Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(91)

Bryde’s voice sounded a little annoyed. “You’re not going anywhere, so I might as well tell you a story. Are you going to be quiet?”

Ronan did not entirely cease thundering, but he changed it to a low roar.

“Probably you’ve heard it before, your father from Belfast, your mother from a Belfast man’s dreaming: the hawk of Achill,” Bryde said. “The hawk of Achill was the oldest man in Ireland, so goes the story. He was born Fintan mac Bóchra in a place far away from Ireland, and when Noah’s flood threatened, he fled to Ireland with two other men and fifty women. Noah’s flood washed away his companions and the foolish world of men, but Fintan transformed himself into a salmon and lived.”

Ronan saw vaguely, from above, his rain making interesting divots on a vast ocean’s surface, and deeper, he glimpsed a salmon digging through the water. In the way of a dream, he could be above the water and below it at once, and he watched the salmon navigate through strange kelp forests and past frightening creatures of the open sea.

“Fintan coursed through the ocean and learned everything about that strange world that he couldn’t have known as a man. After the flood receded, he could’ve become a man again, but he’d acquired a taste for worlds beside the one he’d been born into. Having learned the world of men and the world of fish, he transformed himself into a hawk, and he pitched through the skies for the next five thousand years, becoming the wisest man in Ireland.”

Now Ronan saw this, too, the hawk with its crisp feathers wheeling through him, so deft and nimble with its flight the rain never touched it.

“You can learn a lot when you see something through someone else’s eyes,” Bryde said, and he sounded a little sad. “You can learn a lot when you see it from below, or from far above. You can learn a lot when you see generations live and die while you soar in slow, high circles in a changing sky.”

The cloud that was Ronan had begun to rain on a pale beach beside turquoise water. He was starting to feel a little shitty again. He rumbled; words were coming back to him and he didn’t want them.

Bryde said, “Some of the stories said Fintan finally turned back into a man, and finally died. But some of them say he’s still up there, soaring far above the rest of the world, holding all the world’s wisdom and secrets in that ancient mind. Five thousand years of knowledge, five thousand years of below and above. Imagine what you could learn if you put out that arm and the hawk of Achill landed on it.”

The dream abruptly changed.

Ronan stood on a familiar cold shore. The cloud was gone; he had his human body back. The wind snagged his clothing and threw sand up against his skin as he faced a turquoise ocean before him. He knew without looking there would be black rocks tumbled up behind him.

The Dark Lady’s ocean.

Ronan felt intensely present, there on The Dark Lady’s shore. The painting, he thought. The painting must be back under Declan’s roof.

“There you are again,” Bryde said wryly.

He was here, yes, and now that he wasn’t Ronan-the-cloud, he had room in his mind for all the concerns of Ronan-the-boy. “Matthew hates me.”

“Did you want him to be stupid forever?” Bryde asked. “Wisdom is hard. Do you think the hawk was always happy with what he learned?”

“He thinks I’m a liar.”

“Then perhaps,” Bryde said, “you shouldn’t have lied.”

Ronan put his hands behind his neck, just as Matthew had in the church. He closed his eyes.

“Perhaps the next creature you should turn yourself into in your dreams should be a dream,” Bryde said. “What do you think a dream wants?”

“Fuck everything.”

“What does a dream want?”

“I don’t want to play right now.”

“What does a dream want?”

Ronan opened his eyes. “To live without their dreamer.”

“Look at me,” Bryde said.

Ronan turned, shielding his eyes. High up on the black rocks, he saw a silhouette against the gray.

“You’re ready for the next part of the game,” Bryde called down. “I am, too. But I’ve been burned before. Wait, I tell myself, wait, slow, high circles, watching.”

“Don’t tell me I didn’t save Hennessy,” Ronan said. “I was there. I kept up my end.”

Bryde said, “She is just afraid. She knows what dreams want, and she wants that for her dreams. Do you want that for Matthew?”

He already knew that Ronan wanted it for Matthew. It didn’t even have to be said. Ronan had wanted that for as long as he knew Matthew was one of his.

Bryde said, “I want it, too.”

“Do you know how to do it?”

The silhouette on the rocks scanned the sky as if looking for the hawk from the story. Then Ronan saw the silhouette visibly square its shoulders. Bracing. Preparing.

“Next box,” Bryde said, “rabbits are coming to you. Next box. Are you ready?”

Ronan held out his arms on either side. I’m here, aren’t I?

Bryde said, “You have been waiting for me; she has been waiting for you. When she stretches out her arm, answer the call. Remember that hawks have talons.”

Ronan woke up.

It was early, early morning. The light through the blinds was still the ugly orange of the streetlights outside, fencing his vision in narrow slats. His phone was ringing on Declan’s guest room nightstand.