Forsaken Dreamscape (Nevermor) (3 page)

Wren
had never heard this angle before, and she wasn’t quite sure what he was trying
to prove.

“It
doesn't matter,” she uttered, feeling defensive.

Witherspoon
was able to see her unease and sat back a bit, letting the pressure off.

“I
shouldn't have said that.  I apologize,” he told her, withdrawing.  “Let's talk
about something else.  Tell me about your time in Nevermor.”

Wren
was able to exhale.  She felt her muscles relax, making her as putty in her
chair, though she hardly moved at all.

“It
was better in the beginning,” she said absently, becoming so lost in those old
memories that he had to call her back.

“Yet
even in those first days, there were dangers, correct?  In fact, everything in
the world was a danger to you, I believe.”

Yes,
those first days had only been better if she could get past the threat of the
pirates that had wanted to rape her, the mermaids that wanted to drown her, the
hateful savages that might have killed her without blinking, not to mention a
nightmare monster around every corner – and that wretched fairy with murder in
her heart, the same which had eventually caused the deaths of the rest of them.

But
why would Whisper do that?  Why?  Those children did nothing.  Was it because
of me?

Wren
had thought that she and Rifter’s vindictive fairy companion had come to a
truce near the end, but there was no proof of it now – not after what had
happened two years ago.

“I’ll
accept that life was good to you for a while,” Witherspoon said, leading her
on.  “You were with your brothers.  You made friends with those other boys –
Rifter’s ‘
Wolf Pack
’.  You were
in love
.  But circumstances
changed.  Tell me.”

Yes,
things changed…

“It
started with the storm,” she said, recalling it.  “Nevermor is a world of
dreams and Rifter is the guardian of it, but when
he
dreams, sometimes
things happen to the world.  The landscape might change without warning, and
another thing that often happens when he dreams is that the Scourge comes
back.”

“And
the Scourge is –”

“A
terrifying man,” Wren interrupted, meeting the doctor’s eyes.  “Rifter’s worst
nightmare.  He changed everything – changed Rifter.  Things got worse.  There
was conflict and war.  There was fire and darkness.  But in the end, Rifter
conquered.  He faced his fear and killed the Scourge.  He promised me that
things were going to get better.”

“That
was when he brought you back here.  With Maxwell.”

“Yes. 
So I could make sure he was safe from that life,” Wren admitted.  Her choice
with her baby brother Max had been a difficult one – letting him go off to
another mother who would raise him.  She had cried every night for a while,
wondering where he was and praying that he hadn’t forgotten her, but
eventually, she had managed to let him go.  She hadn’t wanted Nevermor to
corrupt him at such a young age.  He’d deserved better.

Wren
had become firm in her agreement, but Witherspoon’s next question caught her
off guard.

“What
happened to Henry?”

She
felt an abrupt choking sensation in the back of her throat when he said that
name.  Her other brother, Henry…  Rifter had renamed him Fang.

He
was given the highest honor.

“I
don’t want to talk about Henry,” she said solidly.  Even though time had
passed, it still felt like a sword in her chest.

“Fair
enough,” Witherspoon said, making a note in the sideline of her casebook.  Then
he started off on another line of thought.  “Rifter left you here with a
promise that he would return for you in a few days, but he never came back, did
he?  Why do you think that is?”

“He
has a tendency to forget things,” Wren said swiftly, feeling a bit frustrated
by now.  She thought that he must have noticed.  “It’s the fairy’s fault.  She
takes his memories away; sometimes even the small, insignificant ones.”

“You’ve
told me before that he has to be willing to let go of the memory first.”

“Usually,”
she confirmed.

“Then
how does that explain why he might have forgotten you?”

Wren
caught her breath, staring.  She’d tried not to think on it, but of course she
had considered that Rifter had
wanted
to forget her – that he was angry
with her, or had decided he didn’t care about her after all.  Was she so
forgettable?  Wren let her gaze drift down to the floor, wondering how
Witherspoon liked the sight of her heart ripping in half.

“Let’s
talk about that night,” he interrupted, writing a few more notes across the
page.  “Tell me what happened.”

Wren
closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of a stray sunbeam cross her eyelids.  Not
even the light could aid her.  In this, she was utterly alone.

“I
was waiting for Rifter to come back for me.  He said he would come back.  He
promised not to forget.  I waited for a long time at the orphanage.  I was even
put into another job – domestic work – and yet he didn’t return.  Then one
night after nearly two years, it was Whisper who came back instead – the fairy
wisp.  She woke up all the children, and they were very eager to see her.  They
looked to me for guidance and I…”  She paused, shaking her head.  “I don’t know
why I trusted her.  I hardly remember it, as if it happened to someone else.”

This
was true.  Every moment that she could recall seemed so far away that it was as
though another person had lived it and she was merely watching, just as she had
once seen Rifter’s memories.

“What
did you tell them?” the doctor asked, leaning forward again to hear her
confession like a priest through the lattice.

“I
told them to follow her,” Wren said sorrowfully, “that she was going to help us
get to Nevermor.”

“Then
what happened?”

Wren
was breathing harder now, reliving the moment – the vertigo of being on the
roof as the wind blew all around her, the weight of the storm that was
gathering overhead–

“She
led us to the roof.  She pretended to give us a blessing so that we could fly.”

Wren
knew that she should never have believed this.  One could not merely fly to
Nevermor.  Only Rifter could go to and fro as he wished, and anyone he brought
back with him had to be unconscious or blessed to pass through the veil that
divided this world from that.

I
knew it.  Why didn’t I see through that lie?  It was my fault.

“And
they jumped, didn’t they,” Witherspoon said, guessing that she would not say it
herself.  “But you didn’t jump.”

“No,
I didn’t.”  Wren thought she had regret in her own voice.

“Why?”

Even
now, Wren could still recall it.  Each one of those children had jumped off the
roof.  She had been meant to join them.  It was only several moments afterward
that they realized that they were falling instead of flying.  It must have been
the sound of their screams that had snapped her out of her own trance,
teetering on the edge of the roof just before stepping off herself.  By then,
Whisper had been gone – gone like she had never been there.

She
had tried to save me for last.

“Rifter
didn’t come,” the doctor said, snapping her back.  “He didn’t come to deliver
you from that, or take you back.”

No,
he didn’t
. 
Wren kept quiet and looked at the floor.

“It
has been nearly two years since then and he still hasn’t come for you.”

“Sometimes
it’s hard for him to remember things,” she repeated more forcefully, even
though she thought she’d made that clear.

“You
don’t have to defend the boy, Wren,” Witherspoon said calmly, shaking his
head.  “The answer is simple.  You have grown up and he has not.  Yet perhaps
you have a point: you should allow yourself to forget about him as obviously he
has forgotten you.”

Wren’s
eyes rounded like moons at this assertion.  As many times as they had talked
about it, how could he even suggest this?  Though her fear of outgrowing Rifter
was very real – that he would cast her away because she had broken the Vow –
she could not embrace the idea of life without him.

“No,”
she told him bluntly, her voice as level as ever.  “I could never give up on
him.”

Witherspoon
leaned back, staring at her a moment before rubbing his eyes beneath his
glasses.  She wondered what he was thinking, but guessed that she knew.  He had
found hope in her once – perhaps the only thing that kept her here – and he was
losing it.  She wondered if she ought to be worried, but it was fleeting.  She
had determined long ago that she had to keep up appearances here.  That was her
only hope of survival.

“That
will do for today, Wren,” he said.  There was a sigh in his voice – a note of
despair – but she could not be concerned.  All she had to care about was
herself.

Wren
waited patiently as he scribbled in his final notes of the session, and all the
while she sat, rigid and still, staring at his shadow.

1

Wren
peered into the cage, watching the birds hop from perch to perch.  They seemed
content enough, even though they were locked away behind steel bars that would
not let them soar.

Yet
if they were free, there would be dangers for them
, Wren knew. 
Perhaps
it is best that they are caged.  Behind these bars, they are protected.

The
inmates were allowed to enjoy the birds, but were quickly chastised if they
tried to open the cage doors.  Still, Wren often reached her fingers through
the bars to feel the soft feathers as their warm little bodies darted past. 
They were flickers of life in this colorless place.  The birds talked happily
together and none of it was directed at her.  She didn’t have to respond.

Two
years
,
she reflected. 
Two years in this cage
.  The irony of her name had made
her sigh helplessly on more than one occasion.

Wren
stared at the birds now, absently watching the blur of their colors as they
swooped by.  Across the room, a few female patients were staring into adjacent
cages – some muttering quietly, some licking their chapped lips.  Sometimes
they tried to open the doors and grab the birds inside, but there were always
nurses nearby to scold them.  They were constantly supervised as if they were
children.

We
are not children.  We are like the birds
, Wren mused. 
All of us are birds,
cooped up together.

Wren
lifted her eyes through the cage to peer across the room, observing those who
shared the ward with her.  The girls housed at the asylum were of different
kinds and from different places, with assorted coloring and breeding.  Some of
them had been normal in the beginning, but years of confinement had broken
them, and even the improvements to treatment had not been able to fix their
tangled minds.  Others were just on the verge of slipping away – like herself –
while a handful or two were complete, raving lunatics.

There
was Trudy, for example, who screamed every night about the wolves in the walls
– who had tried to cut into another girl with a razor to expose the secret
monster inside her.  Trudy had always been that way, since her first day here. 
She was no worse, but not yet improved.  There were a few others like Trudy,
but there were also more docile types that had never been meant for a place
like this.

Clea,
with her lovely red hair, had been married to an older man who’d been very
jealous of her and had eventually become so paranoid of her flirting that he’d
sent her here as punishment, claiming incurable promiscuity – at least, that
was what Wren had heard the nurses say.

Yes,
we are exactly like the birds.

Wren
rested near the cage, her head on her arm and fingers outstretched through the
bars.  A young cardinal hopped down and pecked at her finger before
retreating.  She was languid now, wishing to drift away.  Through a dream fog
in her mind, she saw the face of a boy, distant but emerging slowly in her
memory.  She reached for him –

With
a short gasp, Wren snapped awake, suddenly aware of a presence nearby.  She
lifted her eyes to see that another girl had approached her, looming now like a
crooked gargoyle on the eave of a cathedral.  Wren knew the girl’s face – pale
and homely with the sunken eyes of the abused.  Her name was Adele, and though
Wren had never spoken to her much, she knew something of the girl’s behavior.

Adele
was of the sort that needed constant attention, and when she’d chosen a target,
she would not relent until she got the acknowledgment she desired.  She often
added the other patients’ problems to her own just for sport, and was an
annoyance to most who dealt with her.

Seeing
that she was being focused on, Wren tried to appease the girl with a short
smile before averting her eyes, but she had known it would not work to send
Adele away.