When I open my eyes again, the world has come back. Or some world has come back, because I sense instantly that we’re not in the same place.
We’re in a forest, still, but it’s more forest. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like … like seeing a movie in 3-D. It’s just …more.
Or, okay, like when the first day of summer comes, and you forgot that the light could do that, flood everything, submerge it in brightness; except that here it’s night, and the stars are doing the illuminating, a trillion stars, glowing brightly like dust in the sky. The colors are more vivid than the forest I left behind, the leaves are more finely traced, more detailed. It’s crazy.
The cars have gone, and the gravel, and we’re in a tiny clearing and it’s just trees in every direction, and thorny undergrowth, and the light of the stars is very dim because of all the leaves above us, making a lace brocade of glow on the forest floor. I notice that the trees are kind of brown and sick looking.
Also, both my feet are on the ground. I mean, obviously. But in the sense that I am not wearing the CAM Walker anymore. 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 realize 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 realize 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. Okay, 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 toward 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 shriveling, 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 realize it’s a human instinct from a million years ago, buried in my genes.
It says RUN.