Burn the Skies

Chapter 3: Murder

Chapter 3: Murder

“I don’t like it.” I turn my back on Ash and his marching band of uniformed woodland creatures. The chipmunks are particularly shrill. “And that’s not helping.”

He dismisses the adorably fuzzy little musicians with a gesture, but the music still trips along in the background, as if a sufficiently jaunty tune can make this better. “Sorry. I just—I don’t know. I wanted it to sound less scary than it, uh, does. It’s not that bad—”

“Really? ‘Cause it sounds like an assassination to me.”

“That’s hardly fair. I just said there could be some risk.”

“Of dying. ‘Risk of death’ means murder.”

“No, it means there’s some risk involved. This isn’t exactly well-charted territory. Things could turn out. Or, um, not.”

“I’m not killing a kid, Ash.”

“Technically, she’s our age. Practically an adult. Probably. Anyway, it wouldn’t be like that—”

“I’m not murdering Cadence. Period. Not even to save the world.”

“And I wouldn’t ask you to. I don’t want to see her hurt either. But we don't exactly have a lot of options here, C.”

Lightening crackles. A tree bursts into flame. I watch it burn—until the anchor knot squirms under my touch, emitting an ominous rumbling. The forest doesn’t appreciate this show of temper. I nod a downpour into existence and watch it flatten fire and foliage alike.

Ash took his sweet time getting here tonight, too. I’d been tossing around the idea of showing him what I’d been working on, but now . . . It’s not like it really matters. I mean, I’d even gone to the trouble of reproducing a patch of wasteland so I could test different ways of restoring it while I waited, never mind those improvements on Nine Peaks’ layout that the forest had nudged me toward, but now . . .

I blink, and the half-finished structures in the distance are gone as if they’d never been.

Ash shoves dripping hair out of his eyes and swirls up a clear dome to deflect the rain. “See why I didn’t want to bring it up?”

I cut a dark look in his direction. The rushing water has finally drowned out that gratingly cheery tune of his. “Explain properly this time.”

“They’re not even saying it’s what you should do. It’s just one option.”

“The only option they’re willing to share, at least.”

“That’s—”

Lightning strikes in quick succession, a ring of flames springing up in defiance of the downpour. “Seriously? What else are you hiding? How much worse could it get than murder?”

He makes a fist, suffocating the wildfire out of existence. “It’s not murder. No one’s saying you have to do anything you don’t want to do. I mean, the council would really prefer you just hang out here and stop stirring up—”

“Not an option. Did you explain properly? Putting aside the elders’ willingness to sacrifice a whole city of innocents, if Cadence and Maryam bring down the barrier and set the Mara free, no one will be safe. You did mention that part, right?”

“They don’t see it that way. Grandfather said there’s no reason to believe your Mara are especially dangerous. If anything, the majority opinion is Cadence might be on to something. The Coles were sent to remove the barrier in the first place. She might even manage to save a few lives if left to her own devices. I’m not”—he holds his hands up to forestall my protest—“saying I agree. Just relaying the message. It was your gran who brought up the idea of taking back control from Cady and switching places again.”

“That was Susan’s idea?” I pace, shrugging the rain away.

Ash doodles a few sunset streaks across the watery-pale sky. I glare. He stops guiltily.

“You’re saying Cadence’s own grandmother suggested I risk her life?”

He shrugs. “Your gran didn’t put it like that. I’d have brought her to explain, except the council’s really cracked down on gate access since we all snuck down to the coast, and she’s supposed to be holed up getting over grief-induced insanity or something. Technically, I wasn’t even allowed to be talking to her.”

“Uh huh.”

“She didn’t seem insane, though. Sad, sure, but no more crazy than usual.”

“Murder seems pretty crazy. Not to mention, if it was that easy to switch places with Cadence, don’t you think I would’ve done it by now?”

“So you have tried? Can you use your powers at all like this? You know, on the other side? Maybe—”

“It doesn’t matter”—the forest’s gift squirms at the evasion—“I’m not doing anything that could put Cadence at risk.”

Ash chews his lip, peering at me. I turn to examine the misty clouds chasing each other in the distance.

“Cole, you know I—I care about both of you, right? I don’t want Cady hurt any more than you do. But if she brings down that barrier and it’s as bad as you say . . . maybe it’s worth the risk, you know?” He digs a toe into the dirt, continues, “After what she did to you?”

I heat with sudden anger at the reminder of Cadence’s betrayal, the way she used my desperation against me to steal back her body, but the flush cools before I can even muster a response. The sensation is almost alien, distant and unfamiliar, as if the fury is being stolen from me before it can fully ignite.

I look past the clouds, beyond the vast sea of unreality to the very edges of the dreamscape. To the place where my ghosts wait for me, drowning in their darkness. The tortured victims of the Mara; the ones I failed to save and the ones I never had a chance of saving. If it were within my power, is there anything I wouldn’t do to keep their ranks from swelling?

Every night I look into that void and count the names of those I desperately hope not to see tortured within. Ange never made it out of the city—it can’t be long now until she joins her lover Cass’s ruined shade in the darkness in-between. And when the barrier hemming in the Mara falls, how long until she’s reunited with her sister Amy in death? Her young niece, Lily? The thought of stubborn, fearless, pixie-faced Lily sucked dry by the Mara makes me almost physically ill.

This is the nightmare that lurks at the edge of the dreamscape, and I would do anything to keep it from becoming real. Anything—except trade one child’s life for another’s. And in my nightmares, Cadence doesn’t wear the gawky, spotty, nearly-grown body I left behind, but a form not much bigger than Lily’s . . .

“Everything could go back to normal,” Ash lies. “You don’t know for a fact that anything bad would happen. You might just switch places again.”

Or I might wipe one or both of us from the face of all worlds at once. I know I should be angry at her, furious at her betrayal, but . . . “I took the chance to grow from her once, without meaning to. I won’t take it away again, even if I could. Besides, I think I’m making progress getting through to her. It’s not like she’s evil, just stubborn and stuck in the past.”

“None of this is your fault, C.”

I blink. Then I swirl up a couple of straight-backed chairs with a scratched-up table between. The legs sink into the damp earth when I sit, so I waft the whole setup a couple inches into the air and glare until Ash hoists himself into the opposite chair. “What else are you hiding?”

He drums his fingers against the top, studying me. “What do you know about the domed barrier?”

I narrow my eyes at the change of topic. “It keeps the monsters in. Keeps everything else in too. Something about it is toxic to dreamwalkers. Not deadly, but damaging. And it burned when I touched it, crossing with Ravel. I didn’t have access to any magic at that time, so it may or may not burn regular humans, too. That’s about it.”

He reaches across the table, palms up, hands open. “I hate that you keep getting hurt by all this, C.”

I shrug, pressing back against my chair. I won’t reach back. I can’t afford to.

“I want you to listen, okay? Just listen, and don’t interrupt.” His eyes are wide, and dark, his gaze too steady, too intent for me to meet for more then a moment at a time. “You do not have to go back there. You don’t have to do anything that hurts, ever again. You can just stay here. With me. If you want to. Because I want you to. Stay here. With—with me. Wow,” he lets out a shaky breath, grimaces. “I sound kinda lame, huh? But for real, Cole. Or C. Or whatever. I’ll call you what you want, be happy with whatever you want to be, and do, and have me be. Just . . . just stay.”

He isn’t supposed to lay it all out there like that. Dancing around it is one thing—that, I can bear. But this—this is unfair. Cruel, even.

In another world, if I were another me, maybe I’d feel differently. That other me might want to reach back, and even know how. Maybe she’d be able to find the right words to give back to him. Maybe she’d be able to make a different choice.

I could say something like, “You have dreamed of me for years—”

“Decades,” he’d interrupt, staring at me with those wide brown eyes brimming with adoration.

And I’d gaze back, maybe a little teary with the emotion of it, maybe bashfully glancing away, saying something like: “While I have only just begun to dream again.” Or maybe something more like, “While my dreams have only just come back to life.” Something eloquent. Restrained. But I’d leave the door open to more. Maybe he’d kiss me. Maybe I’d want him to. Maybe it would be enough to help me forget all worlds but the one we’d make together . . .

But the me that I’ve become, that I choose, only has the capacity to care about one thing right now. And it’s not him.

“Don’t.” I let him see the fantasy dying in my eyes, my tone flat with finality.

He flinches. Closes his eyes. His hands tremble, as if he’s only just stopping himself from covering his ears.

“If you care about me at all, Ash,”—he starts to respond, but I cut him off before he can embarrass either of us further—“If you want to help me, you’ll help me save them. Now: the dome. Impenetrable to monsters, and to most humans. Burns on contact, probably. Toxic to dreamwalkers. Cadence’s target, and apparently Maryam’s. Am I missing anything?”

He shakes his head, draws his hands back and braces them against his knees, knuckles whitening. “ No, that sounds about right. I’m not sure anyone knows much more than that. But the elders—let me back up. You knew I ran away from Spectre to come find you, right?”

“Not that you told me, but yeah, if that’s what you call your little team or whatever, then that’s the story I heard.”

“Did anyone ever say what we were doing on that mission?”

“Does anyone ever explain anything to me?”

He shrugs. “It’s hard to remember what you know, sometimes.”

I drop his chair into the mud so he has to peer over the table.

Ash rolls his eyes. “Abuse of power. I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ And also a ‘hurry-up.’” He tries for a grin, but doesn’t quite pull it off. “Here’s what you need to know: most large bodies of water are infested with creatures who are none too fond of anything that looks human, so we obviously try to keep our distance.”

He holds up a hand to quell my protest. “Stay with me, that’s not the important part. The thing is, my squad came across the rumour of a boat—a ship, really—crossing between our shores and an island off the coast. And the source of that rumour claimed to have encountered a dreamwalker crew. Her descriptions were dead ringers for some of our missing-presumed-killed parents. You know you weren’t the only one to lose most of your family when you were young, yeah? Nearly all of us have lost at least one parent, if not both, in missions gone wrong.”

I blink. That is news, actually, but . . . “Where you going with this?”

He leans forward, tapping the table in emphasis. “Look at it this way: how does the council know what to expect from a barrier dome when yours is the only one anyone’s ever heard of—and the only mission to crack it failed?”

“I don’t know, how do they know anything? Mystical dreamwalker libraries?”

“. . . Okay, sure, maybe. But there were never many big cities around here in the first place, and I’m telling you, yours is the only one I’ve ever heard of that ever had a barrier like that put up around it. It’s also one of the only ones still inhabited. But that island I mentioned? On the old maps it’s huge. Once it held the biggest city in the region, next to yours. If my parents are still alive, there’s nowhere they could have survived in hiding all this time . . . except, possibly, across a sea-monster infested ocean.”

“And?”

“And what? That’s like—like—it’s the biggest news in pretty much forever. It could change everything. Just imagine: a whole generation of fully-grown dreamwalkers out there somewhere. What have they learned since they left us? What skills have they honed? I mean, there’s your army!”

I flick the landscape past until we’re standing on the edge of the cliffs staring out to sea. Not the sea he’s talking about, but my pulse still ticks up as if a ship will show up on the horizon.

An unconstrained by Nine Peaks’ elders. Adult dreamwalkers who could fight and choose their fate—instead of a bunch of teens on the edge of childhood with half-manifested powers and more enthusiasm then sense. Surely they could save my city, defeat the monsters, even rescue Cadence from her misguided quest . . . But—“Why didn’t you bring this up sooner?”

Ash kicks a pebble off the edge of the cliff and watches it fall, mumbling.

“What was that?”

He dangles his legs over the edge and flicks another pebble. “Spectre didn’t actually find anything. No traces of boats run up on the shore. No pier for a ship to dock at. No more survivors to corroborate the story. That was when I left the squad behind to look for you, and all they found while I was gone were swamp monsters and gnawed bones.”

He hangs his head, intent on rolling a stone between finger and thumb. I snatch it away and hurl it into the shimmering ocean. “So? Those guys suck. I mean, have you met them? I did—hardly confidence inspiring.”

His eyes spark at the insult to his friends, but I keep going without pausing for his protests. “You’ll do better this time. You’ll find the way across, I know it. How far are you from the coast? You know what—doesn’t matter. Just get going. I’ll do my best to stall Cadence until you find the ship. Bring me that army, Ash.”

“It’s not that easy—”

“And killing Cadence is? Look, it’s not like—ugh.” My vision doubles. She’s waking up. Back to harassment duty. “Look, I don't care what it takes. I’ll stall her as long as I can, but I’m counting on you to find that ship. You might’ve promised not to bring Nine Peaks’ forces back to the city, but you never said anything about other dreamwalkers, right? You owe me this.”

I leave him on the cliffs overlooking the dreaming sea, still protesting, and hurl myself through the ranks of nightmares at the edge of the dreamscape with barely a sideways glance.