Chapter 9 #3
“Remove external distractions. Internally, clear my mind of extraneous thoughts and emotions,” she recited, not verbatim, but from her own understanding, as Zoltan would expect.
“Keeping firmly in mind the object or dreamer I wish to locate, I open the Dream and reach in with my sorcery and intention. Depending on what I’m seeking, I—”
“You can stop there,” Zoltan interrupted. “What is the salient detail about this method for reaching into the Dream as opposed to physically entering?”
She almost argued, then realized his point. “I don’t look into the Dream with my conscious mind using my standard techniques. A portal is open, but I look with my sorcery and my will, not my physical eyes.”
He nodded, pleased, giving Rose a flush of satisfaction.
“Exactly so. We become so practiced in this method—indeed, you have been relentlessly trained to avoid looking with your eyes as a safety measure—that we can forget there are other ways. When you physically travel the Dream, and forgive me if this sounds obvious, but it bears repeating, you not only look at the portal with your eyes and conscious mind, you take them with you into that alter realm.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted, then wished she hadn’t said that aloud.
Zoltan, however, seemed to approve. “When we discuss the dangers of entering the Dream physically, this is the primary one. There are many dangers posed by the Dream. It does not obey the laws of the reality with which we are familiar. It is endlessly mutable, responding to not only our own thoughts and emotions, but also those of the countless dreamers, alive and dead, who spun the fabric of it from nothing more than the stuff of sleep. The Dream, being formed of a different medium, is not a place for the waking mind. While you insert the intention, as you phrased it, of your waking mind into the realm of the Dream, your mind, your physical being, your self, remains in reality. When you physically enter the Dream, you take something formed of this world into an alien one. Do you understand the distinction?”
She was beginning to, the awful prospect of what her teacher suggested she attempt slowly dawning on her.
“So, I’d be losing my anchor to physical reality,” she said, “taking my entire conscious mind and physical flesh into a place where they don’t belong and where everything I perceive is guaranteed to drive me insane. ”
Zoltan gave her a slight bow. “There you go.”
She stared at him, appalled. “How can anyone do this? It doesn’t sound possible to survive.”
“I cannot do it. Very few can,” he told her, without inflection, though something about the absolute neutrality of his face and voice made her think he deeply regretted his failure.
“The short answer to your question is powerful sorcery. I didn’t have enough of it.
The skills, the understanding, yes. The sheer potent ability? No.”
“I don’t understand how powerful magic overcomes this fundamental incompatibility,” Rose said, trying to remain logical, reasonable, but battling a deep terror.
What would happen to her physical self inside the Dream?
She’d heard of people becoming lost in the Dream, either as their projected mind or as their full physical selves, but not what they were like when they managed to extract themselves. If they ever did come out again.
“No one quite understands how the sorcery operates, except that it seems to act as a sort of buffer, a bubble of your waking reality, if you will, that encases you as you walk the Dream. Those who learn to do it are able to retain their individual reality, to navigate and manipulate the Dream without succumbing to its power.”
“Like Oneira.”
“Just so. And one or two others I know of. Very few. Shall we see if you are one of them?”
No. Rose very nearly voiced the denial. All she could think was that, if she messed this up, she could be lost forever in the Dream.
“It’s perfectly natural to be afraid,” Zoltan said cannily, eyes on her, hands still folded behind his back.
She bit back the immediate denial, the temptation to reflexively retort that she wasn’t afraid.
“You have dispensation to refuse the attempt without any downgrading of your performance evaluation,” Zoltan continued, “though the inability will be noted on your official resume, naturally. That ability is kept private, regardless, outside of a few insular circles. A secret weapon for your clients, if you will. Officially, your resume won’t show the ability either way, though it will be communicated unofficially. ”
And thus would affect her job prospects.
Though that might be less of an issue if she deliberately chose a lesser contract, with fewer expectations and strictures—and debt.
Still, it wasn’t in her to refuse a challenge, to back away from learning a demanding skill out of cowardice.
Zoltan had taught Oneira. Rose could learn also.
And yet … “Have many students elected not to attempt it?” she asked, bracing for a scathing answer, that no one had been too afraid.
“Many,” Zoltan answered her gravely.
“Did any try and fail?”
He raised a brow. “Many,” he repeated.
Hmm. “Were any … lost?”
“Yes.” He turned back to the windows. “Mistakes were made, mine among them, though not chief among them. I haven’t lost a student in a very long time.” He glanced at her. “You will not be one of them. Not if you listen and pay scrupulous attention to my instructions. If you want to try it.”
She stood from her chair and straightened her spine. “I want to try.”
“No,” Master Zoltan said, yet again, with endless patience. “Try again. A perfectly rectangular doorway. Remember that neatness counts.”
Aware of the sweat trickling down her spine and dampening the underside of her heavy, braided hair, Rose fought the urge to snap back.
Zoltan had been confining her to drawing perfectly delineated portals without actually opening any of them for hours.
She was exhausted. She’d missed lunch. But she’d resolved to see this through without arguing.
“Why?” she demanded in exasperation, immediately breaking her own resolve.
“How can the precision of the portal doorway possibly matter? The Dream can’t care about ninety-degree angles. ”
To her surprise, instead of snapping in return or throwing up his hands at her and naming her a failure, Zoltan smiled and dipped his silver-bearded chin.
“Exactly! The Dream does not deal in perfect lines and angles,” he continued, seeming amused by her surprise.
“You do. Or, rather, you soon will. This is a technique through which you impose a continuing reality—your own, waking reality—even as and after you step into the Dream.”
She gazed at him a moment longer, a visceral level of understanding flooding her, along with considerable frustration. “With all due respect, Master Zoltan—is there a reason you didn’t tell me that to begin with?”
“Yes,” he answered simply. “What do you suppose that reason might be?”
A few minutes ago, she wouldn’t have had an answer. Now she did. “So I would learn for myself the difficulty of imposing this level of control on the magic.”
“Just so. Now, do it again.”