The Radiant Road (21 page)

“Um, something about seeing? Like watching something? Like he couldn't see me?” Clare, rubbing her face in weary frustration, was stopped by a thought. “Or, oh—like he didn't leave anyone to watch me while he was gone? Or he's worried who's watching out for me now?”

“Perhaps. A nice beginning. What about the rain and wind?”

Clare yawned, then shook her head. That drink must be wearing off. She thought about how the wild wind echoed her father's wild sobs. “Like, his emotions?” she asked. “Maybe like—like wind for his worries swirling around, and rain for his sadness. Like rain for tears!”

“This seems a good reading to me. And now: what did he say about the flag? His precise words.”

Clare thought. “He said it was in the sky. No, wait—he said, ‘It's one of the stories in the sky,' so he ‘keeps it in the sky.' I thought . . .” She hesitated.

“Say,” said Her of the Cliffs.

“I thought of, like, constellations? How they're named after myths, which are like old stories? But I still don't see . . .” She trailed off, and was silent for a while. “It's hard to read a dream-map.”

“It is not only hard.” Her of the Cliffs selected a stone and threw it across the river. “It is impossible, in the end, for the meanings are that dense. That is what I best love about dreams, and about makings, good makings. They are folded-up buds of complications and mysteries, and if you stay with them patiently, they will unfold and unfold, and never stop unfolding. Dreams are flowers that never stop blooming.”

“But then what's the point of trying?”

“I said it will continue to unfold and unfold,” said Her of the Cliffs. “I did not say you could see nothing at all.”

Clare sat in a frowning and frustrated silence.

Finn spoke up. “It's practice is all she needs. I will take her to the dreaming place, and we will practice reading dreams. After a few practice readings, she will know where to find the map.”

Her of the Cliffs eyed Finn for a moment. She nodded. “Practice, then it shall be. But you will only watch the dreams, not enter them, as entering might be harmful, to the dreamer and to you. Agreed, Clare?”

“Agreed.” Clare yawned hugely. “Oh! Sorry.”

The red head cocked to the side. “Have you slept since coming to Timeless?”

“Uhhh.” Clare thought. “Not really. Except when I practiced dreaming-awake, I guess. Was that a kind of sleep?”

Her of the Cliffs frowned. “A kind of sleep. But you need true sleep.”

Clare thought she ought to be tired—the banquet, and learning to dream, and seeing her father. But the light hanging half bright around her told her it wasn't time. “I'm fine,” she said. “I had that wake-you-up drink. And I did sleep some.”

Her of the Cliffs stood, nodded. “Then Finn will take you to dreaming place.” She strode off.

Clare and Finn stood together, alone and a little shy. “It's beautiful here,” said Clare. “This place, this river.”

“It is Her's making,” said Finn.

“But even this, it's only ice under the surface, right?”

“Yes.” A sadness in his assent, almost a shame.

“Is it really ice in my world, too?”

“No, no.” Finn wouldn't quite look straight at her. “Where you live, the fire you call ‘change,' turns the ice into water, and the water flows on and on, makes ponds and oceans and storms and rivers and snow that thaws and runs down the mountains. Ah, but I wish my home was there,” he said with passion.

“But after a while,” said Clare, “the fire of Time turns the water to steam, and the steam vanishes. Where does it go then? Where does what used to be water go?”

Where do we go, when we die and vanish
, she thought, but didn't say.

“Maybe back to water,” said Finn. “Or into air. Or maybe there is a third world we don't know about. Timeless, and Time, and something else.”

They were quiet together, thinking. Then Finn tugged her sleeve. “Let's go,” he said. “To the dreaming place.”

Now they stood at the top of a path that wound down in switchbacks to a wide plain, a plain that stretched out to the horizon. Clare put a hand to her mouth and took a step back.

It was not a sweet, grassy plain; nor was it a vast, dirty city of tall black buildings; nor a rocky desert; nor a snow-carpeted plain; nor a valley full of little houses with chimneys that smoked.

It was all these things, and many, many more.

As far as Clare could see was a confusion, a chaos, of landscapes and objects. There were city streets; there were jungles; there were great white monuments; there were oceans and lakes.

She saw a gigantic statue, taller than a skyscraper, whose enormous stone head had fallen to the ground, where it lay, frowning, on its side.

She saw a merry-go-round spinning out of control, and an old man on it screaming.

She saw a white man and a black woman in red robes doing a slow, complicated, lovely dance down a dirt road.

She saw a tall sooty building, covered with graffiti, every window alight, a man dangling from one window ledge and laughing.

She saw a group of children standing still in a green field of rice, as if they were the rice plants themselves.

This was the tiniest patch of what she could see. The valley stretched beneath them much farther than her eye could follow. It was as if all the paintings of every museum in the world had been scrambled into one dish.

Clare found that she had sat down on the path, and pulled her
knees up, and was peering over them. “Why is it like that?” she said in a small voice. “What is it?”

“The place your people come to dream,” said Finn.

“This isn't what it looked like when you took me to my dad's dream,” she said.

“I took you a different way. I took you straight into his dream. Once you are inside one of these dreams, you won't see the rest of them.”

“Do
I
dream here?” she asked. She got back to her feet, her legs wobbling. She stamped one foot at a time to bring them back to her. “Do I?” It seemed so sad, so congested, so thick, all these screams and laughs, this heat and cold, all this misery and loveliness packed together like cells in a body, and each person unseeing, not seeing the others.

“Sometimes you come here,” said Finn, glancing at her for the first time. “But you are one of the few who wanders out of this place, and into the rest of Timeless, to visit us.”

“They don't see each other,” said Clare. “I hate it.”

“Usually they don't. You are an unseeing people.” He added more kindly, “But all these dreamers are connected underneath what you can see, like mushrooms or trees. But mushrooms and trees feel how their fingers tangle beneath the earth, and you do not.”

“We never feel it, not ever?”

“Some feel it always,” said Finn. “And all feel it sometimes. That's why your dreams may cross the dreams of people you are close to.”

“Close, like, people I'm in the same house with? Or people who are my friends?”

“People desiring what you desire. People whose hearts hum in harmony with your own. Sometimes you know them, sometimes not. Then you make the dream together.”

Then without speaking, Finn took her hand and led her down. Clare was so shocked at this gesture, at the warm rough feel of his hand in hers, that she could neither speak nor think clearly. She just walked beside him, the world rushing around her, blood rushing in her ears.

At the top of the last switchback, Finn stopped. He did not look at her. He kept his gaze on the crazy-quilt dream landscape before them, a chaos of smells and sounds and strangely washed-out colors.

“I know what you're planning to do, Clare,” he said.

Startled, Clare pulled her hand away from his; regretted it. “I'm not—” she began.

“It's a foolish idea,” he said, still not turning toward her. “It is dangerous beyond what you understand. And the anger of Her of the Cliffs when she learns—” He closed his eyes.

Clare's mouth set, pulled down at the corners, waiting for the fight.

“I know what you plan,” said Finn, “because if I had a father, and he were in danger, I would do the same. Which is the selfsame reason I will help.”

Clare thought of the word
dumbfounded
and saw how well it fit this feeling. “You're going to
help
me?”

“But I cannot come with you,” he continued, as if she hadn't spoken. He sounded anguished. “I thought it through a hundred times while you talked with Her of the Cliffs.” (
He doesn't care, he's just skipping rocks
—she felt ashamed to have had that thought.) “He would know me, in a moment he would know, and all would be lost. Clare, I am downcast for it. We are too close, Balor and I.”

“Too close in blood?”

“In blood and other ways.” Finn smiled a crooked, painful smile. “My whole life has been dedicated to him, to knowing that I was meant to destroy him. His life since my birth has been dedicated to escaping me. Our two hearts are tied in one terrible knot.”

“I never thought of it that way. That must be, it must not be . . .” She searched for words: “. . . very nice.”

He laughed a brief, startled laugh. “No, mad Clare. Not nice indeed.” He smiled. “But though I cannot go, I can help you, a little I can. We are meant only to watch the dreams, that you might learn to read them. But if you're willing, I'll take you right inside.” He
looked at her anxiously. “I'll teach you to stay safe inside another's dream, at least as safe may be. What say?”

“
Yes
.” Impulsively, Clare took up his hand again. They both looked down at their hands, as if surprised to see them there. Looking down, not in his eyes, she felt safe to say aloud the hope and fear she had been nursing: “Is there a way to be
invisible
in dreams? That's what I was wondering. So that he couldn't see me at all?”

“No,” said Finn, his low voice so close to her own ear she could feel his breath. “No, I'm so sorry, Clare, you cannot
be unseen.
But”—as she slumped a little—“you can become part of the dream, blend into the dream. Make yourself a passing cat, make yourself a book on a shelf, make yourself a broken doll lying in a corner . . .”

“You can do that?” said Clare in astonishment, looking up.

“You can, of course you can. You just make, as you do in your dream, only using the stuff of their mind. You decide what to be, and you become that. It will be easier if I show you. Come.”

And Finn led her into the dreams of the world.

They entered an old house, like a haunted house, many gabled, with broken windows. The door was off one hinge, and creaked as they pushed it open. The front room, empty of furniture, smelled musty and moldy, a rotting smell. They stood on a grubby wood floor in the dim, colorless light.

At first Clare didn't hear the sound, it was so soft, and came from all around them. But it was there: a high, whispering song. She could not make out the words.

A voice in the next room. Hand in hand, Clare and Finn walked to the doorway, and peered carefully through.

An extremely old man, his face all dusty wrinkles like a dying apple, was scrubbing the walls with a large, dirty rag. He wore jeans and a thin, faded plaid shirt.

“It works through plumbing and words,” the old man said to himself under the soft hiss of the song. His voice was both reasonable and mad. “If you find the words written down, you must erase them. Fast as you can, erase them.”

Words covered the walls. Urgently, carefully, the old man erased some words while leaving others.
The potter's cup unbroken
, said one line.
The cup with water fills.
Carefully, urgently, the old man erased the word
water
.

Clare suddenly understood that the strange song all around them was the sound of water running through pipes.
It works through plumbing and word
s, she thought and shuddered. The words the pipe sang were clearer now, like a dense poem.