Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

“I don’t think my mind should do what it wills,” Hennessy said. Ronan could still hear the Lace in her voice, somehow.

Ronan asked, “Does it have a name? The forest?”

He saw the question pleased Bryde. He saw it pleased him very much. Bryde replied, “This tree is called Ilidorin.”

Ilidorin. It sounded like a name that belonged with Greywaren.

Chainsaw, in one of the branches far overhead, let out a little growl-caw. She could manage a fair number of human words, but this was not one Ronan had heard before.

“I brought you here to see Ilidorin because I wanted you to see that this is the pedigree of your power, not the world you keep looking over your shoulder at. I thought you were outgrowing old habits but …” Bryde shook his head. “Given the opportunity to communicate with your family, what do you do? Dream up phones.”

The disdain in his voice was sufficient to twist Ronan’s guts.

“Phones, he says,” Hennessy mocked. “Phones! That portable lifeline. As if—”

“Don’t start.” Bryde cut off her monologue before it could take hold. “A human child believes all things are possible. How wonderful. How terrifying. Slowly, you are taught what you cannot have. What will not be possible. What you do not have to fear. There is no monster in the closet. You cannot fly. How relieving. How disappointing. But this is the world, isn’t it? You believe it. You believe it so thoroughly that even when the box is lifted from around you, you continue to travel in circles no bigger than its walls. A phone!”

“How is it you think I should be talking to Declan if not with a phone?” demanded Ronan. “I don’t think he really wants to have a one-on-one, with, like, some dream balloon with my face projected in it. He just wants a phone call.”

“Does he even want that?”

Ronan demanded, “What?”

Bryde said, “Do you really think your family understands you? Truly? This world has been built for them, so thoroughly that they don’t realize it. It has been built to destroy you, so thoroughly that it has never occurred to them. Your goals are fundamentally opposed.”

“So what are you trying to say?” Ronan asked. “Don’t talk to them?”

Bryde’s expression softened. Was it pity? “It’s a warning, not an order. The view in the rearview mirror is often a painful one.”

“Whoa, mate, Jordan is not in my rearview mirror,” said Hennessy.

“Then where is she?” Bryde asked. “Why is she not standing in this forest with us? She’s a dream, this concerns her, too, does it not? And where are your brothers, Ronan Lynch? Where is Adam? They are the brothers and lovers of a dreamer, is this not their concern, too? Did they come with us to save the world for dreamers? No, dreamers are a task for dreamers, they think, not for people like them. They love you, they support you, they wave goodbye as you flee without them, and then they return to their own lives to muddle through without you.”

“That’s a little unfair,” Ronan said uneasily.

“And can you blame them?” Bryde went on. “A part of them must be relieved they no longer have front-row seats watching as the world breaks you. It’s hard to die. Harder to watch someone else do it, and make no mistake, that’s what you two were doing before now. Dying in plain sight, inch by inch, dream by dream, drip by drip. You’ve given them the gift of letting them look away, and I’m just warning you they might not like you returning that gift for store credit.”

“Marvelous,” Hennessy said, sounding bitter. “Wonderful. Inspiring. Got it. We die alone.”

Bryde said, “You have each other. The ley line. Places like this. They are your family, too.”

“You’re wrong,” Ronan said. “About Adam, anyway.”

“I’d like to be,” Bryde replied. “But I’ve met too many humans.”

“You’re wrong,” Ronan said again.

“Tell me the dream that produced all those wheels,” Bryde said. “Tamquam—”

“Don’t say that again,” Ronan said. Then, again, “You’re wrong.”

Hennessy muttered something, but when Bryde waited for her to repeat it, she just said, “I wish I had a cigarette.”

“Come on,” Bryde said. “We have work to do.”

Declan Lynch had a complicated relationship with his family. It wasn’t that he hated them. Hate was such a slick, neat, simple emotion. Declan envied people who felt proper hate. You had to sand all the corners off things in order to unequivocally hate; it was a subtractive emotion. Hate was sometimes a prize. But hate was sometimes also just a dick move. It was annoying how many people had small redeeming qualities or depressingly sympathetic motives or other complicating features that disqualified it as an appropriate response.

Declan wanted to hate his family. He wanted to hate his father, Niall. For being a bad businessman, for never paying attention to the details, for bullshitting himself to death. For being a bad father. For having favorites. For having favorites who weren’t Declan. But could he blame him for not wanting a son like Declan? Declan hadn’t wanted a father like Niall. He liked to think he hated him, but he knew it wasn’t true, because if it was, he’d have been able to set Niall’s memory down and walk away. Instead, he took it out of the box and poked it. Declan said he hated him, but it was aspirational.

Declan wanted to hate his dreamt mother, Aurora, but he couldn’t justify that, either. She’d adored him; she’d adored all the boys. It wasn’t her fault she was a faulty model. He was increasingly certain she was happily oblivious to her dreamt status. This was probably where the idea to withhold the same information from Matthew had clocked in. Who’d come up with that? Niall? Declan? It had happened too long ago. In any case, it wasn’t Aurora’s fault that, deep down, Declan had always suspected she was untrue. A trick. A blarney-filled bedtime story for three