I wriggled my bare toes on the carpet and smoothed the rumpled hem of my dress. Now I was full of swirly silver and green energy, Leander-filtered Brad-y goodness, I considered willing the dress to change into something more suited to my style. But I’d need every scrap of energy I could muster. The fact my boots were gone again, lost in the transition between dreams, irritated me. I’d paid good power for those.
Leander regarded me strangely, looking me up and down.
“What?” I said. “I know, dresses aren’t my thing, and my legs are milk-bottle white, but…”
“It’s not that,” Leander said. “It’s the butterfly pattern.”
I wrinkled my nose. “It’s so cutesy I might die,” I admitted. “I figure either my subconscious had butterflies on the brain or Ikelos is trolling me. Or both. It could be both.”
“And not a single moth among them.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “I’m hurt.”
“Speaking of moths, where are the other Oneiroi? You mentioned the Morpheus left others as reinforcements.”
“He did.” Leander edged around me, the tips of his wings tickling the tops of my feet, and strode to the door. He leaned out, peering into the corridor. “But I … well, I couldn’t get Brad’s help if they were with me. Not without them reporting me to the Morpheus.” His voice grew sombre. “I would have been happy to be reported if they’d have helped you first, like I did with Ollie and your mother. But I know these people. They’re sticklers for the rules.”
“It’s okay,” I said, my voice soft. “You wouldn’t be much good to me in jail. But … could we get them in now he’s gone? Send up a Bat-Signal?”
“A what?” Leander glanced at me over his shoulder.
“A Bat-Signal. You know. A request for help that can be traced back to the source, like a beam of light at night. Think of a lighthouse, only … bat-shaped.”
“Oh. Right.” Leander scratched behind his ear. “Unfortunately, the void of Erebus isn’t good at carrying a signal. It must be the lack of bats.” He said this last part with a dead serious expression that made me think he was teasing me.
I wrinkled my nose at him, deciding not to take the bait. “So can we do it? I mean, I can see the light of dreaming minds from a distance through Erebus. Clearly, something can get through, even if it’s just light waves.”
He turned towards me. “What you’re seeing is your own mind’s interpretation of—”
“Uh huh,” I interrupted. “Can you do it?”
“Yes. I think so.” He hesitated. “Maybe.”
“Maybe” wasn’t very reassuring, but I didn’t think we had a choice. I’d seen Leander go up against Ikelos before, and that had been when my friend had been at full strength, with my father at his side. They’d been creamed, trussed up and tortured before I could do anything to stop it. Now, when we were both sub-par? I’d take a maybe chance of reinforcements. “What do you need?”
“We have to find the perimeter of your dreams.” He paused, lifting his nose like a dog scenting the air. “This way.”
To my surprise, he didn’t lead me towards the front door of the house, or even the laundry; instead, we hurried into Mum’s room. Dreams often reset themselves, especially traumatic ones, and I braced myself for the sight of her in the nursing home bed, but it remained empty.
How could you so casually destroy me?
The thought, spoken in Mum’s voice, was so filled with pain that I took an involuntary step towards the bed. “I didn’t,” I said. “You weren’t real.”
I felt real. That’s how I know how much your betrayal hurts.
“Melaina?” Leander stood by the window. Behind him, the pane of glass had vanished; he must have willed it away rather than smashing it. Cold air from the winter garden flowed in like a tide, an invisible wall of ice that set goosebumps to prickle at my flesh. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” I rubbed my temples with my fingertips. “Just a guilty conscience.”
You could bring me back again, Mum’s voice suggested. Will me back from the void. Please. It’s so dark here.
Gritting my teeth, I hurried to Leander’s side. “Or maybe not,” I said. “I think Ikelos is messing with me.”
“How?”
“I’m hearing things.” I leaned against the table, taking a deep breath. “Thoughts designed to delay us.”
“Good.” Leander brushed the outside of my arm, his palm as warm as an electric blanket on a cold night. “That means we’re on the right track. Ikelos is afraid.”
He’s not afraid of anything, Mum spat in my head.
“I think you’re right.” I smirked.
“Still,” Leander said, “let me know if it gets too bad.”
I lifted my chin. “I’ve got this.”
“Give me a bit of space,” he said. Even though I knew it was silly, I scooted back onto the desk rather than crossing back to the bed, as if that would keep Ikelos out of my thoughts. Leander folded his wings back so they stuck out, horizontal to the ground, before climbing through the window frame and into the nursing home garden. Shivering, I hurried after him.
From inside the room, the garden had looked cold, but at least the sun had been up to give the day a veneer of warmth. Now, as my feet hit the ground, crunching on frost-covered grass that was slick and sharp against my soles, night fell. The transition was as fast as a Hollywood scene change, the sun sliding from the sky and stars winking to life around us. I half expected to see the moon float into the air like an escaped balloon, but the heavens remained moonless.
Leander turned at my sudden hiss of breath, taking in my summery clothing with a frown. “Don’t waste energy on it,” I said before he could do anything extravagant, hugging my arms across the front of my chest. “That’s what he wants you to do.”
“You’re no good to me if you’re frozen to death.”
“I’m not. I’m at the beach, remember?” My teeth didn’t seem convinced; the words came out chopped into little pieces by chattering.
Making a curious sound that was half laugh and half snort, Leander returned to my side. Before I could object, he picked me up, one arm beneath my knees and the other behind my back. My breath huffed out and I hesitated, debating whether to struggle. But my feet no longer felt like I was walking on knives, and Leander’s arms were warm through the thin fabric of my stupid dress. Did he carry a bubble of heat around with him, or was he spending a tiny bit of energy to project a sphere of warmth for my benefit? As my shivering subsided, I decided not to ask.
Instead, all I did was raise my eyebrows at him. “You’re loving this whole damsel-in-distress thing, aren’t you?”
“I’d prefer you in your kick-butt boots and warm clothes to a dress,” Leander said, the muscles in the arm I could see flexing as he held me tight against his chest. He seemed distracted, his face turned upwards. Thankfully, he didn’t notice me ogling him. “Brace yourself,” he added.
That, and the flaring of his wings, was all the warning I got before he launched both of us into the midnight sky.
The gardens were a frost-covered fairytale beneath us as we broke through the trees, paths lit by in-ground lamps whose candlelight-yellow glow flickered and danced. The trees swayed and sighed in a breeze I couldn’t feel. Seasonally inappropriate wattle blooms like tiny yellow pompoms sent forth a scent that was what would happen if a rose and a lavender gave birth to a perfumed baby: sweet, relaxing, rich, fresh.
The scene was so picturesque and enticing that I wanted to ask Leander to land. We could conjure up warm clothes and hot cocoa and then wander the winding paths. I even opened my mouth to suggest it … and then closed it with a snap of teeth, tearing my gaze away. Wattle never smelled that good in real life. And those path lights were meant to be electric. “Sod off, Ikelos,” I muttered, looking up at the star-strewn sky instead. That seemed to be where Leander was headed, not across the wall but straight up. His gaze was fixed on those distant stars, his face showing no hint of strain though my long-limbed frame wasn’t exactly feather-light.
As if triggered by my thought, Leander grunted with surprise and we dipped in the air. I clutched at his vest for a moment before releasing it, embarrassed. “What’s going on?” I asked as sudden perspiration beaded his forehead.
“Don’t know. You just got…” He paused, apparently thinking better of what he’d been about to say. “Don’t know.”
I just got heavier. I felt lopsided in his arms, like something was pulling me—us—downward.
Something was pulling me downward. I peered towards the ground, ignoring the spin of vertigo, and saw that a part of my dress hem was hanging straight down, as if someone had sewn lead into the fabric. At the heaviest point, dragging us lower, was the Monarch butterfly. I swore.
“What is it?” Leander said between puffing breaths. His shoulder muscles, already well-defined, now bulged with the strain of keeping us steady in the air. We’d stopped climbing higher.
“Ikelos is playing silly buggers,” I said. “Do you have a knife?”
“What? No. Want me to make one?”
I shook my head. “All good.” Leaning to the side, I grabbed the hem just above the butterfly, gripping the fabric in my fist.
Melaina, look out! Mum’s voice cried. My gaze snapped to the ground and I saw—really saw—how high Leander had carried us. The home’s gardens were still picturesque, but now they were also distressingly far away, like a postcard photograph taken from a helicopter. My own helplessness crawled into my throat, sharp and bitter with fear.
Get him to land before you fall, Mum begged.
“We’re on the right track.” I swallowed the panic, closing my eyes. “Ikelos is getting shrill.”
Shrill?!
I could have created a knife—in the same way I could have flown if Leander had dropped me, which was how I knew the panic was irrational. It would be expensive, but I could do it. Still, there were cheaper ways to rid myself of the leaden butterfly, and hopefully of my faux mother.
I reminded the fabric of how thin it really was, especially in a contoured line around the Monarch. The reminder was backed by a needle-thin sliver of energy.
It was enough. The dress fabric parted with a tearing sound. I opened my eyes in time to see the fabric butterfly plummet towards the earth like a dropped rock—exactly the way a piece of fabric shouldn’t. Leander and I shot upwards as his powerfully beating wings no longer had to strain so hard to bear us higher.
A glance at what remained of my dress told me it was only missing a piece about as large as my hand with my fingers spread. Relief flooded through me. I’d worried I’d be naked from the waist down.
“We’re here,” Leander said, glancing at me before hastily returning his gaze to the starlit heavens. They seemed to flicker, like real stars … but it wasn’t the planet’s atmosphere generating that effect. It was the edge of my own dreaming mind, an invisible curtain, creating the illusion. I couldn’t detect the boundary in any other way and wondered how Leander had done so.
“How close are we?” I asked, regarding the dreaming minds warily. I’d been out there before, with Leander and my father. It had been beautiful. But another hadn’t been vying for control of my mind at the time. Now, embracing that sparkly vista seemed like … surrender.
“Close enough.” Leander’s voice rumbled in my ear. His wings had fallen still and we hovered, a kite cradled on an updraft. The ocean sounded closer now; I almost imagined I could smell the tang of salt water. “If you reach out your hand, you can touch the edge.”
I shuddered. “So … about that Bat-Signal?”
“Right. What we’re going to do is make your mind glow brighter than it does now, so it washes out the light of all these other dreams.”
“You told me once that I glow pretty bright already.” What he’d actually said was that I was a bonfire surrounded by fireflies. The memory sent a curl of warmth through my chest, and my thoughts flashed back to sitting on my bed, holding hands with Brad and Leander.
“It does, but we need it to be brighter. Think of the sun during the day. It’s a star, but its light hides all the other stars from view. You will be a beacon to the other Oneiroi, a sign that Ikelos is hiding here. They won’t be able to ignore it.”
I hesitated. “Won’t that also attract blights?”
“Blights require a physical infection, and there’s no way Ikelos would let that happen. He’s not looking to share you with another possessing creature. He doesn’t play well with others.”
“Mara then?” I persisted. The idea of posting an “open home” sign for all to see suddenly didn’t seem like such a great idea. Was this Ikelos’s hesitation, I wondered, or my own? Could he be that subtle?
Leander shrugged, the gesture lifting me against him. “I’d rather deal with Ikelos and the mara with reinforcements than just Ikelos without reinforcements. Mara aren’t so bad if they haven’t been given a boost by an Oneiroi and, again, Ikelos has no reason to do that. He’s trying to take over your mind, not kill you.”
“That’s reassuring … I think.” I shoved my hesitation aside. I’d known this was the plan. I’d suggested it. There was no sense in backing out now. Besides, what alternative did we have? “Let’s do it.”
“Stretch out your hand until you feel resistance.”
I extended the arm that wasn’t pressed against Leander’s chest, willing it not to tremble as I reached past his face and brushed the sky. The resistance presented by the barrier was so faint I barely noticed it, similar to the feeling of tension on the surface of a crystal-clear pond. The only sign the tips of my fingers had broken through was the way that the stars in the distance wavered and danced, distorted as if they were pebbles on the bottom of that pond. Beyond the barrier, my fingers felt a little warmer than the rest of my hand. “Now what?”
He hesitated. “I’ve never tried this before,” he admitted. “But try imagining the edge of your dream glowing as brightly as the sun.”
I closed my eyes, imagining myself turning up a dimmer switch in a darkened room. Come find me, Oneiroi! Come fetch your exile out of my head. I don’t want him. Energy flowed up my arm, sparking and dancing like static electricity, draining out of the reservoir Brad and Leander had given me. I grew weaker by the second.
I’d hoarded the power for this reason, to use it against Ikelos … but the idea of letting that final piece of Brad and Leander go made me ache with despair. And so, greedily, I kept a small piece for myself. Not enough to make a difference—a single glowing coal after the heat of a fire. It warmed my heart.
When I opened my eyes, I expected to see the heavens ablaze with light. But the sky was unchanged. “Did it work?”
Leander frowned. His hair brushed against the inside of my arm as he shook his head. “No.” He looked around, desperation filling his voice. “It should have. I was so sure. Maybe … maybe Ikelos is blocking it? Absorbing it?”
I followed his gaze. The creeping sense of surface tension, the edge of my dream, had eased down my fingers, from their tips to the middle of my palm. “The bubble’s getting smaller, isn’t it?” I’d known it was—Leander had told me so—but feeling it shrink around me, a tightening noose, filled me with dread.
“You have to try again,” Leander begged, his eyes mirroring my fear back at me.
“I have barely anything left,” I whispered. He seemed to blur, and I didn’t know whether it was because of the sudden rush of fatigue or because my eyes had flooded with tears. “Leander, I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”
“Of course you can,” Leander said, and I felt energy flow into me from all the places where he touched me: down my arm, across my back, along the back of my knees. Compared to what I’d spent, the quantity of power was a thimbleful. He was running low too. If his wings hadn’t been a part of him, we’d have tumbled to Earth. Sudden fatigue scribbled shadows beneath his eyes.
“Stop it,” I demanded. “You have to go, fetch the Oneiroi back here. I’ll … I’ll hold him off till you return.”
“We don’t have time,” Leander said. “You know we don’t. Please, Melaina, try it again.”
“I…” I didn’t know what else to try. Usually, picturing what I wanted and spending some power on it was enough to get it done. I’d turned that stupid dimmer switch up to eleven. It hadn’t worked. What else could I try?
Nothing. This is the end.
My gaze dropped from Leander’s eyes to his lips. If I was going to die here, or be forever imprisoned in my mind while Ikelos strutted around in my body, I would at least have this memory to sustain me.
Before I could think it through, I pulled my arm backwards, from where it was pressed between Leander and myself, and slid it around his back, between the strong line of his wings. My traitorous fingers curled in that hair, so soft and silky, and I drew his head down to mine. Slowly, so he could pull back if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to. Our lips met not in a crash but in a tender kiss, as gentle as anything I’d ever felt. He exhaled a soft oh against me, and kissed me deeper, his tongue flickering against mine as we tentatively opened our mouths to one another. A fire roared to life within me, ignited by that single ember of Brad-and-Leander coal and fuelled by my desire for the Oneiroi. A desire I’d carried for years but only today acknowledged. His fingers tightened around me, pressing into my ribs and thigh, and I kissed him harder, stoking those flames higher.
My other hand trailed above us, drifting on the surface of a pond. As Leander clutched me and we kissed, I sent that roaring flame out into my dreams. I wasn’t clinically adjusting a switch. I was burning with desire, with love, and even, yes, with the heat of shame at what Brad might say when I told him, because of course I would tell him … if I lived long enough.
My eyelids had drifted shut as we kissed, and I only realised something had changed when a brightness pressed against them, green and silver and blue, shifting like the aurora australis.
My eyes flew open. Leander’s face filled my vision, the flecks of gold in his green eyes clear and sparkling as he stared at me, his expression full of a hundred storming emotions. Light haloed his head. The sky above us burned, shifting between emerald, sapphire and diamond hues, the stars no longer visible.
“Told you that you could do it,” he said, his lips moving against mine.
“No!” a voice howled. It came from everywhere and nowhere. It was inside me and all around me, crawling into every corner of my being. I clutched my ears to block out the atonal reverberation, though the gesture didn’t help. Leander’s cry was barely audible, despite coming from right beside me.
A wall of wind knocked us towards the ground, a slap from a spiteful child.