“Be certain,” Cathal said, bending forward. “You might not have boots in the next dream. You might not get away in time.”
Sophia shuddered, and for a moment Cathal hated himself, but then her eyes cleared and she held up a hand. “Wait. Ididhave boots. Why would he let me…unless he only intended a warning…but… And then he clearly can’t… Not all of it…and—”
“Finish a sentence, pray,” said Alice. “Before I pour a basin over your head to bring your senses back.”
The face Sophia made at her was practiced but also absent, halfhearted at best. “He can’t control all of the dream. Ithinkthe shades are separate, his creatures but still themselves, and I think that he had to pull me there, through a place that isn’t entirely his. And Iwasshaping things in the end. Not very well, but I managed it.”
“That’s a relief. Obvious, since you’rehere, but we’ll take any good news just now,” said Alice.
“No, but this could be an advantage,” Sophia said, leaning forward. “I mentioned connections. If the dream is his sending, he must put something of himself into it…and if I can shape it, then that much of him is in my power, or it could be.”
“Like a fight,” said Cathal, trying both to understand and to ignore the way Sophia’s breasts pressed against her gown in her new position. The former helped with the latter, though not as much as would have been genteel or knightly. “Hard to strike without getting in the other fellow’s range.”
Sophia nodded slowly, chewing on her lip some more as she thought the metaphor through. “Yes. And if I can, oh, grab his arm and pull him even more forward, then he’s inmypower. I can’t fight him directly with magic, any more than I could fight you with a sword…but it’s possible that I could make him fight himself.”
Cathal actually smiled. “How can we better the odds?”
“Well, a part of him would be best. A part can change the whole,” she recited, almost singsong, “and a likeness can change what it’s like. If you’d saved the arm, we’d probably be doing very well,” she added with a wry smile of her own.
“I’ll bear that in mind for the next time.”
“It’s always better to prepare. A lock of hair, a drop of blood, a true name, all of those have great power…which is, I’d imagine, one of the reasons he goes by that ridiculous alias. To a lesser extent, anything you can find out about him might be an aid. And I’ll contemplate the problem.” She got to her feet. If the ankle gave her any trouble, Cathal didn’t see it. “The world is the divine cloaked in matter. Dreams, which have only will and no matter, should be a midpoint. If I can bring my will into greater harmony… Well, I shall have to see.”
“See right,” said Alice, gripping her friend’s shoulder, “and study hard. I don’t think this will be the last dream he sends.”
Sixteen
For the next few nights, Sophia slept without trouble. She was nervous enough the first night to consider drinking wine before bed, but decided that she’d need unclouded judgment if Valeriusdidsend another nightmare, and spent a good long time staring into the darkness, making herself breathe regularly in and out, before she relaxed enough to doze off.
Her undisturbed nights after that were not entirely reassuring. Whether Valerius needed to gather strength again or could only send the dreams when the stars were right, every night that progressed without a nightmare was one closer to the next occurrence. Sophia had been granted time to prepare. Knowing that weighed on her, keeping her always conscious that she should be working, and that she could be doing more.
Then there came an afternoon when she couldn’t.
The laboratory was full of work. Near the window, the burned remains of the holly, blended with powdered jet and the skin of a snake, sat in a clear glass beaker and caught what sunlight the winter day was able to provide. A little solar energy to go with the saturnine would harm nothing, Sophia had thought, and it was almost always essential to the fermentation phase.
Where more blatantly solar forces were concerned, she’d nursed a small amount of her precious stock of cloves through the calcination process once more, had transferred it to a blue glass bowl and carefully added water to start the dissolution phase. The topaz was powdered and ready for calcination itself, but there would be several hours before the planets aligned properly for that, or for Sophia to begin any of the other processes that she could manage just then.
As she always did, and as she had done more often in the days since the first dream, Sophia had turned from action to contemplation, seeking both to strengthen her own will and to bring it into harmony with that of the Most High. Barred by her age, sex, and unmarried state from studying theSefer Bahir, the book that explained greater secrets of the universe, she’d nonetheless picked up bits from books and teachers, as birds picked up crumbs in the street. She bent her mind to understanding what she could and prayed in all ways she felt might be acceptable.
At times, as she shaped her lips around the words, she felt her will almost like a hand, capable of reaching out, of grasping or of striking, if she only knew what to do with it. At other times she felt that her mind opened and she saw a light that was onlylightbecause she could think of no other word for it, a light that was in reality everything.
Such moments were few. They were brief. They almost always left her weary, as though she’d been running uphill or lifting heavy loads rather than just standing and focusing on words. Pushing herself too far in contemplation, as with anything else, could be disastrous. She knew that from both teaching and instinct.
Besides, there were hours for contemplation too, and once she’d added water to the topaz, the timing would be wrong.
One wanted to become part of the right harmony, after all. She’d heard a few stories about what could happen otherwise. Opening those doors under the wrong circumstances could let in beings Sophia hoped never to encounter.
So she found herself standing in a room where she could do nothing, with the afternoon ahead of her, and feeling more alert and restless than she would have expected. It might have been the approaching spring—it was hard to tell with the snow, but the days were getting longer, the air a shade less frigid.
At home, the snow would have melted weeks before. By now, at least the first tightly furled crocuses would have come up. There might be grass and the earliest buds on the rosebushes and in the trees. Mother would sit outside on the first day of real sun and risk scandal by uncovering her hair.I’m an old woman, she said,and God made the spring breeze. He’ll understand.
Memory hit Sophia in the pit of her stomach.
It was spring, and the remembrance of other springs. It was Alice saying,Someone should tell your parents. It was Passover approaching. She’d accommodate, if she was still here, doing what she could and trusting that her work would justify her failures in the end, but she didn’twantto adjust, to make do or leave out. She wanted the preparation, her father’s voice at the table, all the small rituals that marked the greater one, that marked off the passage of time and the smooth turning of the world.
Alice had always liked watching the city celebrate Lent around them, observing the same way she listened to songs out here:This is not mine, but that doesn’t matter. The celebrations in the street had always made Sophia feel a touch left out, but back home that had been a minor, momentary pang. She’d had her family, her friends, her own part of the world.
Here, there were just her and Alice, and a good fifty people who, kind as they were, might turn much less so if they knew precisely what kind of women lived under their roof. But then again, the Scots weren’t necessarily the English.
