The Waking Dreamer (31 page)

“Honestly, I don’t know how you do it,” Emmett had said as they sat together watching him admire the cut of a new pair of slacks in a full-length mirror.

“You know that he doesn’t even see it, right?” Amala asked as she sipped from her chai tea. “How affected they all are by him?” Keiran was joining in a conversation with a mother and teenage daughter who were shopping for some special event, offering his much-desired sensibility to their decision-making process. That Keiran seemed able to convince the young daughter that she would be quite a bit more attractive in a more conservative ensemble, to the mother’s delight, made Emmett laugh out loud.

Emmett sipped his own hot chocolate with mint as he watched how Keiran smiled and laughed so freely with the strangers around him, so completely comfortable and confident in his own skin.
So
unlike Emmett. Before now, at least.

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“You mean do I get jealous?” Amala looked at him. She was wearing her brown hair down this morning, and its full length draped elegantly around her neck and framed her petal-shaped face so perfectly with her wide amber eyes that glittered from the surrounding light though hidden from curious onlookers by a pair of sunglasses.

“What you two have as Companions goes well beyond special. It wouldn’t be unreasonable if you were protective of it, you know?”

“It’s not quite like that, Emmett,” she smiled, sipping again from her tea. “Words are so awfully imprecise, and that one is perhaps the most imprecise of them all.”

“‘A word means what you choose it to mean,’” Emmett said, bringing his hot chocolate up to his face and enjoying its sweet steam as it tickled his nose.

“Companions are chosen by our Elders. Often it is a bonding borne of practicality. If there is a new Druid or Bard in a Grove, the Elder selects someone of a similar temperament, and perhaps only due to availability. Siblings are usually joined as Companions. It is far more a relationship of sensibility and sometimes expediency.”

“Keiran spoke of it with so much more—”

“Passion? Intensity?”

“Yeah.”

“Love in all its various forms isn’t forbidden by
ikkibu
. We celebrate it. Some believe that Companions cannot experience the truest strength of bonding unless they
are
in love. Others think differently.”

“And you?”

Amala closed her lips and swallowed slowly. “I love him, Emmett. How could I not? He would give his life for me a thousand times and never once ask for anything from me in return. He would devote himself to filling my life with laughter and joy and that boyish grin of his. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Emmett nodded immediately. “I do.”

She looked wistfully at him as he walked between racks of clothes and gestured excitedly at new outfits brought to him by the store’s clerks. “I would absolutely do the same for him. Without question. But could I love him in
that
way? Could I let him love
me
in that way? No. There will always be a part of me that I could never give him.”

Emmett saw the flash of something conflicted in her eyes, and he instinctively looked away to respect whatever struggle was there. That she could experience it for that briefest moment in Emmett’s presence told of vulnerability and trust that he knew was not easily granted.

Emmett looked down and cleared his throat. He wanted to say it ever since they had left the Appalachian Mountains. Perhaps ever since she had come for him on Prince Edward Island. There had never been a moment to tell her, though, before now.

“Amala, I want to thank you,” he said simply, unable to make eye contact. “For saving my life. For everything.”

Placing her hand on his, she smiled and raised her tea. “You can make it up to me by keeping Keiran entertained when he gets all excited about going out. I could use the rest.”

The panging feeling of jealousy was gone. Sitting beside the woman who had held him at birth and populated his life’s dreams felt comfortable and familiar now. Neither had discussed what Emmett had learned from the Archivist’s vision of Amala and how that might relate to Keiran being her Companion. Nor had Emmett asked how Amala had dreamed of him, too, as he had dreamed of her.

Emmett knew that eventually they must deal with it. But not today.

“Deal,” Emmett smiled, watching Keiran waving at them as he purchased his latest selections.

Several hours later and with new luggage for all three of them to hold their new wardrobes, they took another taxi away from the urban center and toward the inner city. Amala and Keiran sat with respectful silence, their postures of reverence like mourners at a wake. When they arrived at the abandoned hotel, Amala paid for the driver to wait while they went inside.

Emmett said nothing as he stepped over broken glass and syringes. He sighed when he turned the corner and entered the boiler room of his birth. It looked the same as it did in the memory of his birth the Archivist had shown him.

He stood in silence for several minutes, wondering to himself what he needed to do to say good-bye.

As if to guide him, or simply to support him as he found his own path, he felt Keiran’s firm grasp on his shoulder and Amala’s reassuring hand along the small of his back. Silently, they stood with him, and their presence in that moment of grief released a burden weighing on him ever since he had finally seen what his mother had suffered for him.

I guess I should say good-bye
. He had never known his mother, of course; only now did he know something of her from the dreams of his youth. He spent his childhood avoiding an orphan’s isolation with the magic promised in film—distant shores where islands hid the secrets of mythical beasts and ancient peoples; stars and planets and galaxies that teemed with life undiscovered; places traveled to in the remote past and the far-off future. And somewhere amid this great fascination, his mother had once lived.

But she had not. She had become pregnant with the Waking Dreamer, the last Mara to bear the visions of the Chief of the Old Ones. The Rugged Mountain. The Unremarkable Man. The unborn infant whispered in his dreams for nine months, driving his mother mad with visions she could not endure and the same words repeated over and over until finally she scrawled them across a reproduction of her favorite painting hanging in her apartment.

Madness touched her mind. There was no room for ghosts that fled through forests; or living dwellings of stone grown so high in the mountains that they touched the very clouds in the sky; or castles that breeched the coast in the cold, stormy north; or monsters that stalked the land; or men whose voices could change winter winds to summer breezes; or women who communed with animals and shared in the infusion of power; of companions who would fight and die to save the life of a stranger.

There was no room for that kind of world. There was no room for that kind of life. The promise of adventure that Emmett had instinctively sought was the adventure his mother had been denied. Because of him.

A tear lapsed heavily onto his cheek, and he shuddered with a faltering gasp, overwhelmed with self-awareness. He bit down on the inside of his cheek, tensing against pain and the bitter tang on his lips.

Then Emmett was crying. He did not know when it began, but when he recognized it fully, it became a heavy sobbing. He felt his grief overtake him, wounded so profoundly that he could not stop himself from experiencing it nakedly in front of his friends. Shoulders sagging, he gasped several times through the tears, feeling Keiran and Amala hold firmly to him through the shuddering pain.

He was crying for his mother; for the Children of Silvan Dea; for the passengers aboard the train; for those whose lives had been taken because of the Waking Dreamer. Whether by chance or fate, Emmett had found purpose in a grand adventure that promised both joy and sorrow and was intertwined with so many deaths.

For several minutes, he cried into his trembling hands. When the tears had run dry and he thought he could cry no more, the emptiness within him seemed to fold inward. It turned in on itself in different ways until it grew smaller, focused, and finally was a distant point beyond his immediate perception. The images of so much death faded from his immediate memory: his mother, alone in her hospital; Paulo and Sebastian’s corpses; the frightened passengers who fled helplessly into the night from the burning wreckage of the train; the Attendant who looked to him in the moments before her death; even the cold look of Ellie’s face as he killed her with his own hands.

As he steadied his breathing, Emmett found the grief somehow manageable.

Amala and Keiran stood with him in the silence, bearing witness to its passing. They understood his grief, in their own way, and their solidarity gave him the strength to begin letting go.

“It’s time,” he whispered softly, uncertain who the message was meant for.

The present roar of traffic coming through the roof’s holes died away with a heavy, mourning melody. Emmett did not look up, his eyes closing with a final tear as he felt Keiran’s song pass through him. It dulled the noise of the world. Its somber tone conveyed the mourning within his heart. He felt the notes pass through him, effortless and light underneath his arms as if it meant to lift him into the sky, far beyond the world below.

“A paean,” Emmett nodded.

“We honor a life that has passed as a new one begins today,” Amala whispered.

“And on my birthday.”

“It is your rebirth,” Amala said.

Keiran’s notes finally softened. Emmett turned away from the place on the ground where he had been born to face both of them. He did not know where his new life would take him, but he understood that he would not face it alone.

“You ready, mate?” Keiran asked.

Ready for what, exactly? For his new life? To follow Amala and Keiran headlong into the darkness? He had been ready for it since before he knew it was even possible. He had been searching for it the moment he got into his car and began driving for Florida—for answers, purpose, and adventures that ended in rabbit holes. He was ready for a life that had to be
earned
. Truly, he had always been ready.

“I’m afraid,” he answered honestly.

“Then you see clearer than most,” Amala responded as Keiran stepped behind her. “There is nothing more powerful than when you recognize that you are inadequate for the journey before you.”

“That’s when you know you’re new life begins,” Keiran added.

Emmett heard the Archivist’s warning in his mind. He thought of the Old Ones and remembered the Hag’s stare and her Black Hounds. He felt the brush of ineffable power from the Revenants that had pursued him; dark and wicked magiks summoned by people whose unknown motives were fueled by some mysterious Master who was already pursuing him. For the Master
knew
Emmett as the Hag knew him. And he was coming for him.

It has already begun, and it begins tonight
, Emmett repeated to himself.

Soon is right now.

“I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

About the Author

Photo by Beverly Guhl

Joshua Elijah Alexander loves veering off the main road in search of abandoned mines, dense bogs, and other ghost-infested settings for future stories. He is an ardent devotee of esotery, sarcastic fringeheads, and jam. Especially jam. He currently lives in Austin, Texas, with near-term plans for lunar relocation, weather permitting. He encourages fans to connect with him online where his attention can be caught with discussion of cryptids or ginger-infused confections. Or ginger cryptids.

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