by Kit Alloway
“It can’t be,” she said.
Feodor gave her one of his polite little smiles. “Begging your pardon, I must insist that it is.”
Alice stopped shaking her head and leaned forward, as if to see him better. “Feodor?” Then she began to laugh. “Feodor. Feodor. It is you.”
“Słoneczko,” Feodor said, and then he was standing at her bedside, holding her hands in his, just as Josh had done, and they were both crying.
As much as Josh wanted to stay and be part of the reunion, as much as she felt like she was part of it, she forced herself to back out of the room. As she gently closed the door, Feodor turned and caught her eye, and he mouthed the word dziękuję.
Thank you.
Josh nodded and left him alone with Alice. Will was wearing the same sappy smile she felt on her own face.
“What did he call her?” Will asked.
“Słoneczko?” Josh smiled deeper. “It means ‘sunshine.’”
They stood in the hallway, smiling at each other. Will didn’t ask if it was safe to leave Feodor and Alice alone; they both knew it was.
Twenty−two
“So,” Will said as Josh pulled back onto the road an hour later. “What did Alice say?”
In the backseat, Feodor was staring out the window with a small smile on his lips.
“Pardon?” he asked when Will spoke to him.
Will had never seen Feodor look happy before. He hadn’t really been sure the man could be happy. Not before today. Now, Feodor’s gray eyes were light, and though he kept wiping his smile off his mouth and straightening his expression like he was shaking out a bedsheet, the smile always crept back.
For the first time, Will wondered if Feodor was capable of love.
“You remembered to ask Alice about Peregrine, didn’t you?” Will asked.
“Yes, of course. She said she hasn’t spoken to him in half a century. However, she did have a visitor about six months ago: Bash Mirrettiso.”
“Dammit,” Josh muttered. “That long ago?”
“He introduced himself as a young dream theorist at Willis-Audretch, no doubt compared himself to me. Unfortunately, Alice’s thinking is not entirely clear, and she told him where to find my papers.”
“What?” Josh cried. “Why? We told her—you told her to burn them!”
Will tried to ignored Josh’s creepy use of the word “we.”
“She felt unable to do so for … sentimental reasons,” Feodor admitted.
“What’s in those papers?” Will asked Josh.
“Everything he was working on up until a year before Maplefax. Light harmonics, spatial barrier theory, the subtle body…” Josh trailed off, and Will put his hand on the steering wheel, worried by the faraway look in her eye.
“Do the papers explain how to treat the magnets and crystals he’d need to switch bodies?” Will asked.
Josh clenched her jaw. “Yes.”
Will’s pulse began to thrum quickly through his temples, and he took a series of slow breaths to calm himself.
“Everything’s written in Polish,” Josh pointed out.
“He could get a translator,” Will said. The slow breaths weren’t working for him. His doctor had given him a medication to take when the anxiety got too bad, but he’d left it at the house.
“If Peregrine can decipher my work,” Feodor said, “which is, as you Americans say, ‘a big if,’ and combine it with the details Geoff can provide, it is possible that he could recreate some of my experiments. However, I don’t believe that is likely.”
Will ground his palms on the knees of his jeans. Mirren said Feodor’s last manuscript barely made sense, he reminded himself. If someone as well educated in dream theory as Mirren couldn’t follow it, there’s no way Peregrine could. He isn’t even patient enough to read through it.
“What happens if Peregrine pulls it off?” Will asked. “Once he’s in Snitch’s body, he can control the Dream, right?”
“Probably.”
“So he’ll start staging nightmares.”
Josh gave a grudging nod.
“This is really bad,” Will said. “I’m … I’m very concerned about how bad this is.”
He unbuckled his seat belt and put his head between his knees. At least when Peregrine had been staging nightmares from his basement there had been practical limitations. Not only had he needed to dress up and work with the dreamer’s existing nightmare, but he’d had no control over whose nightmare he walked into. With complete control of the Dream, Will was pretty sure he’d be able to call any sleeping soul to him, and he could create elaborate dreams for them—dreams that changed the way they felt or thought.
“Will,” Josh said, and he felt her put her hand, small and hot, on his back. “Do you want me to pull over?”
“No,” he said, but he stayed with his face hidden in the cave of his body and repeated a mantra he’d worked on in counseling.
In this moment, I am safe.
He repeated it mentally about a dozen times before he was able to sit up and put his seat belt back on. Afterward, Josh reached for his hand, and he gave it to her. She flashed an apologetic smile too.
“I’m okay,” he said.
“I know.”
From the backseat, Feodor said, “Alice expressed an unusual interest in you, Josh.”
“I know,” Josh said. “She got really weird when she realized who I was.”
“You’re her best friend’s granddaughter,” Will pointed out, trying not to worry about Peregrine. “I’m sure she saw a lot of Dustine in you.”
“No,” Josh said. “It was something else. At first she thought I was Del, and she wasn’t freaked out at all.”
“She asked a number of questions about you,” Feodor said.
“What kind of questions?” Will asked.
“Whether or not Josh has unusual skill in dream walking. If she has unusual skills in other areas. If she is wise.”
Will saw Josh jump in her seat at the word “wise.”
“Alice’s questions,” Feodor continued, “suggest that Dustine observed something unusual about you.”
“Everybody observes it,” Will said. “The whole dream-walking world knows how good Josh is.”
“I don’t believe that’s what she meant,” Feodor said. “Josh, all of this continues to point to the idea that something extraordinary happened before you were born.”
“Continues?” Will asked.
Josh told him about the prophesies, which made him feel guilty on top of his anxiety.
I left her to deal with all of this alone. Or with Feodor, which is as good as alone.
At the same time, he felt the heaviness of these new problems pressing down on him. More to deal with, more to try to survive with love intact.
He squeezed her shoulder.
“I talked to Dad,” Josh said. “He doesn’t remember anything unusual about my birth or the year before it. He said Mom was a nervous mother, but I was her first baby.”
“Did you ask Alice about Josh’s birth?” Will asked Feodor.
“Yes. She refused to answer, although indirectly. She did, however, imply that we should ask Ben Sounclouse.”
“Young Ben?” Josh repeated. “Because he’s a seer?”
“No,” Feodor said, “because he was your grandmother’s lover for decades.”
Josh nearly swerved off the road again.
“Young Ben and my grandma?!” she shouted.
In the backseat, Feodor wore an amused smile.
“They were engaged before he deployed for World War II and was incorrectly reported dead. Dustine developed a severe depression, and Peregrine staged nightmares for her to convince her to marry him. Only later did they learn that Ben was alive.”
“Why didn’t she leave Peregrine?” Josh asked.
“She spoke of it many times, but she was afraid he would kill her if she left. I suspect that each time their relationship became tumultuous, Peregrine resumed staging nightmares for her, ni
ghtmares that made her afraid to leave.”
“That’s terrible,” Will said. “That takes domestic violence to a whole new level.”
“So she just stayed with Peregrine and had an affair with Young Ben?” Josh asked.
“That was the situation when I was exiled,” Feodor said. “Dustine and Ben were … quite devoted to each other.”
“You know,” Will said, “Ben has aged really fast since Dustine died. And he’s put on a lot of weight.”
“All those times he came over for tea with Grandma,” Josh marveled. “It never occurred to me that they were dating.”
She was interrupted by Will’s phone ringing.
“Hey, Whim,” Will said, glancing at the ID as he answered. “What’s up?”
“Where the hell are you, man?”
Whim’s voice was even higher than usual. He sounded like he’d chugged one of Trembuline’s energy drinks.
“I’m with Josh and Feodor. I texted Kerstel about it. What’s going on there?”
“Kerstel’s having the baby!”
Will’s adrenaline jumped to life. “Right now?”
“I mean, if not now, pretty soon. You’ve got to get back here!”
“We’re about eight hours away. We’ll probably miss it. Can you tell her we love her?”
“Yeah, and guess what else happened? That weirdo from Winsor’s party showed up again.”
“The guy with the walker? Sam?” Will couldn’t figure out how these two things were on par with each other in Whim’s mind.
“Yeah. He took a taxi here. Winsor was already having a rough day. She went completely hysterical, took her bedtime meds, and went back to sleep. What’s this guy trying to do? Torture her?”
I think it’s her that’s torturing him, Will thought to himself.
“Josh and I’ll track him down and have a talk with him. Maybe we’ll take Feodor.”
“Jesus, hasn’t Feodor done enough to him already?”
“I was actually thinking that Feodor could help him put what happened in context, but I take your point.”
When he hung up, Josh said, “What’s going on?”
“Kerstel’s in labor.” Despite his anxiety over Peregrine, Will couldn’t help smiling. “We’re gonna have a baby brother, probably by the time we get home.”
“Skippy,” Josh said, although she sounded overwhelmed by the idea.
In the backseat, Feodor lay his head against the window.
“Isn’t that lovely,” he murmured.
* * *
They dropped Feodor off at the chair factory and drove home. Although it was only dinnertime, Will was exhausted. He hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours, and the emotional toll of seeing Trembuline and Alice had drained him. But just as Josh turned the car toward home, Will got a text from Deloise.
“Josh, we have to go to the hospital,” he said. “Your little brother was just born.”
“That’s awesome. Did they name him Ziggy?”
Will wasn’t certain how serious his parents were about naming their baby Zigoshinoc—or rather, how serious they had been.
“No,” he told Josh. “They named him Keri. Because he’s a girl.”
Josh laughed all the way to the hospital.
Twenty−three
Haley ran farther than he ever had. He couldn’t even guess how far he’d gone—eight, ten miles? He just kept running, the book of his life tucked under one arm, until his knees began to weaken and black spots flickered in his vision.
Stumbling to a walk, he staggered into the forest. He didn’t want to risk being visible from the road in case Ian was following him.
Beyond a little hill, he found a small stream and sat down on its edge. He had his hand in the water before he remembered the warning Mirren had given him before they entered Death. Don’t eat anything, drink anything, accept any gifts, walk barefoot, or tell anyone your name.
Reluctantly, Haley withdrew his hand from the water. He wasn’t actually thirsty, he realized; he just wanted to cool down.
He guessed it was a few hours past noon, but it was hard to tell in the forest. Shafts of golden sunlight broke in between the branches, illuminating floating pollen and small, harmless bugs. The stream was nearly silent. But despite the peace of the place, Haley couldn’t relax.
Ian wanted Haley’s body.
He still felt sick. When he held out his arm, he saw that the usual shy, nervous violet color he displayed was spotted with ugly gray vortexes. He couldn’t repress a little cry at the sight of them.
Ian poisoned me.
Overwhelmed by hopelessness, he curled up beside the creek and cried.
I’m never going home. Mirren and Josh aren’t coming back for me. Ian is going to destroy my soul so he can have my body.
He cried because he was tired, and afraid, and because there was no one there to watch him. He cried because his brother had turned against him, had lost the ability to love, had lost himself—
Don’t lose yourself, Mirren said. Don’t lose yourself.
Haley didn’t know if saving himself from Ian was possible. He was almost afraid to hope it was, because he didn’t think he had enough energy to fight. And maybe that was for the best. Maybe Ian did deserve a second chance. Maybe that’s why God had sent Haley here.
The book, still clutched to his chest, grew warm. Haley sat up to look at it and saw that it had its own aura, a rainbow of different shades. The colors twinkled as if beckoning him.
Gently, he opened the cover. On the first page, his name was written in a dramatic hand in black ink. Haley turned that page, and he couldn’t hold back a smile when he realized that his life was written in the book … as a graphic novel.
Haley had always loved graphic novels. He’d read all the good ones, from Blankets to Violent Cases to Maus, fascinated by stories of people stronger than he was. Now he saw his own life, every frame in full color, every aura meticulously shaded, every glimpse of the future illustrated.
He saw himself and Ian as infants, indistinguishable in matching blue onesies. He watched himself meet Josh, watched his father leave, watched his mother’s anxiety worsen. He read along as Ian opened his scroll and destroyed his own life, then took over Haley’s body and ran from country to country abusing it. Finally he reached the pages where Mirren appeared, her hair a voluminous red cloud on the page, and then the transition to Death, where this new, twisted Ian appeared like all comic villains, enormous, hulking, bathed in shadows.
What he read in those pages wasn’t how he had wasted his life; it was how hard he had worked to do no harm.
With his expanded perception, he could have manipulated people, taken advantage of people, shared their secrets, exposed their most private dreams, forced them to change. But he never, ever had. Instead he had watched them and learned who they really were and who they wanted to be, and by the time he met Mirren, he was ready to start helping nudge people to grow into themselves. She had given him that opportunity.
I haven’t wasted my life, he realized. I’ve just been getting ready to help people.
The last frame showed Haley, sitting by the stream and reading the book of his life. But the rest of the pages were blank.
I haven’t seen the future since I’ve been here, he realized, gently closing the book, which felt more precious than ever. Maybe the future doesn’t exist here.
He wasn’t disappointed that the book couldn’t tell him what would happen next.
It meant he still had a chance to survive.
* * *
He hiked back to the road and began to walk. The road—now dirt again—wound up and down mountains, each one taller and steeper than the last. Haley huffed and puffed and stopped to stretch, but the dead he passed by moved effortlessly. Some of them floated several inches off the ground.
Haley didn’t know how he could ever have been afraid of them. Their auras were luminous and trimmed with gold, and their faces radiated profound joy and peace. Once, when Haley twisted
his ankle on a loose rock, a little boy with a spring-green aura healed it for him. Haley felt happy every time he saw one of the dead now.
People are so afraid of Death, he thought, working his way across a rope bridge. If they could see this, they’d never be afraid again.
Midafternoon, he ascended a mountain and found a long, flat plateau on top. Mist swirled around the plateau, suffused with the sweet colors of the auras of the dead.
In the middle of the plateau, a two-story bonfire burned. Haley couldn’t see a source of fuel; the flames came out of the very rock. The longer he gazed at the fire, the more he thought that the flames seemed to bend near their orange tips, into a shape almost like a doorway.
He watched as, one by one, the dead walked into the flames and through the doorway. They didn’t come out the other side.
It’s an archway, Haley realized. It’s the archway between Death and the Dream.
Many of the dead weren’t going through the archway, though. Or at least, they weren’t going through the archway immediately. Instead they sat or stood with another dead person, their hands clasped, looking at one another, their energy fields entwined, communicating in some way Haley couldn’t name.
He was loath to interrupt them, but he waited until a teenage girl with a pumpkin-orange aura began to walk away from her partner, and he said, “Excuse me. Is Dustine still here?”
She smiled at him and pointed. Haley couldn’t have explained how she knew who he was talking about, or how he’d known she would, but he sensed that information was less restricted here, less personal. Everyone became omniscient as they gave away their personalities; souls had access to all knowledge.
Haley thanked her, and she gave him a kiss on the cheek that left him awed by her joyfulness. Then she walked into the archway of flames.
He went in the direction she had pointed, working his way around the people standing in pairs. A woman with an aura the color of sapphires drew his attention, and he couldn’t resist stepping closer to her.
She released the hands of the man who had been standing with her, and he smiled at her before walking away. Then she turned to Haley and offered her hands.