To her disappointment, neither Dream Gaius nor the unicorn were present.
“This is rather impressive,” Gaius looked around. “There’s so much detail. I thought dreams were fuzzy, you know, at least around the edges.”
“You asked what demons and the Raven can do. Look at this.” Rachel recalled standing in the forest by the statue.
“Nice statue,” murmured Zoë. A silvery light surrounded Zoë’s body when she was in the dreamlands nowadays, illuminating the meadow up to about twenty feet in all directions.
“Wow!” Gaius circled the statue. “It looks exactly the same. Impressive, Griffin!”
“Don’t go outside the silver light,” Zoë murmured. “You’ll fall out of dream land.”
“Good safety tip.” Gaius raised his eyebrows. “Fall out to…where.”
Zoë peered downward. “The classroom we just left.”
“O-kay,” murmured Gaius, his eyes a bit wide.
“Now, look at this.” Rachel recalled a different memory. Everything remained the same, except the statue of the woman now had large, stone, bird wings.
“Whoa!” murmured Zoë.
Gaius blinked. “What’s that?”
“That’s the same statue, as I saw it on the first day of school, in September.”
“But…” Gaius walked around the statue again. “Sure this isn’t a different statue?”
“Note the tear-streaks on the face. Note the split pine over there and that rounded boulder. This is the same spot.”
Gaius frowned. “I…don’t understand.”
“This is what it looked like the first time, and this…” Rachel called up the recent memory, “is what it looked like when I went back, a few days later.” She switched back and forth a few times, the wings appearing and vanishing. Everything else stayed the same.
“W-why?” asked Gaius.
“I don’t know,” said Rachel. “But there’s more.”
She recalled the page from the ancient bestiary, the page that had been hidden from her memory before the Elf’s Rune revealed to her. On it was an image of a winged man. The word Angel was written across the top in large curly letters. The image was oddly broken into squares and triangles that together made up the whole. Looking closer, she realized that this peculiar drawing style looked very much like the colored-glass pictures in the windows of the beautiful building with all the spires that she had glimpsed in the background of the princess’s vision of Von Dread’s past.
“‘Angel,’” read Gaius, glancing from the picture to the statue.
“This page had been hidden from my memory,” explained Rachel.
“Wait!” Zoë flipped her braid in a circle with some annoyance. The feather went thwip, thwip. “You mean…some power is deliberately hiding references to winged creatures called angels—both from your memory and from the world itself?”
“Yes,” said Rachel.
“That’s rather disturbing.” Gaius gritted his teeth. “Especially since in the princess’s vision of my past I had wings…no, sorry, my reflection in the Mirror Nebula had them. What’s the point of being a scientist, if someone’s changing the evidence?”
Rachel nodded and gestured. Gryphon Tor appeared around them. The ruined castle was behind them. Her family estate, the town of Gryphon-on-Dart, and Dartmoor National Park were before them. The view looked westward toward Cornwall. The lay of the land was as Rachel recalled it from the previous summer.
“And—this,” she said.
The view changed, but the changes were subtle. A few of the landmarks in the distance moved to the right or left.
“Creepy!” murmured Zoë.
“You mean, something changed an entire landscape?” Gaius asked. He took a stumbling step forward, pointing. “Hey! Wait! I know this place. Right there, where things changed! That’s where my father’s farm is! That’s where I live!”
“Even creepier,” sang Zoë in a sing-song voice.
“Really? You live so close to me?” burst from Rachel’s mouth.
Embarrassed to be caught paying attention to such trivial personal matters at such a time, she added quickly, “That change happened when I was three and a half. I wonder if that was when the Raven brought you here.”
“Maybe…” He swallowed with some effort but then gave her a kind smile. “Sorry. It’s one thing to be told you come from another world. It is another thing to see evidence of it.”
“What could do such a thing?” Zoë asked. “Add a whole farm to Cornwall, I mean?”
“Could you do that with kenomancy?” asked Gaius.
Rachel’s brow furrowed. “Technically, yes…but I have never heard of sorcerers adding such a massive space before.”
“So you are saying that demons…or angels—do we know the difference?” asked Gaius.
“The page in the bestiary says angels are heavenly messengers,” replied Rachel. “Demons seem to be chthonic.”
“So, demons, and creatures like them, can knock over towers, stop time, change statues, change memories, and change landscapes?” asked Gaius. “But why? Why change the statue?”
“I keep thinking about that. I wonder if this statue is like the orphaned words,” Rachel said slowly. “The words that no one knows what they mean, like steeple, friar, and saint.”
“You mean,” Gaius said, “you think the statue’s left from some previous state of the world—one we’ve been forced to forget? But that whoever enforces the amnesia—your friend the Raven, perhaps?— accidentally left in this evidence of the former state?”
“Yes,” said Rachel.
“But…for what reason?” Gaius pushed. “Is he evil, this Raven? Or is he on our side?”
Rachel did not answer. She wanted to blurt out that the Raven was not evil, but who was she to know, really?
She was the girl who could not tell a familiar from a house cat.
“The whole thing is crazy.” Gaius shook his head. “Is any of this related to why there’s a Lion who looks tiny but is actually gigantic?”
“You mean the Comfort Lion?” Rachel gestured again, recalling another memory.
The scene played out around them. The three of them stood in Rachel’s bedroom. The tall, arched window was open. On the windowsill sat an enormous raven, jet black with blood red eyes. It addressed a tiny Lion on the bunk of the sleeping Kitten Fabian.
The raven croaked harshly, “You are not supposed to be here.”
The Lion sat regally. “I was called. Where I am called, I come.”
“None of my people called you.”
“You called one of my daughters. I am always in her heart.”
“You need to depart.”
The Lion yawned. It turned in a circle three times and settled down to sleep.
“That happened the first night I slept at school,” explained Rachel.
“Okay, that’s triply creepy!” Zoë shivered. “Does stuff like that happen in my room?” Rachel turned and looked out the window of her dream dorm room, until they were surrounded by paper birches and ferns. It was the only way to keep herself from remembering the Raven standing in Zoë’s room, over the pile of frozen, sleeping girls.
“So, these demons, or angels,” Gaius drawled slowly, “have a conspiracy to hide something from us, and we have no idea why? Or what is being hidden? And we can’t do anything about it?”
“Yes,” Rachel nodded. “Exactly.”
Chapter Thirty-One:
Plunged Into Darkness
“Rachel,” Gaius gestured airily at the moonlit bedroom around them, “how are you doing all this? Making these images appear around us? They’re so clear and crisp. I couldn’t do this…recall exactly what the land around my farm looked like, for instance. Much less recall what it looked like when I was three!”
This was the moment for which Rachel had been waiting. She grinned with joy. “That’s my secret power.”
“You have dream control? No, wait. You mentioned Topher knew your secret. You have
a perfect memory, like Evans?” guessed Gaius.
Rachel bounced with excitement. “Yes! Exactly! Let me show you.”
She cast around for something that Gaius might enjoy seeing and lighted upon a memory that fit the bill perfectly. She recalled the night Gaius had spent as a sheep. She and Zoë had snuck through dreams into Von Dread’s room, so that Rachel could use the boon Vlad had promised her, in return for her efforts to save him from Dr. Mordeau, to get him to restore Gaius’s proper shape and buy Gaius a new wand. She recalled the events exactly as they had occurred. Gaius stood in the midst of the diorama and watched with great interest the confrontation between his girlfriend and his boss. He saw her insist that Von Dread take Gaius back into his good graces, quoting what Gaius had told the Agents while he was under the influence of the Spell of True Recitation as proof of her boyfriend’s loyalty to the prince.
“There!” Rachel smiled at him when she came to the end, anticipating his pleasure at seeing how bravely she had stood up for him. “Exactly as it happened.”
Gaius turned on her, his face bright red. “H-how do you know what happened when the Agents interviewed me? That’s word for word what I said.”
“Can’t tell, sorry.” She shook her head sadly. “Promised my source.”
“Your source was spying on me?” he practically shouted. “Tell it to stop. Please. Did your source see all the interviews with the Agents? Including Dread’s?”
Rachel bit her lip. She wished desperately that she had left out the part where she told Dread about Gaius’s interview with the Wisecraft, but it had not occurred to her to consider effect it might have on him. In retrospect, she felt a tremendous wave of sympathy for him. She had not meant to embarrass him.
“Yes. Vlad was so impressive!” Rachel cried, hoping give Gaius a chance to regain his composure. She recalled Von Dread’s interview with the Wisecraft Agents, where he conducted himself admirably despite being under the influence of the Spell of True Recitation.
“Sweet as!” Zoë exclaimed in admiration, “Dread really is way cool.”
Gaius, on the other hand, looked shell shocked. If anything, he looked more upset than before. “You know, I have to tell Vlad about this, right? Not about your memory, but this information…Either one of the Agents is the source of your information, which is extremely disappointing, or you have methods none of us have even guessed at. Either way, this is quite alarming.”
Rachel felt the blood desert her face. Her stomach flipped upside down.
He was going to betray her.
Worse, he was going to betray Sigfried and his amulet to Von Dread. “You’re…you’re going to tell somebody? B-but…you promised! Nobody is being killed, and many people have been saved! You can’t tell!”
“You said not to tell anyone about your memory,” snapped Gaius. “When did you say I couldn’t talk to anyone about anything said here?”
No!
The single pillar holding her mental world together snapped.
Inside her head, her mind seemed to come unmoored. She tried to resist, to pull herself together, but it was not working. Here in her dream space, she could not hide the disintegration of her inner well-being. There was a loud rushing noise. Darkness began encroaching around the edges of the landscape.
Zoë looked around nervously. “What’s going on?”
“Please, Zoë,” Rachel managed to speak, but she felt so nauseous she feared she might become ill. What happened if someone became ill in dreamland? Would her body vomit back in the waking world? “Can you take Gaius back down and wake me up. I-I don’t want to talk about this here.”
Gaius scowled, looking tremendously annoyed. He had never been angry with her before. Now she felt both ill and frightened. The color drained out of the scene. The details remained sharp, but the landscape started to appear inked instead of real.
“Fine.” Gaius stomped away from Zoë, until he was outside the circle of silver light. He fell back into the waking world.
“It’s okay. Joy and I can talk to him.” Zoë’s silvery light went dim, and she disappeared.
Odd things occurred. Rachel started losing her lucidity. Her thoughts drifted like a ship without a rudder. The weight of all the terrible things she had suffered these last two and a half months crashed in upon her. She could feel her sanity coming apart like an unraveling sweater, falling into shreds. The dream spun rapidly toward nightmares.
It was a dark and terrifying feeling, knowing that she had tried her best, but her mind just could not bear the pain and sorrow that had been piled upon it. It reminded her of the way her arm had snapped, the time she flew into the grandfather clock and the force of the blow broke the bone. Only this was a thousand times worse. Bones could be mended, but Rachel knew of no magic that could mend madness.
Suddenly, the world snapped back to normal. Rachel stood in dreamland beside the winged statue. Looming over her, singing softly, her eyes wise and kind, stood her Elf.
Her dead Elf.
Rachel threw herself at the lady elf, wailing. Illondria knelt and held her, stroking her back. Her body felt warmer than a normal person’s, but not uncomfortably so. Rachel sank into her embrace.
“Little one,” Illondria whispered in Rachel’s ear, “you have been given so many burdens and over such a short time. Even I would balk, and I am eons older than you. It is a testament to your race that you can adapt so quickly.”
“My elf!” Rachel cried out in joy. “I didn’t kill you! You’re alive!”
“No.” Illondria shook her head sadly. “I am dead. I just haven’t passed over yet. But you are not the one who killed me, child. Never think that.”
“But I told Valerie…” Rachel’s voice faltered.
“No, child. The mistake that revealed me had already been made by that time, and you took care not to be overheard. Mr. Smith and Miss Forrest spoke about me in a public place. They unwittingly pronounced the demon’s name during the same conversation.”
“Oh.” Rachel wet her lips. “But…I still…”
Illondria’s eyes shone like stars of kindness. “No, my dear one. Never.”
“So…you’re a ghost?”
“You could say that. Yes.” She held Rachel at arm’s length, brushing the hair from Rachel’s eyes. “Oh, little one, I am so sorry. I thought I would be with you a bit longer. I left things undone. In addition to everything else weighing upon you, you must stop the summoning of the Archfiend. Great sorrow will befall you and those you love should he wake.”
Rachel bit her lip and nodded.
The Elf looked down at her kindly. “Let me show you something I often liked to see, when I was feeling the weight of the world.”
The dream rippled. They stood at the foot of a truly gigantic tree rising up from a vast forest. Rachel knew it was enormous because there were great cities nestled around its base, and a tiny hollow, near one root, contained a magnificent metropolis. She and the Elf seemed to be standing on a silver pathway, the color of moonbeams, in the midst of a vast darkness. Ahead of them rose the floral giant. Above, smaller trees, still as large as sequoias, grew on the titanic branches, and a second group of trees grew out of the canopy of these giants.
“This is the great tree Yggdrasil, the World Tree. My people guard it—or did, before it fell. The many worlds hang like fruit from its branches. My lord Duneyr once told me that all worlds have a great tree grown from saplings of this one greatest tree. Yggdrassil is as large as the entire continent upon which your body currently lies.”
Filled with awe, Rachel forgot her sorrow. This was exactly the kind of vista that she longed to see when she wished to travel to other worlds.
Suddenly, Rachel began laughing. “Oh no! I’ve been arguing with my boyfriend over whether he can tell Vladimir Von Dread information that he got from seeing a memory of—me talking to Vladimir Von Dread. For heaven sakes, Vlad already knows all that! I told him!”
The Elf smiled at her, though Rachel had the feeling that the
tall woman did not entirely follow what she was saying. Still, Illondria did seem pleased when Rachel laughed.
They stood together watching the World Tree and its surrounding forest. The darkness felt thick around them. The silver path shone beneath their feet, ringing softly like the sound of distant bells. Rachel was aware that time was passing, quite a bit of time. Her sorrow began to ease, as if the cause of it had occurred long ago. The terrible grief she had felt at the Elf’s death also lessened. A sense of calm settled upon her.
“Illondria, you are holding time still,” came a familiar harsh caw. “Is there a reason?”
Rachel spun around. An enormous Raven flew over the silver pathway. As it came closer, the otherworldly vision faded, and the three of them stood by the dream of the winged statue again. The Raven cocked its head and gave the statue a look. The wings vanished. The bird landed, pecked the ground three times, and then turned into an unbearably handsome, shirtless, eight-foot-tall winged man.
“I merely wished to comfort this little one before her friends wake her,” said the Elf.
“Ah,” the Raven gazed down at her, “it is you.”
“Yes.” Rachel curtsied. “Thank you for saving me from the Headless Horseman.”
“Did you?” asked Illondria. If she did not know better, Rachel would have thought the Elf was smirking. “How quaint and out-of-character of you, Guardian.”
The Raven regarded her calmly. In a burst of courage, Rachel ran forward and hugged his leg. Her head came up to his hip. He sighed but did not cast her away.
“Oh, that looks like fun,” murmured Illondria.
She glided forward and hugged him as well. She was only a foot shorter than him. The Raven closed his eyes, as if seeking to endure such indignities without complaint.
“Guardian, lean down,” asked the elf woman. “Please?”
He frowned but obliged, leaning over with a wary look in his scarlet eyes. With a gesture and a wink, the taller woman communicated her meaning to Rachel. Moving as one, the two of them leaned in and kissed him, one on either cheek.
Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Page 39