Dreamhunter Duet: Dreamquake Part 9

From far away the substance looked like chocolate sauce from one of his ma's self-saucing puddings. (His ma used to say that she was a "self-saucing pudding," which was a joke about how in their family there was no "Da" like other families had.) The boy squatted to look at the brown substance. The air was hot nearer the ground, as though the ground was cooking something.

He saw that the oozing ma.s.s was ants, thousands of them, flowing in a twisting, glistening brown rope down the grooved tree trunk. He could actually hear them. The ants were making a noise like bursting bubbles in sea foam-except much quieter. The boy could hear them only because the sounds of the world had dropped away. Even the birds in the bushes were silent.

His mother came to the cottage door to ask what he was doing. She was wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n. He wanted to say to her that the ants were leaving their nest. But he didn't get to say it. He saw her hands grow still, though she continued to hold her ap.r.o.n gathered before her.

They both listened. The boy wondered why the horses in the paddock behind the house had decided, all at once, to gallop down to the back fence.

But the thunder wasn't horses.

The ground began to move; it lurched sideways, and then jolted up in shudders. The boy fell onto his hands and knees. He heard his mother shout. He saw her rush across the porch. At the same time the cottage chimney slammed down onto the corrugated iron roof, then came apart and slid-bricks and boulder-sized chunks of mortar and brick-down the curve of the roof and off its edge. The boy's mother rushed out among the falling bricks. None of them struck her.

She staggered across the yard and picked him up, then stumbled under the yard's one tree, a cabbage tree partly smothered with honeysuckle. The honeysuckle was in flower, and as they stood-he in her arms-the tree dropped honeysuckle blossoms and a thick veil of floral scent down over them. His mother spread one hand over the crown of the boy's head and held him sheltered in the curve of her body. She leaned back against the tree trunk and struggled to keep her footing.

There were crashes and thumps from the cottage-scarcely audible in the thunder from everywhere. And there were high-pitched sounds, the squawk of nails pulled loose from timber, and the painted weatherboards splitting with a sound like gunfire.

Water was jumping out of the puddles and into the air.

Then the heaving and juddering stopped. The yard went quiet, though the air seemed to torque and rustle.

The boy's mother held him tight. Her heart was beating so hard the boy could feel it pus.h.i.+ng against him, fierce and powerful. Her heart was strong-the boy thought-but not nearly as strong as the ground, the angry ground.

Grace was shaken awake by the bed heaving. Beside her, Chorley was sitting up. She heard him fumbling around on the nightstand. He lit a candle.

Grace made a m.u.f.fled noise of irritation. The bedsheets were uncomfortably starchy, and the room was stuffy. She remembered that she was in a hotel-the sort of hotel young Sandy Mason could afford to rent for his performance.

"That was Verity," Chorley said to his wife.

Grace's next annoyed grunt had, at its end, a mild tone of inquiry. Verity was Chorley's dead sister, Laura's mother.

"The woman on the porch," said Chorley.

"Sandy isn't a Gifter," Grace said. She was waking up, reluctantly. She could feel herself shrinking away from something.

Maze Plasir was a Gifter (or, impolitely, a Grafter). He could graft the bodies of real people onto the characters in his dreams. That was why he was in demand by the sorts of men who would send him out to watch-say-their daughters' school friends and then have those school friends stand in for the obligingly friendly females of Plasir's specialty dreams. Gifting was a very rare talent. Some dreamhunters, at certain times in their lives, did make their own subst.i.tutions. As a young woman, Grace had found herself replacing the anonymous handsome faces of her dreams' heroes with Chorley Tiebold's after she first saw him at a ball. It just happened, and was beyond her control.

"But why would Sandy think of Verity?" Chorley asked, bemused. "Where would he get her from?"

"Laura."

"How could he get her from Laura?"

"No. It was Laura." Grace sat up so quickly she threw the covers off them. "It wasn't Verity; it was Laura."

Chorley screwed up his face. "Why would Sandy want to imagine himself as a child and Laura as his mother?"

Grace put her hands over her face. She was very confused, appalled, and, at the same time, deeply moved.

"It's perverse," Chorley was saying, his voice strained.

Grace put a hand on his arm. She was worried he might leap out of bed, wake up Sandy Mason, and start demanding explanations. "Calm down," she said, though she was far from calm herself.

"It's so perverse I can't even imagine what kind of perversity it is!" Chorley said. Then, "Why are you laughing?"

"You're funny."

"Grace, Sandy Mason finds he's an angelic, violin-playing little boy so he immediately supplies himself with my niece as his mother. And you're laughing. I'm a liberal man. I have an abundance of tolerance for dreamhunters and their peculiarities. But this is going too far."

Grace wiped her eyes. "Shhh," she said.

Chorley shut his mouth and only radiated indignation.

Grace took his hand and met his eyes. "That was Laura. She wasn't tall or fair like Verity, but she had Verity's sweet, queenly face. Sandy Mason isn't a Gifter. And if he recognizes the woman in his dream, he'll be very upset and angry with himself and suppose it's because he can't get Laura out of his head." Grace kissed her husband's hand. Her own heart was pounding as hard as the heart of the woman in Sandy's dream, but she tried to be calm for her husband's sake. "Listen, love," she said. "The convict in Laura's first dream remembered being a boy racing a schooner along the sh.o.r.e of So Long Spit, and you saw the lighthouse keeper's boy doing just that. The dreams are set in the future. And that was Laura, grown-up, and with a little boy of her own."

III.

Summer and Christmas.

1.

HEN SHE WAS ON VACATION IN THE AWA INLET, MAMIE PREFERRED TO SPEND AS LITTLE TIME AS POSSIBLE WITH her brother, Ru, and his friends. She told Rose that the boys were boring. Right after breakfast she and Rose would often walk up the stream and into the beech forest, or set out along the hot mud track through the reedbeds at the eastern end of the Inlet. Mamie would tell anyone who was listening that they were going to gather sh.e.l.ls on the sandbar. Or she'd say they were going swimming and then would go to gather sh.e.l.ls. Ru had once confronted Mamie about it. "You told us you'd be down by the rocks," he said, aggrieved.

"So?" said Mamie. "Why do you suddenly want my company?"

Ru had blushed and hadn't complained again.

Mamie was, in her own brutal way, trying to look after Rose, who had discovered that it wasn't at all fun to be admired by someone she didn't like, especially someone you had to share a roof with. When Ru Doran looked at her, Rose felt at odds with her own body. She felt that there was something wrong with her. She didn't want Ru to think she was beautiful. She felt she should be able somehow to show him that he wasn't allowed to have opinions about her appearance-or, at least, that he wasn't allowed to show them. Being openly admired by someone she found unattractive made Rose feel that her beauty didn't belong to her, was in fact something tricky, a demon hiding inside her, prompting, and making offers, and emitting strange odors when she'd rather just go about being her usual self.

Mamie and Rose's favorite beach in the Inlet was toward the western end, quite a distance from the Doran house.

On a day two weeks into Rose's visit, the weather was very hot, and the girls had swum for more than an hour, jumping from the rocks over and over until their ears began to ache. Then they lay on the sand. Salt p.r.i.c.kled on their warming bodies as their skin grew dry and tight.

"How long can we stay away?" Rose asked her friend. Her room got the afternoon sun and would be too stuffy to retire to.

"I'm going to have to have a word with Ru, aren't I?" Mamie said.

Rose shrugged, her shoulders rasping on the sand.

Mamie picked up Rose's skirt and fished in its pocket for the letter her friend received that morning.

"Hey!" Rose said, but didn't move.

"It's only Patty-Patty is a weakness we share, Rose." Mamie frowned, then quoted their cla.s.smate's letter: "I am deprived of society here in the South. I see no one I like." She laughed. "But see, a paragraph later she's dancing the military two-step with her cousin. You know, I think they're all cousins in the South. Which is a shame, since poor Patty is one of those girls who is longing to be able to say to someone things like 'An introduction for the purposes of a dance does not const.i.tute an acquaintance.' But she knows absolutely everyone. And, Rose! It says here she already has the pattern for her Presentation Ball gown. Hasn't she got any other interests?"

"Making fun of what other people are thinking doesn't actually const.i.tute 'an interest,' Mamie," Rose said.

Mamie tossed the letter down. "Let's go back," she said. "I'm not going to be kept from the house by my brother and his tedious admiration."

Rose got up and dressed while Mamie tried to think of a plan to discourage Ru. "You could propose marriage-that ought to sober him up."

"I could start scratching myself all the time, so he thinks I'm infested."

"Or you could clear your throat every thirty seconds, like Miss Toop at the Academy."

"I could make a three-p.r.o.nged attack, clearing my throat, scratching, and proposing," Rose said.

"Or you could just attack his three p.r.o.ngs!"

"Mamie!"

Shrieks of laughter.

That night, in the early hours of the morning, Rose woke and lay listening. She heard a disturbed bird twittering in a tree near her window. Perhaps its calls had hooked her out of sleep, or perhaps she'd been roused by the same thing that made the bird cry in alarm. She felt that something remarkable had happened only a moment before. The curtains in Rose's room were thick, the room black, and the birdcalls were bright in the darkness.

She got out of bed and shuffled to the window, slid the curtains open, and squinted into brilliant moonlight.

Outside, all the colors of day were present under a smoky filter. It was late, and a dewfall had softened and silvered the gra.s.s.

Rose decided to go out. She left her room and crept down the stairs. She went out by the French doors in the dining room. They were locked, but the key was in the lock.

She set off down the flagstone steps of the terrace, then veered away through the orchard and headed for the best path to the sea, the bed of the narrow-gauge railway that ran from the sh.o.r.e to the house.

The Doran summerhouse was on a slope at the back of the Inlet. It was grand and solid, built of blond sandstone, its roof tiled with slate. It had been a big project, in a remote spot, and had presented its builders with some challenges. Labor wasn't a problem, for the hill had been terraced and the foundations laid by convict workers. The difficulty was in getting the materials from the sh.o.r.e to the site across the boggy paddocks of the former farm. The farm already had a rough road that ran, plumb straight, from the sh.o.r.e to the foot of the hill, along an avenue of mature plane trees. Cas Doran's solution to the transportation problem was to have a narrow-gauge railway built along the road. A small engine ran on the line. In many trips, over many months, the engine hauled stone and timber, marble and parquet flooring, roof tiles, window gla.s.s, and finally furniture.

When Rose had first arrived at the Awa Inlet, the train she was on made a special stop at the end of the trestle bridge that crossed the mouth of the Sva River. Rose then got into a small boat and was rowed up a broad tidal channel, through the reedbeds, to the Doran jetty. There she was greeted by the sight of a butler sitting in the cab of a little engine. A footman stowed her bags in the single truck the engine was pulling. Then she climbed into the engine behind its driver and rode up to the house.

The engine had been stoked up several times during her visit-to pick up Ru's guests and their luggage, and to carry supplies: baskets of fruit and vegetables; sides of pork and beef; cages of live chickens; blocks of ice; and hampers of dry goods, preserves, cheese, and wine.

Rose emerged from the orchard and went into the avenue of old trees. She patted the engine, which was sitting in its shelter, cool, still, and breathless.

In the daytime the avenue was a shady tunnel; at night it was like a cathedral, a ruin with a broken roof. Rose walked beside the tracks, her face turned up to the moonlight that fell, almost warm, through gaps in the foliage high overhead. She glanced down only now and then to step over tree roots that snaked almost all the way up to the rails.

Rose intended to go to the sh.o.r.e. The tide would be out, and she wanted to see what the bare sands of the Inlet looked like by the light of the moon. But as she came near the two stacks of rails left over from the time the line was laid, Rose saw something that made her stop, and then slink off the track and behind a tree trunk.

She stepped up onto a tree root and peered around the trunk-yes, she had seen a light. There was a lamp sitting unattended beside the pile of surplus rails. Nothing moved in the circle of its vaporous white light. And then a moth appeared and began a colliding orbit.

Rose, craning around the trunk of the plane tree, saw four rangers appear. The men flickered into existence beside the pallets and their loads. The rangers were working in pairs, picking up several rails each and carrying them out of sight, Into the Place.

For two weeks Rose had walked by the stacked rails-and, for that matter, the pile of surplus timber ties a few paces away, concealed in a patch of fennel. She had walked past them and hadn't wondered how Doran's builders had made such a huge overestimation when buying for what was, after all, less than a mile of line. Nor had she wondered why the rails, after sitting there for years, lacked even the faintest freckle of rust.

Now she knew. The piled rails never rusted because they were replaced, new ones were landed on the sh.o.r.e-probably when the house was empty-and were carried by engine to this spot, then, by rangers, into the Place.

Rose knew nothing about the country In from the Awa Inlet, but she knew that she'd never heard anything about a railway in the Place. Where would a rail line go? And what would run on it, if a flame couldn't be kindled and put to coal to heat a boiler and make steam? If there could be no spark in the valves of a combustion engine, if only muscle could move things?

As Rose considered all this, the rangers came and went, and the stacks of rails were gradually reduced. She remained where she was till she worked out, from s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk and the rangers' gestures, that next they meant to start transporting the timber ties from the fennel patch to the border.

Rose realized that she couldn't keep edging around the tree in order to stay out of sight. She'd have to make a run for it. She'd have to wait till they were all In, then break cover and run as far from the lamplight as she could. She hoped the light had formed a kind of capsule and sealed the rangers into it, so that they would be as blinded as people coming from a bright outdoors into a dark room. She hoped the moonlight would seem weak to their dazzled eyes and they would miss her running form, her pale hair and white nightgown.

Rose waited till all four rangers were out of sight, then sprinted flat-out for the next tree. She slid behind it before they reappeared. Again she waited, ducked out, dashed on, scrambled under cover. When she was five trees farther up the avenue, she looked back to see the lamp moving, then pa.s.sing into the fennel, casting giant, feathery shadows on the smooth trunks of the nearest plane trees. The shadows leapt to engulf the trees as the lamp was lowered to the ground.

Rose sprinted through the orchard and up the steps to the house. Her feet and the hem of her nightgown were wet with dew, the cloth clinging to her ankles. She didn't pause to catch her breath but headed straight for the unlocked dining room doors.

Then she stopped dead.

Ru Doran was standing on the veranda beside the only unlocked door. He looked at Rose, then past her at the lamplight along the rail line. He craned his neck and came forward. Rose edged away a little, so he stopped. "What was it?" he said.

"Rangers," said Rose.

He regarded her. "You know-most girls would be more cautious about wandering at night."

Rose shrugged. She met his eyes, but only briefly.

"But you aren't like most girls, are you, Rose?"

"What do you mean?" Rose said. She felt uneasy. Ru was standing between her and the door.

"Well-your mother is a dreamhunter. And so you've been exposed." His tone was insinuating.

Rose tossed her head, snorted, and started forward briskly.

Ru intercepted her. He put his shoulder against her, backed her into the wall, and caught hold of her wrist.

"Please let me go," she said.

"You're still whispering." He sounded amused. "Very sensible. It would be a shame to be caught. Out of your bed. Snooping."

"Let go of me," Rose said, angry but ineffectual. She found that she was feeling more indignant than frightened, though she knew fear was probably the sensible response to being cornered and threatened.

Ru Doran was threatening her. She knew that he had decided she was a certain kind of girl. A girl somehow spoiled by "exposure" to freedoms and excitements most girls hadn't had. He'd decided she was fair game. And he was laughing at her, chuckling in a superior, indulgent way and shaking his head. How dare he be so comfortable about making her uncomfortable. "Let go of me," she said, "or I'll get my father to take care of you-or, better, I'll get your father to do it!"

Ru's face went hard with anger and, immediately following the anger, spite. He put his free hand to her face, perhaps to press it over her mouth. But Rose had had enough. She moved toward him and let herself fall forward. One of her feet thumped onto his instep, and her wrist wrenched free from his grip. She plunged through the gap between his body and the wall of the house, caught herself on her hands, sprang up, ran to the door. She jerked the door open and rushed inside.

Rose hurried back to her room, closed the door, and locked it. She climbed into bed and lay fuming and s.h.i.+vering till the birds started up, legitimately this time, to greet the dawn.

2.