Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

“What do you want me to do about it?” Declan asked.

Adam said, “Is he taking your calls?”

Growing up, the Lynch family hadn’t talked about the dreaming.

It seemed unfathomable now, that their entire livelihood had been based upon dreams, that two-fifths of them had been dreams, that two-fifths of them had been dreamers, and yet they did not talk about it. Niall Lynch sold dreams on the black market, and Declan took calls from buyers for dreams, and yet they did not talk about it. Aurora was a dream, and Niall had always known that if something happened to him, the children would immediately become orphans of a sleeping mother, and yet they did not talk about it. Ronan accidentally dreamt a brother into being, and had to teach himself how to prevent it from happening again, and yet they did not talk about it.

Ronan had thought there was no one else like him in the world, and it had nearly killed him, and yet they didn’t talk about it.

Looking back now, Ronan tried again and again to understand it from Niall and Aurora’s point of view. Perhaps they thought the children would be less likely to betray the secret if they didn’t have words for it. Perhaps they thought Ronan might grow out of the dreaming if he didn’t pay attention to it. Perhaps they had lost trust in humans so thoroughly that they numbered their sons among the untrustworthy.

He didn’t remember the first time he’d dreamt something into being. He didn’t remember dreaming Matthew. He did remember, however, one of the only times they talked about his dreaming.

Ronan had been young. He didn’t remember if Matthew existed yet. Memories were like dreams that way—they skipped the parts that weren’t interesting to them at the time. He had been playing in the back fields at the Barns, the deep sloping pasture that now contained the pond he and Adam had dug. He was young enough that he wasn’t allowed out alone, so Aurora had been there with him, reading a book under the shade of a tree, laughing to herself every so often.

How idyllic it must have been, he thought now. Young Ronan, tumbling through the waist-high grass. Beautiful Aurora, sprawled in one of her light dresses in the grass, hair golden as Matthew’s or Bryde’s, a book in one hand, the other finding grapes out of the basket she’d brought with them. Overhead, the clouds in the summer blue had been as inviting and drowsy as an afternoon comforter.

Ronan had fallen asleep. He did not remember this; he only remembered the waking. He remembered waking in the grass and being unable to move. Not his legs asleep, but all of him, his mind looking down at his body sprawled in the grass near his beautiful, sweet mother.

And then the memory skipped to him plucking something from the grass to show to Aurora. It was a book like the one she’d been reading, but much smaller, sized for his child palms.

“What do we have here?” she asked him, putting hers away.

“Open it.”

Aurora let the tiny volume fall open. Inside there were not pages, but a summer sky graced with towering white clouds. She poked her fingers into the book and watched the clouds part around them. The sky was in the book but it was also over the book, a page and a sky, two-dimensional and three-dimensional at once as it towered upward.

“Look at you, Mr. Impossible,” Aurora whispered fondly. She opened and closed it several times to see if the sky would change. It did. From day to night to day again. Sun to stars to sun. “Now let’s bury it.”

“Bury it,” echoed Ronan. He wanted to show it to Declan. To Niall. He wanted to put it on his shelf.

Aurora stood up and brushed the grass off her skirt. “Little things like this are best as secrets. It’s very important to remember that.”

It didn’t feel important to remember that. It felt important to show it to someone. Ronan tried to understand. “For how long?”

She kissed the top of his head. “Forever.”

Forever?

“This seems like a really nice place,” Hennessy said. “Are we here to destroy it?”

Burrito had just driven past acres of dried, unharvested cornfields to arrive at a house old enough to have a name on a brick pillar by the drive: Barnhill. The cornfields went right up to a neat little yard, and then there was the square white house, and beyond that was dried marsh grass, and then, presumably, were marshes, and eventually the sea. The entire property had a haunted, lonely loveliness. One would not find it by accident.

Ronan agreed with Hennessy. It did seem like a really nice place. It reminded him of the Barns, and he did not want to destroy it.

Bryde didn’t answer, just gazed at the house as they pulled the invisible car up to the separate garage. He had not been quite the same since the server farm, although Ronan couldn’t put his finger on what had changed. He wanted to say that it was something like an additional gravity, an investment in the task, but no one had ever been as invested in this as Bryde. He seemed withdrawn from them. Introspective. It was, Ronan thought, as if he were angry or disappointed with Ronan or Hennessy, although he couldn’t think of what they might have done to vex him.

“Get your things,” he said finally, already opening his door. “No, not just your sword. Your bags.”

“We’re staying here?” Ronan asked in surprise. The lights were on inside the house and it had a decidedly lived-in look to it. Not Bryde’s style. Not his style at all.

“If we’re murdering people and taking their house,” Hennessy said, “can I eat first? Actually, I guess I could eat them. I’m hungry enough to eat a baby. Are there going to be babies?”

But Bryde was already