Mister Impossible

by Maggie Stiefvater

  Perhaps they grew better in the absence of noise.

  As if reading his thoughts, Bryde said, “They’re all so young. Second growth. Beginning of the twentieth century, this was all twigs, because of logging. Looked like a war zone. Was, even. The army used to fire mortars here. Imagine this place razed and stubbled and smoking, the sounds of gunfire.”

  Ronan couldn’t.

  “Yes,” Bryde said. “Amazing what you can change in a century, if you have a purpose. Humankind razed this place, but humankind also built it back up again. Planted trees. Put up fences to keep the cattle out. Dragged the rivers into shape where trauma erased them. Replaced all the living things that grew along them to hold them in place. Deep down, there are always some that miss it. Do you really feel nothing at all, Ronan?”

  Ronan muttered, “Not while awake.”

  Bryde went on. “Did you feel how strong the line was when you were dreaming? And that is with it smothered. In the sixties, a dam was built southeast of here that disrupted its energy. But before that, it was strong enough to spill out ley energy into distant tributaries.”

  “Stronger than this?” Hennessy said. She didn’t sound pleased.

  “Come here, both of you,” Bryde said. “Put your hands on this.”

  They did as he asked, Ronan in his old leather jacket scarred by escaped nightmares, Hennessy in her stolen smelly coat with the snow caught in the tips of its fur, Bryde in the same jacket he always wore, that light gray windbreaker with a light stripe down its arm. All their hands were placed on the ragged edge of the stump.

  Bryde said, “This is one of the originals. It looks dead, but it’s just sleeping. The others keep it alive. Beneath the soil, these trees are connected. The strength of one makes the others strong. The weakness of one challenges the others. They value their oldest members, as do I.”

  “How much longer for this video essay?” Hennessy said. “I can’t feel my tits.”

  “A little fucking awe would be appropriate,” Bryde said calmly. “This forest was like your Lindenmere not long ago, Ronan, but its dreamer died and there was no one to protect it. It is old and hard of hearing and no dreamers have tried to befriend it for a long time. It is still doing its work on this line; it is a wonder these young silly trees had the thought to keep it alive to ground it all, but we should be grateful for it.”

  “Thanks for the dream, tree,” Hennessy said. “I hated it.”

  “This is a rare ley line in these times,” Bryde said, a little sharper. “Pure, quiet, strong. If that dam miles and miles away didn’t exist, it would be perfect. If you cannot bring yourself to wipe that smirk off your face while awake, Hennessy, perhaps you can do it in your dreams. Remember this tree, find it in dreamspace next time you close your eyes, and remind it of what friendship looks like. Perhaps it will help you remember what you want and help you dream what your mind wills.”

  “I don’t think my mind should do what it wills,” Hennessy said. Ronan could still hear the Lace in her voice, somehow.

  Ronan asked, “Does it have a name? The forest?”

  He saw the question pleased Bryde. He saw it pleased him very much. Bryde replied, “This tree is called Ilidorin.”

  Ilidorin. It sounded like a name that belonged with Greywaren.

  Chainsaw, in one of the branches far overhead, let out a little growl-caw. She could manage a fair number of human words, but this was not one Ronan had heard before.

  “I brought you here to see Ilidorin because I wanted you to see that this is the pedigree of your power, not the world you keep looking over your shoulder at. I thought you were outgrowing old habits but …” Bryde shook his head. “Given the opportunity to communicate with your family, what do you do? Dream up phones.”

  The disdain in his voice was sufficient to twist Ronan’s guts.

  “Phones, he says,” Hennessy mocked. “Phones! That portable lifeline. As if—”

  “Don’t start.” Bryde cut off her monologue before it could take hold. “A human child believes all things are possible. How wonderful. How terrifying. Slowly, you are taught what you cannot have. What will not be possible. What you do not have to fear. There is no monster in the closet. You cannot fly. How relieving. How disappointing. But this is the world, isn’t it? You believe it. You believe it so thoroughly that even when the box is lifted from around you, you continue to travel in circles no bigger than its walls. A phone!”

  “How is it you think I should be talking to Declan if not with a phone?” demanded Ronan. “I don’t think he really wants to have a one-on-one, with, like, some dream balloon with my face projected in it. He just wants a phone call.”

  “Does he even want that?”

  Ronan demanded, “What?”

  Bryde said, “Do you really think your family understands you? Truly? This world has been built for them, so thoroughly that they don’t realize it. It has been built to destroy you, so thoroughly that it has never occurred to them. Your goals are fundamentally opposed.”

  “So what are you trying to say?” Ronan asked. “Don’t talk to them?”

  Bryde’s expression softened. Was it pity? “It’s a warning, not an order. The view in the rearview mirror is often a painful one.”

  “Whoa, mate, Jordan is not in my rearview mirror,” said Hennessy.

  “Then where is she?” Bryde asked. “Why is she not standing in this forest with us? She’s a dream, this concerns her, too, does it not? And where are your brothers, Ronan Lynch? Where is Adam? They are the brothers and lovers of a dreamer, is this not their concern, too? Did they come with us to save the world for dreamers? No, dreamers are a task for dreamers, they think, not for people like them. They love you, they support you, they wave goodbye as you flee without them, and then they return to their own lives to muddle through without you.”

  “That’s a little unfair,” Ronan said uneasily.

  “And can you blame them?” Bryde went on. “A part of them must be relieved they no longer have front-row seats watching as the world breaks you. It’s hard to die. Harder to watch someone else do it, and make no mistake, that’s what you two were doing before now. Dying in plain sight, inch by inch, dream by dream, drip by drip. You’ve given them the gift of letting them look away, and I’m just warning you they might not like you returning that gift for store credit.”

  “Marvelous,” Hennessy said, sounding bitter. “Wonderful. Inspiring. Got it. We die alone.”

  Bryde said, “You have each other. The ley line. Places like this. They are your family, too.”

  “You’re wrong,” Ronan said. “About Adam, anyway.”

  “I’d like to be,” Bryde replied. “But I’ve met too many humans.”

  “You’re wrong,” Ronan said again.

  “Tell me the dream that produced all those wheels,” Bryde said. “Tamquam—”

  “Don’t say that again,” Ronan said. Then, again, “You’re wrong.”

  Hennessy muttered something, but when Bryde waited for her to repeat it, she just said, “I wish I had a cigarette.”

  “Come on,” Bryde said. “We have work to do.”

  Declan Lynch had a complicated relationship with his family. It wasn’t that he hated them. Hate was such a slick, neat, simple emotion. Declan envied people who felt proper hate. You had to sand all the corners off things in order to unequivocally hate; it was a subtractive emotion. Hate was sometimes a prize. But hate was sometimes also just a dick move. It was annoying how many people had small redeeming qualities or depressingly sympathetic motives or other complicating features that disqualified it as an appropriate response.

  Declan wanted to hate his family. He wanted to hate his father, Niall. For being a bad businessman, for never paying attention to the details, for bullshitting himself to death. For being a bad father. For having favorites. For having favorites who weren’t Declan. But could he blame him for not wanting a son like Declan? Declan hadn’t wanted a father like Niall. He liked to think he hated him, but he kn
ew it wasn’t true, because if it was, he’d have been able to set Niall’s memory down and walk away. Instead, he took it out of the box and poked it. Declan said he hated him, but it was aspirational.

  Declan wanted to hate his dreamt mother, Aurora, but he couldn’t justify that, either. She’d adored him; she’d adored all the boys. It wasn’t her fault she was a faulty model. He was increasingly certain she was happily oblivious to her dreamt status. This was probably where the idea to withhold the same information from Matthew had clocked in. Who’d come up with that? Niall? Declan? It had happened too long ago. In any case, it wasn’t Aurora’s fault that, deep down, Declan had always suspected she was untrue. A trick. A blarney-filled bedtime story for three boys. He didn’t hate her. He hated that he’d been naïve enough to ever be fooled by her.

  And Ronan. Ronan should’ve been the easiest to hate, because Ronan was built for acrimony. He despised people and assumed they despised him, too. He was stubborn, narrow-minded, completely unable to see compromise or nuance. He’d fought Declan before, which was unremarkable; he’d fought everyone. The world against Ronan Lynch, that was his motto. As if the world cared. Niall had, Declan supposed. That was Ronan’s worst sin: idolizing their father. Grow up. But Declan couldn’t hate Ronan for this; now that Declan didn’t have to parent Ronan, he no longer had to constantly compete with a ghost.

  Which left Matthew. In person, it seemed impossible to consider hating the youngest Lynch, but on paper, it seemed impossible to not. Out of all of the Lynches, he was the family member who’d taken the most from Declan. Niall had made Declan a liar. Aurora had made him an orphan. Ronan had made him a nag and then, later, a fugitive. But Matthew had taken Declan’s youth. Declan fed him and read to him, drove him to school events and picked him up from friend visits. The orphans Lynch. But at least Ronan grew up and out, toward independence. Matthew didn’t even want to get a driver’s license. And could he live alone, really? He was a dream with a head full of clouds, a dream whose feet kept walking him over waterfalls. Goodbye, distant colleges in interesting places. Goodbye, internship offers from Niall Lynch’s well-connected clients. Goodbye, carefree, single adult life.

  Goodbye, whatever Declan Lynch would have grown up to be.

  Declan should have hated Matthew.

  But he couldn’t. Not jolly, carefree Matthew. Not the innocent chubby kid who tumbled into Declan’s gloomy childhood. Not Matthew, the angelic—

  “Not gonna, fartmonger,” Matthew said. “Can’t make me.”

  “It wasn’t a request. Buckle your seat belt, we are in a moving vehicle,” Declan said.

  “If I died,” Matthew shot back, “couldn’t you just ask Ronan to dream a replacement me?”

  “If I did, I’d ask him to dream one who always buckled his seat belt. Do you really want to die in Connecticut?”

  The two brothers were in a loaner car one of Niall’s past associates had hooked Declan up with in exchange for the transport of the skittish foreign national currently riding in the trunk with a bottle of water and some potato chips. (Declan didn’t know why the man needed to be moved secretly from DC to Boston, nor did he even consider asking.) Declan had just stopped long enough to make sure the hired muscle he’d arranged to watch their backs in Boston remembered where and when to find them. Then he called the second hired muscle he’d gotten to watch the first hired muscle in case the first one got attacked or compromised in some way. Then he talked to the third hired muscle he’d gotten just in case the first two went wrong. Fail-safes. He believed in fail-safes. You’re a twitchy guy, the third muscle had said. Then, thoughtfully, You looking for a job?

  “Maybe I am the replacement,” Matthew continued mulishly.

  Declan allowed himself one quarter of one half of a picosecond to imagine what it would be like to make the journey to Boston on his own, feeling guilty for all parts of the picosecond.

  This was his father’s DNA, he was sure of it. Niall had felt no compunction about going on trips and leaving his family behind. Fuck you, he thought. Then: I hate you.

  (How he wished that was true.)

  Matthew was still going on. “If I were a replacement, I wouldn’t even know, would I?”

  “Mary, please strike me deaf until the state line,” Declan said, checking his mirrors, changing lanes, driving safely. He felt Matthew was taking all this a bit far. Declan had put his identity crises on hold multiple times for the greater good. Matthew had only been asked to do it once.

  “Did you hear a thump?” Matthew asked. “From the back?”

  “No,” Declan said. “Eat your snacks.”

  “Why did I have to go through puberty?” Matthew picked back up where he’d left off. “If I had to be a dream, why couldn’t I have superpowers? Why di—”

  There was a phone ringing from somewhere in the car, which ordinarily would have annoyed Declan, but in this case relieved him.

  “Turn your phone down,” Declan said.

  “I don’t have a phone anymore,” Matthew whined. “You made me throw it out.” He said it in the most sing-song-younger-brother-annoying way possible. You MADE me THROW it OUT.

  Oh, right. But Declan didn’t have a phone anymore, either. He’d just thrown out his burner phone at the rest station and was intending to pick up another one after he got to Boston. He wanted badly to pretend that this was evidence of the return of safe, paranoid Declan, but he knew better. This was just what Foolish Declan did to justify this insane trip north. He was going to get his car back. Right.

  “Then what’s ringing?” It was too loud to be coming from the trunk, so it couldn’t have belonged to their secret passenger.

  “Dur, there, it’s that,” Matthew said, tapping on the loaner car’s radio display.

  “I can’t read that—I’m driving. What does it say?”

  “Connected phone has an incoming call.”

  “There is no connected phone.”

  Matthew’s voice was dubious. “I think you ought to look.”

  Declan spared a glance. INCOMING CALL FROM, said the display. And then it displayed something that was not quite a number and not quite a name. The something made Declan’s mind reel and bend in on itself to even glance at it.

  He hit the button on the steering wheel to accept the call.

  “How are you doing this?” he demanded.

  “So you’re not dead,” said a voice through the car’s speakers.

  “Ronan!” Matthew said.

  Declan felt the usual feeling he got with Ronan: Good news, it was Ronan on the other end of the phone. Bad news, it was Ronan on the other end of the phone.

  “How do you like it?” Ronan asked. “I call it the MEGAPHONE, all caps.”

  Matthew laughed, but the joke sounded a little forced to Declan. He asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Don’t you worry your curly head. I hear Matthew. What’s cooking, shitface? You good?”

  “Declan’s driving—how good could I be?” Matthew replied.

  Declan persisted, “Why didn’t you call before now? Are you still with Bryde? And Hennessy? What’s Bryde like?”

  “You should be getting some miles in, Matthias,” Ronan said, in that aggressively jovial tone he used when he was making Matthew feel like things were normal and blowing off Declan’s concerns. “You’ve got to get your license eventually, bro.”

  “Mehhh,” said Matthew. “Maybe.”

  “Hey. Hey,” Ronan said. “Where are you going, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be, like, lying low at the Barns?”

  “I have an errand in Boston,” Declan said.

  Booty call, mouthed Matthew, and Declan shot him a dark look.

  Ronan said, “An errand! There are fuckfaces out here!”

  “I can’t put off every aspect of life forever,” Declan said. Foolish Declan clapped gleefully. Paranoid Declan rolled his eyes.

  “You said you were going to the Barns. I assumed you were staying at the Barns. Now you’ve left the Barns.”
/>   “You sound like D,” Matthew remarked.

  Declan told himself not to rub it in, to be the mature one, and then he said, “How does it feel to ask for something reasonable and be completely ignored? How does it feel to know you’ve made plans to keep the family safe and they aren’t keeping to them?”

  There was silence for so long that it seemed possible the connection had been broken.

  “Ronan?”

  “I gotta go,” Ronan said, but he didn’t go.

  Declan once again had the curious feeling that their roles had reversed.

  “I kept my head down for years,” Declan said. “It wasn’t just you. Sacrifices were made by all of us.”

  “Great,” Ronan said. “My gratitude is turned to eleven. Boston. Sounds great. While you’re there, look in on Parrish for me.”

  It had already occurred to Declan that he was headed to the same place Ronan’s boyfriend was going to school, but he hadn’t planned on a tête-à-tête. Paranoid Declan wasn’t intending to spend that long in the area. “I thought you had the MEGAPHONE. Call him yourself.”

  Ronan said, “Yeah.”

  “What’s that mean? Did you guys fight?”

  “No,” Ronan said, sounding offended. “I really do have to go. Keep an eye over your shoulder for, like, uh, the bogeyman, I guess. Matthew, eat whatever vegetable the Big D tells you to.”

  “Turds,” Matthew said.

  “Turds aren’t vegetables,” Ronan replied. “They’re mammals.”

  “You never told me what Bryde was like,” Declan said.

  “Ha!” Ronan replied.

  The phone went dead. The Connecticut traffic charged around them in the middle lane.

  Declan tried to figure out if the feeling inside him was the usual unsettled sensation that came from every interaction with Ronan, or if it was above and beyond that. It was time to let Ronan grow up and make his own decisions, surely. Declan didn’t need to parent his relationship with Adam—and in any case, who was Declan to talk about relationships? Ronan didn’t need a father figure. He needed to keep on growing up.