“And if we fix the ley lines?” Ronan asked. “The disease goes away?”
Bryde didn’t answer right away. He let the wind buffet him; that was the way to keep from being knocked off the board. To bend, not break. Then he said, “A healthy body can withstand illness. Can live alongside it. A world full of ley energy doesn’t support dreamers and dreams only along the lines any more than a healthy body is only vital directly along the veins. It is vital from head to toe. Brain and lungs, kidney and hands. Fix the ley lines, and dreamers and dreams simply exist wherever they like.”
A world where Matthew could just live.
A world where Ronan could just dream.
A world where every dream was clear and crisp and easy to navigate, so there were never accidents or nightmares.
He wanted it.
It had been so long since he’d wanted something to happen, instead of wanting something to not happen. He’d forgotten what it felt like. It was equal parts great and terrible. It burned.
“Restoring the ley lines is a game of dominos,” Bryde said. “If we addressed each domino separately, we would never be done. Dominos would be set back up as soon as we turned our backs. And we’d be stopped before we were anywhere close to done. But instead we focus only on the dominos that will knock over many others.”
“Cool metaphor,” Ronan said. “What are the dominos?”
“You already know,” Bryde said dismissively. “All the obstacles blocking ley energy. Human noise.”
“And what is ‘knocking them over’?” Hennessy said. “Please tell me it’s blowing shit up.”
“Sometimes,” Bryde admitted. “Often.”
Hennessy made a contented noise.
“Do other people get hurt?” Ronan asked.
Bryde hesitated for only a second. “Not if we are creating nuanced solutions instead of hammering our way through. We’re dreamers. We can step lightly.”
“What’s the first domino?” Ronan asked.
“That’s not the right question,” Bryde said. “Always ask, ‘What do we do last?’ And then you work toward that. The man who thinks step by step sees only his feet. Eyes up. What do we want?”
“Save the ley lines.”
“Step back from that,” Bryde said. “What’s one step back from that?”
Ronan thought. “Save Ilidorin’s ley line.”
“One step back from that?”
Ronan was once again curled in Ilidorin, connected to everything. A thrill chilled him as he said, “The dam.”
“Yes,” Bryde said. “But there are steps between us and that still, too. There’s no point moving the dam without freeing up the tributaries first. Why throw the switch with no lamps plugged in? First we have to remove obstacles from farther down the line and adjacent lines. Ilidorin’s line will be the first and the hardest. But it is a fine domino. It will knock over many others after for us. Hennessy, you’re quiet.”
A thin gray cloud passed between them and the world below. The patchwork fields disappeared and reappeared.
“You don’t bloody need me,” she said.
“Don’t tell me what I need,” Bryde said.
“I couldn’t do anything back there. I couldn’t dream a weapon because there was no one to hold my hand. Ronan Lynch here can do anything I could do and lots I can’t. Just cut me loose.”
Bryde didn’t say, What about the Lace? because he rarely mentioned the Lace out loud unless he had to. He was just quiet for a very long time and then he said, “I won’t drag you.”
But Ronan would.
He snarled, “Get over yourself, princess.”
“What?” she demanded, shocked.
“Just say you want to do something easier if that’s what you mean, but don’t play the boo-hoo card. Oh, me! My whole family got shot, I’m not going to cope, please beg me to stay and make me feel good.”
Hennessy twisted as much as she dared to stare at him. “You’re a real piece of work.”
Ronan smiled meanly at her. Somehow he’d just jumped straight to nastiness, but it was too late to rein it back now. “I saved your life. You owe me.”
“I saved yours. That’s what we call ‘even.’ ”
“You want to give Jordan a call and let her know you gave up, then?” He couldn’t stop. Acid kept pouring out of him. “You’re setting a timer again, you’re living life in twenty-minute chunks of sleep denial, whatever, sleep deprivation again? Hey, Jordan, they died for nothing, can I crash with you? Thanks.”
Her expression didn’t change but he watched her swallow, the tattooed roses at her throat shimmering ever so slightly with the movement.
“And when I bring out all the Lace and blow up the world?”
Bryde said, “We won’t let that happen.”
“Ah, but you did, bro. Only reason why there wasn’t more Lace was ’cause there wasn’t enough ley for it, was there? I actually got the Lace out and got our boy here closer to dead at the same time. I multitasked like a mother.”
She was going to leave them. Ronan could tell she was. He could see every bit of her was ready to give up. Could they do it without her? Maybe. Probably. But somehow the idea of saving ley lines with just Bryde was awful to imagine. Awful like a thunderstorm. Awful. Aweful. Ronan couldn’t think about it too hard, because it made him feel like flinging himself from the hoverboard just to see what would happen. What was real? Falling? Dying? Flying? They were floating a thousand feet above the ground. Real? In a dream there would be no consequence.
Ronan was just as frightened to feel this impulse in himself as he was by the idea of saving the ley lines with just Bryde.
“Why do you even care?” Hennessy asked. “The truth. Not more shithead talk.”
He could feel the impulse to pour more acid, but he held it back. He watched his raven circle far below them, in and out of the clouds.
His voice, when he spoke, was barely audible against the wind. “I don’t know. I just do.”
It wasn’t a very good answer, but it was the truth.
Hennessy said, “Fine. Whatever. But don’t say I didn’t tell you.”
Ronan’s heart was beating hard again. It was like the rush he got when the masks came out, when he knew they were going to dream, only it was so much bigger than that. They were going to change the world. They were going to change their worlds. There was no going back. Was he doing this? He must be. What had he been made for, if not for this?
Bryde said, “Then we begin where I left off.”
Jordan couldn’t really fathom what it was to be great at art.
Other people told her she was great at art all the time. They gasped over how quickly she could pencil a likeness. The ease with which she mixed pigments. The confidence of her brushstrokes. And it wasn’t that she didn’t understand why they said it. The canvases she turned out were impressive. Her grasp of technique was notable at her age. Her ability to paint what she saw before her at speed was unusual.
But she was simply aping other people’s greatness.
It wasn’t that she was incapable of greatness. It was possible (probable?) she had the aptitude for it. She had a very good grasp of art theory. She knew how to lead the viewer’s eye around a canvas in just the order she intended. She knew how to subtract and add elements to make the eye linger or flit. She knew which colors warmed a subject closer and which cooled objects into the background. She knew how light glowed on glass, on metal, on grass, on cloth. She knew which of her paints were lean and which were fat, she knew how much turpentine to add to get the stroke she wanted, she knew what value problems varnish would and wouldn’t fix. She knew all the fiddly math and science that made art and emotion work on a good canvas. Jordan had the prerequisites to be a great artist.