Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet (32 page)

Passengers were pushing down their windows and poking their heads out to take a look.

“Are you a dreamhunter?” the conductor asked.

“Yes. I got lost,” the girl whispered.

“Can you walk?” the conductor said, then looked at her feet and gave a little yelp of sympathy. He put an arm around her and took some of her weight. They tottered together toward the nearest door. Another conductor leaned out and lifted her up. He said to the first, “The only house here is up beyond that border.”

“Yes,” the girl whispered. “I couldn’t look for help there.”

There was a clatter of stones behind them as someone came running along the track beside the train. It was a passenger, who had jumped from one of the second-class carriages. He was wearing a dreamhunter’s long duster coat. The young man said, “I’ll take her.” He sprang onto the steps behind the girl and scooped her up.

The second conductor retreated into the carriage ahead of him. The first followed, leaning out only to wave all clear to the engineer.

The train exhaled and began to move.

“We have an empty compartment in first-class,” the first conductor said to the young man. “She’ll be more comfortable there.”

The girl had her eyes closed and her head on the young man’s shoulder. Perhaps she had fainted.

“I can’t pay.” The dreamhunter looked stricken and stiffly angry at the same time.

“Was anyone asking you to pay?” The first conductor was irritated. “If you’ll please just carry your friend this way.” He set off up the carriage. The young man followed.

The other conductor went to find towels and soap, bandages and ointment, food and drink.

Laura woke up to see a man in a brass-buttoned uniform bandaging her blistered feet. Her head was in someone’s lap. She looked up, said, “Sandy.”

“Laura,” said Sandy. Then, “Love.” Then, “What have you been doing?”

“I got lost,” she said, and closed her eyes again.

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AURA DIDN’T REALLY COME BACK TO HERSELF TILL SHE AND SANDY WERE IN A TAXI TAKING THEM FROM SISTERS
Beach Station up to Summerfort. The driver was sitting out in the open air. They were in the back, and she was leaning heavily on Sandy. He thought she was still faint and feverish; then she started to speak.

As she talked, he realized that she’d postponed answering his question, “What have you been doing?” and that what he was now hearing was her answer.

“The Regulatory Body has built a rail line beyond The Pinnacles at Z minus 16.” The map reference made her sound lucid, despite her ravaged little voice. She said, “They run handcars on it. They move supplies. There’s a kind of camp far Inland along the line. A camp they call the Depot. It’s full of dreamhunters, missing dreamhunters, and, I guess, a few no one misses—like little Gavin Pinkney. Rose told me she saw Gavin on St. Lazarus’s Eve after the riot. And Aunt Grace saw him before she went into quarantine in the forest near Doorhandle. I bet if you asked Plasir where his apprentice was, he’d say Gavin had suffered a breakdown and was under treatment.”

Sandy saw Laura’s eyes glimmering at him in the gloom of the cab. He saw her tears spill and how her skin grew instantly
red where the tears were running. She wasn’t sunburned—no one ever got sunburned in the Place—but the skin of her face was so parched and damaged that it flared wherever salt touched it. Sandy drew his cuff up over his hand and dabbed gently at her cheeks.

Laura went on. “The camp is on the site of a dream, a master dream called Contentment, which makes people perfectly happy. Perfectly, slavishly happy.” She shuddered.

Sandy put his arms around her.

“I didn’t sleep,” Laura said. “I got away.”

“Good girl.”

They had arrived at their destination. Sandy opened the door, dropped his pack onto the shell driveway. He pulled money out of his pocket and paid the driver. He said, “Keep the change,” which felt as strange as anything else that was happening since it was something he’d never said, or been moved to say, before. He eased out and lifted her up—she was so light, so small.

Sandy watched the taxi backing around the corner of the drive, its tires kicking up clanking scallop shells. He asked Laura, “Is anyone here?” Then he turned to the house in time to see someone appear—a small man with graying black hair and a badly scarred face.

The man looked alarmed and hurried down off the veranda.

Laura croaked, urgently, “It’s all right.
I’m
all right!” She sounded even more worried than the man looked.

The man reached Sandy and for a moment, despite his slightness and fragility, looked set to snatch Laura out of Sandy’s arms.

“I can walk,” Laura said. “Don’t try lifting me, Da. It’s only my feet that hurt.”

Sandy finally recognized the man. He was Laura’s father—
Tziga Hame—reported missing a year ago, declared dead shortly after that.

“Take her inside,” said Tziga.

“I’m all right, Da,” said Laura.

“Shhhh,” said Sandy and Tziga together.

Sandy carried Laura indoors. Tziga went ahead. He led Sandy up to Laura’s room and pulled back the covers on her bed. Sandy put her down, and Tziga shook out a down comforter and draped it over her, leaving her bandaged feet uncovered.

Laura lay looking at Sandy, then at her father. Her gaze went back and forth between their faces, and her eyes began to close. For a moment longer her eyes went on moving behind their shut, smooth lids. Then she was asleep.

Tziga said, “It’s probably best just to let her rest. I’ll sit with her. I have a nurse, who is out at the market. When she returns, could you please send her up to me? Laura’s aunt Grace went In yesterday to catch something for The Beholder. Laura’s cousin is in Founderston with her father for a dress fitting. I’ll cable them tomorrow. You can help yourself to something to eat. The kitchen is on the right at the foot of the stairs. And, Sandy, if you can be so good as to not go off anywhere before I’ve had a chance to talk to you.”

Sandy was puzzled that he was known to this man he’d never met, and by Tziga Hame’s tone, which wasn’t just gratitude but a kind of warm eagerness that Sandy knew he didn’t deserve. “Um” was all he managed to say.

“Good,” said Tziga, as though Sandy had said, “Yes, sir.”

Sandy retreated from Laura’s room, went downstairs, and wandered around examining everything. The house wasn’t at all what he had imagined—what he had been imagining since the day the previous summer that the two beautiful, forward, tangle-haired girls had edged up to him when he was lying on
a lounge chair on Sisters Beach in order to read over his shoulder. They had talked about their libraries, two libraries in two houses. They had talked about their town house in Founderston and their beach house, Summerfort. Sandy had spent the following few days looking up at the big house on the headland. And—more recently—he’d looked at it from the sea when he sailed into Tarry Cove on a coal barge. Sandy had thought Summerfort would be full of brocaded chairs and tasseled lamps and furniture darkened and gnarled with carving, with gilded mirrors and brass fire screens and Turkish rugs and crystal lamps. He wandered around looking at the bare floorboards—oiled timber—the few rugs, the faded, comfortable sofas, everything showing the wear of sun and sand. Everything except the books in the library, whose windows were shaded by white Roman blinds. The chairs in the library were studded leather, but so aged and scuffed by use that in some places the leather was pink, not red.

Sandy sat down and gazed up at the spines of the books. After a moment he heard the front door open and went to relay Mr. Hame’s message to the nurse.

Later, the sun went down and Sandy followed the light out onto the veranda in order to keep reading a book he’d discovered, a book with a title irresistible to him. Laura’s father found him frowning over
The Seven Principles of Self-Reliance.
Tziga Hame sat in a chair opposite him.

“How is she now?” Sandy said.

“She’s sleeping. Her feet have been lathered with some smelly ointment and properly, professionally bandaged. When the nurse left us, Laura told me about her ordeal.”

“She told me too.”

Tziga nodded. “I hope you’ll stay, Sandy. I mean—you must.”

Sandy bit his lip for a moment, then his irritation and the sense he had of himself being salt of the earth got the better of him. “I can’t just hold my breath, even when someone I care about is convalescing,” he said. “I have to earn a living.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that. And about Laura.”

Sandy was speechless. Was Laura’s father trying to talk to him about his “prospects”—whether he could support his daughter? Laura’s father didn’t sound stern, or prying, he didn’t seem embarrassed either, and if he was joking he was being remarkably deadpan.

Tziga went on. “There’s a dream I’d like to have again. I doubt I can catch it myself. I don’t have the strength anymore.”

Sandy realized that he wasn’t being asked about his intentions toward Laura. He also understood that Tziga Hame’s scars and smashed-in cheekbone were signs of a more serious, invisible injury. “I must be kind to him,” Sandy thought—though the notion of trying to be kind made Sandy feel he was trying to stuff his big feet into small shoes.

“Just listen.” Tziga smiled, a sweet, fey smile. “Let me finish before I forget how I began,” he said. Then, “Master dreams are all somehow brutal, even when they’re beautiful. I couldn’t manage The Gate now myself, but Laura certainly can. And Grace tells me you show great promise …”

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