Chapter 64: Dreaming Girl
I had a dream.
A bad one.
A forest burning, and Itsuki walking away from it down a road I could not see the end of. I was standing at the start of it. My feet did not work. My voice did not come out. He did not look back once.
Nobody ever did.
I woke up in the dormitory room and lay still with the ceiling above me and the dream still sitting in my chest.
***
The room was smaller.
Stone walls, single window, a desk with a chair whose armrests had been worn smooth. Academy-issue linens folded at the foot of the bed. A small mirror propped on the desk.
My name was on the door.
Tessira Vale. A-Class. Room 14.
I sat in the chair and looked at my reflection.
My face was red.
I pinched my left cheek and watched it get worse. Tried the right. Same result. I put both hands flat on the desk and looked at my reflection and neither of us had anything useful to offer.
You won’t fall.
I pinched my cheek again.
The problem was the memory of waking up in a forest not knowing who I was, and the first clear thing in all of that being a voice and a hand and a potion. The problem was the cave entrance in the early mornings. The pillow down the middle of the bed. The laugh that came out of me before I could stop it.
I pressed both palms against my face.
I had been without my memories when it was happening. I had not known who I was. And in all of it the one consistent thing had been him, every morning, every evening, talking to me without adjusting for it. He had not treated me like someone who was broken.
I looked at the mirror.
Not bad.
Just someone who had been left before and recognized the shape of it coming.
My parents had left. Not their choice, the memories had come back clear enough to know that. But knowing the reason did not change the space the leaving created. And then a forest. And then a voice saying hey.
I pressed my palms flat against my face and breathed.
Sylph moved at the edge of my awareness.
You had the dream again.
"Yes."
The same one.
"Yes."
It is not real.
"I know." A beat. "It does not feel like it is not real."
I know, she said.
I lowered my hands and looked at the mirror. Still red. The dream was still sitting somewhere in the upper part of my chest.
Can I ask you something.
"Yes."
When you were at the estate. Before your memories came back. What did you feel when he was not there.
I thought about that honestly.
"Like something was missing and the room was empty." I looked at the mirror. "I followed him to the forest that morning because I woke up and he was gone and I went looking without thinking. I did not even put on shoes."
You have always known where he is, Sylph said. Even before your memories came back. You could feel where he was without trying.
I looked at her.
"What does that mean."
I do not know exactly, she said. But I think it is worth noting.
"Sylph."
Yes.
"He is going to leave."
He has not left yet.
The right question is what you do with the time that is not yet over. You are standing at the start of a road and watching the end of it. But you have not walked it yet.
"I am trying to be practical about it."
You are trying to be finished with it before it starts, she said. That is not practical. That is just fear.
I did not say anything.
"He said you won’t fall," I said. "On the road. When I hesitated before getting on his back."
Yes.
"He meant it. I could tell he meant it."
Yes, Sylph said. He did.
"People who are only planning to leave do not say things they mean."
No, she said. They do not.
When he leaves. If he—
"Don’t," I said.
Sylph was quiet.
I stood up and put on my coat and looked at the door with my name on it.
"Come with me."
Where.
"Somewhere that is not this room."
The corridors were empty at this hour.
I walked past the stairs and along the upper corridor to the far end where it turned, where a window looked out over the northern grounds.
I stopped at it.
Academy buildings in the dark, mana-lit at the edges, the eastern tower the tallest thing visible from this angle. The grounds quiet.
I leaned my forehead against the glass.
The cold came through immediately.
Stop treating it like something that is already over, Sylph said, after a while. It has not happened yet.
I looked at the grounds.
Anastasia was there.
Standing at the far edge of the north garden near the ward boundary, which was the edge of the island. I had learned this about her in four days, the same way I had learned the secondary cafeteria entrance and the third-years’ stairwell schedule. She went there when she needed to remember the world extended past whatever room she was in.
She was looking at the sky.
She stood with her hands at her sides and her face tilted up. Not at anything specific. Just at the fact that there was a sky.
I looked at her for a long moment.
The cold of the glass where my forehead was resting.
She was not taking him from me.
What was happening was that he had arrived in a body that was not his, in a world he had built from the outside, and he was collecting people the same way he had probably collected everything else in his life. Without entirely deciding to. Without making it dramatic. Without looking back to check whether anyone was following.
I had been following since the forest. So had she. So would whoever came after us, probably.
That was just who he was.
I looked at Anastasia standing at the edge of the island and thought about two hundred years in a cave waiting for something worth coming out for. I thought about being left before and recognizing the shape of it coming.
Neither of us was wrong about what we saw in him.
The sky was starting to lighten. Not brighter yet, just less dark than it had been.
Anastasia turned from the edge.
She looked up at the windows of the building and stood there.
Then she turned and walked back toward the dormitory.
I stayed at the window until the grounds had gone all the way to morning.
I went back to Room 14 and opened the door.
Mirror on the desk. My name on the door.
My face was still slightly red.
I lay down and let it be what it was.
Sylph settled.
I went to sleep.
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