Chapter Twenty-Six

Walking the Dreampaths

 

 

 

The chill of the starlit air as it rushed into his lungs woke Tully with a start. He opened his eyes wide and stared. Stars were all around him, gemstone bright and so close that he felt their heat searing the skin of his outstretched hand. Another hand clasped his tightly, and he turned to find Carla floating, falling or gliding, he wasn’t sure which, beside him. He smiled. He and Carla, alone in the night sky, close, just the two of them surrounded by eternity. Tully’s heart soared. He heard the song of the stars.

Below them, in the darkness, there were no stars, no lights, and he knew from the thickening of the air that there was nothing below but the black slime, the eaters of souls. Clutching Carla’s hand, he soared higher into the heat of the stars and farther. Together, they followed the course of a great river over an immense plain then hit the lower slopes of a mountain range. Time passed and the first hesitant, isolated lights appeared. Mountaintops. Carla pointed. A ring of wavering lights, flames, beacons maybe, encircled what looked like a valley. The valley was dark, but it vibrated with heat and life. Carla turned to him, her brow furrowed, then her face lit up with hope. She pointed again. The valley was full of trees! A dense forest covered the valley floor. Any life below would be invisible from above, except where the tree canopy broke…and an isolated hilltop settlement appeared.

Carla plunged lower. Tully held tightly to her hand and followed. The freezing night air burned his lungs and set his nose tingling painfully. His fingers numbed and he could no longer feel Carla’s hand. But she seemed oblivious to everything but the pinpoints of light below. Then Tully heard the music, rising up from the valley, from the trees and the houses nestled beneath. A courageous music defied the encroaching darkness that was more than just the night shadows.

They skimmed the treetops. Leaves shivered and parted. A troop of monkeys cowered among the topmost branches, hugging their thin chests with finger-like paws. They made no sound as the humans passed in a dream, but Tully looked into their bright black eyes, filled with curiosity. If they were afraid, their fear was reserved for something else.

The music soared and swelled as they sped toward the tremulous lights that blinked through the leafy canopy as they passed. Tully stole a look at Carla and saw that her expression of intense concentration had changed to one of ecstatic joy. She turned to him and beamed.

“Mamma!”

The single silent word echoed in Tully’s head and he grinned back, grinned so hard it hurt. Only now, gripped by the elation of relief, did he realize how terrified he had been that Garance was dead.

They circled, Carla reaching out to the darting fragments of light that emanated from the clearing. Dreams, but only one dreamer. A beam, stronger than the rest, caught them in its spotlight and held them both. Tully felt the immensely powerful tug through Carla’s fingers as she locked onto the source. The tension eased and they both saw a star-like shape hovering low over the hilltop, over a vast fortress that gave out a throbbing warmth. The star struggled to rise, as if reluctant to leave the warmth below. Tully had no idea what it was, but he sensed that Carla desperately wanted it to let go.

Then Tully saw the blackness, thicker and blacker than night that engulfed the forest. The hysterical jabber of the monkeys filled his ears, and the sad song of the dying Earth became a crashing, agonizingly discordant cacophony of sound. The blackness was a huge wave on an ocean of darkness. He turned swiftly to Carla and pointed. She nodded, but her gaze didn’t shift from the star riding at anchor above the fortress.

They were hovering low, low enough to see the trees sagging and falling beneath the onslaught of the dark wave, low enough to smell the stink of carrion and putrefaction. Suddenly the silent forest was full of bounding shapes that trampled the fallen branches, snapping and growling at the monkeys that raced, screaming in panic before them, at the small forest deer, wild pigs and even a big spotted cat. And drax! But the drax were not hunting. They ignored the leaping prey animals, racing with them, faster than them in a terrified race.

Carla still watched the star, and Tully realized she was guiding its path upward, out of reach of the slime.

Garance! She’s caught her!

In his joy, Tully began to sing, a song that rose out of the silence of space. He turned to Carla and smiled, and he became lips, tongue, mouth opening and closing, a throat rising and falling as the music poured from him. The star glowed brighter, pulsing in time to the song’s rhythm. Carla smiled back at him, transfixed by the music. Suddenly, her expression changed from joy to black, bitter terror.

‘Tully! No, stop!’

Tully hadn’t understood the danger, and now it was too late. The blackness had heard. It had found Tully, the singer, and faster than galloping horses, it surged into the sky with a bestial roar. The rising star faltered in its course, and a mass of black tentacles reached out around it, almost quenching its brilliance.

“Mamma!”

Carla dived so suddenly that Tully’s hand slipped from her grip. He half turned, dragged out of his dream and saw Carla’s panic-stricken eyes fixed upon him. The song died in his throat as a black tendril shot out from the approaching blackness and wrapped itself around his wrist.

Carla stopped in her dive toward the failing star. Tully mouthed a wordless cry and saw the distress in her eyes. The black tendril became a wave that swirled about him, plucking him out of the sky. He fell, Carla’s scream ringing inside his head, and the blackness dragged him from her sight.

 

* * * *

 

Jim looked out over the sea from the lighthouse gallery. The sky at the far horizon was a luminous, unsullied blue, but closer to the shore, wispy mares’ tails threshed orange and ochre patterns across it. Battalions of gray and white cirrus pushed behind like foam on a boiling tide, a tide as black as pitch. The land was gradually disappearing beneath a dense blanket of thunder cloud that hung so low as to drape every treetop and rocky outcrop in funereal shrouds that banked so mountainously high as to obscure the sky and take sustenance from the black depths of empty space beyond. The unbroken darkness was lit from within by the flickering yellow light, so familiar from the last days of Jim’s world. He felt the hair at the back of his neck prickle, either with static or fear.

The door opened at his back, and he started. Eirian’s voice asked, “Do you mind a bit of company? I think if I have to listen to Jack yelling at Yvain any more, I’ll hit him.”

Jim turned and scraped wind-blown curls out of his eyes. “Company would be fine. It’ll take my mind off the Apocalypse that’s preparing out there.” He nodded in the direction of the furious sky. Eirian leaned on the rail beside him, her hair blowing wildly too. She pulled it back out her eyes, and her breath whistled between her teeth.

“I don’t know which idea is worse, going into the thick of it or waiting for it to hit the lighthouse.”

“You’d really go out there, wouldn’t you?” Jim was filled with admiration. “Even knowing it’s full of black slime, zombies and God knows what else?”

Eirian shrugged. “That’s rather the point of the exercise, isn’t it? We’re meant to be leading that darkness to its doom, not hiding from it on a desert island.”

Jim looked into the wild ocean and back at Eirian. “I’d be keener if I didn’t have to go it alone.”

Eirian gave him a curious look. “Who said you’d be on your own? Where do you think the rest of us will be?”

Jim took her hand, still looking out to sea. “You know what I mean. Don’t leave me.”

Eirian let him hold her hand, but he sensed that she wasn’t holding his hand. Instead she sighed. “You don’t need me, you know. You can cope with your demons on your own.”

“Maybe I can.” Jim turned, pouring all the tenderness he felt into his words. “But maybe I don’t want to.”

Eirian smiled. “What you don’t want is a crutch. Walk by yourself for a while, then we’ll have this conversation again. All right?”

Jim hesitated then managed a smile. “Fine.”

 

* * * *

 

Erelah stared at the humming blackness, listening to the voices it contained, watching the worlds turning and shifting in its depths. Silently, Rajeev crouched down beside her and tucked her arm under his. Erelah could feel that he was trembling, either with fear or excitement.

“Raj? Are you okay?”

The boy nodded, his eyes fixed on the black hole. “Is this the way? You’re sure?”

Erelah took a deep breath. “Sure.”

“What about Sanjay?”

Erelah let her excitement burst out in a brilliant smile. “We’ll carry him! When the time comes, we’ll carry him.”

“When, Relah? It has to be now. Sanjay’s… I don’t know if he can wait many more hours. Can you make it soon?”

Erelah turned to where Sanjay lay. Such a slight hump he made in the sleeping bag. There was hardly anything left of him. She refused to think about his death. It wasn’t possible. And it wasn’t part of her plan.

“Just as soon as I work out how the tunnel operates.”

“I thought you knew.” Rajeev’s voice was dead, not even disappointed. “I thought once we found the path, we’d be able to…you know, just leave.”

“We will!” Erelah would not let Rajeev’s doubt drag her spirits down. He was worried about Sanjay. That was all. “The tunnel will take us out of this place into a world without black slime and cold, where the dead are truly dead, and the living have real lives, not living deaths.”

She gave Rajeev’s arm a squeeze and turned to him. His dark eyes were wide, sunless pools, and in them Erelah could see the doubt struggling with hope.

“Another world,” he said dreamily. “I can’t imagine it.” Rajeev lowered his gaze, and Erelah knew it was because he didn’t want her to see that he didn’t believe her.

She longed to be able to share some of her hope with him.

“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen it. This is the secret—the surprise I was keeping for you. I’ve seen what comes after the end!”