“Are we there yet?” Hennessy asked.
“Up,” Bryde replied.
Up, up. Ronan’s calves strained as they headed up the steepening mountain. Here, the snow was thicker, the trees even bigger. The landscape seemed just as dreamy as the desert he’d just left. And as real.
Hennessy, he thought, are we still dreaming?
She didn’t turn her head. So he was awake, or at least he was in his dream alone, with a copy of Hennessy, a copy of Bryde. Reality was harder to define now.
“Do you know where we are?” Bryde asked them. They had reached their destination: a great, vast stump that must have once been a great, vast tree, larger than any of the others still standing. It was dusted with snow like everything else, which somehow made it seem more alive, not less. Ronan was put in mind of the way the snow dusted the backs of his father’s eternally sleeping cattle back at the Barns.
“Still Westva,” Hennessy replied. “Yeah?”
“West by God Virginia,” added Ronan, mimicking his old friend Gansey’s Southern accent before remembering none of these new acquaintances had ever met him. Here in the future, they didn’t know about his past. Maybe that was Adam’s attraction to it.
He felt that prickle of the Lace again.
Bryde said, “Yes. Quite nearly in the middle of the National Radio Quiet Zone. Over ten thousand square miles without radio, Wi-Fi, cell phone signal, or microwave ovens. Home of the largest steerable radio telescope in the world and several defunct alien research programs. One of the quietest night skies east of the Mississippi. Can you feel it?”
Of course not. Not now that he was awake. The ley power always seemed so clear to dreaming Ronan. Waking Ronan, however, couldn’t sense it even a little. In fact, it often felt like waking Ronan loved the things that seemed to actively interfere with it the most. Electricity, engines, motors, gasoline, adrenaline. And then dreaming Ronan—nightwashing Ronan—needed a world free of them. Perhaps this was why it was hard to see a future for himself. Bryde said there weren’t two of him. Bryde didn’t know.
“Can I feel it, or do I like it?” Hennessy asked. “Because those are different answers.”
Bryde gazed up at the massive spruces around them. A crawling white mist ghosted up from the light snowfall now, and the tree trunks were marked with little upside-down Vs of white where the precipitation had stuck to the rugged bark. “What do you hear?”
“Nothing,” said Ronan.
Nothing. Nothing.
There was no sound of distant trucks, no hum of generators, no slam of distant doors. There was just the soft, white silence around these huge trees. Mountain soil was so poor and yet they’d managed to become massive. Ronan wondered how long it had taken them to perform this feat.
Perhaps they grew better in the absence of noise.
As if reading his thoughts, Bryde said, “They’re all so young. Second growth. Beginning of the twentieth century, this was all twigs, because of logging. Looked like a war zone. Was, even. The army used to fire mortars here. Imagine this place razed and stubbled and smoking, the sounds of gunfire.”
Ronan couldn’t.
“Yes,” Bryde said. “Amazing what you can change in a century, if you have a purpose. Humankind razed this place, but humankind also built it back up again. Planted trees. Put up fences to keep the cattle out. Dragged the rivers into shape where trauma erased them. Replaced all the living things that grew along them to hold them in place. Deep down, there are always some that miss it. Do you really feel nothing at all, Ronan?”
Ronan muttered, “Not while awake.”
Bryde went on. “Did you feel how strong the line was when you were dreaming? And that is with it smothered. In the sixties, a dam was built southeast of here that disrupted its energy. But before that, it was strong enough to spill out ley energy into distant tributaries.”
“Stronger than this?” Hennessy said. She didn’t sound pleased.
“Come here, both of you,” Bryde said. “Put your hands on this.”
They did as he asked, Ronan in his old leather jacket scarred by escaped nightmares, Hennessy in her stolen smelly coat with the snow caught in the tips of its fur, Bryde in the same jacket he always wore, that light gray windbreaker with a light stripe down its arm. All their hands were placed on the ragged edge of the stump.
Bryde said, “This is one of the originals. It looks dead, but it’s just sleeping. The others keep it alive. Beneath the soil, these trees are connected. The strength of one makes the others strong. The weakness of one challenges the others. They value their oldest members, as do I.”
“How much longer for this video essay?” Hennessy said. “I can’t feel my tits.”
“A little fucking awe would be appropriate,” Bryde said calmly. “This forest was like your Lindenmere not long ago, Ronan, but its dreamer died and there was no one to protect it. It is old and hard of hearing and no dreamers have tried to befriend it for a long time. It is still doing its work on this line; it is a wonder these young silly trees had the thought to keep it alive to ground it all, but we should be grateful for it.”
“Thanks for the dream, tree,” Hennessy said. “I hated it.”
“This is a rare ley line in these times,” Bryde said, a little sharper. “Pure, quiet, strong. If that dam miles and miles away didn’t exist, it would be perfect. If you cannot bring yourself to wipe that smirk off your face while awake, Hennessy, perhaps you can do it in your dreams. Remember this tree, find it in dreamspace next time you close your eyes, and remind it of what friendship looks like. Perhaps it will help you remember what you want and help you
