I was six years old when I first had the dream, and I have not had it in a very long time.
Last night I had it again.
The beach of bones. The boiling water that did not burn. The skulls weeping water through their empty eyes, and the cave in the mountains with its red light breathing in the dark, and the call like a thousand blades inside my head.
I always wake from it screaming.
This morning I woke without a sound, and with the feeling that I had forgotten something far worse than the dream.
∞
"Up, up, lazy cur. Elric, I say, wake up!"
I woke with a headache that felt like the inside of my skull had been replaced with broken glass.
The pain was immediate, absolute, and the world swam in and out of focus as I tried to sit up. My hand went to my forehead, and I felt sweat, cold, clammy sweat on my skin.
I groaned in pain, and for a moment, I did not know where I was. I looked around, and I was inside a grey tent. I blinked, trying to force the world into clarity, and looked at the silver orb floating beside my head. The voice of a girl, young and bright, already mid-phrase:
"Up, up, lazy cur. Elric, I say, wake up!"
The voice was familiar. It made something in my chest ache, but I could not remember why. I could not remember anything. The name Elric, I thought. That is my name, Elric Voss. But everything else was fog, thick and impenetrable, like trying to see through a wall of cloud.
I sat up slowly, my head pounding with each movement. The cot creaked beneath me. The silver orb repeated its phrase, and I reached out and grabbed it. The motion was automatic and practiced, as if my body knew what to do even though my mind did not.
I held the orb in my hand and stared at it. It was warm. Inscribed with something I did not recognize, but I felt I should know, as if it had been made by my hand. The voice had come from it, a recording, but the voice felt important, like it belonged to someone I should remember.
I shook my head. The pain flared, and I winced.
"The sun’s been awake longer than you, and it’s done less complaining."
The words appeared in my head unbidden, and I frowned. Where had that come from? It was not the recorded voice. It was a memory, maybe, but it was wrong. The recorded voice said something else. I could not remember what.
I reach for the cot beside me, ’where was the little...’
I do not finish the thought. My hand finds the blanket, and I touch the rough wool. I do not know what I expected my hand to find. Something. Someone.
For a moment, the absence is so sharp that it cuts clean through the headache, and I do not know why my chest aches.
I sit up too fast and the world tilts. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes until colors bloom behind them, I breathe, and I wait for the tent to hold still.
I looked around the tent. It was small, functional, and filled with things that felt familiar but distant. A staff leaned against the tent pole, a brown rod with a twisted claw at the top, gripping a blue crystal. There were three small silver charms tied near the head. I reached for them, and my fingers brushed against the cool metal.
A bell. A needle-hoop. A gold disc.
The names came to me unbidden. Mel... Mum... Dad...
Something in my chest cracked, and I did not know why, but the charms made me want to cry. I did not let myself, it seemed important for a reason that I do not cry.
I looked at my hands. They were pale, unmarked, the hands of a boy who had not seen much work. But something about them felt wrong, as if they should be different... new. I flexed them, and they moved easily, normally.
∞
Check your screen.
The thought arrives from nowhere, urgent, in a voice that is almost not my own.
When something is wrong, check the screen. The screen does not lie.
And it is good advice, and I reach to call up the status screen, and the headache surges, white and total, and the thought of the screen scatters like startled birds, and by the time the pain ebbs, I am looking at the grey canvas of the tent, and I have forgotten what I meant to do.
’I should check my status screen,’ I thought. The thought appeared from nowhere, and I blinked. ’Status screen? What was that?’
I tried to remember. Nothing came. Just the headache, pulsing behind my eyes like a second heartbeat.
I stood up, wobbling slightly, and looked around the tent again. There was a small cupboard near the cot, and I opened it. Inside was a notebook, a pen, and a few other odds and ends. I picked up the notebook and flipped through it.
The pages were blank.
I frowned. I felt like there should be writing on these pages, something important, something I had written over and over again. But there was nothing—just empty paper.
I should find that frightening. I think, somewhere under the fog, that I do find it frightening. But the fear cannot get its feet under it, and the morning is pulling at me with the small insistent gravity of things that need doing.
I wear my grey Acolyte robe with the blue lidless eye on the back. I take up my staff, and I brush the creases from my robe. The ordinariness of the ritual steadies me, and I push open the tent flap and step out into the morning.
I stopped the moment I cleared the tent and looked at the camp. It was small, nestled at the base of a massive black pyramid that seemed to fill the sky. The pyramid was enormous, impossible, and it pressed against my vision like a thumb against a closed eye. I stared at it, and for a moment, I felt a wave of vertigo pass through me.
The pyramid was familiar. I had seen it before. But I could not remember when, or why, or what it meant.
I walked toward the edge of the camp, where a cookfire was burning, and a group of people was gathered. They were speaking, laughing, and moving with the easy rhythm of people who knew each other well.
A young man with broad shoulders and a friendly face saw me approaching and raised his spoon in greeting. "Elric! You’re up! The porridge is..."
"Bad," I said. The word came out automatically, and I blinked. Why had I said that?