The Waking Dreamer

by J. E. Alexander

  “No longer,” Amala said stoically, turning as Oliver spoke.

  “There is something out there. Do you hear it?”

  Amala and Rhiannon narrowed their eyes, both searching the forest’s darkness.

  “Aye. It’s about—”

  “—five hundred yards north,” Keiran and Oliver said at the same time.

  Oliver’s head snapped around to where Emmett was standing, and a second later Keiran did the same thing. They both stared at something in the trees beyond Emmett, and both cocked their heads to the side as they listened.

  “It’s changed direction—”

  “—at least three hundred and fifty yards due south,” Keiran finished.

  Again, both Bards spun toward a sound only they could hear, listening to a distant point, facing away from Emmett. “Now it’s in the east—”

  “No, it’s in the west!” Oliver corrected as they both spun around.

  Amala stepped toward Emmett as Rhiannon, too, drew closer to him. Amala’s serpents hissed and uncoiled from around her shoulder, winding down her arms. The Druids each raised their arms above their hips as if expecting an attack. With their sparkling eyes widening, both stared into the obscuring forest for signs of attack.

  Before Emmett could say anything, a twig snapped sharply in the distance. Amala reacted before Emmett could even process what was happening, feeling the strength of her grip on his arm as she bore him almost aloft in the air. With a backward stumble, Emmett managed to twist around before diving to the ground, with Amala’s form crouched over him defensively.

  “Stay down!”

  Rhiannon’s arms spun outward, an iron stave the length of her body now twirling in her hands above her head even as the hawk circled above. Keiran had dashed for Amala and Emmett as Oliver fell to a crouching position like a cat waiting to pounce. Both Bards’ eyes closed and turned their ears up to the night as they strained to hear the smallest of movements.

  Keiran was standing guard with Amala over Emmett as Rhiannon slowly circled them and Oliver stood a few yards away still listening for the unseen presence. Emmett was so winded from the pain of being thrown to the hard ground that he had to struggle just to speak.

  “The Archivist?” Emmett managed to ask.

  “Until we know for certain, Emmett, we must assume otherwise,” Keiran said.

  Another twig snapped. Another. Then another. As if something were charging toward them.

  “From the north, two hundred yards,” Oliver said as he spun in place to face the direction from where the sound was coming. As one, the others turned, though Amala’s serpents continued to pivot in the air to watch behind her.

  Suddenly, the direction of the sound shifted, and now it sounded as if the running was coming from another direction.

  “From the west, one hundred yards,” Keiran noted, and again they all moved in preparation.

  “Eighty yards.”

  “Sixty.”

  “Defensive positions. Now!” Amala commanded.

  Again, the running was now coming from a different approach. “East now, fifty yards,” Oliver called out. Emmett felt Amala place one hand onto the back of his shoulder and squeeze firmly as she crouched low over his prone body.

  The sound of the hurtling form in the forest changed direction again, and this time it was so close that neither Bard had to call it out for all four of them to turn as one to face it. The sound ended suddenly, and they all collectively held their breath.

  Something flew out of the forest, hurtling through the air faster than any human could run on the ground and faster than any bird could fly. Emmett had only a moment to catch a glimpse of it as the form landed on the ground a dozen yards from him and fell into a graceful tumble before uncoiling upward and bursting into motion directly for him.

  Oliver had already loosed a deafening roar of sound at the figure, but its movement through the air was so fast that it had avoided it entirely. Rhiannon’s body was a blur of motion as she spun around several times and brought her stave around again and again. The form tumbled low and then broke into a run so fast that it easily avoided her attacks, as if Rhiannon’s stave chased the form’s shadow.

  Amala did not move from standing guard over Emmett, and he saw Keiran step in front of them with his arms spread wide open as he unleashed a heavy, forceful bellow that rolled directly over the form. It spun forward on the ground in a tumble before unfolding back up and sprinting around him.

  Oliver turned around and pierced the night with several short, abrupt notes that singed the air. The figure ran wide in a semi-circle around the group, jumping up several feet into the air and propelling itself over several low-hanging branches from trees on the periphery of the forest. Oliver’s notes crashed into the trees and splintered them easily, Rhiannon’s powerful swings felling large trees and upending smaller ones. Through it all, the form escaped unharmed, so fast and agile it was.

  “What the bloody hell is it?” Keiran managed to ask before taking another deep breath and unleashing a strident note that produced an invisible force that missed the form by several yards as it leapt through the trees.

  “Where is the Archivist?” Rhiannon responded, watching the figure disappear into the forest before hurtling out of the trees again and bounding directly for them.

  Oliver loosed another series of notes that the figure deftly leapt over before twisting and contorting through the wide slashes of Rhiannon’s diving hawk. The figure was within reach of Keiran when he extended his open palm outward and bellowed deeply. Its speed was too great for the eyes to track, the figure seeming to pirouette and contort around him.

  The figure was so close to Emmett that he could feel the rush of wind as it seemed to swim through the air. Amala stood her ground, sweeping her serpents at a spot where the figure had once been. The figure dove underneath her so fast that she did not have time to recover the motion, and she was as easily off her feet as if the ocean had knocked her from the beach.

  Emmett spun over onto his back, struggling to get up despite the stranglehold the Rot had on his body. The figure loomed over him wild, formless, and insubstantial. Emmett’s vision was already blurring, and he could not tell if it was from the slow suffocation of the Rot, or the figure that was now atop him on the ground, having so easily defeated his four guardians.

  Dizzy with effort, in a distant corner of his mind, he recognized that he was taking his final breath. The darkness of the grave subsumed his vision as human hands pressed down on his chest.

  And then there was only black.

  He was surrounded by emptiness. The beginning of everything that came after. If life were a canvas upon which the people and experiences and everything learned or known is drawn, then this was the material from which the canvas was made.

  Emmett heard a voice: urgent, and with less confidence than before.

  “Follow me.”

  The nothingness coalesced with a whirling of colors and forms as Emmett’s consciousness transfixed onto a shaping substance within the chaos. Soon, his mind saw a world form beneath him, a vast plateau of green fields dotted with trees and shrubs that swayed soundlessly in a placid breeze. A wide, shimmering river of blue and white wound across the flat pastures of grasses as small animals grazed at the water’s edge.

  Emmett felt the dizzying movement of color as the ground rushed up toward him, his consciousness plummeting from the cloudless sky. As he drew closer, the animals took shape, their varying stripes and patterns sharpening in focus. Proud racks of horned antlers craned above the tall grasses as large, bristled hides moved just beneath the river’s surface. Mighty tusks of pristine ivory were raised with trumpeted calls from long trunks.

  His consciousness focused at a wide-reaching tree in the distance. Its massive, swollen trunk sported thick branches that tapered at their ends like giant, unearthed roots, spreading majestically outward with a dark green canopy of leaves and laden with large, bulbous gourds of fragrant fruit.

  Before
the canopy of the grand tree sat a lion, whose pensive eyes were cast along the distant horizon as a gentle breeze softly ruffled his brilliant and majestic mane. Seated underneath the tree just behind the lion in the canopy’s wide-reaching shadow sat a lone woman with her back to the engorged trunk. Her dark, aged skin folded over on itself with a plump, homely face that brightened with wide jowls and a bemused reflection in her eyes. They sparkled with the preoccupied expression of distant stars that have seen the coming and going of countless, untold eons.

  Emmett felt his consciousness drawn toward the figure, the waving grasses almost parting as he sped toward it. As he drew closer, he saw other animals standing near the figure in groups—gray gorillas, several tending young babies while lone silverbacks with shocks of white fur running along their backs paced in the distance. Elephants and giraffes grazed along the perimeter.

  He felt himself slow to within a few yards of the figure. Though distinctive in form, the definition of her face was shrouded by the tree’s shadow. Only the heavy lines that surrounded her starry eyes could be seen. An aged hand reached out to stroke one of the infant gorillas near her, which responded approvingly with a wide yawn of teeth as it settled against her hand.

  “Am I dead? Are you God?”

  The voice tickled his mind with a laugh that was full of the wonder and joy of an infant, the attentiveness and devotion of a mother, and the wisdom and patience of an old woman. The voice touched his consciousness like a waft of air carrying a soft whisper.

  “Neither.”

  Emmett recognized the peace that spread through his mind and the world around him. It was the voice he had heard before in his previous visions; an ageless, genderless voice that spoke to him from an imperceptible distance with the intimacy and immediacy of someone embracing his spirit.

  “Archivist?”

  “Indeed, I am here. I have been waiting for you.”

  At once, every single emotion he had experienced since the Underdweller’s attack—fear, anger, frustration, anxiety, confusion, appreciation, camaraderie, joy, love—all swelled through him at once like a symphony reaching a climactic crescendo of sound. He felt everything acutely and specifically, as if every moment had been leading to that moment, right then. The Archivist.

  “Can you heal me?”

  “Do you wish it?”

  “Yes!” Emmett exclaimed in his mind, wanting finally to be free of the gnawing pain of the Rot coursing through his body, penetrating his organs and claiming his body for itself. He wanted to be cleansed of the decaying flesh. He wanted to be free of the nausea and the discomfort that he felt whenever the Revenants were nearby. Most of all, he wanted to free Keiran and Amala of their duty, the burden they carried to protect him. The burden that he saw in their eyes when they looked at him and only by their faith in their Elder held out hope that they would reach her in time.

  Emmett expected to feel water washing over him or warmth passing over his skin. He expected the Archivist to reach for him and touch him, or direct some kind of light or sound at him. Yet none of those things happened. He felt no difference. Indeed, he did not feel or see that he had a body at all. And so he only knew that he had been healed when he felt the Archivist’s voice tickling his awareness.

  “It is done. And yet, it is just beginning. You sense this, don’t you?”

  “You say that as if I’m special in some way.”

  “Strength is often not measureable until it has been sufficiently tested.”

  “I have the gift of the Mara, don’t I? I’m a Dreamer.”

  “You are the last one who will see things that the others cannot; things that must be seen in your age. When the people of your age can no longer see, then death becomes an end rather than a beginning.”

  Emmett had been preparing himself to hear that he was entirely unremarkable and that there was nothing special about him. He wasn’t sure what to say now that he knew the opposite was true.

  “I’m the Waking Dreamer.”

  The Archivist’s eyes twinkled under the shadow of the mighty tree, and though some of her features remained hidden, Emmett thought he could almost see the crinkling of her face from an unseen smile.

  “It would appear that you are.”

  “What does that mean? Who am I really?”

  “Who do you think you are?”

  Had Emmett his body, he would have shrugged. Only weeks before, the question would have seemed meaningless. His name was Emmett Jonathan Brennan. He was nearly eighteen years old. He had no family or home. He was just a name and an age.

  “You are quite more than a name. You may not realize your impact until you see another person give their life for you.”

  Emmett saw Keiran’s face smiling at him. That Cheshire cat grin that seemed so amused by Emmett’s dry sarcasm and endless film references. He saw Amala’s face visiting him each night in his dreams, telling him he would one day save her even though it had been her up until this moment who had been saving him.

  “Keiran and Amala were ready to give their lives for me. How do I even begin to deserve something like that?”

  “When you no longer have to ask, then you will have earned it.”

  Emmett thought of the attack in the forest. His anxiety for his friends rolled outward from his awareness, upsetting the graceful animals around the great tree. The lion shook his mane heavily, the gorillas pounded their fists on the ground, and the elephants trumpeted nervously.

  The Archivist cooed the animals, and soon all were settled.

  Emmett saw that a glassy image had formed in the air. He saw himself lying on the ground with the large figure hovering over him. All was frozen in time: Oliver and Keiran lunging toward the figure as Rhiannon and Amala prepared to strike. Nothing was happening in that moment, though it still appeared as if they were in danger.

  “That is my Attendant.”

  Emmett thought of Dr. Hazrat’s Attendant, young Eitan, and he willed his awareness to look deeper into the image suspended in the air. Whereas young Eitan was petite, cultured, well mannered, and appropriately manicured, the Archivist’s Attendant was the farthest concept from human civilization.

  “Not the warmest welcome, really.”

  He saw that the form crouched over him was actually a woman: wild, untamed hair snarled with leaves and twigs caught in unkempt tufts, with layers of furs or skins woven together covering her body. She looked like someone who lived entirely in the wild, her face hidden mostly by her overgrown hair and her brown eyes alight with a feral sort of fire.

  She was clearly powerful. Emmett could remember now how she moved through the air with speed that outpaced even the Druids and Bards, who themselves moved with alacrity far greater than he had ever seen another human capable of. Yet the Attendant had not attacked any of them, deftly avoiding their attacks to finally reach Emmett, which had immediately pushed his awareness into this communion with the Archivist.

  “Next time just say hello and save everyone the bother of fighting.”

  “Her posture was not due to your presence.”

  Emmett recalled the procession of spirits fleeing through the forest. Again, he felt the heavy burden as he understood that his friends still were in danger.

  “It’s an Old One, isn’t it? The Hag has come for me.”

  “Not the Hag, Emmett. It is time that you finally remember.”

  The Archivist raised a hand pointed at his head. Suddenly, Emmett’s mind reeled under the weight of memories that raced to the surface. He was watching the moments following his birth, staring up into the green luna moths fluttering about the Archivist’s face. Amala the child was holding him, staring down at him. She was trembling now, frightened by the red eyes that had come for Emmett. The Grinning Man was searching for Emmett, the Waking Dreamer. It was not yet time. Then the Archivist named The Grinning Man just as Keiran named the Hag, and he was gone. Only to torment his mother in the hospital, searching for Emmett, until finally she died.

  “He came for
me!”

  “The Grinning Man is the harbinger of the Waking Dreamer, the final Mara of this age. The Grinning Man will take you, Emmett. And his Master will finally kill all the Children of the Earth.”

  The shadow cast by the tree overhead widened, and a coldness he had not felt blew through him. His mind focused upward to see a sky swollen suddenly with dark storm clouds like black shadows that stretched across the horizon. Emmett felt a tenseness pulse through the area as animals shifted nervously, many bounding away into the grasses as great winds whipped along.

  Emmett’s mind was finally pulling all of the pieces together.

  “Amala knew I was the Waking Dreamer all along.”

  “You are intertwined, as you always have been.”

  Emmett thought of her Companion, Keiran, and he saw the Archivist nod.

  “So is Keiran. Their journey is the Waking Dreamer’s journey.”

  “Which is what? What am I supposed to do?”

  “It has already begun, and it begins tonight. The Master sends The Grinning Man for you, and for the Children you will face him.”

  “Who is the Master? Who is this patron?”

  “The Rugged Mountain. The Unremarkable Man. He is the Second and is chief amongst the Old Ones. He is the true darkness of the world.”

  Already Emmett saw that the great shadow overhead had darkened the valley and swallowed the suspended image in the air.

  “Banish The Grinning Man, Emmett. Then go to the Lady Karina with Keiran and Amala. Your journey is theirs, too. It always has been, and it always will be. There is something important in Noronha for you next to learn.”

  Emmett felt the urgency of the moment as his consciousness began to fold in on itself, his mind racing with a tangle of half-formed questions.

  “What about Silvan Dea? Your Grove has been destroyed. What do they do?”

  The Archivist seemed to sigh with the feathery touch of her consciousness on his own.

  “Let the dead remain dead, Emmett.”

  Before Emmett could respond, he felt himself plummeting backward into a black void bereft of color or sound. With shocking awareness, sensation and feeling shot through his limbs like electricity, and his watery eyes opened to a starry, crisp night.