Wakeworld (10 page)

“The poor parents did not understand a word of this conversation and were terrified that some evil would befall the child, but they need not have feared. The dragon led them to a place where there was water, and wood to make a shelter, and let it be known that they were welcome to live here so long as they wished.

“Allel ran wild in the forest by day, and ran through the Dreamworlds at night. From that day forward the white dragon was her constant companion both waking and dreaming. He kept her safe in the Dreamworlds, showed her how to move between one world and another, and all the secrets of the Between.

“All of the time in Dreamworld saw to it that she aged slowly. Her parents grew old and faded away. One after another they died, and by this time Allel was a good half century in years of time, but looked no more than eighteen summers, with a cloud of night-black hair and eyes the color of fog when the sun shines through.

“The dragon saw that she was sad and alone once her parents were gone. He tried to make it up to her, but she said, ‘I am lonely without my kind; there are none of them left except in the dream, and those are only for a night.’

“‘I shall teach you how to make a dream of your own,’ he said, and took her to the pits where the raw dream matter lies.

“‘Take up a handful,’ he said, and she did so. ‘Now let your mind go quiet, and you shall see the desire of your heart.’

“In her hands the matter twisted and writhed, and she looked at her dragon, afraid. ‘Do not fear,’ he said, ‘or we shall have a nightmare to deal with.’ She listened to him, and from the matter a lovely thing was formed, the shape of a young man. Broad shoulders had he, and hair as golden as hers was dark, a smile as bright and blinding as sunlight on water. He was only tiny, not life-sized, but alive and real and warm in her hands.

“‘Do you wish for him to live?’

“For the first time in her life Allel felt tears upon her cheeks. Yes, she wanted for this perfect thing to live. She could not understand what it was that she felt, only that once in existence she didn’t want for the man to die.

“And so the dragon created a bubble around the little man, and blew with his fiery breath, and the bubble floated away and vanished. Allel cried out to see the man float away, but the white dragon showed her how to find that Dreamworld, so that she might visit whenever she wished.

“But it was against the dragon lore to teach such things to a human, and a summons came that both the white dragon and the girl should present themselves to the Dragon King. When he saw Allel, clothed only in the fall of her own hair and gazing at him with sheer delight in her silver eyes, he was enchanted.

“All of the dragons were assembled, but Allel was not frightened by the glittering throng. She stood quietly before them, self-possessed, and only inclined her head, ever so little, to show respect but not fear.

“And the King was moved by her beauty and the clearness of her eyes and the quickness of her mind. Within him stirred a new emotion—a hot and writhing thing. He had no name for it but could not bear to lay his eyes on the white dragon as he stood there beside the maiden.

“‘The law has been broken and there must be consequence,’ he said.

“The white dragon moved to stand between the maiden and the King. ‘You shall not harm her. The fault was mine.’

“‘Precisely,’ said the King. ‘And yet we cannot allow her to return now into the world, to share what she has learned. She will stay here, not as a punishment but as a precaution. You shall bear all the penalty of what you have done, and that penalty is death.’

“A silence followed such has never been known before or after that time. The sound was sucked from the trees, the river, and even the sky. Breath and birdsong, breeze, flowing water, the scurrying feet of a mouse, even the inaudible flicker of a dragonfly wing went silent. And through the minds of the dragons, thoughts traveled from one to the next. Some thoughts were loyal to the King—whatever he did must be right. Others disagreed that the life of a human should be held sacred over the life of a dragon.

“And then the King set upon the white dragon and killed him.

“Through the ranks of the dragons ran a murmur of dissent. ‘This is wrong. We will not be ruled in this way. We are a free people.’

“Others, accustomed to following the King’s thoughts and deeds, cried out against the rebellion. A war broke out then, dragon against dragon. Allel stood unscathed in a swirl of battling dragons on sky and land, for all were agreed on the one point that she should not be harmed.

“But in that moment a great and lasting hatred was born within her heart—for the King, and for all those dragons who served him.

“At last the King came to his senses. ‘Enough!’ he cried. ‘We must not fight among ourselves. Those who do not wish to honor an allegiance to me may go; the others may stay. Make your choice and make it well, for there will be no turning back.’

“Fully half of the dragons took to the air and flew away. Allel stood beside the body of the white dragon and watched them go.
There shall be reparation for this,
she thought, but she kept her thoughts unto herself, buried deeply within her heart.

“And so when the Dragon King shifted his form by magic to appear to her as a golden-haired young man, she smiled at him and allowed him to believe that little by little he won her love. At night, though, she vanished into the Dreamworlds still—visiting the man that she had made and telling him the tale of all her wrongs. Although Allel’s hatred fell only upon the dragons of the Forever, and especially upon the King, her tales took on a life of their own in the breast of the man she had created.

“‘They are all alike,’ he said. ‘Marauding, cruel, and evil.’ His hate grew until, in time, he began to hunt them, as did his sons, and the sons of his sons. The dragons were strong and many of the dragon hunters died, so that the seed of Allel’s first Warrior was very nearly extinguished.

“But not quite—for it is said that in every generation, still, one Warrior will be born.

“As for the dragons outcast from Forever, they kept largely to the mazes of the Between. It was not that they could not enter the Dreamworlds, as much as that they did not care for the strangeness and unreality. They loved to fly, to hunt, to eat. Although they retained the ability to speak to one another, mind to mind, they lost the ability to speak aloud. Much of the magic and the lore was forgotten, for dragons are long lived but do not live forever, and what was passed from generation to generation grew less and less.

“Allel bided her time, and one starlit night she allowed the Dragon King to make love to her beside the golden river. Her body began to swell with child. In all that time she kept her thoughts to herself. For the Dragon King she would only smile, allowing him access to her physical self but keeping the rest of her—the part that he desired to know and possess—a secret unto herself. He grew increasingly jealous, confining her to a single room so that she would not wander away. And with this also she complied, only with the exception that at night she vanished utterly away, and try as he would he could not hold her.

“At last, within the silken prison cell he had made for her, she gave birth to a child—a daughter, with her own dark hair lighted by gold, and silver eyes. And the King was moved by awe and wonder and great love for the tiny creature. Still, Allel waited and watched. She allowed him to grow more and more attached, and then one night she took her daughter with her into the Dreamworld and did not bring her back.

“The Dragon King waited, believing that she would return as she always had. But days went by, and then weeks, and months. Strange things began to happen. Dark shadows found their way into his kingdom, at first by night and then by day. They took the form of monstrous bears and wolves with jaws of iron. There were creatures that were a travesty of dragons—things of bloated bellies and bulging eyes with dragon wings and scales. They crept through the land, banding together to attack full-grown dragons, or attacking the young when unattended.

“The dragons all waited for the King to grow wrathful and lead a war against the invasion, but instead he wandered for hours by the golden river, often in his human form, pining for the woman and for his child. At length he did grow angry and led invasions out into the Dreamworlds, seeking what he had lost and wreaking destruction along the way.

“Word came at last to the Queen of the Giants, in those days the wisest and most just of all living beings, and she saw that if this war continued it could lead to the destruction of all the worlds. So it was that the giants went to work to craft doors of adamantine to block the entrance to the Forever. One by one, each of the lesser doors by which Allel had traveled into the Dreamworlds were sought out and sealed. The only connection left between the worlds was a single cave that bordered on the pits of raw dream matter, so that it might flow into the Dreamworlds and back again as needed.

“A dragon was chosen to serve as guardian in the Cave of Dreams, ensuring that nobody passed in or out of the Forever. And then the doors were made and put in place, and the giants shut them, that the dragons within would remain within, and the dragons without would remain without. And a key was made and a spell was cast upon it, that only she who could restore the balance would be able to open the Gates.”

“And the dreamspheres?” Zee asked.

“Nobody knows why the Cave of Dreams exists, any more than they can tell how the Dreamworld or the Wakeworld came into being in the first place. Made by the gods, it is said, but where are these gods now? They are not talking. Every dream has its dreamsphere, and except for those given to the Dreamshifters as a gesture of goodwill, all rest in the cave. Thus it has always been.”

Zee set aside his tankard in frustration. “You have told me fairy tales. How does any of this answer my question?”

The sound of a heavy motor filled the air and a red tractor drove around the corner and pulled up in front of the trailer. The man behind the wheel nodded his head at the hermit. “You ready?”

“In a minute.” To Zee he said, “You think I am a foolish old man, and you may be right. But I ask you to consider this—how long have you hated the dragons? And how deep does it run?” He hitched the rope belt to ride more comfortably over his belly and brushed the crumbs from his beard. “Well, there’s my mover. Take care of yourself. I shall leave you some supplies.”

“Wait—you’re moving right now?”

“She’ll be coming for you soon, now. I don’t wish to be here. You might want to be moving on yourself.”

“But I have more questions . . .”

“Everybody has questions. Learn to live with them.” The hermit clucked and shook his head, ran a hand over the top of his bald pate, and disappeared inside the trailer.

The farmer hitched up the trailer to the tractor without so much as looking in Zee’s direction, then headed off in the direction he’d come from, hauling the trailer along behind. As it began to move, hands tossed items out of the windows.

Zee watched the tractor and trailer out of sight, waiting until the dust settled and all was quiet. In the center of the green lawn was now a rectangle of dirt and a few tough weeds. Scattered all around it were the items the hermit had thrown out the window.

Zee collected them, taking stock of his inventory. A pair of socks and sturdy leather hiking shoes. A sheath for the sword that ran over his shoulder instead of around his waist. A flannel shirt, and a T-shirt with a picture of a can of beer and a slogan proclaiming,
It’s five o’clock somewhere
. A woolen blanket. An army canteen, full of water. A backpack, stocked with protein bars and a first-aid kit. And a battered copy of
Through the Looking Glass
, which explained absolutely everything and nothing.

He could feel the black dragon’s presence. Not too close, not yet, but not far enough away. Much as he would have loved to slay her, he knew he wasn’t ready. And so he put on the T-shirt and the shoes and socks, slung the sword over his shoulder, packed everything else into the backpack, and set out down the only road there was to follow.

V
ivian tucked her chin into the neck of the sweatshirt she’d borrowed from Zee’s closet and curled her hands up inside the too-long sleeves, seeking protection from the sharpness of a wind that smelled of snow. The streets of Krebston were still dark and mostly empty. In another hour there would be a trickle of traffic increasing to a steady flow as people headed out to school or work, but only an intrepid few were out at this hour. Her source of information, unless something had gone wrong, would be among them.

Tugging open the door to Sacred Grounds she found herself instantly enveloped in a steamy warmth, redolent with the rich smell of coffee and cinnamon.

“Hey, Doc! What are you doing here? Thought you’d gotten too uppity for the likes of us.”

“Decided to come slumming.” Vivian turned toward the speaker, the knots of tension loosening a little with relief as she saw Cal was there with him. Thank God for gossipy old men and unshakable routines. She’d hoped they would be here, sitting in the corner by the window and working through the crossword, but she’d feared that maybe even this reality had been altered. At least twice a week over the last year she had stopped here on her way home from a long night of work for a cup of coffee and participation in the communal crossword puzzle.

“Where’ve you been?” Cal asked.

“Took a little leave of absence. Personal stuff.”

“Need a five-letter word for bring upon oneself,” Rich said, not looking up. “You gonna help us or what?”

Cal just grinned. He’d left his teeth at home again, his collapsed mouth giving him a deceptively foolish look. He wasn’t. At eighty-five he might be slipping a little, but he’d started with a towering intellect that left him still smarter than the average Krebstonite.

“Let the girl get her coffee,” Marta said, rolling her eyes at Vivian. “Before she falls asleep on my counter. What can I fix you, hon?”

“Just coffee, in the biggest mug you can find. And one of those cinnamon rolls. They look amazing.”

“Calorie content to last all day, and worth every crumb,” Marta said, patting her comfortably rounded belly. “Room for cream, right?”

“Always.”

Almost light-headed with the mingled aromas, mouth watering with anticipation, Vivian carried plate and mug over to the table where the old-timers had already shifted to make room for her.

The two were constant companions—where you saw one, you saw the other. Weekday mornings at Sacred Grounds, lunch at Café Michelle, afternoons at the library in winter, outside in the park on sunny summer days. Rich was shrunken down to nothing but bones, an old scarecrow with a few strands of white fluff on his bald head, blurred brown eyes behind thick glasses. Cal, on the other hand, was fat. He still had a full head of black hair, his brown eyes bright but almost buried, like raisins stuffed too deep into a gingerbread boy.

“Are you sure that’s edible?” Rich asked, eyeing her cinnamon roll. “Looks like more frosting than bread.” His voice was surprising coming from his thin body, a rich baritone made for giving speeches.

“That’s what makes it edible,” Vivian said, taking a bite. “You should have one. You’re only young once.”

“Abstinence,” Cal said. “Fourteen down.” His right hand, the joints red and swollen with arthritis, gripped the pencil and slowly added in the letters.

“I did. Yesterday I had two. What have you gone and done to your eyes?”

Vivian shrugged, and said lightly, “Wandered into an alternate reality and got poisoned by a dragon. They look like dragon eyes, don’t you think?”

Cal’s raisin eyes sharpened in a quick assessing look and then returned to the crossword puzzle. Rich frowned a little, his forehead puckered. “You’re a little edgy, Doc.”

Cradling the hot mug between her palms and breathing in the fragrant steam, Vivian thought about how to broach her topic. “Not sleeping so well,” she said at last. “That business down at Finger Beach bothers me.”

“No good thing has ever happened around that stone. They’re keeping it real hush-hush this time. But I heard there were all kinds of suits down there the other night.” Rich grabbed a fork and took a bite of her neglected cinnamon roll. “Damn, that’s good. You should eat.”

She slapped his hand. “I will, if you leave me any.” She took a bite, gooey and cinnamony, an explosion of goodness so sweet it burned her throat. A swallow of scalding coffee to wash it down, and then she said, as casual as she could make it, “I’ve heard tales about the stone myself. Some guy named Jennings connected somehow, wasn’t there?”

It was a guess, and a total score. Cal looked up from the crossword, actually putting down the pencil, his keen eyes peering deeply into hers.

“The old man was a mean old devil. Beat all the kids and his wife,” Rich said.

“That fall his wife had maybe wasn’t so accidental.” Cal tapped the pencil on the page, but his eyes were no longer reading crossword clues, they were staring off into distant memory.

“Maybe so—but it wouldn’t have to be the old man that pushed her.”

“Weston mighta done it, you mean? He was only a little kid when she died.”

“Some are born mean.”

“He was nine. I hardly think—”

“Didn’t he shoot the family or something?” Vivian broke in.

“That’s what everybody said.”

“My dad never did believe that story,” Rich said. “He figured it was too convenient to blame the boy just because he wasn’t around to defend himself.”

“You saying the girl might have done it?”

“Why not?”

“A thirteen-year-old girl—”

“Like a woman has less murder in her than a man? Doc, I do believe our Cal might be a chauvinist.”

“You both are,” Vivian said. “Why do you suspect the girl, Rich?”

“Well, my aunt went to school with her, you know. Rose said Grace was downright unearthly, possessed maybe. Those were her words, mind. Hardly ever said a word, kept to herself but always watching. No friends. And they found her in that room with all the bodies.”

“Never going to convince me a slip of a girl shot her whole family in cold blood. And it wasn’t some stranger—no sign of a struggle. Had to be Weston.”

“Well, whatever happened up there, it was spooky. The house is haunted.”

“That’s a fact, sure enough.”

The two old men exchanged a grin that was suddenly all mischievous boy. “When we were kids we lived near the old place—what is it, twenty miles from here?”

“Round about.” Cal shoveled half of Vivian’s cinnamon roll into his mouth at one time, chewing with great enjoyment.

“Used to ride our bikes out there—take a lunch and make it a day. Dared each other to go through the house. Kitchen was allover bloodstains—nobody ever cleaned it.”

“Could you draw me a map?” Vivian asked.

Cal stopped chewing.

“Well, I reckon we could,” Rich said, slowly. “But why would you want to go out there? Less’n of course you took us along—”

“Some protection we’d be,” Cal snorted.

“We’re talking haunted, right?” Vivian made her voice clear, logical, and dripping with disdain. “Ghosts and such? Wooo and woooo? And you are going to protect me from that. You’re not only old chauvinists, you’re superstitious old chauvinists.”

Rich unfolded a napkin, took the pencil from Cal, and sketched out a rough map.

“Does anybody know what happened to Grace?” Vivian asked.

The two old men exchanged glances, quiet for a long moment.

“Well, my old man said the neighbors took her in for a bit. But they shipped her off to an orphanage after only a couple of weeks,” Rich said, finally.

“That seems harsh. Nobody in the community that would take her?”

“Probably would have done if she hadn’t robbed her daddy’s grave.”

“She what?”

“Well, not the grave per se. Gotta be fair, Rich.” Cal licked his fingers, then wiped them on a napkin. “Just the coffin. After the wake, before the funeral, minister come downstairs and found her rooting around in the coffin. Not kissing the dead good-bye, like, or weeping. Just cold and quiet.”

Rich nodded. “That’s what my mama said too. Couldn’t have her here, going to school with the other kids, loose in the community. Even if she wasn’t the one what did the killing, it must have turned her.”

Vivian wasn’t hungry anymore. The ancient tragedy, combined with her worry about Zee, swirled with cinnamon and sugar and dough in her belly. She shoved the plate and the remaining bits of the roll across the table.

“You not eating that?” Cal said.

“Feel free.”

“So she never came back?”

“Never said that.” Cal’s mouth was full with the remains of the cinnamon roll. “Moved back to Krebston once she was all growed up. Lived down by the river.”

“Died what—about forty years ago?”

“Near enough. Whole house burned up—poof. Didn’t look so much like an accident.”

“Suicide, if you ask me.”

“No way of telling. Nobody went to the funeral.”

“Let me get this straight. When she was a little kid her whole family got murdered, she got sent away to an orphanage, as an adult she was so miserable that she lit herself and her house on fire, and nobody in this community went to pay respects?” Vivian discovered that she was angry on behalf of this woman she had never met and knew nothing about.

The two old men looked surprised, then shrugged. “When you put it that way . . .”

“People want no truck with what they don’t understand, Doc, and that’s the truth. Something weird about that whole family.”

Cal took back the pencil, tapped it on the crossword. “You weren’t much help, Vivian. Twenty-one down, purchase price.”

“Did Weston ever come back?”

Both old heads shook no at once. “Not that I heard tell,” Rich said. “Never seen or heard of again. The rest of the lot is all buried in the old part of the Krebston Cemetery—not the one by the school, the one up on the hill. They found room for Grace in the family plot, so maybe you’ll feel better to know that she joined them in the end.”

Vivian looked at the map on the napkin, which seemed clear enough to find her way. “Don’t suppose you two know whether this land belongs to anybody?”

Rich shook his head, his face suddenly serious. “Look, missy doctor, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not kidding about that house. Laugh as you will about it being haunted, but there’s an evil lingers ’round that place.”

“Leave investigating to the cops,” Cal added. “Go take care of sick people like you’re meant to.”

Rich yawned. “Damn, I’m tired and my brain feels fuzzy. Must be getting old.”

“Ha, you were old when you were born.”

Vivian left them bickering amicably, getting another cup of coffee to go.

When she stepped outside, she left all the warmth behind her. A slice of wind cut through her clothing, and she shivered, huddling into the sweatshirt and running down the street toward A to Zee.