Cassie
I awoke again in the forest of fog, but this time was different. The tree trunks around me all reflected a warm light. I found the candlestick beside me and took it with a flood of relief as I stood. The thought of having to start over terrified me.
Mist retreated from the light of the candle, revealing I stood on a path through the woods. However, I hadn’t stumbled onto it somewhere in the middle. Instead, the winding path began at my feet and cut through the trees until fog obscured its progress.
Still, I was expecting company, so I waited.
I cannot express to you how anxiously I stood at the foot of the path as my hopes festered to fears, wasting whatever time I had here before—I was sure—the rustling of leaves once again approached. The Tsukumogami never came. Neither did the Nightmare. I stood alone on my path in the woods, candlestick in hand. I was beyond help. All I could do was walk. So, I did.
I followed the path.
It takes me a sentence to describe what felt like hours. I marched over cool, smooth ground, haunted by the looming threat of the Nightmare lurking around the next bend or stalking silently behind me. I walked, and I walked, pointlessly paranoid until I reached the end.
As far as I know, it is the sole clearing in those woods. And when I say ‘clearing,’ I mean the fog literally parted. A sky congested with clouds hung above the grassy meadow. By what little light filtered through, in the center of the field, I saw a barn.
I recognized that barn. No, that word is too weak. The barn, its shape, its smell, the feel of its wood and straw, and the sound of my voice echoing against its walls are etched into my soul. I knew that barn.
I ran towards it though nothing pursued me. I pulled open one of the double doors, and a silent, dark room greeted me. Odors of hay, timber, and healthy animals wafted to me as earthy tones. A lived-in scent. I swept candlelight over the interior, clean but not sterile—well kept, as if someone had tidied up before a week’s vacation.
My feet, wet with dew, left muddy footprints across the barn floor. I realized I’d been headed straight for the ladder as I reached it and instinctively began to climb. The hayloft seemed larger than the size of the building should permit. The straw felt soft and dry, a perfect makeshift bed.
The wide window on the far side drew my attention. I noticed two objects on the sill. A conch shell on the right, the same one I’d picked that day at the beach. On the left lay a pair of casino-style dice. My gut told me to give them a roll. Three and four made seven. I rolled again. Six and one made seven. I suspected I’d be rolling ‘seven’ however many times I tried because the dice were loaded.
I undid the latch and opened the twin doors of the window outward. It had a perfect view of a sky obscured by ugly white clouds. Below, I surveyed a forest choked with fog. The edge of the meadow circled the barn, but beyond that may as well have been a fathomless ocean of trees.
The candlestick glowed warm in my hand; its flame far brighter than a regular candle. I placed it on the sill between the conch and the dice. It illuminated the barn’s interior and shined across the field like a beacon. The hayloft now felt cozy, as if my window were a roaring fireplace.
My drifting eyes landed on the tip of something in the straw, and I picked it up. I gasped at the plastic action figure of Rana in my hand.
For the longest time, I stared, disbelieving, unable to comprehend how or why this was here. The level of detail was impossibly true to life. Real hair in her typical style, short and brown. Real fabric clothes. Her striking eyes—green and gold mosaics—seemed to watch me, concerned. Her skin felt soft and smooth, her face frozen in a stoic mask.
I know I chose the word ‘plastic,’ but the more I handled her, the less sure of that I became. The look, feel, texture, body temperature, flexibility, and even smell were all perfect likenesses. Would she bleed if cut? If I waited, would she blink? I set Rana on the floor, and she stood, balanced.
Driven by impulse, I searched the straw. Soon, I’d turned up miniatures of Lea, Kenta, Daniel, Wendi, and Paul. Paul before his transformation. I held the boy of wax in my hands and remembered.
The battle with the beast. Paul calling me over. Asking me to Listen to his future. Hearing his screams as his body reforged itself into one of glass and steel. My fear for him only quelled by the overwhelming certainty he would save us if he went through with it.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I had asked. When he agreed, I’d kissed him on the cheek as he’d asked, and we’d shared Lifeforce. He’d been so warm and bright inside.
I looked down at my chest and saw a candlestick pin on my shirt that had been there the whole time. I realized the candle in the woods had been Paul’s Lifeforce—Paul had guided me through the nightmares!
He’d led me here. To this familiar place. Why? At the time, all I could do was wonder. I set Paul aside as a now much heavier steel figurine.
Rifling through the straw, I began to understand my purpose here. I was searching for answers.
Wendigo came next, her smile not quite as malicious as I remembered. I placed her with Wendi and set aside the complicated emotions bubbling in my chest for later.
Near the surface of one haystack lay Red Tail and Goldie. It seemed strange to find the hawk the same size as everyone else. I found Calephor, then Nes, Harumi, Bufo, and Lumière. When I drew Ziege, Persephone, John, and Gaja, though, I paused. They were as I remembered them. Alive. Happy. I paired them together properly—with those they most loved—on the wooden floor.
My hands trembled with fear and anger as I pulled this next cold lump of flesh from the straw. Moloch. It’s eyes were molten tar, skin as falsely white as ever.
“You!” I accused. “This is all your fault! Everything has been because of you!”
Neither It’s eyes nor lips moved, but the perpetual malicious grin and too-white teeth taunted me. It felt too real. I set the demon far away from the others.
“You’re not real,” I said. “I’m going to close my eyes and count to three. When I open them, you won’t have moved. That’ll prove you’re not real.”
I closed my eyes. “One. Two. Three.”
I opened my eyes. It hadn’t moved. I released my held breath. At the same time, something caught my eye out the window. I walked over to see, and my heart stopped.
There, at the border of the foggy woods on the edge of visibility, stood… Cassie.
I knew her by the tall, conical ears, the wide wings, the sharp claws on her feet, and the fangs in her mouth. Yet her skin was alabaster white, her teeth grinned wide with dark joy, and her eyes were a sticky black—no silver rings. She had my face, she had my powers, but this Cassie was not me. She was my demon.
She was my Nightmare.
Cassie retreated into the fog, giving me the ‘come hither’ gesture with a wing as she faded from sight. I stared at that patch of trees, dreading a reappearance, dreading the thought she would come after me, and finally tore my gaze from the window to turn around.
Moloch was gone.
Too terrified to scream, my legs trembled and gave as I slid to a heap on the floor. I stayed that way for a while, feeling helpless, powerless, unable to flee. Yet, I knew I’d been led here for a reason, and I wasn’t done.
Regaining my composure, I once again combed through the straw. I found people I barely knew or half-remembered. Tesem the Black Dog, the crab and the anemone, other Wildlings, the old librarian Alex from book town, mages from Goldie’s group, soldiers from Eastwood whose names I knew but had never spoken with, even Mary Adelaide.
I remembered…
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Footsteps awoke her.
Mary walked towards Cassie’s room with her case of equipment in one hand, a stack of documents under her arm, and talking into the recorder in her other hand.
“Subject spends the majority of her time asleep but seems unable to maintain proper lengths of REM sleep due to unusually frequent nightmares. The difficulty of separating the sleep abnormalities from the subject’s lack of ‘donors’ to feed upon makes the true cause of UE 006’s lethargy—”
Dr. Adelaide opened the bolted steel door with a card swipe and entered.
“—Unclear,” Cassie imitated the good doctor’s voice as she finished the woman’s sentence. She sat on her bed, unseeing eyes locked with Mary’s.
“How are you feeling today?” the doctor said, unruffled.
Pulling that trick too many times had weakened the effect.
“Same.” Cassie didn’t protest or resist as Dr. Adelaide took her temperature and a pinprick blood sample from a leg finger. The good doctor looked into both her ears with an otoscope, flashed it in her eyes—which gave no response—and inspected the inside of her nose while being very careful of the delicate upturned skin. She obediently stuck out her tongue, “Ah,” had her throat swabbed, and had her heart and lungs listened to with a cold stethoscope pressed into her back.
When the woman finished putting her equipment away, Mary reached into her bag and withdrew a stuffed animal. It was fuzzy, though shaped like a white owl. Cassie wondered if it had been a mistake telling this woman about her guardian but put aside her doubts. Instead of tossing this one on top of the stack, the bat girl accepted the toy and tucked it under folded wings.
With her medical rigmarole out of the way, ‘Dr. Adelaide’ became Mary, the friendly nurse. She used the same technique on all the kids, a one-woman good-cop/bad-cop routine. Communicating with the others via Rosetta and Shew Stones kept her resolve firm. However, Cassie starved for physical contact and positive touches; she needed them down to her soul.
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In hardly any time at all, Adelaide’s relentless bombardment of kindnesses and little displays of affection wore down Cassie’s defiance to almost nothing. And this despite hearing the woman explain to her colleagues and superiors how this was a strategy to keep the UE’s subdued—although Mary’s rapid heartbeat told Cassie that wasn’t the whole truth. Whether the woman merely played at motherhood or took the responsibility seriously, Adelaide clearly enjoyed their time together.
Mary passed the dollhouse and the sunlamp to sit on Cassie’s bed and pull the bat girl onto her lap. Cassie never struggled. She enjoyed this too. Though this third mother remained her least favorite, any substitute was better than none.
“I finished testing your skin samples,” Dr. Adelaide said. “Perfectly healthy. Your grey skin tone is not a sign of disease as some suggested—” Cassie knew all too well the voices Mary’s acidic words pointed at, “—But an adaptation for crepuscular life. Though no documented human complexion matches your pigmentation, that doesn’t mean…” As the doctor lectured, she trimmed Cassie’s nails and painted them. Purple today. Mary was a multitasker at heart.
With her nails done, Mary moved on to combing her hair and talking about the inconclusive results of her hearing tests. After that, Mary held her and rocked for a while. Cassie would often fall asleep in Adelaide’s arms at this point. Mary’s voice became soothing white noise, and she was so tired all the time these days.
Her ears perked as she heard the doctor say, “Since you and the other subjects spend most of your time indoors, the lights in the containment units mimic natural light. It’s much nicer that way. I’m glad that myth about vampires and light turned out to be wrong.”
Cassie shook her head weakly. “It probably exists for a reason. All the old myths do.”
Hearing Cassie speak encouraged Mary to ask a question. “Would you like to try another blood pack?”
She stirred at the thought of blood but knew from experience, “No, it’s too cold.”
“I can warm it to within a tenth of a percent of human body temperature,” the doctor assured.
“No, not heat like that. It has to be fresh,” Cassie tried to explain in her semi-conscious state. “The packet blood doesn’t smell right, and the taste doesn’t do anything for me. It loses its flavor so quick when it’s drawn. I have to take it directly from the vein.”
Mary hesitated for another minute, then asked, “Would you like to drink my blood?”
“No, thanks,” Cassie said, reluctant to trust the offer but very tempted. “I’d feel better for a day and then be back to this the next.”
“What about once every eight weeks?—Unfortunately, my doctor won’t let me donate more often.” Mary winked. “You could be here for a while. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a few good days?”
Cassie couldn’t believe it. “What about my record?”
“I need to study my subject’s feeding habits,” the scientist explained. “I can’t ask anyone else to do this, so I must collect the data periodically.”
Something else worried Cassie. “What if I hurt you?”
“You didn’t cause permanent damage to any of your ‘donors.’ Should I be worried about disorientation and confusion?”
“No, that’s something else I did because I was afraid you’d catch me. I guess I was right to worry.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary Adelaide said, and her pulse confirmed it. “But if I hadn’t caught you, the soldiers would’ve kept escalating until they killed you.” The worst part was Cassie knew Mary was right. She’d been having nightmares of machine guns, missiles, and the forest burning before they put the curfew in place, and she lost her source of blood. Owing her captor her life was what Cassie hated most about Mary, but she couldn’t even hold that against the woman.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t want to try my blood?” Dr. Adelaide’s friendly tones returned Cassie’s attention to the conversation. In the end, regardless of fears and misgivings, Cassie came to love Mary.
“Yes, please.”
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The vivid memory fell away. That’s what the dolls were—memories! Perhaps, I thought, the Nightmare wanted to keep me away from the barn so I wouldn’t have access to some of these older, less-used memories. Maybe one memory in particular. I kept searching.
Then, from deep in the straw, I drew Nyctea, the owl harpy. The one I loved more than anything, who had been my second mother, my sister, and my friend.
This was kind of a fantastic moment, the first time I saw her with my own eyes. By that, I mean, while I could use ultra-sonography to ‘see’ other people, that didn’t work on Strigiformes because of their aura of silence. Instead, I could get a picture of her through the not-light of the Aurvandil, or the projected memories of others through the Shew Stone—both of which directed images into the viewer’s brain.
As I brushed her feathers and gave her a regal perch on the windowsill, something in the hay caught my attention. An owl feather, one of Nyctea’s. I picked it up and marveled. Sweeping it through the air, rubbing the bristles, touching it to my ear, I heard nothing.
A memory blossomed in my mind. I knew I needed to remember this. It was important. I stared into the human face of her figurine and dove into the memory.
~~~
Here, we return to the beginning, to the start of my story. I was born to two loving parents in a colony of thousands. We often huddled together in animal form, hanging from the roofs of enormous caves. Mother and father always knew I was different. I favored Biānfú—our Yin progenitor—while my neighbors and cousins were sons and daughters of the other guy.
Although everyone had superhuman hearing, I alone was blind, and I alone heard the echoes of possible futures. My childish certainty was rarely proven wrong. I’d make some comment about preparing winter fur because it’d be a chilly night, and the others would shrug it off—until the next day when we flew straight into a snowstorm.
I knew when someone would be mad before it happened. I knew where someone would find what they’d lost. While a few individuals refused to believe it, my parents supported me and promised to believe in me even if they didn’t understand my gift.
I was around five years old when the nightmares began. Rarely, at first, once or twice a month, I’d wake in a panic. As the dream repeated over and over, more and more often as the weeks passed, I became certain of the threat. I warned my parents and told them of this danger to the colony. My parents explained everything to the elders, who were skeptical despite how often I’d been right.
They deemed it far too dangerous to rely on the Auditions of one inexperienced girl. They calmed the colony, whom I’d frightened with my prediction of doom, saying I’d had no teacher in the ways of Yin. That I had no way to be sure whether the dream was a prophecy or a too-active imagination. I was discredited and dismissed, but I knew my dreams were real.
Unable to convince the others, we three left the colony to avoid their destruction. Except, the bad dreams kept coming, more frequent than ever. I found us safe paths through the Wilderness, fleeing the doom that hounded our tails, yet I couldn’t escape the nightmares.
One night, exhausted from lack of sleep and half-awake, it happened. Flying through a landscape full of rock spires, one of the ledges lashed out and caught my parents unawares. Yet, they were no weaklings.
They used their bodies to shield me as we were forced to the ground. They transformed into their most fearsome warrior-bat shapes, shouting cones of devastating sound to shatter huge swaths of rock. They stood between our attacker and me, wings broken, ready to fight to the death.
She didn’t give them the chance.
Her body had been so still, her heartbeat so slow, she’d been indistinguishable from the rocks her body wrapped around. Once moving, I measured her dimensions by the sound of her scales scraping on the mountain’s bones. She slithered toward us, her body wide as a two-isle airplane and as long as a train. The monster from my oldest nightmare.
Medusa.
At that moment, I realized what I’d done. She had not followed us. She had not lured us here. In my panicked flight from the tiniest of possibilities, more frantic with each action I took that made it more likely, I had unknowingly, though systematically, led us here myself.
Mine had been a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It was over in a snap. My parents turned to stone. Hidden by their statues, I’d been spared the effects of her magic. Yet, she smelled my living breath. She snaked around their figures, mere inches from claiming my life.
Then everything went blank. I felt something hard and strong gripping me, and I thrashed against it. Feeling the wind in my hair, I realized talons held me instead of coils; I was flying, not falling. I ceased my struggle, and the constricting grip relaxed.
Too tired to cry as I gave myself to the blankness, I promised never to tell anyone about my dreams again. That’s how I survived the guilt.
I awoke in a barn, this barn. I’d been laid on a bed of straw. As my ears twitched to take in my surroundings, I noticed the void in the corner of the hayloft. Startled, I fled.
Nyctea pounced on me before I reached the window. Her absolute aura of silence stilled all air vibrations within her sphere of influence. I was blind, and she mute. She didn’t know what was wrong with me but put her whole heart, all her love and pity, into one embrace.
I’d feared the silent void in my perception, but once inside the stillness, I appreciated how my senses had plagued me. The chatter of birds, the gnawing of caterpillars, the sawing of wind through the grass, the whispers of futures that may never come, the screams in my nightmares, and the cries of my parents as they were turned to stone.
Compared to that, the silence was peaceful.
If what held me in the stillness was not the claws of a nightmare but the arms of a person, then I’d not shun what comfort I could find. I was a child and clung to what was warm and gentle.
There and then, the full weight of what happened came down, and I cried for loss and self-pity. I committed my tears to the silence. Buried myself where bad dreams couldn’t reach. Nyctea showered my head with kisses, planting one on my forehead. I did not know then what that kiss represented: a sacred vow of protection, a token sacrifice of Lifeforce. She pulled me close and rocked me back and forth, and I felt—rather than heard—her hum a lullaby.
Later, with more curiosity than sorrow in my heart, Nyctea let me touch her face and body so I could understand her shape. I felt her hooked nose, the hard lines of her face, the razor-edge jaw, the angled brow, the downy feathers, the caring smile, and soft bosom.
Then Nyctea used the Aurvandil to illuminate herself. Her alien feathers intrigued me. I became fascinated by how similar her arms were to my legs—both with fingers and thumbs. I’d never had the chance to examine humans or other races with my sonography and had no idea I was in the minority with wings for arms.
When she noticed my confusion, Nyctea demonstrated her shifting skills. Her arms became wings, like mine but feathered, and back again. She would be my first teacher in the ways of shifting. Before that, though, we had to learn how to communicate.
Sign language was her prime method of ‘talking,’ so she tried adapting it for when she had to turn off the light gem—lest it attract unwanted attention. She discovered the Rosetta Stone translates messages written on my back or hand, as well as carvings and lines scrawled in sand.
Nyctea said she’d been tracking Medusa when she found me. Selling the whereabouts of notable monsters to those in the area made for a tidy salary. She’d saved many lives evacuating settlements in Medusa’s path.
However, she decided that line of work was too dangerous with me in her care. I asked about the people she wouldn’t be able to help because of me, but Nyctea said not to worry. Fault or not, she’d stopped losing sleep over the people she couldn’t help—preferring to focus on the ones right in front of her.
One day, we stumbled across Wendigo and Ziege. I heard them coming and described them to Nyctea. She decided we should meet them, and we joined forces soon after.
As time went on, she taught me to shift faster and push my form’s size to the limit. With her, I learned how to shoot a blast of confusing noise. With her, I discovered how to Listen and focus my Auditions. With her, I learned everything I know about fighting and dodging in combat.
I love her. I miss her. I remembered what I needed to do.
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I awoke in the Tsukumogami bedroom.
Tarō knelt beside me. “How long was I out this time?”
“A day and a half. How do you feel?”
“Still awful,” I said, too tired not to be honest. “I need to see Rana.” I Listened as I got to my aching feet and found her running my way. Perfect.
She met me at the door as it opened, heart-pounding, unusually tense, even for her. Rana stood there ready for action, any action, hands hanging uselessly at her sides, watching me with a mask of blank features.
“Rana, I’m so glad to see you. I remembered!” The words spilled forth, and I realized how happy I was. “My parents were turned to stone by Medusa!”
I heard her muscles contract in a full-body wince, though most wouldn’t have noticed the micro-movements since her eyes remained steady on me. I explained, “No, don’t you get it? That means they’re alive! I can’t believe I’d forgotten, but this is my chance! With a little luck and hard work, I can find them and cure them and get them back!
“All we need to do is buy the secret to curing them from the Tsukumogami. We have plenty of stuff to sell: we have the Cintamani, we have books, and movies, and radio shows, and hey—information about monsters is valuable; I bet they’d accept our memories of Red Tail. Wouldn’t it be great to use that horrible experience to save lives? I know I’m not so good with haggling, but with you at my side for support, I’m sure we can get the information we need!”
When I finished, Rana smiled and said, “Don’t worry, Cassie. I’ll take care of it.”
I hugged her, thankful to have such a good friend.
“Come on,” Tarō said, “Let’s get you to the kitchen for a drink and then straight to bed.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “There’s one more thing I have to do.” I let the tatami mats carry me away, had a drink in the kitchen, visited the latrine, and returned to bed.
I had to face my Nightmare one last time.