Page 22 of The House of Quiet

Chapter Sixteen

A Dreamer Revealed

There’s a single flickering point of light, drawing hopeful little moths tired of being in the dark.

Birdie’s candle sputters, about to go out.

The night presses in around them, relentless and ravenous.

But Birdie walks resolutely forward. She walks past Lake, and Dawn.

She walks past a woman with two scarves, past children ragged and hollowed out with hunger.

She walks past a man and a woman who look like her, each holding out a silent hand, their eyes averted.

She walks past Forest, then Nimbus, then a door standing alone in the darkness. Tears stream down her face.

The candle dips lower. Birdie will be alone in the dark forever. Her shoulders stoop.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “I don’t matter. I can’t matter. I have to find her.”

There’s nothing to be done. Whomever Birdie’s looking for, it will consume her.

Another dream pulls harder. It’s an undertow, slipping beneath the surface of all the dreams, tugging everyone toward it eventually. The darkness is gone, and so is Birdie.

The red circle is the only thing left, brilliant and burning, getting closer and closer. There is no mind behind that circle. The dream exists without a dreamer, like it was always there, waiting.

No. No no no no no.

The sheer animal urgency of forcing eyes to close against that red circle is at last enough to disrupt the dream.

River backs up so fast she loses her balance and falls, jarring her eyes open.

Eyes. She has eyes. She has a self. This almost never happens. She exists in the dreams, but only as an awareness. Always an observer, never a participant. Though sometimes she tries to influence things—like with poor Rabbit’s first kitten dream—more often than not she just tries to get out.

Always sleeping without rest, claimed by others’ minds as soon as her own body succumbs to exhaustion.

River hates it, but she can’t stop it. And at least this is something new.

The heavy scents of salt and blood welcome her back to the beach.

Though on a normal night that might be alarming, tonight it’s a relief. The red circle won’t find her here.

Freed from existential terror, River picks her way over the beach rocks, each perfectly uniform, to where Minnow is sitting.

She’s on her boulder, staring out at the gray waves.

They come with startling precision, evenly spaced.

A clockwork ocean. Beneath her rock is the puddle with the house far beneath the surface.

River doesn’t want to look at it, either, so she climbs up next to Minnow.

“Minnow?” River asks.

The other girl looks at her, beach-rock-round eyes narrowing. “That’s not my name.”

Interesting. Also interesting that this is twice now River’s been able to speak to her in a dream. And this time she’s herself . Except, not quite. It’s like she’s put on a ball-gown version of River. Her limbs feel more elegant, and her skin glows like she has her own private light source.

River gathers her wits. Though this isn’t the same existential dread as the red circle, this is clearly Minnow’s idea of her, and she can’t be subsumed by it, no matter how flattering and intoxicating it is. She has to hold on to herself.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Whose blood is that?” River points to Minnow’s hands and skirts.

Minnow’s sigh is so weary it breaks River’s heart. “They still haven’t told me. There was no blood when my mother died. But this is hers, in a way. It’s for her.”

River should leave. There’s only one thing she can do in a dream that changes the waking world, and she definitely doesn’t want to do that to Minnow.

This feels like she’s cheating. She wants Minnow to tell her things in their waking life.

She doesn’twant to spy and steal information like she did at home.

But she doesn’t want Minnow here alone in this cold, gray place, covered in blood.

And River doesn’t want to be alone, either. She feels safe with Minnow, gore notwithstanding. Somewhere out there the red circle is waiting for a dreamer, and River can’t, won’t , be that dreamer.

She nudges the other girl with her shoulder. “We have all this water right here. Let’s get you cleaned up. No sense in keeping blood on your hands. But let’s use the ocean, not that puddle.” River doesn’t want Minnow going anywhere near the house under the bog. Not after her story.

Minnow frowns, like the idea never occurred to her.

“I don’t have to have blood on my hands,” she says, slowly.

Just like that, the blood is gone. It’s a start.

And it’s a start that River gave her. Before Rabbit, she’d only ever tried to nudge things toward nightmares to torment her awful parents and the wretched minister of defense.

To say nothing of what else she did at the minister’s estate.

“Much better,” River says. “While we’re changing things, we could find someplace warmer to meet. This is beautiful, but socold.”

River turns to see if she’s managed to get a smile out of Minnow, but more than the blood has changed. Before, Minnow was distracted, like River was part of the landscape. Now Minnow’s fully present, aware of herself…and of River.

Minnow leans close. “ You’re so beautiful,” she whispers. “I want to swallow you whole.”

The air around them is charged, like the atmosphere before a storm. River feels the space between them. There are threads woven there, drawing tighter and tighter, pulling them together.

River’s accidentally visited this type of dream before, but she’s never been the subject of one.

She knows it isn’t real, she knows , but the electric thrill dancing along her skin is undeniable.

A warning of lightning about to strike. River wants this white-hot intensity to burn away everything else.

“You should kiss me,” River whispers.

The threads between them snap taut. They crash into each other like waves hitting the shore, but there’s nothing orderly about their frantic movements.

They kiss like there’s nothing in the world outside their bodies and the points where they meet.

And, because it’s a dream, it’s true. There is nothing outside what they’re doing and feeling.

For once, River doesn’t resist. She lets the dream do exactly what Minnow said she wanted: swallow her whole.

Lips aren’t enough. River leans back, frantic and aching. She pulls Minnow with her. But instead of the boulder beneath them, there’s a soft surface. The surprise of it shocks River right out of the dream.

“No, no, I want to go back,” River demands, the feelings inside her so urgent and overwhelming she might burst if she doesn’t find her way to Minnow again. But the lingering thrill scurries away from her like insects exposed to the light.

The red circle found her again. River’s trapped in it. She can’t get out because she can’t find the dreamer, and if she can’t find the dreamer, she can’t disconnect from them. Who is dreaming this? Why?

River tries to squeeze her eyes shut, but she doesn’t have eyes. She doesn’t have a body. She’s nothing. There’s only the red circle.

Wake up, wake up, wake up , River whimpers. She’ll be free when the dreamer wakes up, but…what if there is no dreamer? What if everything else was the dream, and now, at last, reality has claimed her once more?