He gave me a long look and then he lifted a hand. “Hounds, come.”
They streamed after him, coats glittering in the long evening light. I waited, my hand outstretched and shaking, until they had been gone two long minutes.
“Is he gone?” I finally whispered.
Thomas nodded, disbelieving. “Yes.”
“Good,” I said, and collapsed.
In my dream, I lay on a hill in a ring of mushrooms that glowed dusky white in the light of a million stars. There was no place in the world closer to the night sky than was that hill where I lay, the darkness pressing all around me, holding me to it. Every breath I took, the night filled me.
In this dream, I lay on my back, staring at the multitude of stars above me and at the chalk-white surface of the moon. I knew I was dreaming because as I looked at the moon, I could see curled birds trembling on its surface, white wings folded over one another in an impossible puzzle. There was something so beautiful and vast about their presence that I wanted to cry. Had they always quivered there in the light of the moon, only I’d never seen them until now?
It took me longer than I would have thought to realize I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t until I heard him sigh. I turned my head to look into his face. “I thought you were dead.”
Luke looked tired; there was dried blood on his face and an odd longing in his voice. “I’m afraid not.”
I swallowed tears; they got stuck in my throat. “I wish you were really here.”
Sitting next to me, he cradled my cold bare feet in his warm hands; the flight from the hounds had left them filthy. “Oh, me too, lovely. But I’m glad enough for a dream; it was clever of you to think of it.”
I didn’t remember thinking of anything before I dreamt. I only remembered falling into the grass and wishing that the darkness had come sooner.
I pushed myself up, sitting closer to him, taking comfort in the memory of his smell. He wrapped his arms around me and spoke in my ear. “Don’t let Them take my secret from you. It’s all I have to give you.”
He sounded miserable, his head resting on my shoulder, so I said earnestly, “All I want from you is you.”
Luke’s breath escaped in a long sigh. “Oh, Dee, I never wanted to be free as badly as I do now. I didn’t think it would hurt like this.”
“I’m coming to save you,” I said.
He pushed back from me, holding me by my shoulders, staring into my face. “No matter what I say later, remember that I’ll never hurt you. I could never hurt you.” I didn’t know if he was promising me or convincing himself.
“Tell me what to do,” I pleaded.
Luke frowned, and I thought he would say that he didn’t know what I should do. But he took my chin in his hand. “Trust yourself.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I couldn’t trust myself; every time I did, I swapped memories with someone, made a car run continuously, or fell down in a useless faint. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was a little kid waving a gun, playing with a toy of unimaginable power. I stared away from him at those milling white birds on the surface of the moon, thinking how they represented just how much I didn’t know.
“Stop,” he said. “I know what you’re doing. You’re a smart girl, Dee. The smartest I’ve ever met.”
“Smart doesn’t have anything to do with it,” I snapped, jerking my chin away. “I can teach myself stuff from books or from watching someone else do it. How am I supposed to learn anything about this? There aren’t any books on being a freak, as far as I know.”
“I’m always pissing you off.” Luke shook his head. “Even in your dreams, I’m managing to piss you off.”
I looked back at him, at his tired, pale face watching me with his pale blue eyes reflecting the light of the moon-birds. He looked so vulnerable and human in this darkness. I shuddered. “I’m afraid I’ll screw up and lose both of you.”
“You have to trust yourself. You don’t need someone else to tell you what to do.”
Maybe I did. Maybe I wasn’t ready for the independence I’d wanted so badly. I buried my face in my hand, shutting out the light.
He took my wrist, and his voice was soft. “You can do anything you want to do, remember? Now come here and say goodbye to me because I don’t know if I’ll see you again.”
My chin jerked up at his words and I saw that a wet streak glittered on his face before he kissed me, lips rough on mine. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I held onto him as he kissed me again and again, another gleaming trail joining the first on his cheek and mixing with my tears.
I thought the dream would end there, but it didn’t end until after he’d pulled me down into the grass with him, lean body wrapped around me, and whispered, “Goodbye, pretty girl.”
Above, the birds in the moon began to wail an eerie, lonely song, dozens of voices keening in a strange melody, and I woke up.
nineteen
Wake up, girl, it’s nearly Solstice.”
I opened my eyes and stared at the sky overhead; the moon had shifted from where it had been in my dream, but otherwise the sky was unchanged. My skin was clammy and my stomach was growling, but though there was no sign of Thomas, I wasn’t alone.
Three faeries, the size of toddlers, sat at my feet watching me, na**d except for flower chains that hung on their shoulders like swordless scabbards. They had plucked the grass from around me and scattered it all over my legs, and they laughed as I sat up and brushed off my jeans.
Their pinched faces were so charming as they giggled that I grinned, too. “Very tricky,” I told them.
They squealed with delight and leapt up, pulling at my hands with theirs. “Get up, get up, and dance with us.”
I wasn’t sure of a polite way to decline, but I was sure I’d heard about humans losing themselves in faerie dancing before. Hiding my wariness, I said, “You dance. I’ll watch.”
“You’re so bright and pretty,” one of the faeries said, touching my hair reverently. “We want you to dance with us. We want to see you dance.”
They really did remind me of children: small, amoral children. I held out my hand. “Let me have some flowers.”
They shrilled with pleasure and draped a circle of flowers around my neck, tripping around me within the faerie ring. “Now we dance?”
I shook my head. “Now I dance, and you watch me. When I’m done, I’ll watch you dance for a little. Does that sound fair?”