Dreamfire

by Kit Alloway

  Feodor threw the switch back the other way, and in seconds, the fog and the images dispersed. Josh glanced back at the canisters just as their lights faded completely.

  “As you can see,” he said, “the machine is incomplete. I have almost pierced the universal barrier into the World, but not quite. I need a few more souls for that.”

  Josh remembered what Haley had said when she’d asked why Feodor wanted souls: Fuel?

  He’d been exactly right.

  “You made a machine powered by souls,” Will said, coming to stand next to Josh.

  “Yes. Nothing here in Warsaw can power an escape—the architects saw to that. Souls were the only things I could acquire that weren’t made from the fabric of this universe.”

  Josh guessed the wall held close to sixty canisters. “But how do you get the souls into the canisters?” she asked, hoping he would tell her something that would help Winsor.

  Feodor responded with a condescending smile, as if he doubted her ability to understand his explanation. “Magnets,” he said simply. “Manipulations of the body’s subtle electromagnetic energy field which render the flesh inhospitable to the spirit. Or, if that’s too sophisticated for you, think of it this way: the gas tank is a vacuum, the mask is a hose, and the spirit gets sucked out of the lungs like biscuit crumbs from a carpet.” He chuckled. “I think of it as a modern interpretation of the Egyptian ‘opening of the mouth’ ceremony.”

  Josh didn’t know what that meant, and she didn’t care. “What does it do to the bodies?”

  “The effect is similar to that of being struck by lightning. Without a soul to generate spiritual energy and the will to live, the body is directionless and will eventually wilt.”

  “Can the souls be returned to the bodies?”

  Feodor made a funny face, as if she were entertainingly queer. “It is possible, should one desire such a thing. The empty bodies are quite useful, however, quite … malleable.”

  “What does that mean?” Will asked.

  “It means he did something to the bodies he got his hands on,” Josh said, glancing at Gloves. “Something that allows him to control them and allows them to alter the Dream.” She looked back at Feodor; he was smiling at her, pleased by her assessment. “More magnets?” she asked.

  “Magnets,” he said, as if making her a promise, “are only the beginning.”

  Sickened, Josh turned away from him. Looking back at the wall of canisters, she felt glad that Winsor’s soul was not trapped among them.

  She hadn’t noticed before because she had been so absorbed by the lights, but each canister had a label attached to it near the bottom. Some labels held numbers, others names.

  “Do all of those canisters have souls in them?” Will asked. His voice sounded as stricken as Josh felt.

  “All but one.”

  Feodor reached out and tapped a canister. Josh and Will both leaned close to read the label.

  Joshlyn Weavaros.

  Josh released a shocked little cry. “What the hell is that?” Will demanded.

  “I would have made one for you,” Feodor promised him, “but I didn’t know you were coming. Or Hianselian the Second.” He gestured to Haley, who stood by the window to the white room.

  Josh went to stand with Haley, wanting to get as far as possible from the canister that bore her name. “How did you know I was coming?” she asked Feodor.

  Feodor smirked. “Your grandfather told me that you would.”

  Too stunned to reply, Josh watched Feodor fiddle with the tubing where it connected to the funnel. “That is why people come here, of course. They bring me their sons, their husbands, their boyfriends, a child once or twice. Some even bring themselves, the arrogant snots.” He glanced back at Josh. “But Peregrine was the first to bring me a granddaughter.”

  “Peregrine doesn’t even know I’m here,” Josh said. “He didn’t send me.”

  “No? You came after your Hianselian. I imagine you rushed to action as soon as you learned he was here. How did you come by that information? An anonymous letter? A carelessly spoken word? A document you should not have seen left out by accident?”

  Josh’s eyes whipped to meet Will’s. “Serpico?”

  He shook his head, but a line had appeared between his eyebrows. “I don’t know. Even if Peregrine did put him up to telling you about Geoff, how could he have known that you would figure out Ian was here?”

  “It wasn’t that big a leap. It hardly took two minutes.”

  Josh felt blood rush to her palms with the desire to grab a weapon.

  “Okay, but why set you up to come here?” Will asked.

  “Oh,” Feodor said, and laughed again. “He didn’t tell you, did he? Sometimes they don’t tell them, especially the young ones. After all, you might not have come if you’d known.”

  Satisfied that his funnel’s valves were sealed, he brushed his hands on a nearby rag and then said matter-of-factly, “Your grandfather believes that you, little Joshlyn, are the True Dream Walker. And he believes a very old rumor that I will initiate the True Dream Walker.”

  It was Josh’s turn to laugh.

  Maybe Will was right and she’d had too many shocks in one day, but she simply could not believe Feodor. Her grandfather didn’t think she was a creature of legend. He didn’t even like her; he just wanted to control her because she was … talented.

  Haley slipped his hand into hers. Josh stopped laughing, startled that he had touched her.

  “He’s right,” Haley said in a hushed voice. “You are the True Dream Walker.”

  Dumbfounded, she gaped at him.

  It was Will who burst out, “What?”

  Haley shrugged, and then he laughed as if relieved. He had a sort of half-hysterical glee on his face. “I’ve been waiting so long to tell you that. You can’t imagine.”

  You’re right, Haley: I can’t imagine.

  “You’re insane,” Josh told him. His face froze and then fell, but Josh didn’t feel even a glimmer of sympathy. They were in a madman’s re-creation of WWII Poland trying to dismantle a machine powered by souls, and she didn’t have time to listen to nonsense. “I’m not the True Dream Walker, Haley. That’s absurd. Every mention of the True Dream Walker in scrolls over the years has talked about him and his return, and how he’ll be able to alter the Dream at will. None of that stuff applies to me.”

  “No,” Will said. “Everybody’s a him in old documents.”

  “It’s ridiculous.”

  Haley looked at Feodor, as if he expected the man to yield backup. When Feodor only yawned indifferently, Haley’s next try was Will, who joined them near the window-wall. Josh watched them communicate silently, remembering the strange bond they had formed, and she wanted to protest, to stop this absurd discussion, to keep them from ganging up on her.

  “Listen,” Will said to her. “Maybe when your grandfather kept asking me if I had ever seen you alter the Dream, he wasn’t implying that you were working with the trench-coat men. Maybe what he wanted to know was whether or not it was possible that you’re the True Dream Walker.”

  Josh just shook her head. She couldn’t believe they were having this conversation, and now of all times. Feodor wanted to put her soul in a canister on his wall, and she was arguing about mythology.

  Haley looked at her hopefully again. “I don’t believe it,” she told him.

  “You have to believe it.”

  “I don’t.”

  Will threw his hands up in the air and laughed. “Why the hell not? This explains why your grandfather was so weird, why you’re so good at dream walking, why you have such great instincts. I just thought you were breaking Stellanor’s First Rule all the time—”

  “I do break Stellanor’s First Rule all the time!” Josh shouted.

  They stared at each other. “You do?” Will asked.

  “Pretty much every time I walk into a nightmare I break Stellanor. And how the hell did you figure that out?”

  “I don’t know
. Maybe because I watch every single thing you do in-Dream, and every time we go in, you stand there with your eyes shut for a second, and afterward you know all this stuff I don’t know. Which is something no one else seems to be capable of, by the way, and only makes me more certain that you’re the True Dream Walker. Maybe that’s why your grandfather tried to blackmail you for your scroll, because it’s written in there.”

  “It’s not in my scroll,” Josh told him.

  “It’s in your real scroll,” Haley said.

  Oh, no.

  “The real one?” Will asked, in a voice higher and tighter than before. “What about the one you have?”

  His eyes flashed to hers, and she felt whatever ground had been recaptured between them in the last hour roll out from under her feet. “It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “Just forget about the scroll. It doesn’t matter what it says.”

  But her words were too little too late, because Will stared at her as if she had knifed him in the belly. “Tell me, Josh.”

  But what could she say? If she lied, he would know, and she couldn’t bring herself to speak the truth.

  Will stared at her, a deep line between his eyebrows. He kept waiting for her to speak, and when she didn’t—couldn’t—he slowly lifted his hands and turned the palms up helplessly. She’d seen that look on his face once before, in a nightmare where the dreamfire had swallowed him, and she realized for the first time that this rejection from her and her world wasn’t just a fear for him, but a fear so deep it threatened his sense of self.

  You finally did it, Josh. You broke his heart.

  “Now that we’ve established that you have believers,” Feodor said impatiently, “let’s move on to the testing, shall we?”

  No, Josh thought. She kept grabbing at Will’s eyes with her own, but he’d lowered his face to the floor. But Feodor continued his lecture, indifferent to his guests’ drama.

  “Do you know what a Tempering is? It is how the monarchy used to prove the worth of kings and queens to rule. Someone told me not long ago that the monarchy had been overthrown. I certainly hope that’s not true.”

  He looked at Josh as if she might inform him further, but she said nothing. She didn’t care about Feodor’s desire for news, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass about the monarchy. After the damage she had just done to Will, she didn’t care about much except revenge.

  Anger was replacing the pain she felt, and that was good.

  “But yes, you’re right, no time for history lessons. Back to the Tempering. I will put you in that room”—Feodor gestured to the other side of the glass wall—“and then, using this little device”—he pointed with one finger to a piece of quartz crystal wrapped in silver wire that stuck out of the wall—“I will bombard you with every awful memory I possess and every negative emotion I’ve ever felt. And believe me, there are quite a few. Eventually—perhaps in minutes, perhaps in an hour or two—your soul will flee from your body and from that room through a pipe in the ceiling, coming out here”—he ran his hand along a rubber tube that connected to the canister with Josh’s name on it—“and providing the final burst of energy necessary for my drill to dig out of this prison of mine.”

  “That’s never going to work,” Josh said. The evening was only becoming more surreal.

  “If you’re the True Dream Walker,” Feodor agreed with a condescending smile, “I suppose it won’t. But you aren’t the True Dream Walker, are you? And you should keep in mind that it has worked on dozens of other people, so it won’t do for you to doubt my methods.”

  He had a point there.

  Josh tightened her grip on Haley’s hand. “And then what about my soul?” she asked, mocking Feodor with her tone. “I’ll sit in a canister for the rest of eternity? That sounds like fun.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s so unpleasant,” Feodor said, his voice softening. He looked at her with gray eyes that, under other circumstances, she might have found beautiful. “I imagine it’s much like being held. We all want to be held, no? Held up, held together, held close.” He walked toward her with slow steps. “How would you like to be held, Joshlyn? And by whom?”

  He lifted his eyebrows as he spoke the last word, which made Josh’s stomach clench.

  “Not you,” she said.

  “Ah, too bad. Of course, once your soul flees, your body—now freed from the limitations of a mind imbued with consciousness—will be able to alter the Dream at will, and at that time I will go about making the arrangements we discussed earlier, involving magnets, that will allow me to give you commands. So I suppose that, in a sense, I will be able to hold both your soul and your body, and we will set forth into the World at large, I the master, and you and Hianselian the servants.” He smiled again, pleased with himself. “Rather incredible, the things I discovered in this laboratory, no? A pity so few people have ever heard of them. But they will, after I leave this place. Someday the entire world will know my name.”

  Will, who had been standing bent at the waist, his hands on his knees, straightened slowly. Josh thought that maybe he was angry too, because he asked Feodor coldly, “Is the rumor true?”

  Feodor glanced at him. “Which one?”

  “The one Peregrine believes, that you’ll initiate the True Dream Walker.”

  Feodor considered. He’d lost his smile, and Josh wondered if anyone had ever asked him that question before.

  “I don’t know. I can only tell you what my mother told me: that my scroll said I would Temper the True Dream Walker. But she said that just before she died of blood loss. In my arms, as you Americans would say. Seeing as both of her legs had just been blown off, she may not have been thinking clearly.”

  His humor was gone, replaced by a chill bitterness. He still looked at Will, but his eyes were unfocused by memory.

  Will took a few steps toward him. “Someone told me that you tried to summon the True Dream Walker, that you destabilized the Dream to do it.”

  “Yes, yes,” Feodor murmured, “I did that.”

  “You must have wanted the True Dream Walker back very, very badly to do such a thing.”

  Feodor’s gaze sharpened. “If you had seen Europe crumble like a dry cracker, you might have done the same.” Then he clapped his hands together, creating a sound like a gunshot. “Enough reminiscing. On to the test.”

  He lifted a hand, and Josh’s body rose off the ground. She looked down at her feet, scrabbling to find the floor again, but Feodor flung his arm, and she spun through the air. Haley tried to keep hold of her hand, rushing after her like a child chasing a balloon, but Josh was moving too fast.

  She flew through the doorway to the white room beyond the glass wall, where Feodor let her fall to the floor. She felt a strange jerk and saw her lighter and compact float out of her pants pocket and back into the laboratory. Then the door slammed shut.

  She had known that Feodor might be able to alter his universe, and she had seen him change his projection of himself, but Josh hadn’t expected him to be able to hurl people about like badminton birdies.

  We should never have come here, she realized.

  White tile covered the walls and floor, even the ceiling, and now that she was inside the room, Josh realized that silver wire ran in a grid between the tiles. Tiny crystals hung from the wire. They looked like Christmas lights, but Josh knew they served a more sinister purpose. Somehow, they allowed Feodor to channel his emotion into the room.

  In several places around the room, Josh saw flaking brown smears of blood and puddles of what might once have been vomit. She looked up, into the pipe through which Feodor had promised her soul would flee. Right now, it offered no escape, being far too small to climb through.

  Josh knew she needed to use these precious moments to come up with a plan, but she was so terrified that her mind darted from one idea to another, never staying with one long enough to develop it. She tried the obvious things: yanking on the locked doorknob, throwing herself at the window. Catching the bottom of the pipe
, she used it to swing herself up high enough to kick the ceiling, but the tile there felt just as sturdy as the walls and floor.

  She watched through the window as two chairs slid across the floor to face her through the window. She couldn’t hear them, but she knew they must have made an awful racket. Feodor deposited Will and Haley in them, and with a dance of his fingers, made ropes bind their wrists to the chairs’ armrests. Will thrashed like a tiger; Haley just grew pale. Invisible hands gathered the compacts and lighters from their pockets and dropped them on a far-off table.

  For a moment, her eyes met Will’s. I’m sorry, she mouthed, and he shook his head. Josh didn’t know what that meant, and she didn’t have time to find out because Feodor went to stand by the window-wall. Meeting Josh’s eyes, he smiled and gave her a mock salute. Then he put his hand on the crystal protruding from the wall.

  She’d thought he would need to warm up or gather his memories, but the pain hit her instantly, like a ten-foot ocean wave knocking her across the room and onto her back. When she reached out to push it away, her hands met nothing, and the pain turned into a sound, a high-pitched wail that made her wrap her arms around her head.

  Then she smelled the pain. At first she thought she’d found a moment of relief, because she smelled woodsmoke and thought of a campfire, but the woodsmoke carried odors of less pleasant things with it. The scent of burning gasoline clawed at her throat; cooking flesh made her gag; and then the smoke turned chemical, its own weapon of war, and Josh lay on the floor coughing until the scents turned to tastes and she rolled onto her side to add her vomit to the collection on the white tile.

  Then Feodor hit her everywhere at once, all her senses, and she was blind and deaf, caught in her own head where her mind tried to make sense of the feelings of agony and anguish by imagining terrible events: the deaths of everyone she loved, eternity spent alone, the end of all life; but the emotions themselves were what suffocated her. Despair, helplessness, hatred.

  I have to hang on, she thought—but what was there to hang on to? Her memories of her life slipped away, forced out of her head by Feodor’s own, and she saw Warsaw as he remembered it, everything on fire, constant shouting, panic without end. She heard his sister, Bryga, so small, screaming until her throat bled. She saw his mother die just as he had described, and felt Feodor’s raging misery as, one by one, he lost every single person who mattered to him. She saw the world transformed until he could recognize nothing good in it, and she saw him walk for days and only find more of the same.