Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(69)

Hennessy’s throat moved as she swallowed. The movement sent three tiny rivers of black from her ears down over her neck. She was frightened. She didn’t say it, but Jordan knew she was. Not of dying, but of whatever it was she dreamt of every time she let herself sleep for longer than twenty minutes. On many sleepless nights, Jordan had tried to imagine what she herself could possibly dream of that was so terrible she couldn’t bear even a minute of it. She couldn’t think of a single thing, but what would she know? Dreams didn’t dream.

Jordan put her hand over Hennessy’s eyes until the feather touch of her eyelashes against her palm told her that Hennessy had finally closed her eyes.

The Dark Lady watched them both with that mistrustful, pessimistic look.

“It’s going to work,” Jordan said. She wasn’t sure if she was addressing the painting or Hennessy. “Take a think about the seaside. All kinds of nice shit there. Portable things. Seashells. Sand toys … umbrellas …”

“Sharks … jellyfish …” Hennessy’s head was so heavy, but Jordan didn’t want to move in case she was the only thing making her sleep. She leaned her chin against her hair. In the mirrors, they looked nearly the same, only Hennessy was ruined and bleeding and Jordan was unmarked and dreamy.

Images flickered at the edges of Jordan’s eyes. A waterfall. The mountains. A starving fire.

“I’m so knackered,” Hennessy said. “I’m so goddamn knackered.”

“I know,” whispered Jordan. “I know you are.”

They slept.





43

Ronan was dreaming.

He was lucid and electric in this dream, perfectly aware of both his sleeping and his waking forms. Of course he would be. His physical body was close to the ley line and his mountains. Chainsaw, his psychopomp, his dream guide, hunched on the sill of his bedroom’s window. He knew what he wanted.

Under these conditions, he was a king.

“Bryde,” he said out loud.

In the dream, Ronan stood in Lindenmere, lovely Lindenmere. His forest. His protector and his protected. The trees were massive and shaggy, green and orange lichen scaling their northern sides. Between them, boulders tumbled over one another, moss softening their edges. Mist moved darkly between the trunks, gray, shaggy breath from words just spoken into the air. The sound of water was omnipresent: rivers flowing, waterfalls hushing, rain pattering. Mushrooms and flowers ventured between stumps and fallen logs. In some places, it looked beautiful and ordinary. In other places, it was beautiful and extraordinary.

It was perhaps the purest expression of Ronan’s imagination.

“Bryde, are you here?” Ronan called. He climbed through the woods. He could feel the strain of climbing in his calves as well as he would’ve if he’d been actually doing it.

He didn’t know if other dreamers had forests, or whatever Lindenmere was. Lindenmere was a forest like this: Ronan could close his eyes and get to it in his dreams. Lindenmere was also a forest like this: Ronan could get in the BMW and drive thirty minutes west, up into the mountains, abandon his car on a fire trail, and walk the remaining twenty minutes to the forest where it existed in real life. He could step between those familiar trees and find they knew him and cared for him and manifested his thoughts in the waking world nearly as easily as they did in the dream world. The real-life Lindenmere was a place to dream without closing your eyes.

He had dreamt it into being. One day, there had been nothing but ordinary trees high in the blue mountains. And then the next, he had woken up, and there was Lindenmere hidden among them.

It was perhaps his best dream.

“I suppose you’d say both versions of Lindenmere are equally real,” Ronan said into the trees. He reached into the moving air. The mist curled around him. “I can feel you here, Bryde.”

Greywaren, murmured Lindenmere, the sound coming from the trees, or the water, or from everywhere. This was Lindenmere’s name for him. It knew his real name as well, and sometimes called him that, but Ronan hadn’t figured out why it sometimes chose one or another. Greywaren, he is here.

He knew Lindenmere was not exactly a forest. Lindenmere seemed to have previously existed somewhere else as … something else. And then Ronan, in a dream, had chosen its form in this world. He had not quite dreamt it into being the way he’d dreamt other things into being. He had just opened the door for it and chosen a forest-shaped suit for it to wear.

“You told me to chase,” Ronan said. “Here I am.”

He found himself looking at a deep creek. A bridge floated over it. A motorcycle was parked upon it. It was precisely the Harvard dream.

But he wasn’t far away from his forest and his ley line now. His thoughts weren’t confused and fragmented. This dream was his kingdom and it would do what he bid it.

“No more games,” Ronan said impatiently. He lifted his hand. Snapped his fingers. The motorcycle was gone. The bridge was gone. The creek was gone. The dream was exactly as he wanted it.

He had worked hard to be able to control his dreams so well, and it was easy to forget how good he was at it when he was in DC or farther afield, in Cambridge, or half-dead with night-wash. It was easy to forget how much he loved it.

Things begin to fall asleep. Sparrows fall from the sky. Deer canter and jolt to their knees. Trees cease their growing. Children fall into gentle comas. So many creatures sleep that once roamed, imagination trapped in stasis. There are dragons sleeping underground who will never stir again.