The only reality was this: He was home.
How badly he wanted to stay.
A few minutes later, standing at the open trunk, they all realized neither Gansey nor Ronan had considered the plan deeply enough to procure a shovel.
“Einstein?” Ronan addressed Adam.
“Barn?” suggested Adam, coming awake. “Tools?” “Oh yeah. This way.”
Climbing over a black four-board fence, they set off across the fields toward one of the main barns. The atmosphere encouraged silence. Adam took a few hurried steps to walk beside Blue, but neither spoke. On Ronan’s shoulder, Chainsaw flapped to keep her balance. She was getting heavy, this dream of his. Beside Ronan, Gansey’s head was ducked against the rain, his face pensive. He’d made this walk enough times himself, before.
How many times had Ronan made this walk? It could have been a year ago, five years ago.
Ronan was filled with a burst of fury at Declan, enforcer of his father’s will. He couldn’t have his father back, probably would never have his mother back. But if he was allowed to come back here — it wouldn’t be the same, but it would be bearable.
Chainsaw saw the strange thing first. She remarked, “Kreck.”
Ronan stopped.
“What’s that?” he asked. A dozen yards away, a smooth brown object sat in the midst of all the green. It was waist-high in size and mountainous in texture.
Dubiously, Blue asked, “Is that . . . a cow?”
It was obvious once she had said it. It was certainly a cow, lying down as cattle do in the rain. And it was certainly one of the cattle that had occupied this pasture before Niall Lynch had died. Ronan couldn’t quite work out how it was still here.
Adam made a face. “Is it dead?”
Ronan pointed to the cow’s slowly moving side as he walked around it. Now he could see her finely sculpted face and the moisture around the nostrils. Her large black eyes were half-lidded. Both he and Chainsaw leaned in, heads identically cocked. When Ronan waved a hand in front of the cow’s eyes, she didn’t move.
“Non mortem,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes, “somni fratrem.”
Blue whispered, “What?”
Adam translated, “Not death, but his brother, sleep.” Gansey, a bit of the gallows in his voice, advised, “Poke its eye.” “Gansey!” Blue said.
Ronan did not poke the cow’s eye, but he did brush a finger through her soft, unblinking eyelashes. Gansey held a palm in front of the cow’s nostrils.
“It is breathing.”
Huddled close, Blue stroked the cow’s nose, leaving dark marks on the wet hair. “Poor thing. What do you think’s wrong with it?”
Ronan wasn’t certain there was anything wrong with it. It didn’t look ill, aside from its lack of movement. It didn’t smell terrible. And Chainsaw didn’t seem abnormally distressed, although she did press her body against the side of Ronan’s head as a warning to not set her down anywhere near it.
“There’s a metaphor for the American public in here,” Gansey murmured darkly, “but it escapes me at the moment.”
Blue said, “Let’s just go on before Gansey has time to say something that makes me hate him.”
They left the cow behind and continued on to the largest of the barns. The big sliding door was worm-eaten and rotted near the bottom, and the metal edging was rusted.
Ronan put his hand on the uneven surface of the door handle. Out of habit, his palm memorized the feel of it. Not the idea of it, but the real sensation of it, the texture and shape and temperature of the metal, everything he’d need to bring it back from a dream.
“Wait,” Adam said, wary. “What’s that smell?”
The air was colored with a warm, claustrophobic odor— not unpleasant, but undeniably agricultural. It was not the smell of a barn that had been used in the past; it was one of a barn currently in use.
Frowning, Ronan slid open the creaking, massive door. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust.
“Oh,” said Gansey.
Here was the rest of the herd. Dozens of cattle were dark silhouettes in the watery light through the door. There was not so much as a twitch over the clatter of the door opening. There was just the sound of several dozen very large animals breathing, and over all of it, the shushing of the light rain on the metal roof.
“Sleep mode,” Gansey said, at the same time that Blue said, “Hypnosis.”
Ronan’s heart beat unevenly. There was a raw potential to the sleeping herd. Like someone with the correct word could rouse a stampede.
“Is this our fault, too?” Blue whispered. “Like the power outtages?”
Adam looked away.
“No,” Ronan answered, certain that this sleeping herd wasn’t because of the ley line. “This is something else.”
Gansey said, “Not to sound like Noah, but this is giving me the creeps. Let’s find a shovel and get out of here.”
Feet scuffing through sawdust, they wound their way through the motionless animals to a small equipment room made gray by the rain. Ronan found a spade. Adam picked up a snow shovel. Gansey tested a post-hole digger’s weight as if checking the balance of a sword.
After a moment, Blue said, “Did you really grow up here, Ronan?”
“In this barn?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
He started to answer, but pain welled up, sudden and shocking. The only way he could get the sentiment out was by drowning the words with acid. It came out sounding like he hated the place. Like he couldn’t wait to get away. Mocking and cruel, he said, “Yes. This was my castle.”
“Wow,” she replied, as if he hadn’t been sarcastic. Then she whispered, “Look!”
Ronan followed her gaze. Where the corrugated roof imperfectly met the edge of the finished wall, a dusty brown bird was tucked away in a nest. Its chest looked black, bloody, but a closer look revealed that it was a trick of the dim light. Its chest plumage was a peacock’s metallic emerald. Like the cattle, its eyes were open, its head unmoving. Ronan’s pulse surged again.
On his shoulder, Chainsaw crouched low, pressing against his neck, a reaction to his reaction rather than to the other bird.
“Touch it,” Blue whispered. “See if it’s alive, too.”
“One of you two Poverty Twins should touch it,” Ronan said. “I touched the last one.”
Her eyes blazed. “What did you just call me?”
“You heard me.”