“In the dream, it had some of Cabeswater inside it,” Ronan continued, and intoned, “If it works in the dream, it works in real life.”
“Does it work? Give me the short version.”
“Asshole. No. It doesn’t. It does, in fact, jack shit.” Ronan dug back through the tack box, lifting out various other failed attempts, all of them puzzling. A shimmering ribbon, a tuft of grass still growing from a lump of dirt, a forked branch. He let Adam hold some of them; they all felt strange. Too heavy, like gravity weighted them more than it should. And they smelled vaguely familiar, like Ronan, or like Cabeswater.
If Adam thought about it — or rather, if he didn’t think about it — he could feel the pulse of the ley line in each.
“I had a bag of sand, too,” Ronan said, “but I spilled it.”
Hours of dreaming. He had driven an hour each day to park his car and curl in this chair and sleep alone.
“Why here? Why do you come here to do it?”
Voice toneless, Ronan said, “Sometimes I dream of wasps.”
Adam imagined it then: Ronan waking in Monmouth Manufacturing, a dream object clutched in his hands, wasps crawling in his bedsheets, Gansey unaware in the other room.
No, he could not dream wildly in Monmouth.
Lonesome.
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get hurt out here by yourself?” Adam asked.
Ronan scoffed. Him, fear for his own life. But there was something in his eyes, still. He studied his hands and admitted, “I’ve dreamt him a box of EpiPens. I dream cures for stings all the time. I carry one. I put them in the Pig. I have them all over Monmouth.”
Adam felt a ferocious and cruel hope. “Do they work?”
“I don’t know. And there’s no way to find out before it actually happens. There won’t be a rematch.” Ronan took two objects from the tack box and stood. “Here. Field trip time. Let’s go to the lab.”
With one arm he braced a bright blue polar fleece blanket against his body. On the other he draped a slab of moss like a waiter’s towel.
“Do you want me to carry one?” Adam asked.
“Fuck, no.”
Adam got the door for him.
In the main room of the barn, Ronan took his time walking among the cows, pausing to look into their faces or cocking his head to observe their markings. Finally, he stopped by a chocolate-brown cow with a jagged stripe down her friendly face. He shoved her motionless side with the toe of his boot and explained, “It works better if they seem more … I don’t know. Particular. If it looks like something I might have dreamt myself.”
It looked like a cow to Adam. “So what is it about this one?”
“Looks fucking friendly. Bovine the boy wizard.” He set the blue blanket on the floor. Carefully. Then he ordered, “Feel its pulse. Don’t just stare at it. Pulse. On its face. There. There, Parrish, God. There.”
Adam gingerly trailed his fingers across the cow’s short facial hair until he felt the animal’s slow pulse.
Ronan hefted the blanket of moss across the cow’s withers. “And now?”
Adam wasn’t sure what he was supposed to see. He felt nothing, nothing, nothing — ah, but there it was. The cow’s pulse had accelerated fractionally. Again, he imagined Ronan here on his own, so hopeful for a change that he would have noted such a subtle difference. It was far more dedication than he had thought Ronan Lynch capable of.
Lonesome.
He asked, “Is this the closest you’ve gotten?”
Ronan scoffed. “Did you think I would bother showing you just this? There’s one more. Do you need to piss first?”
“Ha.”
“No, seriously.”
“I’m good.”
Ronan turned to the other object he’d brought out. It was not the blue blanket, as Adam had expected, but rather something wrapped inside the blanket. Whatever was inside couldn’t be larger than a shoe box or a large book. It didn’t seem very heavy.
And if Adam’s eyes didn’t deceive him, Ronan Lynch was afraid of it.
Ronan took a deep breath. “Okay, Parrish.”
He unwrapped it.
Adam looked.
Then he looked away.
Then he looked back.
It was a book, he thought. And then he didn’t know why he thought it was a book; it was a bird. No, a planet. A mirror.
It was none of those things. It was a word. It was a cupped word in Ronan’s hand that wanted to be said out loud, but he didn’t want to, but actually he did —
Then Adam looked away again, because he couldn’t keep his eyes on it anymore. He could feel himself going mad trying to name it.
“What is it?” he asked.
Ronan eyed it, but sideways, with his chin tilted away from it. He looked younger than he usually did, his face softened by uncertainty and caution. Sometimes Gansey would tell stories of the Ronan he had known before Niall had died; now, looking at this fallible Ronan, Adam thought he might be able to believe them.
Ronan said, “A piece of Cabeswater. A piece of a dream. It’s what I asked for. And this is … this is what I think it should look like, probably.”
Adam felt the truth of it. This awful and impossible and lovely object was what a dream was when it had nothing to inhabit. Who was this person who could dream a dream into a concrete shape? No wonder Aglionby bored Ronan.
Adam looked at it. He looked away.
He asked, “Does it work?”
Ronan’s expression sharpened. He held the dream thing beside the cow’s face. Light, or something like light, reflected off it onto Ronan’s chin and cheeks, rendering him stark and handsome and terrifying and someone else. Then he blew on it. His breath passed through the word, the mirror, the unwritten line.
Adam heard a whisper in his ear. Something moved and stirred inside him. Ronan’s eyelashes fluttered darkly.
What are we doing —
The cow shifted.
Not a lot. But her head tilted; one ear flicked. Like she was sleepily jostling a fly from it. A muscle shivered near her spine.
Ronan’s eyes were open; fires burned in them. He breathed again, and again the cow twitched her ear. Tensed her lips.
But she did not wake, and she did not rise.
He retreated, hiding the dream from Adam’s maddened sight.
“I’m missing something still,” Ronan said. “Tell me what I’m missing.”
“Maybe you just can’t wake someone else’s dream.”
Ronan shook his head. He didn’t care if it was impossible. He was going to do it anyway.
Adam gave in. “Power. It takes a lot of power. Most of what I’m doing when I repair the ley line is making better connections so the energy can run more efficiently. Maybe you could find a way to direct a stub of the line out here.”
“Already thought of it. Not interested. I don’t want to make a bigger cage. I want to open the door.”
They regarded each other. Adam fair and cautious, Ronan dark and incendiary. This was Ronan at his most truthful.
Adam asked, “Why? Tell me the real reason.”
“Matthew —” Ronan began again, and stopped again.
Adam waited.
Ronan said, “Matthew’s mine. He’s one of mine.”
Adam didn’t understand.