Forsaken Dreamscape (Nevermor) (8 page)

This
forest was burned by the Scourge years ago
, she recalled. 
It hasn’t
grown back
.

There
was a disturbance above and Wren lifted her eyes in time to see several dark
shapes fly by overhead.  They looked like a flock of large birds, but she
feared they were not.

“Keep
moving,” Rifter said lowly.  “Almost there.”

Rifter
guided her farther until they reached a hollow cave mouth which seemed to hum
on its own.  He tugged on her hand as he guided her inside, but paused just
within the opening where there was still a bit of light.  He was quiet as he
peered around, his eyes glowing in the dark.  Wren examined the cavern as well,
noting the jagged spikes that had formed on the ceiling.  Somewhere deeper
inside was the resonating sound of dripping water.

“Are
we safe here?” she asked quietly, but even that echoed.

“Safe
as anywhere,” he replied.  She didn’t like the sound of that.

He
turned to face her, his cat eyes flashing.  There were so many emotions in
those eyes: hatred and love walked hand in hand, followed closely by innocence
and wisdom.  He looked at her, his expression that of a poor little boy who
didn’t know what to do, but the way they were shaped under his brows made him
look sinister.  Was she to feel sorry for him?  To take him in her arms?  Was
that what he wanted?

“Is
this where you live?” she asked, but there was no evidence to support her
guess.

“I
have no home anymore,” he said sadly.  “I have to keep on the move, always.”

“Where
are the others?” Wren was beginning to feel nervous, but she had already
guessed the answer before he confirmed it for her.

“They’ve
gone,” he replied, and a harsh bolt of fear rushed through her chest.  Surely
he hadn’t meant that they had
died
!

“They’ve…?”

“They
left me,” he said, but Wren only felt slight relief from that.  “They’re out
there somewhere now, on their own.”

Those
six boys that Rifter had chosen to be his companions – the six that were left
in a long line of the fallen – had once called Rifter their leader.  They had
not always seen eye to eye with him, but their loyalty had been strong.  They’d
fought for him, despite the circumstances, and Wren believed every one of them
would’ve died for him as well.  Something terrible must’ve happened to cause
them to leave him.

There
were so many things to address, but to start, Wren took a deep breath to steady
herself.  She looked at the light-haired boy, trying to find the one she
remembered.

“Tell
me what happened,” she said firmly.  “Why is the world dead?  Why have you
aged?”

He
didn’t answer immediately, instead circling around her, considering.  She
watched him, his movements, feeling his eyes penetrating every part of her as
if he was staring through her flesh.  Finally, he stopped behind her, leaning
in against her hair.

“You’re
beautiful,” he said near her ear, as if just discovering it.  Wren felt her
heart speed as it had in former days.  “Somehow more than I expected – than I
remembered
. 
Perhaps I’ve only missed you.”

He
touched her shoulder affectionately, and she savored the sound of his breath. 
She might have claimed not to know him, yet she felt something inside at his
show of admiration.  It was pleasant, but she could not allow herself to be
taken by it.

“I
owe you so many apologies, Wren…”

“I
just want the truth,” she insisted, but did not bother pushing him away.  “What
took you so long?  What of the others?”

She
paused as a thought came to her.

“He
came back, didn’t he?” she assumed.  “Did you dream him up again?”

“No,”
Rifter said, his gaze shooting to hers.  “This has nothing to do with the
Scourge.  I swore he would stay dead, and that, at least, I’ve been able to
manage.”

Wren
was able to feel a bit of relief at that, but it faded swiftly, giving way to
further confusion.  How had this happened if the Scourge had nothing to do with
it?

Rifter
stepped back from her and strode away.  She was relieved when his glowing eyes
turned, and yet sad that he had retreated from her.

“I’ll
start at the beginning.  Is that what you want?  You will have your answers.”

Wren
found a place to sit on a damp rock formation as Rifter leaned back to sit on
the air – merely one benefit of being able to fly.

“It
was the darkness,” he said.  “By the time you left, it was already on its way;
we just didn’t know it.  We had a lot of guesses, but never quite decided what
brought it on.  It came on like a storm over the sea, but the effect was a
thousand times more than what the Scourge could do.  Those dark clouds rolled
over, and the land died.

“I
was away when it happened – taking you back to your old life.  I didn’t have
the chance to stop it, and then it was too late.  That darkness – or nightmare,
or whatever it was – destroyed everything.  It corrupted everyone at least a
bit.  Some fell into despair completely.”

Sounds
like the asylum
,
Wren thought, shifting uncomfortably. 
Perhaps our lives have not been so
different.

“It
was a change in Whisper that I noticed first,” Rifter went on.  “She was very
sensitive, you know.  The darkness snared her heart.”

The
fairy, Whisper, had never been very high on Wren’s most-trusted list, though
Rifter had never seemed aware of the creature’s misgivings.  Something had
finally gotten his attention.  Did he know about what had happened at the
orphanage?

“Why
did she kill the children?” Wren asked.  “Was it because of me?”

“Yes,”
he said soberly, and Wren felt her chest ache, even though she’d already known
it.

“When
I got back, everything was in chaos.  It happened so quickly!  As we were
trying to figure out how it had happened, what had caused it and how we might
beat it back, I lost track of time.  Time meant so little to me back then.  But
I didn’t forget you, Wren.  I want you to know that.  I never forgot you.”

He
reached for her hand.  The way he looked at her now, even with his fierce eyes,
made her want to take away his pain.

“I
believe you,” she promised, holding his hand between hers.

Does
he have fever?  Why is his skin so hot?
  She wanted to ask, but he was speaking
again and the moment passed.

“When
I started talking about bringing you back, Wisp became angry.  I had thought we
were past all that,” he said, shaking his head.

“Me
too,” Wren agreed quietly.

“She
felt that she was the only thing protecting me, and she wanted it to stay that
way.  I didn’t know what she was planning – didn’t know to stop it.  It was my
fault.  She had been corrupted long before; I just turned a blind eye to it.”

Rifter
had always turned a blind eye to the actions of his fairy companion.  The truth
of it was that Whisper had never needed the darkness.  That night at the
orphanage was not the first time she had tried to kill Wren.  Wren hated the
thought of this, but perhaps it was that simple.  Those children had died just
because of her, and yet she had lived.

“Whisper
came back to me and told me what she had done – that you were
dead
.  I
didn’t want to believe it, but when I went to see for myself, it was true.  You
weren’t where I’d left you.  A while later, that entire group of children
showed up on the beach here.”

They
appeared as wanderers – ghosts
.  Wren’s heart ached for them.

“They
were still looking for this place after death, but you weren’t among them.  I
had to believe that you were alive, but I couldn’t find you.  Without Whisper,
and without your own dreams to bring you back here, I couldn’t see you in the
other world.  I had to give up.  Only recently it occurred to me that I might
use my own shadow to find you, but that was a bad idea from the start.  Mimics
have always been corrupted.  They are of the darkness.  Seems that it did work,
however.  It eventually found you – even if it tried to kill you.”

“What
happened to your mimic?” she asked then, recalling that it had simply disappeared
inside her cell.

“It
must have sensed I was close when I was looking for you at that prison.  It
attacked me in one of the hallways, but I was able to subdue it.”

“So
you were behind the riot after all.”

He
nodded.  “I needed a way to get you out.  Chaos is a good distraction.  At
least you weren’t hurt.”

Hurt?
  Wren had been
ignoring the dull pain in her arm but allowed herself to look at it now.  The
long line where the shadow had cut her had stopped bleeding, but her skin was
smeared with old blood.  She covered it with her hand, hiding it with her hair,
and Rifter did not seem to notice it at all.  Instead, he became agitated,
rising up to pace as he continued his story.

 “To
see the land as it was…  I couldn’t stop thinking about
him
.  Still, I
didn’t bring him back.  Even so, he knew that this would happen.  He planned
it.”

The
Scourge…

“Before
I killed him, as the two of us were tumbling down into that lava pit, he told
me that I wouldn’t be able to keep him away.  He told me it wasn’t over.  The
Scourge set something into motion that day, and he knew that it would come back
around.  None of us were aware enough to see it.”

Wren
thought back to those last days.  Unlike the rest of them, she’d spent time
with the Scourge – talked with him privately in a way that the others never
had.  He hadn’t told her all of his plans against Rifter, but he had given her
the impression that there was something more to what he had intended than what
he’d presented them with that day.

He
told me that he’d opened the mouth of hell.

“I
have lost my power over this place,” Rifter confessed, his voice full of
self-loathing.  “The Vow of the Never-Ones has been broken.  Whisper was
separated from me – by my own choice – but we had begun to age long before
that.  Of course we didn’t know it right away, but it didn’t take so long to
learn.  We all
changed
.”

“Changed?” 
Wren feared that word, now more than ever.

Rifter
looked up to peer straight into her eyes, peeling away the layers of her soul.

“Can’t
you tell by looking at me?”

A
shrieking cry from the dead forest echoed down to them and Wren jerked her head
around, fearing the emergence of a nightmare.

“We
have to go deeper,” Rifter said, taking her arm.

Ahead
of them, the cavern was yawning and ominous, lit only by a hint of bright green
fungi that was growing in clusters on the ceiling and walls.

“We’ll
get lost,” she tried to protest.

“You’ll
have to trust me.”

She
wanted to, more than anything.

Wren
allowed him to pick her up.  He flew deeper into the cave, moving silently
through the air.  She kept quiet, though she could not see anything aside from
the glow of his eyes.  She decided then that, though she might have been blind
to the darkness, he could likely see through it.

He
hadn’t gone so far before she could see a glow in the distance, and eventually
Rifter touched down beneath the light of a few dim crystals that were glowing
deeper within.  Wren had seen some like these before, years ago at the
mermaid’s lagoon, but these seemed to be losing their life and luminosity. 
They had once been bright and beautiful, lighting up the place where the dreams
had gathered, protected by strange, bubble-like eggs.

That
was the night he kissed me for the first time.

They
stopped at a point where the cavern gave way to an open pool of water that
seemed to flood the rest of the cave.  He peered around in silence and Wren was
good enough to copy him.  When everything seemed still, he turned to her again.

“What
is out there?” she asked quietly, looking back toward the direction of the
forest, but it was shrouded in darkness.

“Valkyries
– some of the lesser nightmare monsters.  The island is overrun with nightmares
now,” he said, shaking his head.  “After a while, there were simply too many to
fight.  The task became too much, and because we couldn’t seem to find an end
to one thing or another, the state of the world got away from us.”

What
had happened to those resilient boys that she had known, willing to fight for
anything?  Wren’s brow furrowed at this thought.

They
finally reached a point that broke them down completely.  They gave up
.  She was sure
of it.

“The
land and its people turned against us,” Rifter went on seriously.  “We all
separated, in fear for our own lives, and are branded traitors here.  This
world has rejected me.  The nightmares have taken over.  It is not safe, even
for me.  Not anymore.”