Shadows Cast by Stars (15 page)

“So, what I saw, was it real?” I rub the chip scar on my arm. It began to hurt this morning and hasn’t stopped since.

“Real?” Madda sets down the bowl she’s been drying and turns to me. “Define ‘real’ for me.”

Define “real.” I roll the words over in my head, and realize I can’t. “I don’t know how,” I say. “I mean, I had my dream, so it was real to me. Did it actually happen, what I saw? That I don’t know, but that doesn’t make the dream unreal, I guess.”

“True that,” Madda says. “Dreams are real, but some dreams are more real than others, if you know what I mean. Did you feel like you were actually there?”

I nod.

“Well, then, maybe you were. Who’s to say? Best wait until your brother gets home and ask him about it. Then you’ll know for sure. Dream-walking is a strong gift, though, and you need to make sure you can come back to your body. That’s what that raven did—sent you back into yourself—but you can’t rely on him every time. And
a raven, even if he’s in the dream world, will want something in return for his help.”

“So what do I do?” The hair on my arms has risen. What would happen if I didn’t return to myself? I’ve never considered that dreaming, something that is as natural to me as breathing, something I have no control over, might not be safe.

Madda takes a seat. “You just make up your mind that you’re coming back. Decide before you go to sleep, and make sure you give yourself a reason to come back. Dreams can be tempting, you know. Sometimes they’re so sweet we don’t want to come back to our bodies.” A shadow passes behind Madda’s eyes, and I get the sense she’s experienced this temptation more than once. “From now on, I want you to write your dreams down. And, go get yourself some lemon balm. It’s good for making sure all of you is inside your body again. Take some home with you. Put it under your pillow. See what happens.”

So I go outside, full of questions that I don’t know how to ask. If I have lemon balm under my pillow, will it mean I won’t dream at all? What if I want to go dream-walking? What then? Just make up my mind and I’ll wake up? Can it really be that simple?

And what of Paul? All this time, I’ve been thinking about Bran and his mother and my studies and Madda,
and yet, I’ve forgotten why I want all of this in the first place.

My thoughts are broken by the sound of footsteps, and I look up to see Henry Crawford at the gate. He nods at me, and then at Madda. “We’re back. Elders meet tonight.”

“I’ll be there,” Madda says as he strides off. Madda looks at me. “Well? Get on home.”

Paul is down at the lake, washing up. He turns when he hears me. A grin is etched on his face and with the two very black eyes he sports, he’s a jack-o’-lantern come to life. A rather sunburned jack-o’-lantern. That’s what three days on open water will do.

“What happened?” I say as he splashes water over his shoulders. Bubbles of soap rush down either side of his backbone.

“Nothing that hasn’t happened before.” He shakes his hair, deliberately spraying me. I laugh and splash him back, and it’s not long before I’m drenched too.

My father stomps down the hill, hammer resting on his shoulder, and grins at us. “Being away didn’t do much for your appearance,” he says to Paul.

My brother laughs. “I’m so tired—didn’t get more than an hour or two of sleep a night the whole time I was
gone.” He wades to shore and gathers up his soap and towel.

It should be enough for me that he’s safe, that he has only a couple of shiners rather than a bullet hole in the leg or a puncture wound to the gut. It should be, but it’s not. I force a smile on my face and give him a hug, and then glance down at his forearm. There’s a scab there, right over his chip scar. So it was real, my dream. That’s never happened before; not that I can remember. My stomach drops. What does that mean?

“You okay?” Paul says, tipping his head to one side to give me a curious look. “Bran’s fine, you know.”

“Good,” I say, pasting a smile on my face as my father takes the towel from Paul’s hand and shoos him up the slope, demanding that Paul share his war stories.

We sit in silence as my father builds a fire, and only when the flames are leaping high does Paul start to speak.

“There were boats everywhere, bobbing along the boundary,” he says. “The Band took me into the Corridor, made me be their guide. Searched for Others, mostly.” He shrugs. “Didn’t find many. The northern part of the Corridor was hit pretty hard, but from what we heard, it was even worse to the south. They say the waves were as bad as the earthquake itself, but what did they expect? Buildings as tall as the sky? They’re going to fall down sometime.”

I check the kettle that’s steaming over the coals. “What happened to the refugees?”

“We brought a few back.”

Paul’s use of
we
doesn’t escape me, but I let it slide for now.

“And the ones they turned away?” my father asks.

I look at Paul expectantly. I was about to ask the exact same thing.

“They’re on their own,” he says. “We don’t need people who can’t take care of themselves here.”

“Paul, that isn’t fair,” I say. “What if it was us?” This doesn’t sound like Paul.

“If it was us? Since when did anyone ever help us?” he says as he stabs a log in the fire. “You speak of fair— when did anyone in the Corridor ask
us
about what’s fair? The UA turned their backs on us Others a long time ago. Why should the Band look after the ones the Corridor’s spat out?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, but I can’t help wondering, how many are injured? How many without food, without homes? Here we sit behind our boundary, safe and fed, while others suffer, all because they have the wrong blood in their veins? “It just doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Cass, you can’t possibly take care of everyone.” My father reaches over to touch my hair. “I know you’d like to,
but take care of those close to you first, hey?” He settles back to watch the waves on the lake. “When are you going to Madda’s next?”

“Tomorrow.”

Paul glances at me from the corner of his eye. “You know what they say about her, right?”

“I imagine you’re going to tell me.”

“She can curse you with a glance.”

“And that’s supposed to scare me?”

Paul frowns. “It should. Bran’s afraid of her.”

I laugh. “Bran isn’t afraid of anything.”

“That’s what you think.” Paul pitches his stick into the bushes and stalks away.

“What did I say?” I ask my father.

He shakes his head. “Leave him be. I imagine he saw a few things that he didn’t expect while he was away. All that bravado is just covering up hurt. Give him a bit of time. He’ll come ’round.”

He’s right, but I can’t help wanting to chase after Paul. I could help him, if I were only a little further along in my studies, and that brings Paul’s words about Madda to mind. “Do you think it’s a bad idea for me to learn from Madda, Dad?”

“Not at all. Madda is respected by the Band. Feared, too, but that goes with her position. She’ll teach you
well—better than some of the other people around here. I heard what happened with Bran’s mother. I won’t tell you what to do, but I don’t think you should see her anymore. She seems harmless enough to me, but she has high aspirations for Bran. If you don’t fit in with them … well, I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” He bends to pull his fishing rod from its case at his side. “The midges are hatching. Dusk is the best time to try.” He bites the line between his teeth and threads a fly on, peering at me all the while. “Bran’s a good sort, Cass. Just be wary, that’s all. With a mother like that … well, it’s bound to rub off somehow,” he says, before he wades out into the water and casts his line. The rod swishes from six to twelve, fast to slow, and the line spins out, sparkling in the last light of the day. Once, twice, and then he releases it, gathers it in, and starts again.

I go to sit on the lopsided dock, where before me the dance between line and fisher blur in my vision.

Just be wary, that’s all
. The words play on my mind, over and over. This is the third time someone’s warned me about Bran’s mother. The third time’s a charm, but a charm for what?

I’m rolling the thought around in my head when the dock jerks beneath me, jolting me alert.
Another earthquake
is my first thought, but nothing else seems wrong.
The trees don’t sway; the water just continues its gentle lapping as the dock lurches again.

Something is moving it. Not the waves, not the wind, but something large.

I am standing on the shore before I know it. I had no idea I could move so fast.

“What’s wrong?” my father asks, reeling his line in.

“Something bumped against the dock … s-something big,” I manage to stutter. Every hair on my body is standing on end.

“Stay here.” He jogs off, but I’m right behind him, our footsteps echoing on the wood planks. When we reach the end, my father crouches, staring into the depths, cocking his head to one side as if listening for something. “Probably just shifting from your weight,” he says as he straightens up. “Paul and I will fix it up tomorrow, okay?” He tugs my braid and wanders off.

But something deep within me whispers that it wasn’t just my weight. It was something else, something from the depths.

Something that is hunting me.

C
alendula is a tonic for the liver, gall bladder, and uterus. Heather is a diuretic and can ease the pains of rheumatism. Mallow is an expectorant.

I turn the pages of Madda’s book of healing—her herbal, she calls it—slowly, reading, trying desperately to commit all the knowledge to memory. Poultices, tinctures, alexipharmicals, coagulants, abortifacients. The book holds the secrets of life and death, and will I ever know which is which? One plant heals, the next kills, and that’s all before I walk into the world of spirit and encounter what lurks there.

Give me a broken arm, I’ll mend it. Give me a wound, I’ll suture it. Those are concrete things, things I can hold and touch. This stuff of mystery is no province of mine.

Madda hovers nearby, adding sage bits of advice that I scribble in the margins of the herbal. “It’s already there,” she says when I write
poisonous in large doses
under the heading of digitalis. “I wrote those exact words myself.” Sure enough, her thin, spidery script crawls around a hastily sketched foxglove. “I didn’t learn it all in one day. You aren’t expected to either.”

I nod, wondering when I can leave herbs and lore behind and begin to wander the paths of spirit. Didn’t she say that was what we were doing next? I suspect if I ask about it, she’ll answer with an enigmatic comment about seeking the way of water or some other Zen thing, so I don’t mention it and wait.

I feel like I’m waiting for everything.

Madda sits across the table from me and watches as I read. I raise an eyebrow at her. She laughs. “Well? You gonna stare at that book all day, or are we going to talk about spirit?”

I open my mouth. All that comes out is a hiss of air. I try again, but my throat is tight. I don’t think I’ve ever realized how frustrated I am. Why couldn’t my abilities have come with an instruction manual?

Madda reaches out and takes my hand. “Take your time. You’ve been holding a lot inside you, and these past few weeks haven’t been easy. Nothing says you have to give words to all of it right now.”

“Thanks,” I say. She offers me a handkerchief and I blow my nose. “Things
have
been different since I came here.”

“This is an old land,” Madda says with a nod.

“The other day, when the earthquake came? I could feel it. Before, I mean.”

Madda sits back and strokes her chin. “You could? Hmm …” She hums to herself for a moment and then nods. “Let’s not worry about that right now. I’ll have a chat with my spirit guide about it tonight. What did yours say?”

“Who?”

“Your spirit guide.”

Something outside the window behind Madda catches my eye. It’s a raven, roosting on the fence. He watches me watching him, and I’m pretty sure I see him smile.

“I don’t have a spirit guide,” I say, knowing the raven can hear my words.

Madda frowns. “Have you asked it to come forth?”

“Yes!”

She laughs. “Okay, let’s try a little something here.” She pushes herself away from the table, turns, and spots the raven. “Hey, you! Get out of here!” The raven bobs his head and cackles at her, but doesn’t move. She runs to the window, clapping her hands. “Go on! Get! We don’t want your tricks here!” The raven croaks at her again but
this time, flies away, his wings whooshing through the air. “Gotta watch those ravens,” Madda says. “They seem to like you a little too much.” She takes a bowl from the windowsill and sets it on the center of the table, then stuffs it with sage. “It’s gonna get smoky in here. You don’t have asthma or anything, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Good.” She lights the sage and then blows the flames out. Smoke curls up from the smoldering leaves. Madda wafts it toward me. “Breathe it in, and close your eyes.”