“Oh. Thank you.” I looked at him more closely and noticed that he was pale. Was there a cost to the energy Oliver expended now? What happened if he used too much of it?
To hide my worry, I started walking up the hill. Oliver caught up with two long-legged strides, shouldering his bag.
Within an hour or two, the two of us reached the end of those rolling hills. We stopped where the grass became ice, which presumably stretched all the way to that mountain pass we hoped to reach. Oliver and I lingered there without speaking for a minute, both of us caught up in our own thoughts and feelings. I hadn’t expected a frozen wasteland to be part of the dreamscape, and the sight of it made my brows lower. I wondered what it said about me that a vast part of my psyche looked like this.
“Fortuna?” Oliver asked, his eyes brightly blue in the fading light. He knew me; he knew what my fear looked like. I felt his fingertips whisper through mine, like the lightest trickle of water, and he sounded like the old Ollie again as he said, “We don’t have to do this. We can go back.”
Hearing this, my mouth pursed. Going back wasn’t an option. For better or for worse, I knew what else could be out there, and I couldn’t unknow it.
My only answer was to shift my backpack, pull my hand away, and step onto the frost-tipped grass.
Now night had claimed it all. We’d been walking most of the night, and eventually Oliver and I found ourselves next to the ocean again. I couldn’t see much of it; I couldn’t even hear it. There was just a glint in the distance every once in a while, and a vague sense of endlessness. Normally, I found the presence of water soothing, but there was nothing beautiful about that quiet, bottomless darkness. Freezing winds howled past, and it would’ve been miserable if not for the winter gear Oliver summoned while I was gone. I wore a wool hat and gloves, along with thick socks that made my hiking boots too snug, but not unbearably so.
Every few minutes, I flicked my eyes toward that distant mountain pass for motivation. The range was so vast, so tall that the peaks were covered in snow and clouds, even in the daytime. Or whatever I should call the sporadic number of hours the dreamscape was lit with sunlight. This place was supposedly created by my own mind, but the farther we ventured, the more I began to doubt it. If this were my design, I’d build my mind to follow the rules of nature, the boundaries of the real world. Why would I make a dream world that defied every rule of logic or convenience?
During those long hours of walking in the cold, I also couldn’t stop thinking about how I’d never been this far from our cottage. It went around and around in my head, incessant as a child’s fear. Maybe that was why time was acting differently. Strangely. Maybe that was also to blame for why I felt so tired. Usually, in the dreamscape, I was energized. Ready to pass the night away swimming in the sea or climbing our tall oak tree.
We weren’t even halfway to the mountain pass when Oliver stopped.
I was about to tell him I was fine, that we should keep going, but then the clouds shifted. The words faded on my tongue as I saw his expression clearly. Oliver’s eyebrows were knitted together, his face turned to the horizon. The moonlight reflected off his eyes, and for a moment, it made him look like someone unfamiliar and otherworldly.
“Ollie? What is it?” I followed his gaze.
“There’s something just beyond that shelf of ice,” he said. But I’d already spotted it and I barely heard him; I was staring too hard at the faint movement far ahead.
I’d been right about the ocean being there. What I hadn’t guessed was that it would be completely frozen over. It was lucky, really fucking lucky that we’d gotten some moonlight when we had, because Oliver and I were steps away from the edge of a cliff. The icy surface of the sea was all that awaited at the bottom.
No, I thought. That’s not all.
A few yards ahead, the drop we’d been walking along veered into an immense ledge, like a peninsula. Except this one was made entirely of ice. The movement we’d both seen was coming from something at the base of it, so far away that I couldn’t even see a shape.
“What else would be out there? It’s another memory. It has to be,” I said, thinking out loud. There had never been anyone else in our dreamscape, save for Oliver’s shadow, and I wasn’t sure that counted.
I looked over at my best friend, and I could tell that he’d reached the same conclusion as me. His mouth was tight as he scanned everything around the enormous wall of ice. “We could go to the top and look down, but that shelf is so high that we probably wouldn’t see much,” he muttered. “The only way to get close enough is by sea. I don’t like the looks of that ice, though.”
I studied the scene again, aware that with every passing second, we could lose the moonlight again. After a few seconds, I shook my head. “There’s no other way. I’ll have to risk walking on the ice.”
“We’ll have to risk it.” Oliver didn’t look away from the memory as he said it. The hard set to his jaw told me he wouldn’t brook any arguments, and I didn’t try to. I was done making Oliver’s decisions for him, taking what little free will he had.
I’d need my strength for the hike ahead, anyway. The distance between here and the bottom of that ice shelf didn’t look far, but the dreamscape had taught me not to trust that. Oliver moved forward, and I followed suit, tightening my backpack straps as we started walking down the snowy slope.
Halfway down, without any way to explain it, the wind completely… stopped. I slowed, unnerved at the sudden, unnatural change. Oliver noticed that I’d fallen behind and turned to look at me. His cheeks slightly pinked from the cold, and his expression said the words again. We don’t have to do this. We can go back.
I shook my head and quickened my pace to close the small distance between us.
There was no reason not to speak, and yet neither of us ventured to end the silence. There was something unnerving about the night. Maybe it was the utter lack of noise. I’d never experienced a stillness like this—even if I was sitting in a quiet room, there were always small sounds. The heat clicking on or an airplane passing overhead.
We reached the bottom, and I was relieved to discover the frozen water wasn’t slippery. It was rough, covered in frozen snow drifts, and it crunched underfoot like we were walking on broken plates. I kept my eyes on that distant ice shelf. It towered over us now, high as a skyscraper. The memory still moved at its base, tiny silhouettes against the night-smeared horizon.
We were close enough to the memory now that I could see more details. I quickened my pace, frantic not to miss a moment of the past playing out in front of us.
It was me and Damon again. We were the same age as the ones who had climbed that twisted tree. There was nothing around the children sitting on the frozen sea, no other objects in the memory, but I knew we hadn’t been surrounded by ice and snow when this day took place.
The younger Fortuna was wearing shorts and a white tank top, the sleeves cinched on top of my bony shoulders with bows of red ribbon. Damon, too, wore shorts. Neither of them acted bothered by the cold, though. Maybe this memory took place in summertime, but my mind hadn’t retained that detail.
It felt like the theory was confirmed when I saw their hair fluttering in a breeze that wasn’t there. Good to know, I thought, keeping my eyes on the children. Even if we found more memories, they may not be complete, like this one.