Dreamland (20 page)

There was a long minute of silence. Dea felt her mind wink on and off, freeze and unfreeze, like malfunctioning software.

“No,” she said at last.

“Yes,” the king said. He stood up. He was dressed in white pants and a buttonless white shirt, like someone playing God in a school production.

“No,” she said again. “Impossible. My father is . . .”

But she broke off. Her father was what? What had her mom said, besides the lies? What had she said when Dea had confronted her about that stupid photograph?
Your father is powerful. Your father is complicated.

“What?” the king prompted her. Now he was obviously amused. “What lies did your mother tell you about me? Please, I've been desperate to know. She won't tell me.”

Dea's heart started hammering again, so hard she brought a hand to her chest instinctively, as if to keep it from leaping through her skin. “My mom,” she said. “Is she—?”

“She's here,” he said. “And safe,” he added quickly, almost exasperatedly, seeing Dea's face. “I'm not the monster she's made me out to be.” When Dea said nothing, he rubbed his forehead. “She didn't tell you anything, did she?”

Dea shook her head.

The king—Dea's father—muttered something, rubbing his forehead again. And in that moment he looked so normal, so like any other father, that for the tiniest sliver of a second, Dea had the urge to run to him, to throw her arms around him, to cry and be held and listen to him say her name again: the father she'd never known, the father she'd always desperately wanted.

Then he raised his voice again. “Everyone, leave us,” he said, waving a hand, and her attention was drawn back to the monsters standing in the shadows, and the memory of the men with no faces—how they'd pursued her through the darkness, panting through open mouths, tasting her.

Aeri hesitated. He leaned in as though to whisper something to Dea. She jerked away, glaring at him.

“Sorry, princess,” he said. He touched his fingers to his forehead once, a kind of salute, and then he was gone. But his words had left Dea feeling dizzy again.

Princess. It was true. She was a princess of this city of chasms and levels, of all these people, of the slaves with their poor slender
necks, bent under the weight of their chains, and the monsters and the flying beasts and the gutters running with sewage.

She was home.

She turned away, feeling sick, bringing a hand to her mouth. The doors banged shut behind the last retreating monster, leaving a sudden silence. How was it possible? How was any of it possible? She tasted salt before she realized she was crying. After a while, she became aware that her father was standing next to her.

“I'm sorry, Dea,” he said softly. “I know this must be very hard.”

She swiped at her cheeks with a sleeve, furious at herself. Furious at him. “Oh, really?” she said. “Do you?” She whirled around to face him. “I almost died, you know. You almost killed me. Is that what you wanted? Is that what you want now?”

He stared at her. “Of course not,” he said. “You're my daughter, Dea. I've been searching for you your whole life.”

“You haven't been searching for me. You sent them—those
things
—to do the work for you.” She took a step toward him, but then stopped, too afraid to go any closer. “How did you find me?”

“You got careless,” he said simply.

Of course. Dea had broken the rules. She'd started interfering, making herself visible, making herself obvious. The monsters in Connor's dream had seen her. And so her father had
used
them to track her. She was gripped with a fury that felt like cold—a blizzard of anger, freezing her insides.

“You sent the men after me,” she said. Her voice, too, cracked as if it were frozen. “You pulled them from Connor's dream.”

She expected him to get defensive—angry, even. Instead, he
just looked amused. “I don't know Connor,” he said. “I recruit all my soldiers from the pits. The pits, as you know, aren't permanent. Dreams collapse. The monsters collapse with them. They have to be reborn, and redreamed, every time.” He shrugged. “I can give them new life. Real life. A kind of permanence and power.” Then his expression darkened. “They were under strict instructions not to harm you. To take you, yes. But not to harm you. Just as the soldiers who came for your mother were under instructions to deliver her safely.”

Dea's stomach turned when she thought about the mirrors, and the exploded shards of glass carpeting her room. Her old room. She wasn't crazy: monsters really had come through the glass.

He shook his head. “But I don't always find my soldiers easy to control,” he said. “So I decided on a . . . different tactic.”

Aeri. Jesus. Dea felt like such an idiot. It was like some bad TV plot—all it took was a cute boy with dark hair, and she went trotting like a dog after him. The icy rage inside of her cracked all at once and became a flow, a river. She was lost in it.

The room was too big, too cold, all hard surfaces. Those swooping dark creatures in the sky cast shadows across the marble floor; the tile mosaic, Dea saw, was very slowly moving, shifting orientations and designs while she watched. It was dizzying. But turning toward the windows, looking down from this vast height to the tiny dark blots of tens of thousands of people, was just as bad.

She waited to speak until she was sure her voice would be steady.

“I don't understand this place,” she said. “How did it get
here? How did any of it get here?”

When he spoke, the king's voice was soft. Gentle, even. “Some people say the world was made from the dream of the first god,” he said. He smiled and waved a hand as if to say,
But we know better.
“The pickers like to take credit, of course. They say they brought a grain of sand out of one of the pits, and it became the desert, and from the desert grew the great city.” He shrugged. “The truth is, no one knows. Do you know where your world comes from? Can you be sure it isn't somebody's dream?”

Dea didn't answer that. “What do you want from me?” she said.

He stared at her as if he hadn't understood. “Dea,” he said, drawing her name out. “This is your home. This is where you belong.”

“Wrong.” Dea shook her head.

“I'm right.” He sighed, and moved past her to the vaulted windows that extended, floor to ceiling, over the city. “Your mother took you, Dea. She stole you from me when you were just a baby. Did she ever tell you that? Did she tell you how she brought you into the other world?”

Dea said nothing. Of course her mom hadn't told her; she had, Dea realized now, never told her the truth about anything. Dea was on the verge of tears but refused to cry here, in front of this man who was supposed to be her father.

The king turned back to her. And Dea found herself looking for a resemblance, for any feature or habit or twitch she'd inherited from him. But she saw nothing—nothing but a tired man with an army of monsters. “There's a war coming,” he said quietly. “I can't say what the outcome will be. I want you here,
by my side. I want to know my daughter.”

“And what if I say no?” Dea lifted her chin and did her best to appear unafraid. “What if I don't want to stay?”

Her father shook his head. “Despite what you may think, I'm not a monster.”

“No,” she cut in quickly. “You just use monsters to do your dirty work.”

His smile tightened. “I'm the king, Dea. Kings need armies.”

“Are you going to throw me in prison if I refuse to play along?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” he said, in an exasperated tone. For a moment Dea's chest ached as she realized she was fighting with her dad, like any normal girl. But one look at the mosaic tiles, crawling over one another like square beetles, reminded her how far from normal she was. “I'm not going to keep you here against your will. If you don't want to come home, that's up to you.”

“What's the catch?” Dea said, watching him closely.

“Honestly”—he threw his hands up—“there's no catch. Stay in that world, if you want—where everything is dull and everyone grows old and dies at the same rate. A world where you'll grow, where you'll get sick. Or come home, to this world, where you belong, where you're the daughter of a king. I'll let you choose.”

Dea thought of Connor's face, and the sputtering of a motel room heater, and the way his body felt lying next to her in bed. The world she knew, the world that was everything she understood.

A world where she would be homeless, without family,
pursued by the police.

Still, she knew she wouldn't—she
couldn't
—stay here.

“So that's it?” she said. “I can go now, and those—those monsters won't come after me again?”

He smiled again—sadly, this time. “Those monsters,” he said, “will stay in your friend Connor's nightmares. And in his memories, of course.”

Dea looked at her father one last time. She tried to memorize the lines of his face, the fine bits of stubble shadowing his jaw and neck, the low-drawn look of his eyebrows.
Father
. But the word had no meaning. No matter what he said, she didn't belong here.

“I want to talk to my mother,” she said.

Something flashed in his eyes—anger or grief, Dea couldn't tell. “Your mother stays here, Dea,” he said warningly. “That's part of the bargain. If you go, I'll make sure you never see her again. I can keep you out, you know. Of the city. Even of the pits.”

Dea felt as if a fist had plunged inside her chest and ripped away her insides: hollowed out, breathless. Of course. She'd known there would be a catch.

“I want to see her,” she repeated.

“Be my guest.” Dea's father turned around, gesturing to a plain wooden door almost directly behind the dais and the throne. “You'll find her in the tower. And Dea.” He called her back when she'd already started for the door. “I'm not a monster, but I'm not a saint, either. Patience isn't one of my virtues. You have twenty-four hours to decide.”

Beyond the wooden door was a small, bright room, airy and pretty—maybe some kind of study or sitting room; there were walls full of books, graceful columns that extended up to the painted ceiling, and gilded chairs arranged around an unlit fireplace. Through a skylight she could make out the tower, which must have been almost directly above her.

She heard footsteps approach and, fearing more of her father's monsters, crossed quickly to a painted door across the room, reaching for the elaborate gold handle. As soon as she touched it, it started to
move
. It began to melt, to change, to slither; it was soon a metal snake, weaving its way up her arm,
coiling itself around her shoulder, its belly hard and cold as steel. She shouldn't have been surprised, but she was. She was being careless, forgetting that this was still a world built out of dreams—that things were fluid and likely to change.

“Through the door and to the left,” the snake hissed. “Straight to the top of the tower.” Then it slithered back down her arm, curled up, and became a door handle again.

This time, the door opened easily at her touch.

She found another set of stairs, this one broad, carpeted, and well-lit. As she climbed, she wound past more windows, all of them open, letting in a warm wind that smelled like orange peel and tobacco, unwashed bodies and frying meat, and other things she couldn't identify. She was sweating in her jacket and nearly stopped to take it off, but fear, and a burning desire to see her mother, to
understand
, compelled her on and up.

Soon, the natural world began to intrude: thick moss grew on the stairs instead of carpet, and narrow vines stretched across the walls like gnarled fingers. Flowers grew in fissures of plaster. The windowsills were crowded with bluebells and honeysuckle, flowers that had always reminded her of her mother. Morning glory crept over the ceiling, and blossoms hung like newly formed raindrops, suspended briefly before they fell.

The higher she climbed—until the city was just a shimmering, undifferentiated mass of glass and wood and gold, a manmade patchwork—the stronger the impression was of her mother's touch, until she was practically running, despite the heat and the shaking of her thighs.

At last, she reached a narrow wooden door at the top of the stairs. Locked. She began to pound with a fist. She wished she
could cry but she couldn't—her throat was dry, her eyes were burning, she felt hollow, as if all her feelings had been burned out.

“Let me in.” Her voice echoed back to her. It, too, was hollow—a stranger's voice. Had her father lied? Tricked her? She kept banging, and kept calling. “Please.
Please
. Let me in.”

“Dea? Is that you?”

Dea stumbled backward, swallowing a sob. It was a trick. It must be. She was suddenly flooded with terror—she was more afraid than she had ever been, at any point since her mother had disappeared. She didn't want the door to open, and she couldn't stand the gummy seconds that stretched into an eternity while it did. She couldn't breathe. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run.

Then the door was open and Dea's mother was there and alive and
real
.

And yet Dea couldn't move. She couldn't go to her.

Miriam was different—so different that Dea felt shy and nauseous, all at once. Her hair was loose and she was wearing a long white dress, very plain, and very different from anything she would have worn in real life. Her feet were bare. She was wearing slender, braided vines around her wrists and arms like stacked bracelets. She looked better, much better, than she had the last time Dea had seen her. She had gained weight. Her eyes were bright. Dea understood that it was being here, in the dream city, that was feeding her. She felt a quick pulse of revulsion.

And in that moment, she knew that everything her father had told her was true.

“You found me,” Miriam said softly, and the moment of revulsion passed. Everything passed but the intensity of Dea's relief, and she stumbled forward into her mother's arms.
Miriam still smelled the same—like soap and strawberries, like long summer days and shimmering asphalt and all the windows open. Like home. She let herself cry at last. She leaned into her mother's hug and took huge, sucking sobs, even though everything was okay: her mom would make everything okay.

“I knew you'd come,” Miriam said, murmuring into Dea's hair, and rocking her at the same time, the way she had whenever Dea was upset as a little girl. “I was afraid you would. Oh, Dea. I've been a terrible mother. I'm so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

“Yes,” Dea whispered. She knew she should demand answers and explanations. She knew she should be furious. But she had already forgiven her mother for everything. She was alive. She was real. That was more important than anything.

Miriam smiled. But her eyes were sad. “Come on,” she said, reaching for Dea's hand. “Come inside.”

“Mom.” She withdrew her hand. She hadn't realized what she'd come to ask until the words were out of her mouth: “Mom, please come home.”

“Honey.” Miriam looked at her with those wide gray eyes, a mixture of affection and exasperation. “This
is
my home.”

“No.” It was the same thing her father had said and yet Dea couldn't,
wouldn't
let it be true. “Your home is with me. In Fielding. Or wherever we decide to go. California or Santa Fe. St. Louis or New Orleans. You've always wanted to go to New Orleans, haven't you?” She was babbling. She couldn't help it.

Miriam looked tired, as if she'd had a long day of work at a new job and had just remembered there were no groceries in the house, an expression that was both familiar and seemed insanely out of place here, on a stone landing in a tower high
above a dream-city. “Come, Dea,” she said again, and gestured for Dea to follow her.

The tower room was pretty but bare. It was encircled on three sides by large windows that looked out over the city and let in broad sweeps of golden sunlight. Creeper vines and pale white roses had begun to overspill the windowsills, climbing down into the room, cascading like water onto the stone floor. A chair was drawn close to the window. Other than that, the only furniture consisted of a faded rug, a narrow cot, and, to Dea's surprise, a large and ornately carved mirror.

Miriam caught Dea staring at it.

“Oh, well,” she said. “It's no danger to me now. Besides, I like to keep an eye on you.”

Dea let herself go to the pull of anger inside of her. “What
are
you?” she spat. She remembered that Connor had once spoken the same words to her, and this made her even angrier—that she was joined to this strangeness, chained to it. “No more lies,” she said quickly, when Miriam opened her mouth. “I want the truth. The
whole
truth.”

Miriam sighed. She crossed the room and put a hand on Dea's cheek. Dea wanted to pull away, but her mother's hand was cool and dry and familiar. “I'm a dream,” Miriam said softly. “And so are you.”

Then Dea did jerk away. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means we come from here. It means we belong here, in the dream.” Miriam gestured, as though to encompass the room, the city, the sunlight lapping long and thick across the floor, like a golden tongue. Her eyes were unnaturally bright.
“That's why I had to leave you, Dea. To protect you. Don't you understand?” She tried to approach Dea again but Dea stumbled backward, until she was pressed against the door. “The dream was always after us. You've seen your father now. You know how powerful he is. He wanted us back.”

“Why?” Dea willed herself not to cry. “Why won't he leave us alone? Why won't he just let us go?” Her mind was cutting back and forth between different images: Aeri saying
the monsters want only what belongs to them
; the erratic rhythm of her heart, beating out the tempo of a different world; the relief of walking, like sucking in air after a long time underwater. Then something occurred to her. “You could talk to him,” she said. “You could
beg
him.”

“It wouldn't do any good,” Miriam said. “Look. I'll show you.” Miriam moved to the chair and sat down. Instantly, the vines encircling her wrists began to move. They slithered around the arms of the chair and began to squeeze, digging deeply into her flesh until it began to pucker, until her hands turned white and Miriam gasped in pain. Of course. Her father had said that her mother was safe. But she was still a prisoner. Dea couldn't believe she'd felt the urge, even for a second, to run to him.

“Punishment,” Miriam said simply. “For trying to run the first time.” When Dea moved toward her, Miriam shook her head. “It's all right,” she said. The vines loosened all at once and withdrew, curling up around her mother's wrists and falling still again. Miriam winced, rotating her wrists. “He knows I won't try to escape again.”

Dea was dizzy. She didn't trust her legs to carry her, so she sat. “Why did you do it?” she whispered. “And how?”

Miriam leaned forward. She seemed radiantly beautiful, in that moment, and also fragile—as if she might scatter into light and wind. Her mother, the queen. The mother who always made tomato soup by swirling in cream cheese, who liked to listen to jazz on rainy days and wade through old flea markets with her sleeves rolled up, as if she were in a swamp, catching frogs. Who liked American cheese sandwiches on white bread, and couldn't stand apples unless they were baked into pie.

“Remember that story I told you, about the pregnant woman who was very sick? She was dreaming. She dreamed of another woman and another baby, but healthy.”

Dea nodded. She did remember: it was a fairy tale her mother had always told her. At least, she'd always assumed it was a fairy tale, although she'd never been able to find it in any books. She no longer recalled the details: just that a pregnant woman was asleep in the hospital, and she dreamed of another woman, and when she woke up she found that she had given birth to a baby with eyes the color of ice.

Like hers.

And suddenly the knowledge was there, gathering like a wave just beyond her consciousness.

Miriam's voice was barely a whisper. “That's how I did it,” she said. “Before I knew what I was doing—without even thinking about what it would mean—I escaped.”

“You didn't,” Dea choked out. It was over; the wave crashed. A tide of nausea rolled up from Dea's stomach to her throat.

“It was too late for them, anyway,” Miriam said, as though that made it better.

A dying woman. Her mom had taken the body of a dying
woman and her dying baby. That's how she had made Dea: from someone else's bones and skin.

Dea stood up. She needed air. She couldn't breathe. She stumbled to the window and leaned out, retching and coughing, tears burning her eyes. But nothing came up. The sickness was lodged inside of her.

“I had to,” Miriam said. She was talking quickly now, trying to get Dea to listen, to understand. “It was our only chance at life away from here.” She added more quietly: “Your father and I . . . well. We weren't happy.”

“You—
what
?” All of this—everything her mother was describing, everything she'd done—because her mom wasn't
happy
?

Miriam seemed to realize she'd misspoken. “There are no seasons here,” she said hurriedly. “Only the direction of the wind. Spring can come for a thousand years or not at all. What is born doesn't always die.” Her mother paused, and added more quietly, “I wanted to know seasons, and order, and rules. I wanted to be . . . free. I wanted
you
to be free.”

Dea took a deep breath. Below her, the city shimmered in the late afternoon sun: crowded and irregular, improbably huge, like litter spit up over an eternity by an endless ocean. She tried to understand the meaning of Miriam's words: a world both of permanence and of ever-shifting rules, subtle changes and subterfuge. It must be exhausting, like eternally navigating ever-changing currents, trying to stay afloat.

But her mother had done terrible things, and Dea
couldn't
understand that.

“You stole money,” Dea said. She turned around, surprised that her voice remained steady. “You hurt people.”

Miriam winced. Had she really thought Dea wouldn't find out? “I did what I had to do.”

“No.” Another thought occurred to Dea—scarier, even, than the knowledge of what her mother had done. “You did what you wanted to do. You did what you felt like.”

Miriam frowned. But she didn't deny it, and Dea knew that she was right. She felt the way she had when, after standing on line to meet Santa Claus at the mall in Florida, they'd emerged into the parking lot fifteen minutes later to see him standing between two Dumpsters, smoking a cigarette, his beard yanked hastily to the side.

Her mom just did things. Not for any great reason, not because she had noble goals or beliefs. Just because. She'd wanted to run and so she ran. When she needed money, she'd taken it.

“I kept you safe for so many years,” Miriam said. Her voice had turned desperate, wheedling, like a salesperson trying to off-load a subpar vacuum cleaner. “That's why all the rules. The mirrors and the clocks . . . time is the enemy of dreams. Dreams are allergic to order. I was hoping I could keep your father away. That's why I was always running, too. I didn't want to give him the chance to . . .” She broke off. “I know it was hard for you.”

“It was awful,” Dea said, but without anger. All the feeling had left her at once, had simply drained away, leaving her numb. She knew the truth now, at least. She was a monster. “It was
wrong
.”

Again, Miriam frowned. “Wrong, right.” She waved a hand. “People in the other world obsess about the difference. The truth is more complicated.”

“The
other
world?” Dea repeated. She nearly laughed. “That's
my world. Or it
was
, until today.”