“Like Oneira.”
“Just so. And one or two others I know of. Very few. Shall we see if you are one of them?”
No.Rose very nearly voiced the denial. All she could thinkwas that, if she messed this up, she could be lost forever in the Dream.
“It’s perfectly natural to be afraid,” Zoltan said cannily, eyes on her, hands still folded behind his back.
She bit back the immediate denial, the temptation to reflexively retort that she wasn’t afraid.
“You have dispensation to refuse the attempt without any downgrading of your performance evaluation,” Zoltan continued, “though the inability will be noted on your official resume, naturally. That ability is kept private, regardless, outside of a few insular circles. A secret weapon for your clients, if you will. Officially, your resume won’t show the ability either way, though it will be communicated unofficially.”
And thus would affect her job prospects. Though that might be less of an issue if she deliberately chose a lesser contract, with fewer expectations and strictures—and debt. Still, it wasn’t in her to refuse a challenge, to back away from learning a demanding skill out of cowardice. Zoltan had taught Oneira. Rose could learn also. And yet… “Have many students elected not to attempt it?” she asked, bracing for a scathing answer, that no one had been too afraid.
“Many,” Zoltan answered her gravely.
“Did any try and fail?”
He raised a brow. “Many,” he repeated.
Hmm.“Were any… lost?”
“Yes.” He turned back to the windows. “Mistakes were made, mine among them, though not chief among them. I haven’t lost a student in a very long time.” He glanced at her. “You will not be one of them. Not if you listen and pay scrupulous attention to my instructions.Ifyou want to try it.”
She stood from her chair and straightened her spine. “I want to try.”
“No,” Master Zoltan said, yet again, with endless patience. “Try again. A perfectly rectangular doorway. Remember that neatness counts.”
Aware of the sweat trickling down her spine and dampening the underside of her heavy, braided hair, Rose fought the urge to snap back. Zoltan had been confining her to drawing perfectly delineated portals without actually opening any of them for hours. She was exhausted. She’d missed lunch. But she’d resolved to see this through without arguing. “Why?” she demanded in exasperation, immediately breaking her own resolve. “How can the precision of the portal doorway possibly matter? The Dream can’t care about ninety-degree angles.”
To her surprise, instead of snapping in return or throwing up his hands at her and naming her a failure, Zoltan smiled and dipped his silver-bearded chin. “Exactly! The Dream does not deal in perfect lines and angles,” he continued, seeming amused by her surprise. “Youdo. Or, rather, you soon will. This is a technique through which you impose a continuing reality—your own, waking reality—even as and after you step into the Dream.”
She gazed at him a moment longer, a visceral level of understanding flooding her, along with considerable frustration. “With all due respect, Master Zoltan—is there a reason you didn’t tell me that to begin with?”
“Yes,” he answered simply. “What do you suppose that reason might be?”
A few minutes ago, she wouldn’t have had an answer. Now she did. “So I would learn for myself the difficulty of imposing this level of control on the magic.”
“Just so. Now, do it again.”
10
Thorn fell into the Dream like breaking through a thin skim of ice on the pond.
Surprisingly familiar—and nothing like the dank prison of the root cellar—the landscape of the Dream sucked her in, embraced and liberated her. She rejoiced at her escape, reveling in the vibrant colors and chaotic dance of it all. She had done it.
The world around her solidified and, before long, she forgot she was in the Dream entirely.
She was walking through the cottage, sunlight pouring in the windows, but the rooms weren’t quite the same. They led into others she’d never seen before. She marveled at the vast library that seemed to go on forever, wondering how she’d never thought to visit this part of the house before. This library had been here all along, unlocked and available to her. Why hadn’t she been reading these books? Going to a shelf, she eagerly withdrew a tome that she somehow knew would answer every one of her questions—though she couldn’t recall at that exact momentwhichquestions—and she opened it. The pages blurred before her eyes, however, no matter how she squinted at them. The letters on the page seemed to knot up and slide away.
Still, she came away feeling as if she’d learned something hugely important. Filled with excitement, she wandered into the next room, which turned out to be a garden, but so much more glorious than her own. Flowers grew taller than her head, enormous blossoms unlike any she’d ever seen before, redolent of some sweet scent that reminded her of honey and forbidden romance, the erotic slide of a lover’s skin, their petals draping lavishly and dripping with colors such as she’d never beforeseen. She ran her fingertips along their velvety edges, and they caressed her in return, beckoning her into something that felt like love.
Then she stood on the edge of a pond, crystal clear and sparkling with turquoise depths, shapes of silver and gold flitting sinuously through them. A little girl stood on the far bank of the pond, long black hair flowing nearly to her knees, multicolored, iridescent roses on her dress. Thorn remembered this girl.
“Hello!” she called with excitement, but her voice seemed to vanish, muffled into nothingness. The girl waved and went skipping away.
Thorn wandered through the roses that grew along the fence. They were purple—a deep violet in the center and lavender at the petal tips, their black thorns like Moriah’s claws, long and lethally sharp, grabbing at her clothing and her skin. She tried to retreat, but couldn’t, the blossom-heavy canes snaking above and around, filling even the blue circle of sky above. She wanted to go back to the pond, to the library, but couldn’t. The roses held her captive and the Dream…
The Dream.
