Fearsome Dreamer (4 page)

Til stroked the side of his tea glass absent-mindedly. ‘I don't want to hurt her,' he murmured.

Rue took a breath, ignoring a twinge of self-disgust. ‘We could try it now,' she said. ‘So you know what it's like.'

He was silent.

‘A really small twist of it,' she said. ‘Really small. Then you know what it'll feel like and whether it might work.'

He was still silent. Rue screwed herself up tight.

‘All right,' he said at last. ‘If you think that's best.'

‘I'll be a minute.'

She got up from the table, heart hammering. When she looked back, he was staring at his glass. She couldn't tell what he was thinking. Done it now, dear, she thought. Made your choice. Carry it through. Stop being such a baby!

Rue moved through the cottage into the back workroom, sorting through the jars on the shelf. It would be plain old dagger weed, not even special enough to be named properly, Fernie had said with a sort of satisfaction. It was a source of pride to Fernie that no one but hedgewitches knew what dagger could do, treated properly. Rue trailed her fingers over the paper labels, nervous of picking the wrong jar. Finally she found a small container filled with the familiar dried purple leaves.

Now how much to measure? Rue sorted anxiously through her mind. Measurements were of the utmost importance. How much for this? Less than usual. How much was usual? One spoon for a tea, wasn't it? But he wouldn't want to sit around waiting. Make it a half pinch. Should only be about an hour's worth, immediate effect.

Rue measured it out into a cup and looked at it. Didn't seem much. Maybe just a half pinch more. She made her way back to the kitchen. Til hadn't moved. She went to the stove and put some more water back on to boil.

‘It should start working fast,' she said over her shoulder. His silence was getting on her nerves now, where before it had charmed her. ‘Won't last more than an hour. If it does, you should take a really cold bath. The shock'll dim its effects quicker.'

In a moment more she had it done. She made her way back to the table and replaced his tea glass with the fresh, her fingers twitching just once in betrayal. She resumed her seat near him and folded her arms.

‘Best let it steep for a moment.'

He twined his hands together and stared at the cup. Rue thought anxiously about what she should do. Should they talk some more? Would he think her too intrusive?

‘Well, and so, who told you to come here?' she ventured.

Til looked up at her. ‘Who …?'

‘You said that someone told you Fernie could help? You don't have to say who it was … I'm just curious.'

Til studied the air in front of his face. ‘Yeh,' he said at last. ‘Something like this. Not a friend of mine. Just someone I know who … knows
her
.'

A friend of his woman. Rue rifled through what she knew of his love's acquaintances.

‘Do you … have this sort of visit a lot?' Til said. He took a tentative sip of his tea.

‘More than you'd suppose,' said Rue vaguely, still thinking. ‘And more men than you'd suppose, and all. And always at night.' She glanced at him.

‘You both must think us fools, all us who visit,' he murmured.

‘No,' she said, wanting to impress him with her honesty and maturity. ‘We're human too. We have wants and desires. We understand them best. We do silly things we'd do anything to take back. Witches are more human than anyone else.'

Til was looking at her strangely when she glanced up.

‘What is it?' she said.

He shook his head. ‘Tea's tingling me all over.'

‘That's expected. Shouldn't be too long now.'

They fell silent. Rue traced a knot in the table under her hands.

‘Not a talker, are you?' she said.

‘No,' he said. ‘Never have been. This is as long a talk as I've had for many a month.'

‘I talk too much, says Fernie,' Rue said. ‘My head's too full, she says. Too dreamy, I am. Always somewhere else.'

‘You're proud of that.'

Rue looked at him in annoyance. ‘You see a lot, don't you?'

‘People don't think a baker's up to much. I listen, though.'

‘Fernie says I don't do enough of that.'

Til swallowed and put his cup down. ‘Why you prenticing with her?'

Rue played her fingers together, rubbing the nails against each other, wondering what to tell him.

‘It's special, ain't it,' she said. ‘Being a hedgewitch. You'll get to know things most don't.'

‘You think you're special?'

Rue was ready to flare but heard no patronising tone in his voice. She shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe I thought hedgewitching would tell me who I am.'

‘Everyone's looking for that answer.'

‘Maybe,' she said again.

Silence fell again, but it was of a richer, more companionable sort. Til swirled his tea a little and drank a mouthful while she watched.

‘Tell me,' Rue started. ‘Do folk … think badly of witches? Do you think us frightful or odd?'

‘No. Folk are nervy of what you can do. You know, healing and that. It's respect, is all.'

‘Well. I mean, sometimes I think I get treated funny in the town.'

‘By who?' came Til's voice.

Rue dared not look up. ‘Don't know. Women talk about me when I walk past. Boys come up and tease.'

‘That ain't because you're training in hedgewitching. It's cos you're a sauce.'

‘A
what
?'

‘A sauce. A little girl woman. You sway your hips and flirt with everyone.'

Rue looked up, outraged, meaning to give Til the fullness of her malice.

She blanched when she saw his face. His skin had gone pink and he seemed suddenly fast and tensed, as if he wanted to bound out of his chair. She had a flash of warning in the pit of her belly.

‘I don't flirt with anyone,' she said, her voice faint.

Til snorted. ‘Ha! It's a fact about you, Rue.'

Rue shrank back in her chair. Til was gripping the table edge, his eyes sparkling and over-heated. He seemed wrong, like he was going too fast for himself and was ready to trip over.

Grad take me … I've given him too much.

She stood up. So did he.

‘Til,' she said. ‘Til, it's the tea …'

He said nothing, as if he could not hear her. Her skin prickled slowly.

‘It's the dagger weed,' she said, striving to sound calm. ‘It was too much. I'm sorry.'

His breathing was loud.

‘Til,' she said.

‘Hush up,' he muttered. He moved towards her and she forced herself to hold still. Something told her that if she acted frightened she'd make things worse.

‘Til, the tea is making you feel fast and hot. Right? You should sit down. You should … I can get you some water. T'will make you feel better.'

He gripped the tops of her arms in his huge hands and then stopped, as if unsure of what to do next. Rue felt sick.

‘Til …' she tried again.

‘Hold still,' he said, and pushed his weight down on her arms. She broke, wrenching free and running to the back door. She felt him up behind her and then his weight tugged her down. She fell awkwardly and felt his hands on her. His arms were against her thighs and her skirts were being pushed roughly up to her hips. In white-hot panic she kicked back and heard a thump and a ‘whoof' sound. She turned, sliding on the flagstones, and scrambled backwards. He was winded, his legs splayed out in front of him. One hand clutched at his belly.

‘I'm sorry,' said Rue, aghast. ‘I'm sorry.'

Til jerked to his feet and she shrank back. With a hand still pushed against his stomach, he staggered past her and out the back door, leaving it wide open.

She sat for a moment, unbelieving. Then she struggled to her feet and peered through the door into the night. She could just make him out, travelling with speed back towards the village.

For one moment she thought of running after him, but she'd never catch up. And what would she do? There'd be no persuading him to anything. His blood was up.

It hadn't been how she'd thought it might go. It hadn't been nice at all. It had been embarrassing and coarse and frightening. She felt the slow blush of shame start to slip over her. How could she ever have possibly thought that it was a good idea?

Stupid, stupid girl.

‘I didn't measure right,' she said aloud. ‘That's all.'

It was no comfort. She felt cold and small, and got up to close the back door.

Fernie could be home any second. She had to get rid of any evidence and hope that Til said nothing. But if Fernie asked … Rue wasn't sure he would lie. She also wasn't sure what Fernie would say when she found out, but it would be awful, on that Rue could rely. She might even, Gods forbid, put Rue out of training. The worst and most damning of all fates. Rue cleaned up as she fretted, rinsing out the tea glasses and putting them back in the cupboards wet.

She'd have to go seek Til out tomorrow and tell him to keep it between themselves. It was the only thing to do.

She swept up the kitchen and straightened everything out as best she could. Thinking she heard noises of Fernie's return, she spooked and fled to her room, throwing herself into bed and trying to quiet her hammering heart.

‘Mama,' he said.

The weak and rounded bulk of his mother stirred a little at his voice.

‘Mama,' he said again. ‘Have you been listening?'

She could hear him, he knew she could; but she was jacked into Life.

Her bedroom was dim and grey, light kept at a minimum. He used to admire her for her spartan approach to decor-ating. He used to think that it was because she didn't need real things to see beauty. Now he understood that it was because for her, nothing could compare to the virtual reality vastness of Life, and how everything looked when she was inside it. Why bother decorating a place you hardly ever spent any time in?

‘I'm back. They let me out. I came back,' he said to his mother, willing her to hear him. Shout. Cry. Move. Care at all.

Her bulbous frame rippled, but that was it. Nothing.

He pushed away his sudden revulsion and stood up.

Cho and Jospen were waiting in the kitchen. They looked up as one. It had always been like this, the two of them working unconsciously together. He'd grown up jealous of that. Now he felt triumphant, because it made him free.

Cho had been crying.

Jospen's face was cold and empty. ‘What did she say?'

‘What do you think?' White replied. ‘She didn't even turn her head to look at me.'

‘She's in Life,' said Cho. ‘If you just jacked in, you could talk to her.'

‘The addiction counsellor said we shouldn't be talking to her in Life at all, Cho. You
know
that. It only encourages her. We should be trying to bring her back to reality,' said Jospen wearily.

‘Oh, so we should just ignore her all the time, right? And just never say anything to her, then?'

‘Cho,' came Jospen's tight reply.

Cho turned back to White. ‘Please,' she urged. ‘Just jack in for a minute. She's been so worried about you. She cries a lot.'

‘You mean her avatar cries,' said White. ‘Not her.'

‘She's got worse since … since you've been away,' Jospen said.

‘If she didn't have an implant, she'd have no way of connecting to Life,' said Cho darkly. ‘And there'd be no problem.'

‘CHO,' Jospen hissed, his face turning an ugly shade of red. ‘She'd die without the implant. All of us would. And it's disgusting, talking about removing it like it's some sort of parasite.'

‘Oh, relax,' said Cho, her voice tinged with a nasty edge. ‘No one's listening in.'

Jospen pressed his lips together, incensed. Cho looked back at White, her eyes trying to appeal to him. ‘
You
should know what it's like for her. You should understand. You know, with your thing.'

White snorted. ‘That has nothing to do with it. She managed to get addicted all on her own. She doesn't even practise the Talent any more, the way we used to. I don't even know if she has the dreams any more. She's let herself become what she is. She's disappearing into Life and letting her children rot. She's a fat, useless junkie.'

Jospen leaned across the table and cuffed him on the side of the head. His eyes teared up.

‘No, no, stop!' Cho, frantic.

White waited patiently for his ear to stop buzzing. He blinked.

‘What did you think that was going to accomplish?' he said to Jospen.

His brother's face was sucked inwards, his mouth reduced to a thin slash.

‘Please don't,' said Cho.

‘No, really. I'm interested. Tell me, Jospen. Beat me. You can do anything to me now. Anyone can do anything they like, because nothing will ever be worse than the prison. You remember what they did in there. Yes?' White's voice cracked and he waited until he was sure it wouldn't again.

‘They let you go,' said Jospen. ‘They couldn't find anything and they let you go.'

‘Is that supposed to be a comfort?'

Jospen was silent.

‘I'm still leaving,' said White. ‘I'm leaving and you can't stop me. I can't think of one way you could do it.'

Jospen laughed. ‘You're not seriously talking about going to Angle Tar, are you?'

‘Yes, I seriously am.'

‘Don't be ridiculous. It's a fantasy land you made up in your head. The version of Angle Tar you know is just a dream. It's nothing like the real Angle Tar.'

‘How would you know? You've never even been to the real Angle Tar! I
have
!'

Jospen's mouth twisted.

‘You should leave, too,' White tried. ‘Go somewhere else, start again.'

‘In case you've forgotten,' said Jospen, ‘Cho is still a child. She hasn't applied for her adulthood status yet, because unlike you, she's not an arrogant little git.'

White swallowed a spike of fury with effort. ‘You could take her,' he said. ‘You're an adult. You could just go somewhere else.'

‘I'm not going anywhere,' said Cho insistently. ‘I'm not abandoning Mama.'

‘Oh yes, you too, Cho. Come on, try your best!'

He felt a hand on his arm, and looked up into Cho's face. She couldn't speak; she was shaking her head, eyes bright with tears, and hiding her face. She was better at this than Jospen. White sighed and slumped, the anger fading away.

‘The problem with you,' said Jospen, ‘is that you have no idea what real life is like. How hard it is. All you do is fantasise the day away. And so does Mama. You're just like her, you know, even though you think you're special. Neither of you have ever actually lived in reality, have you?'

‘Nobody does!' White exploded. ‘This whole place is an endless dream! Everyone spends their entire time jacked into Life! People barely leave their houses any more. No one even travels any more! When was the last time anybody went to another country in World?'

‘I met with friends in Germany this morning.'

‘You met them in Life,' said White. ‘Not in real life!'

Jospen gave him the look he always gave him when White had apparently said something so totally inexplicable, he might as well have been barking instead of speaking.

‘It's the same thing, Jacob. Life
is
real life, so no one needs to move around,' Jospen said. ‘You know this. Why do you want to live in the past? Transport is evil. It was killing us all, killing the world. The wars, and all the genocide, and the … the oil,' he tailed off lamely. ‘You learned this at school.'

White forced himself not to reply. He wouldn't bring it up again, no matter how much he ached inside to try. He had attempted to explain it to his brother and sister many times, and it had always ended up in an argument like this.

‘No more talk of leaving,' said Jospen. He had mistaken White's silence for backing down, and it made his hackles rise. ‘It's ridiculous. How can you possibly hope to go and live in another place, all by yourself? How could you even look after yourself? Where would you get clothes from, and food? Where would you live? You don't know the first thing about it. You're just a child, still.'

‘I'm not a child,' hissed White. It was the one thing that he absolutely despised about his older brother, the one thing that always made him react – as surely as night followed day. He knew Jospen used his age as a weapon to keep him in his place, and he knew that he was perpetuating the whole thing by reacting the way he did
every single
time, but he couldn't help it. He just couldn't leave it be. It was like a knife slammed in his ribs. ‘I took up adulthood last year, and you know it, so stop always pretending that I'm still a child!'

‘Why do you think they put you in that place?' said Jospen. ‘They couldn't have done it if you'd stayed a child. They waited until you took adulthood to arrest you. They had to; it's the law.'

Jospen never referred to it as a prison, and always called it ‘that place', as if it was a shame so great that acknow-ledging its actual name and function out loud would cause the universe to cave in.

How to even begin to explain his reasons for leaving here? Except that the kind of place that put you away and tortured you when you were different was a place that made him feel sick to his soul. White felt no affinity to it – it was not where he belonged – even though he had spent his life here. Because he was different, he could see things from the outside. Cho and Jospen could only see things from the inside. He shouldn't blame them for not being able to understand.

It was not a matter of choosing a country outside World to escape to. There was only one place he wanted to go, only one place in the world for him, and he'd seen it in his dreams.

Since he could remember, White had dreamed of places and people he had never seen before, and they felt and tasted different to his other dreams. They felt
more
, somehow. He couldn't explain it better than that. And until he'd started to talk innocently to other children about the things he liked to do (mainly dream), he had assumed that everyone had a separate dream life the way he did.

He used to try and tell Cho and Jospen about the things he dreamed of, when they were all children together. It had been a game of sorts. Their mother had encouraged it, to the point of scheduling time at the dinner table for him to regale them all with where he had been ‘visiting' the night before. Because the places White visited in his dreams were real.

Their father had hated the whole thing. He'd wanted a family that fitted comfortably into their surroundings, not this collection of odd people that did nothing but stick out. He'd wanted normal. It was hard to see why he had ever married their mother. It was easy to see why, just after White turned fifteen, he had given up and divorced her.

When they grew older, White learned that Jospen and Cho didn't really care much for the ability that only he had inherited. He'd also been taught very quickly that he should stop talking about his strange dreams outside of the family. No one else wanted to see the world the way he saw it.

He was a problem that brought them nothing but pain. The solution to that was obvious. He had to go.

He knew he would miss them.

He would be alone for the first time in his life, unconnected from Life, unconnected from everyone and everything he had ever really known. Only criminals and terrorists were unconnected.

He was terrified by the idea of it. Terrified that Jospen was right, and he wasn't ready to be an adult, despite being one in the law's eyes. Terrified of having to find a way to get his own food, and his own clothes, and every part of his material existence that had always been provided by Life.

They had said in prison that his new implant would be able to tell them when he Jumped out of World, and away from Life signal, in minutes. He knew there was no signal in Angle Tar, he
knew
that; nevertheless, he was scared that they would be able to track him down somehow and make him pay for escaping.

But it was better than staying here. It had to be better. He would be free.