Cassidy’s throat went dry as a red fighter broke from beneath a ridge. A tri-plane with black iron crosses. Richthofen. All fighters of the Baron’s Jagdstaffel flew red planes, but without even seeing the pilot, he knew this was his dreamer.
Something was wrong though. The Baron’s flying. The red Fokker appeared to be in pursuit of a Sopwith Camel with Canadian markings. It wasn’t like Richthofen. Cassidy knew the codes the German flew by. They were burned into his mind as sure as if they’d been his own. The Baron never chased fighters alone and across enemy lines near gunners. A barrage of ground guns tore at the air around the scarlet Fokker.
Another fighter, also bearing Canadian markings, dove from far above. As the fighter neared, Richthofen broke off for a moment to dodge the attacking plane.
Cassidy went to fire his Spandaus, but only got three rounds off before the chains ran dry. No one had noticed him yet, and it needed to stay that way. Once again, he concentrated on his body and then reached out to the plane. He’d already bonded himself to the Fokker, making it easier, but he had to move his awareness through the fighter itself. The wings, the fuselage, the engine and props. He felt them all as he did his own body and he pushed the fighter to fade a little as he drew closer.
The diving Canadian fighter missed the red Fokker and was forced to pull up hard to avoid hitting the ground. Cassidy couldn’t believe how close to the ground they were flying. The gunners couldn’t seem to see Cassidy’s Fokker, but they were laying down a wall of fire around the Baron.
What was he doing now? Richthofen should have broken off long ago. Not only did he have a code about ground fire, but about not following another fighter once it put him in danger. Survive to kill more enemies. Why would he break that code now? Richthofen fired sporadically in odd bursts. Only one gun was working. The other had to be jammed or broken.
What the hell is he doing? Cassidy thought. The image of the Baron from his dream came back in blinding colour. The stricken look on his face. The wound and the bloody wrappings beneath his crown. What had he been pleading?
The gunners continued their wall of fire. The fleeing Sopwith continued at full throttle. The red Fokker was still trying to choke out a few shots with the misfiring Spandau.
Like a shot through his own head, Cassidy realized what Richthofen was trying to do. Tired, wounded and broken by war, the Baron wanted to die. Needed to die. Was pleading for it from anyone willing to give it. He didn’t just want death, but a hero’s death. A death of blood and honour.
Tears welled in Cassidy’s eyes as he skimmed just above the gunners’ heads, looking up at the bright red Fokker as it dared and begged for anyone to take it down. None of them had the right, though. These gunners. The Sopwith Richthofen pursued. None of them. And no one seemed capable.
Cassidy lifted the Mauser rifle to his shoulder and chambered a round. He aimed through the fuselage to where Richthofen sat. The red Fokker wobbled side to side. As it tilted right Cassidy squeezed the trigger. For a moment, nothing happened, then the tri-plane slowed. The nose tipped down.
Cassidy followed Richthofen as he limped his fighter to a landing. The Baron brought it to a halt with amazing grace for whatever wound he’d sustained. Cassidy landed beside him and leapt out. He ran, jumped up to the centre wing and brought himself up to the cockpit.
Richthofen didn’t move. His head lay back staring up at the blue sky. Blood blossomed beneath his flight coat. The bullet had passed through the plane, through the Baron and exited his chest. The hole lay just beside the coat’s lapel. “Did you do that?” Richthofen asked, still staring past Cassidy at the sky.
Cassidy nodded. He couldn’t speak. His throat was too tight.
“Danke,” Richthofen said. “No one here can shoot.”
“I may fade away now,” Cassidy finally got past his trembling lips. “Banner wasn’t a real dream, so I don’t know what will happen.”
Richthofen still didn’t move, as if saving all his strength to speak. “I dreamed you to kill me,” he said, and rolled his head to look at Cassidy. “It’s what you were always meant to do. I knew it the moment I saw you standing there in Arcadia. I knew you would kill me.”
“I’m sorry,” Cassidy said. Men shouted in the distance. They were coming.
“It’s honour. It’s right,” Richthofen said. He lifted his shaking hand off the control stick where it had been glued, and gripped Cassidy by the arm. “I have accomplished my purpose in life. Now, so have you. What men can say that?”
Cassidy gripped him back. “Where do I go now?”
“Home,” Richthofen said. “I did give you a home country.”
Another man stared at the Baron now. A soldier had run up on the opposite side and propped himself up on one of the wings. Cassidy was a ghost to him. The soldier only watched the Bloody Baron staring off at nothing.
“Kaput,” Richthofen said. As he finished the word, the razor tip of an umbrella popped out of his forehead and withdrew. The soldier was still oblivious.
Cassidy jumped down off the plane and ran around to the other side.
Tamelicus grinned as he wiped the umbrella tip with a white handkerchief. “My paper shadow,” the dandy demon said. “Never thought we’d cross paths again, but the world is indeed an intriguing place.”
Soldiers with Australian flags on their uniforms crowded around the plane. They didn’t notice Cassidy, or his Fokker, as they swarmed the scarlet fighter.
Cassidy wiped his eyes. “Don’t think for a moment you killed him with that damned umbrella. I killed him. Me. He wanted it that way.”
The demon scoffed. “You’re just a cherry seed.”
“I’m no cherry seed and you’re nothing. A shadow that walks around sticking his blade in things already dead.”
Tamelicus tsked. “I could cut you up like Christmas turkey.”
Cassidy drew closer so he was eye to eye with the creature. “I don’t think you can. Perhaps before, but not now. I’m real. And you’ll just have to wait around for my time to come so you can show up and pretend, shoving that piece of nothing you carry into my cold dead corpse.”
“If only you could stop whining,” Tamelicus sighed, cutting over his words. “You’re still a shadow,” he said putting the umbrella’s tip to Cassidy’s throat. “And this will never be your world.” He tipped his bowler. “You’ll need more than mental determination to make you a real boy. But believe what you will. They all do.” The dandy demon turned, and was gone.
Soldiers dragged Richthofen’s body from his fighter and began stripping the tri-wing for souvenirs. Cassidy walked to where they laid the body and looked down at his dreamer. “Guess I didn’t fade,” he said to the still unclosed eyes. “If this was my purpose, what do I do now?” Cassidy reached down and removed the Baron’s scarf. He tied it around his own neck and returned to his Fokker.
The Australian soldiers continued dismantling the red plane as Cassidy turned the engine over, taxied over the bumpy ground and lifted off. No one glanced his way. Home. Richthofen had told him to go home.
Chapter 35
Cassidy watched the war vanish behind him. He wasn’t even a memory to Europe, except, perhaps, for Ilsa. He considered returning to visit her, but if she was still alive, he could be nothing but trouble for her. It seemed that everywhere he visited collapsed behind him.
Banner, the Nubigena and her crew had been alive and free before him. Brewster had acted as if he would live forever, smoking his pipe and drinking tea. Richthofen had been the pride of Germany. Was Cassidy a curse to everyone in his wake, or just a cursed survivor?
Potential gates appeared around the Fokker as he called them up from the fabric of reality. America, he thought, somewhere around New York. No, Darcy, Virginia, wherever that was. The home of April’s pain. One of the gates glowed bright and he steered into it. The crackling energy bounced across the Fokker and faded to nothing behind him.
A mere force of thought and no one could see the fighter anymore. It
must work much like his pistol and the uniform he wore. Had the world at large ever seen the Nubigena? He’d never gotten a chance to see if people noticed at all, or simply saw and forgot a moment later. Had the stormship been just a dream sort of memory to this world?
Cassidy was an alien creature to all of reality now. Something that didn’t belong to the Everdream, the Twilight or the real world. Perhaps he was as alien as the strange creature he’d called Banner, that dreamer’s mind in the body of his own dream.
Cassidy sat the Fokker down near Darcy and left the plane covered in branches. There was no telling how long his effect would last on the machine and he doubted the local authorities would look kindly on the sudden appearance of a German war plane.
The town looked like a painting. Like a dream he glanced in bubbles off the Everdream. It might have been nostalgia born into him by Richthofen’s idea of an American’s reaction to such a place, or something else Cassidy had picked up along the way. Perhaps behind the Baron’s fear and hatred of enemy pilots there also had lain a certain subconscious love of another people and culture. Perhaps the feeling had leaked out of April’s coin along with her pain.
The heat Cassidy felt in his chest now as he surveyed the skyline of the church, town hall, schoolhouse and other small buildings outlined against the setting sun must represent some love of the Baron’s own home. His love and nostalgia for some Bavarian hamlet.
Cassidy buttoned his jacket to hide his weapons, let himself become substantial enough to be seen and entered the town as a pilot returned from war. A hotel offered him a room at a discount rate and he accepted it, not knowing how long his roll of American currency would last.
His room was small, but as hotel rooms and Zeppelin cabins had been the only home he could remember, it cheered him just to see a made bed and a lit oil lamp. This town still hadn’t seen its first electric light.
Sleep came easy. The foreign but familiar sheets accepted him like a prodigal son. He dreamed of the castle again. The war was gone and the shattered stones and spires were whole again. There was no Richthofen anymore, but the Baron’s portrait adorned the hallway. In it he stood tall and proud in royal garb with a kingly crown and an iron cross about his neck.
Cassidy drifted from room to room finding a strange amalgamation of both Richthofen’s memories and his own. This was now their home and sanctuary, and perhaps he’d even meet his dreamer once again in some random room of the castle, or he might fly through an earthly Borealis again. What would the Northern Lights be like in the real world?
Sun streamed through his window, waking him from his sleep. He washed and dressed. Several jobs presented themselves, but a position for a stunt pilot in a new air show caught his attention first. The owner wouldn’t be in until the next day, so Cassidy spent the rest of the morning and afternoon exploring the surrounding fields and forests.
Here in the real world, everything was fascinating. The colours and textures were enough to keep him busy forever. The sun began to set and he felt the pangs of hunger calling.
Cassidy returned to Darcy and looked up and down the main street. Of the several eating establishments, a small pub called Deven’s Place looked the most inviting. He stepped through the door and let the aromas of warm food and fermented hops hit him full in the face.
A few locals sat at various tables as well as a couple at the bar, but the evening crowd hadn’t shown up yet. Cassidy took a stool on the far right where he could lean against the wall and take in the place.
A young woman with the red hair of Scottish highland girls, wearing a dark green apron approached. “What’ll you have?” she asked, with a smile that made her look even younger than she probably was. It was a kind of laughing smile he’d always imagined small children must have. Her green eyes widened. “I’ve seen you before.”
Cassidy pushed the silver half-dollar across the counter. “It saved my life.”
“Saved?” she began, but stopped. With a slow, quivering hand she picked up the Walking Liberty. “I never thought I’d see this again,” she said, gripping the coin tight in her fist as if it might vanish if she let it go. “I don’t do things like that. Just hand things out. Ever. But you looked so sad.” She opened her fist to peek at the coin and closed her hand again. She formed her lips as if she was going to say something else, but stopped. Her emerald eyes looked glazed, as if she were looking past him to somewhere else. “Will you have a drink this time?” she said instead. “This’ll buy you anything on the menu.”
Cassidy gulped, forcing his mind past anything beginning with a W. His lips had already formed the awful sound. “I’ll t-try cognac,” he blurted, and relaxed as the word came out.
“Ever have it before?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Then why cognac?”
“It’s what my fr—” He was about to say friend, but friend didn’t describe Richthofen any more than enemy. “My father liked cognac.”
“April,” she said. “Do you remember?”
“Cassidy,” he said. “I mean, John. Please call me John.”
Thunder rolled in the distance. “There’s a storm coming,” April said, glancing out the window.
Cassidy nodded as a flash of distant lightning cut through the sky. “The storm dreams,” he said.
“Why did you say that?” she asked, a look of sudden horror in her features.
“Nothing. Just--” He looked up into her bright eyes. They looked back at his without glancing away. Without questioning. They just stared as if expecting something. “If I buy you a drink, would you tell me a story?” Cassidy asked.
“About what?” she asked and a light blush came to her cheeks.
“Anything. I just want to hear you talk.”
April slipped the coin into the pocket of her apron. “I do have a story for you, John Cassidy. Meet me at that table after the dinner rush,” she said, pointing to one in the corner. “But you’ll think I’m mad.”
Cassidy nursed his cognac while April served customers. She kept glancing at him and dropping things, her movements hurried. He couldn’t take his eyes off the young woman as she scurried through her duties, gripping at the pocket of her apron now and then as if checking to make sure the coin hadn’t escaped.
When she finished, April shed the apron, smoothed out her skirt and sat down. “Can I—” she began, but stopped and stared down at her hands which lay folded on the table.
“I’m sorry,” Cassidy said leaning forwards across the table. “I didn’t mean to bother you by coming by. I just wanted you to know...I wanted you to know I wasn’t dead.”
April fidgeted with her hands as she continued staring at them. “Why did you mention the storm dreaming?”
“I don’t know,” Cassidy said. “It’s just a turn of phrase, I guess.” He’d disturbed her somehow. This wasn’t how he’d seen this going. She was supposed to just smile and laugh and throw her arms around him or something. Or say thanks. What had he expected? “Storms,” he mused as rain began tapping at the window panes. “They’ve always been a good thing for me, I guess.”
April nodded as if she’d decided something and brought her eyes up to meet his. “You really will think I’m crazy, having only met me twice. But I should tell you something.” She took a deep breath. “Do you ever dream, John Cassidy?”
Cassidy winced inside. Did he ever dream? Did he breathe air? Was she accusing him of something? “I dream,” was all he could manage.
She pursed her lips. “I don’t always remember my dreams. I mean, who does? But ever since I met you, they’ve gotten strange. Vivid. I dream about being someone else. Someone who’s kind of me, but me from somewhere else. I’m always in a garden and you’re always there. And I never remember the end, but each time I wake up weeping.”
Cassidy couldn’t take his eyes away from hers. This was worse than déjà vu. Every word she spoke made the soft fuzzy memory in his mind more and more crisp. A memory that had stuck in the back of his head fr
om the moment he’d left his original dream and escaped aboard the Nubigena. The memory which had stopped him from being with Shea. The ache in his mind. The longing for... “We’re in a garden,” he said “A garden with strangely coloured grass and flowers I’ve never seen before.”
Tears flowed down April’s white skin. “Crystal petals. Purple bulbs that grow in clusters. Light shone just beneath the surface.”
Cassidy nodded. “I land my plane. And there you are. Your voice sounds like singing. Like a choir.” The blood in his veins pumped hot in his ears. This couldn’t be happening. Was he dreaming now? No. The colours were too vivid. Her voice was too crisp. “You and I—” He stopped, realizing he almost said something inappropriate.
“I recognized something about you just before I handed you the coin,” April said as her delicate fingers inched across the table. “There’s always been this tugging.”
“In your chest,” Cassidy said. “Like you always want to burst into tears for no reason. But you remember something just beyond your memory.” His hands had closed around hers. Tight. He gripped her fingers hard as if he was trying to keep her from floating away. As if the world might yank her into some gaping black mouth. “I know you,” he said. “I know you like I know my own name.”
She was gripping him back, her thin fingers oddly strong. The dripping tears had become a torrent down her face. “They’re all staring at us.”
Cassidy glanced over at the gawking customers and staff. “I’ve waited all this time to remember you,” he said looking back at her.
April’s lips trembled. “I do remember you. But how?”
Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1) Page 27