Chapter 9

––––––––

Sheed woke up in motion, trying to get out of bed and across the room at the same time. It wasn’t light yet, but dawn wasn’t far off. He thought he’d heard a yell of pain, but now the house was silent, so as he reached his bedroom door, he stopped to listen. Ralion’s door opened and he came half out into the hall, doing the same thing, and confirmed that there’d been a noise.

They already knew it was Dynan. The nightmares had increased in frequency and severity over the past several weeks. Ever since he’d seen the girl next door, coincidentally, but Sheed knew there wasn’t anything of coincidence to it. Sometimes he talked in his sleep and so they knew he’d been dreaming about Elana Marleen.

“I’ve got this,” Sheed said to Ralion so he could at least get another few hours in.

Sheed moved to Dynan’s door, waiting to see if just that amount of movement would wake him. Sometimes it was enough. He’d hardly been sleeping at all and woke at the slightest disturbance. Every day that went by it seemed he was closer and closer to a complete breakdown. No one knew if it would be what he needed; a cathartic release of the pent up emotions he walked around with, or another slide down the long path to madness.

Listening at the door, the sounds of heavy, fast breathing stopped and then the sound of movement, feet hitting the floor, the covers crinkling as they were thrown off. A lamp came on, set low. Sheed hesitated a moment, uncertain he should make Dynan aware of him or that he knew about the bad dreams. Maybe that was the wrong approach to stay with, hiding from him that they all knew what he was going through, trying to be normal about their existence in this place. He knocked softly, sticking his head in without waiting for an answer. Dynan was on the edge of the bed and blinking as if he couldn’t see.

“I’m making tea,” Sheed said and nodded him to come on.

Sheed moved to the kitchen to get it started, not sure if he would come or not. The kitchen was dark and the stove fire cold. The lamp he set on the counter fixed part of that problem. The ordeal of keeping a fire going at the proper temperature for cooking was almost immediately given up after the first two meals Geneal tried to prepare by flame. They were able to install a heating element that did the same thing, warm the surface plates to cooking temperatures, without all the bother. Carryn would have complained they were risking discovery. Geneal successfully convinced them, after the second meal burnt to a crisp, that they would all starve otherwise. There was a switch now, hidden just inside the burn box, along with a crude dial to adjust how hot the elements got. It worked and it didn’t burn the food, but it wasn’t much faster because the cooking plates were thick and took a while to heat up.

By the time the steam started to spout out the teapot, Sheed was able to dress for the day. On the way back he passed Dynan’s open door and found him in the kitchen, pouring hot water into two mugs. Geneal had given them a list of actions to take when he woke like this, or was just inside his head too much that she called ‘things Dain would do’. Sheed went to him after he’d set the pot back down and put an arm around him, jostling him, and then pulled him over with a hand on his head.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said and clapped him on the back.

He didn’t shy away from the physical contact, an improvement over how he used to react, but he didn’t look like he believed it. He nodded anyway and managed a half-smile. He finished the tea and stood at the back door for a while, looking out, while Sheed pretended to read from the kitchen table and could watch him at the same time. Dynan went outside and down to the dock where he stayed until dawn.

Before their neighbor woke and headed off to work, he came back inside. They all knew her schedule now, and Dynan especially made the extra effort to avoid seeing her or being seen by her. As soon as she was gone, he went back out and spent the morning outside in the sun. It was a fine, bright day with a stiff breeze coming across the water that kept it pleasantly cool. All the outdoor interest made Geneal happy enough that she agreed to go out with Ralion on a short sail.

She didn’t leave until after she’d put Dynan through the usual forced conversation she insisted on every day that was another technique she employed to make him participate and interact with them. Sheed wasn’t sure what the value was since Dynan knew what Geneal was doing. There wasn’t any emotional connection to the things he said in response to the questions she asked. It was a routine he cooperated with and that was all.

After they’d gone, Dynan made him get Gilraen out of the barn, which Sheed and the horse did not like, and then rode her around the field across the lane for a few hours. The point of all this activity was to get his mind off of something he wasn’t going to talk about. Sheed watched it eat away at him and saw when the moment arrived when he gave up. Or maybe it was just a last resort to protect his sanity.

Sheed had seen it often enough to recognize it. Dynan became unresponsive, unmoving, sitting at the end of the dock, leaned up against the end piling. He stared at the rolling water without seeing it, eyes open, expression empty. He stayed that way long enough that Sheed started to think he needed to go down and bring him back, which might not be possible without Geneal. She had at times used a dose of anethinol to break his ability to concentrate. She didn’t like using it, but once, after he’d checked out for nearly three days, there wasn’t much choice. They weren’t supposed to give anethinol to him unless she was there to supervise and only if other means didn’t work. She once sat and dug her fingernails into his hand until the pain finally registered. Sheed wasn’t interested in hitting him, but would if he had to.

Just when he decided it was time to do something about it, Dynan moved.

Sheed stopped on the back porch, waiting to see what he would do. That turned out to be nothing. He sat, leaning against the piling. He was back in the world, staring over at the neighbor’s. He reached inside his pocket then and pulled out Dain’s letter. Sheed watched him read it, examining the words as if he’d never seen them before. He ran a finger over the paper and started shaking his head. He folded the letter back up.

The next instant a gust of wind came and took it from his hand just as he meant to put it away. The water claimed it a moment later.

Sheed jumped off the porch, racing down to the water while Dynan scrambled to his feet, staring after it. He followed the paper along the shore as the current swept it away, the last link to his brother, his most important possession. By the time Sheed got there, only moments later, the paper was gone, pulled down into the depths. He rushed out on the neighbor’s dock, searching the water, but it wasn’t there.

Dynan stood back on shore, not breathing except in occasional gasps. He was trying to bury it all again, the horror of losing this connection and shaking from the effort to keep it contained.

“Dynan—”

“No,” he said and backed up, shying away when Sheed reached for him. He pulled in another breath and swallowed. “It doesn’t matter.”

Sheed couldn’t believe he would say that, but before he could counter him, or shake him into letting go, he turned and walked away. Sheed glanced back to the river, cursing the wind, unable to give up the idea of searching for the paper. In the back of his mind he knew it was hopeless. The current was moving too fast.

After a glance at Dynan who was on the porch and then in the house, moving fast to get there, Sheed went to the shoreline and followed it. He crossed the neighbors yard and moved along the bank, looking down and periodically out, methodically gridding the rushing liquid into sections. He searched until he was far down the shore, but Dain’s letter, like Dain, was gone.

Sheed drew out his comboard, reading a message into it to Ralion and Geneal, telling them to come back, what had happened and to look for the paper on their way in, another exercise in futility.

“Damn you, Dain,” he said, swearing at the sky. “You see what this is doing to him? What the hell were you thinking, going off by yourself? God damn you.”

Cursing at Dain did nothing to make that letter reappear from the depths and Sheed was afraid to leave Dynan alone too long. Time’s passage forced him to give up the search. He thought he saw the neighbor’s sailboat turning into the inlet and had to hurry to get off her property before she made the turn toward her dock. His comboard buzzed at him and he read the message from Ralion, that they were an hour out, but on their way. Geneal sent a message right after that telling Sheed what he already knew.

“Don’t leave Dynan alone.”

Sheed was headed inside already. He turned first to the kitchen after not seeing him in the living area, and then headed back for his bedroom. The door was open and the room was empty.

“Dynan!”

Sheed rushed through the rest of the house, looking in every room to be sure, and then burst out of the house by the front door. He ran to the wood, thinking he must have gone to the ship, but the creak of a hinge swinging in the wind stopped him. It was coming from the barn. Denial that Dynan would take off alone formed until it was shattered by reality. The Frielian was gone, her stall door left to swing in the breeze. Sheed swore again, cursing more than Dain Telaerin this time, punching the barn wall for emphasis. Finally, he brought the comboard back out to give the others the bad news.

“Dynan is gone.”

Loren saw a white speck of something on the water as she turned the point, but she was distracted from it by one of the neighbors on the shore near her dock. She wondered what he was doing there, looking in a rush now, to get across her property. He disappeared too soon for her to find out.

She wondered about them again and the complete lack of a presence their existence put on the world. It was like they lived in a void. She may as well have not had new neighbors as little as she saw of them.

She’d managed to discover by looking up the census records the name of the servant, or supposed servant, Drin Talbor, whose face constantly swam before her eyes. She wanted to find out everything she could about him, but couldn’t go around asking. Not only did the information not readily exist – not just anyone could do a records research on someone – it would cause too many people to ask too many questions about why she was so intensely interested.

In all truth, she couldn't answer, so she thought it best not to attract that kind of attention.

The speck of white caught her eye again. It turned out to be a piece of paper, floating along. Someone’s trash they’d let fall. She frowned at that, steered over to it and pulled it out of the water. She deposited the paper on the deck, and went back to sailing her boat to the dock.

She wouldn’t have thought more about it, except she noticed the paper had writing on it. The ink hadn’t even smeared from its soaking and that struck her as odd. After she finished securing her boat, she picked up the sodden lump and tried to unfold it, but then thought better of that. She didn’t want to tear it, so she carried it to the house instead and covered it with a cloth to dry out.

She didn’t think of it again until after she’d changed from her work clothes. The paper was still moist, but she could unfold it now without fear of it tearing. The letters were perfectly legible. If she hadn’t fished it out of the water herself, she wouldn’t have believed it ever got wet. Even rubbing them, damp as they were, didn’t smudge the ink.

She found herself blinking at the first line and as she read more, thought how sad it was. It made her think of Matt and how he wasn’t given the chance to leave Marc something like this, a precious testament from one brother to another. She couldn’t believe it had been let go on purpose. She wondered how this man, Dain, had known he would die. She didn’t recognize any of the names, doubting she’d ever find its owner. She folded the paper up again and put it in her pocket.