“Cabeswater isn’t me,” Ronan repeated. “You’re still just you.”
It was one thing to say it and another thing to see Ronan Lynch standing among the trees he had dreamt into being, looking of a piece with them because he was of a piece with them. Magician – no wonder Ronan was all right with Adam being uncanny. No wonder he needed him to be.
“I don’t know why the fuck I told you,” Ronan said. “I should’ve lied.”
“Just give me a second with it, will you?” Adam asked.
“Whatever.”
“You can’t be pissed off because I’m thinking this through.”
“I said whatever.”
“How long did it take you to believe it?” Adam demanded.
“I’m still trying,” Ronan replied.
“Then you can’t —” Adam broke off. He suddenly felt as if he had been dropped from a height. It was the same sensation as when he had known Ronan was dreaming something big. He just had time to wonder if it had truly been the ley line or merely the shock of Ronan’s revelation when it happened again. This time, the light around them sagged in time with it.
Ronan’s expression had sharpened.
“The ley line …” Adam began and then broke off, uncertain of how to finish this thought. “Something is happening to the ley line. It feels like when you’re dreaming something big.”
Ronan spread his arms out, meaning clear. It’s not me. “What do you wanna do?”
“I don’t know if we should stay here while it’s like this,” Adam said. “I definitely don’t think we should try to make it to the rose glen. Let’s call her just a few more times.”
Ronan eyed Adam, assessing his status. Correctly seeing that Adam was feeling like he needed to kneel in his apartment with his hands over his head and think about what he had just learned. He said, “How about just once more?”
Together they shouted: “Orphan Girl!”
Intention sliced through their shared words, sharper than the gloom.
The forest listened.
The Orphan Girl appeared, her skullcap pulled low over her enormous eyes, sweater even mankier than before. She could not help but be off-putting in this gray-green wood, not arriving like she did, skittering between dark trees. She looked like she belonged in the vintage photographs Adam had seen in the Barns, a lost immigrant child from a destroyed country.
“There you are, you urchin,” Ronan said as Chainsaw chattered nervously. “Finally.”
The girl offered Adam’s watch back to him, reluctantly. The band had acquired some toothmarks since he’d last seen it. The face of it said 6:21. It was very grubby.
“You can keep it,” Adam said, “for now.” He couldn’t really spare the watch, but she didn’t have anything, even a name.
She started to say something in the strange, complicated language that Adam knew was the old and basic language of whatever this place was – the language that young Ronan must have mistaken for Latin in his long-ago dreams – and then stopped herself. She said, instead, “Watch out.”
“For what?” Ronan asked.
Orphan Girl screamed.
The light dimmed.
Adam felt it in his chest, this plummeting energy. It was as if every artery to his heart had been scissored.
The trees howled; the ground shivered.
Adam dropped to a crouch, pressing his hands into the ground for breath, for help, for Cabeswater to give him back his heartbeat.
Orphan Girl was gone.
No, not gone. She was plummeting yards down the slanted rock face, fingers clawing for purchase, hooves scraping dully, tiny rocks tumbling down with her. She didn’t cry for help – she just tried to save herself. They watched her slide straight into that pool of clear water, and because it was so transparent, they could see how far she plummeted into it.
Without pause, Ronan leapt after her.
It was 6:21.
Ronan hit the water hard enough that he saw sparks behind his vision. The pool was as warm as blood, and the moment he thought about that heat, he realized that he remembered this pool. He had dreamt it before.
It was acid.
The heat was because it was eating him. At the end of this dream there was nothing left of him but bones, white-picked sticks in a uniform, like Noah.
Immediately Ronan threw all of his intention out towards Cabeswater.
Not acid, he thought. Make it not acid.
Still his skin warmed.
“Not acid,” he said out loud, to the pool, as his eyes stung. Liquid flowed into his mouth, sucked into his nostrils. He could feel it bubbling under his fingernails. Somewhere below him was Orphan Girl, and she’d been in the strange sea for a few seconds longer than he had. How long did he have? He couldn’t recall the dream well enough right now to know. He breathed words directly into the acid. “Make it safe.”