The Woman Behind My Dreams

I went into the earth.

The third seal let me pass through loose soil, though stone still bruised me. I forced myself between roots and followed a buried stream until its water turned bitter. Only then did I surface.

I waited for the voice.

Nothing answered except rain.

There was no woman behind me, no army searching the trees. I almost convinced myself I had imagined the words. Then I found a little green snake lying across the path ahead, its scales broken, its gold eyes fixed on mine.

I stepped over it.

Half an hour later, a young firebird hung from a thorn bush by one damaged wing. It cried when I passed.

I kept walking.

At dusk, a white hare lay at the entrance to the cave I had chosen, blood beneath its belly.

Three dying creatures in a forest where I had seen no predators.

"You're becoming obvious," I told the trees.

The hare lifted its head.

I did not enter the cave.

Instead, I circled back, climbed a rock shelf, and watched. The hare remained still for an hour. Then its shape softened into black mist and drained into the ground.

My stomach tightened.

Someone was testing me. Someone expected a kindness I no longer knew how to offer.

I called the Wayfarer until my thoughts felt raw.

At last, its voice crackled awake.

"Northwest. Beneath the basalt ridge. A duskfruit grows above the old fire spring. It may release your fourth seal."

"Someone is following me."

"Energy insufficient for a survey."

"Then give me something useful."

"Become strong enough to survive being found."

It slept again.

I considered throwing myself into the nearest river, but drowning would probably not improve my circumstances.

I headed northwest.

For three days, I traveled without using roads. I rolled in mud to cover my scent and slept in places too small for a human body. Every sound became a footstep. Every breath of cold air carried the possibility of that voice.

At the ridge, I found an opening narrow enough to scrape both sides of my ribs. Beyond it, a cavern glowed red above a pool of molten stone.

The duskfruit hung from a single root in the ceiling.

It was purple, no larger than a plum, with light moving beneath its skin. I stared for a long time before touching it.

Nothing this valuable should have been unguarded.

Yet the fruit was real. My closed seal strained toward it, aching with hunger.

I took it.

Then I sealed the entrance with seven wards, one woven into the next. I hid my scent beneath sulfur, my thoughts beneath a sleeping charm, and my soul beneath a false echo cast into an empty tunnel.

If something came, it would have to wake me first.

I swallowed the fruit and sat in human form beside the fire spring.

Heat spread through my chest. The fourth seal loosened, then caught on something deeper. My soul shifted inside the vessel as though the flesh had grown too tight.

I tried to slow the magic.

The cavern vanished.

Black mist surrounded me. The heat became cold so abruptly that I gasped.

A woman's arms closed around me from behind.

I seized her wrist. It was solid beneath my fingers, bare and cold, with a scar where a bracelet might once have been.

"Let go."

"Your soul is coming loose."

"Then tell me what to do."

"Breathe."

"I was managing that before you arrived."

Her breath caught against my ear. It could have been laughter. It could have been pain.

"You always did have something to say."

I twisted, trying to see her face. The mist moved with her, concealing everything above her mouth. I saw pale lips and a dark wound along her throat.

"Do I know you?"

Her arms tightened.

"Yes."

"That isn't an answer."

She pressed her palm over the fourth seal. Magic passed from her into me, cold along the surface and fiercely warm beneath it. The two currents met behind my heart.

My knees gave way.

She lowered herself with me, keeping my back against her chest. I hated the ease of it, the way her hands seemed to know where I would hurt before I did.

"You can't force it," I said.

"I'm not forcing the seal. I'm holding you inside your body while it opens."

"You're holding rather more than that."

She loosened one arm. The pressure in my chest immediately became a tearing pain.

I caught her hand before I could stop myself.

She went completely still.

"There," she whispered. "Just there. Let the power move around it."

I followed the current because the alternative hurt worse. Inch by inch, the magic found passages I had never been able to reach alone.

I felt her heartbeat through my back.

It faltered whenever mine steadied.

"What is this costing you?"

"Nothing you owe me."

That answer frightened me more than a demand would have.

When the pain eased, I tried again to turn. Her cheek brushed my hair. For a moment, the sensation was familiar enough to make my eyes sting.

Then fear swallowed it.

"Tell me your name."

She lifted her hand toward my face and stopped before touching it.

"Not yet."

"Then get out of my head."

The dream shook. Beyond the mist, I sensed a door, narrow and white, beginning to open.

The woman looked toward it sharply.

"No," she said, and the word was not meant for me.

She folded her power inward. The door disappeared, leaving a taste of iron at the back of my tongue.

"What was that?"

"Something that would take you somewhere I couldn't follow."

I pulled away from her.

"Maybe I'd prefer that."

Her silence lasted long enough for the mist to turn colder.

"I know," she said at last.

I woke on the cavern floor.

My clothes were soaked with sweat. The fourth seal glimmered faintly beneath my skin, half open. My soul no longer drifted whenever I breathed too deeply.

All seven wards remained intact.

I checked them twice. No break. No disturbance. Whoever had reached me had not entered through the cave.

At the center of the innermost ward lay a black thumbprint.

I held my hand above it. The same cold warmth moved through my palm, and somewhere inside me an old injury answered.

Below the print, a line had been traced in ash.

Sleep. I will keep watch.

I stared until the letters blurred.

Then I destroyed the ward, gathered my blade, and ran.