In the slightly improved light, Adam saw dustless trails leading from the desk to an office chair by the wall. A blanket — not dusty — nested on the chair, and it was not difficult to imagine the shape of a young man sleeping in it. There was something unexpectedly lonely about the image.
Ronan dragged a metal tack box out from the wall and flipped up the lid with a terrific crash. “I’ve been trying to wake my father’s dreams.”
“What?”
“They aren’t dead. They’re sleeping. If I dragged them all to Cabeswater, they’d get up and walk away. So I began to think, what if I brought Cabeswater to them?”
Adam wasn’t sure what he’d expected as a reveal, but it wasn’t this. “To the cows.”
“Some of us have family, Parrish.”
Aurora was trapped in Cabeswater. Of course Ronan would want her to be able to come and go. Shamed, Adam replied, “Sorry. Got it.”
“It’s not just that. It’s Matthew —” Ronan broke off, very completely, and Adam understood. This was another secret, one Ronan wasn’t ready to tell.
After a moment of rummaging in the box, Ronan turned around, a clear glass ball in his hand. The air inside it shimmered mistily. It was pretty, something you’d hang in a garden or in an old lady’s kitchen. It struck Adam as safe. Not very Ronan-like.
Ronan held it up to the light. The air inside rolled from one side to the other. Maybe not air at all. Maybe a liquid. Adam could see it reflected in his blue eyes. Ronan said, “This was my first attempt.”
“You dreamed it.”
“Of course.”
“Mm. And Cabeswater?”
Ronan sounded offended. “I asked.”
He asked. So easy. As if it was a simple thing for him to communicate with this entity that could only make itself known to Adam through grand and violent gestures.
“In the dream, it had some of Cabeswater inside it,” Ronan continued, and intoned, “If it works in the dream, it works in real life.”
“Does it work? Give me the short version.”
“Asshole. No. It doesn’t. It does, in fact, jack shit.” Ronan dug back through the tack box, lifting out various other failed attempts, all of them puzzling. A shimmering ribbon, a tuft of grass still growing from a lump of dirt, a forked branch. He let Adam hold some of them; they all felt strange. Too heavy, like gravity weighted them more than it should. And they smelled vaguely familiar, like Ronan, or like Cabeswater.
If Adam thought about it — or rather, if he didn’t think about it — he could feel the pulse of the ley line in each.
“I had a bag of sand, too,” Ronan said, “but I spilled it.”
Hours of dreaming. He had driven an hour each day to park his car and curl in this chair and sleep alone.
“Why here? Why do you come here to do it?”
Voice toneless, Ronan said, “Sometimes I dream of wasps.”
Adam imagined it then: Ronan waking in Monmouth Manufacturing, a dream object clutched in his hands, wasps crawling in his bedsheets, Gansey unaware in the other room.
No, he could not dream wildly in Monmouth.
Lonesome.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get hurt out here by yourself?” Adam asked.
Ronan scoffed. Him, fear for his own life. But there was something in his eyes, still. He studied his hands and admitted, “I’ve dreamt him a box of EpiPens. I dream cures for stings all the time. I carry one. I put them in the Pig. I have them all over Monmouth.”
Adam felt a ferocious and cruel hope. “Do they work?”
“I don’t know. And there’s no way to find out before it actually happens. There won’t be a rematch.” Ronan took two objects from the tack box and stood. “Here. Field trip time. Let’s go to the lab.”
With one arm he braced a bright blue polar fleece blanket against his body. On the other he draped a slab of moss like a waiter’s towel.
“Do you want me to carry one?” Adam asked.
“Fuck, no.”
Adam got the door for him.
In the main room of the barn, Ronan took his time walking among the cows, pausing to look into their faces or cocking his head to observe their markings. Finally, he stopped by a chocolate-brown cow with a jagged stripe down her friendly face. He shoved her motionless side with the toe of his boot and explained, “It works better if they seem more … I don’t know. Particular. If it looks like something I might have dreamt myself.”
It looked like a cow to Adam. “So what is it about this one?”
“Looks f**king friendly. Bovine the boy wizard.” He set the blue blanket on the floor. Carefully. Then he ordered, “Feel its pulse. Don’t just stare at it. Pulse. On its face. There. There, Parrish, God. There.”
Adam gingerly trailed his fingers across the cow’s short facial hair until he felt the animal’s slow pulse.
Ronan hefted the blanket of moss across the cow’s withers. “And now?”
Adam wasn’t sure what he was supposed to see. He felt nothing, nothing, nothing — ah, but there it was. The cow’s pulse had accelerated fractionally. Again, he imagined Ronan here on his own, so hopeful for a change that he would have noted such a subtle difference. It was far more dedication than he had thought Ronan Lynch capable of.
Lonesome.
He asked, “Is this the closest you’ve gotten?”
Ronan scoffed. “Did you think I would bother showing you just this? There’s one more. Do you need to piss first?”
“Ha.”
“No, seriously.”
“I’m good.”
Ronan turned to the other object he’d brought out. It was not the blue blanket, as Adam had expected, but rather something wrapped inside the blanket. Whatever was inside couldn’t be larger than a shoe box or a large book. It didn’t seem very heavy.
And if Adam’s eyes didn’t deceive him, Ronan Lynch was afraid of it.
Ronan took a deep breath. “Okay, Parrish.”
He unwrapped it.
Adam looked.
Then he looked away.
Then he looked back.
It was a book, he thought. And then he didn’t know why he thought it was a book; it was a bird. No, a planet. A mirror.
It was none of those things. It was a word. It was a cupped word in Ronan’s hand that wanted to be said out loud, but he didn’t want to, but actually he did —
Then Adam looked away again, because he couldn’t keep his eyes on it anymore. He could feel himself going mad trying to name it.