A Dream of Summer Rain: Things You're Gonna Find Really Difficult to Forgive (Chapter 40))

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***

Lacy tried, to no avail, to keep the hair from sprouting out every inch of her skin. She warped and twisted into a massive pile of flesh and hair, a disgusting, inhuman mass with no face and too many feelers. She could sense everything and hear everything but see nothing- her eyes had been taken from her. She tried to move, but she had no legs, and she tried to scream but she had no voice. Sewage was her blood and garbage was her body- she was a waste of space, plain and simple. Her parents told her as much again

and again

And again…

No, no that wasn’t either of her parents’ voices. That was her own voice, attempting an impression of her father. The words were coming out of her mouth, the shape of each hideous syllable heavy on her lips.

She ripped herself out of the ball of skin and hair and broke free, in her own body again. She walked up to a nearby mirror and saw a man in a rumpled suit, balding, with a thick beard and a prominent monobrow, a nametag labeled ‘Liam.’

Lacy wretched and punched the mirror, the glass tearing her hands to shreds as she ripped the skin off her bones until she was a bare skeleton, wandering about through alleys in a crowded city. People moved in droves around her, all of them taking the time to stop and stare and gawk and point but none of them doing anything beyond that. She didn’t want them to, did she? She wanted to be alone, so nobody could see what a freak she was, but if nobody saw then… It didn’t matter if she was a freak. But that meant it never mattered, and that meant nothing mattered.

Nothing at all.

“Yes. That’s right,” her reflection said. She was the Storm on the Horizon, and she was here now. “Nothing at all. So why not do what you’ve always wanted to do? To make them all hurt like you have? You know you want to- that’s the whole reason you’re doing any of this.”

There was no sun, only an endless black canopy lit by distant reflections of stars.

Two sets of hands crawled through her bones, keeping the skeleton upright and in place. Her mother and father’s hands, grips tight around her arms and legs and jaw, moving for her and talking for her. She screamed, and found she couldn’t break free.

But she had to, and so she tried for hours and hours and hours to make herself move and speak freely of them. Gradually, bit by bit, her skin grew back, and she was herself again. Better than herself- regrown, she had all the parts she wanted, and none of the ones that she didn’t. She had longer hair and clearer skin, and wore a black gown that accented her new figure. She walked forward, her feet clicking against the tiled floor of an empty ballroom until she stood beneath a chandelier. She danced alone.

It didn’t matter what she did. Nobody was there. Her parents were gone. Drew was gone. She couldn’t trust Isabella. She couldn’t trust Danny. And she doubted she could trust Gwen. And so she danced alone, the chandelier refracting blue Starlight.

Until, suddenly, everyone was watching. She danced for a crowd of seven foot, pointy-eared people with inverted eye patterns. Her family stood watching, to her chagrin, as she danced for them, until she lost her balance and twisted her ankle. She fell to the floor, and the elves all stared at her, eagerly waiting for her to get back up. It didn’t matter what she did, how she hurt herself or anyone else- they simply wanted to use her. Just like everyone else.

That had been what Gwen was doing, wasn’t it? Using her. For revenge against her father, or perhaps to finally finish clearing the board of her siblings and be the last Albrecht standing. She’d killed them all- perhaps not in the way Danny thought she had, but she’d had something to do with it. “You just wanna use me too,” she said.

The Storm heard her, and said, “I’m you, sweetie. I don’t want to use you, I just want us to live up to our full potential.”

“Our full potential being… You?”

“Yuppers!” the Storm said, twirling her hair and pulling Lacy into a tight embrace. They waltzed together, and the dance floor became a dead girl’s face, Elaine’s pale gray eyes looking up at her from the ground. Elaine’s face appeared again as the walls and the ceiling, the dead girl always looking at Lacy, always surrounding her. There was nothing else.

And Lacy screamed, and nobody came to save her.

She had to get out of here on her own. Plain and simple.

She broke free of her reflection’s grip and ran. It didn’t matter where, she just had to run.

And run.

And run.

She ran until she found herself in her old house, the one she’d had as an adult, the one in Grand Rapids in which she’d hid from the world, the one which she’d intended never to leave. She went into her old room and locked the door behind her, and her skin began falling off until once again she was nothing but a skeleton, and then the bones turned to ash and there was nothing of her but powder sitting in a room with the stagnant air.

It changed, and she was whole again, or something approximating it. She was in a boardroom, overlooking a city she didn’t recognize through glass walls on all sides. She was clad in a purple skirt suit with shoulder pads, plus two pounds of fool’s gold jewelry and four inches of makeup, her hair sprayed and teased to the point of being bigger than her head. Caroline was there in a similar state of dress, as was Lacy’s mother, looking far more put together than Lacy had ever seen her. Lacy’s father and Alistair were both there, their hair slicked back and gold watches on each of their respective wrists. They kept checking the time as Caroline negotiated with the man at the far end of the table: an elf, ten feet tall, adorned with fine robes and jewels that shined with blue Starlight like something out of an old poem. Their lips moved but no noise came out, and they passed sheets of paper back and forth between them, signing them over and over again with quill-pens dipped in blood.

The Storm stood behind her and whispered into her ear, “Look, I know what you’re thinking. But we don’t necessarily have to do what they want. I don’t really want that, because you don’t really want that. You want to take it all for yourself. You want to make the elves pay just as much as the Sovereignty for making you what you are, for making you have to exist in the first place. Make everyone pay for putting you in this position in the first place, hurt the worlds’ so badly they can’t hurt you ever again. C’mon. I know you wanna.”

Lacy stared directly ahead, and whispered, “I do.”

She screamed, and blue Starfire burned everything in sight. Through the flames, the elf who held the contract to her soul smiled wickedly at her. Lacy swam through her own fire, not caring how it burned her, desperate to reach the elf. That must be him: the Elf-King. Her ancestor, and the intended conqueror of earth.

Not unless she got to him first. Not unless she killed him now and ended this.

On the other side of a fire was a place Lacy recognized: the Pale. The Elf-King stood at the shores as snow fell across the lost land. She ran towards him and buried her fist in his gut, the distant glass cracking under the weight and force of her rage. She brought him to the ground, and struck, and struck, and struck, drawing blood and teeth. She screamed, and he bled profusely. His bones cracked and his face swelled.

She looked down, and saw it was no longer the Elf-King. It was Danny.

She kept going. She struck, and struck, and struck. How could he do this to her? How the hell could he think this was okay?! Any of this?! He’d gotten her parents killed, he’d lied to her, he’d tried to kill her, he’d…

He’d…

… Never actually…

… Tried…

… To kill her.

He’d never actually been aiming for that. That was what she wanted. She hadn’t even attempted to listen to him until he had her in a box with nothing else to do. She’d just inflicted violence, reacted, judged him without bothering to know or care why he was doing what he was doing. Just like she always did. Just like she was still doing. That was what she’d always done…

Just like Alistair.

And she only did that because she thought it was the only way to keep herself from getting hurt. But the only way that would actually guarantee her safety is if she killed the person who hurt her. And she didn’t want to kill- she’d never wanted to. It was wrong, it was a sin. All those people, even if they were ghouls, she’d killed them. She could tell herself she’d had to, and maybe she did, but it was sinful. She’d tried shutting out the guilt, tried doubling down and committing to the violence, tried writing them off as ‘just monsters,’ tried writing off anyone who scared her as ‘just monsters,’ and all it had gotten her was beaten and imprisoned and briefly dead. All it left her with was her own guilt and self-loathing, and she was tired of having nothing to her name but those things. All those ghouls were people. Evil people, perhaps, but still people. Some of them had been normal once- some of them had been children taken by the Sovereignty. Everything else they might have been was stolen from them. Some of them were born to this, and were simply doing what their people had always done. And for some of them, it was both.

For Danny, it was both. And he’d been trying to keep her alive, because that’s what he’d always done. He’d dropped the ball this time, spectacularly so, made basically everything worse in the process. He shouldn’t have done what he’d done, but that didn’t give her the right to kill him. He was the only family she’d had for most of her life.

There was that word again. Family. The difference was, unlike with her parents, and unlike with Danny’s parents, she and him actually were family.

She withdrew, stumbling backwards and falling on her ass. Everything sank in at once.

She was-

She’d been trying to-

She’d wanted to…

To kill him.

She’d been trying to kill Danny.

Just like she’d been in Peoria, when she found out he betrayed her.

She’d been hurting him. Just like she wanted to hurt… Everyone. Just like she’d chastised Alistair for doing.

And now, Danny laid bloody in the snow and sand, where his father appeared over him and forced human blood down his throat to heal him. And he changed, growing fangs and claws, baying for human flesh.

No. No, God, please no. She didn’t want him to be a monster anymore than she wanted herself to be a monster. She didn’t want him to die any more than… Herself.

I don’t wanna die, she realized. “I don’t wanna die,” she said aloud. And I was dead for a moment there, wasn’t I? This path I’m on, it only ends with me either dead, evil, or both. Unless I change it. Neither of us have to be monsters. Neither of us should be monsters.

She didn’t want to kill anyone in the first place, and she could tell herself all she wanted that she hadn’t had a choice, but that was a bullshit rationalization. There was always a choice, and she’d chosen to kill. And nothing was bringing back the people who’d already died, but… It had to stop somewhere. She would protect herself, and she would protect others, protect the people she cared about, and if it was the only way to protect them or her, then maybe she could bring herself to kill again, but killing Danny wasn’t protecting herself or anyone else. It would be a sin born of fear and rage, nothing more.

Her parents laid dead on the glass behind her, along with Elaine. And looking at the sight in front of her, she knew that Alistair was feeding Drew’s blood to Danny. And like a flickering intrusion into a reel of film, Lacy saw herself in Danny’s place, drinking Drew’s blood and changing as well. “I won’t,” she said, hearing the words for the first time. “I won’t kill my best friend. No matter what he’s done. I don’t want to hurt him. He’s been hurt enough.”

And to her shock and relief, she believed it when she said it. She would not kill Danny. He was culpable, he’d been party to this, he’d even contributed, but… If the past six months had proven anything, if it were her in his situation… God, she might’ve done the same thing.

She needed to be better, because otherwise… Otherwise, what they said about her, what she was capable of, what she was destined to do, then it was true, all of it. Every wretched word of it. She wouldn’t let that happen. She would be better. She wouldn’t kill her best friend, wouldn’t kill her brother. If she did, then there was no going back. She wouldn’t let him die. And she wouldn’t let the world die. She wouldn’t let it be conquered by maniacs like the Sovereignty or the Elves, who would subjugate everyone they could, take away their ability to choose, and kill everyone else. They all wanted her to be a villain, like them. Part of her wanted to be a villain, deep down- the part that was still a scared little girl who needed to prove she was strong enough to keep all the threats at bay. But the better part of her didn’t want to be that, not anymore and not ever. She could be who she wanted to be. She could be a hero instead. And being a hero meant saving people whenever you could. Starting with Danny. “I’ll save myself. Then you. Then everyone else.”

“Good,” a familiar voice came from behind her. “I’m glad to hear that.”

The cracked glass mended itself as Drew walked over it. He joined her on the beach, looking down as she remained squatting where she was. Lacy knitted her eyebrows and said, “Where the hell have you been lately?!”

“Oh, around. Talking to Danny, mostly. Trying to get him to see reason.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Any luck?”

“None so far, but hey, hope springs eternal. Wanna take a walk with me?”

“Where?”

“Oh, just along the beach. It’s been a while since I’ve been back here.”

“Only if you agree to finally give me some damn answers,” Lacy said.

“Eh, fair enough. You’ve earned them.” Drew offered Lacy a hand up, and she took it.

They walked, and Lacy barely felt the cold. It was distant, like air conditioning filtering in from another room. The four-corner moons shone brightly, fewer clouds than usual blocking their light. Lacy looked up at the floating wreckage of a city that drifted between wherever this was and whatever was up there.

“So who are you, really?” Lacy asked. “And don’t go giving me vague half-answers. I want the truth.”

“Okay, well then where do I start? Hm. Oh, I know: I’m not Drew,” Drew said.

“Yeah, I figured that part out on my own.”

“You didn’t let me finish: I’m not Drew, I’m how you remember Drew. What you see is an aspect of me. But it’s the aspect of me that you have given me, Lacy. I am, in part, a Reflection of your memories of Drew.”

“And what’s the other part?”

The thick wall of forest to their left lightened, offering a look at the Castle of Midnight. It was a lonely place, with nothing but lost memories inside it.

Drew said, “I’m a constellation, composed of the Destiny Stars of fallen wielders. I am the aggregate of thousands of years of heroism and villainy alike, meant to shield the earth from elven invasion. I’m talking to you by reflecting myself off a stray shard from the Sea of Glass, which in turn allows you to see me as Drew, and due to the nature of the thing, gives me your memories of him. And after talking to Danny, I’ve gained his memories of the young man as well. Interesting fellow. Shame what happened to him.”

Lacy stopped walking, stood with her arms hanging limp at her sides. Her jaw went slack.

“You okay?” Drew(?) asked her.

“Um… It’s, uh, that, that’s a lot, like A LOT of information to process.”

“I’m not done.”

“Of course you’re not. Why would that be the end of it?”

“Lacy.”

“Sorry. Continue,” Lacy said as they resumed their walk.

“I’m connected to the Sea of Glass, and the barriers it erects around the Worlds. In order for you to fulfill your Destiny to bring down the barriers and let the elves in, you would have to kill me.”

“Kill a sentient constellation? How’s that even possible?”

“Okay, bear with me here: the thing to remember is that the Pale is surrounded by Liminal Void- the space between worlds, leftover from the Sundering. Things work differently here: nightmares lurk in the dark, creatures that exist only because of our fears and anxieties of what might come, of what might be, of who we might be; that’s what the other you that you keep seeing is- a Starbound’s negative potential, the worst possible version of their Destiny, everything they fear their Destiny might make them into, can, much like me, be reflected in the Glass and come to life, such as it is. And there are… Other things here as well, things even older than I, things far more twisted than anything a human or an elf could dream up. But they can’t hurt me: only a Starbound can. This form you see here isn’t just an illusion, Lacy. I might not have a corporeal form on earth, but here in the Void, if you were to destroy this form of mine, you would kill me, and the walls would come down, and the invasion would begin.”

Lacy kept walking, breathing through her nose and out her mouth. She smelled a rich, oaky scent that carried on the wind. “Why are you just telling me all this now?!”

“I had to be sure that you wouldn’t kill me.”

“You thought I was gonna-”

“Yes, Lacy, I did. To be perfectly blunt, a lot of what I’ve seen doesn’t indicate a ton of mental stability on your end.”

“That-”

Drew cocked an eyebrow.

“... Is true, you’ve got me there. So what, you’ve trying to discern my likelihood of going off the deep end and becoming the Dark Lord?”

“Essentially, yes. And wanting to murder your best friend is generally a red flag, so I decided to make myself scarce while you tried to reconcile your desire for revenge with everything else you believe.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re a good person, Lacy. You believe in mercy and forgiveness, as much as you may hate extending them to the people who’ve wronged you. But you need to think about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it- you can’t just throw yourself at everything full-force and hope you have enough momentum to overcome whatever’s in front of you.”

“I haven’t really been thinking anything through, have I?” Lacy said under her breath.

“No you have not,” Drew said. “But hey, it seems to have started to sink in, vis a vis a certain Daniel Woodrow.”

“He made a choice to side with his parents,” Lacy said, rubbing her forehead. “But at the same time… Nobody’s ever given him a chance to do anything else. And he just wants to shut it all out and hope he survives. No wonder he and I are friends, we both live with our heads perpetually in the sand.”

“Yeahhhhhh,” Drew said.

“So what do I do now? I’m still in a coma, still stuck in that cell in Dresden. I haven’t actually moved an inch from where I was.”

“That’s up to you,” Drew said. “I can’t interfere quite that directly without accidentally setting a continent on fire- drawbacks of phenomenal cosmic power, you understand- so you’re gonna have to wake yourself up.”

“But how- Caroline hexed me.”

“You’re stronger than she is. And you’ve already proven you’re stronger than Alistair- he’s just got a lot more practice than you. You can do this. But you have to believe it.”

“That’s it? That’s the pep talk? I need to believe in myself?”

“How do you know it won’t work when you’ve never tried it before?”

“...”

Drew cracked his neck. “Alright, well, I should get going, leave you to it.”

“Just like that?”

“Yup. Clock is ticking. And there’s someone else here who wants to see you.”

“What? Who?”

Drew winked, and then faded away as they completed their rotation around the island. She was frustrated, and still confused, still had more questions, but… A satisfaction, a contentment, was there in her mind as well. And she knew now who this new Drew truly was, and she was certain that she would get to see him again.

And perhaps the real Drew one day as well.

“Lacy?” a new voice, equally familiar, said.

Lacy turned to find Isabella coming from the Castle of Midnight.