Mazeweaver, page 4
‘Was it worth it?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ He fanned his wings. He looked like a proper dragon. ‘I don’t know.’
He loved his wings. What could he possibly have promised that was bad enough to make him doubt the value of that bargain?
A tribe of aliens
Ravi asks me the same question Padma did. ‘Why are you trying to help Dean?’
Are all my friends sociopaths or something? ‘Because he’s hurting.’
‘That’s noble, Luca,’ Ravi says with a sigh, ‘but you’re just setting yourself up to get smacked in the face. Again.’
I swing my foot against the leg of the picnic table. ‘But what if I’m the only one who can help him?’
Ravi squints into the sun and pinches the bridge of his nose. I'd dragged him out to Hampstead Heath – my second home this summer – but since Ravi is allergic to both exercise and the outdoors we’ve ended up sitting at the café by the bandstand, about a hundred metres from the bus stop.
‘He’s not going to thank you for spying on his dreams,’ Ravi says.
I blush. Yes, Ravi knows I’m a dreamwalker. My misguided attempt to prove that to him will never cease to be a cause of acute embarrassment. Seriously, how was I supposed to know? Ravi is the last person in the world I would imagine having a sex dream. Okay, not thinking about that.
In some ways, I don’t know much about dreamwalking. Almost every dream I’ve ever walked in has been a nightmare. At least that’s not all there is.
I sometimes wish I had normal dreams. The spontaneity, the random chaos. Looks like it could be fun. Uncomplicated. ‘Just a dream.’ But would I swap my dreamwalking for that? No way. Being swept along by dreams might be fun, but controlling dreams is being the architect of an entire world. I haven’t let myself stretch my wings since Lily got better, but surely if I have this power I’m obliged to try and do some good with it.
‘Dean doesn’t have to thank me – he doesn’t have to know.’
Ravi gives me one of his serious looks. I can imagine him as a doctor delivering bad news. ‘Just don’t go in thinking if you fix him you’ll be friends again. He was judgemental and intolerant before he was depressed.’
Come on – tactless, maybe, but not an arsehole. At least, not to me. I try and think of a single conversation I can remember Dean having with Ravi and can’t come up with one. Did my two closest friends ignore each other for five years, and I never even noticed?
Ravi heaves another sigh. ‘You think Dean’s going to want your help after you ask out his ex-girlfriend?’
Just the thought sets a boa constrictor around my chest. ‘I’m not going to ask Padma out.’
But the longing is a constant ache in my stomach. As soon as I let my thoughts turn to her, it’s worse than it’s ever been – a surge of want that’s unnatural in its intensity, desire turned to greed, barbed wire wrapped around my spine. Gritting my teeth, I fight my way back to someone I can recognise as myself. Padma isn’t an object to be possessed.
‘You’ll have to ask her out eventually, Luca. I may not be the most emotionally literate of guys, but there is a certain level of pining that even I can’t ignore, and you passed it months ago.’
He’s right. I have to. I can’t. Not just the fear of rejection – the fear of being forced back into a role I hated.
I wrap my feet around the leg of the picnic table and lean back to look at the sky. London-blue: bright and clear, but always with a hint of pollution-yellow. ‘I’ll sort out Dean first. Start with the low-hanging fruit, right? Then I’ll ask Padma out. Then save the world.’
‘Are you sure you have your priorities straight, Luca?’ Ravi asks, polishing his glasses. Jamming them back on his nose, he pulls an overflowing binder out of his satchel. ‘Personally, I’d rather you got on with saving the world. See, I’ve been researching rising sea levels; to prevent the melting of the ice caps, global carbon dioxide levels would need to drop back below three hundred parts per million. So, I suggest that we take measurements of the CO2 levels in different parts of the Heath, to map the effect the resident elementals—’
I lower my forehead onto the table and wrap my arms over my head. ‘Please, Ravi! Does being a shaman have to be like schoolwork?’
He tuts. ‘I’ll do the science, you do the ...’ He waves his hand around like he’s brandishing a magic wand.
Yeah, thanks. I’ll do the weird stuff. He makes it sound so easy, as if it’s just a case of numbers and charts. He knows that the Arctic permafrost is melting – but I’m the one who’ll need to work out how the ice caps feel about it.
Is the Arctic Ocean awake yet? Maybe I need to tip a bit of the mixed bathing pond into it to bring it to life. How am I supposed to get to the Arctic – I’m only sixteen! And I don’t want to meet an ocean. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg – oh no, bad puns mean my anxiety is getting the best of me – there’s also deforestation and extreme weather patterns and the disappearing bees. Where am I supposed to find the bees? Is there a bee spirit I can ask? I don’t want to meet the mythological representation of bees, either.
I can see my thoughts beginning to spiral. Stop thinking about all that. The big picture is just too big. How can I solve the world’s problems when I can’t even tell one girl how I feel?
My knee keeps jiggling. The scuffed lino floor is unduly fascinating: hospital green with flecks of grey. Easier to look at than the other people in the circle.
I’ve been contemplating coming to this group for months ... but I don’t need to, right? I’m happy with who I am. I’m only here now because I need help finding a way to ask out a girl without betraying myself.
So, I’m at a trans support group at a youth centre off Euston Road, wondering if this is the place to find answers. Does non-binary even count as trans? No one else seems sure, either, judging from all the sideways looks.
The group leader is a guy called Jasper, a few years older than me, with a vertical afro and a ring in his nose. He looks cool. Another reason I’m in the wrong place. I wish I had long hair, then I’d feel like I was doing this non-binary thing properly; but I shaved it in solidarity when Lily had chemo last year, and it’s taking aeons to grow out. It almost reaches my shoulders now if I tug it. Which I realise I’m doing, so I sit on my hands.
‘There are lots of different ways to transition,’ Jasper is saying. ‘I was lucky enough to start on hormone therapy before I hit puberty—’
‘Do you take hormones?’ a girl with the expression of a bulldog and an incongruous blue pixie cut barks at me.
‘What?’ I say. I mean, is that a normal way to open a conversation with a stranger?
‘Lay off, Dex,’ says the person beside her. Gender undetermined. We all introduced ourselves at the start: name and preferred pronouns. It was weird. I can’t remember the names or the pronouns now. Not sure if I remember my own name. Definitely don’t remember why I thought this was a good idea.
‘Don’t worry, Luca,’ Jasper says, ‘there’s no right or wrong way to be non-binary.’ Which I interpret as a passive-aggressive way of telling me that I’ve found the wrong way. ‘Why don’t you tell us a bit about the journey that brought you here?’
‘Um,’ I say. ‘Well, I came out as enby last year, and it feels good. It feels right. But there’s this girl I like, and I keep thinking “why doesn’t she make a move?” and then I realised she’s probably expecting me to, and does that mean she still thinks of me as a boy? Like I’m supposed to fill that role because she’s a girl.’
‘Dating other people in the queer community is way easier,’ one bloke says. Yeah, that’s helpful, thanks.
‘Don’t let this girl put you under pressure to be someone you’re not,’ Jasper says, leaning forward. ‘If you go into a relationship inauthentically then it can only get worse.’
Sounds like the consensus is that if I stay true to myself I’ll never get the girl. Great.
I won’t be coming back here again. Why do I need it, anyway? Coming to terms with who I am was hard, but I did it. Coming out was hard, but I did that too. I’ve done the hard stuff now. I don’t need anyone else telling me how to be me.
But ... this is supposed to be my tribe.
I shouldn’t be thinking about this, anyway. I have more important things to do than analyse my gender identity. The people here may be all sorted and self-fulfilled, but they don’t have all my responsibilities. Restore the natural balance. Reverse the damage of the Industrial Revolution. Save my ex-best friend from drowning in despair.
I don’t have time for me.
Chasing the winter
The last time Aliya had set off on a quest, with no idea of the length and depths to which her journey would take her, she had simply grabbed a bag and left. Now, she had responsibilities.
‘I’ve arranged for another local shaman to visit in a few weeks,’ she reassured one of the elderly villagers. ‘You have enough medicine to last you until then.’ He went away, pacified, but an irate Juna took his place.
‘If you make me delay my wedding I will string you up by your toes!’ Juna said.
‘I’ll be back well before midwinter,’ Aliya promised, hoping it wasn’t a lie. There were enough barriers between her and Juna at the moment without adding a broken promise. ‘At least you know I won’t miss your big day,’ she said, trying to lighten the mood. The wedding couldn’t take place without her there to officiate.
Juna didn’t even crack a smile. ‘I’m sure whatever you’re doing is important, Aliya – but this is important to me.’
Aliya crossed her arms and replied with the coming winter already present in her voice. ‘I’ll be here. I take my calling seriously, you know.’
Juna flinched. ‘Well, take care, then. Will it be dangerous, where you’re going?’
A year ago, Aliya would have told her best friend about the ball of confusion and anxiety nestled in her chest. But now, she was a shaman. She was the one with the answers, not the questions. No one wanted to hear that sometimes she still felt just like an ordinary girl.
‘It won’t be anything I can’t handle.’
‘Of course. Well then, don’t let my trivial concerns slow you down.’ Juna spun on her heel and stomped off.
Quantum tutted. ‘She’s supposed to be your friend, Aliya.’
She held out her arm and Quantum jumped onto it, her muscles straining to take his weight. ‘Shamans don’t have friends.’
His sharp claws snicked out and dug into her skin, almost hard enough to draw blood. ‘Well, that’s good to know,’ he said.
‘I didn’t mean you,’ she said, ‘you’re different.’
‘Yes; thanks for the reminder,’ he spat. ‘I can’t help being different – but you make yourself an outsider. You can be a shaman without pushing people away.’
Aliya snorted. She didn’t push people away – they all kept their distance. She had fought for their respect, proven herself useful ... and now they needed her. That wasn’t the same as wanting her. It wasn’t the same as love.
Quantum tutted, his tongue flicking between sharp teeth. ‘I rejoice that you’ve learnt to embrace your differences, Aliya. But you could try focusing on the things that make you the same as the rest of us, too.’
It took three more days to finish making arrangements. It was possible that not all the delays were other people’s fault. Was it so wrong to want someone to ask her to stay?
Finally, two panniers were packed and slung over Meera’s back. Aliya didn’t like to burden her horse with so much luggage, but the harvest was already beginning and it was sure to have turned cold before they returned. She usually travelled in spring and summer when she visited other shamans or toured the local villages that had no shaman of their own. But this couldn’t wait for the weather. She would just have to take warm clothing and extra blankets. At least Quantum was good at starting fires.
Everything was ready ... except her. She didn’t want to leave. Usually, Aliya enjoyed the travelling she had to do as part of her role. But this journey was going to be different, she could feel it; this one was going to test her.
With a sigh, she unlaced a small pouch from her belt and shook it so it rattled. Squatting down, she opened the pouch and poured out its contents onto the ground. A dozen tiny bones clattered and rolled before settling into place. Their arrangement could predict the outcome of this journey.
‘So, what do the bones tell you?’ Quantum asked, sidling up to her.
‘That there’s a wolf out there somewhere without a paw, and the rabbit he’s chasing is already long dead,’ Aliya said glumly.
The little dragon laughed. ‘That’s reading the past, not the future. Anyone can do that.’
‘Neema told me that we’re not truly trying to tell the future; we’re reading the present, and if we fully understand the present, we’ll be able to predict the future because we know what people will do. But I can’t even see my own future – I just see a pile of bones.’
‘Well, practice makes perfect,’ her friend reassured her, turning with a flick of his tail and scattering the bones into a new pattern. ‘Or makes you less than completely hopeless, at any rate!’ he called back over his shoulder as he scampered away.
She tried not to give him the satisfaction of seeing her laugh as she swept up the bones to return them to their pouch. For a moment, their friendship felt like it was back on solid ground. For a moment, there was a shape within the bones, a pattern that slid through the corner of her mind – a mountain, a cave, linked concentric circles – and then they were once more just a handful of old bones. She shook her head to clear the weird flash of vision and put the useless bones away.
‘Come on then, Quantum,’ she called, ‘let’s get moving. You reckoned it’s about six hundred kilometres, right? That should take us three weeks or so.’
‘A bit longer if we go via Jacinth,’ Quantum said as he leapt onto Meera’s back and settled himself comfortably between her ears.
‘Jacinth is in the wrong direction,’ Aliya said. ‘Why would we want to go there?’
‘To pick up Vali, or course. You weren’t thinking of going without him?’
Vali would come if she asked him to; he’d drop everything for her in a heartbeat. She wanted him with them, a buffer between her and Quantum. But Vali was building a life without her, a life he loved. She couldn’t ask him to leave all that behind.
‘We can’t afford the time. I need to be back for Juna’s wedding, remember?’
‘Funny that you’re suddenly so concerned about your friends,’ Quantum said. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to leave me behind as well?’
Aliya gritted her teeth against a reply. Quantum was frightened; it wasn’t bringing out the best in him.
She swung up onto Meera’s back, and the horse gave a disgruntled sigh at her weight combined with the travelling bags. With Quantum and Meera both sulking, they trudged silently into the rising sun. Clouds of golden grass seed puffed into the air each time Meera planted her hooves, making Quantum sneeze and creating a dusty haze. Three weeks of whispering grass and a grumpy dragon lay ahead.
She glanced back only once, after they had forded the river, at the sleepy village surrounded by wheat ready for harvest. Then the wild prairie closed around them.
Electricity
I’m not in the mood for a party.
Even if it’s only a party of seven (that’s the maximum number that can fit in a Pharaoh’s tomb, apparently). As well as Ravi and Padma, Justin’s also invited three of his friends from outside school. Ravi is shy and I’m distracted, but at least Padma is good at getting to know people.
‘So, Laurie,’ she’s saying to the gangly guy with a mop of curly brown hair who’s just joined us, ‘how do you know Justin?’
‘North London Youth Orchestra,’ he says. ‘Trombone. I’m quite an expert blower.’ He winks at Ravi, who spits out a mouthful of lemonade. We’re all gathering on the pavement of a back street near London Bridge (which is the antechamber to a Pharaoh’s tomb, naturally).
‘Ravi, right?’ Laurie asks. ‘Are you a musician, too?’
‘Ah, no,’ says Ravi. ‘More of a science guy.’
‘But music and maths have a very close relationship,’ Laurie says, leaning in close to Ravi and lowering his voice to an intimate murmur.
Padma mouths ‘Cute’ and winks at me. I manage not to choke on my drink. Just. When I succeed in tearing my gaze away from her eyelashes the barbed-wire hook in my gut eases its pull a little and I’m able to draw a full breath. It’s not fair that it suddenly hurts to look at her. I’ve fancied her for months, but the last few days it’s like my fingers have been permanently jammed in an electric socket.
It’s our turn to get locked up. Which is more fun than it sounds, except that a little niggle in the back of my mind keeps telling me all the answers before anyone else has even finished reading the clues. A sharp, crackly sort of awareness; not like me at all. Is being good at escape rooms a weird side-effect of being a shaman? I keep my mouth zipped shut so I don’t ruin my friend’s fun.
The night flows around me. I’m outside it all, yet can feel every moment prickling on my skin. Maybe because I’ve been opening myself up to Dean’s emotions, I feel more like a shaman than I ever have outside the world of dreams: connected to everything, tuned into a level just below the surface. A more real reality where people are more than what they show.
The action around me is surreal and yet mundane: Justin bouncing with glee over solving a puzzle, Ravi giving an impromptu lecture on hieroglyphics, Padma pretending to be a mummy come to life. Each of those things holds its own kind of wonder and makes Dean’s pain seem darker by comparison.
