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I stare at the gate and wonder if Grace’s sanity got locked on the other side. I don’t remember her hitting her head.
“Oh, stop being so dramatic,” Cadence chides.
Like she has room to talk.
“No, listen.” Grace steps closer, bumping me with her basket. “It’s an easy mistake to make. Ask almost anyone and they’d probably say the same as you. But think about it. It didn’t hurt us.”
“It tried.”
“That whirlwind? You scared it, that’s all. Think of it like a wild animal.”
I stare, blankly. That was no squirrel. Cadence laughs.
“Um, or . . . Think about if someone came up to your door and knocked, and then when you opened it they were pointing a knife at you. It looks like they’re there to hurt you, but maybe they wanted to borrow a sharpener, or show off their new knife, or sell it to you, or something. Okay, it’s not a great analogy, but you get the idea.”
“There was a monster. It attacked us. I tried to fight back. You got in the way. Nowhere in that do I remember knocking on a door.”
Grace sighs and mutters something about letting Gran sort me out later. I trail along after her, trying to work out what monsters have to do with animals and stupid people who open doors to knife-wielding strangers.
She must be taking a different route back; we’re spending longer than we did on the way out in the above-ground-building zone that sits at the base of the towers and giant trees, and along the outer perimeter of the city. Long stretches of wavy, layered earth walls, weathered copper, and age-silvered wood cast shadows on the path. The walls are thick enough to muffle shouts and clacks of impact until we turn a corner.
Grace nods at the sunken courtyard. “Thought you might want to see. Go on, you can get closer, just as long as you don’t step into that flat bit.”
“What is it?”
“Halfway between the class you should’ve been in, and the one I’d be in if I weren’t me.”
It takes little more than a glance to identify the huge courtyard as some kind of training grounds. But these kids aren’t learning how to scrub floors or monitor screens like we did in Refuge. This has to be one of Nine Peaks’ classes for dreamwalkers. And right now, they’re learning to fight.
The inner walls are latticed. Plants grow right up them and along the long beams that span the entire width of the courtyard, casting mottled shadows and shading the trainees as they sweat and struggle below. Earth slopes from ground level down to a rectangle of lighter stuff—maybe sand? Each impact raises a puff of dust.
There are more people moving than I can easily keep track of, but the grounds aren’t limitless—no more than a few dozen would fit in here. These kids, like so many in Nine Peaks, all look very different at first glance. But after a few moments, I change my mind.
They all wear their hair cropped or scraped back and tied down tightly. Even the braids are somehow caught close to the head, not loose like Grace and Susan’s. The kids all wear close-fitting clothes in dark shades, too. Like Ash, but not identical to his. It’s not quite a uniform, then. And they all seem well muscled and confident, even graceful in their movements, though there’s a whole range of sizes and shapes tossing each other around in the ring.
I squint, trying not to see Ash in them, setting my teeth against the hollow, left-behind feeling these strangers have unexpectedly triggered. They don’t look all that much younger than me, despite Grace’s claims. I’m suddenly very conscious of my shapeless, borrowed clothes, my increasingly soft build since leaving home, my ragged shock of hair, well littered with bits of tree and dirt.
But even without all their training, even looking like this, feeling like this, I fought back the Mara. My shoulders straighten. I unknot my fingers from the hem of my shirt.
Cadence snorts. “You think they haven’t seen battle? I guarantee you every one of these kids has taken down a monster or two by now. Their trainers will have made sure of it.”
Heads tilt across the ring, curious, bored, even irritated gazes swinging our way as she speaks, silver in their eyes. Silver all around them.
My shoulders slump. “Oh.”
An adult strides toward me from the other side of the grounds, cutting straight through the crowd. The teens in her path jerk back to their practice with self-consciously upright posture, but the ones on the fringes watch from the corners of their eyes.
Their trainer plants herself in front of me. Hard faced, deeply tanned, deeply scarred, and deeply irritated-looking. I think I remember her from the council meeting when I first arrived. And the un-welcoming committee at the gate.
“Who said you could come here?” she demands.
I start to turn toward Grace and catch myself just in time. It takes an effort to keep my hands loose and relaxed at my sides. “No one.”
The trainer’s gaze flicks to her anyway. Then back to me. “This isn’t your class.”
I fold my arms. “So I hear.”
Her scars twist in an interesting way when she scowls. I catch myself staring and switch to eyeing the kids training. It’s not what I’d pictured. Some stand or sit alone, eyes closed and motionless amidst the whirlwind of activity. Others are paired up, trading blows in acrobatic-looking flurries. Still others seem to practice against an invisible opponent or fend off multiple attackers.
There are weapons and bare hands, dark skin and light, and everywhere I look, shimmering, mist-covered forms. It’s chaotic, and bewildering, and some part of me unexpectedly longs to dive in headfirst.
“You like that?” the scarred trainer asks, dragging my attention back to her narrowed eyes. “Good. If you get started now, you might be able to join them in a decade or so.”
Cadence bristles. “If it were me, I’d teach her a lesson . . .”
For once, we’re on the same page. I cast an ostentatiously dismissive sneer at the training grounds, and something truly ridiculous flies out of my mouth. “Won’t need a decade. Won’t need a month. Two weeks and I’ll beat any student here.”
I swallow a gasp and set my teeth against the inevitable slap.
But instead, the trainer smiles instead, slow and twisted. “I look forward to it, dreamweaver.”
I show my teeth in a vicious grin, fighting to keep my knees locked. What did I just do? Those trainee fighters suddenly look a whole lot more intimidating.
I turn on my heel, wobbling just a bit as I march back to Grace. And right past her, and around the corner. Which I promptly collapse against, panting.
Grace races after me, dragging bark in her wake. “That was so cool! You just—and she—and then the look on Steph’s face!”
Cadence laughs. I feel ill.
***
SUSAN LAUGHS TOO, WHEN Grace tells her—possibly because the story comes complete with a re-enactment starring Grace in every role, including an improbable inner monologue by the head trainer, Rocky. Who also happens to be her aunt, as well as one of the Council of Nine, captain of the guard, and the one who flunked her out of training in the first place.
I turn my back on the both of them and twist wet strips of tree until my fingers bleed. I can’t afford to waste another second.
Step one: master basic skills—like, immediately. Step two: secretly learn everything else there is to know about dreamwalking. Step three: beat whoever I have to into the dust while stupid-face Rocky weeps into the dirt.
All in service of regaining my magic and saving my city, of course.
By the time the story ends, Grace catches her breath, and Susan stops chortling, I have a pile of cords as thick as my arm. Too bad the only lengths that aren’t untwisting themselves faster than I can replace them are those pinned in place by the weight of the fresh failures on top.
Susan puts one hand on my wrist, stopping me.
I shake her off. “Leave me alone. I’m getting it.”
“Yeah, you’re definitely not.” Grace pinches a ravelling cord between two fingers like a worm, or a twig, or a very skinny snake, or something equally thin and unpleasant.
Her stubby fingers untangle the strands, smooth, and re-twist them into a shining cord. She loops and fastens it around my wrist. “See? Like this.”
I yank, but it’s too tight to slip off. I need shears . . .
I stop mid-reach, suspicious. “I’ve almost got it. Stop distracting me.”
“So stubborn,” Grace says to Susan.
Cadence snorts. “Welcome to my nightmare.”
Susan wanders off. The door creaks open behind me, letting in the cool evening air. Goosebumps ripple across my skin.
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” Grace tugs at the cord around my wrist in passing. “Sweet dreams, grumpy.”
I scoff, still twisting, twisting, twisting as blisters burn, and break, and bleed. Ugly, broken cords pile up on the table. Footsteps, the soft thud of a latch as Grace cleans up for bed. Something tugs at the back of my mind but gives up almost immediately.
Alone again.
What was I thinking? I let the knotted strands drop. My hands shake. Grace’s wristband gleams, warm brown ripples catching the light.
It looks almost soft. I’m tempted to run my finger along it, but I’d only stain it.
“It’s nothing special,” Cadence says. “That’s literally the most basic thing you can create. It’s what they teach toddlers before they have the coordination to weave properly.”
I slam my hands down, tipping the bowl. Water splashes across the table.
What does she want from me? I never wanted to come here. I certainly never cared about making perfect beautiful little cords, and farming, and weaving, and fighting my way up the trainee ranks one step at a time, getting treated like I’m some useless wannabe failure instead of—I mean, I already know how to do everything I need to beat the Mara. I’ve woven the threads of dreams and bound nightmares, without any training at all, and I know how to take back my city.
“Maybe you did, once,” Cadence says. “And once upon a time your fingers learned to hold the threads and spin and weave like all the other little kids up here, you just don’t remember. So stop pouting and try already.”
“I am trying—”
“No, you’re whining. You’re fighting it every step of the way because you think you’re too good for this.”
The door slams open, but when Susan enters, it’s with a soft step and quiet eyes. I swivel to watch her place a basket by the sink, rinse her hands, dry them, and pull a chair up to the table. She reaches around me, alarmingly close and warm and smelling of growing things, and places her hands over mine.
I yank away, afraid she’s going to try to heal me again. I don’t want her looking at . . . at me. Not now. Not ever. But she gives me an annoyed little jab with her elbow and then takes my hands, covering them.
Her fingers are just as long as my own, if a little thicker at the joints. Her skin is stained in the creases and nail beds, and roughened with callouses and old scars. And if I flinch from her touch and try, repeatedly, to pull away, she doesn’t seem to take offence.
Slow, calm, inevitable, she guides my hands to the bowl, gathers fibres, knots and twists, and lays the finished cord to one side. She repeats the process, and again, and the fourth time her hands hover a breath away from my skin as I make the slow, deliberate movements on my own, if only barely.
The result is imperfect—but it holds.