Muse of Nightmares (Strange the Dreamer #2_UK)

by Laini Taylor

  Lazlo had never imagined a day he’d be rummaging through a dead god’s closet, but then, it was far from the strangest thing to happen to him today. He didn’t fuss. He just pulled out a set of linen underclothes like Feral’s and held them up to himself.

  “A bit short, maybe,” said Feral with a critical eye. “Skathis’s would probably fit you better.” Matter-of-factly, he added, “I suppose you’re his son.”

  Lazlo almost dropped the clothes. “What?”

  “Well, you have his gift, so that’s my guess. You could claim his things if you wanted. It’s not like Minya needs them. Gods, she hasn’t changed her clothes... ever. But today’s not really the day to go knocking on her door. So to speak. Since, you know, there are no doors.”

  “I’ll make do,” said Lazlo.

  “I wouldn’t expect any sisterly affection from her, but I suppose you’ve already gathered that.”

  Again, Lazlo was stunned. “Sisterly...?”

  Feral raised his eyebrows. “She’s Skathis’s daughter. So if you’re his son...” He shrugged.

  Lazlo stared. Could it be true? Was Minya his sister? The idea floored him almost more than his transformation, and he didn’t properly hear the next several things Feral said to him. He had been a very small boy when he’d given up hope of ever having family, the monks having spared no effort in impressing on the boys how utterly alone they were in the world. Lazlo had channeled all his yearning into an equally impossible dream: going to the Unseen City and finding out what happened there. Well, here he was. So much for impossible. Had he found family, too?

  “Bring those,” said Feral, gesturing to the clothes. “I’ll show you where the bath is.”

  They met Ruby and Sparrow in the corridor, coming from Sarai’s room with her white slip in hand, and they all walked back together. A shyness overtook them in Lazlo’s presence. Even Ruby was subdued. A couple of times she almost blurted out questions, but stopped each time, and Feral and Sparrow were surprised to see her blushing.

  For his part, Lazlo would have welcomed an opening. These three were Sarai’s family, even if not by blood, and he wanted them to like him. But he had scarcely more practice at conversing with strangers than they did, and couldn’t think where to begin.

  In the gallery, Sparrow parted from them to carry the slip to Sarai, while Ruby went with Feral and Lazlo to help prepare the bath. It was awkward for Lazlo, being catered to—until, that is, he watched Feral hold up his hands and summon a cloud out of nothingness, right above the big copper drum that served them as a tub. The air grew dense, carrying with it a thick jungle scent, and for a span of minutes the only sound was rain pelting metal.

  Lazlo smiled at the wonder of it. “I’ve never seen a trick like that before.”

  “Well, it’s nothing like your gift,” said Feral, humble. “It’s only rain.”

  And here, Ruby should have jumped in to disagree. It’s tacky to sing one’s own praises; your friends ought to do it for you. Your lover absolutely should, but Ruby was clueless, her attention all on Lazlo, so Feral was forced to add, “Though of course we’d have all died ages ago if we didn’t have water.”

  “Water’s important,” agreed Lazlo.

  “So’s fire,” said Ruby, not to be outdone. She held out her hands, and both kindled into fireballs in an instant. It was a flashier show than she usually put on when heating bathwater. Instead of pressing her hands against the side of the tub, which would have done perfectly well, she plunged them into the water itself, sending up great jets of steam where fire met water, and swiftly bringing it to a boil.

  “Are you trying to cook him?” asked Feral, producing another cloud. There was no jungle scent to this one. It filled the room with a clean, cold tang, dosed the hot water with a flurry of snow, and brought it down to a reasonable temperature.

  Ruby, her lips pressed thin, summoned a spark to her fingertips and flicked it, unseen, at Feral’s rear end. He managed to stifle his yelp, and favored her with a glare.

  “This is amazing,” said Lazlo, marveling. “Thank you both.”

  “It’s not much,” said Feral, one hand to the back of his neck. “This used to be a meat locker. It isn’t very fine. There are baths in the rooms, but they don’t work anymore....”

  “This is excellent,” Lazlo assured him. “Until I came to Weep I never had a proper bath in my life. In winter, when I was a boy, we had to chip the ice off the bucket before we could wash.” He gave Ruby a smile. “You’d have been very welcome there. Well,” he reconsidered, “except that the monks would have thought you were a demon.”

  “Maybe I am,” she said, locating her sauciness, her eyes glimmering with flame.

  “Anyway,” said Feral, a touch more loudly than necessary. “The soap’s just there. We’ll leave you to it.”

  They went out. Feral drew the curtain behind them, and Lazlo considered it. He wondered if it would be rude to close the door. He decided it would be, since they’d lived all their lives without doors, and it would give the impression that he didn’t trust them to give him privacy.

  In fact, it was a near thing. Feral and Ruby had reached the gallery when Ruby said, “I’ll be back in a minute. I just have to go to the kitchen.”

  Feral raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Oh? What for?”

  She was evasive. “I want to tell Less Ellen something.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he said.

  “No need to trouble yourself.”

  “It’s no trouble.”

  “Well, it’s trouble to me,” she declared, beginning to scowl. “It’s private.”

  “Funny you should use that word, ‘private,’ ” said Feral, who knew perfectly what she was about. “It’s almost as though you know what it means.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said, giving up the mission. “I was just going to peep a little.”

  “Ruby. Peeping’s not okay. Surely you know that.”

  He sounded so condescending. She shrugged. “I’ve peeped on you often enough, and you never minded.”

  “You’ve what?” Feral demanded. “How could I mind if I didn’t know?”

  “It didn’t hurt you, did it?”

  He covered his face with his hands. “Ruby,” he groaned, censorious, though secretly a little pleased. He’d have been jealous if she’d tried to spy on Lazlo and not ever on him.

  “I suppose you’ve never peeped on me?” she asked.

  “Of course I haven’t. I respect the curtains.”

  “Or you just don’t care,” she said, and there was a note of hurt in her voice.

  Though he’d grown up in a nest of girls, Feral still didn’t understand them. “What?”

  Ruby was remembering what Sparrow had said to her last night, before the citadel’s lurch had tipped them into chaos and grief. To her own assertion that if Sparrow had been the one to go to him, she’d have had Feral instead, Sparrow had replied, “If that’s true, then I really don’t want him. I only want someone who wants only me.” Well, Ruby did, too. In fact, she wanted someone who would look at her the way Lazlo looked at Sarai, and not some passive man-boy who’d go along because you literally put yourself in his hands.

  “If I’d respected your curtain,” she told him now, “we’d never have done anything. I came to you, I’m sure you remember. I climbed into your lap. I made you kiss me. It’s obvious you don’t care, and that’s fine.” She lifted her chin. “It was just something to do in case we died, and look, we’re still alive.” She gave him a brittle smile. “You don’t have to worry anymore. I’ll leave you alone now.”

  Feral had no idea where this was coming from. It was true that she’d initiated everything, but that didn’t mean he wanted it to stop. “Are you angry that I never spied on you naked?” he asked, incredulous.

  “I’m not angry,” Ruby replied. “I’m just through with this. At least it was good practice, for when I meet someone who gives a damn.” And she tossed her wild dark hair so that he had to dod
ge it or be hit in the face, and then she walked away.

  “Fine,” Feral said to her back, but his head was spinning and he hardly knew what had just happened. One thing he was almost certain of, though, was that he wasn’t happy at all.

  Chapter 10

  Ghosts Don’t Burn

  Sarai dipped the sponge in the basin of water Less Ellen had prepared. It smelled of rosemary and nectar, like the soap she’d used all her life. She held the sponge in trembling hands and looked down at herself.

  No. She squeezed her eyes shut. That wasn’t her self. It was her body. She was herself. She remained. She opened her eyes again. Her mind reeled. She was there and she was here, undead and unalive, kneeling beside herself in the flowers.

  How can you kneel beside yourself? How can you wash your own corpse?

  The same way you do anything, she told herself firmly. You just do. She’d been washing her body all her life. She could do it this one last time.

  “Let me help you,” said Sparrow, her voice raw as a wound.

  “It’s all right,” said Sarai. “I’m all right.”

  Great Ellen had cut the slip away with scissors, and the body lay naked now, its familiar terrain made strange by this new perspective.

  The jut of hip bones, the pink areolae, the divot of the navel all seemed to belong to some other girl. Reaching out, Sarai squeezed the sponge and let a trickle of water run down her dead chest. And then, gently, as though afraid of causing pain, she began to wash the blood away.

  When she had finished, the water in the basin was muddy red and she was, too, from holding her own dead head in her lap to rinse the blood from its hair. She looked down at the wet, stained silk clinging to her legs, and grappled with the knowledge that it was all illusion. The slip wasn’t wet. The slip wasn’t there, and neither was the body beneath it. Everything about her was illusion now. She looked and felt exactly as she had before, but none of it was real, and none of it was fixed. She knew that this ghostflesh copy was an unconscious projection—her mind’s re-creation of her accustomed self—and that she didn’t have to stay this way.

  Ghosts weren’t bound by the same rules as the living. They could shape themselves however they liked. Less Ellen, who in life had lost an eye, in her ghostself restored it. Great Ellen was ever-changing, a master of the medium. She might wear singing birds as hats, or sprout an extra arm when need arose, or turn her head into a hawk’s.

  As children, enchanted by their nurses’ transformations, Sarai and the others had liked to say what they would do if they were ghosts. It hadn’t been morbid, just fun, like the most amazing game of dress-up ever. You could have ravid fangs or a scorpion’s tail, or turn yourself miniature, like a songbird. You could be striped or feathered or made of glass, translucent as a window. You could even be invisible. It had seemed a grand game back then.

  Now that it came to it, though, Sarai just wanted to be herself.

  She brushed her fingers over the sodden, discolored silk of her lap, willing it clean and dry. And, just like that, it was.

  “Well done,” said Great Ellen. “It takes most of us a deal of time to figure out how to do that. The trick is to believe it, and that’s quite a hurdle for most.”

  Not for Sarai. “It’s like in dreams,” she said.

  “You have an advantage there.”

  But in dreams, Sarai had control over everything, not just the fabric of her self. Cleaning blood out of silk was nothing. She could turn day to night and up to down. “In dreams,” she said with longing, “I could bring myself back to life.”

  “Would that you could,” said Great Ellen, reaching out to stroke her hair. “My poor, lovely girl. It’ll be all right. You’ll see. It isn’t life, but it has its merits.”

  “Such as being a slave to Minya?” Sarai asked bitterly.

  The nurse let out a sigh. “I hope not.”

  “There is no hope. You know how she is.”

  “I do indeed, but I’m not giving up on her and neither should you. Come, now. Let’s get your body dressed.”

  The girls had fetched the white slip; they’d chosen a halter style to cover the wound. It took all of them to put it on, maneuvering stiff limbs, lifting and arranging. They lay the body with its arms at its sides, orchids tucked all around it, and fanned out the cinnamon hair to dry in the sun before studding its ripples with blooms. It was easier to look at now that the evidence of its violent end was disguised, but it didn’t lessen the ache of loss.

  Sarai was glad when Lazlo returned. He was dressed, like Feral, in clothing of the citadel, his dark hair clean on his shoulders, shining damp in the sunlight. She drank in again the sight of him blue, and could almost imagine they were back in a dream, alive and full of wonder, holding hands after the mahalath transformed them.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, such sweetness and sorrow in his dreamer’s gray eyes that she felt his sorrow absorb some of her own. She nodded and was able to smile, a small gladness alive even inside her loss. He pressed a kiss to her brow, and the warmth of his lips flowed into her, giving her strength—which she needed for what came next.

  The fire.

  Ruby didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want to touch the body. She didn’t want to burn it. Her eyes were pools of fire; when she wept, the tears hissed into steam. She was shaking. Sparrow steadied her, but with what she had to do, no one would be able to stay near her.

  “Should we wait for Minya?” she asked—anything to buy time— and they all looked to the arcade, their breath catching, as though the mention of the little girl might summon her. But the arcade was empty.

  “No,” said Sarai, who couldn’t forget how it had felt to hang in the air, powerless over her self. She’d been at odds with Minya for years, but they’d gone beyond “at odds” now, and every minute the little girl stayed away was another minute of doom forestalled.

  “I’ll help you,” she told Ruby, and they knelt down together. She placed her hands atop Ruby’s where they lay on the body’s smooth skin. And she kept them there, even when Ruby kindled. They called her Bonfire. This was why. The flame burst into being; it blazed hot and white. It started in her hands but leapt like a living thing, engulfing the corpse in seconds. The heat was intense. The others had to back away, but Sarai stayed with Ruby to share the burden of this terrible task. She felt heat, but no pain. Ghosts don’t burn, but corpses do. It was over in under a minute.

  The flames rushed back to Ruby’s hands. She absorbed them, and they all saw: there was no body now beneath her palms, no orchids, no cinnamon hair. The bower was untouched, though; the white blossoms all remained. They were anadne, Letha’s sacred flower, from which, before all this chaos, Sarai’s lull had been brewed to keep her safe from dreams. Their pale petals were tinged pink from bloody bathwater, but they lived, while where the body had lain there was naught but absence, like a gap in the world where something precious had been and now was lost. Even the scent of singed flesh was weak, the immolation having been so hot and fast, and the breeze was already sweeping it away.

  Sarai sobbed. Lazlo stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her against him. She twisted so she was facing him and wept against his chest. Everyone clustered close. No eyes were dry.

  “There, now, love,” said Great Ellen. “You’re all right. You’re still with us, and that’s what matters.”

  At least the dissonance of two Sarais had resolved. There was only one now. Her body was gone. Only her ghost remained.

  . . .

  The Ellens shepherded them to the table. They weren’t hungry, but they were indisputably empty. It had been many hours since they ate or slept, and in their numbness, they let themselves be led.

  They cast wary glances at the head of the table, but Minya still did not appear.

  It wasn’t a proper meal. With the events of the night and morning, the Ellens hadn’t prepared one. There was only a loaf and a pot of jam, representing their two inexhaustible resources: kimril and
plums. The others took slices and spread them with jam, but when the tray came to Sarai, she just looked at it. She could no longer consume food, but she was still prey to the habitual sensations of life, and a feeling like hunger stirred in her. Before she had time to feel sorry for herself, Great Ellen came up behind her.

  “Watch,” she said, reaching for the bread. She cut a slice, and picked it up—or seemed to, anyway. It came away in her hand, and yet remained where it lay. She had conjured a phantom slice, upon which she proceeded to spoon phantom jam before lifting it to her mouth and taking a dainty bite. If you weren’t watching closely, you wouldn’t even notice the real food had stayed on the plate.

  Sarai did as Great Ellen did, and took a bite of phantom bread. It tasted just as it always had, and she knew she was eating her memory of it. She watched Lazlo’s face as he took a bite of the real thing, encountering kimril for the first time—the nutrient-rich tuber that was their staple—and laughed a little as his expression registered the startling absence of taste.

  “Lazlo,” she said with grave formality, “meet kimril.”

  “This...” said Lazlo, striving to keep his voice neutral, “is what you live on?”

  “Not anymore,” said Sarai, a wry twist to her lips. “You’re welcome to my portion.”

  “I’m not very hungry,” he demurred, and the rest of them laughed, enjoying this acknowledgment of their private torment.

  “Wait’ll you try it in soup,” Ruby said. “It’s purgatory in a spoon.”

  “It’s the salt,” lamented Great Ellen. “We’ve herbs, and that helps, but with salt running low, there just isn’t a lot you can do to help kimril.”

  “I think we might manage to procure some salt,” ventured Lazlo.

  Ruby pounced on the notion. “And sugar!” she said. “Or, better yet, cake. The bakeries must be empty now, cakes going stale in the cases.” They had all witnessed the exodus from Weep. “Go and get them.” She was deadly serious. “Get them all.”