by Nick Lake
I stare at her. Wizards. Crones. A shiver runs through me. What is with people who don’t read novels? I mean, what kind of life is that? I read them, I say.
She waits for me to say something more, but I don’t, so she just nods eventually. Okay, well, we’ll go to the bookstore, you can pick something.
We’re allowed out? I say.
We’re allowed to do anything we want, she says. We’re a family.
Yeah, I think. Sure.
That night, I lie in my bed in the spare room and I can’t sleep. I run through scenarios in my mind, fantasies, trying to lull myself into sleep, tell myself a story. A lullaby. This is something I have always done—when I was younger, like I said ages ago, I would fantasize that my mom was not my real mom, that my real mom was a queen, and one day I would meet her. That I was special, in some way.
Now I know this was the most stupid-ass fantasy of all time, because I know the reality now of my mom not being my mom, and it sucks.
So instead I imagine the opposite:
I imagine:
That none of this is real.
I mean, none of the stuff that has happened to me in the actual world, since I know the Dreaming isn’t real, because if it is, then I have gone totally and utterly mad, and I don’t like to get too close to that thought, because it’s like a fire and it burns.
This is not helping me to sleep.
I imagine:
That my mom is still my mom and we still live in Scottsdale, and every weekday apart from Friday, when Mom’s not working, we do school stuff, and then every Friday we go to the baseball cage and then we get ice cream for dinner and nothing ever changes and everything is always awesome.
It doesn’t work. I lie there wide awake for most of the night. But at some point I must fall asleep because one moment I’m looking at the ceiling of the rented apartment and wondering if I could actually just run away to Mexico on my own and start a totally different life, and thinking about what I could possibly do there, I mean being deaf and all—
and the next moment I’m—
A Diamond Pinprick in A Constellation of Stars
Chapter 58
And then I’m back in the Dreaming and I catch a glimpse of the great eagle swooping down toward me before I close my eyes tight.
Feathers flutter against the skin of my face, there’s a sensation of the air being disturbed by something fast, falling past me, and then—
Nothing.
I open my eyes and see the eagle standing on the ground in front of me. It cocks its head, regarding me with its mineral eye. It folds its wings neatly.
You are rather small, for the one who will kill the Crone, it says.
I blink.
Do you speak? Or do you communicate with your eyelids?
I, ah, speak, I say.
Good, says the eagle. It does save time.
I still haven’t gotten my heartbeat under control. I scoot back a bit, but don’t stand up. I don’t know which side this eagle is on.
You are alone? asks the eagle.
No, I say. I’m with Coyote. He has gone … to … um … hunt. He will be back soon.
Good, says the eagle. He will be glad of my support in this, I think.
You … want to help us? I ask.
Of course.
You’re not with the owls? The wolves? The snakes?
If it is possible for an eagle to look disgusted, then it does now. I am nothing like those low creatures, it says. I am Eagle. I am sacred. I see all. It puffs its chest, considering me coldly.
I’m sorry, I say.
For instance, says the eagle as if I have not spoken, I see that you have sent Coyote away. Why?
I blink again.
I’m sorry, says the eagle. Does that mean something?
No, I say. I … I did send Coyote away. But the elks told me not to trust him.
Why?
He caused the flood. He scattered the stars. He … I don’t know, stole fire. He also, oh, I don’t know, didn’t mention the small fact that the woman who raised me for seventeen years was not actually my mother at all but someone who stole me from a hospital.
The eagle actually rolls its eyes. You are a fool, it says.
What? I say. Screw you.
You are facing a challenging quest and you have sent away your strongest ally, says the eagle.
My stubborn streak is riled. He plays tricks, I say. That’s what the elks told me. What if all this was a trick of his? All this fricking crap with my so-called mother. What if it’s all some screwed-up idea of a joke on me, at my expense?
The eagle takes a step toward me. I flinch, but it merely gestures with its wing to the sky. Look up, it says.
I look up—the stars glitter above us, chips of ice, diamonds.
Coyote scattered those, it says. That is why they are so beautiful. There is no order. There is only the vastness of the heavens, the randomness of the stars. Would they be more beautiful if they were lined up in rows?
No, I say.
It lowers its head. And the flood? Did the elks tell you why Coyote stole the River God’s child?
No, I say.
Because the River God had taken two human children. Coyote paid her back. And it was because of the flood that people climbed the reed to the Fourth World, and gained knowledge, and culture, and time, and all good things.
He created death, I say.
Imagine a world without death, says the eagle contemptuously. Imagine the horror.
I frown. It has a point.
Coyote is chaos, says the eagle. He is misrule. He takes order and routine and he breaks it, he scatters it. But always, when he has done so, the world that is left is a better one. Would you want a year with no seasons?
I shake my head.
Consider the rain, says the eagle. It is in Coyote’s gift to control. It can wash things away, it can destroy, it can drown. But it nourishes everything. The chain of life depends on it. That is the nature of Coyote.
To … nourish?
Yes. While washing away. Cleansing the past. Coyote opposes the Crone, says the eagle. The Crone takes many forms: the Owl, the Giant. But always Coyote is against that which seeks to harm people.
How do you know? I say.
I am Eagle. I see all.
I nod, slowly. But …, I say. But, I mean, none of this is true, is it? Like, one hundred percent actually true, in the real world. I mean, Coyote didn’t have anything to do with the moon and the stars and the sun, it was all the Big Bang, or whatever.
Coyote is the Big Bang, says the eagle.
Yeah, like, metaphorically, whatever, I say, but there was no First Woman and First Man, there was no—
Yes, says the owl, there was a First Woman and a First Man. One hundred percent, actually, really, there was.
No, there was evolution, and—
The mitochondrial DNA of every person on earth can be traced back to a woman who lived 150,000 years ago in Africa. She is known to scientists in your world as Mitochondrial Eve. She existed. Everyone on earth is descended from her. Everyone.
I am blinking again. I see the eagle looking and I stop.
Your DNA, says the eagle, is a code for the creation of protein, a specific recipe, and it has been passed down, with only minor variations, since the beginning of life on this planet. This is a metaphorical and a literal truth. An unbroken line of DNA lies between a single-celled organism in the primordial soup and you. You have letters written in nucleic acid inside your bones that are a billion years old. You are older than you can possibly imagine.
I stare. I’m— How do you …
I am Eagle. I see all.
So, what, these stories are all true, then?
In a manner of speaking. There are different kinds of truth.
I nod. Coyote said that too, I say.
Coyote is more ancient even than you, says the eagle. You should listen when he speaks.
Okay, I say. You think I should trust him, I get it.
I think you should trust him to be untrustworthy, says the eagle. You should trust him to take peace and make it war, to take order and replace it with chaos. But always, what is left will be better.
I nod. Fine, I say. So what should I do now?
Wait for Coyote. He will return. Go with him. Kill the Crone. Save the Child.
The eagle begins to stretch out its wings. Then it pauses. Quickly it stabs its beak down into its side, and when its head comes up again there is a feather in its mouth. It drops it on the ground in front of me.
Take that, it says. It will protect you.
Protect me from what?
Everything, says Mark, behind me. It is an eagle feather. It is perhaps the most powerful thing in the Dreaming.
I turn. He is standing there, I don’t know how he snuck up so quietly, over the dry grass and twigs of the Forest of Thorns.
Coyote, says the eagle.
Eagle, says Coyote.
This is their whole entire conversation, then the eagle flaps its great wings and lofts into the air. It lets out a loud cry—Kiiiiii—and wheels upward, quickly reducing to a speck in the dark air.
Guard that feather, says Mark. It could save you.
I nod.
Are you ready to carry on? he says. Or do you require another tantrum?
I am about to shout but then I see the glint in his eye.
Jerk, I say.
He smiles. Didn’t you hear? I am misrule.
Chapter 59
We press on through the Forest of Thorns. It’s weird, now that I have the eagle feather, the path seems a little wider, as if the thorny branches are shrinking back from it, withdrawing their grasping, twisting arms.
After a week’s walking, or it feels like it, Mark holds up a hand.
We’re close, he says.
I look around. The woods don’t look any different from before.
He points and I look up:
The spire of the castle looms above us, between the trees, like a cliff, like a rock formation.
We’re there? I say.
Not quite, he says. There’s a moat.
Mark presses on into the woods, not wasting time with talking, and I follow behind him. The undergrowth gets thicker and thicker, even worse than it was before, twisting with vines, bristling with thorns. I cry out as they scratch at me, despite the eagle feather, blood dripping from my arms that I raise in front of me to shield my face.
Not long now, says Mark.
I can’t believe it—it seems like the woods want to stop us, like the thickening vegetation is trying to trip me, to hurt me.
And then, very suddenly, we break through, into darkness, the stars behind black clouds. Then—the clouds thin and part, and the castle reverse-dissolves, mists into being in front of us, bluely, like a photo in a developing bath.
It’s tall, that’s the first thing I notice. The spire, obviously, but also the whole structure. And it’s all black, like if someone took a Disney castle and dipped it in tar. Bats wheel around the towers, and there are slits for arrows, and crenellations. In front of the castle, on the lawn, is some kind of glass structure, like a pagoda, a little crystal palace, and it might be a tomb or it might be a greenhouse, it’s impossible to tell from here.
And from the castle, all the time, so that you can just assume from here on in that it is a loud, loud and everpresent backing music, comes the sound of crying, the Child, weeping and weeping for help, a ghastly sound now that we’re so close, filling the air all around us, as if the castle itself is inconsolable, sobbing. The noise sends daggers of pain into me, hooks.
It is terrifying.
The castle is terrifying.
But not quite so terrifying as what lies before it.
That’s the moat? I say.
Yes.
I goggle at it. It’s, like, two thousand miles deep and this time I’m not exaggerating. I can’t even see the bottom. And stretching over it is a thin rope bridge, like in fricking Indiana Jones or something—just planks roughly held together to form a surface, and two ropes to hold on to, and some of the planks are broken, and a two-thousand-mile drop, and there’s like algae dripping from the rope because the whole “moat” is all misty and creepy and did I mention the two-thousand-mile drop?
You have to be kidding, I say.
I don’t kid, says Mark.
Yes you do, you did that whole hilarious joke about the snakes.
Oh, yes. Well, I’m not kidding now. We cross, and you kill the Crone.
Simple as that.
Yes.
Mark, that was sarcasm.
I know. It just wasn’t funny.
I sigh. But even when he’s being like this, it’s so nice to talk to someone for once. A friend. Someone who isn’t my mom.
To hear his voice.
I can’t, I say. I’m scared. Suddenly all the challenge and mocking is gone from my voice, I can hear myself how it’s trembling—this is new to me, because I never heard anything before coming to the Dreaming. I didn’t know that your own voice could betray you.
You don’t need to be afraid, says Mark.
I don’t? Just look at it. I’m a teenage girl. I’ve never done anything. My mother or the thing that said it was my mother kept me at home all my life.
He smiles. You’re not just anything, he says. Thousands of years ago, people did not think of themselves as individuals. They said that all their ancestors lived in them. I know—I was there.
So?
So you are not just a teenage girl. Remember what Eagle told you. You are a billion years of ancestors, in one person. Every living thing can trace a lineage right back to the start of life, to when the first bacteria fell to earth in stardust.
So? I say.
So? says Coyote. So now, think of all those who were never born, because a mouse was stepped on by a dinosaur, or an ape who could walk on two legs was eaten by a lion. But not you. Every one, every single one of your million ancestors, whether they were amoebas or mice or, finally, apes, survived long enough to have at least one child.
Okay …, I say, unsure.
So every generation that goes into your genes is a generation of fighters, of survivors. And all those millions of lives are in you, in your blood, and do you think they would have balked at a gap in the ground, and a bridge? No. They would look at you and they would be ashamed.
Well, that’s a bit much, isn’t—
You are descended from warriors, says Mark. An endless parade of warriors. You have been alive for a billion years, an unbroken line of DNA. You will not be defeated by a ditch.
I feel my heart stirring despite myself. No, I say. I can hear the crying of the Child, louder than ever now, wafting over the chasm, from the castle on the other side, and I think to myself: all those times I had that dream and it always stopped before I could pick up the kid, before I could comfort her, and this time that is not happening.
I am going to cross that bridge and I am going to get that child if it kills me, and I am going to hold it tight and tell it that it never needs to cry again.
Tell me again, says Mark. I won’t be defeated by a ditch.
I look at him, but he isn’t smiling. I won’t be defeated by a ditch, I say.
Good, says Mark. In that case, you first.
Oh, no way, no—
In case the wolves are still following, he says.
Oh, right. Yeah.
I step toward the bridge.
Wait, says Mark. I turn to him and he takes a step toward me, then puts his arms around me and hugs me. It’s the first time we’ve touched, properly. I gasp. Not for the obvious reason. Because it’s not a boy holding me, or a man, whatever, it’s something else. It’s Coyote.
I remember him saying, I’m older than the world. And standing here with him, like this, our bodies touching, I can feel it—it’s like holding the stars in my arms; like touching the moon. Time slows down and it’s crystal clear, like ice. I close my eyes, and everything becomes
inside, not outside, the universe turns inside out, like a sock. All is just the interior of my mind, the body that is also a god, contained within the span of my arms.
I pull away and stare at him. You’re not a person, I say, and for the first time, I really understand that it’s true.
No, he says.
Thank you, I say. Thank you for that.
I mean it: I feel like I have breathed in stardust from just after the Big Bang.
How do I know all this? I say. I mean, I’ve barely read any Native American myths. But this is happening inside my head, right? So how do I know?
Places have a long memory, says Coyote.
But I’m not from this place, I’m from Alaska.
You are not from here. But you are here. In Arizona. And Arizona remembers.
Why Arizona?
He sighs, but not angrily. All places remember, he says. Arizona just happens to be where you are.
This is not clearing things up, I say.
He shakes his head. I am Coyote. It is not for me to clear things up. It is for me to break things, and make them into something new.
Right, I say.
You know, he says. Since you mentioned books. I’ve told you before, when I was Mark, but you should really go to college. Plenty of places offer interpreters. For people like you. To take notes for you, in class.
It’s surreal, him saying this, when we’re in the Dreaming by a, well, by a massive ravine.
Uh … okay, I say.
You need to think about the future, he says. But right now, you must go. Go. There is no more time.
And I do, because there’s something in his voice that makes me. I look back at him, then I walk toward the bridge and then onto it, and it sways and oh this was not a good idea. I cling on to the ropes on either side, my hands sweaty. I inch out over the vast drop, moving super, super slowly, taking tiny little baby steps.
Slow down, says Mark. You might slip.
I turn and give him a withering look.
See? he says. That was sarcasm.
I ignore him and continue to make my way across, trying to ignore the pulsing black depth of the chasm below me. After a while, I find that I’m stepping a little easier, and the other side is getting closer and closer. Soon I’m halfway across.