There Will Be Lies (10 page)

Also, both my feet are on the ground. I mean, obviously. But in the sense that I am not wearing the CAM Walker any more. I am barefoot, the cold forest floor beneath my skin.

Where are we? I ask. At least I think I do – but speaking is
suddenly strange, and it comes from the world outside me but also inside my head.

We’re in the Dreaming, says Mark. His voice is happening in my mind, not outside it; he’s no longer speaking with those graceful gestures of his. His voice is entering through my ears and into my head; it’s an experience I’ve never had before, not really.

I touch my ears. I … your voice is in my head, I say.

Yes, he says. It is called hearing.

I can … I can hear?

Yes, he says. In the Dreaming, yes.

I stare at him. It’s so beautiful, his voice, I can’t express it at all; it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced. I can hear it, loud and clear, rippling in the air, vibrating in my eardrums. Till now, all I’ve heard is static and faint sounds; now I’m standing in this weird forest and I realise that there are multiple strange sensations coming through my ears, that’s the only way I can describe it. Faint, scratching
resonances
, from the outside world, from the forest. I realise that as well as Mark’s voice I can hear some kind of bird calling, and insects crawling in the undergrowth, and the rustle of leaves in the moving air.

And then …

Suddenly …

I am crying.

Oh crap, I am crying, tears running down my cheeks like something has melted at the front of my mind and is leaking out.

Then I love the Dreaming, I say, and I don’t need to move my hands to say it, I just open my mouth and speak, and I hear my own voice in my ears, the voice of a stranger.

Good, isn’t it? says Mark. It’s a place of magic.

I know this already. I don’t just hear the forest, I
feel
it. Or maybe it’s better to say that it feels me and I just know it; I sense it, all around us; it coils; it can see in the dark.

Yes, I say. But, I mean, what is it? Where are we, really?

There was a time before time existed and that is called the Dreaming, and that is where we are, he says.

Oh, that clears it up, I say. Basically it’s a dream, right?

No, he says. It’s not a dream. It’s the Dreaming.

What I mean is … I say. What I mean is, it’s not real. You’re not real. This place isn’t real. I’m imagining it all. Obviously.

The things you imagine are not real? he says.

Well, no, I say.

How do you know?

What?

A dream, he says, is real to
you
. While it is happening, you are not aware you’re dreaming, correct?

I guess. Sometimes.

So it’s a kind of reality. Just a reality personal to you.

I laugh. An illusion, in other words, I say. I mean, if my mom woke up, would I be gone from the car?

Mark shrugs. I don’t know.

Because surely that’s the test of whether something is real, I say. Whether more than one person experiences it. And according to Mom, you don’t even
exist
, so you don’t count.

I exist, he says.

Who says?

Me, he says, and smiles.

I roll my eyes, exasperated. OK, I say. So we’re in some sort of dream that you insist is real, but what am I –

The Dreaming, he says. Not a dream.

Whatever, I say. The point is –

Then suddenly, the sound of the forest, the rustle and hiss and crackle all around me, gets suddenly louder. All of this is INSIDE my head, like Mark’s voice, something that has not yet ceased to amaze me. I glimpse fur, rushing towards us – foxes, badgers. And a clattering of wings as birds approach, hawks, beaks extended before them like weapons.

Mark hisses and squeezes my hand.

This is Shelby, he says in a formal but quick tone, his voice suddenly echoing slightly, as if we have entered an invisible cave of hard rock. And she enters the Dreaming on my sufferance, at my forfeit, and under my protection. I stand for her.

A tension drops out of the air.

The birds reach us, and bank steeply, and shoot up into the trees and disappear; the foxes are undergrowth again and can’t be seen. The forest is back to normal, which is to say, back to dying – because the more I look around me, the more I see that the leaves are blackening and shrivelling, the undergrowth at our feet dry and thin. Everything looks diseased, or thirsty maybe, like it hasn’t rained here in the Dreaming for months.

You
stand
for me? I say.

Yes.

I stare at him. Who
are
you?

I’m Mark, he says.

Yeah right, I say.

He shrugs again, this is kind of his thing at the moment and it is getting super annoying. On the other hand, he is practically the only person apart from my mom I have ever spoken to, he was the
only one I knew who could sign, and now I’m in this magical place with him and I can actually hear him with my ears and I love the sound of his voice.

What am I doing here, though? I say. What is the point of this? I mean, I know dreams don’t have to have a point, but still.

The Dreaming is suffering, says Mark. He reaches to his side and pulls a leaf from a tree. It is little more than a tracery skeleton – ribs, held together by a gossamer gauze of brown tissue. He blows on it and it scatters into dust.

Yeah, I can see, I say. Everything is really dry.

Dry and dying, says Mark. He indicates a flower that is bent over, most of its curled-up petals on the ground.

What does that have to do with me? I say.

Everything, says Mark.

What, why does –

But then there’s a high, plaintive howl, coming from somewhere behind us in the forest.

Alarm floods Mark’s eyes. We have to move, he says urgently, in a low tone. Wolves.

You can’t tell them you stand for me, like you said to the foxes and whatever?

He laughs a hollow laugh. No, he says. Wolves serve the Crone.

The Crone? I say.

An owl hoots.

Owls also serve the Crone, says Mark.

Who is the Crone? I say. What does this have to do with –

Quiet, says Mark. Just go.

This really doesn’t seem like the time for arguing, so I hurry behind him, and it seems like we go for hours, jumping over roots,
twisting to avoid trees. Even though I haven’t been wearing the CAM Walker long in the real world, it’s extraordinary now to be without it, to glide through the forest, over the grass and moss and twigs, barefoot. It feels primal and free, and I would be enjoying it – the air in my lungs, the rhythm of the running – if it weren’t for the howls behind us, gaining. Getting louder.

Mark stops for a moment and frowns, deeply.

Then there’s another high-pitched howl, very close this time. I look where he’s looking, and see eyes glinting in the depths of the forest, and hear snarls. Deep, hungry snarls.

I have only been able to hear for less than an hour but those snarls speak to something very, very deep inside me, something older than I thought I was, and I realise it’s a human instinct from a million years ago, buried in my genes.

It says
RUN
.

I start running. The forest flashes past, leaves and tree trunks strobing, like slowed-down celluloid film.

My legs piston along, my breath rasping in my throat; I don’t know when I last ran like this. I am gasping.

Then suddenly I’m not running but lying down, and I’m looking up at Mom and she is shouting, gesticulating wildly. SHELBY? SHELBY, HONEY? TIME TO WAKE UP.

Then I snap back into the Dreaming and I’m running again, flying over the forest floor, jumping to clear some roots, stumbling over a rocky section, then splashing through some sucking mud where a stream must have been – I can see its banks, though there is no water flowing.

I run and run, following Mark’s fleet, agile form, duck under some ivy and then –

Tree trunk.

I swerve left, miss the tree by inches, but there’s a root elevated above the mossy ground and I don’t notice it till my foot hooks under it and I go right over, smash my chin into the ground and do a clumsy roll, then lie there winded on my back.

Mark appears above me, looking down at me with concern in his grey eyes.
Shelby, rise and shine!
he says.

Huh? I say.

Get up, he says.

Then again:

Get up
.

What are you talking about? I say. Just then he disappears, as does the lacework of leaves above him, the tracer-fire of the brown vegetation, and instead in its place is the grey fabric of a car ceiling – is it called a ceiling in a car? – and the little light you can turn on, or set just to illuminate when the doors are open, and Mom is there leaning over me and –

Mark frowns as a wolf howls, close behind us.

You are flickering in and out of this world, he says.

What does that mean? I say.

Mark closes his eyes, then opens them again. It means you have to go, he says. I will be back for you. But you must get up and step through the air now.

On my own?

Yes.

But I don’t know how.

You do. You just don’t know that you do.

Oh, that’s helpful, I say.

He grabs my arm and levers me up into a standing position. Then he presses a knife into my hand.

Hold this, he says. Close your eyes. The knife knows who you are and knows its way back to the Dreaming, and so do you, deep down. Then take a step sideways. If you need to get back here, to me, you do the same thing – but from your side of the air.

I don’t know –

Yes, you do. But be fast. And remember, I will be back for you.
We must rescue the Child within a matter of days, or your world ends.

Days? I say.

Yes, he says. Days. Now move. Step through the air. Do it.

And I do.

I’m in the car, under a blanket, where I started off. Mom is leaning over me, frowning. I look down and see that I’m shaking.

What? What?
I say.

It’s morning, honey
, she says.

Oh
.

Did you have a nightmare?

I look at her.
Uh, yes, I guess
, I say.

Sorry, honey
.

When I realise that her voice isn’t in my head, that she’s speaking to me with her hands, I nearly cry. For a moment, I wish so powerfully that I was back in the Dreaming again, that it’s like a pain in my chest.

Luke made eggs
, she says.
He has a kerosene stove
.

Mom helps me to lever myself out of the car, swinging the heavy CAM Walker out and down. I stand slowly – the pain is back in my leg, a constant throbbing, like there’s another heart down there, a big one. Mom goes over to Luke.

That’s when I feel something hard pressing against my other leg, and I check my sweatpants pocket. My hand closes around a handle of bone, and I gingerly touch the blade below it, and yes, it’s the knife that Mark gave me.

In the Dreaming.

What the hell?

I try to calm my breathing, because now Luke and Mom are looking over at me. I smile and point to my right leg, as if to say, I got a twinge of pain, you know?

Mom clasps her hands over her chest like, poor sweetheart, and Luke gives me a sympathetic look. Then they beckon me over.

I leave the cocoon of the car; step out into the forest. It is silent. After the Dreaming it is so silent. The birds have swallowed their song, the wind has closed its mouth, the leaves are still and their rustling is gone. I feel like I am going to cry all the tears. All of them.

But no. I need to reserve some tears for the whole Luke and Mom situation.

Because I look at them and I see the way Luke’s and Mom’s hands touch as he hands her a plastic plate of eggs, and a pang of – what? Hurt? Jealousy? Both? – shoots through me. But I sit down anyway and accept my own plate, and also some muddy, bitter coffee that Luke has brewed who knows how.

I can still feel the knife pressing into my leg. Its bone handle, its blade. I try to mentally will it into disappearing, into not being there.

Only …

Only …

I can’t get one feeling out of my head: it’s the feeling of sound, glorious sound, trickling into my ears, buzzing in my head. I know already that I would go back to the Dreaming again in a second, if I could, that I would embrace madness like an old friend – if madness is what it is – just to hear those leaves in the breeze again, just to hear my own voice.

After breakfast, Luke walks into the forest, I guess to use the bathroom. Mom comes quickly over to me.

Are you OK?
she says.

Yes. Why?

You look pale, honey
.

Oh
, I say.
I’m just worried, I guess. About what’s going to happen to us
. This is at least partly true. OK, 100 per cent true. I mean, what IS going to happen if my dad, who I always thought was dead and gone, catches up with us? Is he seriously going to kill us? What kind of lunatic does something like that?

I understand
, Mom says, her hands moving quickly.
I’m sorry about that. But right now I have to do something. We’ll discuss it later
. She looks over to the forest, checking that Luke isn’t coming back, then steps to the front of the car and pops the hood, then bends over it. I see her disconnect some stuff, and pull on some other stuff.

Mom
, I say.
What are you doing?

But she doesn’t answer me. She sits in the front seat, and turns the ignition. Then she nods, satisfied.

Mom
.

She comes over to me. She touches my hair, brushing a strand of it behind my ear. Her hand is trembling a little.
We can’t keep the car
, she says.
It could be traced
.

I blink.
Traced?

Yes. It’s not safe. This way we can hitch a ride with Luke
.

This is insane
, I say.

She gets like a pained expression.
I know
, she says.
I’m sorry. But it’s better than hitting him with a rock, huh?