Dream

by Carole Cummings

  “You forget that I see you.”

  Wil nodded slowly. “And you’ll take it all?”

  “Oh, my boy.” Síofra pulled in a long, deep breath and unfurled a smile that was soft and loving, but Wil could see the oil beneath it. “For you.”

  The push was feverish now—behind Wil’s eyes, lancing up his spine and drilling into his ears. Hungry, greedy, mindless, and exultant.

  giveitgiveitgiveit

  “For me.” Wil pulled back, keeping his hold on Síofra’s hand. “Blood to blood.” He let his lip curl, teeth bared and grip tight, then—

  “Open wide, then—Father.”

  —pushed back.

  Resistance at first, saw-toothed and excruciating as the push washed over him, tangling into him, way down deep. Familiar, with a perverted sense of nostalgia, because oh, Wil had been here before, he knew this pain, except then he hadn’t known. A bruise to the mind, a rending of the soul, and fuck, it hurt, but Wil knew now what it was, knew it was his, something of his own Self turned against him.

  Sharp edges, like trying to take hold of the blades of a thousand knives, and all of it drilling into his mind, his Self. Tendrils of Síofra’s pattern wound into Wil’s as if they were hot wires under his skin, burning like acid and sliding into everything he was. Wil made himself not pull away, made himself take the pain, made himself see it, define its pattern. Almost cried out when he found it, but he didn’t have the breath.

  He pushed into the weave and drove in. His mind came loose, flailed out, reaching, grasping hold of the pain itself—tether—and latching on to the knots of agony wound around him. He did scream then, using the pain as a lanyard, a connection to Síofra’s own Self, pulling himself in with it and prying his way into the pattern.

  And then he was through. Just like that. Taking it over, and forcing it into the shapes he willed.

  That’s it? All my bloody life, and that was all I had to do?

  Reeling, Wil paused, bracing himself, not quite able to believe he’d done what he’d just done. He took the threads in his hands and just looked, amazed by what he held.

  And then he… plucked. Unraveled—

  “Mutinous wretch! What…? Don’t—”

  —one, then two, and Wil dimly heard Síofra grunt, then throttle a scream, but Wil was already lost in sick fascination, the subtle brutality of the unweaving.

  It was too easy. A lifetime of torture, and freedom-revenge-ruination was suddenly in his hands. All this time, all that pain, all the years of imprisonment—retribution shouldn’t be so effortless. He should have to work for it, make it sweeter with the trying.

  Color exploded before Wil’s eyes, thinning and stretching out forever, burrowing into threads. Wil pushed at the emptiness with it, shoved and twisted, then opened himself wide and… swallowed it. Enraged—easy, so bloody easy!—he dug through it all, tore heedless with frantic fingers until the weave behind it lay exposed to him. He could feel Síofra’s mind reeling, overwhelmed, and he followed it down.

  Saw his own birth, heard the screams, paused and stumbled for a moment—Mother—when his own infant cries drowned out the harsh gurgle of murder in childbed. He tore himself away, flinging consciousness through a spiderwork of memory and forgotten memory, and ignored the screams of a mind rent and warped.

  “Where is it?” He plunged mental fingers through a frantic wall of resistance and tore. Clawed through a Self so rotted and twisted, the man beneath it was barely there, shriveled and furiously betrayed. “Betrayed?” Wil seethed. “You dare to feel betrayed?” He tightened his grip, pushed harder. “Give me my name!”

  “Witch.” Síofra’s distant gaze was stunned, afraid but angry too. Betrayed. As though he had the right. He tried to drag his hand away, but Wil wouldn’t let go. Panicked, Síofra pushed at Wil’s mind, struck out with poisoned fangs that sank into Wil’s soul and burned, but Wil dug his grip in with mental grappling hooks and hung on. “Filthy, ungrateful, mutinous—”

  “Blood to blood,” Wil said through his teeth. “Like a father to me. I’m only giving you what you wanted.”

  With a wave of his hand, Wil pulled the storm harder. He refused to even flinch against the greedy talons trying to shred their way into his Self, just struck back and brought the hail and the lightning. Built a wall about them with it and shut the world out. Shut Dallin out, because Dallin already saw too much, and Wil couldn’t stand for him to see this.

  Wil reached out, took Síofra’s other hand, and yanked him in close. Wide, dazed blue eyes stared back at him, appalled and furious. Wil couldn’t even feel disgusted with himself that he liked the look, fed on it. He curled the threads of horror and shock into his fist and rammed them into the weave.

  “For me, all for me. Let me show you what you’ve done for me.”

  He spun the threads of his own weave through his fingers and hurled them.

  Dragged from his bed screaming, small fingers clinging to the sheets billowing over the floor behind him as he’s carried, terrified and weeping, to the chamber.

  Held immobile in strong arms, choking as bitter tea is poured down his throat, the soft, flowery taste of the leaf fountaining in his mouth, his nose, strangling him.

  Longing, a pathetic wish for arms around him, a shoulder on which to lay his head, long fingers brushing through his hair, a lap to curl into, the pleasant rumble of a voice in his ear—“They’ll try to come for you, but I’ll protect you, beautiful boy.”

  Dazed and stupid, stumbling around inside the only four walls he’s allowed to wander, stone and mortar, latches and locks. Vague awareness that his mind won’t work properly, unable to care, staring blankly at a fissure in stone, weeping for what he doesn’t know he can be, laughing hysterically at nothing through the tears.

  Driven into dreams that don’t belong to him, facing monsters of someone else’s making, writhing through someone else’s lust, behind someone else’s eyes, dream-kisses scattered along his throat, and knowing all the while it’s not for him, never for him. Get their secrets, use their fears, push them along a pattern they won’t want to go, but they will because there’s an itch inside their mind, and he put it there when he stole their kisses and wore the faces of their monsters.

  The simple word no and the cataclysm of pain that follows it, digging into his mind and twisting inside it like a corkscrew, drilling sanity from him until he weeps, arches his back, and screams, “Yes, all right, just stop, please make it stop!”

  Harsh reality and the agony that comes with it, vomiting ’til his head nearly explodes, shaking and cramping and begging to be sent back into dreams.

  Turning to Father, but Father turns away because he’s been bad, he can’t behave, he’s changed the patterns and he’s not allowed, and it hurt, and he couldn’t help it, he had to—“I didn’t want to, he made me, I couldn’t help it, please”—but Father sleeps and doesn’t save him, and he understands because he’s been bad, but oh, it hurts, and he wantswantswants, but he can’t have, can’t ever have.

  Tears burned Wil’s cheeks. He could feel them scalding through the chill of the rain, and it pissed him off. Because why should he be weeping now, damn it? Anger and sorrow for a life taken away from him. Hatred and vengeance for the one who took it. It growled inside the thunder and exploded in a blast above his head. Betrayal beat a throbbing pulse in the air, shook the ground. And still, it wasn’t enough.

  “All for me, like a father.” Wil gripped Síofra’s hands ’til his own fingers felt as though they’d shatter. Snarling, Wil pushed and drove Síofra down to his knees in the mud, then pushed and drove Síofra’s mind down inside Wil’s own rage. Wil felt the crack, the fissure at the very edge of Síofra’s mind, and crammed a thread of his own Self through it. “D’you still want what I have? You see now what you’ve taken from me. Shall I give you back what I’ve taken from you?”

  Síofra’s eyes had gone blank with dread, teetering on the edge of sanity. “Ungrateful wretch.” He dry-heaved until he coughe
d up a thin spray of blood.

  Wil pushed again. If it were anyone else, the meager resistance would have been laughable.

  Easy, easy, so bloody easy. Why aren’t you stronger?

  And then he shoved.

  Wil opened himself wide, showed Síofra everything. Pushed it into the emptiness, swallowed it and filled up the crevices. Threw pure power into the weave and watched as it stretched the threads, strained them.

  “Blood to blood,” he snarled. “Only your heart’s too small and cold to take it all.”

  “Don’t.” Rain fell into Síofra’s open, staring eyes. “Please. Don’t.”

  Wil glared down at him, tried to laugh and… couldn’t. Faltering, cold rain falling on the blaze of his fury and guttering it. He clenched his teeth, looked away. He’d been wild with it a moment ago, enthralled, reaching for revenge with every bit of rage inside him, flinging it out from himself, exhilarated. I’m strong enough. I’m stronger than you. You can’t hurt me anymore. You can’t ever hurt me again. Now he nearly stumbled beneath the weight of it, a mind balanced in his palm, that narrow face twisted in near madness.

  “Tell me my name!” Wil let go of Síofra’s hands and took hold of his coat instead—shook. “Say it, damn it. You took everything else away from me, I’ll have my fucking name!”

  Warm, broad hands settled on Wil’s shoulders—No, don’t see this, I shut you out, I don’t want you to see, how are you here, and how can your hands be warm when it’s so bloody cold? How are you even here, don’t you see how weak he is, how easy it was for him to take from me?—and with the touch came immediate stillness.

  “You’re in too deep, Wil. Don’t hold it back.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  No response to that one, just the weight of Dallin’s hands firm on Wil’s shoulders. Not holding him up, not holding him back, not pushing. Just there.

  Wil took the comfort they offered—Why do you keep caring? Why do you keep letting me take? Don’t you see what’s happening here?—and dropped down to his knees, face-to-face with the monster who’d turned out to be nothing more than a greedy little man with greedy little power, who’d taken a small boy and convinced him he was weak and helpless, used him because… because….

  “So… so weak.” Hot tears squeezed from out the corners of Wil’s eyes. “Weak and small, and I only wanted—” He shut his eyes tight.

  “We all do,” Dallin told him. “It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you normal.” He hesitated, then asked, soft and steady, “What do you want here, Wil?”

  Wil faltered. What did he want? “I want him to—”

  I want him to be stronger. I want him to be sorry. I want him to see. I want him to….

  He swallowed a sob. “I want him to bleed.”

  Dallin tightened his grip and laid a firm kiss to the top of Wil’s head. “Then make him bleed. End this.”

  He kept holding on. Stayed.

  Wil almost wished those broad hands had pulled him back, almost wished that encouraging voice had dipped toward dismay and demanded he come away. Was cruelly glad they’d done neither.

  He sucked in a long breath and drove himself deep.

  All the time in the world, it was forever inside, and Wil touched each thread, following it to its end, then casting it aside before he took up another. Memories and inclinations, wants and needs. All those things that built a person, and all twined together, pulsing in his fingers.

  “He was a boy once,” Wil murmured, surprised that he was so surprised when the bright-misted memories of childhood throbbed in his hand, all innocence and tactile need. “He had parents.” A small, spare woman with a kind laugh and warm eyes. A tall, balding man, long nose, and a cheerful gaze the color of morning.

  Not fair, not fair, not fair—

  The desire-driven consciousness of adolescence—the first kiss, the first thrill of intimacy, the first broken heart—branching and flowering into adulthood, seeding a life. Lust drove it all sideways; it always did. Síofra had believed once, he’d believed deeply, was devout in his beliefs, and he’d read, researched. Knew the legends by heart, dug through archives, outpaced the scholars and priests with his vast knowledge, and came to believe just as devoutly that he knew better. Proved it when he’d bribed his way into the ambassador’s office, crossed the border for the first time. Invited into Temples as though he belonged there, permitted to read and study archives that would have got him hanged in his own country. Finally obtained something close to reverence in a secret brotherhood and watched possibility unfurl before his eyes.

  Found the key.

  A strand of memory, winding down into a morass of desperate resistance. “It’s here.” Wil could feel the edges of it. Down and down and down…. “It’s down here.” A shudder and a shaky breath. “Don’t go away.”

  “I’m right here.”

  Wil latched on to the thread and followed it.

  Deep and dark and cold. Like sinking into a pit of frozen tar. Scudding across forever, sliding into time and being spat back out again. A wide, bitter void beneath his feet, drawing him in.

  He let it, tethered to himself only by the threads of pain acid-webbed around him. He tightened his grip and ramped up the agony so he wouldn’t get lost. His own pain in one hand, a safety line back to his Self, and Síofra’s strand of memory in the other, Wil pulled them together and plaited them. Joined them.

  We are one, you and I.

  Wil almost laughed. Yeah, and I bet you wish you’d picked a different metaphor.

  Rushing through consciousness that wasn’t his, striving through an alien vista with no markers to tell him which way to go. Only that thread, that fiber of remembrance inside a deep-dark pit of resistance. He clawed at its patterns, scrabbling-tearing-rending, ignoring the resonant throb of pain—his and Síofra’s both, doubled and then trebled—until there was a give, the slightest break in resistance. Wil seized it, push-push-pushed at it with everything in him, shocked nearly stupid when the counterpressure abruptly broke and the weave frayed in his hands. Stunned, almost euphoric, Wil firmed his grip and slammed himself through, sailing reckless into the black, then….

  Freefall. Unraveling.

  Too fast, too uncontrolled.

  Anchorless, Wil plunged headlong into the patternless murk, felt it closing over him, cold and black as well water.

  “Shit! Wil, you’re in too deep. You have to push it away. Do you hear me? Wil—”

  Too deep.

  Too right.

  It was like being nowhere at all, pitching down into the unplumbed depths of a Self, skirting consciousness and setting his teeth against the deadly cold emptiness resisting-denying-thwarting him. It drew itself in against him, hiding from him what was his.

  Wil growled and stretched for the boundaries, reach spanning eternity.

  “Almost there. I can see it.”

  Could see the very end of the man who dared to call himself Father. Could see the shadow of his own Self caught down there in the darkness, biding in its little cage. A mantle of deception of its own design, weaving blindly, tangled inside a shroud of secrets and lies and betrayals.

  Say my name, say my name, say my name….

  A snarl and a gathering of strength. Pushing, tending, dreaming awake, all of them together. Wil twined it all in his hand, weaving it into raw energy. Elation nearly took him—Dallin, you were right, I think can do this, I think I can do anything!—as Wil shoved himself into the tight-woven strands of nothingness, grip fumbling but almost there, almost there. He reached, stretched—

  “Wil, no!”

  —and thumped with a jaw-jarring shock into… something. A presence. Alien and yet familiar.

  Swarmed by awareness, overwhelmed by intent not his own. And he’d thought it had hurt before. Cold-sharp agony swamped him, shoving itself down his throat, choking him and snagging at his mind.

  Far too big to be Síofra. Far too old to be sane. Far too cunning to be anything but vile.

&n
bsp; Wil snapped his reach, started to pull back, but it was too big—

  “Oh, shit. Wil? Wil, damn it, what are you doing?”

  Sentience, crawling all over him, a more horrifying invasion than any tormentor he’d met before. Like something was peeling open his skull and peering into his head, cracking open his chest and measuring his heart, his soul. So strong, so aware—the master of greed, the god of lust, the demon of hunger—driving, chittering hunger.

  This wanted more than souls. This was hungry enough to swallow worlds.

  Blood to blood, it chuckled.

  “Wil, damn it, answer me!”

  This was more than just a memory.

  I think I’ve just stepped into some very serious shit.

  “Dallin?” Too faraway, too small. “Help.”

  “Don’t pull back, understand? Don’t pull back. Push it away, Wil, as hard as you can.”

  Too late. It reached again, and Wil panicked, jerked back, a whining little whimper knocking loose from his throat.

  It knew him. It knew him, knew what he had in him. And it wanted.

  Dearg-dur. Daeva.

  Æledfýres.

  “Oh fuck…. This isn’t Síofra. This is the real monster.”

  Too slow, he was too slow—it smiled at him, laughed at him… wrenched.

  Wil lurched, took what was in his hands, and closed his fists, snapped himself away—

  “Nonono, Wil, don’t!”

  —hurtled, screaming, into forever.

  VAST.

  Dark.

  Terrifying.

  Alone inside time.

  Not a dream. Not life. A dreaming half life, perhaps.

  No. No, that wasn’t right. A not-life.

  Nothing.

  “I think there’s so much more that if you’re not very careful in how you use it, you could lose yourself.”

  He was lost, that was it. In a place with no color, no patterns, no path—

  “She fears for you, for your path has only just begun, and you refuse Her gift.”

  Path…. gift… he saw neither, and he didn’t know who “She” was, but the thought made him want to weep, so he pushed it away. She should be here, damn it, should be… should be—