Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(6)

Ronan was lying in the middle of an interstate. Three lanes each direction, no cars, just Ronan. In the way of dreams, he understood that the road began at the Barns and ended at Harvard and that he was somewhere in between. Little strangled trees struggled through the thin grass by the road. The sky was the same color as the worn asphalt.

We used to hear the stars, too. When people stopped talking, there was silence. Now you could shut every mouth on the planet and there’d still be a hum. Air-conditioning groaning from the vent beside you. Semi trucks hissing on a highway miles away. A plane complaining ten thousand feet above you.

Silence is an extinct word.

It bothers you, doesn’t it?

But the dream was perfectly silent, except for the voice. Ronan hadn’t thought about how long it had been since he’d experienced perfect silence until that moment. He wasn’t sure he had experienced perfect silence before that moment. It was peaceful, not dead. Like putting down a weight he hadn’t realized he was carrying, the weight of noise, the weight of everyone else.

Magic. It’s a cheap word now. Put a quarter in the slot and get a magic trick for you and your friends. Most people don’t remember what it is. It is not cutting a person in half and pulling a rabbit out. It is not sliding a card from your sleeve. It’s not are you watching closely?

If you’ve ever looked into a fire and been unable to look away, it’s that. If you’ve ever looked at the mountains and found you’re not breathing, it’s that. If you’ve ever looked at the moon and felt tears in your eyes, it’s that.

It’s the stuff between stars, the space between roots, the thing that makes electricity get up in the morning.

It fucking hates us.

Ronan wasn’t sure what the voice belonged to, or if it belonged to anything. In a dream, physical truths were unimportant. Maybe the voice belonged to this road beneath him. The sky. Someone standing just out of sight.

The opposite of magical is not ordinary. The opposite of magical is mankind. The world is a neon sign; it says HUMANITY but everything’s burnt out except MAN.

Are you understanding what I’m trying to tell you?

Ronan felt rumbling against his skull: distant trucks roaring toward him where he lay in the center lane.

He refused to let the dream be a nightmare.

Be music, he told the dream.

The rumbling of approaching trucks turned into the thudding of Matthew’s dubstep.

The world’s killing you, but They’ll kill you faster. Capital-T They. Them.

You don’t know Them yet, but you will.

Bryde. The voice’s name suddenly dropped into Ronan’s thoughts in the way the knowledge about the interstate had, presented as an understood truth: The sky was blue; the asphalt was warm; the voice belonged to someone whose name was Bryde.

There are two sides to the battle in front of us, and on one side is Black Friday discount, Wi-Fi hotspot, this year’s model, subscription only, now with more stretch, noise-canceling-noise-creating headphones, one car to every green, this lane ends.

The other side is magic.

With effort, Ronan recalled where his physical body was, riding in a car with his brothers, on his way to Adam and a new life with his dreams firmly under control.

Don’t bring anything back, Ronan told himself. Don’t bring back a truck, or a road sign, or dubstep that can never be shut off, only buried in a yard somewhere. Keep your dreams in your head. Prove to Declan you can do it.

Bryde whispered:

You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.

Ronan woke up.





4

Wake up, Waaaaaashington, DC! Authorities should be notified,” laughed TJ Sharma, the host of the party. “Someone tell them a young woman with superpowers is on the loose.”

All eyes in the DC-suburb McMansion were on Jordan, a young woman with eyes like a miracle and a smile like a nuclear accident. The other partygoers wore relaxed casual; Jordan didn’t believe in either relaxing or being casual. She wore a leather jacket and lace bustier, her natural hair pulled into an enormous kinky ponytail. The floral tattoos on her neck and fingers glowed bright against her dark skin and her enthusiasm glowed bright against the suburban night.

“Shhh, shhh,” Jordan said. “Superpowers are like children, mate—”

“Two-point-five for every American family?” TJ asked.

“Better seen than heard,” Jordan corrected.

In the background, a nineties band whined frantically about their youth. The microwave dinged—more cheap popcorn. The party’s mood was equally ironic and nostalgic; TJ had joked the theme was delayed development. There was a punch bowl full of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and SpongeBob played on the flat screen next to a pile of PS2 games. The partygoers were all mostly whiter than her, older than her, safer than her. She didn’t know what they’d be doing at this party if she wasn’t performing for them.

“Push in, punters—queuing is for rule followers,” she said. She indicated the scratch paper TJ had provided. “Homework time. No partial credit. Write ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’ and then put your name to it in your best school signature.”

Jordan was attending this party as Hennessy. No one here knew the real Hennessy, so there was no one to say she wasn’t. Even TJ knew her as Hennessy. Jordan was accustomed to wearing identities that weren’t hers—it would’ve felt stranger, in fact, for someone to know her by her actual name.