to you.’
‘Nettle. Stop. Let me speak. Swift is safe. Alive and safe. He is still here, with me.’ I paused and tried to breathe. The inevitability of what must follow those words sickened me. Here it comes, Burrich, I thought to myself. All the pain I ever tried to save you. All tied up in a tidy package of misery for you and your family.
For Nettle asked, as I knew she must, ‘And where is “safe with you”? And how do I know he is safe? How do I know you are a true thing at all? Perhaps you are like the rest of this dream, a thing I made. Look at you, man-wolf! You are not real and you offer me false hope.’
‘I am not real as you see me,’ I replied slowly. ‘But I am real. And once upon a time, your father knew me.’
‘Once upon a time,’ she said scornfully. ‘Another tale from Shadow Wolf. Take your silly stories away.’ She took a shuddering breath and fresh tears started down her face. ‘I’m not a child any longer. Your stupid stories can’t help me.’
So I knew I had lost her. Lost her trust, lost her friendship. Lost my chance of knowing my child as a child. Terrible sadness welled up in me, but it was laced with the music of brambles growing. I glanced behind me. The thorn vines and fog had crept higher. Was it just my own dream threatening me, or had Thick’s music become even more menacing? I didn’t know. ‘And I came here seeking your help,’ I reminded myself bitterly.
‘My help?’ Nettle asked in a choked voice.
I had spoken without thinking. ‘I know I don’t have the right to ask you for anything.’
‘No. You don’t.’ She was looking past me. ‘What is that, anyway?’
‘A dream. A nightmare, actually.’
‘I thought your nightmares were about falling.’ She sounded intrigued.
‘That’s not my nightmare. It belongs to someone else. He is … it’s a very strong nightmare. Strong enough to spread out from him and take over the dreams of other people. It’s threatening lives. And I don’t think the man whose dream it is can control it.’
‘Just wake him up, then.’ She offered the solution disdainfully.
‘That might help, for a little time. But I need a more permanent solution.’ For a brief moment, I considered telling her that the man’s nightmare endangered Swift as well. I pushed the thought aside. There was no use frightening her, especially when I wasn’t sure she could help me.
‘What did you think I could do about it?’
‘I thought you could help me go into his dream and change it. Make it pleasant and calm. Convince him that what is happening to him won’t kill him, that he’ll be fine. Then his dreams might be calmer. And we could all rest.’
‘How could I do that?’ And then, more sharply, ‘And why should I do that? What do you offer me in exchange, Shadow Wolf?’
I did not like that it had come down to barter, but I had only myself to blame. It was cruellest of all that the only thing I had to offer her would bring pain and guilt for her father. I spoke slowly. ‘As to how, you are very strong in the magic that lets one person walk into another person’s dreams and change them. Strong enough, perhaps, to shape my friend’s dream for him, even though he himself is also very strong in magic. And very frightened.’
‘I have no magic.’
I ignored her words. ‘As for why … I have told you that Swift is with me, and safe. You doubt me. I don’t blame you, for it appears I have failed you in my earlier assurance. But I will give you words, to say to your father. They will … they will be hard for him to hear. But when he hears them, he will know that what I say is true. That your brother is alive and well. And with me.’
‘Tell me the words, then.’
For one brief Chade-ish moment, I thought of demanding that first she help me with Thick’s dreaming. Then I harshly rejected that notion. My daughter owed me exactly what I had given her: nothing. Perhaps there was also the fear that if I did not speak to her then, I would lose my courage. Uttering those words was like touching my tongue to a glowing coal. I spoke them. ‘Tell him that you dreamed of a wolf with porcupine quills in his muzzle. And that the wolf said to you, “As once you did, so I do now. I shelter and guide your son. I will put my life between him and any harm, and when my task is done, I will bring him safely home to you”.’
I had cloaked my message as best I could, under the circumstances. Nettle still struck far too close to the truth when she eagerly asked, ‘My father cared for your son, years ago?’
Some decisions are easier if you don’t allow yourself time to think. ‘Yes,’ I lied to my daughter. ‘Exactly.’
I watched her mull this for a moment. Slowly her tower of glass began to melt into water. It flowed, warm and harmless, past my feet until her balcony had descended to the ground. She offered me her hand to help her climb over the railing. I took it, touching and yet not touching my daughter for the first time in her life. Her tanned fingers rested briefly on my black-clawed paw. Then she stood clear of me and looked down at the fog and creeping briars that were ascending the hillside toward us.
‘You know I’ve never done anything like this before?’
‘Neither have I,’ I admitted.
‘Before we go into his dream, tell me something about him,’ she suggested.
The fog and bramble crept ever closer. Whatever I told her about Thick would be too much, and yet for her to enter his dream ignorant might be dangerous to all. I could not control what Thick revealed to her in the context of the dream. For one fleeting second, I wondered if I should have consulted Chade or Dutiful before seeking Nettle’s aid. Then I smiled grimly to myself. I was Skillmaster, was I not? In that capacity, this decision was mine alone.
And so I told my daughter that Thick was simple, a man with the mind and heart of a child, and the strength of an army when it came to Skill-magic. I even told her that he served the Farseer Prince, and that he journeyed with him on a ship. I told her how his powerful Skill-music and now his dreams were undermining morale on the ship. I told her of his conviction that he would always be seasick and that he would likely die from it. And as I told her these things, the thorns grew and twined toward us, and I watched her quickly drawing her own conclusions from what I said; that I was on board the ship also, and therefore that her brother was with me, on a sea-voyage with the Farseer Prince. Rural as her home was, I wondered how much she had heard of the Narcheska and the Prince’s quest. I didn’t have to wonder long. She put the tale together for herself.
‘So that is the black dragon that the silver dragon keeps asking you about. The one the Prince goes to slay.’
‘Don’t speak her name,’ I begged her.
She gave me a disdainful look that mocked my foolish fears. Then, ‘Here it comes,’ she said quietly. And the brambles engulfed us.
They made a crackling sound as they rose around our ankles and then our knees, like fire racing up a tree. The thorns bit into our flesh and then a dense fog swirled up about us, choking and menacing.
‘What is this?’ Nettle exclaimed in annoyance. Then, as the fog stole her from my sight, she exclaimed, ‘Stop it. Shadow Wolf, stop it right now! This is all yours; you made this mess. Let go of it!’
And she wrested my dream from me. It was rather like having someone snatch away your blankets. But most jarring for me was that it evoked a memory I both did and did not recognize: another time and an older woman, prying something fascinating and shiny from my chubby-fisted grasp, while saying, ‘No, Keppet. Not for little boys.’
I was breathless in the sudden banishment of my dream, but in the next instant we literally plunged into Thick’s. The fog and brambles vanished, and the cold salt water closed over my head. I was drowning. No matter how I struggled I could not get to the top of the water. Then a hand gripped mine and as Nettle hauled me up to stand beside her, she