“That’s what it seemed like,” I say.
I gaze out toward the horizon, where the sun is hovering on the brink of sunset. The clouds are turning fabulous colors and reflecting their light onto the water, but they won’t be for long. A faint tingle starts in my fingertips again. I know from earlier, from when I first arrived in the vault, that the dreamers reacted to disturbances in the vault. But the rippling effect and the way Dubbs’s light was the only one on was too coordinated to be random.
“How could that be possible? They aren’t conscious,” Linus says.
“But they’re something,” I say.
Something like us, the voice says inside me.
I grip the railing and wince my eyes closed. You’re not coming back if you’re here to hurt me, I say.
But she’s already back. I can feel her pacing around the cage of my mind again. She seems more cautious than before, with her power straining but contained.
“Are you okay?” Linus asks.
I open my eyes again and turn to him. “It’s the voice again. She’s back.”
“What does she say?” he asks.
A surge of excitement billows in my lungs and sets off a race of adrenaline through my veins. I grip the railing tighter and lower my head. I will hold on to my body. I will resist her.
We want to talk, she says. Give us your voice.
You’ll take over like before.
She churns in frustration. We won’t. We know things that could help you.
Then tell me where my parents are. Have you seen them?
No. But we helped you find Dubbs.
You did not. That was the dreamers.
I jam a fist against my teeth and bite down on my knuckles, welcoming the pain, and that pushes her back.
Wait! she says. We need to talk to you!
Then tell me what you are, I say to her. Were you seeded into me?
A slow, swishing noise circles around my brain, and I’m reminded eerily of the dark fish in the underground river.
We weren’t seeded. We came ourself, she says.
But how? Who are you? I ask.
We’re all of us, she says. We’re all the dreamers.
21
CANDLELIGHT
STUNNED, I LOWER my hand from my mouth. This thing inside me isn’t just a seed that’s growing. It’s something else entirely, some presence a thousand times bigger and more complex, and it has invaded the deepest pockets of my mind. For a long moment, I can’t breathe. I’m too amazed to think at all.
I don’t understand, I say. How can you be all the dreamers?
Without warning, all the sands of the beach down below appear to lift into the air. The grains line up in rows, sort themselves into a pattern of sizes, and then drop back exactly as they were. It’s a visual feat that defies all logic, and I’m no closer to understanding than I was before.
Just stop, I say. This is not helping. Quit messing with my mind.
We’re just trying to explain.
It’s not working! Just leave me alone!
But we want to try out a body. We want to see what it’s like.
I am not surrendering my body.
We aren’t going to hurt you, she says. We learn fast. Let us use your voice. Let us just try.
Do I have a choice?
Yes. It’s your choice. We’ve already learned that.
Even that’s confusing. How?
You went into the rain. You overloaded the senses.
Then I say no, I tell her. It’s my choice, and I say no. I don’t want you here.
She’s gone. That fast, she’s gone without a fight.
I don’t trust her one bit.
I surface to find Linus studying me with piercing attention. He has me by the shoulders, but I didn’t notice when he moved in front of me. I blink around at the porch, the cottage, and the water, all where they belong, and yet they shimmer with a dim but vibrant luminosity. While the sky is still orange above the dark horizon, the sun is gone, and the light over the porch has reached the tipping point of grayness. We’re at the true edge between day and night, and we could stay here forever if we liked.
This is her doing. She’s gone, but she’s changed me. Or changed the world around me. I can’t tell which.
“Rosie?” Linus says. “You were in a trance again. What’s going on?”
I shake my head slightly, expecting pain, but there’s none. I think I have a problem, I want to say. But the words stick so long in my throat that by the time they emerge, they arrive transformed: “We have a problem.”
A shiver runs through me. I’m a we now.
If what Arself said was true, the dreamers combined into a new consciousness and it’s here, in my mind. I can barely grasp the concept, let alone accept it.
“Tell me,” Linus says gently. “You’re scaring me.”
“I need to rest,” I say.
“Do you have a headache? Do you need something?”
I shake my head. “I just need to rest.”
I ease out of his arms and touch my way back into the cottage. Dubbs is still sleeping on the couch, and I curl up next to her feet.
Linus lights a couple of candles. He brings pillows and blankets in from the bedroom, and he moves the crate along the wall, making room to stretch out on the rug. Slowly, I crawl off the couch into the nest of blankets and curl a pillow under my cheek. It feels like forever since I slept somewhere safe. Maybe this will work. Maybe I won’t have nightmares. Linus settles behind me and gently smooths another blanket over my shoulder.
“Warm enough?” he whispers.
I nod.
Night comes. One candle still burns in a dish on the crate before the windows, where I don’t have to worry that it will accidentally set fire to anything. Arself is gone still, just as she should be. I press my thumbnail against the gap in my teeth and watch the flame burn, hungry for its steady light.
*
The butterfly is back. It drifts under the dim dome above me, and I sense it up there, each noiseless flutter of gray wings, even with my eyes closed and covered with gel. I can feel the blue light on my face as a faint, phosphorescent prickling along my skin, and my body is long and weighty, stretched out in the cool hollow of my sleep shell.