Greywaren (Dreamer Trilogy, #3)

by Maggie Stiefvater

She knew that when it came to brass tacks, Niall would sooner watch her leave than cut Ronan’s throat so they could go back to the way it was. Which meant it was over, the grand experiment in paradise.

Because Niall knew both her and the dreaming, he could already imagine what she was thinking. A Niall to go off with Mór. A Mór to stay here with Niall. Perhaps a bag to keep their old memories in, so that they never did it (manifest a god, fall in love) ever again.

“Haven’t you seen? We dream reality,” Mór said. “We make reality.”

I thought he preferred Ronan,” Declan said. It was the most ridiculous thing to say. It was the most meaningless of takeaways. But out it came.

Niall had stayed, always choosing Declan, a life with Declan beside him as much as possible. A life with Ronan, because Declan had cared for him when no one else yet did.

His father had loved him, adored him, favored him. Given up everything for him. “You had to know you were the favorite,” the new Fenian said. “Didn’t I—he take you everywhere with him that he could?”

“It was important for Ronan to know he was just as loved as you,” the new Fenian said. “The consequences of something like that feeling wronged … It was important he be raised a son, not a monster or a pet.” But the problem was that Ronan had ended up feeling like a monster or a pet, Declan thought. And he had turned out to be dangerous to the world, and to himself. A lifetime of being raised as a human and then told, upon adulthood, that no, being human was not going to work out for him.

Long before any of them were born, the planet had already been made up of both dreams and non-dreams, and what was good for one wasn’t necessarily good for the other.

All this time, the biggest lie Declan had told himself was that he hated his father. What he’d really meant, every time he thought it, every single day, was: I miss him.

The fear of discovery had always been present during Declan’s childhood. They were not to speak of any of the dreaming that took place at the Barns—not Ronan’s, not Niall’s. They were not to speak of where the money came from. They were not to speak of where Matthew had been born. They were not to have friends over to the Barns; Ronan was not to ask to sleep elsewhere.

Declan had been practicing secrecy his entire life. He had never practiced trust.

“I shot him,” Mór said, from behind the wheel. “And I’ll do the same to you unless you answer the question.” Farooq-Lane’s voice was aghast. “Is he hurt?” “Of course he’s hurt,” the new Fenian replied. “Have you ever been shot?”

It was hard not to think about being shot. Every thought began and ended with it. The pain didn’t even feel like it was coming from the wound anymore; it was radiating through every part of him, a sun of agony, shining out through his fingertips, his eyes, out his parted lips like a sundog.

You can trust us to do this, the new Fenian had said. Declan was not good at trusting anyone.

He would not risk her being connected to it, which meant he needed to think of someone else he trusted. But everyone else he trusted was sleeping or dead.

“Christ,” said the new Fenian, sounding an awful lot like Niall. “Call a fecking social worker,” added Mór, sounding nothing like Aurora.

On cue, the new Fenian handed her the ink through the window. Then he swiveled to Declan with a single pill pinched between thumb and forefinger and said sharply, “Not a minute longer, boyo. I can’t stand you like this.”

How badly Declan wanted it. How badly he wanted to trust that someone else would make sure the world didn’t burn down without him. How badly he wanted to be a son again, a kid again, to let someone else carry this. Carry him

Humans only lived for decades, but it turned out, when you were human, that felt like a long time.

Come on, Ronan Lynch. I went through the Lace for you, asshole. I need you now.

How long had he been asking: Tell me what I am? Never once had he simply decided for himself.

“Fuck you,” he told her. “This is so good.” She gave him a ghost of a smile. “Welcome back, Ronan Lynch.”

“Where’s Adam?” Hennessy asked, “What?” “Adam. My Adam. Adam!”

But he closed his eyes, and in that darkness, he could still see the bright threads of the sweetmetals. The bright orbs of Adam’s consciousness. Kicking was something this body had done back when he was younger, when he was a kid. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was barely even Ronan Lynch anymore. He didn’t have to take up any of that body’s habits that he didn’t need anymore.

What would Hennessy have been without Jay? Jordan.

Jordan thought her time at the Charlotte Club would have been a perfectly nice time, except for the dust, and the bombs, and the body.

This entire time, even as Nathan had descended the stairs, Ronan had not taken his eyes off Adam Parrish’s body. He was still fixated on it now, his entire posture almost leaning toward him. Even if Farooq-Lane had not known anything about the relationship between the two of them, she would have guessed it by the shape of the space between Adam’s motionless body and Ronan’s coiled one.

“And you can speak to one of those things now?” Farooq-Lane asked faintly. “That can wake ley lines?” He said, “I am one of those things.”

Now, here was that Ronan in the waking world, looking both young and old. On one hand, a young man with a tattoo still new enough to be angry, a pugnacious set to his shoulders, a defiant way of planting his boots on the wood floor. On the other hand, there was something ancient in his eyes. He no longer looked torn between. He was both at once; there was no dissonance. I am one of those things, he had said. She believed him.

She knew the Lace would be waiting. You’ve been through it once before. You made it all the way through to Ronan Lynch. Don’t forget. You beat it once already. Everything had changed. She had changed. She would not be afraid.

“I need a home-team advantage here, Hennessy,” Ronan said, hoping she could hear him, hoping he didn’t have to elucidate.

“On it,” Hennessy said. The dream spread like watercolor into a different scene: It was now a landscape, but without land. The dreamers were falling through an endless stormy sky, nothing but lightning and clouds around them. Clever, Ronan thought. Nothing to grab. But it was more than clever, it was personal. She’d seen what Ronan looked like in the dream before she held him, when he must have still looked a lot like the Lace-like entity he was in the sweetmetal sea. She knew what atmospheres he could thrive in.

He heard a shattered scream from the direction of the Lace. It was the sound Adam had made when he was torn away. The nature of it was so precise, so exact, such a perfect rendition of how Adam had sounded that he knew it was just a copy of that moment, not a new one. It was not Hennessy screaming now, it was Adam, screaming then. Not something he could prevent now. Something he had not prevented before. Ronan knew it was just to distract him. But it worked.

There was a voice in Ronan’s dream. You know this isn’t how the world is supposed to be. It was everywhere and nowhere. At night, we used to see stars. You could see by starlight back then, after the sun went down. Hundreds of headlights chained together in the sky, good enough to eat, good enough to write legends about, good enough to launch men at. You don’t remember because you were born too late. Maybe I underestimate you. Your head’s full of dreams. They must remember. Does any part of you still look at the sky and hurt

You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.

All the dreams he’d failed to control. The murder crabs. The sundogs. Matthew. Bryde. When something was really important to him, he always fucked it up.

Don’t be only human just now, Ronan Lynch. Ronan thought of how he had just woken the ley line, a thing he would have never believed possible only a few years before. He thought of how he would never again feel powerless, because he wasn’t going to lie to himself anymore, hiding from the truth just because he was afraid of taking on the decisions himself, afraid of being wrong. He was Greywaren, and he belonged in both worlds.

Turning just enough to let him see that while Ronan was making the fire, the Lace had gathered together the orbs that made up Adam Parrish’s mind. And brought them just close enough for him to see. To reach. To save. To make back into Adam Parrish. One last chance to save Adam and bring him back to his body in the waking world. All he had to do was put down the fire he had begun to build. You have a choice, the Lace said.

Ronan believed it could be done, and that was all that mattered. Ronan made reality, either through dreaming or stubbornness, both good and bad.

Adam had recently realized Ronan was a weakness to his ambition, since it was harder to work with two moving pieces rather than one, but he couldn’t talk himself out of it. He tried each night he was alone in the apartment over St. Agnes, and he failed every time he saw Ronan again. He was in love with Ronan, and he was in love with this lonesome green valley, and although he could not work out how either dovetailed with his addiction to the future, for the summer, he put his reservations away. He just lived in the moment with Ronan instead.

College and forest were the same sort of concept, because both of them were full of both hope and dread. What would happen at the end of the summer? Adam could not stay at the Barns forever. Ronan could not leave the Barns forever.

Ronan would not tell Adam not to go, or to go to a college near to him. Adam would not tell him he did not want to do a long-distance relationship, because he had lost the knack for being unhappy and tired and strung out with balancing acts.

Dreaming is about intention, and Ronan intended for this forest to last. He intended for this forest to tell him how to exist in the future as a dreamer. He intended for this forest to be able to survive without him. He intended for this forest to want him. (It was about Adam, of course.)

“I know I’m going,” Adam said, repeating the thing he’d said over and over, “but I’ll always come back, as long as you’re here.” “I’ll be here,” Ronan said. “I’ll always be here.” They kept saying it. The less true it felt, the more they said it. Magic is about intention. So are conversations.

Neither Ronan nor Adam had been trained in the difficult and nuanced art of having a future. They had only ever learned the art of surviving the past.

The fire had to go out. It could not devour the rest of the world, it could not churn over the surface, ending everything, no matter how miserable Ronan was over Adam’s ruined, empty body; no matter how miserable he was over the memory of Matthew’s golden smile; no matter how remembering Declan saying Be dangerous made him feel.

The dreamers and the people who loved them had not gone far,

Jordan Hennessy and Jordan Hennessy turned to observe the scene before them.

Slowly, Ronan Lynch sputtered to movement, trying to sit up even before his body was fully willing, scrambling, his voice disbelieving: “Adam?” Adam, who had been sitting quietly all this time beside Ronan, grinned weakly as Ronan seized him around the neck in a crushing, desperate hug. Hennessy and Jordan watched the two of them kneeling in the grass, just clinging to each other.

To see how Adam’s face just wore a raw relief, a peace, as he held on to Ronan, his eyes open and gazing up into the blue sky. To see Ronan finally say something into his ear and Adam close his eyes and sigh.