Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

“But you will still repay the debt you owe me,” Rushkin added.

Isabelle shook her head. “I won’t do it,” she said. “I won’t make people for you to murder.”

“People? You call them numena, yourself. Strictly speaking, a numen is merely a spiritual force, an influence one might feel around a certain thing or place. It has no physical presence.”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“Of course I do,” Rushkin told her. “But you have to remember they’re not real.”

Isabelle looked at the two numena who had brought her to this place. “You heard it from his own lips,” she said. “How can you serve a monster such as this? How can you help him prey on your own kind?”

But neither of the numena appeared particularly perturbed.

“What do we care about the others?” Scam asked. “What have they ever done for us?”

Bitterweed nodded. “And we will be real. We have been promised.”

“By who? This father of lies?”

“He has never lied to us.”

Isabelle shook her head. “You don’t need him. He needs you. You’re already real. My numena live lives of their own and so do you. To believe otherwise is to believe his lies.”

“No,” Bitterweed said. “We need him.”

“All we ever did,” Isabelle said, “was open a door for you to cross over from your own world to this. You don’t need him any more than the man he based you upon needs me.”

“Quite the remarkable job I did making Bitterweed, don’t you think?” Rushkin remarked. “Of course it helps to have an eidetic memory.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Isabelle said.

“I know,” Rushkin said. “But you are wasting your time trying to convince them to see things your way. They know the truth.”

“Then how will you make them real?” Isabelle challenged.

“It’s quite simple, frankly. They require only a piece of your soul. Or mine. Or that of anyone such as us who can make them.”

Now Isabelle knew what Bitterweed had meant when he said she owed him. Though what he should have said was that she was owed to him. He and Scara had brought her to Rushkin so that she would rejuvenate her erstwhile mentor and in return Rushkin would give her to them. So much for Rushkin’s assurances of safety. So much for his giving his word. But then she already knew he was a liar.

“You’re a monster,” she said.

Rushkin shook his head. “You take everything far too seriously, Isabelle. You think of us as parasites, but it’s nothing so crass as that, I can assure you. The beings I require to restore me are not real in the sense that you or I can claim. I murder no one; I hurt no one. No one that is real.”

Isabelle thought of John, of the arguments they’d had on this very subject, and all she could do was shake her head in denial.

“And to make them real,” Rushkin went on, “costs so little. They will step into your sleep and take a small morsel of your soul. A memory, a hope, a piece of a dream. Nothing you can’t live without.”

“You were in my dreams once,” Isabelle said, “and you weren’t nearly so benign. You killed the winged cat. You would have killed Paddyjack, too, if John hadn’t driven you away.”

Rushkin neither denied nor agreed to what she said. “It’s harder for you and I to step into each other’s dreams. It’s because we are both makers—dreamers. It’s much easier for what you call numena since they are already so close to our dreams. They are born from our art and our art is born from our dreams—from what we remember, and what we envision.”

“You still killed the winged cat.”

Rushkin shrugged. “There was a need upon me that night. In retrospect, I should have been more patient. But I must remind you, Isabelle: none of your numena that I took were real. They need that piece of your soul to fuel them and I would have known if you had given it to them. I would never harm any that you made real. I am not the monster you make me out to be.”

“Oh no? Then what would you call yourself?”

“A man who has lived for a very long time and who is not yet ready to end his stay in this world.”

“No matter what the cost.”

“There is always a cost,” Rushkin agreed. “But in this case, it is not the one you assume it to be. I did not want to come back into your life and bring you more heartbreak, Isabelle. But I was weaker than I thought and in the two years since Giselle died, I have found no one with the necessary talent to take under my tutelage. It was Bitterweed who reminded me of you and even then I would not have returned into your life except that I heard that you would be illustrating a new collection of stories by your friend.

Since I knew you would once again be creating numena ...” He shrugged.

“How could you have heard that? I only agreed to it yesterday.”

“Really? I heard about it over a month ago. Or perhaps it was only that you were being considered for the project. It makes little difference, now, since here we all are.”

“So this was all Bitterweed’s idea,” Isabelle said. “Kidnapping me and bringing me here.”

“He is very eager to become real,” Rushkin told her, “and like your own John, headstrong. We meant to wait until you had completed the work for the book before we stepped in, but then ...”

“But then what?” Isabelle asked when he hesitated.

“There are so many things that could go wrong or delay such a project,” Rushkin said.

He kept that same earnest expression in his eyes that he’d been wearing throughout their conversation, but Isabelle didn’t think that this was what he’d meant to say. He was hiding something.

Then she had to laugh at herself. When had she known Rushkin to ever be straightforward about anything?

“You can see how weak I am,” Rushkin added. “Bitterweed was afraid that I wouldn’t survive the wait. And besides, he is so eager. So impatient. I think he would do anything to become real.”

“But he already is real.”

Rushkin sighed. “The numena do not need to eat or sleep. They are unable to bleed or dream. They are not real.”

“You say that only because it suits your purpose.”

“Then what would you call them?”

Isabelle glanced at his numena. Scara lounged on the floor, cleaning her nails with a switchblade, and didn’t even seem to be paying attention to the conversation. Bitterweed leaned against a wall beside her, arms folded, listening, but his face was a closed mask. Unreadable.

“Different,” Isabelle said. “That’s all. Not better or worse than us, only different.”

Rushkin smiled. “How very open-minded of you. How politically correct. Perhaps we should refer to them as the dream-impaired in the future.”

“I’m not Izzy anymore,” Isabelle told him. “I’m not that impressionable teenager that you took under your wing and who’d believe anything you’d say because you were Vincent bloody Adjani Rushkin.

God, I hate you.”

“And yet you named your studio after me.”

Isabelle gave him a withering look. “You know up until this very morning I couldn’t have said which was stronger: my admiration for you and the gratefulness I’ve felt for everything you taught me, or my fear and loathing for everything you stand for. You’ve certainly clarified that for me today.”

“And yet you will help me,” Rushkin said.

Isabelle shook her head. “I can’t believe you. Aren’t you listening to what I’m saying?”

“If you help restore me with your numena,” Rushkin told her, “I will give you the one thing your heart most desires.”

“What would you know about my desires?”

“I’ll bring her back—the friend you still mourn.”