Richie had dreamt before, and he would dream again. As a child, he dreamed of myths and monsters, gods and heroes, fables and legends passed down through the pages of every storybook compilation the world over of the ancient tales of every inhabited continent. Dragons, magic, epic quests, and the thresholds of other worlds, alien and unknowable, yet right under our noses. More and more now, he began to wonder if there weren’t fragments of truth hidden in the old wisdom. These thoughts colored his dreams now, had been ever since he first was graced with the preliminary vision of his arrest by Station Bay’s police force jumping to conclusions in their panicked hast to clear the streets of a dangerous psychopath with a penchant for butchering humans like cattle. Perception of that first wandering corridor into the mystical Backyards that so much of his life’s story seemed to turn on as its axis had come to him partially by his daze, and his unusual open-mindedness, accidentally or otherwise, to that unknown frontier. He had wandered into the tunnel of ivy of his own free will, and by his own desire, smelling and sensing within the rejuvenating elixir of universal nostalgia wafting out of the liminal dreamspace, as his dragon runes smelled the rivalry of other magical beasts they struggled against for supremacy.
Richie made the choice, consciously or otherwise, to descend into the rabbit hole when he passed into the impossible tunnel within the broken picket fence. Yet, the vision that had come to him - the one that led him to those abandoned apartments and the hole in their fence - had come unbidden into his senses, overtaking and hijacking them. Sure, maybe it could have been the instincts of his dragons projecting into a possible and likely future, but that didn’t seem to fit with what other data Richie had been able to collect on them. Besides, only now had his inked guardians truly begun to come into their own, parallel to the boy’s own sudden impetus to head towards self-actualization and the peak of his manhood in this life. No, the early warning to escape that fate - however briefly averted, given his arrest not much longer later - did not come from within, from either Richie or his symbiotic companions. That had been an extrinsic psychic warning.
Divine intervention, when all qualifiers were stripped away.
He hadn’t really had the time to figure through any of this. There was so much still to unpack. The ferals and the fog, the Backyards themselves, the increasing number of people drawn to each other who boasted ambiguously-ordained magical powers, the lost memories of some frolic in another world beyond the Backyards, and the twisting feeling in his gut of a higher fate he could only know on a nominal level, as though predetermination was moving him and everyone he knew like pieces on a cosmic chessboard - all of it was overwhelming, utterly, like a tidal wave. Wherever to begin?
As questions layered atop questions, forming deep layers of existential stratum, the central question at the start of it all that had begun his journey gathered dust, forgotten. How had he come by knowledge that he must either flee, or be captured then and there, in the precious seconds and minutes after dispatching the would-be mugger? Who gave him the headstart on the mad killer who was responsible for killing the beaten thug and implicating Richie, who had stalked him in the jail, and who had continued to be a persistent thorn in his side and his peace of mind, antagonizing his friends and corrupting whatever animistic forces were trying to guide the city? Who had given him the brief taste of a sixth sense? Why did he know to take the path he had?
If Richie knew this psychic instinct had had a clear source, from the will of another being privy to a bigger picture he was denied, would he have taken it? Better to let the boy think he had been his own fortune teller, and encourage him to trust his instinct, than to make him feel like a pawn in someone else’s game. Benevolent forces working their best to counterbalance the malevolence of the Faceless Man and his ambitions had their own plans for Richie, and his kin. However, the weakness they had that their enemies did not, was compassion, empathy, and acknowledgment of the free will of others. If the strength of an individual mortal soul was to stand against the Void, that determination must come from within, not from the machinations of a puppeteer god.
The choice had to be Richie’s to make.
Yet the question remained - where did a helpful push in the right direction, and taking control of the variables which created a chain of causality leading the chosen ones to the preferred outcome diverge clearly? What difference did it all amount to? The answer to that was up to the chosen to decide for themselves. What personal stakes did they have in the preservation of the light?
Before the fog was lifted, the powers that be would need Richie’s answer first.
The question was not posed clearly. It came, like all important questions of an existential nature, by way of dream, and ambiguous emotions.
Chikita had been correct - Richie and Freyja were not blocked from remembering the events that unfolded within their Backyards by anything other than their own traumas and repression. Those memories had begun to come back to Richie piecemeal, often in chunks of dreams and daydreams that were a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces would take many hours to put together. The first and most prominent detail of the time inside that liminal space that came back to Richie in waves was the comforting rain he had felt in the frozen cocoon of time right before Freyja rose again as Garm to slay the Great Eagle. The heavens had hatched a monstrous quasi-divine being who had been no less bloodthirsty and destructive than the demonic canine Richie would come to view as a friend in time, and he made his wager on sticking beside the hellhound he played fetch with. The rain shower that connected him, Garm, and the unmet Cuppy to nine other unknown players on the board who had yet to come within his sight had been like drops of reassurance from the heavens. He had never liked rain in particular. Ella might have, he didn’t quite remember. Either way, the light patter of the raindrops had sounded unmistakably like the beats of many hearts. He trusted it, lost himself inside it. That rain was a promissory note of direction from a kind elemental force hitherto suppressed from guiding Richie and the others.
Much like the seal between himself and the power of his dormant dragon runes had been broken by Richie’s decisions, his first contact with that empowering rain had set the precedent for its continuing cycle. The rain would come to him, as across the seasons, in rhythmic patterns. Every shower was a step closer to some ultimate truth that was within reach when asleep, and a lost illusion upon waking.
This night, he felt closer than ever to the final revelation.
Richie stood amidst trellises of crawling ivy, marble plates sunken into the mud like stepping stones through dense rainforest vegetation and snagging green tendrils framing either side of a narrow green passageway, and sheltered under a dome roof of fine bird netting. The air was moist with a hint of cool mist, and he could hear the trickle of fountains and streams up ahead, and all around him. He looked back over his shoulder, and saw the circle of light of the apartment backyard strip past the broken fence, and could see that it was twilight there. The fading orange light was divided sharply at the gate from the ephemeral green daylight of the garden path within. He was beckoned forward by something, like the same transcendent instinct that had lassoed him by his curiosity and whim into the ivy tunnel the first time. He pressed on, pushing through huge, ridged leaves of dark jade green, and dusted fallen rose petals out of his hair. He came upon a stone path cutting through an intricate nesting series of concentric ponds, six circles deep, whose waters were still and calm, and absolutely crystal clear yet a cyan sparkling blue. They caught and reflected the glare of the unseen sun whose rays penetrated through the obscuring canopy. Somewhere were songbirds, but the birdbaths were empty. The sounds of the trickling and the flowing of water had become the ambient pelting of distant rain whose drops Richie could not see.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Looking down at his feet when he was midway across the nesting circles of blue pond, he saw that strange, gentle ripples were continually spreading from random epicenters across each surface. When the ripples formed, they made sounds like little musical notes being struck. It dawned on him that these notes were the sounds he had taken for a spring shower. He peered into the crystal depths, saw that the still waters ran deep - perhaps thirty feet or more, with a bottom lined with countless tossed coins, each carrying the psychic remnant of wishes made on them. Somehow, he could taste each will captured inside the lucky coins. Adjusting his focus to the surface, Richie could see his own shimmering reflection, subtly warped by the ripples such that it seemed to be dancing. Over his reflection’s shoulder, he saw a slender silhouette with a fall of smooth hair. When he looked behind him, he could not see anyone else. But, when he peered into the pond again, there was the other presence within the garden, standing just out of range of her features being made clear by the reflection.
He felt no hostility from this figure, as he had from the jester, or the man in cobalt robes. All worries melted away, like winter ice sloughing off in the spring to reveal the sprouting stalks of seeds they had sheltered in the winter. He thought of both Cuppy, and Chikita as this analogy passed, wordlessly, through his senses. He felt a calming hand on his shoulder as he did so.
“Why am I thinking of them?” Richie asked.
Because came a voice that was not altogether a voice, you have been connected to each other.
“Connected how?”
The rain falls when it may. All of you sat under the same cloudy sky once, in a time both far off, and very near.
“So it may not have even happened at all? Or maybe it’s something that hasn’t happened yet?”
A linear path of events is only one perspective. That concept means less and less here, the longer you stay, and begin to stretch out and feel your immense consciousness. For you, the unifying event was remembered only in flashback, when you felt a brotherly instinct toward the girl battling her own inner demon. A path could have diverged when the heavens responded with Hraesvelgr. You chose to stand by Freyja’s side, and gave her the strength to fight and win. Not even gods can predict where every single raindrop will fall. But, would knowing whether that was only a dream, some kind of time travel, or a true memory warped by recent extrasensory experiences change how you felt in that moment? How you feel now?
“I don’t understand.” Richie said.
Try. If that vision stirred the will to protect someone inside your heart, then it isn’t an illusion. Its reality is as valid as any other. If you truly wish to surpass the heavens, this is something you will understand someday. All possibilities spiral outward from one ultimate concept at the heart of your universe, and countless others. You and all other children of the world already peer into this wellspring of knowledge every time you dream or hope. It is the place from which you scry the tomorrow you want to reach, and the person you want to be.
“Why tell me any of this?”
Because there are lost souls who would poison this wellspring. You may have suppressed your cares and your sensitivities for so long that you no longer recognize them, but in this garden, all masks are dropped, and hearts are laid bare. I believe you will look for the truth on your own, because your heart, yearning for freedom, will not tolerate the corruption of hopes and dreams. Each of you carry your own little lights, flickering in the wind, struggling not to go out. Even now, you fear you are alone and unable to be the torchbearer of your own little light. You don’t dare to dream and hope. These things were stolen from you when your mother was taken away. Now, you find yourself slowly warming to others, yet remain afraid to let them into your heart. An urchin on the streets who loves only himself has nothing to lose. That was easier for you than you care to admit. But now, there are precious things you can’t bear to lose again.
“I can’t carry everybody’s light with me on top of my own. I’d be juggling candles in a hurricane. If you know me, then you know the void I saw. You saw how powerful it is, how it swallows all the light. Not even dragons can escape its pull. How can I protect other lights? I can barely preserve my own.”
The answer is already inside you. Peer into the wellspring. Have faith.
“Faith has never gotten me anywhere. I’ve had no one but myself to rely on day in and day out to survive. If there was a higher power to appeal to, it either doesn’t get my messages, or doesn’t care. If there is a God, he has a lot to answer for when I get up there.” Richie punched his knuckles together.
You misunderstand. Faith and free will are two sides of the same coin. Flocks of practitioners look for God in the wrong places. Churches and steeples are but shells. What they carried with them, the spark of inspiration to create those temples and those monuments, spurred on by the first moment they looked up at the blue sky and felt awe and wonder, and a desire to understand it, is where true immortality lies. True power.
“None of this makes any sense. Gods, demons, heaven, hell, whatever. Whatever Freyja is, she’s a hell of a lot better than those ‘peacekeeping’ hypocrites in suits, or the dumb buzzard that came to silence her. She is who she is. Cuppy is Cuppy. And I’m just Richie. Only Richie. Not the bearer of prophesied lights, or some pawn in a game I didn’t sign up for. I have my own reasons for fighting, and they belong to me alone.”
I know. You fight to understand the meaning of your own life. Everything makes sense when you are in conflict. When someone lunges at you with a knife, you move to disarm them. When a predator pursues, you escape into the rafters to outmaneuver their jaws. When the black hole of the Void opens beneath you, you cling to the Sun.
“Then you already know that I want no part of some grand design.” Richie crossed his arms, glaring.
You will know everything you need when you see that We are One.
“We? What, people? The elements?”
Everything.
The warm rain fell, and then Richie woke up. His eyes were moist.
He sighed, then sat up, looking about the brightening living room where Freyja snored on the couch, and Cuppy slumbered in a bedroll beside his own. Before he was fully awake, he accidentally let himself have a sincere thought that he had always wanted to have a sleepover with friends.
Gross.
He stretched out his back. "Big day, today."