I bounced my leg as Carva brushed my hair, pulling at a snarl that I didn’t even know I had.
“Are ye going to calm down, or is this how you like to lull yourself off to sleep?”
“Sorry.” I murmured, staring at the blank wall across from me. “Just nervous.”
“Don’t be,” She assured, tugging the bristles through the particularly stubborn knot. “It probably won’t work right off the beat, anyway. I may not be a magical seeing lady like yourself, but I know no valuable skill comes to you in a wink.”
“Well this one needs to. We may not have much time beyond a wink.”
“Now whipping yourself up into a frenzy like that isn’t going to help anyone. Do ye need me to call one of those handsome lads in to wear you out?”
“No.”
“Aw, what’s with that tone now? Have ye not told one about the other yet?”
“Myrik knows of Gael. He always has. But Gael… not so much.”
“Oy. As if ye needed more troubles. I would be rid of all your secret before someone dies in some heroic sacrifice and leaves ya clingin’ to the guilt forever.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“Aye, it’s the practical way. Sometimes I think all this time with the shapeshifting folks has ya complicating things you don’t really need to go a’ complicating.”
“Yeah, and is it just me or is spending all this time around the dragons making your accent thicker?”
“Fine. Attack the messenger. See how far that gets you.”
“Sorry. It’s just the stress.” It wasn’t like I didn’t have a lot to freak out over. I was about to plunge myself into a vision when I had never voluntarily done so before. And if that weren’t enough, I was going to be yanking a man who had tried to kill me about a handful of times there with me. And then if that weren’t enough, I had to covertly get the information I needed from him without giving anything vital away myself, or letting him that I knew what he knew about his secret sorcerer stash.
She finished with my hair and patted my shoulder reassuringly. “It’s alright. I know you’re going through a few things, even if I don’t really understand what they are. Just wanted to make sure that you’re aware that you can always count on my good humor and turn of phrase to irritate you out of your worry.”
I smiled and tried to let myself push down some of the nerves that were churning my stomach so. “Thank you. Good to know I can always trust you to shoot a duke down with literal darts, or me with metaphorical ones.”
“Aye. We all have our strong suits. I’m quite happy in mine. Do you want me to stay the night with you? I promise to keep my hands above the covers.” She wiggled her fingers at me salaciously and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“No. I’ve got to be alone for this part, and honestly, the less he sees your face, the better.”
“Alright then, I’ll be praying for ye. See you come morning.”
“See you.”
She fluffed my hair once more before letting herself out, and I tried to force myself to keep that pleasant feeling she gave me as I headed to the bed. It was certainly an upgrade from the healing cots I was used to, so I focused on that as I sunk under the heavy covers.
It was hard to get my mind to stop whirring. It was the next day after the celebration of my new birth, and we had managed to find a pretty good stake-out room for my grand idea. But now that I actually had to sleep in the bare, featureless area, everything seemed that much more impossible.
I decided to just close my eyes and focus on my breathing. In and out. In and out. No worries or cares about tomorrow. Just inhale slowly. Then exhale.
I felt myself get into a rhythm, my muscles slowly letting go of the stress they clung to so readily. I reached down into myself, grasping at that strange, slip-shine rush that I felt each time I was pulled into one of Perin’s messages. It was ephemeral, and slipped from my grasp repeatedly. But I kept on, not allowing myself to get worked up or frustrated. I just needed to change my tactics. The energy coiled within me was not too different from water, I just needed to treat it the right way, and then I could use it to my advantage.
I don’t know how long I laid there, reaching within myself for something I had never been able to control before. In some ways it seemed like ages, in others only a few minutes. All I knew was that one moment I was lying in my bed, the next I was spiraling down into what felt not too different from a dream.
I looked around hesitantly. Had I done it? I was so used just to popping into the same room that Perin seemed to prefer that it was strange to see anything else.
But then I heard a loud grating, and looked to the bed in the room to see Perin lying there, snoring away.
Wow, the mastermind behind the extinction of an entire race snored. I don’t know why, but I found that a bit funny.
Like before, his face was a blurred, jumping mess. I could no more tell who he was than an abstract painting, and I supposed that was a pretty decent defense mechanism built into this whole Shepherding nonsense.
“Perin,” I cooed, creeping over to his bedside and poking him in the arm. My voice was doing that strange, echo-like thing it did whenever the man had visited me in my dreams. I had heard it once before, but it was still so strange to hear it from my own mouth. “Oh Perin!”
He started and sat up so fast that we almost cracked foreheads. Luckily, I had the wherewithal to take a step backwards so that the panting, shocked murderer didn’t knock me unconscious.
Could I be knocked unconscious? I wasn’t really sure on that.
“Y-You!” He sputtered, obviously furious and not an easy riser. “What are you doing here?”
I feigned a hurt expression and perched myself on his ornate desk. “I thought that would be obvious.” I said, just as sickly sweet as my initial greeting. “You visited me so often before your attack on our last stronghold, I thought that was just what we were doing now. Haven’t you missed me?”
A string of curses escaped his lips and it took quite a lot not to laugh in his face. He really hadn’t expected me to strike back at him. What did he think? That I was going to scurry under some rock and hope he didn’t find me again? He should know better. “Come to gloat? How unheroic of you.”
“Gloat? Me? Never.” I kicked my legs and batted my eyes at him. It was funny, I had once been so terror-stricken by this one man and all that he stood for, but now I saw him as much more of an equal. He was a man, after all, and although he had far more experienced with killing people than I had saving him, he no longer was some mysterious force waiting in the wings to strike me down. “I just wanted to check in. See what you’re planning for me next. That is, unless you’ve given up.”
“Oh yes, definitely,” he snapped back. “After hundreds of years in this timeline, you made me see the light with your honor and noble deeds. I will not pack my bags and let this world go back to the purpose the Shepherds deemed natural.”
“Glad you could see things my way.” I answered primly. “So, what are you up to, anyway? Any grand visions of death and destruction to show me?”
“Is that what this is all about, you’re trying to goad me into destroying you?”
“Maybe I’ve developed a taste for self-destruction. Or maybe I just want some attention. You’ve spoiled me with all this main character treatment.”
“Trust a woman to develop an emotional connection with their enemy.” He flopped back onto his bed. “Can you go now?”
“Do I have to? It gets so lonely being the only Shepherd in dragon land.”
He rolled out of bed and stalked over to me, until he was just a breath away. “Is this your plan? To irritate me to death?”
“Are you saying you don’t enjoy my company?” I purred. “I just wanted to get to know you. See if we could settle our differences and all that.”
“You can go to hell.” He spat, spittle flying from his blurred face.
“And I trust that you’ll be my tour guide.”
He shoved me backwards, sending me toppling over the desk and right back into my own body. I sat up and waited for him to come dragging me into a vision of his own making.
Except he didn’t bite.
All that work sending myself to him, figuring out how to throw my consciousness across the continent to land in his, I hadn’t riled him up enough for a return shot. I guess I was just going to have to go harder. Poke deeper. Get nastier.
I sighed and pulled the covers back up under my chin. This was going to be a very long stake out.
*
I had thought that stalking my enemy would be exhilarating. While never a hardcore fan of the spy genre, I’d seen enough espionage thrillers to have an idea what the game was supposed to be like.
But in reality, it was mostly a lot of waiting and power naps.
As I read through Abuela’s journal, I tried to find more instructions on how to manipulate my power. There was nothing specifically about dreams, but it mentioned different ways to hone and fine-tune abilities. Meditation, envisioning, as well as lucid dreaming. It all seemed very mumbo-jumbo, but she had gotten me this far, hadn’t she?
I knew I should probably stop skipping around, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was constantly running out of time even though each day tended to drag with me throwing myself at the wall that was Perin’s mental defenses. There was a whole chunk I passed about three times that seemed like it discussed more about the Shepherds, but I decided to wait for a rainy day when I wasn’t plotting the downfall of an entire dynasty to look over that.
Of course, all of my circle visited at different times, but it was hard to take comfort in their presence when everyone was feeding me fake lines and false information. I knew we were probably going overboard in my whole bait n’ switch plan, but I had to make sure this was perfect. Now that I had seen what could be in my future, I wanted it. More than anything.
Often times, when I was feeling particularly defeated or despondent, I would recall that fantasy. The broad hands caressing my skin. The teeth biting into me in wicked little hints of pleasure. The heat of two bodies pressing into my own soft flesh…
“My, my, my, is your face red.”
I sat bolt upright, eyes wide as they locked onto Perin. I barely managed to check my smile in time, and eked out a breathy gasp.
“What are you doing here?”
“You’ve been banging on my metaphorical door for three days and you’re surprised that I decided to turn the tables?”
“Oh, you could sense that?”
“Yeah, and it’s possibly the only thing more annoying than that voice you do when you’re trying to be adorable.”
“Well you wouldn’t let me in, what’s a girl supposed to do when she just wants to have a good conversation?”
“God, you really know nothing about this whole business. You can’t just throw yourself into the mind of someone else who’s been at this game so much longer than you.”
“How much longer, exactly?”
I could sense his smirk as his voice grew smarmy. “Trying to get my backstory out of me? What possible purpose could that be for?”
“Isn’t there an idiom for this, know my enemy, or something like that?”
“You would think that before trying to know your enemy, you would try to know yourself. Or even how you got here. You don’t even know a Shepherd from a Creator. How could you possibly understand me?”
“Well, you could teach me.”
“And why on earth would I do that?”
“Well, we’re not on earth, are we?” I threw off the covers and swung my feet off the side of the bed. “Isn’t it terribly boring though, to have this grand plan where it’s obviously important enough to you to murder other Shepherd people who’ve come snooping around, but not be able to share even the outline with anybody? Like, come on, what’s the point of winning this world? What does wiping out the dragons do? Why do the humans need to win? I’m sure these are all things you could explain to me without giving away too many details about whatever way you’re going to try to kill me next.”
“And how would knowing any of this help you?”
“Better understanding of why the hell I ended up in this world with abilities that can’t be explained.”
“So, you want me to assuage your curiosity about why this grand scheme happened to a little girl like you?”
“Maybe.”
“No.”
“No? Come on, I know you wanna brag at least a little. Come on, I’ll answer all those little questions that I know you’ve gotta have about me.”
“This is ridiculous.” He took a step back and vanished in a rush of air. I blinked against the harsh gust, and when I opened my eyes, I was lying in my bed just like I had started.
“Dammit,” I hissed to myself. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, but my fists pounded at the soft mattress while my legs kicked out. It was a full-on temper tantrum, but I didn’t care.
Until, that was, I found myself caught in the rush that came with vision hopping and I was whisked off again.
I sat up, heart rushing, only to realize I was in Perin’s room once more. “If this is a no, you’ve got some issues with mixed signals.” I picked myself up off the floor and perched myself back on his desk.
“I get to ask the first question. If you don’t answer satisfactorily, I don’t respond to your questions.”
“Fair enough.” I looked around the room again, taking in everything I could. It was pretty sparse for the castle, with only the small bed, a desk and a chair. There didn’t seem to be any personal effects. Just clothes, some weapons and a whole lot of rolled-up scroll. I wondered, could I open one? Was it possible to have a physical effect on his side of this connection? I doubted it.
That would be a good question to ask. “So, do I get a chair for this, or do I just have to stand around awkwardly?”
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions,” he said with a snort. I stood there, unimpressed, and he conceded. “Just envision one. You’re not actually here, so a chair cannot actually be here too.”
“Really, it’s that easy?”
“Depends on how terrible your imagination is.”
I furrowed my brow, trying to call up every single chair I had ever seen that was somewhat interesting and comfy. It took a couple of seconds, and I felt fairly awkward with Perin standing me down, so I closed my eyes to shut him out.
And when I opened them again, there was a beautiful, crystal throne with scarlet cushions on the seat. It reflected the light in dazzling sparkles, casting a rainbow across the opposite wall and -- of course -- Perin’s face.
“Really?”
I sent him a superior smile even though he couldn’t see it as I arranged myself in my throne. “What, a little too ostentatious?”
“I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t envision a rabid tiger.”
“See, it’s important to be grateful for the little things.”
Now that I was spending more time on his side of things, I was getting used to the odd idiosyncrasies of this strange in-between existence. The echoed voice, the fading half sigh between what was and what could be. It was strange, and almost made me feel disconnected from myself, but it made sense… kinda.
“Now, Mercedes. Tell me how you got here.”
“That’s easy. I was in the park, reading this book that flung itself off a shelf at me. It had instructions on how to find a portal, and this weird dagger-lock thing. One minute I was sitting there, the next I was stabbed by the thing and dragged into some water.”
“You... you…” I hadn’t heard the man sound so flustered in ages. “You opened an unauthorized portal to this world by accident?”
“Um, I guess. Your wording is leading me to infer that these things are normally regulated.”
“Of course, they’re regulated! What do you think I’m fighting against? The Shepherds who control the pathways to all these alternate realities decide who can and can’t travel them. They’ve got the ability to shape thousands of lives, to become very gods, and they squander it on becoming glorified librarians!
“It took me three hundred years to find a way to subvert them enough to find this place, develop a portal and sweep it from their archives, and you’re telling me that you accidentally got yourself impaled and fell into a pond?”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much it.”
He swore. Then swore again. And then one more time. “This is ridiculous.”
“You’re telling me. Imagine how I felt when I was just supposed to be busking for some cash and I was dumped into a field.”
“You were a street performer? I don’t know whether to laugh or break something.”
“Why not both? Can’t you just imagine something?”
“It doesn’t work that way. I’m grounded, I have to abide by the rules of this reality.”
“What do you mean? That the visitor can manipulate things but the visit-ee can’t?”
“Is that your question?”
“Yeah, that’s my question.”
“Then yes. The Shepherd who is sending out the dream can manipulate their side of reality, but the receiving Shepherd can’t.”
“So, is that how you implanted those visions of the ransack of the capital?”
“Now, now. You had your question. It’s my turn.”
“Fine. Ask away.”
“Where did you find the book? Some antiquity shop? A set of a movie? An estate sale of some old and haunted mansion?”
“My grandmother, actually.”
“Your grandmother? You had a Shepherd in your family? What was her name? Tell me!”
Now it was my turn to tsk condescendingly. “What was that you just said about taking turns.”
“Fine. Yes, you can project visions onto another if they don’t have the proper imagination in place.”
“How?”
“Skipping my turn again.”
“That doesn’t count if you only half answer a question. You’re the one who made the satisfactory rule.”
“You’ve got an annoying knack for turning a phrase on a guy, you know that?”
“Yeah, I think it might even be my specialty.”
“Cheeky. But it’s much like the throne. You imagine it, piece by piece, building the experience from the ground up. Your mind creates every particle of the experience. You miss a detail, it could throw the entire thing into a cataclysmic mess and your target will be aware that you’re trying to implant an idea into their mind.”
“Sounds complicated.”
He perked up, grinning from ear to ear. “Your grandmother. What was her name?”
“Guerra Cavallero. You wouldn’t have liked her, she was even wo-”
“Guerra Ca-” Perin sputtered, shocking me out of the smart aleck remark I had. “The Guerra Cavallero?! Are you kidding me?”
“I’m guessing you know her?”
He slammed his fists on the table and lunged at me. “Get out!”
“Whoa, what? What’s going on here?”
“I said get out! Get out now!” He threw himself at me again and I rushed backwards in a panic.
“Fine! God, geeze!”
But I was yelling at myself, alone in my bedroom once more. Breathing hard, I looked around to make sure this was real.
I sat in silence, trying to catch up with everything that had happened. If I had interpreted that right, Perin knew my darling abuela.
What did that mean?
I scrambled for her journal and quickly lit one of the room’s lanterns.
It seemed I had some more reading to do before Perin called again.