Anne Bishop - Bridge of Dreams

He looked uncomfortable. “‘Keeper’ is a title I must use when I deal with other officials, but it is not what I am. So I will tell you what I told the other Handlers and their Helpers. When we are private as we are now, you may call me Danyal. Out there”—he made a graceful move with one hand to indicate the grounds—“you should address me as Shaman.”

She wasn’t going to be dismissed. Knowing she would still have a job made her momentarily dizzy.

Which the Shaman noticed, of course, because Shamans noticed everything.

Please, Zhahar thought. Let my secret remain secret.

“Break your fast,” Danyal said. His smile was a bit apologetic. “You had good reason to be tardy today, but I must set an example. The others have their assignments. There is only one task left, and it is hard, dirty work. Meet me outside in ten minutes.”

He walked out of the room.

Zhahar looked at Sholeh’s tunic and sighed.

“Do you think he really gave the other Helpers permission to call him Danyal?” Kobrah asked.

“No.” She took another bite of bread and cheese. It would probably sour her stomach, but she needed the food if she was going to spend the day laboring. “But I doubt any of the Helpers were present when he talked to the Handlers. What did you want to tell me?”

Kobrah nibbled her piece of flatbread before answering. “I made a friend. He’s not like anyone I met before. He doesn’t dress like us or talk like us. We take walks and hold hands, and he doesn’t mind just being friends. He’s met me a few times now, and he’s going to come back. I don’t know when, but he’s going to come back.”

Startled, Zhahar ate the rest of her bread. Kobrah, taking a walk with a man ? What man? Kobrah wasn’t allowed to leave the grounds. She couldn’t stand the male Handlers, and becoming involved with an inmate was foolish as well as dangerous. So who could it be?

“Where did you meet him?” she asked.

Kobrah hesitated too long. “In a dream. He says we meet in the twilight of waking dreams.”

She sucked in a breath. A couple of the inmates had talked about dream lovers. The woman had become calmer, more lucid, but the man had become violent when he wasn’t allowed to leave in order to “cross over” and meet his lover in the flesh. If this was a new symptom of madness…

“What does he look like?”

“He has pale hair and blue eyes. His name is Teaser,” Kobrah said.

Zhahar wiped her hands on the napkin, offered it to Kobrah, then folded it and put it in her pack.

“We had better find the Shaman and get to work,” she said. “I’d like to hear more about your friend, but I think it best that this remains between the two of us. At least for now.”

Kobrah studied her, then nodded.

They hurried outside and found the Shaman waiting for them. There were Handlers, Helpers, and inmates all over the grounds, washing windows, weeding flower beds, draining the murky water out of a reflecting pond. But the worst job was on the other side of the pond from the main building—a small, two-room building that hadn’t been used in years.

“We’re supposed to clean this?” Kobrah asked when Danyal led them inside.

“Yes,” he replied.

“How clean?” Zhahar asked.

“What is precious to you will be held in this room,” Danyal said. “How clean does it need to be?”

Zhahar sighed. “I understand.”

He smiled. “Then I’ll leave you to your work.”

She and Kobrah did work. They swept and washed and scoured and polished. By the end of the day, the small building was clean and the grounds showed noticeable improvement. Through it all, the Shaman walked among them, helping, listening, being.

When she got home, she was more than ready for Zeela to come into view. She sank into a deep rest—not quite full sleep, but not participating with the others. True sleep came only when all three of them were at rest, and was something they needed at least once every third day.

As memories of the day drifted through her mind, one realization brought her back to the surface.

=What’s wrong?= Zeela asked.

*Nothing.* When you were one who was three, you really couldn’t lie to your sisters. *Something I just realized about the Shaman.*

=What is that?= Zeela sounded wary.

*He has the most beautiful eyes, but despite all the times I spoke with him today, looked into his face, into those eyes…I can’t tell you what color they are.*

Too restless to sleep, Danyal followed the lit walkways between the buildings. He had been at the Asylum only a day and already felt the weight of this place seeping into his body, into his heart. If he’d come here with any lingering doubts about his own sanity, this place would have crushed him. And it still might.

Some of the inmates were truly ill beyond changing. However, many of them had simply lost their way, confused by the nature of the world. But until their minds were able to gain some peace and clarity, those people would remain in the Asylum, unable to see a future in a city that should have held boundless futures.

Zhahar disturbed him. He had sensed nothing unusual about her until that brief touch of his fingers against her arm.

Light, dark, shadow. Just like that strange place on the other side of the bridge.

Then it was as if he’d touched three people, had picked up the feel of three distinct heart-cores. That shouldn’t have happened with one person. Unless she wasn’t a person at all. Unless she was something else.

Was she, or something like her, the reason some of the streets had disappeared from the Shamans’ sight? Was she working at the Asylum because it benefited her plans in some way?

“Why is this place so important?” he whispered, looking around at shabby buildings and unkempt grounds.

heart wish

He shivered despite the lingering heat. That voice again. Those words again.

He was exhausted from the demands of his first day as Keeper and the rushed journey to reach the Asylum after receiving the letter from the Shaman Council. Throughout the two days of travel, he had thought the council had been foolish to send him here on the advice of bone readers and fortune tellers.

Now he knew they had been right. All of them had been right. Something was going to happen here. Something that required a Shaman’s presence. When it came, he had to be ready.

He hurried to the apartment that would be his home for the next year. After locking up for the night, he took the sleeping draught he used occasionally when he needed to block out everyone and everything for a few hours.

Lee frowned at the footbridge that spanned a narrow creek. It should have been a stationary bridge that connected two of his mother’s daylight landscapes and one of Glorianna’s. And it did. But the bridge now also resonated with Foggy Downs, a dark landscape tended by Michael.

This wasn’t the first bridge he’d come across in the past two weeks that suddenly provided access to one of Michael’s pieces of Elandar, but he was getting tired of dealing with this weird piggyback. Seemed like there couldn’t be a landscape connected to Glorianna anymore without there also being access to something connected to Michael. That meant someone crossing over a stationary bridge they’d used for years could suddenly end up in another part of the world because the Bridge—meaning him—couldn’t unravel the resonance of Michael from Glorianna.

Damn Magician. Just another way he had fouled up their lives.

He lied , something dark whispered inside Lee. You thought Michael wanted to be your friend, but it was just an excuse to get close to your sister, to use her for his own purpose. Caitlin Marie is a Landscaper too. She could have been the bait used to trap the Eater of the World. But the Magician chose to sacrifice your sister instead.