the pebble, jump to the next box, closer to the center?

A plastic baggie of teeth washed up on the shore. Ronan snatched it up; he hated news stories about plastic in the ocean. “I don’t have time for games.”

Life’s a game, but only some bother to play.

Next box: You don’t know which rabbit to chase right now, me or her.

Next box: Doesn’t matter. Either rabbit will take you to the same warren. We’re all struggling the same direction these days. Foraging for crumbs.

Next box: Throw a pebble, jump, jump. Jump after the rabbits.

Next box: Happy hunting.





24

The morning after the Fairy Market, Ronan woke in Declan’s guest room. Since Cambridge, he’d had to give himself a little talking-to before he convinced himself to get out of bed, but today, he immediately rolled out from under the duvet and got dressed.

For the first time in a long while, he was more interested in being awake than asleep.

Bryde.

Bryde.

Bryde.

Plus a dreamlike underground market, and a stranger with his mother’s face. The world felt enormous and extraordinary, and his blood felt warm again through his veins.

Jump after the rabbits.

Ronan even had a clue: the card the mask-woman had given him outside the elevator.

Retrieving it from his jacket pocket, he took a better look at it. It was heavy cardstock, more like a disposable coaster than a business card. It was pleasant to hold. Professionally made, perfectly square, rounded corners. One side featured that image of the woman with a broad cross on her face, striping over her forehead and chin vertically, striping over her eyes and cheekbones horizontally. The other side was flat black. There was no other information on it that he could see, even holding it up to the light.

He snapped a photo of it, typed do you know what this is? and texted it off to Gansey in hopes that he was still tied to that black walnut tree or somewhere else with a phone signal. Richard Campbell Gansey III was the most academic and mythic person he knew, and the most likely of any of Ronan’s acquaintances to have an idea of what the significance of the image might be. He wanted to send it to Adam, but he didn’t want Adam to think he had to devote time to it. He’d already fucked up Adam’s life enough at the moment. He didn’t think Adam was angry with him, but things had been different since the dorm was destroyed. Quieter, sort of. Ronan didn’t know how to make things right again, and he was afraid of making things more wrong.

So he just texted him: dreamt of you.

As he headed downstairs and into the kitchen, Declan’s voice sounded lecturey. “You aren’t even remotely dressed for the recital. I need at least forty extra minutes for traffic. And please stop.”

Matthew was cheerfully chanting through a mouth stuffed full of pancakes and jam, accompanying the sound with a small dance. His chant sounded like “Ror a ror a ror a ror.” It was hard to tell if it was a phrase he liked the feel of or a fragment of a song, not that it particularly made a difference; he had, on previous occasions, sung phrases he liked the feel of for hours.