Fearsome Dreamer (12 page)

It had been a busy few days. People did get tend to get ill with annoying regularity.

No more dreams, for a while, at least. Rue suspected she was too tired for them. Fernie was working her hard, and she practically fell into her bed every night, waking up heavy-headed each morning from a sleep that felt more like being unconscious.

In the mornings, Fernie had Rue doing chores from the moment she crawled to the kitchen. Rue was beginning to wonder whether she was being punished for something, and a horrible sickly thought began to form in the back of her mind: that Fernie knew what had happened between her and Til. But then, Fern had always been the sort to have it out, not keep it bottled up inside where it could do much more harm.

The whole thing was making her jumpy, and the fact that she hadn't even been near the village square for a while was starting to irk her. She needed information.

She skirted the kitchen, furtively checking the bread basket, and then each cake tin in the cupboards. She was in luck. They were running low, and Fernie was currently holed up in her workroom, overseeing a potion mix or two. She wouldn't have time to cook today, and Rue's baking was mediocre at best. So when Rue asked her whether she should go off to Til's bakery and buy some bread, Fernie absently said yes.

But as soon as she did, Rue grew nervous. Her bid to find out what was going on with Til started to seem like the machinations of a silly child, not the inscrutable, poised woman she wanted to be.

She knew she didn't love Til, or at least not the kind of love that was worth going stupid over. It was just that he was the only man worth wanting around here. The reality of him probably wouldn't be the same at all. She knew that. And the thought of being a baker's wife day in and out made her shudder.

Besides, witches didn't marry.

Or at least, none that Rue had ever heard of. Certainly Fernie never had, and she seemed to think that sort of thing an utter waste of time. She obviously hadn't at one point, though. Rue had heard tell that she had a son, though no one seemed to know where he was now. Fernie wouldn't talk about him.

Rue trudged along the track to the village. The sky was brooding along with her. There would be a big storm tonight. Her room ceiling always leaked in heavy rains. Fernie had promised to have it fixed but never got round to asking Mussyer Ofton, who had a long time ago done the cottage roof, whenever they saw him in passing.

She reached the square, and her jaw dropped.

Til's bakery was closed and dark.

In the middle of the day.

Rue stood on the step and peered inside. He hadn't opened all morning, that was clear – the floor was still swept clean from the night before.

Rue wandered around the square for a few minutes, unsure; then walked into Beads, the nearest open door.

She loved Beads, more than she would if Fernie weren't so disapproving of it. It was full of city silks, sparkling buttons, velveteen ruffles and meandering ribbons of butterfly lace draped artfully across display tables. The proprietor, Jennet La Damm, was rather old, wore far too much make-up and liked nothing better than gossip. Rue didn't care for her a whole lot but adored her shop. The deep woven baskets packed with beads were her favourite – you could buy a small bag of them for a few centimes. Rue liked to plunge her fingers into the baskets, wrist deep, and feel those beads shifting and pouring like oversized sand grains around her hand. Damm had harped at her on several occasions for doing it, but she wasn't the only one who did.

There were three women huddled close to each other and chatting, with Damm the middle one holding court. They stopped when Rue came in, and gave her a triple-headed stare.

‘Your pardons,' said Rue. ‘I was wanting to visit the bakery, but it seems closed.'

Their faces transformed with a sudden excitement and they exchanged sly glances, but said nothing.

‘Never mind, then,' said Rue, turning to leave. Hang 'em. She'd find out from someone else.

‘Well, and so you've not heard then?' said Damm.

Rue shrugged, burning up with curiosity.

‘Well, it's the biggest scandal,' Damm continued, her eyes sparkling. ‘At first it was nothing but whispers, you know it. This one saying they'd seen him and Mussyer Forthrint's daughter, you know the one, with the blonde hair down to her bum, well, they'd seen 'em down by the copse in the mornings together. It was dismissed by most but I was the only one who thought there might be some truth to it. I seen the way he's looked at her before and they were friends in childhood, of course. Well, and so, the talk started coming in fast about who'd seen them where doing what, though they were clever enough not to give a clue of it in public –'

‘I seen them a couple of nights ago,' interjected one of the other women. ‘She was coming out of his garden at three in the morning!'

Damm was not pleased.

‘And what were you doing walking past Til's garden at three in the morning?' she demanded of her interrupter.

‘I seen them,' said the second woman stubbornly, but she had turned red.

‘What you see and what you dream is two different things. Now, and so. Her husband gets to know of it after some days of this, and there's such an almighty screaming and shouting from their place one night that you wonder it doesn't wake up the whole village. And he'd cracked her one or two nicely, for wasn't she sporting a big shiny bruise or two the next day on her face?'

‘She was!' the third squeaked. The second had forgotten her sulk and was nodding eagerly.

What a bunch of bitches, thought Rue savagely.

Damm grinned, wide as a frog, as she talked. ‘Didn't stop them, did it? If anything they stopped caring about hiding it. Everyone was seeing them after that! In the woods past Old Stumpy, people visiting her house during the day and her answering the door all flushed and badly dressed, them proper
looking
at each other in public.'

Damm leaned close. Rue could see the cracks in her lipstick.

‘It was last night, they left. They tried to make it secret but the husband caught her in the middle of leaving and Til and him nearly fought it out in the street! Still, they're gone now. And who knows who'll run the bakery, as how it was all in Til's name and him with no sons?'

‘Give him time, he may be back in a year or two with one,' said the second woman with a cackle.

Rue wanted nothing better than to throw up.

She muttered something and backed out of Beads, the three women bunched together before her and chattering like birds. They had never looked so happy, and she loathed them for it.

And it was all her. She had told him to talk to that woman.
She
had told him to. And then she had given him dagger weed and made him reckless and hot.

She covered her mouth with her hand. It had probably been that night. He said he'd talked to the woman the next day. What if they'd done more? What if he'd gone around and coaxed her out of the house? He would have grabbed hold of her and forced her down, just like he had started to do with Rue.

She flushed.

‘Stupid, stupid, STUPID,' she muttered viciously as she clomped back to Fernie's house.

Everything was stupid.

Those repulsive women in Beads, who had no lives of their own but fed from the lives of others like insects.

This dreary little village, with its gossiping and secrets and scandals. They couldn't see how brave and how romantic it was. All they could see was the nastiness of it. No doubt it was the most exciting thing to happen round here since the local pig farmer had accidentally left his pen open at market and the loose creatures had caused a riot in the square.

So Til and that beautiful woman had gone off together now, hadn't they. And probably to the city. They would live a beautiful life, wouldn't they. It'd be a little apartment, setting themselves up at first. Beds hung with fluttering curtains. Silver-backed brushes and crystal perfume bottles and gemstones flashing at her throat.

They'd love each other. They'd love while Rue was left behind, growing old and fat like Fernie, treating back pain and gummy feet and keeping petty little secrets. Becoming nothing to no one.

And it was all her own fault.

No, she thought.

No bloody time for pity, Rue girl.

First chance I get, I'm out of here.

It was getting hard to remember life before this. He'd forgotten how comforting routine was, and how days slipped into weeks so easily when you were in it. The murky, anxious dreams he'd kept having the first few nights, of URCI police breaking into his bedroom in Red House and dragging him away, eventually disappeared.

He had always liked discovering. Here there was a whole wealth of culture and strange viewpoints and history and mannerisms to consume. And books – real
books
. Made of paper. Extravagant, costly objects, thousands upon thousands of them, just lying about the place. His free time, when he wasn't with Wren and Areline, was spent at the university library. He could hide away in one of its little study rooms, tucked away in the back, round a crooked corner and closed off from the world. He could lose himself for a while, and be left alone, and only catch the occasional stare from a passing ‘normal' student. The Talentless, Wren called them, grinning as he said it.

There was Areline, too.

Wherever Wren was, she inevitably appeared. Beautiful and coy.

Wren adored Areline, it was clear. It was less obvious how she felt about Wren. White had made a joke once, about how girls interfered with studies, and stopped you from learning as quickly as you might. Wren had laughed at that, but Areline had been hurt and annoyed with both of them. She was hard to fathom, sometimes.

White felt uncomfortable with her when Wren was not there. Wren made it okay for them to talk to each other. Somehow, when he wasn't around, it felt like the air moved more slowly between them. That they were doing something they shouldn't be.

So when he found himself alone with her in Red House's study, the rest of the group either out on the town or lounging in their own rooms, he had started to grow nervous. They had never been alone for such a long time before.

Wren had gone off earlier in the evening, on one of his mysterious jaunts into the city. He never took anyone with him, and had so far never bothered to explain exactly what he did other than ‘walk around'; but Areline seemed not to care, so White followed her lead, wanting to say nothing that might offend either of them.

So they sat, alone together, in silence. Areline was curled like a cat on the opposite couch to White, scribbling in a notebook. Occasionally she would look up and smile at him.

She knew that she had lovely lips, and she knew just how to use them.

Finally, when their eyes had caught a third time, she closed her notebook and got up, floating towards him.

‘What are you doing?' she said.

‘Reading,' said White. He showed her the book.

‘Good god, that looks boring.' She plopped onto the couch next to him. Her hair had swung backwards and brushed against his shoulder; a feather touch.

‘History,' he said. ‘Your history, in fact. It fascinates me.'

‘Really? It doesn't me.'

‘It has survived much, this country.'

She leaned over to him, her arm solid against his. He caught a sudden scent of raspberries. He tried very hard not to tighten up as she pressed against him. She would feel it, and ask him what was wrong.

She read a passage from the book. Or pretended to read it. Her eyes weren't moving.

‘When is Wren back?' he said suddenly.

It worked. She moved away from him, her face uncertain.

Finally, she shrugged, with a little smile.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Sometimes he's gone for hours. It won't be for a while, anyway.'

Silence descended. An unwelcome thought surfaced in White's head.

Don't you know where this is going?

Don't you honestly?

He hadn't dared dwell on it.

‘White,' she said suddenly, and then stopped.

‘Yes,' he replied, trying to concentrate on the book. Straining to listen to her tone, for any desperate indication of what she wanted, inside her.

‘Can I ask you something?'

‘Yes,' he said again.

Stop saying yes like a robot in that stupid voice.

Areline cleared her throat. ‘Would you like to go to dinner, sometime? Just me and you.'

His heart crashed alarmingly in his chest.

‘What about Wren?' he managed.

‘Just suppose Wren was not a concern,' she said. ‘Just suppose that was so. What would you say if I asked you to dinner then?'

White couldn't deny the fact that the thought had occasionally lurked in the dark corners of his mind.

What it would be like to be with her.

But no. Just … no. He saw Wren's face in his head. It wasn't worth the hurt.

‘I would say no,' he said, without thinking.

She recoiled, as if he had shouted at her.

‘You don't …' she started, and then fell silent. He snatched a glimpse of her face and saw in horror that her cheeks were red.

‘I am sorry,' he said. ‘I did not mean to … hurt you.'

She said nothing.

They sat in excruciating silence. Every second that ticked by, the silence gained weight. He tried to think of something to say to lift it. He tried thinking of ways to explain. He had a friend now. He didn't want to lose his friend. She was lovely; she was. He would if things were different. Really.

But it was just words, and the words he chose in this language were always curt, or wrong. He couldn't speak properly. He couldn't express what he needed to. So he kept silent. Easier that way.

He forced himself to look at her. She was screwed tight into the corner of the couch, hiding her face in embarrassment.

He reached across, touched her arm.

‘Areline,' he said. He hated how his voice sounded. Awkward and boyish.

‘Yes?' she replied, her voice low.

‘Are we still –'

– friends, he was going to say, but a faint popping noise distracted him.

Wren had just appeared in the middle of the room, a delighted grin on his face.

‘Ha!' he said. ‘I did that from just outside the front door!'

His gaze settled on them both.

The grin dropped, disappeared. His eyes grew dark.

White took his hand away from Areline's arm.

‘What's going on?' said Wren.

‘Nothing!' said Areline. ‘I thought you'd be away for a while longer?'

It had meant to come out as chatty, but all it did instead was make her look enormously guilty. Wren was silent.

White felt himself closing up, wanting to be away from this. He fought against it. If she couldn't act normal and show Wren that there was nothing to be suspicious about, then he would.

‘So where have you been?' he tried, but it sounded hollow and sickly.

And Wren's face was growing darker.

‘Out,' he said. ‘Around. Leaving you two alone with each other.'

‘Wren, what are you talking about?' said Areline.

‘Nothing!' he said. ‘Nothing.'

And he smiled suddenly.

Areline had recovered some of her energy. She slid off the couch and moved to him, taking him by the hand and talking her head off about a dance class she had had that day. She walked around him, and he admired her, and laughed; and they fell into easiness.

White watched them.

But when her back was turned, Wren glanced at White.

His expression was black.