And—
Her eyes lit, at last, on Hutchincroft.
“Hutch,” she said, slowly, over the quickening of her heart. “Would it work if I used you? You’re his familiar. You’re a part of each other.”
It sounded like cheating to her—the two of them shared a soul, not a body. But magic loved cheating.
In answer, Hutchincroft pushed his head under her palm, burrowing until it reached his soft ears.
It was then, of all times, that the true seriousness of the situation sank in. Hutch cared about her safety more than almost anything in the world. He protested when she climbed too high, strayed too far, stayed out too long in rain and cold and sun. Yet now, when she had declared her intent to disappear into a dream—into an enchanted sleep that even Rowan couldn’t escape—he was helping her without a murmur. There was only one reason he would let her take such a risk. Whatever danger Rowan was in, it was far worse.
Biddy drew a deep breath.
You’re clever, and you’re brave, Rowan had said to her that afternoon, and he had meant it. But he had been talking about climbing trees. It was easy to be brave when the greatest risk was in falling to the ground—that was real, tangible. Magic was perilous in ways that couldn’t be predicted. You never knew what you might fall into. Rowan never cared what she climbed, but even he had never let her do magic alone. If he were here now, he would never let her do this.
But he wasn’t here. And if she didn’t, he might never be again.
She sat down at the desk first—you should always, Rowan said, be sitting down when you tried a new spell. Then she put the ring on her finger, buried the fingers of her other hand in Hutchincroft’s fur, and entered Rowan’s dream.
Last summer, Biddy had slipped from the cliffs near the ruins and tumbled twenty feet into the sea. She had seen a glint of silver in a small hollow worn in the rocks: That close to the remnants of the old wall, she had wondered if it might be an artifact, even a magical one. It was a few feet down from the edge of the bank, the sea a dizzying grey-blue swirl below. Normally she would have mentioned it to Rowan and let him investigate later—he could fly, after all. But it was tantalizingly close, and the thought of how stupid she would look if it turned out to be nothing more than a trick of the light overcame her natural caution. Her boots had gripped the rock with reassuring firmness; she judged she could do it, and after she had swung herself over the edge, it was too late to change her mind. She was almost there when her foot shot from underneath her in a scree of pebbles, and she was falling.
Putting on the dream ring felt exactly like that plunge into icy water.
One moment she was on firm ground in the study with Hutch beside her; the next, her stomach lurched, and her grip was torn away. She was dropping, plummeting, a roar of wind in her ears and a surge of panic in her throat. Then, just as she had once hit the water and opened her eyes to a greenish haze shot through with sunlight, she opened her eyes and there was a new world about her.
A room. She was standing in a room. A room she had never seen before.
In all her life, the only rooms Biddy had ever known were those of the castle: the stone kitchen, cold in winter and hot in summer; her own room looking east out over the fields and the sea; Rowan’s bedroom upstairs with its perpetually unmade bed; his study at the top of the turret; the massive oak-shelved library where she all but lived in the colder months; the frigid bathroom with its cracked washbasin; the crumbling gatehouse that had become dangerous with age and could be ventured into only with great care. This was smaller than any of them, and so much newer. The pale green walls formed a perfect square, with a flickering fireplace and darker green curtains half-drawn against the night. More surprising yet was what she could glimpse beyond those curtains. The glow of lamps, the rattle of wheels on cobbles, the sight—so terrifyingly close—of other windows across a narrow street.
This wasn’t Hy-Brasil. For the first time in her memory, she was somewhere else.
She had only a moment to take all this in. She wasn’t alone. Rowan stood facing the fireplace. It was him, exactly as he had left the island, even the same tiny cut above one eyebrow she’d noticed that morning. And yet something was different. His stance was open, less deliberately careless; his face, too, was unguarded, and softer than she had ever seen it. Opposite him, back to the fire, was a woman.
To Biddy’s embarrassment, her first reaction was not curiosity or suspicion or fear but a thrill of wonder. A stranger. And not only a stranger, a woman. In all her life, she had only ever seen other women in books, in photographs, and once or twice—though she had never told Rowan or Hutch—in dreams as a small girl, when a lady about the age of a mother or older sister would come to her and smile and ask her about her day. This one looked the same age as Rowan, however old that was, but unlike him she was beautifully dressed. Her hair was darker than Biddy’s, almost black; her face was paler, framed by precise curls. There was nothing unguarded about her. She faced Rowan firmly, proudly, a warrior primed for battle.
“I told you, I’m not going anywhere!” She had a cool, clear voice, yet by her side her hands were balled into fists. “You don’t understand. It’s too late.”
“How is it too late?” Rowan demanded.
His voice jolted Biddy out of her fascination, and she flushed inwardly. For God’s sake, this wasn’t real. This was the inside of Rowan’s head. She wasn’t really away from the island, and the woman was no more solid than the one she herself had dreamed about as a child. A closer look at the woman’s clothes confirmed that. Her dress was a soft grey green, the color of moss, and it drew to what seemed an uncomfortably tight waist before blossoming out into a voluminous bell-shaped skirt. Biddy had seen dresses like that in illustrations nestled in the text of Jane Eyre and Oliver Twist; it wasn’t what people wore today. Not only was this a dream, it was a dream taking place at least fifty years ago, perhaps more.
Rowan was talking, low and urgent, not waiting for a response to his question. “Hutch and I have a rune door set up in Galway. We’ve had it years and never touched it, even Storm doesn’t know. We can be out of this country in seconds—”
Biddy grabbed Rowan by the arm. “Rowan? It’s me. I’m here.”
It was like tugging at a statue. He didn’t respond, not even to dislodge her. He didn’t even know she was there.
This wasn’t how it was meant to work. The ring was supposed to allow people to talk to each other in dreams. Surely she should be visible to the dreamer.
“There are places to hide for a while, just to get our bearings,” Rowan was saying to the woman. “They won’t find us.”
“Suppose you’re right, and you do manage to hide. Then what?”
“Then we fight back!”
“How?” She didn’t wait for an answer either. “I can’t leave London. I can’t leave the Council. We don’t all have the luxury of running away, Rowan. Some of us have responsibilities.”
“What responsibilities?” He shook his head, frustrated. “Jesus, Morgaine, you know what they’ve ordered us to do? What you would have to do to stay?”
“Of course I know!”
“Well, then. You can’t tell me you’re willing to pay that price.”