Dreamhunter (28 page)

Rose tried to tear herself away from her mother, who was clutching her, grappling with Rose as she tried to struggle free and go to Laura. To
save
Laura.

Laura held her arms out to the statue. It swooped on her, caught her up and rushed away into the nearest stairway — the one that led down to the dreamer’s door.

Rose ran after them, then stopped when she saw the sparkle of broken glass on the carpeted stairs. She had bare feet.

LAURA COULDN’T SPARE
her aunt — the dreamer she had to mount. She couldn’t spare Sandy — who she hadn’t imagined would be there — or any of the other innocents. She couldn’t spare the pregnant woman, the sight of whom had
appalled
and very nearly stopped her. She had still gone through with it. She had followed her father’s letter. She had stuck to her resolve.

But, early that morning, before her train came into Founderston, and after she had seen Nown off it — pushing him on to the track near the muddy riverbank — Laura sat down to mix Wakeful into the jar of Farry’s musk cream before spooning it into the toffee shells. She did that so that Rose,
Rose at least
, would be spared waking up in her coffin.

The police who arrived at the Rainbow Opera, summoned to quell a riot, discovered many of the Opera’s patrons spilling out into the freezing street. They seemed desperate for air. Many were brushing at their faces, as though to remove some obstruction only they could see. Some had clawed long, red channels on their own faces and necks.

The police entered the building through hallways marked by bloody handprints. They encountered men and women who were still gnawing at their own hands — some fortunately restrained by calmer friends. The Opera stank of vomit. Many of the Opera’s patrons were sitting on the balconies, pale and stunned, their luxurious nightclothes torn. But, the police found, it was no riot. For while some people were shouting and flinging themselves about, most simply sat, holding one another and crying quietly.

The police first established that the President of the Republic had been taken to safety by his own bodyguards. Then they located the Secretary of the Interior. Cas Doran was leaning on his balcony rail, his arms rigid and shaking. He was surrounded by his own bodyguards, who were jumpy and kept glancing nervously about, but were listening to Secretary Doran as he issued instructions.

The constables then noticed that a large group of angry men were clustered around the door to the President’s private balcony. They persuaded the crowd to disperse, then broke down the door and found Grace Tiebold and her daughter. The dreamhunter was placed under arrest, and escorted from the Opera through angry crowds, gathering ambulances, jostling reporters and a stampede of black-suited officials from the Dream Regulatory Body.

Laura and Nown left the Isle of the Temple by the railway bridge to the east. Nown carried her. He walked from board to board along the top of the bridge, over the running water that was deadly to him.

He cradled her, his arms so long in comparison to her body that he could warm her bare feet in one hand — a cold hand, but it kept her toes from the night air. He held her as he could hold heat, and her breath blowing against his fake collarbone warmed him all the way to the back of his neck.

Nown strode on, stepping on every third sleeper on the track, passing beneath the barred windows of the houses that backed on to the railway line in the Old Town. There was no one looking out of those windows. Not a soul to see them go by.

It had been raining and the sleepers were wet, the
rainwater sitting on spills of engine oil. But Nown’s sandy soles never slipped, and their progress was smooth.

They passed through the Old Town and into the suburbs, over crossings whose striped warning barriers were up, saluting the sky. Nown stepped aside for one train. They went on past backyards where damp work clothes and aprons and nappies hung from clothes lines. They passed properties where dogs erupted from their kennels only to baulk, whining, then scuttle back into shelter again.

Nown carried Laura beside ditches choked with brambles, and banks covered in newly planted trees — budding birches and willows.

The railway line would, eventually, take them to the stop near Marta Hame’s house. That was where Laura had asked Nown to take her.

She lay quiet. She didn’t stir till they reached the country. Then her head moved from where it rested against his shoulder to look around at the slender birches that clacked and ticked in the night breeze.

‘Nown,’ she said, ‘in the train last night, did I tell you to stop talking to me?’

‘No.’

‘I think I did.’

‘You said, “You’re hurting me.” You had told the eighth, “Don’t hurt me.”’

Nown had let himself be guided by an order she’d given his earlier self. He’d tried to help her, and she’d silenced him.

Laura hitched herself up in his arms. She felt the smooth bandage of sand that wrapped her feet separate, and round out into fingers once more. She climbed Nown, flexed her legs so that she could get her arms up over one of his shoulders. Laura looked behind him — not back along the track — but at the back of his neck. She looked at the letters of his name. NOWN. She thought of the words of the song her father taught her:

She reached around and used one finger to erase the first N in his name. His name now read: ‘OWN’. She knew that, if she properly understood the way the spell worked, she had just set her servant free.

Nown hesitated; he broke stride. He faltered, but he didn’t stop walking.

Laura sank back into the cradle of his arms, and he once again picked up his pace, kept on steadily striding along between the rails.

Shortly before dawn it began to rain. Laura watched the big drops absorbed by Nown’s sandy skin. She saw the rain spots join together to become dark patches. Nown stooped his shoulders, and bent his head down over Laura to shelter her from the rain. His face was near to hers.

She said to him, ‘You might melt.’

And he said, ‘If I melt, you can make me again.’

Story concludes in Book Two:
Dreamquake