Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet (57 page)

“Something came into my head at Debt River. A story I’d heard my great-aunt tell, between music lessons, about magic. She’d taught me a song, though I was only interested
in tunes I could play on the violin. The song was supposed to be a spell that would make a little portion of the earth come to life—be alive and
obedient.
At Debt River I remembered the song, and I remembered an earthquake that had frightened me when I was little. No one we knew was hurt in the earthquake, but I remembered going into the city afterward, once they’d replaced all the sections of wriggly rail line. I remembered seeing heaps of tumbled stone in the street. There were little aftershocks. I’d wake up crying, and my mother would sing to me. She, too, had sung that song. To comfort me she told me that she and I—if we
wished
hard enough—could make the earth itself listen. Listen and lie still.

“At Debt River I was hiding near the mining camp, eating fern shoots—stripping off the black fur and eating them raw. After a short time I’d exhausted the food supply; I’d found every freshwater crayfish in the stream and had gouged out the heart of every tree fern. The sounds from the camp made me sad rather than kept me company, and so I just
began.
I began without thinking. It was as if something in my head had more use for me than I did for it. I took the first steps of the spell I’d been taught and had thought was only a quaint folk ritual. Or, rather, I began the spell but adapted it to my purposes.

“I’d decided to show everyone. The men hunting me, the oblivious miners, the families on the farms I didn’t dare go to. I’d show them, I thought. I started to sing and made a mark on the ground and began to run again. I traveled up Debt River and into the mountains, then I crossed over into Wry Valley.

“I traveled like that for more than a day. Then I slept, and dreamed the song, woke up, and kept on singing. That’s how I went along. And at one place I slept I made another mark on the ground. The song seemed to be consuming me—and I
dreamed impossible things. I dreamed of being saved and starting over.”

The man fell quiet.

Laura waited. She was too afraid to prompt him or comfort him. She did want to know his story, and she wanted to help him, but she didn’t know what to do.

When the man spoke again, his voice had changed; it was remote and resigned. “I did die,” he said. “But there wasn’t another garden beyond the gate, there was a whole world, the same again. More thirst and cold and hunger. Here. Here with you—you strange girl.”

“You dreamed something impossible,” Laura said. “But that isn’t the end of your story.”

“No. I woke up.” He stirred. Then he sounded faintly amused. “You know, that’s what is comforting—that parts of what I recall, even after I lost my mind, still seemed logical and real and practical. I remember wrapping my feet in strips of cloth after I lost my shoes. I remember singing and walking many more miles, mending my makeshift shoes as I went. I remember how my last meal wasn’t much, because wasps had spoiled the apricots left hanging in the orchard by a grand mansion. I remember deciding that it was altogether too big a gesture to dig my own grave with my hands, and spending some time finding a flat stone to serve as a spade.”

“You dug your own grave?”

“After days, and miles—and the same thought in my head for days and miles. I didn’t have to survive it. All I had to do was keep singing, and come to a place where I’d feel that I’d closed a circle. When I did come to that place, I scratched out a hole in the ground, a hole big enough to lie in. I lay down in it. I was finished. I wanted time to stop, and to let
me
stop with it. And I wanted revenge.

“I made the final mark that finished the spell—a W—and
then said to the land, ‘Bury me, and rise up. Rise up and crush them all.’

“And then I felt you brush the earth from my face.”

The outdoor, nighttime quiet had a stealthy quality, as though it was listening to both of them, stalking them with its attention. Laura thought of Nown and could almost feel him, far, far away, reaching for her, his wish to touch so strong that she felt touched.

This man’s vast servant had obeyed him. The earth of his excavation had fallen in to cover him and had piled up over him to make what he’d imagined for himself, a low grave mound. His servant took him to its heart, as its heart. And then it rose up. There was an earthquake—and back along the miles of its master’s journey the ground moved and cracked and
broke
the N that came to be known as Foreigner’s North. By its master’s own actions, the first letter of that Nown’s name was erased. It was its Own, it was free, and it remembered an earlier promise it had made: “I promise in the future to do more, to do—
I know not what
—to save whoever you love.”

Laura knew she would love her as yet unborn son. She
had
loved him—she, the woman who had lived a quiet life caring for him and her invalid father. Laura’s servant, the Ninth Nown, had loved her, and so the giant, immobile, speechless Tenth, the Place, remembered having loved her and went looking for her to ask for help. To say, “Here is one you love who has asked me to stifle him. What should I do?” It moved its territory of stopped time back in time. It went too far, went on until it found the first someone it felt it knew—Laura’s father, who had taught its heart music. It tried to tell him. It showed him his grandson, standing in chains beside a rail line. It tried by the only means available to it—the memories of the lives its territory had encompassed—to tell
anyone who would listen. To show them not just the injustices but the beauty of human life that injustice is a blasphemy against—the joy of the boy on the shore racing the schooner, the happiness of the sing-along around the beach bonfire; dancers, banquets, desires, balloon rides, the miracle of rivers.
Life.
It said, though not in words, “There is something underneath all this, someone buried alive.” It was like a person talking in his sleep—speaking urgent nonsense. It waited, and it felt Laura as she came toward it, through time, being born, growing up, reaching the age of her Try. And sometimes it would rap out its faith and rapture on the Founderston—Sisters Beach telegraph line, singing: “She is coming, my own, my sweet …” Singing a song she had taught it.

“Why the hell are you crying?” the man asked. He seemed offended. “It wasn’t my intention to make you cry, girl. Look—if I was crazy, it’s passed now.”

“Shut up!” Laura said. And cried.

He got up and shuffled down the dark beach to drink some more. When he came back, she said, “I’m glad it’s so dark. It’s easier to talk to you without seeing you.”

“I guess I am a pretty pitiful sight—especially for anyone in prime condition.”

“I’m not feeling guilty because I’m healthy and you’re half-dead!” Laura shouted. “You idiot! And the condition I’m in is
pregnant!”

“You’ve run away from home because you’re pregnant?”

“Shut up!”

He did, and she knew that was perhaps because he felt sympathetic—if exasperated—and that he wasn’t at all the hard and heartless person he made himself out to be. She couldn’t help but feel for him—he was so like Sandy, and he had her father’s beautiful black eyes.

After a time she said, “Do you think you can stay awake long enough for me to tell you
my
story?”

“I think I should hear your story. And I’m not sleepy, only hungry and weary. I feel as if I’ve slept for ages.”

“Well—you have,” she said. And then she told him her story.

5

ERE WAS A ROUGH TRACK FROM THE AWA INLET ACROSS THE SADDLE. IT WASN’T ONE DREAMHUNTERS KNEW, OF
course, since it was within the section of the map they couldn’t enter. Mamie was familiar with a few miles of her end of it. Her family sometimes went along it to have picnics at the lookout. Beyond the lookout, sparse foot traffic meant the track was overgrown. Gorse shoots grew out of the path, and the bare patches were stippled by holes cicada nymphs had tunneled out of. It was rough going, and the girls stopped walking when it got dark. They curled up in their coats, back to back, and Mamie shed more tears about her “stupid situation” and Rose’s “exaggerated ideas” about her father’s scheming. Rose let her friend cry and complain, and they were both soon asleep.

The following morning they were walking along the spine of a hill over the sea when they spotted two figures far below, making their way around a cove, stepping from boulder to boulder.

Rose stopped and shaded her eyes. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “Laura!” She saw her cousin hesitate and look around, then wave to her. “Stay right there!” Rose shouted. “Come on,” she said to Mamie. “We’re going down there.”

Mamie moaned, but when Rose set off downhill, she hurried after her.

The man Laura was with had filthy red hair and was wearing Sandy Mason’s coat—Rose was sure of it. The coat was wet. The strips of cloth wrapping the man’s feet were oozing blood-tinged seawater. He’d been pulling mussels off the rocks at the tide line and was smashing them open and eating them raw.

“I told him you’d have some food,” Laura said. “But he has a somewhat independent disposition.”

Rose put her arms around her cousin and held her close. Mamie began to burble, more excited than complaining, about the dreamhunters who had swarmed the Doran summerhouse. “Rose thought it best to run off. But I’m beginning to suspect there’s a strong streak in your family of fleeing the scene.”

“Huh!” said the man smashing mussels.

“Who is he?” Rose asked Laura. She could see that he was wearing arrow-printed trousers and that his ankles bore the marbled purple scarring caused by years of wearing leg irons.

“This is my cousin, Rose,” Laura said to the man.

Rose was intrigued by how gentle and respectful Laura sounded when she spoke to him. The man looked up at Rose with great interest. It made her blush. Then he dropped the shell-and-meat-flecked stone and, looking decisive, said to Laura, “How many people are there who need to know?”

Laura said, “There’s Da, Uncle Chorley, Aunt Grace, and Rose.”

“But not this girl,” he said, and pointed his chin at Mamie.

“No,” said Laura.

“Well, I’ll wait till they’re all in one place. I’m only going to tell my story once more. Then, if I’m going to have any kind of life, I have to keep my mouth shut. I’m sure you agree.”

“Hell—you’re a bit forceful,” Rose said to him. She had a very strong urge to pick a fight with him. It made her feel like a blowfly trapped under a glass.

“Do you have food?” he said, and gave Rose an up-from-under-the-brows look like the kind of dog who nips your fingers while snatching meat.

“Only if you tell me your name,” Rose said.

“Lazarus Hame.”

Rose looked at Laura, who said, “Yes—it turns out there was a Lazarus, after all.”

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