“What was it like growing up with Pra-with Dad?” I asked suddenly.
She smiled. “I don’t know what it’s like not to. Father is gentle and he tends to believe what people tell him. He wants to see people as kind even after it’s obvious they are not. But he is not stupid.”
“Mom’s smart, too,” I said. “She can make people do what she wants, but she wants what’s good for them-or what she thinks is good for them. You look like her.”
“And you look like Father.”
We grinned at each other for a moment. Then Katsu’s face got serious. Another rumble of thunder crashed over us.
“I dance for the children,” she said. “It calms them and keeps them in one place, but once in a while, one of them runs away like you just saw. They see themselves as monsters, and that means when they touch the minds of other Silent in the Dream, those Silent see them as monsters too, monsters made of the Dreamscape itself. They are very powerful, which is how they can force their own picture of the Dream on other Silent.”
“They’re related to us, aren’t they?” I said.
She nodded. “They are our brothers and sisters. That’s why I dance for them, and because I dance, they haven’t devoured the minds on Rust. If they did, I wouldn’t be able to enter the Dream. Neither of us would. But they’re getting hungrier and hungrier. When the next set of our siblings enters the Dream, I will not be able to hold them back.”
I swallowed hard, feeling cold. “And if Garinn brings them in early-”
“-the Dream will be destroyed before anyone else can do anything,” she finished. I saw that she was tired. The strain of what she was doing must be tremendous, and she had been doing it all by herself.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my flute. “Do you want some music?”
She smiled at me, then took my hand and lead me into darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
PLANET BELLEROPHON BLESSED AND MOST BEAUTIFUL MONASTERY OF THE CHILDREN OF IRFAN
Silent grief only breaks the heart.
Ben and Harenn pulled Kendi along between them on swaying walkways. Ara hadn’t answered her phone, though it seemed to Ben that he should be more worried than he was. Harenn uncharacteristically kept up a running monologue as they went.
“Most people think the Dream is a gestalt of all minds in the universe,” she said. “It makes us feel connected to other people. But now we are no longer part of the Dream. We feel lonely and afraid and we don’t care about other people except out of habit or when the feelings are exceptionally strong.”
“Not now,” Ben snapped. Harenn fell silent.
Ben continued dragging Kendi along the walkways. It would have been faster to leave him behind, but something told Ben this would be a mistake. Kendi walked like he was half-asleep and his arm was cold in Ben’s grip. The monastery had been transformed. It no longer bustled busily. People sat on balconies and stared into space. Several times he saw people hanging from branches or rails, their bodies swinging like ghosts in the fog. Four shots sizzled in the distance and a siren wailed for a long moment before dying. A Ched-Balaar lay sprawled across one of the walkways. Ben had to guide Kendi’s steps over its body. As he did so, he saw its head had been crushed.
The rest of journey was equally nightmarish. Ben didn’t dare try the gondolas or the monorail, and he avoided humans and Ched-Balaar whenever he could. If Harenn was right, if no one cared about or felt empathy for anyone else, it meant people could commit-probablyalready had committed-unspeakable crimes against each other. Harenn walked wordlessly with him, guiding Kendi by the other arm.
Eventually they reached Ara’s house. Ben hurried Kendi across the walkway connecting her porch to the main thoroughfare. It was strange. His heart was beating fast only from exertion. He wanted to know how Ara was doing, but it was as if she were someone else’s mother, perhaps Kendi’s or Harenn’s. The front door opened for Ben’s voice.
“Wait here,” he said once they were inside. He ran through the house, calling out. Ara was nowhere to be seen. Ben asked the computer if it knew where Ara was.
“Mother Adept Araceil is on the rear section of the balcony,” it said.
Feeling a bit of relief, Ben trotted out the back door. But Ara wasn’t there. Confused, he asked the computer to verify her whereabouts.
“Mother Adept Araceil is on the rear section of the balcony,” it repeated.
And then a gleam caught Ben’s eye. On the floor of the balcony lay a gold medallion and a gold ring with a blue stone. They were Ara’s.
Something inside Ben broke through the apathy. His heart beat hard in his ears and blood roared through his head. It couldn’t be what he thought. It couldn’t be.
Without stopping to explain to Harenn or Kendi, Ben ran to the staircase that wound down around the trunk to the base of the tree. It thudded and thumped beneath his shoes. The planks were slightly slick with moisture, but Ben avoided slipping with the ease of long practice. He passed the houses set beneath Ara’s without seeing them and ran all the way to the bottom. There was no trail or sidewalk down here-the staircase was primarily for use in case of fire or other emergency. Green ferns grew shin-high among beds of moss, and the impossibly thick trunk soared high above him. Ben ran several meters away from the trunk and began to circle it, trying to gauge the spot below Ara’s balcony. His shoes and trousers were quickly soaked by the wet ferns. After several minutes of searching, he found nothing. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe he’d been His foot came down on something that rolled slightly. Ben jumped back and saw the dark place where the ferns had been crushed. Ara lay face-down among them. With a choked cry, Ben dropped beside his mother, feeling desperately at her neck for a heartbeat. Her slack skin was already chilly and pale. No pulse. Feverishly Ben rolled her over.
Her face was a mass of blood. Fern leaves and bits of dirt were stuck in it. When he touched her chest, he could feel the shattered ribs move grotesquely beneath his hand.
“No,” he whispered. “Mom, please, no.”
There was no response. Benjamin Rymar gathered his mother’s body into his arms and cried among the dripping ferns.
How long he stayed there, he didn’t know. Then he felt a touch on his shoulder. Ben looked up. Harenn was standing beside him.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“If I had come over earlier,” Ben said, hot tears running down his face, “I could have stopped her. I could have-”
“You had no reason to be here or even to call before any of this happened,” Harenn interrupted. “There was no way for anyone to do anything.”
Her words didn’t make Ben feel any better. “We can’t leave her here,” he said. “Something might-the dinosaurs will-”
“I saw a gravity sled at one of the houses on the way down,” Harenn said. “Wait here. I will bring it.”
Ben turned his attention back to Ara’s body. Water dripped from the ferns around him with tiny spattering noises. He smoothed the dark hair out of her face and wiped the blood away with his sleeve. So many times he had heard people say that it didn’t feel real when they found out someone they loved had died, but this felt achingly, bone-wrenchingly real.
Harenn arrived with the sled, a small one just the size of a stretcher. They lifted Ara’s small body onto it and
