Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1) (29 page)

Cassidy watched the war vanish behind him. He wasn’t even a memory to Europe, except, perhaps, for Ilsa. He considered returning to visit her, but if she was still alive, he could be nothing but trouble for her. It seemed that everywhere he visited collapsed behind him.

Banner, the
Nubigena
and her crew had been alive and free before him. Brewster had acted as if he would live forever, smoking his pipe and drinking tea. Richthofen had been the pride of Germany. Was Cassidy a curse to everyone in his wake, or just a cursed survivor?

Potential gates appeared around the Fokker as he called them up from the fabric of reality. America, he thought, somewhere around New York. No, Darcy, Virginia, wherever that was. The home of April’s pain. One of the gates glowed bright and he steered into it. The crackling energy bounced across the Fokker and faded to nothing behind him.

A mere force of thought and no one could see the fighter anymore. It must work much like his pistol and the uniform he wore. Had the world at large ever seen the
Nubigena
? He’d never gotten a chance to see if people noticed at all, or simply saw and forgot a moment later. Had the stormship been just a dream sort of memory to this world?

Cassidy was an alien creature to all of reality now. Something that didn’t belong to the Everdream, the Twilight or the
real
world. Perhaps he was as alien as the strange creature he’d called Banner, that dreamer’s mind in the body of his own dream.

Cassidy sat the Fokker down near Darcy and left the plane covered in branches. There was no telling how long his effect would last on the machine and he doubted the local authorities would look kindly on the sudden appearance of a German war plane.

The town looked like a painting. Like a dream he glanced in bubbles off the Everdream. It might have been nostalgia born into him by Richthofen’s idea of an American’s reaction to such a place, or something else Cassidy had picked up along the way. Perhaps behind the Baron’s fear and hatred of enemy pilots there also had lain a certain subconscious love of another people and culture. Perhaps the feeling had leaked out of April’s coin along with her pain.

The heat Cassidy felt in his chest now as he surveyed the skyline of the church, town hall, schoolhouse and other small buildings outlined against the setting sun must represent some love of the Baron’s own home. His love and nostalgia for some Bavarian hamlet.

Cassidy buttoned his jacket to hide his weapons, let himself become substantial enough to be seen and entered the town as a pilot returned from war. A hotel offered him a room at a discount rate and he accepted it, not knowing how long his roll of American currency would last.

His room was small, but as hotel rooms and Zeppelin cabins had been the only home he could remember, it cheered him just to see a made bed and a lit oil lamp. This town still hadn’t seen its first electric light.

Sleep came easy. The foreign but familiar sheets accepted him like a prodigal son. He dreamed of the castle again. The war was gone and the shattered stones and spires were whole again. There was no Richthofen anymore, but the Baron’s portrait adorned the hallway. In it he stood tall and proud in royal garb with a kingly crown and an iron cross about his neck.

Cassidy drifted from room to room finding a strange amalgamation of both Richthofen’s memories and his own. This was now their home and sanctuary, and perhaps he’d even meet his dreamer once again in some random room of the castle, or he might fly through an earthly Borealis again. What would the Northern Lights be like in the
real
world?

Sun streamed through his window, waking him from his sleep. He washed and dressed. Several jobs presented themselves, but a position for a stunt pilot in a new air show caught his attention first. The owner wouldn’t be in until the next day, so Cassidy spent the rest of the morning and afternoon exploring the surrounding fields and forests.

Here in the
real
world, everything was fascinating. The colours and textures were enough to keep him busy forever. The sun began to set and he felt the pangs of hunger calling.

Cassidy returned to Darcy and looked up and down the main street. Of the several eating establishments, a small pub called Deven’s Place looked the most inviting. He stepped through the door and let the aromas of warm food and fermented hops hit him full in the face.

A few locals sat at various tables as well as a couple at the bar, but the evening crowd hadn’t shown up yet. Cassidy took a stool on the far right where he could lean against the wall and take in the place.

A young woman with the red hair of Scottish highland girls, wearing a dark green apron approached. “What’ll you have?” she asked, with a smile that made her look even younger than she probably was. It was a kind of laughing smile he’d always imagined small children must have. Her green eyes widened. “I’ve seen you before.”

Cassidy pushed the silver half-dollar across the counter. “It saved my life.”

“Saved?” she began, but stopped. With a slow, quivering hand she picked up the Walking Liberty. “I never thought I’d see this again,” she said, gripping the coin tight in her fist as if it might vanish if she let it go. “I don’t do things like that. Just hand things out. Ever. But you looked so sad.” She opened her fist to peek at the coin and closed her hand again. She formed her lips as if she was going to say something else, but stopped. Her emerald eyes looked glazed, as if she were looking past him to somewhere else. “Will you have a drink this time?” she said instead. “This’ll buy you anything on the menu.”

Cassidy gulped, forcing his mind past anything beginning with a W. His lips had already formed the awful sound. “I’ll t-try cognac,” he blurted, and relaxed as the word came out.

“Ever have it before?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Then why cognac?”

“It’s what my fr—” He was about to say friend, but friend didn’t describe Richthofen any more than
enemy
. “My father liked cognac.”

“April,” she said. “Do you remember?”

“Cassidy,” he said. “I mean, John. Please call me John.”

Thunder rolled in the distance. “There’s a storm coming,” April said, glancing out the window.

Cassidy nodded as a flash of distant lightning cut through the sky. “The storm dreams,” he said.

“Why did you say that?” she asked, a look of sudden horror in her features.

“Nothing. Just--” He looked up into her bright eyes. They looked back at his without glancing away. Without questioning. They just stared as if expecting something. “If I buy
you
a drink, would you tell me a story?” Cassidy asked.

“About what?” she asked and a light blush came to her cheeks.

“Anything. I just want to hear you talk.”

April slipped the coin into the pocket of her apron. “I do have a story for you, John Cassidy. Meet me at that table after the dinner rush,” she said, pointing to one in the corner. “But you’ll think I’m mad.”

Cassidy nursed his cognac while April served customers. She kept glancing at him and dropping things, her movements hurried. He couldn’t take his eyes off the young woman as she scurried through her duties, gripping at the pocket of her apron now and then as if checking to make sure the coin hadn’t escaped.

When she finished, April shed the apron, smoothed out her skirt and sat down. “Can I—” she began, but stopped and stared down at her hands which lay folded on the table.

“I’m sorry,” Cassidy said leaning forwards across the table. “I didn’t mean to bother you by coming by. I just wanted you to know...I wanted you to know I wasn’t dead.”

April fidgeted with her hands as she continued staring at them. “Why did you mention the storm dreaming?”

“I don’t know,” Cassidy said. “It’s just a turn of phrase, I guess.” He’d disturbed her somehow. This wasn’t how he’d seen this going. She was supposed to just smile and laugh and throw her arms around him or something. Or say thanks. What
had
he expected? “Storms,” he mused as rain began tapping at the window panes. “They’ve always been a good thing for me, I guess.”

April nodded as if she’d decided something and brought her eyes up to meet his. “You really will think I’m crazy, having only met me twice. But I should tell you something.” She took a deep breath. “Do you ever dream, John Cassidy?”

Cassidy winced inside. Did he ever dream? Did he breathe air? Was she accusing him of something? “I dream,” was all he could manage.

She pursed her lips. “I don’t always remember my dreams. I mean, who does? But ever since I met you, they’ve gotten strange. Vivid. I dream about being someone else. Someone who’s kind of me, but me from somewhere else. I’m always in a garden and you’re always there. And I never remember the end, but each time I wake up weeping.”

Cassidy couldn’t take his eyes away from hers. This was worse than déjà vu. Every word she spoke made the soft fuzzy memory in his mind more and more crisp. A memory that had stuck in the back of his head from the moment he’d left his original dream and escaped aboard the
Nubigena
. The memory which had stopped him from being with Shea. The ache in his mind. The longing for... “We’re in a garden,” he said “A garden with strangely coloured grass and flowers I’ve never seen before.”

Tears flowed down April’s white skin. “Crystal petals. Purple bulbs that grow in clusters. Light shone just beneath the surface.”

Cassidy nodded. “I land my plane. And there you are. Your voice sounds like singing. Like a choir.” The blood in his veins pumped hot in his ears. This couldn’t be happening. Was he dreaming now? No. The colours were too vivid. Her voice was too crisp. “You and I—” He stopped, realizing he almost said something inappropriate.

“I recognized something about you just before I handed you the coin,” April said as her delicate fingers inched across the table. “There’s always been this tugging.”

“In your chest,” Cassidy said. “Like you always want to burst into tears for no reason. But you remember something just beyond your memory.” His hands had closed around hers. Tight. He gripped her fingers hard as if he was trying to keep her from floating away. As if the world might yank her into some gaping black mouth. “I know you,” he said. “I know you like I know my own name.”

She was gripping him back, her thin fingers oddly strong. The dripping tears had become a torrent down her face. “They’re all staring at us.”

Cassidy glanced over at the gawking customers and staff. “I’ve waited all this time to remember you,” he said looking back at her.

April’s lips trembled. “I do remember you. But how?”

“I don’t know,” Cassidy said. “But give me a few minutes and I’ll tell you a story about how the storm dreams.”

***

That night Cassidy dreamed of a dark man wearing nothing but a cotton loincloth and a white beard that almost covered his chest. He looked thinner and wilder than any man Cassidy had ever seen. A bushman? No. An Australian aborigine.

“You’re in a ‘Storm Dreaming’,” the man said. “The rainbow serpent just slithered by.”

“I’m dreaming,” Cassidy said. “Where’s the castle?”

The old man shook his head. “No castle tonight. This is
your
dream. Your first dream that you’ve created alone.”

A vast desert spread out before Cassidy. The sun was pale red. Rocks stood here and there adorned with odd pictures of men and beasts in what looked like white finger paint. “You know what I really am, don’t you?” Cassidy asked.

The aborigine nodded. “You’re an alien to the
real
world. You know that.”

Cassidy nodded. “But, I know there used to be a garden.”

“Before and after,” the Aborigine said nodding. “You’re standing in the desert of the Dreamtime. This is where my people come from. It’s where they return. You’ve been here too, but you must go back. Much further back.”

“I don’t understand,” said Cassidy. “Back to what?”

“Back beyond the Storm Dreaming. You’ve a long way to go.”

Cassidy stood silent in the dream, unable to take his eyes off the wrinkled man. “But I’m
real
,” he finally said. “I’m
real
now.”

The old man cracked a sardonic smile. “More
real
than you’ll ever know. All dreams are fingers and toes of the Dreamtime, but you’re something different. You are bound for a time when this desert becomes glass.”

The aborigine’s words trailed off as he faded into the air and the sand became smooth and transparent. A city of coloured glass rose to the sky, moving above him like the arms of a great mobile. “This,” said a strange voice that crept into his head, “is the dream of your dream. And you must find the garden.”

Back in the
real
world he knew April slept beside him. He remembered it as clear and clean as anything he’d ever known. But she was here, too. Somewhere. She meant something more than he could comprehend, but he would find her. He would know what she was.

A special thanks to everyone who helped this book come together.

My cover illustrator: Dave Groshelle

My editors: Carol Woods and Sumittra Wongsaprome

My English teachers: Ila Zbaraschuk and Keith Lindsey

My writing teachers: Don Whittington, Jon McCord and Jack Ballas

My first editor: Don Muchow

The Lesser North Texas Writers club and the DFW Writers Workshop

And of course the many beta readers who gave amazing feedback on what I know what was a challenging book to read:

Bill Francis, Shawn Scarber, Kristie McKay, Marc Morris, Krista Wolcott, Gerardo Delgadillo, Carl Droste, David Pflugrad, Ken Snow, Ed Sherrill, Janet Sherrill, Stan Sherrill, Connie Snow, Carmen Vargas, and probably a few I’ve forgotten to name. Thank you all.