Chapter 22
In the silent, lonely wake of Moriah’s departure, with the unsettling story of the witch Gornicka rattling around her head, Thorn contemplated going back inside the cottage.
Only one of them lived. Moriah’s words echoed still.
Was that how it had to be with Rose and her? Could only one of them survive?
Certainly, only one of them could have Sebastien. And he’d sent her a forget-me-not. She had to know now if they had a future or if she needed to reconcile her heart to being forever broken.
Well, if she couldn’t walk the Dream, she could still communicate with Sebastien. There was more than one way to navigate the Dream, wasn’t there? Rose had mentioned it: finding dreamers.
With her finger on the gem and Sebastien’s bright essence, Thorn searched the Dream, seeking his dreaming mind. She found him, not exactly easily, but quickly enough that she knew it was meant to be. He bloomed in her mind with all his familiar light, warm and beloved.
Keeping Rose’s lessons and the books’ instructions firmly in mind, and her body solidly on the cottage side of the portal, Thorn entered Sebastien’s dream.
To her giddy delight, she discovered that he was dreaming of her. Well, of them, since Rose and Thorn appeared to be the same person. It very well could be Thorn.
He danced in a gilded ballroom, an equally glittering Rose/Thorn in his arms. The music dragged in an odd, distorted way that seemed wrong.
Thorn hadn’t had occasion to listen to much music, only the enchanted music boxes Jada had once brought her when she was a girl, so maybe this was how it should sound in ballrooms. There seemed to be people populating the background, but they remained an indistinct mass of elongated shapes and blurred colors.
Shouts of admiration and applause wove through the music, a strange, discordant thread.
Neither Sebastien nor her dream self seemed to notice anything outside of the other, gazing at each other adoringly as they spun in wide circles, love and uncertainty drenching the air.
Her dream self wore white and gold, jeweled roses in her hair of that dark rainbow sort Rose always wore and the matching pendant glowing in the hollow of her throat.
So Thorn altered her own gown to be black and silver—the same, but in mirrored colors—and she added forget-me-nots to her hair and wreathing her neck.
Sebastien caught sight of her, looking from the Rose in his arms to Thorn, back and forth.
“There are two of you,” he said to them both and Dream Rose laughed.
So, Thorn laughed, too, extending her arms to him. “Dance with us both then,” she invited, and he waltzed away from Dream Rose to embrace Thorn instead.
“It’s you,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered.
She willed Dream Rose to go away and she vanished.
Thorn didn’t have to feel any remorse about that, as that Rose was only a figment of the Dream and not real in any way.
The dream shifted, the ballroom fading and a dense forest taking its place.
The trees loomed in twisted shapes, something unseen but menacing in the shadows.
Not liking it, Thorn pushed the Dream to make the trees lighter, the leaves and needles falling like green snow around them, sunlight breaking through the diminishing canopy above, though it had a strangely orange cast to it.
“Where have you taken me?” Sebastien asked.
“Paradise,” she answered, reveling in his answering smile.
“Every moment with you already is,” he murmured.
She kissed him.
It felt odd, not quite right, not like in the waking world, the kiss somehow elusive.
She pressed closer and Sebastien became even more insubstantial.
She couldn’t let him go so soon. Not sure what to do, Thorn tried influencing the Dream, to keep him there, shoring up the bleeding edges of his Dream presence.
To no avail. Like water pouring through her spread fingers, he vanished.
“Thorn,” came a voice, resonating through the forest, shaking the leaves and needles to rain down in a torrent. “What in the darkest stars do you think you’re doing?”
Along with the falling canopy, all the Dream crashed, breaking from the sky down, pouring in a gelatinous liquid, like a gravy rich in marrow, that collected in a flood, surged, then thrust her from the Dream.
She actually physically stumbled, falling onto her rear end, the voluminous skirts of her fancy gown flying up and nearly drowning her in the fluff, ruffles, and netting as it billowed around her head, a waking-world, frivolous version of the dissolved Dream.
Fighting it down, the ridiculous springs popping the froth back up, she swallowed a scream of frustration.
She’d had Sebastien, right there, practically in the palm of her hand.
And lost him again. She shouldn’t have dallied in that lovely, romantic dream.
If she’d stepped through the portal physically, she could have been with him in reality. An opportunity lost, perhaps forever.
Finally, she emerged from the black and silver sea of her gown, vanity, and foolish romantic aspirations—to find Rose standing there, glowering with righteous anger, and glowing at the center of a nimbus of magical lights illuminating the nighttime garden.
“I ask again,” Rose said, spacing out the words so each came as a devasting punch. “What did you think you were doing?”
Thorn scrambled to her feet, cursing the overwrought gown, utterly humiliated by her clumsiness and the unreal quality of the outfit, crawling together in a shame she shouldn’t have to feel. “I wasn’t doing—”
“You were.” Her sister shook her head slowly, her expression grim. “You were in Sebastien’s dream. You went into his dreaming mind and, far worse, you interfered with his dream.”
“I didn’t interfere,” she pleaded with Rose to understand.
“I only wanted to see him.” She flailed at the mud on her skirts, wishing she still had the ability, as she’d had in the Dream, to change her aspect and appearance.
Rose, of course, still looked impeccably gorgeous.
“It’s not like that was a real you in his dream.
I didn’t cause you any harm.” Wishing Rose gone in a dream wasn’t the same as in the real world. Was it?
Rose made an incredulous sound, eked out through her nose and throat, as she threw her hands up in the air. “No, Thorn,” she said, dripping with scorn. “The point is that you are correct that, while you didn’t cause any harm to me, you may have caused irreparable injury to Sebastien!”
Thorn’s retort caught in her throat, choking her, panicked regret scalding her worse than any imagined shame. “I didn’t,” she protested, weakly, but valiantly hoping that was true. “I did nothing but find him in the Dream.”
Rose practically spat at her, fisting her hands at her sides.
“You ignorant fool. I am trying to be patient with you because it is not your fault that you weren’t taught as you should have been, but didn’t I expressly warn you to leave experimenting with oneiromancy alone?
I know I did and you promised me—promised!
—that you would wait until I could teach you more.
Do you have any idea what you did to Sebastien? ”
“Nothing!” Thorn nearly wailed, keenly feeling the unfairness of the accusation. “I only wanted to visit his dreams. I didn’t even contact him physically.” Not that she hadn’t planned to, but she could leave that part out.
“You manipulated his dreaming mind,” Rose said, eyes wide, the words enunciated as if Thorn might not understand. “In all your reading, did you not see cautions on that?”
Now that Rose mentioned it … All right, maybe Thorn had seen something about not interfering in the minds of active dreamers—or how those techniques could be weaponized against enemies. “I didn’t attack him,” she explained. “I barely did anything at all.”
“You tried to keep him in the Dream,” Rose said flatly.
“I didn’t think that—”
“No, you clearly did not think. If you had managed to keep Sebastien in the Dream, which you very nearly did…” She dragged in a breath, closing her eyes as if reaching for calm.
“If you had a bit more skill—and if I hadn’t interfered when I did—you would have succeeded.
You would have stranded Sebastien’s mind, his immaterial self, in the Dream forever.
Do you understand what I’m telling you? Just like you did to Nina.
Or he might have become a ghost, like Oneira. ”
Thorn, feeling sicker than ever, thought maybe she did. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You never do,” Rose snapped. “And that’s only the part I witnessed, I don’t know what all you did to him before I arrived. You’re lucky I got here when I did. As it is, I’m going to have to go to Sebastien immediately and make sure his mind doesn’t need healing from your ham-handed tinkering.”
“What would have happened if I’d stranded him in the Dream?” she made herself ask. “Nina went through the portal physically, but Sebastien didn’t. He was only dreaming and—”
“Only dreaming.” Rose firmed her lips, her disdain and contempt for Thorn’s ignorance clear.
“You’re like a child playing with fire not even understanding that it can burn everything down.
The part of Sebastien that makes him who he is, the living self, would stay in the Dream and his physical shell, his body would gradually decompose. ”
Thorn flinched in horror. “But … we, you, could put him back in his body.”
She shook her head grimly. “I don’t have that skill.
I don’t know that even Oneira could restore someone once lost in the Dream to their physical bodies.
It wouldn’t matter, though, because there wouldn’t be any point to it.
We’re not meant to live in the Dream. Just as looking at the Dream with our conscious minds erodes our sanity, being entirely in the Dream with no connection to the waking world…
” She stopped, seeming unable to continue, then leveled her dark gaze on Thorn’s own horrified one.
“Sebastien would have ceased to exist as a distinct entity. He’d have become an irrevocable part of the fabric of the dream, an echo of himself, at best. It would be even worse than death. ”
“I didn’t know,” Thorn whispered, fully aghast at what she’d nearly done.
“I know,” Rose replied wearily. She took in Thorn’s Dream garb.
“Like I said, it’s not your fault that you haven’t been taught as you should have been, but it is your fault that you are not listening to advice.
You’re reacting emotionally and with careless disregard for the repercussions, complicated by the fact that you’re so very powerful.
You don’t know how much. I came here to tell you what I discovered, but it’s a conversation that will take time and now I don’t have any. ”
“I don’t feel powerful,” Thorn said.
“But you are and you must be careful with this dabbling. I have to go. I will come back, as soon as I can. In the meanwhile, I’m begging you … please, please stay out of the Dream.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt Sebastien. I really didn’t.”
Rose smiled sadly. “I know. Even as an infant you used the Dream in a powerful way to help someone else. You mean well, Thorn. I know that. But you’re clumsy. You could cause irreparable damage to your sanity.”
“Would you care?” Thorn asked, suddenly bereft.
“Of course I care. After talking to our parents, I came here right away to tell you, to reassure you, that, well … It’s too complicated for a short conversation.
The important part for this moment is that our mother did not know we both lived.
She’s devastated that you’ve grown up alone, without her, and wants to know you.
It was our father’s scheming that brought all of this about.
There’s a lot to discuss and we’ll have to decide what we want to do about our father’s plans for us. ”
“We?” Thorn questioned, further chastened. Some bleeding place deep inside turned over and stopped stinging with so much pain. Her mother hadn’t known about her. Her mother wanted to know her.
“We,” Rose said firmly. “This is about both of us and we’ll decide together.”
“Even though…” Thorn’s voice went as wobbly as her legs. She’d nearly ruined everything.
“Even though,” Rose replied on a sigh, but with firm resolve. “There is nothing right about any of this, beginning centuries ago, but continuing to heap wrong upon wrong isn’t going to correct anything.”
Thorn didn’t fully understand. “Where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know.” Rose stroked Adsila’s sleekly feathered head, seeming to take comfort in what was clearly a moment of despair.
“If one extreme is to give up and go along, then the other is to fight to the bitter end. I have to find it in myself to fight because I refuse to just cave. Now I have to see to Sebastien right now. He needs my help. Surely you want that?”
“Yes. Please help him. Tell him…” What? That she was sorry, again. That it was an accident, again?
“I’ll think of something,” Rose said, as the portal delineated itself in a perfectly square rectangle. Adsila winged off Rose’s shoulder and disappeared into the Dream. “I’ll come back by tomorrow. Please stay out of the Dream until then.”
Before Thorn could answer, Rose stepped through the portal and was gone.
And, with her departure, the magical lights she’d strewn about the garden all went out, leaving Thorn in the darkest of nights.