‘Grandfather,’ I said softly, but if he heard me he did not acknowledge it.
Instead, he advanced upon the thing as if he thought to catch it sleeping and make an easier dispatch of it. His jaws opened wide and he angled his head for the best line of attack.
The Dream stirred.
Tattered black arms floated out from it to wave gently in the highway winds, like fronds of weed in a pool. The dreamcatcher threw back his head and roared, then with a mighty leap – a leap designed to culminate in a killing blow – Hawkweed fell like a hammer into the centre of the Dream. It shuddered and sighed under the impact. More tentacles unwrapped themselves from its mass and drifted outward as if in surrender. It gaped, as if it were yawning at the disturbance of its sleep.
The tatters rose lazily; and now, rather than weed, it was an anemone: a great flower of black with a beating red heart, a heart upon which my grandfather stood, biting down ferociously.
There was a sudden upheaval. The Dream rose up. It was enormous.
‘Granfer!’ I cried, for suddenly I could not see him: black upon black, the Dream had him in its embrace.
I hurled myself into the fray. My jaws closed on it and I was rewarded by a mouthful of foul juice, as caustic as bile. My tongue and gums smarted; my eyes stung. Still I bit down.
Terrible images assailed me then: cages of cats, howling like banshees; a woman with burning eyes butchering a kitten. A towering house: a cold, white room; the stench of death; the sweetness of decay. Maggots, blowflies, great knots of twining worms all poured out of it, to be followed by more abstract horrors – a chaos of limbs and eyes and teeth and hair, bound into abominable combinations, which unleashed themselves and shot apart. Clawed hands came snaking out to clutch and rend; and great shags of black hair whipped around our feet and wrapped our throats. The heat was appalling: it was as if what drove the demon was a fire at its heart. It vomited atrocity after atrocity at us, which hung in the air twitching and shrieking before drifting off into the highway winds like scraps of ash.
‘Keep fighting, Orlando!’ my grandfather cried from the depths of the monster. ‘Each wound saps its strength.’
As if to prove his point he raked the Dream viciously with a razored paw. Black fluid bubbled out until it writhed and wailed. We fought on, and on, and all the while, the moon dipped lower in the sky beyond the wild road, heralding the possibility of an early dawn; but I feared that if we did not defeat it soon, we would never see it.
There came a moment when I thought we had our enemy beaten: lion and jaguar, our heads met, jaws clashing, as if the Dream had somehow emptied itself out into the air and left us biting on a hollow sac. I raised my head in anticipation of a victory, and even as I did so, I realised my mistake: for all the Dream had done was to withdraw itself into one corner of its membrane as if gathering its strength for a final onslaught. Black streamers came hurtling out of it, wrapped themselves around my grandfather and began to tighten their hold. His eyes went wide with shock.
‘Grandfather!’ I yelled, and gathered my hind legs to spring into the mêlée.
I got no further. Something was holding me by the tail. I whipped around, expecting to find myself entwined by hellish tentacles, but there, behind me, its sharp teeth meeting in my flesh, its feet planted foursquare against my leverage, was the burnished creature I had seen the previous day, aiding my grandfather as he limped across the common.
I roared at it, but it did not let go. A mad light burned in its tawny eyes. I whipped around in fury, swiping at it with huge forepaws, but it danced neatly sideways.
‘Get off me!’ I yowled in frustration, for my grandfather was now in the throes of the Dream, but all the fox did was to grin and constrict those inimical jaws a further notch.
What happened next will haunt me forever. I remember it only in a series of flickering images: the Dream rearing up so that the highway was forced to arch above it: my grandfather thrashing in its grasp; the highway beginning to tear itself apart under the force of their struggle, silently, like the teeth in a zipper unravelling one by one; a sudden roar of hot wind which scorched the whiskers off my face; then being whirled into the air as the highway convulsed, and falling at immense speed. The fox fell past me and vanished from view; but other images came. I do not know whether they were real or in my head alone, for they were very strange. I saw the world outside the highway, spiralling around and around; at one moment full of black light and white frost, then bright with August sunshine; the cottages by the pond crouching in the darkness were replaced by haycarts in an open field and people sweating as they worked in breeches and long dresses; empty trees stood stark against a moonlit sky, but crows rose cawing into blue air out of a giant, green-faced oak...
And then the ground – hard, frozen, cold as stone – came up and hit me.
I lay there, breathing hard, disorientated and confused.
Everything was deathly quiet: for a second. Then all hell broke loose. The gentle little highway that ran behind the church, past the pond and out to Ashmore Common was being ripped apart. It arched, maybe twenty feet above the frozen pond, almost translucent in the night air, and great rends showed in its sides through which spilled gouts of black and violent jets of steam. Inside it, two figures were locked in struggle, one holding the other with many arms, worrying at it as a terrier will worry at a rat.
One more shake and a single black shape came plummeting out of the broken highway. It was Hawkweed, free of the Dream at last. Twenty feet up and on his back, I saw him twist expertly, with the age-old skill and instinct of the falling cat. His tail whipped the air; his legs swivelled and splayed. Feet first, he hit the frozen pond.
For a moment he stood there, incongruously magnificent: a huge black jaguar, limned with silver light, roaring his defiance at his retreating enemy. Then a zigzag of cracks snapped their way across the ice, and down he went.
Without a thought for my own safety, I ran straight out over the crust towards him, my paws skidding uncontrollably on the pond’s slippery skin. It took the momentum out of my charge, and though I was more fortunate than my grandfather (for even thin ice will bear the weight of a small domestic cat) by the time I reached the jagged hole where he had gone down, all I could see, far below in the murky depths, was the amber light dying out of one outraged eye.
*
I do not know how long I sat there, staring into the dark, weed-tangled water, calling my grandfather’s name; but by the time I finally gave up all hope, the moon had gone and there were icicles in my fur.
The rage that had consumed me earlier that day deserted me when I needed it most. In place of the burning sun of fury I had felt at Dellifer’s needless death, all I had left at the thought of Hawkweed’s dramatic end was a cold pit of dread, hanging heavy inside me. I had failed my own grandfather. We had had the old enemy in our jaws, and I had let it go at the crucial moment. If I could have offered myself to the Great Cat then in place of the old dreamcatcher, I would happily have done so, for I was indeed the useless, snivelling, weak-kneed puppy; the fool of fools; the coward of cowards; all those things of which he had so often accused me.
As the cold deepened, my sense of horrible anticipation grew heavier. Slow and exhausted, it took me a long time to understand the irrevocable reason for my dread. It was not just that I had failed Hawkweed; it was that now he was finally gone, I was alone. Alone, to bear the burden he had been grooming me for all this while.
I was now the sole dreamcatcher of Ashmore, and as such I was facing a terrible challenge. It was now my fate, and mine alone, to hunt down and eat the Dream that had killed my grandfather, as it had killed so many dreamcatchers before him.
Weary in body and soul, I dragged myself to my feet. My legs and rear were numb with cold as I slipped and slid my way awkwardly across the pond to the rushes at its edge, but by the time I had reached the churchyard, hot aches had begun to flare up inside my skin. Strangely enough, the pain from this return to feeling proved t
o be all I needed to ignite my resolve.
*
Even in the grim light before dawn, the Dream was not hard to track.
I did not even have to use the highways to follow its destructive progress. Scorched trees, sere grass, flattened bushes: the Dream had torn through the village like a whirlwind. A large white dish dangled uselessly off one of the cottages on the old terrace; Christmas wreaths had been whipped off doors; small branches lay scattered in the road. I found the blond twins’ pet guinea pigs with blood oozing out of their eyes and nose, their sturdy cage a mess of chicken wire and splintered wood, their bedding straw strewn all over the garden. A chimney had collapsed through the roof at one of the alms cottages, and at the corner of the lane that led to the manor house a small wire-haired terrier stood barking madly, its lead wrapped around a broken lamp-post, its owner, who had presumably suffered a disturbed night and had risen in the early hours to take its restless dog for a walk, lying insensible beside it.
This last act of destruction seemed to have taken some of the sting out of its havoc: from here its path became hard to track. But I knew now where I was going: I knew where it had come from, and where it was returning, and I started to run.
*
There were lights on in the old manor house, but the Dream was not inside. As I crept through the towering stone gateway, I could see how a baleful glow dully illuminated its trail across the gardens. Skirting the open ground, I ran quickly towards the cedar where I had caught the dream I had followed from Lydia’s home, trying to keep as much under cover as I could manage. To the far east, a corner of sky was showing a glimmer of red light, a tremulous promise of dawn.
The Dream drifted languidly around the corner of the manor house and disappeared from view.
I seized my opportunity and galloped up the garden until I reached the herbaceous borders. From inside the house, I could hear raised voices, but I was past the stage of caring what people said or did to one another when they were conscious. Moving cautiously, I skirted the corner just in time to see the Dream float over the old orchard wall. I watched while it sailed aimlessly over the naked branches of the fruit trees, casting a morbid light, the unnatural antithesis to a shadow, as it passed, and then, brushing the wall on the other side, fell out of sight once more.
Cautious to the end, I walked around three sides of the orchard before catching up with my quarry, where it hovered over a collection of low-lying hedges, cut close and neat to form a complicated pattern. Over the centre of this convolution it bobbed gently, its streamers hanging from it like some particularly virulent jellyfish.
Then it floated to the ground, as if it had finally reached its destination.
With my tail low, walking down on my hocks, I crept around the edges of the knot garden. It took a little while to find an entrance, and when I did, I found I had to weave a path dictated by the complex planting, if I was to stay out of sight. Who knew what senses the Dream might possess? I did not intend to test the numerous eyes I had seen jumbled in its midst.
Approaching the middle of the pattern, I risked a glimpse over the hedges, and there was my enemy, a pool of black, pulsing quietly in the centre of the maze, as if recharging its energies.
I wasted no time. Had I stopped to think for even a moment, I might just have taken to my heels, and not stopped running till I was past Ashmore, into Westley and far, far beyond. Had I stopped to think, it might have occurred to me that out here beyond the wild roads I was no more than a small domestic cat, singularly lacking in the armoury with which I had failed to stop the Dream before. But I had the heart of the lion, if not its weight and size, and I launched myself upon the monstrosity with all twenty claws extended and my jaws open wide.
It was like falling upon a creature that should have been long dead, for all it smelled and gave beneath me, but even so, it squealed like a rabbit when an owl breaks its back and twisted in panic beneath my grip. I felt its panic, and it fuelled my efforts, so that I bit and ripped and swallowed and tried to ignore the burning liquids that shot from the thing, and the shreds of horror that peeled away from its bulk, biting back at me with discorporate mouths. I gulped down its bitter guts, blanking my mind against the images with which it tried to break me; all but one. It was failing, and I could sense my victory, when it threw up an effigy that set my heart racing: a small golden cat, held in a mechanical vice, rolling her beautiful eyes in pain and despair.
It was Lydia.
I blinked and stared, my teeth still embedded in the Dream’s membrane, but the image burrowed away from me and out of sight. Frenzied, I went after it, burying my head in that noxious sac so that vile fluids burst open, soaking into my fur, my ears, my nose. I felt myself choking. I felt the Dream’s glee.
It began to constrict, as if every remaining part of itself was a muscle. The world started to darken around me. I struggled to breathe. So this is the end of it all, I thought dully: first Dellifer, then Hawkweed, and now the hopeless apprentice dreamcatcher...
Then there was a cry and something thumped hard into one side of me, and a second later, something else slammed into the other flank. My head shot back out into the air and I rolled, gasping, to the ground. Black stars filled my eyes. A terrible caterwauling split the night: a high-pitched yipping; a bubbling yowl, and the moaning wails of the Dream under assault. I staggered to my feet, only to find the fox who had prevented me from saving my grandfather now, inexplicably, savaging my enemy. And beside him, up to her elbows in black bile, was my friend Millefleur.
My heart welled up inside me and I set to again with renewed will. Between the three of us we drove the thing around that maze. It tried to flee, but found itself hemmed in, the fox blocking its exit in one direction, while Millie and I attacked it from another.
The Dream did not go quietly. It thrashed and shrieked, and lashed out with its ragged tentacles, but at last we got it cornered.
‘Orlando,’ the fox said, addressing me for the first time. ‘This unnatural thing must be yours to despatch. It is your task: it was what you were born and raised to do. You are the seventh Dreamcatcher: it is the Seventh Dream. I know this better than most: it has been my task, and that of your grandfather, to ensure you were brought safely to this point in fate and time. Only you can kill it, Orlando; and only here.’
I stared at him, still muddled from the lack of oxygen and the poisons I had inhaled. The image of Lydia, bound in her world of pain, tormented me, and in the end it was that which drove me forward, a feral grin stretched across my face. I leapt upon my enemy for the last time, bit it to the core and felt it burst its viscera over me with a savage satisfaction. I think now that I had somehow decided that Liddy was trapped inside it, and that by rending it in such a manner I would somehow release her from its toils; but all that emerged from the Dream, at last, was a sigh of anguish, even of relief.
I lay, stunned and exhausted, in a stinking pool, the bile drying to tacky peaks in my fur in that freezing dawn, gluing my eyelids shut. Millie sat beside me, and with much spitting and many frank expressions of disgust, started to groom my spattered face. The fox gazed down at me over her shoulder.
‘You did well, Orlando,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘Hawkweed would be very proud.’
But I could not think straight. I barely knew who or where I was. I opened my mouth, but all that came out was, ‘Lydia—’
Millefleur’s head shot back as if I had bitten her and her eyes became unnaturally bright. She emitted a small, strangled cry, then turned and ran.
The fox gave me a disappointed look. ‘Alas, a hero; but still a fool.’
I struggled upright and stared after Millie’s disappearing form, her tabby fur eloquent with the new sun’s red light as she fled across the lawns, and a terrible, inexplicable sadness flooded into me.
‘But, why?’
The fox shook its head. ‘Females are complex, jealous creatures, my friend. And males are stupid and blundering. It’s a rather unfortunate combination. One of
Nature’s rare mistakes.’
‘Like the Dream?’
The fox looked at me curiously. ‘You really are the fool your grandfather said you were. I thought he exaggerated. I said, “Give the lad a chance, he’ll learn: it’s his destiny to learn.” However, I must say that you’re slower even than I expected, which is most alarming.’
This pleased me not at all. I was just about to ask him who the hell he thought he was, to appear and disappear at will and issue such ungenerous pronouncements, when I heard a door creak open behind me.
‘Run!’ the fox cried urgently, and took to his heels.
But as if to set the final seal of logic on his judgement, I was, inevitably, too slow. A naked crone had emerged from the house and when she saw me, she smiled. I quailed before her and my paws made pathetic little mimes of running as she bent to examine me. I closed my eyes as if to banish her presence, but a pair of hands caught me firmly around the ribs, taking the last of my precious breath, and though I struggled feebly I was hauled up and away and borne into the house my grandfather called the Nonesuch.
The last observation I could make before unconsciousness took me was this: I recognised that crone’s mouth; that hair, those eyes. I had swallowed them down, in all their vile, myriad forms, a dozen times in the past hour alone.
25
Anna woke. Her heart thumped painfully against her ribs. There was cold sweat on her neck and shoulders, and the duvet had hobbled her legs. She lay curled and panting in the dark, fighting off the heavy pull of sleep. Bits of her nightmares kept replaying themselves in meaningless juxtaposition. One moment she was in some deserted house, opening a door; the next she was trying to make progress through a crowd of refugees. The house, she could have sworn, was one she knew. She recognised those corridors, those uneven walls. The war zone, though, was unrecognisable. A man cried out in a distant street. There were klaxons blaring, megaphones commanding everyone to keep moving. Anna struggled on against the tide, getting an elbow in her chest, a hand in her face, a dragging at her feet. Dismal concrete structures towered above her, mortar-scarred, their windows shattered by bullets. Someone she loved was held against his will in that town. The war was barely a prelude to the disaster that would ensue if she did not reach him.