Reverie

by Ryan La Sala

“Hey,” Sophia murmured. “We’re all glad that you’re okay. That’s what matters most. We should be grateful for just that.” A stitch of guilt pulled tighter in Kane’s chest. He agreed that being okay was what mattered most. He just didn’t agree that okay was what he was.

They wore a fitted suit sashed at the waist and sleek pants trimmed in satin, all of their outfit rendered in a rich, golden fabric that revealed an elusive pattern beneath the lamplight. Even their skin glowed with a gold luster, shifting as they sat. Kane sat, too, a bit dazzled by the person’s faultless face, which would not allow him to answer the question as to whether this person was a man, a woman, both, or neither. They slipped a pad of paper from their bag and peered at Kane through curled lashes. “What, you’ve never seen a man in mascara?” he said, answering the question on Kane’s face. “I’m sorry.” Kane’s cheeks burned. How often had this man caught people staring? How many times had he been asked that question? How many more times had he answered it without being asked, just for the sake of people uncomfortable with ambiguity, who ignored what this person had to say while instead wondering viciously at his identity?

“If you look at most female archetypes—the mother, the virgin, the whore—their power comes from their relation to men. But not the Witch. The Witch derives her power from nature. She calls forth her dreams with spells and incantations. With poetry. And I think that’s why we are frightened of them. What’s scarier to the world of men than a woman limited only by her imagination?”

“There is a dangerous truth within you, Mr. Montgomery, that not even the most competent artifice will conceal for long. And, as with all dangerous truths, the trick to surviving it is letting it out in a way you can control.” Dr. Poesy leaned even closer. “People like us? We must tell our stories ourselves, you know, or else they will destroy us in their own violent making. And I assure you this truth will destroy you, too, if you’re not careful. It’ll crack you apart from the inside out”—Kane

“Be careful. The things we cannot outrun are the things we must fight, and you are no fighter. You will need help. You will need me, and I do not provide for liars.”

Kane breathed steadiness into his nerves, imagining their frantic energy drifting from his hands as waves of writhing static. He shook himself out, hopping in a small circle, then hopping in the reverse direction to undo the coil. These small rituals often worked for him, and the tension eased from his body. He had made it this far, hadn’t he? He wasn’t going to let himself crack apart now.

To some, the sudden onset of magic might be shocking, but to Kane it was owed. Ever since he was little, and ever since he knew he was different, he had woven the hope for magic into every one of the world’s disappointments. Every sneer, every snuck glance, every birthday spent alone with Sophia as his only guest. Each felt like a debt. Prove to me that it’s all been worth it, he used to tell the universe. Let me have power that they can’t take from me. Like the X-Men. Like Sailor Moon. Like Avatar Korra. He thought that if he suffered enough, magic might find him in a moment of insurmountable peril. Telekinesis, like Carrie. Or control of water, like Sailor Mercury.

“Reveries are what happens when a person’s imagined world becomes real. They’re like miniature realities, with their own plots and rules and perils.

“Just because something is imagined doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. Sometimes the things we believe in are the most dangerous things about us. That’s why people build entire worlds in their minds. Because they think they’re safe, but they’re wrong. Dreams are like parasites. They grow up in the dark within us, and they grow deadly.

“What happens if I don’t want to?” Poesy eyed him with unrestrained pity. “Saving the world isn’t usually a matter of want, Mr. Montgomery. How cowardly you must be to balance the destruction of reality upon the scales of your own heart. And how selfish.”

Kane thought of the small house Maxine lived in, that he was sure Helena lived in, too. He thought of the second bedroom full of watercolor paintings doomed to fade under winter’s sun. Helena and Maxine were described as friends, but was that true? Or was “friend” just a lie the world told about two elderly women who chose to live together, away from everyone else, in their own world of wonder? Kane thought of the house’s single bedroom. He thought of the gloomy, covert life so many queer people were forced to live as they found one another in a time and a world that could not adjust to them. He thought of secret meetings and secret names, and the secret sadness that grew like mold in the humidity of a life kept closed. This reverie was not just dreams and whimsy, like Kane had thought. It was a person’s psychology, rendered in vivid fantasy. They had waltzed in the ballroom of an old woman’s loss and wandered the corridors of her grief. This party was her pain, this garden her purgatory, and they were just playing dress-up in it. Meddling, like it was a game.

While he did, he thought of Helena. He owed her and Adeline for a lesson learned too late: sometimes a person’s dreams are all they have and taking them away can break a heart or even stop a body. The act of crushing a dream can’t be minimized. At best, it’s mean. At worst, it’s murder.

Etherea taps into our subconscious and materializes our fantasies, correct? Well, some people have bad fantasies and believe bad things about themselves. Whatever Poesy’s method is, I think she filters etherea through our pain, and the result is a power that we fear. That’s a pretty ingenious way of making sure none of us grow too power hungry or surpass her, I would say.”

“I have been helping you.” “Helping me survive is not helping me achieve.”

“You think just because you’ve faced trauma you’re excused from treating people with compassion?

He reminded himself of the few reveries he’d witnessed. They all taught him something new about the way dreams inhabit a person. Dreams can be parasites we sacrifice ourselves to. Dreams can be monstrous, beautiful things incubated in misery and hatched by spite. Or dreams can be the artifacts we excavate to discover who we really are.

“That’s the thing about a big imagination. It’s hard to belong anywhere when you can always imagine something better. I wouldn’t worry about settling just yet, though. You’re very young. Lots of time to figure out what you want, and then make it happen. But not if you stay here.”