Thank you, reviewers - hopefully this chapter is fixed now!
[The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal — Mark Twain.]
Dream had to remind himself again that technically, he hadn't lied. He sat forward on Johanna Constantine's couch, running one finger down the side of his own matching bracelet to the one he had given the Muse. His was smaller, a lighter silver design with both his own sigil and another strange symbol as the clasp. It spun slowly as he moved it about.
Johanna flung herself into the armchair opposite Dream, drinking deeply from a heavily dinted metal water bottle. Her hair was slightly singed on one side, and the smell of acrid burning hair was strong in the small room. On her clothes were the remains of a battle well-fought, stains of soot and sulphur.
"That had better be worth it," she sighed, gulping down water. "That bastard put up a good fight."
"You have my thanks," Dream reminded her. "And your payment."
Johanna sank back into the thick cushions. "Is it working?" She gestured at the bracelet of the Children of Lis.
"Indeed," Morpheus admitted. Through the thin metal he could sense the tide of Melete's emotions, in readiness should something come for her. The bands were linked across realms, time and all space so the two wearers could not lose one another. But while she wore it Morpheus had insight into her every feeling, especially if her emotion was strong.
It was a very uncomfortable form of voyeurism. Dream's own emotional gauge tended to shift fairly predictably and to remain generally neutral most of the time. As he was fast discovering, Melete's own variations galloped in all sorts of directions, depending on what she was experiencing. From the second he had slid it onto her arm, Dream had a steady flow of her emotional barometer against his own arm, which sharpened when he touched the metal and concentrated his attention on it. The first sensations were confusion, hesitation, and then a reluctant acceptance when she seemed to understand there would be no arguing with him. All perfectly understandable to Dream but when she wasn't near, the feelings emanating out of the band were wild without context and could turn in a moment.
"I still think you should tell her, for the record," quipped Johanna, knowing her guest's mind was elsewhere. She drained the rest of the water and poured some of the dregs onto her hand, to gingerly wipe through her crisped hair. When she pulled away her fingers and individual burnt locks came away with them, she gave a deep sigh. "Fuck."
Dream stayed silent, the justification for his decision having already been provided to this Constantine some days ago. It was hard not to let his own sensations follow along with Melete's, especially when he started to worry she might be in trouble. But the last time he'd materialised to check in on her safety, she had been in her cottage, staring at two small effigies lined with flowers. A memorial – the emotions made sense. Dream was compelled to remember his own experience, watching Jessamy murdered in front of his eyes. There was a shock, growing grief that hurt somewhere deep within, the shame, the survivor-guilt and the frustrated fury that he hadn't been able to do anything to avert her death. She shared all of these and more – a deeply personal sense of loss that went deeper than the one he'd felt for Jessamy and then multiplied. Two different strands of heartache; it was a wonder that Despair hadn't turned her eyes onto Melete yet.
"Well, this has been a blast," Johanna stood over him, her arms folded. "But I need rest. Go brood somewhere else." She all but pushed him out into the night, urging him to come back anytime he had another expensive errand for her to run. Dream recognised the sarcasm for what it was. As she had successfully stolen the bracelets from a demon and delivered them as he required, he put up no resistance and strode into the street.
London was grimy, harsh and freezing at night. Despite the bright full moon in the sky, humans kept their heads low and darted down the street or jumped into vehicles to slowly make their way downtown. Morpheus watched as the final tourist bus for the day stopped outside Piccadilly and thirty-odd weary humans departed, grumbling and sighing at the traffic conditions, thick mist issuing from their mouths. He knew they would be in the Dreaming very soon.
Hands in his pockets, he marched away. He'd forbidden Matthew from running this errand with him, not confident that the raven would not go and spill his strategy to Melete or worse, run back to Lucienne. Morpheus was uncomfortable about the fact that the more he learned about the Muse's inner workings, the more doubt niggled at his mind and the more he reflected on his own experiences of things like pain, hope and grief. These were not lessons he had intended to take, and the understanding that the Muse was not in a good way made him concerned about whether this was the right course of action.
Despite what he had told Melete, Desire's break from their usual tactics had him deeply worried. Desire was pride personified – the fact that they had stooped to asking Death for any form or help or even used this as an excuse to bring about a conversation merited some consideration. In the face of such a break from tradition, Dream was forced into tactics he would not have normally considered. If Melete was some sort of traitor, even without her knowledge, Dream needed to keep more than just an awareness of her location to protect his realm.
When he returned to the library, Lucienne found him still mulling over the possibility of telling Melete the nature of the jewellery she wore. He was immensely distracted, and she had to slap a book into his hands to get him to focus.
"My lord," Lucienne started, watching him closely. "Is anything the matter?"
Whatever volume she had given him was hefty. He shoved it aside, silent. Lucienne, who knew him better than almost anyone, didn't roll her eyes but came very close.
"Whatever it is you are thinking of doing, just go and see it done, my lord." Her frown emerged, clear through her glasses.
Dream gave a rueful grin. "Am I truly so transparent?"
"Yes, sir," came her low, weary reply but the expression in her eyes was amusement. Dream dropped a finger onto the bracelet and sensed the Muse out in the waters once more, about to dive into deeper dreams. She was not that far away.
"Perhaps some other time," he mumbled, then ducked out of the library and away from Lucienne's perceptive gaze.
He retreated into his own chambers, somewhere personal and private where he could think and feel without interruption. Morpheus sat at the edge of his bed (fairly unused, more for decorative purposes than anything else), his arms sinking into the black silken sheets. The room was sparse yet comfortable, not far from his gallery room where he could call on his siblings if he wanted to.
Dream stared up into the canopy of his four-poster bed, wondering. His fingers brushed over the metal again.
Concentration. Exhaustion. Fleeting relief that something had worked. More concentration. A stab of regret, quickly brushed aside. Low elation, the satisfaction of a simple task easily done…
Melete was hard at work, it seemed. And moving into the Waking World, if he wasn't mistaken.
Dream wasn't certain how long he lay prone, vicariously experiencing the Muse's work but then, like lightning, something changed.
Terror. Fear that froze all movement. Agony. Sadness…
Morpheus catapulted himself forward and adorned his helm. His hand brought forth his sand, casting it about the air, making it swirl in furious haste. This was the moment he had feared.
He vanished, appearing at the dock. With a twist of his hand, the stairwell appeared, and Morpheus raced down, two steps at a time. He was so swift that Matthew, flying as he was, couldn't keep pace.
"Guard the realm!" came Dream's order. "The Muse has been attacked in the Dreaming!"
Matthew swore and rose into the air, leaving his king to plunge into a writhing sandstorm. Melete's location was shifting rapidly. Morpheus clenched the bracelet tightly to his skin, willing it to show him the way to her side. He was almost incapacitated at the amount of pain that fed back from her but, gritting his teeth, forced his body to move.
Pain. So much pain, ratcheting up in levels at a gradual pace. A blankness as the mind tried to pull her into unconsciousness, in an effort to protect her from the pain. More agony though, as something jolted her away from the Gray Place.
Morpheus cursed. Something was deliberately keeping her awake, prolonging her suffering, keeping her out of places he could quickly protect her. Her enemies were clever. He let her location compel him - the sand knew where to direct his power.
He turned, appearing in the Waking World. A broken summoning circle was etched at his feet, a crude imitation of something like the one that had trapped him once before. He smelt candles, the thick blobs of wax marking where they had stood. Morpheus crossed the cement floor and realised he was in some sort of barn, not the basement as he had presumed. Light filtered through wooden slat doors and hay barrels sat in a neat pile along one wall. Somewhere nearby, an animal shuffled about, making huffing noises.
Dream moved rapidly. Outside of the barn doors were fresh tracks in the dirt – some sort of vehicle had been parked nearby and taken off at speed. But they were only moving along a road. Morpheus reached out with his inner vision and found a sleeper taking a quick nap in his car at a service station not far from where Melete was. Once again, the sands swirled, and he disappeared in pursuit.
In the shadows of a fuel pump stand, Morpheus concealed himself from mortal eyes. If anyone looked in his direction, they would just see a blur – some haze of heat perhaps from the bitumen.
Pain, fear, desperation… Anger at helplessness, a surge of fatalistic energy…
Melete was trying to fight back at least. He could sense her presence now, getting nearer as the car drove closer. Finally, a huge white sedan came into view, tearing down the road at a frightening speed. Dream blew gently at sand concealed in his palm and the driver slowed, his eyes growing heavy. But his companion in the back with Melete had clearly had some warning and screamed out some words in an ancient tongue. Oil – shiny and thick – spurted from inside the vehicle until the Muse and her captor were covered. Without warning, Dream felt her vanish again, consumed by some malevolent energy within whatever the mortal had summoned to their aid.
He was livid. Stalking over to the sleeping driver, Dream let himself appear in the visible spectrum. The driver sneezed, yawned and shook himself into wakefulness just in time to glimpse the helmeted figure of Morpheus reach inside his window and grab him by the collar of his shirt. The air inside the car was smouldering hot.
"Who has taken her?" demanded Morpheus, his eyes burning like wildfire, bright red inside his helm. The mortal took one look at his assailant and shivered, clamping his mouth shut.
"Who has taken her?" Morpheus repeated.
Terror. Aching sadness. Melancholy. Hopelessness. More pain on her arms and legs, something across her mouth. Suffocating. Suffocating panic…
Dream shoved the driver back into his seat and flung about his sand once more. The being he pursued knew he would be coming now, and the stakes were driven higher but that feeling of horror and despair radiating down his arm pushed him forward. They were smothering Melete, wherever she was. She was resisting, but the threat to her existence was imminent.
Any possibility of stealth was gone. The chance to discover the identities of the attackers was sacrificed. Dream commanded the sands and materialised directly next to Melete, pulling her into his arms and vanishing before the assailants could even see what had happened. He had a split-second picture of a man, maybe in his late thirties, reaching for something metal on a workbench before they were safely away. Morpheus tried to imprint the man's visage deep in his memory; there would be a reckoning one day.
They reappeared in the middle of a thicket of trees, several thousand kilometres away. Dream pulled aside his robes to reveal the poor Muse, bruised and bleeding, with duct tape across her mouth and shackles on her hands and feet. Morpheus lowered her to the ground and pulled the tape away, noticing it was thick with her tears. Melete gasped and sucked in air, spluttering and coughing. Her skin was incredibly clammy and pale. As she lurched forward, Dream spied blotched bruises that went from the temple of her head down and encircled her neck, blooming and darkening as he observed them.
Her relief twinned with self-disgust was palpable. Morpheus held onto his growing fury, noting the drying blood in her hair. He moved slowly, trying not to startle her already broken nerves to crouch in front of her.
"I can remove these," he assured her as she coughed again, gesturing at the shackles. Melete gave him a dopey nod, which he took as her consent to proceed. With a deft hand, he undid the lock on the metal shackles around her ankles and then used some of his sand to melt away the chains that held her hands. She winced and rubbed at the reddened skin that had been pinched underneath.
Morpheus crouched there, one knee to the ground, helpless to do anything but count the injuries to her with steady anger brewing. Only the bracelet, connecting him to her hurt and shock, stopped Dream from disappearing to hunt down those who had dared to put her in this state.
There would be a reckoning for this madness.
Melete started to croak. "Please…" But the word cut short as she slackened, weaving as though drunk to the side.
Dream tried his best to soothe her, to reassure her she didn't have to talk but she persisted.
"Lord… Don't leave." She slumped towards him, holding herself upright through sheer force of will. "I'm… sorry." She cried silently, tears streaming onto the ground. "Sorry," she whispered again. She kept mouthing the word, but her tongue was slack, her breath gone. Melete started coughing again – a deep, rattling sound he didn't like.
Dream was useless at comforting others. But the combination of the emotions flooding into him from this pitiful being in front of him and his own need to remedy the way he had deceived her drove him forward. By instinct, he took her into his arms, laying her head against his chest as he knelt on the ground. Melete's battered arms reached around his neck and weakly hugged him back; his jacket muffled her sobs as she let the past few hours catch up with her. Dream was careful not to press his chin into her hair, where the iron tang of blood was strong in his nose. She trembled rapidly, shivering into his embrace.
"Let me take you home," he asked softly. He felt rather than saw her nod against his body and for the final time, he willed the sand to take them directly into the heart of his palace, hoping that no one had taken advantage of his absence to stage an attack on the Dreaming itself.