35
Winter
The day we met,
The day our lives
Changed forever
And time did pass, but we’re still there
“Sean, you’re bleeding! An attack, and I haven’t dreamt of it! Again!” Sarah clasped a hand over her mouth.
“I’m fine. It wasn’t the demon who did this, it was Niall’s singing.” Sean had an arm around Niall’s waist as he was so weak he could barely walk.
“Jesus, Niall. Come here.” Mike took Niall’s arm, and Niall leaned heavily on him. “Come and sit down.”
“Niall,” Sarah began, but she froze as she saw Winter emerge from behind Elodie. “And who are you?”
“I’m Winter Shaw.”
“Winter? Mrs Shaw’s daughter? It can’t be! You should be … you should be – fifty years old, at least!”
“I’m fifty-three, yes.”
“You—oh, never mind! What happened?”
“Sean and I were on the beach,” Elodie began, and she blushed, remembering the kiss. “A demon came out of the water. It was one of those jellyfish things. It pulled me in and dragged me down.” She shivered at the memory. “I’m not a good swimmer at all. I would have died, but Niall sang the demon out of the water, and it was Winter who brought me onto the rocks.”
“The seal,” said Sean, looking at Winter with awe. “It was you!”
Winter smiled. Her hair was shimmering silver and mother-of-pearl against the stained-glass window. “Yes. Seal is my usual shape, this is just for special occasions!” She laughed, gesturing to her human body. “My father was a spirit of the water, which is why I grow old so slowly, Sarah.”
“Mr Shaw was a spirit of the water?” asked Sarah, incredulous. She’d seen pictures of him, a short, bearded man in a tweed cap, always with a shotgun strapped across his chest. He’d been the Midnight estate gamekeeper for forty years.
“No,” laughed Winter. “Hugh Shaw wasn’t my father. My father was my mother’s lover. He left his human shape forever just after I was born and went back to the sea. Hugh, my stepfather, came after. He knew all about me, how I came to be.”
Sarah was wide-eyed. “Mrs Shaw had a lover?” She thought of the black-clad, stern-looking old woman she had known as a child.
“I know it’s hard to imagine. She was very reserved, wasn’t she? But she and my father were very much in love. She loved life, in every way. And so do I.” And with that, Winter looked straight at Niall, and through him, inside him. His face turned crimson.
“Was it you who left the letters?” asked Nicholas suddenly. His tone towards Winter was harsh, almost accusing. Everybody tensed.
She nodded. “It was me, yes. Before you all arrived. My mother had taken them away from this house. She died three years ago, and when I found the letters among her things, I thought I’d wait for you to come back and hand them over.”
“That’s funny, man. This people-of-the-sea thing!” Mike chipped in. He wasn’t very interested in the mechanics of delivering letters. “Being able to turn into an animal, or something. I wish I had some really cool powers like all of you.”
“Well, in a way, we all belong to an Element,” Winter remarked. “Human beings too. I mean, Lays. Non-Secret people.”
“Do we? So what Element am I? Out of curiosity,” asked Mike.
“You’re …” Winter tipped her head to one side, studying Mike’s face. “You’re earth. Yes, earth. And so is Sean, with a touch of fire. Elodie is air and water. Sarah is air and fire.” Winter smiled at her. “And you, Nicholas …” Nicholas had been looking down, lost in thought. Upon hearing his name, he raised his head with a quick, jerky movement. “You are fire.” They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and it was Winter who looked away first.
“I’m freezing,” said Elodie. “I’ll go get changed. Come, Winter, I’ll get you some clothes.”
Niall and Mike watched in awe as the silver-haired girl walked slowly upstairs, the light from the stained-glass window making her hair shimmer like the inside of a shell.
36
Don’t Let Me Sleep
A child who asks, “What’s happening?”
And then silence begins
Islay, May 1985
Dear Amelia,
Life has been quite complicated around here. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. The time has come. Mairead’s dreams have started. She screams throughout the night until she’s exhausted, and everybody else with her. She’s refusing to tell me anything of what she sees, or to write anything down in the dream diary we gave her, which means we can’t use her dreams at all. She’s worse than my sister was. Hamish says she’ll grow into herself. I have to believe she will.
She does all she can to stay awake. Last night she went for a walk down to the beach, hoping the cold would prevent her from falling asleep. I know that trick, my sister and I used it too. Her brothers followed her from a distance to make sure she was safe. She walked up and down that beach until the small hours of the morning, until she couldn’t stay upright anymore. Stewart carried her home and laid her on her bed, but she kept trying to get up, and when she realized she couldn’t stand, that her legs couldn’t carry her any longer, she started throwing herself off the bed, hoping that hitting the floor would keep her awake. We couldn’t have that. I asked Stewart to hold her down, and she struggled and thrashed, with Stewart begging her to stop, to let herself go and surrender to sleep. He hated every minute of it, my poor son. What that girl puts us through!
In the end, she couldn’t resist anymore. She’s still a child, after all. She started nodding off and waking up with a jolt, over and over again, until sleep finally took her just as dawn was breaking. I stayed in her room. I knew I had to watch her, lest she tried to throw herself out of the window, like my sister tried to do when her dreams started. Mairead woke again two hours later, screaming and crying, begging me to make it stop. But how can I? What am I supposed to do? There is no way to stop the dreams, and we need her to dream. The family requires her to dream. But will she listen? Of course not.
So here I am, writing to you while she plays the piano downstairs, a terrible, haunting song she wrote herself. At least she has her music to keep her busy.
This morning, as she was washing, I caught a glimpse of her arms. They’re purple with little bruises. She’s even been pinching herself in the effort to stay awake.
Sarah couldn’t read any more. She walked to the window, her arms folded, and looked out to the sea. It seemed to her that the salty waters were the tears that Mairead must have cried in that very room.
Low, ghostly music had started seeping up from downstairs. Sarah knew it was Niall playing, but to Sarah those were Mairead’s trembling fingers touching the keys in a song of sorrow.
“What happened to you, Mairead?” she whispered, closing her eyes.
And then she gasped, forcing herself not to jump, not to move, not to scream, as she felt a hand run down her hair, lift a lock of it, gently, and then another, and small, cold fingertips caressing her cheeks with infinite tenderness.
As quickly as she appeared, she was gone, leaving Sarah wondering if she’d dreamt it after all.
A short while later, Nicholas came looking for her. “I think Mairead was in my room,” Sarah whispered in his ear as they lay entangled on her bed.
“Was she?”
Sarah raised her eyebrows. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“Of course not. When the body goes, the spirit remains. For a while.”
“She touched my cheeks, and my hair,” murmured Sarah.
“Oh yes, I can see it. Look. She braided it.” Nicholas lifted a plaited lock from the back of Sarah’s head.
Sarah held the loose black braid in her hand, bewildered.
Come back, Mairead. Come back and speak to me.
“Who’s Martyna?” Sarah asked suddenly. The question had been whirling in her mind since Nicholas’s nightmare. She had to know. But she hadn’t planned to ask him quite so abruptly.
Nicholas’s face fell, and she could see a host of painful memories shaping his features into a mask of regret. “How do you know about her?”
“You said her name in your dreams last night. Is it … another girl?”
Nicholas resumed his usual calm demeanour, stroking Sarah’s cheek, and then her hair. He was back in control. “Yes. A girl I loved once. But she died.”
“She died? Oh, I’m so sorry.” Then a lingering question. She had to ask. “Was it the Surari?”
“Yes.” He looked at her intently. “It was the Surari.”
It was me.
“I’m so sorry,” repeated Sarah.
I’m so sorry, Martyna.
37
Darkness
In death is freedom
Alone in his room, his eyes once more on the sea and the sky, Nicholas listened to the whispers and screams in his mind. He knew another attack was imminent, and he knew it would be the deadliest yet. He couldn’t even trust his ravens anymore. The Elementals didn’t show him any loyalty now. He knew that any decision about the fate of Sarah’s friends was out of his hands, and that it was only a matter of time before the King of Shadows demonstrated the terrible extent of his powers. Juliet had been just the beginning – only Nicholas and Sarah were supposed to come back from Islay.
Even though everything he knew and understood was shifting, Nicholas was sure about what would happen in the next few days – he knew how his father worked. The Surari would be instructed to spare him and Sarah, and to kill everyone else, as was the original plan. Then he would be punished for having strayed, a punishment much worse than having his face pecked and scratched by his Elementals. So much worse – his thundering headache told him that. A taste of the brain fury. Enough of a warning.
But he would not be killed.
Not unless he betrayed his father’s trust.
Nicholas had never believed that there could be any other option for him but to obey his father. But after all that had happened, he could see it now. There had been a choice all along. He could decide that he didn’t want to be his father’s puppet anymore. He could lift the fog that was still blocking Sarah’s gift and allow her and the other Dreamers with her to dream again. Then they’d all know what was about to happen.
Nicholas put his head in his hands. The King of Shadows had terrible ways to kill his enemies. Would he be pecked to death by Spirits of the Air, drowned by Spirits of the Water, suffocated by Spirits of the Earth, consumed by Spirits of Fire? If all those failed – and they might because Nicholas was, after all, very powerful, and he would fight for his life – the Surari would intervene. And if by some weird occurrence the Surari failed to kill him, his father would simply use the full force of the brain fury. There was no escape from that; nobody ever survived once his father decided to unleash the whole of the brain fury.
If he did his father’s bidding, though, he would survive, and live the life he was meant to. Fulfil his destiny as the heir of Shadows, and come the time when finally his father’s life force faded, he would take his place.
When a spirit dissolves, there’s nothing left; the body has gone long before, the soul is all that survives. And then the soul is gone too, leaving nothing but a memory.
Sometimes death seemed a better option.
Death was the way Martyna had chosen. Another black-haired girl ensnared in the King of the Shadows’ plans, chewed up and spat out. Martyna. The name was like a curse in Nicholas’s memory, the curse of the woman he had loved and helped destroy.
Martyna had been beautiful in a strong, insolent way, the kind of girl who would always get noticed wherever she went. It seemed as if light shone from inside her. She was a Dreamer, of course, and a powerful one. Over the years Nicholas had found ways to prevent himself from remembering, but memories have a way of ambushing you when you least expect it.
Nicholas was the one who’d chosen Martyna, not his father – and his biggest mistake, as the King of Shadows was so fond of reminding him, was falling in love with her. Nicholas asked his father not to start working on her mind straight away, to give him a chance to do things differently. And his father agreed.
Things went well, for a time. Or at least Nicholas thought they did. He succeeded in pretending there would be no mind-moulding needed, no deceit, that they could step out like any other man and woman in love. It was the best time of his life.
It didn’t last long. The King of Shadows ended up taking control, as he always did in every matter concerning his son. Nicholas’s mother cried and begged Nicholas to stop, to leave Martyna alone. Not to do to Martyna what had been done to her. But Nicholas was resigned. Deep down, he’d always known that their enchanted time, their time to love freely, had to stop sooner or later. It was fantasy, a useless masquerade, to pretend to be a mortal man with the chance to live a normal life. Martyna would never accept shedding her body and entering the Shadows forever, not unless they mind-moulded her. And slowly but surely his father made Nicholas see reason. He proved to him that to destroy a woman in body and mind was the only way she could ever be convinced to come and live in the Shadow World. Nicholas was made to see that his pretence that things for Martyna and him could be different was just a pathetic dream.
The King of Shadows decimated Martyna’s whole family in the space of one night. Between sunset and sunrise her parents and her sisters died, one by one, leaving only the ashes of burnt bodies. The sun rose on a world she couldn’t recognize, a world she couldn’t live in. It was too sudden and too traumatizing for her to accept. And she never did.
The day Martyna died was the worst day of Nicholas’s life. He found her trapped among the reeds, her body floating face up, her hair covering her face, a face that used to be beautiful and that was now a blue mask of pain.
For a while after Nicholas wished he’d been with her when she drowned herself, and that he’d done the same. Her life was over because of him. She wasn’t going to be anybody’s wife now. Nicholas hadn’t given a second thought to her parents or her sisters, just as he hadn’t given a second thought to anyone they had caused death or despair to, but Martyna’s destruction stayed with him, haunted him. He couldn’t stop thinking about what had been done.
Maybe it was also because his mother had watched him do to Martyna what his father had done to her.
After that, Nicholas’s mother was never the same. She refused to be kept prisoner anymore, and she took the only way she knew to be free again. Spirits live a long time, but they aren’t eternal; they will, in time, fade away. Ekaterina let go of her will to live, and allowed herself to fade slowly, leaving nothing but a memory. She had only lived a few hundred years in the Shadows, a heartbeat from their point of view. Martyna’s fate had sealed his mother’s desire for freedom, and in a way, Martyna’s death set her free.
The love of his life and his mother. The two women he had loved and lost.
Nicholas went to visit their graves whenever he could. Ekaterina’s grave had been built by her human family; they thought that she’d died of heartache because of her newborn son’s death. They couldn’t know, of course, that although her body was in that grave, her spirit was alive, imprisoned and bound to the Shadows. Martyna was buried in the same graveyard. Because she’d taken her own life, she shouldn’t have been allowed to be entombed there, but the priest took pity on her and arranged for her to be buried against the stone wall, at the very edge of the cemetery, a few yards from her parents and sisters. Nobody except Nicholas ever visited Martyna, because her entire family were killed at their hands; there was nobody left. He was the only one who tended to her grave – and every time he went back it looked more abandoned, more forgotten.
Nicholas forbade himself from thinking that Sarah might follow the same path as his mother and Martyna. Sarah was stronger, wiser. More used to being alone, more used to suffering. Sarah would survive her destiny, he had to tell himself that.
Before she died, his mother had whispered her last wish, that when the time came for the King of Shadows to fade and leave his son to rule the Shadows, Nicholas would refuse. He had looked at her, desperately wanting to reassure her, but he’d said nothing.
38
Andromeda
Beneath the waves
What kills me
Is what saves me
It was nearly a relief to be in that place again. The place of dreams, with the purple sky and the endless waves of swaying grass, the heightened colours and the wind. Sarah sighed in her sleep. At last the dreams were talking to her.
She was standing alone on soft, mossy ground, shivering in her T-shirt and leggings. A salty smell invaded her nostrils, and the muted sounds of the sea came from behind her. She turned towards the sounds, and saw that she was standing on the edge of a white sandy beach dotted with Venus shells. The wind was making the sea dance, frothy and white-topped. Sarah took in the beauty of it all, the near-emerald colour of the waters, the translucent shells – a scene so enchanting it could not be real, it could only be born in a dream. Such a place was nowhere on earth.
But she didn’t let the beauty deceive her. She knew what that dreamy landscape hid. She knew what would happen, as always in her dreams. Her heart tightened in fear and anticipated rage.
Too much had happened for Sarah to be the trembling lost girl she had once been whenever a vision took her, resigned to another ordeal, frightened to her very core. Inexperienced, clueless, able only to yield to whatever came upon her.
The forces that she had encountered, and that she had survived, meant that she had now grown into herself. She was still frightened, but she had learnt how to handle it. She had embraced her Midnight blood at last. After having been deliberately shielded from her rightful inheritance of power throughout her childhood, her parents’ death meant that she had finally reclaimed it, been forced to reclaim it. All that Sarah was meant to be, she was, at last. It was a conquest made of pain and loss, like most conquests, and it gave her strength, and a belief in herself she had never felt before. Only now, standing by the seashore, drawn there by her dreams, could she fully grasp how far she’d come. Her hands were burning, her senses were awake and alert. She stood on that beach flexing her hands, waiting to find out what was in store for her.
She didn’t have to wait long.
It was Mermen who emerged from the sea, their scaly skin shimmering in an opaque rainbow, pale green and mother-of-pearl, their gills faintly throbbing in the transition between water and air, webbed hands at their side and wide mouths open to reveal row after row of thin, needle-like teeth. Two, four, six, ten of them, walking unhurriedly towards Sarah, waddling slightly from side to side, the sound of their gurgling breath coming nearer. They were close enough now for Sarah to see the barnacles attached to their skin, the sea anemones that had made a home on their chests, on their hips, on their legs, and the seaweed dangling from their arms like ripped clothes. Little creatures slithered over them, newborn eels and many-legged things that resembled woodlice. A slimy trail shimmered faintly behind them on the wet sand.
Sarah tried to calm her pounding heart – there were too many of them. They were going to kill her. The best course of action was at least to try and get as much information as she could out of the dream – when it would happen, and where – before they slaughtered her.
She drew a deep breath, her eyes glinting with the Midnight gaze. “Who sent you?” she screamed into the sea wind, her voice determined but coloured with the terror of what was soon to come.
The Mermen neither acknowledged her question nor replied. Instead they continued their silent march across the shore towards her. They resembled fish gasping for air, their mouths opening and closing intermittently, their gills pulsating in rhythm with their heartbeat. A nauseous smell of things decaying underwater wafted off them, carried towards Sarah on the wind.
“Answer me! Who sent you?” she repeated, and a bittersweet memory came back to her – how Sean used to get so impatient with her whenever she tried to communicate with the Surari. She used to try and communicate with them to avoid fighting, and it angered Sean no end, but this time she was on her own, and she was demanding the truth.
The Mermen were now a few yards away and coming closer, closer. There was no point in turning around and running. She could have outrun them, but she would have learnt nothing. She raised her hands, now scalding, and readied herself. Suddenly she felt something brushing her elbow and she jumped in alarm, but it was only Nicholas, having materialized beside her in perfect silence.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
“I’m glad to see you too.” He grinned sarcastically.
“I don’t want you in this dream. You’ll die too.”
“No. I won’t. And neither will you.” And with that, Nicholas started shouting to the creatures at the top of his voice, with such fury that his fingers were sparkling blue and crackling with fire. Sarah could recognize only a few words as they were spoken in the ancient language, the one used by the human tribes during the Time of Demons.
Immediately the Mermen stopped in their tracks, and one of them replied in a gurgling, watery series of sounds that vaguely resembled the ancient language, but sounded alien as well, alien to this earth and all its creatures.
A dialogue followed that was fevered and full of anger on Nicholas’s part, and calm and steady from the Merman. He kept repeating the same things, on and on, over and over.
Sarah turned and smiled sadly at him. “Nicholas, I don’t think you can help me here,” she said gently.
“Sarah …”
She turned back to the Mermen. “Come on! Come and get me!” she screamed, and as one, they starting moving up the beach towards them again.
Sarah could feel Nicholas tense at her side. Now that the sea creatures were right in front of them Sarah estimated that they were twice her size, their arms thick with sleek muscles. There must have been at least twenty of them. She’d never seen so many Surari in one place at the same time.
Another gust of wind, and Sarah gagged at the rotten smell that swept over her. Recovering quickly and ignoring Nicholas’s muted pleas, she crouched slightly before leaping with a growl, her hands thrust forward, trying to grab at least one of the Mermen before they bit her, or drowned her, or whatever they were planning to do to put an end to her life. But the Merman she attacked didn’t react by retaliating. He simply put one arm around her waist, lifted her off her feet and threw her aside effortlessly.
Sarah landed on the sand, her breath knocked out by the fall. For a few hazy seconds she watched as the slimy, wet fins of the Mermen moved towards her, then around her, marching over the dunes, leaving her behind. They weren’t interested in Sarah. She wasn’t the target.
Where are they heading?
Sarah sat upright and looked ahead of her. The landscape had changed; the sea and land had swapped places, so that the water was now in front of her. The Mermen were marching towards a formation of rocks that jutted out of the waves like rotten teeth.
Sarah stared aghast and peered into the gloom. She could see something tied onto each of the rocks – someone.
It was Niall, Elodie, Mike, and a bit further away, Sean. Her Sean. Their feet were dangling over the water, their hands bound behind them, and she could see now that their eyes were pools of horror and despair. They knew what was ahead of them. They were waiting for the sea to take them – they were like Andromeda, waiting for the sea monster.
Nicholas scrambled along the shoreline, shouting warnings one moment and threats the next, but the Mermen took no notice, continuing their march into the water, towards the rocks. It was as if they were being controlled by some other power. Sarah watched, frozen with horror. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, and worst of all, she couldn’t close her eyes as, one by one, the Mermen climbed over her friends and tore their bodies limb from limb, ripping flesh from bone, leaving only trailing, reddened ropes of sinew behind.
Unable to take any more, Sarah threw herself on the sand, staring in silent despair. Why couldn’t she have stopped them? Why couldn’t Nicholas have stopped them? Eventually she found the strength to raise her eyes towards the scene of devastation. She felt her world spinning as she contemplated a lock of blonde hair strewn with blood floating on the incoming tide. All that was left of Elodie.
Sarah woke up panting, her eyes open wide in the pure, unbroken Islay darkness. The horror of the dream had been burnt into the back of her mind – she’d never get rid of it for as long as she lived. Her skin was covered in freezing sweat, her heart would not stop pounding, and the room was so dark, so silent that she couldn’t even make out the shape of the furniture. All she could hear was the beating of her heart and the rush of blood in her ears.
Why? Why had the sea demons devoured her friends but not her and Nicholas?
Sarah felt the edge of her bedside table with a trembling hand and eventually found the lamp switch. Soft, yellow light illuminated the room. She sat up, and breathed deeply – once, twice, three times – trying to calm her heart. There was no doubting the dream. But despite its cruel clarity, there were things she didn’t know or understand.
I’ve got to warn them. Now. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, bare feet on the ice-cold stone floor, and tiptoed out of the room. Nicholas slept at one end of the corridor, Sean’s room was at the other. She stood for a long, long moment, hesitating – which way to go?
Finally, she made her choice.
*
He was awake, of course. When he’d heard the footsteps outside his room, he had got up instantly, weapon in hand. He was standing by the bed as Sarah pushed her way in.
Ready for anything, she thought, and felt better for knowing that. “It’s me. Were you not sleeping?”
“You know me, I never sleep. Are you OK?” he whispered as she closed the door behind her.
“Yes. I dreamt again tonight. It’s the first time since …” She shook her head, puzzled.
Their eyes met, and lingered for a moment. And then it happened – they were drawn towards each other like a planet and its moon.
Sean’s body smelled just the same as it used to, of soap and of the sea, with a soft, lingering scent of coffee. She didn’t want to let go, and he clung to her with all his might – it was as if they had come home to each other. But eventually they forced themselves to break their embrace and take a step back. Sarah’s cheeks were scarlet in the darkness.
“Come here. Here, have this.” Sean switched the table lamp on and took a blanket from his bed, wrapping it around Sarah’s frozen shoulders as he sat her down in an armchair. Then he knelt in front of the fireplace and lit the fire. It didn’t take long before she saw the soft, warm light reflected in his face, dancing over the old white scars on his arms and the more recent ones on his chest. He was wearing only a pair of sweatpants, and the glow of his skin, the strong contours of his body made Sarah want to run her hands over him, made her want to be close to him.
The horror of her dream followed so quickly by the sudden rush of desire made Sarah’s mind go blank and she sat immobile, rigid, unsure of what to do or say.
“What did you see?” Sean asked. He sat at her feet, looking up at her.
Sarah’s emerald-green eyes widened at the memories as she pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Sea demons. Mermen. They were huge.” She flinched, thinking of their wide, fish-like mouths and their razor-sharp teeth. “They came out of the sea, and I thought they were coming for me. But they ignored me. Just cast me aside. They …” She took a deep breath. The last thing she wanted was to recall the terrifying images.
Sean found her hand under the blanket and held it tight. Once more Sarah considered how big, how strong his hand was, and she clung to it, drawing strength from him. She braced herself to tell the last part of the story.
“You were there, tied to a sea rock. Niall, Mike and Elodie, too. The Mermen,” she shuddered, “tore you all to pieces.”
Sean grimaced, then recovered himself. “Was Nicholas not there?” he asked carefully.
Sarah nodded, frowning. “He was with me on the shore, trying to help me. He kept shouting and calling to the Mermen in the ancient language, trying to convince them to stop.”
“Are you sure? You don’t understand much of the ancient language. How would you know what he was saying?”
Sarah rubbed her forehead. “No, I don’t, but the meaning was clear. He was begging them. Honestly, Sean, begging them. But they wouldn’t stop.”
Sean nodded, his manner almost businesslike. “Any indication of when this would happen?”
Sarah shook her head.
He stood up. “We must be ready then.”
“Sean. They killed you.” An abyss was opening slowly in her heart. All her strength, all her courage leaked away in the face of a world without Sean, and she was horrified to realize how much she needed him, how much she … loved him.
He stood there, looking at her, then once again knelt in front of her and took her hand. His striking blue eyes were full of longing, his face open and strong, his hair shone golden in the light of the fire. Sarah reached forward slowly and took hold of the red velvet pouch around his neck, the protection charm she’d made for him.
“I never took it off.”
“I know.”
They both felt at once what was to follow. Arms and lips looking for each other, irresistible as gravity, but almost immediately the sinking feeling in Sarah’s stomach that she was betraying Nicholas, betraying her boyfriend, that she really ought to stop it now …
“Sean! Can I come in?” A voice at the door. Elodie.
Sean and Sarah looked at each other, shocked, the moment shattered.
“Come in,” answered Sean, jumping to open the door. “Come in.”
Elodie entered, pale and troubled. “Sean. I dreamt.”
“You too.”
“Oh,” she gasped, her face tightening when she saw a pale-faced Sarah standing beside Sean’s fireplace. “I didn’t realize.”
Sarah took in Elodie’s graceful figure in her white cotton slip trimmed with lace, her slender legs, her arms like willow branches, her silky blonde hair cascading down her back. She was delicate, and perfect, and Sarah’s heart sank. “I dreamt tonight too,” she said quietly.
“Mermen?” Sean asked Elodie.
“Yes. It was horrible,” Elodie replied, her accent made thicker by distress. “So what are we going to do? Wait until they come to get us?”
“All we can do is prepare ourselves as best we can. Elodie.”
“Mmmm?” she replied, biting her lip.
“In Sarah’s dream we were all killed, except Nicholas and Sarah.”
“Yes. In mine too.” Elodie’s face was hard as she glanced over at Sarah. “What can this mean?”
“Nicholas was trying to stop them.” Sarah assured her. “Trying to halt the attack. You must have heard that.”
“Yes, I heard that too. And saw him. Just like he tried to stop the ravens from attacking me on the beach yesterday,” pondered Elodie.
There was a gentle knock at the door and before they could answer, it swung open. “Hello. A pyjama party, and nobody told me?” Niall walked in, pushing a hand through his hair, his eyes sleepy and his feet bare.
“You dreamt too?” asked Sean.
“Yes. And judging by the colour of your faces, it was the same dream. I dreamt we were fish food. It wasn’t pretty.”
“The revenge of the clam?” chipped in Mike, appearing from behind Niall now. “After all the shellfish we ate in Louisiana?”
“More than likely,” teased Sean briefly, but his face became deadly serious and a silence fell over the room.
Suddenly, Elodie gasped.
“You OK?” asked Sean.
“Yes, yes. It was just a shadow.”
Sarah noticed that Sean’s eyes rested on Elodie for a long time after that, but the French girl didn’t offer any further explanation. Sean brought his hands to his temples, massaging them. “I need to think this through.”
“When’s the first ferry?” asked Mike hopefully.
“To go where? They’d just follow us,” Sarah replied. “At least here we’re on familiar territory.”
Sarah was interrupted by Elodie in a voice so frail yet firm that they all turned to her with concern. “No more running away,” she whispered.
Sean nodded his agreement. “Elodie’s right,” he said.
“I think we need a drink,” Mike concluded after a short pause.
The whole house instantly came alive with lights and footsteps and conversations as Mike and Niall took Elodie downstairs to steady their nerves. Sarah and Sean stayed behind.
“I don’t want to be alone,” Sarah whispered.
“Go to Nicholas then,” replied Sean immediately, his voice harsh.
Sarah wasn’t expecting that. It was as if she’d just been punched in the stomach, the air knocked out of her. Sean had turned away from her.
“OK. I will. Yes.” She walked towards the door, reeling from Sean’s response.
At the doorway, he took her arm and turned her until he was looking straight into her eyes. “Nicholas is your boyfriend, after all.”
“Yes.”
“Because if he weren’t, I’d ask you to stay here with me.”
Sarah froze.
Too much.
Too much, too confusing. Too complicated.
The dreams coming back, the choices she was faced with. The danger. The one choice she didn’t know how to make.
“You can’t ask me to choose now, Sean. Can you not see?” she whispered, her mind somewhere between being angry and imploring him for a reprieve.
“If not now, when, Sarah? It’s not likely to get better, is it?” He took her by the shoulders firmly. “Do you love Nicholas?”
There was nothing she could do but to tell Sean the truth for once – to reveal herself, and reveal her heart.
“I don’t know what love is,” she said, with a clear, steady gaze.
Sean’s eyes were solemn, unsmiling, when he replied. “Yes you do. And when you decide to admit it, I’ll be there.”
It’s a promise, Sarah.
39
Be Ready
Rules of the heart
Before rules of the mind
Be ready then to face
The time to fall
Nicholas had been in his room, standing in front of the open window. All he could see was darkness, except for the intermittent lighthouse beam shining from beyond the hill. His whole body was alert, and a film of sweat coated his forehead. His nails sank into the palms of his hands.
Earlier that evening he had lifted the fog that had enveloped Sarah and the other Dreamers for weeks. Now he would wait for her to dream and for her to tell the others what she had seen, what she’d been finally allowed to discover. Nicholas knew what would happen next and he had stood there waiting for them to come and challenge him. Or hunt him down, probably. He was ready to defend himself.
To be human is to be afraid. Tonight, I’m wholly human.
Any time now.
When Nicholas felt Sarah’s dream starting, he had forced his mind into hers. He made himself witness it, and he couldn’t believe what he saw. He was still shattered by what had happened.
In Sarah’s dream, he had seen himself trying to stop the Mermen, trying to protect Elodie, Mike, Niall. Even Sean. Sarah had read his heart before he could read it properly himself. In her dream, for the first time in a long time, his mind and his heart had acted in harmony.
The cold air crept over his moist skin, making him shiver. He couldn’t bring himself to move. For some time his gaze remained fixed on the black sea, as waves of shock at his own behaviour swept over him.
I have chosen. Or destiny has chosen for me.
Suddenly there were noises and lights going on in the house, shining out into the garden, and people coming and going outside his door. They must know by now.
Nicholas closed the window and let himself fall backwards onto his bed, his eyes staring up towards the ceiling. He didn’t have long to wait. The brain fury hit him almost immediately – his father’s wrath was merciless. Right at that moment he heard rapid tapping at the glass. Turning as best he could within the pain, he caught a glimpse of sharp beaks and beady black eyes, and then came the voices from the Shadow World screaming, screaming, using every possible argument and threat to get him back.
It was worse than he could have possibly imagined. He lay in agony, knowing that finally the die was cast and that there would be no salvation. Not for him. He felt Sarah coming into the room, but he wasn’t ready for her. He lay still, calm, pretending to be in a deep sleep, using the last of his self-control not to cry out with the pain that exploded in his head. He was aware of her standing by his bed for a few seconds, then walking out as quietly as she had come in – a ray of moonshine sweeping the room and disappearing.
No salvation for me, but I’ll keep you safe. And I’ll keep you with me, Sarah Midnight.