The Shadowed Path

21. Lawrence

21

Lawrence

I walked to the edge of the clearing and tried to ignore the baleful look Sir Raleigh gave me. “Coward,” he seemed to say. My skin held on to the memory of Reine's feel and weight against me, and I relished the way her soft hair had brushed over my biceps and chest.

The sense of restlessness burned through me, a push-pull of desire and caution. My inner gargoyle seemed to be confused about the whole situation. Why didn't I just claim her? He wanted to know. I wanted her, she seemed to want me, and wasn't it time I took a mate? Sometimes my inner gargoyle seemed to channel my mother and her various guilt trips.

The moon had risen overhead, paving the way in silvery light that poured through me as well, a calming benediction for a creature of stone and earth. I had never felt the moon as I did here, and I debated going back and retrieving my backpack in order to note the sensations. However, something drew me forward, tugging at my protective instincts. The sense of the ground, the dirt and stone beneath me, also felt more vivid than in my home realm, lending confirmation to what I’d been taught—that gargoyles had once lived in fairy and been the guardians of the high Fae. What had happened to make the atmosphere so toxic for us? Or had that been a result of the break between gargoyle and Fae, since this was a realm where it was impossible to hide the truth? An interesting irony, that, considering how deceptive the Fae could be in spite of their inability to lie.

I drew on the power of the minerals beneath me, and they gladly gave it up for an earth elemental. In spite of my size, I managed to cloak myself so I appeared to be just one of the shadows. I gave into the impulse to follow the narrow dirt trail in front of me and soon heard voices.

The path opened onto another clearing, this one also ringed with standing stones, and with a large reflective pane of obsidian—the preferred surface here, I noticed—at the far end. The healer gnome stood in front of it, and she was flanked by two others, whom I sensed were younger. One of them wore a robe of light gray, and I could only see the back of her head and tips of her ears over it. The other one wore black, and the only way I knew she was female was from her voice.

"When do the dreams start, mother?"

The words came through somewhat distorted, and I frowned, then had the sense of an old piece of magic clicking into place.

“The old bond between gargoyle and the Fae creatures,” something explained to me. “In order to protect the high Fae, they allowed your kind to be able to understand the languages of the others as long as you could channel the power of the moon, which lightens and also hides.”

I bowed my head in thanks and wriggled my fingers to dispel the compulsion to find something to write on. The situation not only piqued my scientist's curiosity, but also a sense of my heritage and how I could potentially fill in the gaps in gargoyle history.

“Later, my son. Pay attention now so you can protect.”

Gah! More questions, but I obeyed and turned my attention back to the gnomes.

"Patience, daughter. It takes time for brains to reach dream sleep. They need to go through other stages first."

I wish I could ask if she knew this from her own studies here, or if they had some way to know about the human science of sleep medicine and what it had found. I chose to remain hidden. Something told me that things were about to get very interesting.

The gnome in black spoke again. "Maybe you should have increased the dose of dream wort you put in the food."

Interesting and disturbing. So why hadn't I succumbed like the others? Right, because I didn't absorb food and air as efficiently in this realm. I wished I could set up a lab, take blood, and do some analyses to see how and where I fell short, what enzyme or whatever else I lacked. Did the healer gnome know? Probably not, or she would have managed to figure out something to compensate for it.

While we were both in the business of healing others, she apparently had other, sinister intent. Or perhaps she and the king had agreed for her to spy on us so she could report to him what was going on in our subconsciouses. I could see how that would be interesting, although I didn't know how useful it would be.

Images flickered across the obsidian, and the three gnomes clasped hands and began a murmuring chant so quiet I couldn't make out the words to it. Multiple foggy fragments of dreams played out, and they appeared and disappeared so quickly I couldn't tell which belonged to whom. Well, except for the one featuring some sort of large rodent. I guessed that belonged to Sir Raleigh.

The main healer gnome, whom I decided to refer to as Mother, as the others had, raised her hands, palms facing the stone.

"Great goddess of the night, revealer of hopes and dreams, thank you for your blessings. Please heed our cry to you for help knowing the strangers in our midst."

The fragments stabilized, and they played out in quadrants, although they still looked hazy, like we watched through fog or some weird camera filter.

The gnome in black shook her hood back, revealing a head full of luminous, blond hair. "Which one belongs to the girl?"

Mother, whose hands still faced the stone, spread them, enlarging the movie playing out in the lower left quadrant and covering the others. The three of them leaned forward to see some sort of detail I couldn't make out from where I was. In fact, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the scene that played out in spite of my desire to allow my adopted godchild her privacy.

The scene took place from Kestrel's point of view, and so it tracked what she saw and chose to look at. It was back in the main CPDC laboratory, and it bounced back and forth between Lucius Cimex waving a gun and her mother during their final argument. I placed a hand over my heart as the ache of loss, and the knowledge that what I experienced could only be a shade of the grief she experienced, split my chest. Poor kid. This had been an adventure for her, but there would still be sorrow and adjustment when she returned to the Earth realm.

Although I knew how the scene ended, I wanted it to be different, desperately desired for Lucius to miss, for Beverly to duck, something… I tensed, knowing the final conclusion would occur any moment.

A golden glow filled the scene, and instead of shooting, Lucius lowered the gun, and Corey tackled him, knocking it away. Beverly stood, shaking, and Kestrel rushed to her. The three gnomes bowed their heads, as did I, in sympathy at what Kestrel must be experiencing and how she would wake from the joy and relief to find out it was all a dream, and she could very well be in a different kind of living nightmare.

The gnome in gray broke the silence. "Go back a few seconds. There was something…"

Mother rotated her hands in a backward wheel motion. Well, I supposed that's what they had to do without remotes, and I admired the control. The scene rewound to just before the golden glow had taken it from a memory to a fantasy, and all three of them leaned forward again.

"There it is, see?" The one in black pointed to something at the lower left corner. "Like at the beginning."

The silver-cloaked gnome c****d her head. "Are you sure it's not a piece of her hair in the periphery of her vision? It's the same color. What do you think, Mother?"

"It could be either. The vagueness shows that she isn't aware of it."

I strained to see what they talked about, but I was too far away. Mother zoomed it out, and it appeared to be a blur of orange-red, sort of in the shape of an animal, but like a photo had been taken while it moved. It was streaked with gold, though, so it could have been her hair.

The blonde gnome huffed. "Was it really there? Can't you make it clearer?"

Mother turned and gave her a warning look. "I've done what I can. I cannot extrapolate more than what the dreamer sees."

The other dream watcher, who seemed to be the mediator between the other two, asked, "Should we go back into her dream, then? See if she loops through again?"

I almost sighed as the tension between Mother and the black-cloaked gnome dissipated. I suspected the two younger ones were sisters, even if they were not the actual daughters of Mother. They had a certain connection, and the way the atmosphere felt with the three of them told me that this type of conflict and distraction-resolution happened frequently.

Mother brought her hands together, then popped them apart, fingers spread. The image they'd been studying disappeared, to be replaced by a close-up of Corey's face. His golden eyes sparkled as he leaned over Kestrel, and I caught the curve of his naked shoulder as he brought a hand forward to caress her cheek.

I almost shouted, “Whoa, stop!” but caught myself. Luckily Mother brought her hands together, and the four foggy images reappeared with more fog over whatever Kestrel was dreaming.

"Awwww!" the two younger gnomes chorused, their disappointment evident.

Mother scowled at one, then the other. "Remember your dream ethics, Daughters. The girl deserves her privacy."

"But he's so nice-looking. A shifter, couldn't you tell?"

"Yes, Daughter, I could. The girl has her own set of complications. Alas, I don't know that we can give our king any more information than what he already suspects. Our evidence was not conclusive, as is often the case with that sort of thing."

I wanted to ask, “What? What does he suspect?” but I held my tongue. Mother dismissed the other two, who left the clearing by a different path than the one I crouched beside. Perhaps they'd go on to have their own dreams of handsome shifters in compromising situations, hopefully without the complications. Kestrel's relationship with Corey wasn't nearly as secret as the two of them wanted to believe, but I had never gotten up the courage to ask her about it, to see if she wanted to confide in me because her parents and I were such good friends. Had she and Beverly ever talked about Kestrel and Corey? I didn't know, and now I couldn't ask Beverly.

Mother turned back to the screen. "And now for some treason," she muttered. She turned to the top right quadrant and zoomed it out, again with her hands.

This one must have been Reine's. I could tell because of the wisps of white-blonde hair that blew across her vision. She climbed a rocky path, and while lightning split the sky around her, no rain fell. Again, there was no sound.

An older Fae, whose age only showed in the depth of her eyes, appeared at the top. She wore a sparkling platinum crown, and I could see the resemblance between her and Reine. This must be her grandmother.

"Yessssss," Mother hissed. "I will be well-rewarded for this."

Reine bowed, showing her focus shifting to the ground in front of the other Fae's feet, and then back up. I crept closer, willing to do something to distract the older gnome from spying on Reine, whom I suspected was not having a dream. However, the older Fae—Tatiana, I believe—looked up and seemed to be gazing out of the crystal.

"Be still, Reine. We are not alone."

Reine looked around, her frown showing she could only see the blackness of the storm clouds around her. She returned her gaze to her grandmother, who looked through Reine and out to us.

"You need your rest, gargoyle. And as for you, healer gnome, you are not welcome here."

Tatiana moved her right hand like she flung something, and the obsidian screen shattered into a glittering cloud of black shards.

Mother emerged from under her cloak, which had saved her from injury, and turned toward me. I froze.

"Well, don't just stand there, gargoyle. You're an earth elemental. Help me clean this up, and we'll talk about what you saw."