When Ronan approached to investigate, they scattered. In the grass where they’d been, he found a blond-headed baby.
In the dream, Ronan knew without being told that this was a new brother.
The baby smiled at Ronan. His hands were already outstretched for Ronan to pick him up. He was so, so happy to see him.
Ronan knew without being told that this brother would always be happy to see him.
“Hello,” he told the baby.
The baby laughed.
Ronan laughed, too, and the awful feeling that had been inside him since that game of kickball dissipated. He scooped this new brother out of the grass.
And then he woke up. When he did, Matthew Lynch was still there, squalling and brand-new, in the hallway outside his closed bedroom door.
But the thing was—Ronan hadn’t known. He hadn’t known Matthew was dreamt. That Matthew was his dream. He couldn’t remember how he’d explained it to himself at the time, but it must have been good and thorough, because all he remembered of that time was his delight at having a new baby brother. He hadn’t remembered the circumstances around it until Declan had cornered him during a particularly destructive time in high school and given him the story. Niall Lynch had given Ronan stories, too, but they were always rewards. This was a punishment. A warning.
“You dreamt Matthew,” Declan said. “Don’t you get it? If you get yourself killed, you’re ending his life, too.”
“I don’t think I did,” Ronan said, but he knew he had. He’d just been pushing the memory away as hard as he could. It had been made easier by the fact that Matthew hadn’t appeared right next to Ronan when he woke. Instead, like Ronan’s dreamt forest, he’d appeared some distance away.
It had also been made easier because Ronan didn’t have words, back then, to talk about what had happened. He wasn’t allowed to.
“I was there,” Declan said. “I know what happened. Saying it didn’t happen doesn’t make it real. You’ve got to keep this under control. His life relies on you.”
Ronan had lived with that weight since then.
No more, he thought now. The ley lines would be powerful again. Matthew would have a life of his own.
“This will have to do,” Bryde said.
They’d been charging away from Boston for a few hours when Bryde pulled over abruptly. There was nothing remarkable about the stopping place. It was simply a one-track gravel road that led into a wooded picnic area with a rotting bench.
Ronan stared around at their surroundings again, trying to decide if, in his misery over Declan, Adam, and Hennessy, he had badly misjudged how far they’d traveled. He could see a lake glistening through the dense trees. Everything continued to look very New England to him. “We’re still in Massachusetts, aren’t we?”
“Connecticut,” Bryde said. “But yes, you’re right. But something is happening. We need to free Ilidorin’s line now or we might not be able to. That’s what the trees are telling me. This is the best place I’ve felt so far for the energy. I’d like more, but I don’t think we can wait any longer to dream something for the dam. We won’t make it all the way there.”
“Before what?” Ronan asked.
But Bryde just threw open the car door. Crisp cool air flooded in. It was a lovely day. It was the sort of day that caused people to put coats on dogs and take long scenic walks. It was the sort of day it had been when Ronan had last visited Adam at Harvard. It was the sort of day that Ronan would have used to repair fences and siding if he had been back at the Barns.
It was also the sort of day for Ronan and Bryde to sit in the dried leaves behind the car, leaning up against it, unfolding their dream masks. Chainsaw flapped up to a tree above them and waited.
“What do you feel?” Bryde asked.
Strange. It felt strange to do this without Hennessy. After this, Ronan vowed, he’d go back for her. He’d fix this. He’d fix her.
But that wasn’t the kind of feeling Bryde meant. Ronan put his hands onto the ground to feel the ley line, but that made him think too much about how Adam sometimes did that when he was scrying. He draped them over his knees instead as he listened.
The ley line was there. Not overwhelming, but present. Sufficient. He could feel its low, slow pulse trying to sync with his heartbeat, or vice versa. “It’s all right. I’ve never been to the dam. How are we supposed to know how to destroy it?”
“I know what it’s like. I’ll show you in the dream.”
“And you want us to dream something here to destroy it way down there?” But Ronan answered his own question. “It has to be something that can travel.”
“Yes,” Bryde agreed. “Like the dolphins for the transmission line. Like the sundogs you sent to save your brothers.”
His voice had no bitterness. Declan had tried to get them killed, but he didn’t spit the word brothers at Ronan. Instead, his voice, if anything, became softer on that word. Soft on brothers. Hard on sundogs. The entire sundogs episode felt like a very long time ago. Ronan and Hennessy had been in Lindenmere, Ronan’s dreamt forest, trying to banish the Lace from Hennessy’s mind with the help of Bryde, who had been just a voice to them at that point. Bryde had disappeared in a hurry as the Moderators began to move in on other dreamers, and Ronan had received that fraught call from Declan that Matthew was in danger. Ronan still remembered the absolute terror he’d felt as he begged his forest to use the power of the ley line to produce the sundogs. He remembered how he’d sped across the state toward Declan and Matthew, the exact opposite of what he was doing now. And he remembered clearly arriving to find his dreamt sundogs had done what he’d asked. Saved his brothers’ lives.
The exact opposite of what Declan had just tried to do.
Declan hadn’t been so worried about Ronan’s ability when Ronan was hidden safely away until needed.
Bryde said, “We don’t have much time.”
Ronan didn’t know if he could stay focused with his thoughts as they were now. He wasn’t thinking about the future. He was thinking about the past.
Bryde said, “I’ll do my best to focus the dream. It will be different after this. Last push.”
They dreamt.
In the dream, they were at the dam. Because it was Bryde’s dream, it was vividly rendered. Ronan could see it, smell it, feel the unseasonably warm breeze on his skin. They were walking. He could feel it as if he were awake. The bite of his boot on the zigzagging walkway the two of them followed. The echo of their steps off the back of the low concrete visitors’ center, which they passed. The tickle of gnats swarming from the overgrown dry brush. The buzz of a stink bug woken by the heat.
Ronan would have been hard pressed to identify how it was any different from waking life.
“What do you feel?” Bryde asked.
“Don’t ask me that while we’re dreaming,” Ronan said. “It fucks me up.”
They had come to a viewing area at the end of the walkway. Wordlessly, they leaned on the railing to look at the vast white dam. The scale of it was difficult to hold. On one side was the glittering blue water of the artificial lake, and on the other, hundreds of feet below, held back by the curved dam, was more glittering water, the choked Roanoke River. All about were mountains. The lake looked odd somehow, the water strange as it climbed the slopes, although Ronan couldn’t understand why.