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It all went wrong from start to finish, and in the end, instead of getting my access to the dreamscape returned or healed or whatever it was we had come all this way for, I got sentenced to school.
And not even regular school. It’s more like preschool. Or remedial classes.
Cadence is not pleased. Ash didn’t seem happy about it either, but the council didn’t give us any time to talk in private before sending him off, along with his whole squad, so I’m just guessing by the look on his face when they ordered him away on some new mission as punishment for going AWOL after his last one.
Turns out, rescuing me didn’t count as permissible grounds to defy orders, and just because he’d snuck off on his own didn’t excuse his friends from responsibility. So much for all his big promises.
The Council of Nine Elders seemed to have decided pretty much everything without me. When I showed up, still steaming from the bath and itchy from prying several layers of dirt from my newly scoured hide, they asked a bunch of weird questions I didn’t know the answers to. Then they stared at me in silence for a while after that, their eyes glazed with silver and their sour, wrinkled old heads wagging slowly in disappointment or disapproval.
Cadence got pissy and soon refused to respond to anyone’s questions.
I got tired of being made to feel like an idiot and told them the only reason I was there was to get my powers back and none of this was even my idea in the first place. If they could just hurry up and fix me or give me a jump-start or something, that’d be great and I’d be right off on my way and out of their hair, thanks.
I was peremptorily informed that I’d flunked my assessment and got myself kicked out of their training program before I’d even started.
Apparently, I don’t know anything useful and can’t do anything interesting. I’m basically a waste of space, time, and the revered council’s energy, or so I gather.
So, now I’ll be expected to tag around after Susan every day instead of fighting monsters. If I’m good, I can look forward to joining the littlest kids in training one morning a week. But only if I work hard with Susan and show some promise.
If it seems like I’m taking the news well, that’s only because I’ve been glossing over the part where I tried to claw more than one of the esteemed elders’ eyes out—gouged a nice red new tear on the scarred, gate-guarding council member’s cheekbone before she planted my face in the floor, too.
They sent me back to Susan’s place with an armed escort.
That was last week.
“You’re doing it wrong,” says Cadence.
“You’re doing it wrong,” says Susan.
I grit my teeth and pull the twine taut. Another soft green stem crumples against its stake. The long, trailing, leafy end flops to the ground.
“You killed it.”
Cadence’s voice is amused and reproachful, Susan’s dry. She folds beside me in the dirt and demonstrates—again—how to gently catch the string around both plant and stake without snapping or uprooting either.
So far this morning, I’ve managed to weed the garlic right out of the garden, thin the carrots to nothing but aerated dirt, flatten the neat rows of potato mounds, deadhead every single blossom in sight, and prune the vines to stubs.
I even failed at composting, somehow. I’m still not clear on what the problem was there. Susan keeps trying to explain what I’m doing wrong, and Cadence keeps laughing at me or doing the disembodied spirit version of rolling her eyes (I don’t know how it works either, okay?), and I’m just so done with all of it.
All. Of. It.
“Here, just try going a little slower this time,” Susan says, pressing a fresh length of twine into my hand.
I let it drop. Her brow furrows. I take in her gentle disappointment, the dirty string, and the row of snapped pea stalks and listing stakes. I jump over them and set off running.
I don’t know where I’m headed. Anywhere but here would do, if only I knew how to get someplace else.
I hate it here. People keep coming up to me as if I’m her. And then like half of them go right ahead and strike up a conversation with Cadence, giving me pitying looks behind silver-dusted eyes the whole time they’re chatting because I don’t know them and they can’t accept that they don’t know me. They act like I’m broken. Defective.
Maybe they’re right. I don’t care.
People call out to her as I storm by. I refuse to stop. Refuse to look into their faces and see the recognition. The pity. The strangers I should know. And the other ones, the ones who had never known Cadence as a child, curious to meet the freak.
I’m learning (relearning?) my way through town. The towers and giant trees make for easy landmarks, though in the areas with long, maze-like aboveground buildings, it can sometimes be hard to see out. Those are mostly places of study or making from what Susan’s explained, and I haven’t had much reason to go there so far. Instead, I head for the main gate. There are several spots along the enormous wall encircling the city where you can climb nearly to the top and look out over the woods and, more importantly, the road out.
This is not how it was supposed to be. This is not what was supposed to happen. I came here to get my abilities back. To learn how to fight and win, or relearn, technically. Maybe even to sort things out with Cadence.
I have to get back home. Back to where I’m really from: Refuge, and Freedom, and Under, and all the people I left behind, just months from being devoured by the Mara, or maybe just moments. Every minute I waste here is a possible life I could have saved and the worst of it is, I’m not even making progress toward being able to leave. There was absolutely no point in coming all this way. It hasn’t made things better for anyone but Cadence.
Now I’m back to being stuck waiting for someone else to fix things: someone else’s power, someone else’s plan, someone else’s choices and consequences.
It’s not okay. But I don’t know how to get home on my own, and I don’t know how to do what I need to do, be who I need to be, even if I could get back there. And Ash isn’t here to talk me down or guide me toward a plan that might actually move me forward, so instead, I stand and stare out over the highway and clench my stomach against the gnawing helplessness that won’t go away.
There’s movement in the distance. A shout rings out from the walls, causing a mass scramble toward and through the gates. Someone’s coming from the outside.
Ash? I lean, narrowing my eyes and raising one hand against the glare.
There are several forms hunched over dark solar bikes, including a few extra wide four-wheeled models towing squat carts heaped high with unidentifiable bundles. But as they near, it becomes obvious Ash isn’t with this group. I don’t recognize any of them from that first day when his squad tried to talk to me, but they all seem pretty young, and they’re dressed in dark, close, tough-looking clothes like Ash’s, with cropped or braided hair.
They move like him, too. My cheeks warm, but I scan the long, dusty line of the road anyway, hoping his team is still on their way. Which is stupid, because there’s no guarantee he’d be able to help me if he were here.
The distant road remains empty. The returning riders sweep through the gates in such a tide of backslapping, hugs, cheers, and shouted song that I’m glad to be up here and not stuck in the midst of the chaos.
I shudder. All that enthusiasm . . .
“ . . . Right.” Cadence says, with her equivalent of an eye roll. “Super miserable to be welcomed home. You’d hate it for sure. Oh wait, that already happened.”
My shoulders twitch with the urge to swat her. It must catch the attention of someone in the crowd below because the next moment, they’re pointing me out on the wall and waving. They shout and beckon me down from my perch, and the only thing for it is to make my escape quick—before they catch me and I’m pulled into the middle of that noisy group.
“Or you could just, you know, make some new friends.”
I jump the last few steps to the ground and set off running. Cadence is altogether too comfortable here. We didn’t come to make friends or, in her case, reconnect with old ones.
“I know, okay? But what do you want me to do about it? I’m not the one who couldn’t make the grade. In kindergarten.”
This time, I swat at her, ineffectual as it may be.
Not my fault, not her fault, not anybody’s fault, I know—but it’s still a crummy situation, and I’ve had enough, and still I can’t fix it, and I can’t change it.
Ugh.
I cut a weaving line through town, changing course whenever there are too many people crowding the path ahead. I wind up back at Susan’s place, standing on the edge of the poor garden I can’t seem to stop killing.
She’s not alone.
“Our—Susan—tells me you don’t remember us,” the strange girl says.
She grins up at me with unexpectedly pale eyes in a more than just sun-darkened face, looking hopeful. Streaks of every shade of brown shimmer through her braids, from a bleached near-blonde to deep earth tones, and her sleeveless tunic is brightly patterned and a little tight too tight.
She clearly spends a lot of time outside, but she’s softer looking than the kids I saw at the gates, and younger-looking. Not a fighter, then. And not a hint of the telltale silver dreamwalker’s sheen I expect to see.
“Gracie!” Cadence says.
“ . . . Sorry,” I say. The girl’s sunny face falls.
Susan bends to pick up a trowel. “I’ll finish up here. Why don’t you two head on inside and start without me?”
The girl brushes off her knees and bobs her head. “I’m Grace. We—uh, Cady and I—knew each other. Before. Actually, we’re kind of cousins.”
I take a step back, shocked beyond words.
Cousins? Despite how hard Ash tried to sell me on the idea of being welcomed back, somehow, I hadn’t picked up on the idea that there would still be so much family waiting for me. Or, for her, at least.
Susan was one thing, but a kid? What next?
“I can’t believe how much you’ve grown!” Cadence says, ignoring my panic.
Grace cocks her head and furrows her brow but doesn’t respond. At least, not to Cadence.
“Sorry for the suddenness, but I, uh. I actually live here? I was staying in Steph’s—my sister’s—dorm while her squad was away, but now she’s back, so, um . . . I guess we’ll be roommates?” Her voice tilts up in apologetic question, but she smiles as she brushes past to open the door. “Come on. We should get started—sounds like you’ve got a lot to learn!”
“Gracie?” Cadence says. “What—”
Susan shakes her head in my peripheral vision. “Grace can’t hear you. She didn’t inherit.”
Grace pokes her head out the door. “What was that?”
“Your supplies are on the counter, kiddo. I haven’t taught her to harvest yet, so just start with the fibres today.”
The girl pops back out of sight.
“She can’t dreamwalk?” Cadence sounds horrified.
“Don’t go making her feel bad about it either, now. She’s worked hard to contribute in her own way. Here, take these in while you’re at it.”
I accept the woven basket, popping an early blackberry into my mouth before taking it inside. The juice is tart, the seeds wedging between my teeth. I’m still not entirely used to actual flavours or food with texture.
“They can’t be that bad,” Grace raises her eyebrows at my expression, takes the basket from me and rinses the berries in the sink. “So? Are we really going to do this or are you just conning Gran and the council? Promise I won’t tell if you are.”
I dip my fingers into a bowl on the counter, tangling them in long brown fibres submerged in the water. “What are these?”
She huffs. “Going to be like that, is it?”
“Well, this is fun,” Cadence says.
Grace picks up the bowl and carries it to the table. “Come on, get over here. Gran said to start at the beginning.”
She untangles a couple strands and holds them dripping over the bowl. Then she drops them again and leans over the table, grabbing my wrist. “Okay, but seriously. You, like, forgot everything? You were top of your class back in the day!”
Cadence snorts. “Don’t remind me.”
I just stare. It’s bad enough dodging the curiosity and pity of strangers on the street who think they know me. The last thing I need is someone in my very own house making me feel like—
“Like I’m the one who should have survived?” Cadence’s voice is flat.
I wince. Then I shake it off. “You’re not dead.”
“Uh, nope?” Grace says with that strained listening expression again.
“Not talking to you,” Cadence and I say at the same time.
Grace’s grip tightens. “So it’s really true? You’re—she’s still in there?”
I pull my wrist back and rub it. “We don’t want to talk about it. Can we just get on with whatever it is that Susan wants?”
“So weird,” she whispers. Then she grins. “Okay, I’ll play along. Welcome to weaving for dummies.”