Reverie

by Ryan La Sala

  “Why wouldn’t you be?”

  “What about Poesy? What are you going to do when you find her?”

  “Kill her,” Kane said automatically.

  Dean backed away, the small muscles in his jaw jumping. His hands drew into a knot at his chest.

  “Then I might not be here,” he shouted over the music. “It’s her power that’s keeping me from unraveling. I don’t know if I can live without her, Kane. I don’t know if I’ll still exist.”

  And Kane grasped, for the first time and with utter devastation, the price Dean was paying to help him. If Dean was truly reverie-born, if his existence was truly rooted in Poesy’s power, would he unravel with the rest of her creations when Kane took her down?

  “But if you summoned the loom, you could command its power,” Dean offered. “You could create something. We could create something, and get far, far away from her. You wanted to, once, for me. You don’t have to kill her. You don’t have to destroy the loom.”

  Couples bumped into Kane, who had gone still. Lasers combed the mist as the music jumped in his blood. He saw none of it, felt none of it. He was alone in his mind as Dean’s words recalibrated his entire world.

  On the bridge, Dean had told Kane they used to talk about what they would create with the loom’s power. Kane had found this as innocent as any of his usual daydreams. But now the nature of Dean’s origin shifted the daydream into a dire focus. Derailed it completely. Dean had revealed their true motive for hunting the loom; not creation for creation’s sake, but creation as a means of sanctuary. Against Poesy’s remarkable power, Dean’s last resort was to use her own plan against her, and Kane had wanted the same. An eternal fantasy to hide away in, forever.

  Kane felt the shadow of who he used to be drifting beneath the surface of Dean’s words, a faint reflection that was undeniably his. He was, as it turned out, more like Poesy than he wanted to admit. They both were.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Kane said. “I don’t even know how to unravel this mess. Only Poesy is that strong.”

  Dean found Kane’s hand, pressing something into it. Kane recognized the bite of cold metal.

  “Poesy is strong because of the weapons she wields,” Dean said. “But you’re strong on your own. I’m scared to imagine what you could do with an arsenal like hers. But please, don’t kill her.”

  Kane looked at what Dean had given him: Poesy’s bracelet of charms, torn from her arm by the Dreadmare’s jaws. The whistle. The teacup. The white key. The opal skull. The starfish. They were all there, waiting for him to light them up. As though recognizing its new commander, the bracelet slithered around Kane’s wrist and clasped itself.

  The world grew loud and bright. The windows filled with sunlight as a blue ocean and a city rose toward them. The music was ending. They had arrived at their destination of resEarth. A destination that filled Kane with eerie familiarity. He had seen this same city once, from atop a ruined skyscraper.

  Over the loudspeaker, a cheerful voice said, “Welcome to resEarth’s capital city of Everest. Please enjoy your stay!”

  • Thirty-Six •

  THE KEEP

  The once empty city of Everest now overflowed with light and life. Crowds of people in futuristic, Victorian formality surged through the open markets. They lapped against the esplanade, waving bright handkerchiefs to the cerulean sea where the ships landed. Like ants, the tourists flowed over themselves as they climbed the hill at the city’s center. Atop it, balancing like an elaborate cake, was a drastically enhanced version of the château from Helena Beazley’s reverie.

  The castle. The lair. The fortress. The keep.

  Kane and Dean hid in its shadow.

  “Sophia has been busy,” Dean said. “I’m amazed she’s able to keep this much in focus, and for so long.”

  “I’m not,” Kane said. “She’s Sophia Montgomery. She’s good at everything.”

  “Still, this can’t last. Either these reveries are going to start collapsing, or Sophia will. We better find her, quick.”

  “And then what?” Kane said.

  Dean didn’t dare say it, but Kane knew what happened then. The teacup hung from his wrist in charm form, darkly dreaming of crushing this entire world into something just as small and cute.

  “If anyone is going to unravel this,” Kane told Dean, “it’s going to be me.”

  A glare of light swept over the crowd. People clapped as a bird with wings of crystal crossed the sun. The owl, from Helena’s reverie, scanning for something.

  Kane pulled Dean into a roofed market of barking vendors. They passed ladies in hoopskirts linking arms with other ladies in crystalline armor. A fleet of scaled children darted past their knees, chasing a small bird the color of fresh grapefruit. The air here was full of fluttering petals and the smell of frying bread. The joy of this place was palpable, but just beneath the surface Kane could still sense the remnant rage of his sister as she felt the final straw of Kane’s betrayals. If this reverie held the brightness and warmth of a dancing flame, it was because of the gnarled, black wick of anger smoldering at its core.

  Horns sounded, and as though choreographed, the crowds moved in a single direction. Kane and Dean moved with them. Ahead rose the pearly castle adorned in its crenellations and spires. The crowds pushed through a yawning gate, into a corridor, and up another flight of stairs, then out into the harsh brightness of the gardens Kane remembered. They were very much ripped right out of the Helena’s reverie, though their original richness had been amplified into outright obscenity. Now, the garden existed as the floor of an immense arena, and flung up from each edge were rows and rows of lacy, wicker benches. Dean and Kane, along with every other character, crammed into the seats, sitting just as the light of the garden darkened. Something was starting.

  “Have you found Sophia? What about the Others?” Kane asked.

  Dean’s eyes shimmered with green as he tried to peer through his powers.

  “I can’t see anything clearly, yet,” he said. “But…wait. Do you feel that?”

  A rumbling worked up through the arena, and the crowd cheered. Then, from the garden floor, there was a commotion.

  “It’s…” Kane squinted.

  He saw the pink outfit before he saw anything else, and his relief at seeing Ursula alive was immediately cut off by the blade of her predicament.

  Ursula and Elliot stood at the garden’s center. Ursula wore her tattered wedding dress, and Elliot his shredded tuxedo. Their costumes from the original reverie. They stood back to back as two creatures circled them: the rose-gold spider and the diamond serpent.

  Kane’s world narrowed into the shrinking space between his friends and those precious predators.

  “They’re being forced to fight the hatchlings from Helena’s reverie,” Kane cried. Dean clamped a hand on his leg, holding him still.

  “Wait. Look. Are they winning?” Dean asked.

  Kane made himself watch. Even in the absurd outfit, Ursula’s was uninhibited power on the battlefield. In the span of a few seconds, she’d somehow climbed atop the spider and detached a bladed leg, tossing it to Elliot. He caught it, maneuvering a sweeping slice as the serpent struck at him. It twisted away, its severed fang rolling into a bed of magnolias.

  “Yes.”

  “Then we leave them.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a trap. Something to lure you out. We need to get into the castle and find Sophia. Those two can take care of themselves.”

  “Ursula maybe, but what about Elliot?”

  “Ursula will protect him,” Dean said.

  At the head of the arena, a gate was rising to admit a new threat: the lapis-lazuli beetle.

  Kane only knew he was moving because he felt Dean trailing behind him. Then, right at the railing, Kane was yanked back and pinned to the stairs.

  �
��Kane. You cannot intervene.”

  Kane got a hand free. “We have to help them!”

  Dean caught his wrist and smashed it into the steps. “We can’t. You can’t.”

  The white eyes of onlookers began to watch them. The clashes from the arena drove Kane halfway up before Dean pinned him again. Then, in the depths of Dean’s stare, jade magic flickered. The skin where they touched prickled as black armor spread over Dean’s skin.

  “No!” Kane begged. “Don’t send me away! I want to fight. I have to—”

  “Your sister needs you, Kane,” Dean said as the Dreadmare’s helmet closed over his head, and with that Kane was gone.

  • Thirty-Seven •

  HOMECOMING

  Kane rocketed through the seasick nothing until the blankness ejected him into blinding sunlight. He flailed, reaching for anything to stop himself, and crashed over a low bench. When he sat up, he saw he was in the castle now, high in a tower and overlooking a city of grays, blues, and golds. Far below he could see the arena, just a gash of green in the castle’s creases, like a smear of moss. Through the glass came garbled cheers, and he imagined he could see the Dreadmare joining Elliot and Ursula in battle. Fighting with them.

  Without him. Again.

  Kane clenched his fists to keep from punching through the glass. He had been forced to flee. Again.

  Your sister needs you, Dean had said. Kane’s fists unclenched, and he saw Dean’s reasoning. Intervening would only unspool the reverie’s rage, twisting it around the coming battle and drawing Sophia out. But Dean had ejected Kane from the action—from the plot itself—and now Kane was free to maneuver while the Others held the focus. He could find his sister without being the focal point of her aggression. Maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to wake her up.

  “Sophia needs me,” he told himself, tightening his backpack in determination. “I am not an egg.”

  Focused now, he made out the distant sound of viola music and grimly put himself to the task of pursuing it. The deeper he descended through the castle, the more physical the reverie’s pressure became, until he could feel this section of Sophia’s world plucking curiously at his strange resort clothes.

  Kane trudged through the prickling discomfort. He must be getting close. The music was everywhere now, and people dressed in fancy attire drifted through the corridors. They all wore masquerade masks, and Kane was conspicuously out of place. He took his time, knowing it would only take one mistake to give him away, and finally he reached the music’s source: the ballroom.

  A crowd of girls served as cover as he snuck in behind them. His fingers wrapping around the black whistle. When the time came, would he know what to do? What would happen to Sophia if he just pulled her from here into Poesy’s sanctuary? Would she blink away her dreamt identity and be herself, or would her eyes go dull and dark, the black doors severing her connection to this place where her mind now lived?

  The group of girls paused to discuss something, and Kane slid from their ranks. The ballroom was immense, its edges thickly clotted in shadows. Good. He snuck behind pillars as wide as redwoods and surveyed the masquerade from afar. Hundreds of guests congregated around something at the room’s center, a circular platform floating in the air. A gossamer curtain concealed what lay behind it. The material rippled as the guests plucked at it playfully.

  Kane edged around the pillar until he could see the front of the room, where wide steps led up to a throne of twisted iron and filigree. Atop it sat an unlikely figure. Kane’s mind lurched, barely able to hold on to the image of his sister. As though smeared there by an artist’s brush, Sophia was slumped over the throne in a gown of endless, crimson fabric. It pooled at her feet and slid down the stairs, thick like syrup.

  Kane’s mind lurched again. There was something among the folds. Gold skin. The dome of a bald head. A badly bent leg. The stump of an arm, now blackened.

  Poesy, crushed.

  Denial thundered in Kane’s heart. Poesy was dying—or was already dead—which felt impossible given the queen’s former glory. Sophia stared at the body with hollow resignation, a faint frown pulling her painted features down. Her fingers dug up into her hairline as though holding terrible thoughts away from her unblinking eyes.

  Kane was already running toward her when the crowd hushed, everyone turning to watch the curtain rise. Sophia stood, her hand still pressed to her head.

  The stage was a nacreous ivory, buffed and polished so that the light bounced off it and illuminated the great hall in hoops of rainbow. One lone figure adorned the stage: Adeline, bare shouldered and shivering in a pure white tutu. She teetered atop what Kane first mistook for stilts. He stifled a gasp. Satin ribbons crisscrossed Adeline’s thighs, weaving down her muscular legs and into ballet pointe shoes at her feet. But they didn’t end in blunted tips like they should. Instead, they continued into elegant blades as long as swords, forcing Adeline to pitch backward for balance as their points glanced off the stage’s smooth face. The crowd leaned closer, hungry to see her fall.

  “You’re here for a reason,” Sophia called out. “Tell me the truth this time.”

  “Sophia, please. It’s Adeline. You—” Adeline pitched sideways, catching herself barely. “You know me. We’re friends, from the conservatory—”

  Sophia winced, sending a ripple through the ballroom. It caught Adeline, maneuvering her body into a pirouette atop one blade. She spun slowly, perfectly balanced.

  “You can’t lie here,” Sophia said. “You can’t lie. She tried to lie, and it killed her. Just snapped her apart.” She pointed at Poesy’s crumpled form before turning desperate eyes to Adeline. “Please. I don’t want to see you hurt. Please, don’t lie to me.”

  Adeline turned, rigid and barely able to nod.

  Her face relaxed as Sophia slumped back, relieved. “You know my brother. You need to tell me where he is. He wants to hurt my kingdom, doesn’t he? That’s what the witch told me. He wants to bring the Doom home to us.”

  Worlds overlapped, the reveries intertwined in her mind, but Kane understood. In the mess of converging story lines clawing at her identity, she hadn’t lost focus of the betrayals he had inflicted on her. And even here, barely holding on to her sanity, she still understood that Kane had run away into a darkness he couldn’t defeat and had brought it back with him to destroy their home.

  “Kane can help you,” Adeline said through her teeth. “He’s not going to hurt you.”

  “You’re lying again.” Sophia clutched her head, another ripple boiling over her. Dolls of alabaster rose up from the stage in perfect imitation of Adeline, balanced atop the same lethal blades. Sophia groaned hopelessly as they spun. Like a music box, Adeline danced within their orbiting choreography, the blades flashing by her without striking. Kane understood the trap. If Adeline resisted—if she moved so much as a centimeter out of step—those blades would find her skin.

  Etherea crackled in Kane’s fist, but he shook it away. He couldn’t fight yet. He would only have one chance.

  No one noticed as he dashed behind the pillars, up toward the throne. No one heard his footfalls. The only sound was sourceless music, like in the conservatory, and the precise scrapes of knives on porcelain. The sounds of looming cruelty. Kane reached the side of the throne’s stairs, doing his best not to look at Poesy’s mutilated body. He focused on Sophia, who focused on Adeline with increasingly frantic terror.

  “Please,” Sophia begged. “Please don’t do this to her!”

  Kane realized she was begging the reverie to spare Adeline. He had seen this before, but it had been Helena. The reverie was beyond Sophia’s control by now, acting out what it thought best. Punishing those that threatened it.

  Adeline’s knees shook. Her resolve was strong, but her body was going to fail her. She leapt straight up as the dancers blended the air beneath her. Sophia cowered on her throne, her sobs punctuating t
he quickening music.

  “Stop! Stop it!” she cried.

  And then it happened. Finally—terribly—Adeline made a mistake. One tittering scuffle and suddenly one of the blades smattered the crowd with red. Adeline kept dancing, a ribbon of blood flowing down her ribs and into her tutu, dying it pink.

  Adeline said nothing, but twirled, dipped, and twirled again, increasingly unsteady. More red bloomed at her shins, then at the back of her neck. The crowd applauded appreciatively.

  Kane crept up the stairs, behind the throne. Everyone, including Sophia, was focused on Adeline. When Kane pulled the teacup from the bracelet it grew to its proper size, cradled in his palm. He held it out, shaking, every particle in his body begging him to think of another way to stop his sister. He squeezed his eyes shut, then risked a glance to the stage. There was, in sticky profusion, red everywhere. The image of Adeline burned bright: wobbling, achingly lovely, atop those bladed shoes. She was looking right at Sophia.

  No, right at Kane. She was watching him, failing on purpose so that he could have this chance. Seeing that he understood, she smiled, but it was wiped away as she finally collapsed. The room filled with the sounds of stabbing.

  Kane’s choices narrowed to just one. Adeline had been wrong; they were going to lose Sophia, after all.

  He flicked the teacup with his nail.

  And everything.

  Stopped.

  The teacup swallowed Kane, taking him down into the curves of its dizzying power. He felt as though he himself was the vibration radiating from the china, as though he himself was the sonic frequency tearing through the reverie and painting itself across every particle. Kane became not a who, but a where. He was everywhere, his consciousness in every thing.

  He could feel it all, from the farthest reaches of the reveries all the way inward: the clutching vacuum of deep space, the tang of the ozone atmosphere, the shimmering streets of Everest. He felt the shattered gems ground into the garden by Ursula’s heel, and the leathery musk of the Dreadmare’s hide as it wound over her protectively. He felt each glittering mote suspended over the awestruck crowd. He felt the stage and its stickiness. And finally he felt Adeline’s slowing heart as it pushed her blood from her punctured body.