In the Dark of Dreams

by Marjorie M. Liu

  The controls were old, flecked with salt and fish scales, but duct taped to the wall was a portable stereo and an MP3 player. Sajeev tapped the device and “Highway to Hell” blared, loud enough to make Perrin flinch.

  The old sailor shuffled from one foot to another, swinging his skinny hips, and began singing with the song at the top of his lungs. When he saw Perrin watching, he grinned and gave him a thumbs-up sign—that turned suddenly into a slicing motion across his throat.

  “Nice,” Rik said, standing in the cabin doorway. “I feel so much better.”

  Six hours later, Singapore was gone.

  Perrin stood at the rail and watched the glittering city disappear into the horizon. His memories of the place were bittersweet. He had been naked when he’d last arrived there—against his will, alone, unable to speak a single human language. A man had found him on the beach, bleeding from the back of his neck, disoriented and sobbing.

  And now you’re going home.

  Nausea made him hold the rail and bend his face toward the sea. Salt spray touched his bare arms, and he stared down at the water, the soft waves. The mirror, he had been taught to call the surface. Two worlds, separated by light and dark, skies above and skies below. And never the two shall meet.

  Bile rose up his throat. He imagined cool slick water rushing over his skin and turned away. This was so much harder than he had thought it would be, after all the years fantasizing how he might return to the ocean. Peace, he had always told himself. He would feel peace. Peace at the chance to live as himself for however long it took until others of his kind found and killed him.

  But living as human was already a slow death. He couldn’t even reside in freshwater lakes, of which there were many that could have accommodated one Krackeni male, in secret. Other Krackeni tolerated freshwater, but his father had taken even that from him.

  He, and the old sea witch, thought Perrin. I hate magic.

  He turned. Eddie sat behind him on a plastic lawn chair that had been bolted to the deck. His head was tilted back, eyes closed. Perrin didn’t think he was asleep. Rik certainly wasn’t. He stared at the sea, shoulders hunched, head hanging.

  How did we end up in the same place? Perrin wondered, wishing he could ask Rik that question. But after the initial shock of seeing each other, communication had shut down. Not that it should matter. The shape-shifter was the least of his concerns.

  Green eyes. A scream.

  Darkness.

  Perrin kept trying to think about the darkness, but those green eyes refused to be ignored. He had a feeling he should know those eyes.

  You know them, whispered a small voice in his head. You’re simply afraid to admit it.

  “No,” murmured Perrin, and winced as the base of his skull throbbed, just once. Like a ghost, fleeting. He held his breath, hoping it would simply go away, but the pain returned and did not stop—pulsing to his heartbeat. Perrin gritted his teeth, reached back, and traced the edge of the hole. The ache went deeper than his skull. Deeper, into his heart.

  He sensed movement on his right. Rik, watching him. He looked away when Perrin turned, but then straightened and settled his gaze on him again, swallowing hard. Flinching, only a little, when Perrin set his jaw.

  “Say it,” Perrin said.

  “I don’t need to,” Rik replied, searching his face. “You were on land, which means they exiled you. If they exiled you, they gutted you of everything that made you powerful.”

  “Not everything.” Perrin forced himself to stop touching the hole in his head. The idea of showing any weakness to Rik was utterly distasteful. Unfortunately, the pain worsened: a radiating stabbing sensation. He half expected to find someone standing behind him, driving a nail into his skull. The sun seemed suddenly too bright, even with his sunglasses, a dizzying light. He heard a woman’s voice break on a sob and squeezed shut his eyes.

  “Hey,” Rik said, sounding very far away.

  Perrin gritted his teeth, trying to focus past the pain. “Go away.”

  “You look sick.”

  He sucked in a deep breath and tried to open his eyes. All he managed was a squint that left him nearly blind. He hoped his sunglasses were dark enough to hide that fact, though given Rik’s wary expression, he doubted it. Perrin turned back to the rail and bent over, breathing hard. Saliva dribbled from his bottom lip.

  “Shit,” Rik muttered. “They did more than gut you.”

  “Shut up,” Perrin whispered, finding the strength to wipe his mouth.

  Rik drew closer. “They broke you.”

  Perrin’s fist shot out. He was too weak to use his full strength, but he was bigger than Rik, and his aim was good, even half-blind with pain. He caught the shape-shifter across the face, knocking him against the rail so hard he almost tumbled over. Someone shouted—Eddie—but Rik turned a blazing golden eye on Perrin.

  “Stole a part of your soul,” he whispered, blood trickling from his cut lip. “You must have killed someone to deserve that.”

  Perrin snarled, and punched Rik again, pummeling through his attempt to block the blow. Each movement was agony, but he didn’t stop. Every blow made him angrier, more bitter, until he was blind and deaf and dumb; until Rik—curled into a ball, covering his head—hardly seemed to exist. He was just a thing. A punching bag. Perrin hated him for it, and he didn’t know why.

  He reached down and hauled Rik over the rail into the sea. He splashed out of sight.

  Eddie rushed forward. Smoke rose from his clothing, between his fingers. Perrin hardly noticed. Moments after Rik disappeared, a dolphin shot free of the water, graceful and powerful. Golden light shimmered against his slick body.

  All Perrin felt was jealousy. Sick, brutal, heartache.

  And shame.

  He spun away, holding his head. Eddie said his name, but his voice was lost to the roar in his ears. He needed to lie down, fall apart. He was going to anyway. His legs were so weak.

  Perrin stumbled toward the main cabin, clipping his head on the door with such force he slammed against the wall and slid to his hands and knees. He couldn’t stand again, so he crawled down the short flight of stairs to the lower deck, seeking darkness, a place to hide like some wounded animal. He half expected to find blood running from his nose and ears.

  He crawled until he hit another wall, and stopped, drawing his knees up to his chest. Focused on breathing, on staying alive.

  You will be strong, or die.

  Strong. Strong. Perrin chanted the word to himself, digging his fingers into the scars at the back of his head. This was not the worst, he told himself. He had lived the worst. He had lived.

  Footsteps echoed, but he could not see who was coming. Perrin did not care. He heard shouts, voices filled with dismay, and anger—and then something sharp jabbed into his throat. He hardly noticed.

  The pain faded. He fell unconscious.

  Perrin lay on the beach again. Waves crashed behind him. Bright morning, with the sun shedding a white light that was cool and clear, and did not burn his eyes. Instead, it was the rippling shimmer of the sea that hurt his vision, and he had to look away.

  He felt weak. When he tried to move his legs, he found them gone, fused into a silver tail that pressed heavily into the damp sand.

  A woman was beside him, her breathing soft and familiar. Perrin grappled for her hand, wishing just once he could see her face. Or her eyes. For a moment he glimpsed red hair glinting in the sun, and peace stole over him, and sorrow.

  “I never thought I would find you again,” said the woman. “I stopped depending on dreams.”

  “I stopped depending on a great many things,” he murmured.

  The woman made a small sound, tilting her head away from him to stare down the beach. Perrin looked, as well, and saw a battered house looming from the sand, so old it was gra
y and stained with mold; and a sagging porch, and broken windows that looked empty and black as shark eyes. Dread filled him when he gazed too long at the house, as though it might sprout legs and slouch across the sand to crush them both.

  “That house,” he said slowly, to the woman. “What is it?”

  “A bad place,” she whispered. “I lost someone there.”

  Perrin tried to see her face, but no matter how hard he tried, some terrible force compelled his gaze down, down, no higher than her white throat. He had never seen her face. “I’m sorry.”

  Her hand tightened in his. “It’s happening again.”

  His pulse quickened, and he heard the echo of that sobbing scream. The woman did not seem to notice, but those green eyes flashed in his mind, and this time, they were not from his vision—but from an old memory.

  Green eyes, staring at him on a beach just like this one. Green eyes, set in the face of a girl who had tried to save his life.

  A human girl. Who had been kind, and unafraid. A girl who had fought for him. Fought, and come so close to losing her own life. Not a day went by when Perrin didn’t think of her—the same girl who, after almost two decades, had grown into the woman with him now.

  He had always known who she was. He had met her in his dreams only a day after meeting her on land. He had no idea how it had happened, but dreams never lied—and the connection between them, forged by accident, had been real to him as blood, and light, and the water in his lungs. Perrin had grown to manhood with her at his side, knowing she was alive in another world, always wondering if she thought of him in waking as much as he did of her. Torturing himself with the knowledge they could never be together.

  And then, his exile. Followed by eight years of silence, without her in his dreams. Harder to bear than he could have imagined. Exile had been agony, but losing her presence in his dreams had almost killed him.

  Now he had her again. He didn’t want to know what that meant, or how it was possible. It shouldn’t have been, after what the others had stolen from him.

  It was difficult to breathe. Fear felt the same here as it did when he was awake. “Are you in danger? Where are you, outside this dream?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she murmured, though the quiet of her voice was tense, strained, as if she could barely bring herself to speak. “I think he’s going to kill me. I really think he is.”

  “Don’t say that. Tell me where you are.”

  “A boat. But I don’t want to talk about it. If I remember where I am, I might wake up. I’m not ready for that.”

  “Tell me,” he insisted, again. “Please.”

  “This is just a dream,” she said wearily, pushing her face against his shoulder. “Nothing dreams can do.”

  “You didn’t used to believe that.” Perrin squeezed her hand—or tried to—but her fingers slipped through his. Made of air and not flesh. He twisted violently, trying to hold on to her body—or even see her face—but the beach fell out from under him, and he dropped into darkness, screaming.

  He did not wake, though. Something cool flowed through the base of his skull, and the sensation sank down his spine, spreading into his bones. He floated, but could not be at ease. The woman filled him.

  Green eyes.

  Certainty crept slowly, starting first in his heart, threading down into his stomach until it took a roundabout path to his brain. Perrin could still recall the glitter of the sand on those pale knees and the unearthly gleam of red hair, which had seemed so alien and lovely to his color-deprived vision. He had thought, as a boy, that she must be magic.

  That girl with the green eyes.

  Her eyes, staring with rage. Her voice, screaming.

  It was her all along. In your premonition. She’s part of it. She’s in trouble.

  Impossible. Insane. Made no sense, no matter how loudly his intuition screamed.

  Wake up, he told himself. Wake up now. You have no time.

  Panic suffocated him. The cold air traveling through the base of his skull faded into heat, becoming a throbbing sensation that was not pain but something worse, as though a small heart beat there.

  Stole a part of your soul, Rik’s voice echoed.

  And Perrin thought, Yes.

  When he woke, it was fast—just a snap from darkness, straight into the harsh light burning from a table lamp that had no shade, only the bare bulb. He was in a very tiny room. No window, no furniture except the bed he sprawled on uncomfortably. His legs dangled so far off the thin mattress, his right foot was planted on the cool floor.

  Eddie sat beside the bed, his back against the wall. Shadows darkened his eyes, and he did not smile when he looked at Perrin.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, quietly.

  Perrin touched the side of his neck. “Like someone gave me drugs.”

  “Sajeev. He took matters into his own hands.”

  “I was in pain, that was all.”

  Eddie rubbed his face, grim exhaustion making lines around his mouth that he was too young to have. “Really.”

  Perrin heard the condemnation in that one word—made worse, because the young man’s judgment felt unsurprised, quietly disappointed. As though he was accustomed to dealing with the kind of man that Perrin had suddenly become.

  Violent. Abusive.

  Shame filled him, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Apologies would be useless. “How is . . . Rik?”

  Eddie flashed him a hard look. “Bruised. But he’ll be fine.”

  Perrin looked down at his split knuckles. “I don’t . . . I don’t know why I hit him. I was just . . . so angry.”

  The young man stared down at his own hands, which appeared riddled with pale round scars. “That’s no excuse.”

  “I’m not making one.” Which was a lie, he realized. There was so much else he wanted to tell him. Exile. Homelessness. Prison. But blame couldn’t be reassigned. Not when his knuckles ached so badly.

  He began to sit up. Eddie watched him, and said, “If you had tried to kill Rik, I would have stopped you.”

  Perrin looked him dead in the eyes. “I would hope so.”

  Eddie’s jaw tightened. Perrin continued to stand, but the young man stopped him again, holding out his hand. “Something happened while you were unconscious. Rik found a body while he was in the water.”

  Perrin froze. “A woman?”

  “An old man. He’s alive, barely.” Eddie gave him a strange look. “Why did you think it would be a woman?”

  Perrin did not answer. He stood and nearly banged his head on the ceiling. Head turned sideways, spine aching, he shuffled to the door and had to bend double to enter the hall.

  “Where is he?” Perrin asked.

  Eddie shadowed the doorway behind him. “Still on deck. You had the bed.”

  He grunted, refusing to feel guilty about that, and made his way topside. It was night. Air had cooled, and tasted sweet as the sea. Stars glittered. Thirst crowded his throat. But none of that mattered. He kept thinking about the woman.

  “Here,” Eddie said. Blankets had been put down, and on them lay a wrinkled, shivering wreck of a man: ashen skin, blood staining a soaked T-shirt and shorts; white hair pressed against his skull. He looked almost eighty, but it was hard to judge human ages.

  Rik held a flashlight while Sajeev cut open the man’s shirt. An empty water bottle stood nearby. Perrin crouched on the other side of the wounded man but looked first at the shape-shifter. The right side of his face was swollen and purple, one golden eye rimmed with blood.

  “Happy?” Rik mumbled, wincing when he tried to speak.

  “No,” Perrin said, reminded of his own reflection after his first night in prison. No glass mirrors, just stainless steel. Distorted, twisted images.

  He focused on the old man, who seemed c
onscious—if the white knuckles of his clenched fists were any indication. Not one sound passed through his tight cracked lips.

  “Bullet hole,” Sajeev announced, pointing to the puckered wound in the old man’s chest. “Should have hit his heart, lungs. Don’t know if it exited.”

  “Did,” muttered the old man, suddenly.

  Sajeev grinned. “Good, good. But you should be dead.”

  “Suck shit.” He cracked open one bloodshot eye, teeth beginning to chatter. “I need a . . . phone . . . radio. S-something.”

  “We’re getting you help.” Eddie dragged a blanket over his lower legs. “Coast Guard is coming.”

  “N-not good enough.” He tried to sit up, and screamed. Perrin placed a hand on his shoulder and held him down. Incredibly, he tried again to move, but this time swallowed his pain with a strangled whimper.

  “This should be bleeding,” Sajeev announced, almost to himself. “Should have bled out.”

  “Forget it,” whispered the old man. “Got to . . . get Jenny.”

  Jenny. The name hit something in Perrin. Premonition burned. He struggled against it, but green eyes flashed, and he heard her voice. That voice, from his dreams.

  A boat, she had said. A boat.

  You’re insane, he told himself. This is impossible.

  More than impossible. But Perrin leaned in close, utterly focused on the old man’s face. He squeezed his shoulder, ignoring sharp looks from the others—and squeezed again until the old man opened his eyes and met his gaze.

  “This . . . Jenny,” he said roughly. “Does she have red hair and green eyes?”

  The old man stared. “Who the f-fuck are you?”

  His fingers dug in harder. “Tell me.”

  Fury filled those bloodshot eyes, and fear. Perrin was flung suddenly backward, against the rail—as if swatted by a giant, invisible hand. The old man cried out at the same time, writhing. Sajeev shouted.

  “Crap, he’s bleeding,” Rik said, reaching for a blanket. He pushed it hard against the bullet wound and gave Perrin a hateful look.

  Perrin didn’t bother standing. He crawled on all fours to the old man, who watched him like he was a shark coming in for the kill. Eddie stepped between them. Smoke curled from his back. Perrin didn’t care.