I couldn’t force anyone to be any different than what they were. It had to be their choice. All I could do was show them how things could be. So I reached out to place my hands on the web of connections that made up the world, the ones that people sometimes didn’t see. They linked everyone together whether they knew it or not, which meant this was how I could reach everybody. I gave the world a dream of a better one, the one that was meant. Feel what I feel.
The dream travelled, flowing along the links that tied everyone to each other. Except my reach didn’t extend far enough. I wasn’t getting to everybody. But the ones I had reached responded. Not everyone liked the dream. Some people ran from it, and some turned away, and some thought it was a nightmare. But some reached out and grasped it, and I suddenly found I was stronger and could reach further. They became part of me and I became part of them, and now we shared the dream and expanded together. Feel what we feel. See what we see.
More dreamers joined us, and more, until we were thousands. Except I knew we still weren’t enough. We couldn’t quite encompass the world. Then another set of dreamers came, and while I didn’t recognise all of them, I knew some. Grandpa. Starbeauty. Feel what we feel. See what we see.
I was starting to shake. My legs went out from under me and I fell, crashing to the ground. I can’t dream any more. Except I knew I had to. I had to dream until there was nothing left in me to give. That was what dreams demanded. So I poured out everything I saw, everything I felt, and everything I was. I gave myself to the world and the hope of a better one.
Something left me. It flew out of my chest and became energy, scattering to become part of all that was. That was okay, because it was where it had come from to begin with. And I knew I’d finally given enough.
I drifted into peaceful darkness, and sleep.
Someone said, “Ashala!”
I opened my eyes, annoyed – and found to my surprise that I was floating among stars. Something shining coiled around me, twisting and dipping until I was staring into a familiar Serpent face. Hello, granddaughter.
“Hi, Grandpa!”
You have become as you were meant and dreamed of what was meant. And it has taken something from you, as all great dreams must.
“Oh yeah? What?” But I knew. “My ability. It’s gone, isn’t it?”
Yes.
I had a dim idea that it was important, but it was difficult to gather up the energy to care. “Can I sleep now?”
No. His eyes swirled. I gave him back to you once. Now I am giving you back to him. He flicked out his big tongue, licking the whole of my face.
“Eww, Grandpa, that’s disgu–”
He was gone. There were no stars, only darkness. I could hear a voice, the same one that had been speaking before, “Ashala!”
I blinked, and everything came back. I was lying on the ground, looking up at trees and at the people looking down at me. Hoffman. Shona. Laurie. And Connor, pale and shaking. I reached up to put my hand against his cheek.
“Are you all right?”
“Am I–” he broke off, shaking his head. “Yes, I am all right. Now.”
He put an arm under my shoulders, helping me to sit up. I was surrounded by trees but they weren’t tuarts; I must be in the forests around Neville’s camp. “Wasn’t I in the tent before?”
“I carried you out,” Connor answered. “You kept saying it was too small … then I realised your ability had kicked in …” He sighed and drew me against him.
Shona reached across to wrap her fingers around my wrist. My arm didn’t hurt any more. “Shona, you Mended my arm?”
“Your arm was the least of your problems,” she told me. After a second she let me go. “Well, despite everything, you’re okay.” She rose to her feet. “I’d better go help Bran with the enforcers.”
Laurie beamed at me. “I’m glad you’re alive and not dead like Neville Rose, Ashala Wolf!” Then he turned and trotted off after Shona.
Everyone seemed to be very concerned with my health. I cast a questioning glance up at Connor, who said, “You stopped breathing.”
Oh. “I was dreaming.”
“We know,” Hoffman replied. “We saw it.”
“You did?”
“Versions of it, anyway. As far as we can work out, everyone experienced something different.” He stood, and added, “You may just have saved humankind, Ashala – and you should be careful about that, you know. When you’ve done it once, people expect you to do it all the time.”
He strode off into the trees, leaving me alone with Connor.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You … showed everyone. What it was to belong. How we’re all connected. Everyone saw it differently, but, well – if you can walk, we can go to the clearing and you’ll see.”
I lurched up to find my legs were weak. Connor put his arm around me and we made our way through the forest together. As we went, I asked, “How’d you even all get here?”
“Laurie carried Shona, and Ran. Bran and I balanced on the flyer with Hoffman. As to how we knew where to come – Georgie Saw it, in a future.”
“How is she?’
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Last I heard from Jaz he said the Tribe was with her.”
I needed to get back to her, only it seemed like there was trouble here. Now we were closer to the clearing I could hear a lot of sniffling sounds. “Is that crying?”
“Wait and see.” I could hear the smile in his voice; whatever was ahead was nothing bad.
We emerged through the last of the trees. The enforcers who worked for Neville were sitting on the ground, confined by shrubs that had snaked up to bind their hands and feet. Some of the enforcers were staring straight ahead, looking numb and shocked. A few seemed angry. Many were crying. And the rest kept trying to catch Shona’s attention, or Laurie’s, or Bran’s, babbling, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“Yes, yes, we know you’re sorry,” Shona told them, sounding harassed. “There’s really no need to keep saying it!”
I’d dreamed a dream for the world and the world had dreamed it back. But all I wanted to do right now was return to my world, my trees and my Tribe.
“Connor? Let’s go home.”
THE BEGINNING
ASHALA
Darkness, and me.
I was floating, as I had been before the memories started. Before I’d lived it all again, this time seeing it through Georgie’s eyes as well as my own. I liked the darkness; I needed the peace after having experienced everything for the second time around. Except that a lot of it had been for the first time around. Maybe all of it had been, because putting Georgie’s memories together with my own changed the way I saw things.
The darkness began to fade. I tried to hold onto it but it slipped away, delivering me back into the world. My eyes blinked open, and I found myself staring up at the flat ceiling of the room where we’d revived Alexander Hoffman. Then Hoffman himself came into view, leaning over me.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
Exhausted. Heartsick. “Thirsty.”
Someone else moved across to me. Connor, bringing a bottle of water. I sat up so I could drink, guzzling the cool liquid. Between swallows, I asked, “How long?”
“You’ve been unconscious for about a day,” Connor said.
One day? It seemed a lot longer than that. But it had been a lot longer than that, because the events I’d lived through, and that Georgie had lived through, had happened over the course of a couple of months. Apparently remembering it all didn’t take anywhere near as long as actually experiencing it.
Hoffman reached across to disconnect the nanomite drip from my arm, and then started on wires on my head. It had been a month now since the Awakening, during which time Hoffman had gone to visit his children in Spinifex City and returned again. He was due back there in another week; Leo had him on a visitation schedule to make sure he didn’t lose contact with the aingls. I had no idea if Hoffman would keep to it, only
… he might. Seeing Georgie’s memories had shifted my perception of him again.
“You didn’t have to kill Neville to save me,” I told him. “But I know you were trying to help my Tribe help me, so – thanks.”
“I didn’t do it to save you,” he replied. “I did it to save the world – as I said before, Rose had to die.” He pulled the last wire off my head. “There. You should suffer no ill effects from the memories, but let me know if you do. And try not to take things so to heart, Ashala. Not everything is about you. In fact, for the most part …” He winked. “Everything is about me.”
Hoffman strolled out, and Connor said, “Tell me what you saw.”
“You’re not going to like it.”
He climbed up onto the table and sat with his legs swinging over the side. “Tell me anyway.”
So I did, starting at the beginning – at Georgie’s beginning, with the foretelling – and moving all the way through to the end. When I’d finished Connor said, in a stunned voice, “They were trying to save us?”
“They did save us.”
“Penelope … Starbeauty … Nicky … Ember … Jules … Daniel … Hoffman?” He drew in a sharp breath, and shook his head. “Did they really think we’d let them?”
“They knew we wouldn’t. That’s why they didn’t tell us.”
He fell silent. I knew he’d be absorbing this for days, and so would I. Right now there was something I absolutely had to do. I climbed off the table. “I need to talk to Georgie.”
“No.”
“No?”
“She came in while you were unconscious and said, when you wake up you go see Ember.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I have to go see Ember.”
We walked back through the tunnels and into the caves. The world had changed in the month since Daniel’s death. It hadn’t taken Willis long to get her city back with Terence and Neville gone, plus the effect I’d had on everyone with the dream I’d shared. Not everyone believed in that dream, but enough people did cause a shift in the way people with abilities were treated. The Primes had held an emergency Council meeting and they’d all voted to continue with the repeal of the Accords. Detention centres everywhere were in the process of being closed. And Detention Centre 3 – which had been a centre, and then a museum, and then the home of the government – was going to become a school. But not just any school. It would be the first ever school for children to learn how to use their abilities, and Shona and Laurie would be among the first teachers.
We wound our way through the passages until we came to the cave where Ember was sleeping. She was lying on a bedroll near the opening onto the forest, surrounded by the things the Tribe had brought her – shells, and feathers, and drawings, and so many flowers that this place was starting to look like a garden. Nicky was lying across her feet, and Jules was sitting at her side, speaking softly. He never did run out of things to say to her.
He looked up as we came in, tired hazel eyes focusing on me. “Guess you know it all now, huh?”
“Yeah.” I tried to think of everything I needed to tell him, how I felt about what he’d done and why. In the end I found I could sum up my acceptance of it, and him, in a single word. “Yellowcrest.”
He smiled something approaching his normal crooked smile. “Guess so.” Then his gaze shifted back to Em and the smile faded. “Did you … was there anything that might help her? In the memories?”
“I don’t know yet. I think it’s going to take me some time to process it all.”
He nodded, his attention drifting back to Em. He seemed to have lost a little more weight in the space of the day since I’d last seen him, and gotten paler too. I flicked my gaze towards Connor, then at Jules, and Connor understood.
“Come and get some food, Jules,” he said. “Ashala will sit with Em for a while.” When Jules didn’t move, he strode over and bent to grip his arm. “You have to maintain your strength. For her.”
Jules rose reluctantly and followed Connor out of the cave. Nicky rolled to his feet and trotted over, nuzzling at my hand. I petted his ears, my dog who’d preserved my chance to save the world. He’d activated my ability in the moment when I could dream a dream for everybody, and now enough of the world was trying to live the dream that there wouldn’t be a blizzard of disconnection. People wouldn’t become blind to other people’s existences, or deaf to their voices, or cold and indifferent to their pain.
“Thank you,” I told him. Nicky licked my fingers and bounded out after Jules. He’d been spending a lot of time with Jules; he knew Jules needed a guardian of his own, right now.
I went and sat by Em, staring down into her still face.
“I know everything now,” I told her. “I know you did this to save me. But you can’t be sure it was necessary, or you would have come back.” I sighed. “And I think the reason you can’t be sure is because you blame yourself for Terence. You think that if you’d done something differently somewhere along the way, he would’ve been different. That’s why you can’t be sure – you think you could have stopped it coming to this. But there was something wrong with him, Em, and I don’t think you could ever have put it right. So, please – you have to wake up!”
Nothing. Then someone spoke from the entrance. “Ash?”
I shot to my feet. “Georgie!”
She took a few uncertain steps into the cave. “Are you mad at me, Ash? Now that you know what I was doing?”
“No. Georgie, no.” I strode forwards to hug her, holding her tight. “Of course I’m not mad.”
“Are you sure?”
I stepped back, so that I could look into her face and she could look into mine. “Georgie, I wish none of you had made the choices you did. Because I’m not worth …” My voice cracked. I stopped, drew in a breath, and began again. “I’m not worth the sacrifice. But I’m not mad and I’m not going to say those choices were wrong now. Not after everything that’s happened and after everything everyone gave up for me. Otherwise it’d be like you all worked really hard to give this gift, and I just threw it away. So I won’t do that.” I wiped at my eyes, and added, “All I can do now is value the gift, and be grateful for it, and you. Even though I don’t deserve it. And I don’t deserve you either.”
“You do, Ash! We all deserve each other. That’s why we’re Tribe.” She took hold of my arm and drew me out of the cave into the passageway, saying in a whisper, “I heard what you were saying to Em.”
She’d been in the doorway longer than I’d realised, and I wasn’t sure why we needed to be out here whispering about it, but that was okay. She’d have a reason, and she’d explain it me when it was right to explain. “She won’t wake up, Georgie.”
“No, except, Ash, I asked Daniel something once.” She paused, her lips curving into the smile she always smiled when she said his name now, a mixture of sweetness and sadness. “I asked him how you were always so sure of which world was real. And he said, it was because you knew I needed you to be sure. And, you see, now Em needs someone to be sure.”
“You think that’s all I have to do? Be sure? Just … sound certain?”
Georgie shook her head. “No. I did think that but then I had another thought, and my other thought was, maybe it isn’t you Ember needs to be sure.”
She moved past me into the cave and settled on the ground next to Ember. I followed to sit on Ember’s other side. Then Georgie reached for Em’s hand and when she spoke it was in a tone I’d never heard from her before – crisp, and clear, and totally confident. “It’s Georgie, Em. I want you to know that I made a map. A Terence map, and I looked at all the things your brother could have been. And he was never any different. You couldn’t have changed him, and in every single future that would have been after the Conclave, he killed Ash. Sometimes he sent other people, and sometimes he did it himself, but he always killed her. You took his life to save her life, Em.”
I gaped at her, realising why she’d been whispering outside. She hadn’t wanted Ember to overhear us and
have exactly the same doubt I was having right now. Because Georgie could have seen all those things. She could have made a Terence map and Seen everything she’d described.
Or she could just know that Ember needed her to be sure.
“Ash? Did she just move?”
I looked at Ember, hoping so hard it hurt. “I don’t know!”
We searched for any sign of life. But Ember was as still as she’d been before, and – no. Wait. “I think … Georgie, are her eyelids fluttering?”
“Her hand! Ash, her hand just twitched!”
I started to shake Em, gently but firmly. “Ember? Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
Her eyes blinked open. “Ash?”
“Yes! It’s us, Em, it’s me and Georgie! Um – you should sit up! Sit up so you don’t fall back asleep.”
Between us, Georgie and I helped her into a sitting position, the both of us grinning like idiots at each other and at Em. Ember gazed around the cave in bewilderment. “I’m in the caves? I – I was on the Steeps.”
“That was a month ago, Em!”
“A month?” She clutched at my arm. “My family … Neville …”
“Your family is in Spinifex City, and Neville is dead. It’s over, Em. It’s all over.”
“Over? You mean … Ash, did we win? Is everyone okay?”
“We won,” I answered quietly. “But everyone isn’t okay.” I looked across at Georgie, who was staring down at the ground and not smiling any more. Then I looked back at Em and said the words I knew Georgie didn’t want to have to say, that she should never have to say. “Daniel’s dead, Em. Everyone else is okay, Jules is okay, but … Daniel’s dead.”
Ember drew in a breath that had a whimper at the edges of it, and then another. She turned to Georgie, reaching out to lay her hand very gently on hers. “I’m so sorry.”
Georgie threw her arms around and buried her face against Em’s hair, and I hugged them both. The three of us sat there like that for a while, saying nothing and grieving together. Eventually we broke apart, and I began to tell Ember the story of everything that had happened since the Steeps. Sometimes Georgie interrupted and sometimes she was quiet. At the end of it she stood up, holding out her hands to me and Ember both, and said, “You have to come.”
The Foretelling of Georgie Spider Page 26