He nudged her. “Tell me before I beat it out of you.”
She smiled. “Mmm, that’s an interesting thought. Long as I can beat you back.”
“The dream?”
She hesitated a moment. “When I was a young girl, up in Harmony ville, Mother Sonja would get me to tell her all my dreams. Every night.”
“You tell her the truth?”
“Course!”
“Always?”
“Nearly always, Ryan. When I was going through puberty, there were some dreams that were so odd and embarrassing that I never told her. Never told anyone.”
He squeezed her hand. “You can tell me. Here comes the smut, lady.”
She giggled. “Not even you. Just say that some of them involved horses, dogs and piles of soft cushions. All kinds of weird stuff. But I never dreamed anything quite like last night.”
“Go on.”
“It was mixed-up. We were all in it, but we were in this huge building, like an old office tower from the big predark cities. Hundreds of floors and we were separated.” She paused. “I was near the top, above the clouds.”
“Yeah?”
One of the horses whickered softly, and both of them turned to look. Ryan’s right hand dropped to the cold, slightly damp butt of the powerful blaster in case the animal was giving them an early warning of some potential danger. But the deep silence remained all around them.
Krysty continued, whispering.
“I kept sleeping, sleeping inside my dream. I was a thousand feet high, and I dreamed I was dreaming. You ever had that happen, lover?”
“Funnily enough, yeah, I have. I once dreamed all my teeth had fallen out. Put my fingers in my mouth and it was all bloody gums. In my dream I yelled out and woke up. Got out of my bed and walked to a big mirror that stood against the wall. I recall feeling so relieved that it was all a dream. Stood in front of the mirror and opened my mouth. And saw nothing but bloodied sockets and gums and no teeth! I remember that I shouted out loud, screamed and then I woke up.”
“That’s a bad one.” She returned the squeeze of fingers. “Mine wasn’t nothing anything like that. In this building, it was a strange kind of half-light, like just before dawn or just after dusk. And there were these people.” She swallowed hard. “There were these people, trying to get into the building at me through the big windows.”
“A thousand feet high? They have wings?”
“No. That’s the point, though lover. They were flying. I saw the wind through their robes.”
“Robes? What kind of ?”
“Okay, they were more like loose clothes. Gray. They all wore gray.”
“How many of them?”
“Give me time, will you? This is my dream, Ryan. Five or six, with more women than men. Mostly old. Quite beautiful. And they wanted me to go outside and join them.”
“So, they were friendly?”
“No. They seemed friendly. They were pretending to be friendly. But there was something unspeakably old and evil about them. Like they were” Krysty struggled for the word. “Unclean. Unwholesome. They were pissed because the glass had a power to keep them out and away from me. They scratched at it with long nails.” She shuddered. “It really was triple-shit horrible. I can still hear the sound of their nails on the glass. And they kept showing their fangs when they faked these smiles.”
“Fangs.”
She laughed quietly. “Well, long white teeth. Mebbe fangs is putting it a bit strongly.”
“Then you woke up?”
Krysty sat up, and Ryan saw in the dawning light that she was unusually pale. “Not quite. Someone joined them. Younger. Someone who looked like Dean.”
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER the camp was up and stirring. The embers of the previous night’s fire had been revived with some dry kindling that Forde fetched from the wag. The horses were fed and watered, and some coffee was boiling away on the flames.
Everyone was bustling around.
Everyone except Dean.
The boy had opened his solemn brown eyes and blinked up at his father when Ryan had shaken him awake.
“Oh! Hi, Dad,” he mumbled. “Time to get up already? Only just fell asleep.”
“Been in the sack for long enough.”
Ryan had been busy helping to get the fire going again, as well as washing himself and using some hot water from Forde’s battered iron kettle to shave. He’d never bothered to check if Dean was up.
“Looks like the lad had himself a late night,” Forde said, grinning. “If I didn’t know better, I might have thought he’d been out getting his coals hauled at some nearby gaudy. But there isn’t one and he hasn’t.”
When Ryan looked across he saw that Dean was fast asleep again.
He lay on his side, his hands delving between his thighs for warmth, knees up to his chest for the same reason. His eyes were tightly shut.
“Hey, come on, son,” Ryan said loudly, kneeling on the wet turf and shaking the boy again by the shoulder. “You waiting for breakfast in bed?”
“Is it time to get up already, Dad?” The words were slurred and barely audible. “Seems like I only just got into bed. Feel triple tired. Can I have a few more minutes?”
“No!” Ryan replied loudly, and with more than a passing touch of anger. “You can’t.”
Krysty had been walking by, carrying a copper pot of water from the small pool that lay just beyond the fringe of trees. She paused and laid down her burden. “He looks pale, lover.”
Ryan hadn’t really noticed. In the first light of dawn, most people tended to look pale and slightly soiled, their skins sagging and waxen from the night.
“Suppose he does.” He touched Dean on the forehead with the flat of his hand. “Doesn’t feel fevered.”
“Seems like I’ve just run ten times round a plowed field,” the boy moaned.
“Get up and have something to bridge the gap between backbone and belly,” Mildred suggested, kneeling beside Ryan, staring intently into Dean’s face.
“Yeah,” the boy replied, managing something that started off as a smile, then sort of lost its way on the road.
With an an obvious struggle Dean sat up, swaying from side to side as though he had an ague. Mildred put an arm around his shoulders to support him.
Forde joined the group, his cavalry sword trailing in the wet grass, his boots damp to the tops. “Got an invalid, have we? Can’t have that.”
“Sorry, Dad,” Dean said. “I’spect I’ll be better once I’m up and had some food.” Ryan helped him to his feet, holding him firmly just below the elbow. “You know I had a triple-sick dream last night.”
“What was it?” Krysty asked quickly.
“Sort of like being wrapped in a big blanket of fog. But I couldn’t breathe properly. And I was growing smaller and smaller. The room I was in was getting bigger, and the window with the moon behind it was getting farther away. There was someone or something behind the window that was dangerous to me. Next thing I knew was you shaking me, Dad.” The boy took a slow, deep breath. “Feeling better now. Think you can let me go. Yeah, definitely better.”
Ryan took a cautious step away from his only child, watching him with continuing anxiety. He glanced across and caught a similar look of concern on Mildred’s face, which did nothing to make him feel better.
The woman moved to stand close to Dean, making him open his eyes wide, telling him to put out his tongue and cough a couple of times.
The boy obediently did what she told him.
“You haven’t got any nasty pains anywhere, have you?” she asked.
“Bit of a headache and I feel a bit sick. But I’m sure I’ll be all right.”
Ryan noticed that Mildred was checking both sides of his throat with some interest, as if she was looking for some specific symptoms.
Finally she patted Dean on the shoulder. “Just growing pains, I guess. Go sit by the fire and take it easy until we get on the road again.”
They all watched him walk away a little unsteadily and squat by the fire, holding out his hands to warm himself.
“Well?” Ryan said to Mildred.
“Well, nothing. Can’t find anything wrong. No swollen glands. No temperature. Pulse is a little bit slow, but he’s only just woken up.”
“Why were you looking so carefully at his neck, Mildred?” Krysty asked.
“Checking his glands. Mumps. Glandular fever. That kind of thing.”
“Was that all you were looking for, Doctor?” Doc pointed the ferule of his swordstick accusingly at her. “I beg leave to call that statement into question, if I may.”
“What’re you on about, you old peckerwood?”
“Were you not looking for marks on the lad’s throat? Perhaps for bite marks?”
“Maybe I was. But there weren’t any.”
Forde straightened. “Vampire bats that had been sucking the lifeblood from the boy?”