Chapter Text
"JiU!" Yoohyeon snapped into a nearly perfect 90° angle from where she had been lain flat, so swiftly that for a moment she was motion-blind. Then sun-blind. Then utterly confused. Beneath her palms she felt the contrasting sensations of warm sun-baked dirt and dewy-cool grass, gritty and waxy and most definitely not the sheets of a bed she last remembered being in. Before her stretched open blue sky, cloudless and almost painfully bright. The grass she found herself lying in was perfectly manicured and stretched off into the distance almost as far as the sky itself, broken only by a row of trees some ways off, spaced so symmetrically that Yoohyeon knew them to be part of an orchard. The Chateau's orchard. She was out behind the Chateau. A quick glance behind her confirmed this, the ashen-white façade of the building keeping an eye on her through its many windows, pupil-less and yet unmistakably, unnervingly focused. Like the eight eyes of a spider.
Remembrance rained upon her with the sudden overwhelming deluge of a summer shower. Where she had been; first the attic, then the north wing parlor, then . . . somewhere dark, dank, distant, like at the bottom of a well, with only a pinprick of light above. And yet she could see through this far-off pinprick with a nearness and clarity as if through a hole in the wall into an adjacent room, witnessing through eyes that were hers but not hers to direct. And oh, what she witnessed . . . Dami's suspicion; Siyeon's hollowness; SuA's descent from triumph to despair; and JiU . . . JiU's many hairline fractures joining and splintering into a full-on break with one precise hit. A hit the spider knew where to land for the reconnaissance extracted from the cache of JiU's closest confidant; The spider had demolished JiU and used Yoohyeon as its wrecking ball.
Yoohyeon pressed a palm to her chest, pinning down the awful lurch she felt her heart make. All the things she would never say, barely thought, hardly believed, stripped of complicated nuance, of the love that forgave and her own fallacies that made falsehoods fester, all laid out to lay into JiU. She needed to get back to her, needed desperately to draw out the venom the spider had sunken into her, needed JiU to know it wasn't her who stood behind such callous judgment. But how to reach her? First she had to determine where she was.
Outside. In broad daylight. With no sun in the sky, and no clouds for it to be hiding behind. And yet it was bright. So bright. Clinically bright. Monotonously bright. Yoohyeon remembered seeing a similarly-broken sky, one that mimicked the presence of one but wasn't quite right, with its looping clouds and impossibly-overlapping sun. She was dreaming. She was dreaming because the spider put them to bed. She remembered now her eyelids closing like a curtain at intermission, forcing her out of a story she desperately needed resolution to. She remembered waiting in that suspended darkness for the curtain to rise again or for lights to come on. She remembered hearing JiU crying in the darkness as she waited, the sound of her sniffing and swallowing magnified in the dead hush of an otherwise empty audience. She remembered wishing she could get up and walk out, but that she was paralyzed from crown to sole. Then, thankfully, she must have finally fallen to sleep, because the next thing she remembered was waking up. Waking . . . here.
So where was the spider?
Yoohyeon stood, mostly to see if she could. She continued gentle, exploratory stretches of her body as she consciously checked in on all five of her senses, after which she moved on to her emotional state, taking inventory of her thoughts and feelings to discover each of them was wholly her own. She had no shadow. Figuratively or literally, as a matter of fact; yet another oddity she noted as she continued to acclimate to her new state of consciousness. That made a certain sense. If there was no sun, then by what could a shadow orient itself?
She inhaled her first, deep breath, visualizing the air expanding her lungs, imagining every nook and cranny the spider could hide in being filled seal-tight until she could not fathom a single space where it could possibly squeeze to hide. She felt truly alone; a sensation she never before valued, but now nearly sobbed for. There still remained a place of her own that the spider could not infiltrate. But how? It had reached her in her dreams before. Tricked her in her dreams before. What was different now except . . . that the spider was now beholden to the limitations of Yoohyeon's body. Pain seemed to have been foreign to it. So what else was? Sleep? Had the spider ever slept before? Did it know how to dream? Where was it now? In some black inexistence? She supposed it could be where she had been, down that pitch-black well, able to do nothing but observe. But she doubted it. She felt nothing looking out of her pupils except herself. She hoped it was flung into its own alien subconscious, tormented by the very concept it had made its meals of.
"Eat that," Yoohyeon crowed as she made her way to the chateau.
She tried the kitchen entrance as she came upon it, seeing no reason at all to round the building just to walk into the foyer. An entrance was an entrance. Except this one was locked. So were the front doors when she eventually made her way to them. So was every window she tried to pry open before figuring to try the remaining was an act of insanity. Especially when she could just pick up a rock and . . .
Her hand lowered in slow disbelief from the tail end of the whipping motion she had used to launch the rock as she watched it bounce off the glass with an odd sort of "plip", as if skimmed off the surface of a lake. She squinted as she neared the window, certain at some point some crack or chip in the glass would reveal itself, but it was as smooth as ever. She tapped her fingernails against it, heard the appropriate clack of hard nail against hard surface, and sighed. So maybe not everything in a dream could be logic'd. What she could deduce was that the chateau was not interested in letting her in. Who was to say JiU was inside, anyway, except a vestigial sense of reason?
Time passed slower than she was accustomed to in dreams. Without a time piece or even a sun to watch move through the sky, all Yoohyeon had to go by was an internal sense of "I've never dreamt this long before". She found no holes in her awareness either; no inexplicable here-to-there's that conveniently transported the subconscious mind from one scenario to another, no transitions necessary. Yoohyeon walked every step, blinked every blink. She was fully conscious, and therefor felt every second of the minutes moving by, not here, but somewhere beyond her. All there was to do with that time was explore.
She walked as far as she could in one direction, aiming for the orchard, curious to know what lay beyond. It was less daunting than the forest at her back, which was equally as mysterious but ten times more foreboding. As Yoohyeon walked between the rows, the invisible sun in the sky seemed to begin to set, the tint of its light growing more and more orange. She must have passed a hundred trees -- she didn't think to start counting them until she felt she had passed at least fifty -- before she marveled at how far the orchard stretched. No way it ran this deep. When she turned to see how far she had come, she gasped as she realized how close she still was to the chateau, shrunken by only some twenty yards of distance. Behind her stretched the trees she had passed. Ahead of her stretched the trees she had passed. She knew because only so many were unique before the sequence refreshed. She was walking a loop. This was as far as she had ever ventured into the orchard, and so her mind had merely recycled the row on and on and on again. She had reached the end of this edge of her new world. She wasn't free; her cage had only grown in acreage.
The forest. I remember the way through the forest. It has to come out to the other side, I've seen that it does. Outrunning her despair, Yoohyeon doubled back at a jog to the chateau, then around it to the gate entrance. The orange of the sky was burning out in dying hues of red that would soon taper into cooled blue. Yoohyeon wondered if this wasn't the sun rising somewhere else, bringing dawn to her other self. To the spider. She ran down the white stone path toward the forest, certain now this was the case. A fog began to encroach on her. Everything it rolled over seemed first to degrade, then disappear, not simply hidden by the fog but erased entirely. The fog had already taken the tops of the trees. In her periphery, Yoohyeon watched as the fog made a vignette of her reality, her aperture of existence narrowing tighter and tighter. She was so close to the forest edge, but she knew she was no more closer to JiU. Still, she ran, because very soon she would not be able to. She ran until the fog overtook her.
When she opened her eyes next, it was to the sight of her bedroom ceiling, glimpsed from the impossible fathom of her black pit. The view of the ceiling shifted to JiU as the spider turned their head to face her, lingering on her red-rimmed eyes. Her splotchy cheeks. The tuck of her chin to hands balled just beneath, spooling the sheets tight around her shoulders to create a sensation of swaddling. Yoohyeon wept bitterly as she heard the spider use her voice to stir the woman she loved from a hard-sought sleep. She screamed to a void she was not sure could hear her, "You leave her alone! You heartless monster! Why are you doing this to her?" JiU smiled -- the wake-up call having been tender and coaxing -- but her smile faded as the stiffness of her tear-stained cheeks confirmed none of last night had been just a nightmare.
Internally, the spider responded, "It fascinates me." Externally, Yoohyeon said aloud, "Good morning, jagiya. Sleep well?"
* * *
Dami did not like what she walked in on, giving only a knock's notice before entering anyway. On any other given day, it wouldn't have bothered her (much), but seeing JiU's hand in Yoohyeon's, the two of them sat side by side in the same bed, made Dami certain that JiU had been fooled. Or worse; was remaining willfully blind. She had prepared herself to have another conversation entirely, to console JiU and perhaps segue into her other suspicions with this one proven true. Now she was at a loss for what to say. What would be the point? But she had to say something; she did invite herself in, after all.
"You're awake." Only in the most literal sense; at this rate, for how much longer? "I'll check in on SuA, then." Barely through the door to begin with, Dami merely stepped back and turned on her heels. She had nearly closed the door when she felt it catch. It was JiU's hand gripping the opposite knob, JiU peeking through the crack, and at once Dami was transported back to the first night at the chateau. JiU's insistence was no less palpable and so, despite feeling just as vulnerable as before, Dami opened up once more. JiU stepped through and shut the door behind them, freeing them of Yoohyeon's lingering gaze.
For a long fistful of seconds, JiU didn't say anything, though Dami could tell by the rapidity in her pupil movement that she was searching for and striking out words in real time. Her mouth opened, forming a syllable she never did aspirate before she gave up and threw her arms around Dami's frame instead. Pinioning Dami's arms to her side, she clung almost too tightly for Dami to reciprocate, but Dami did the best she could to encompass JiU all the same.
"You're right," JiU whispered against Dami's hair. "Yoohyeon's not herself. I-- don't know what's gotten into her, but she would never . . . even if it were true, she wouldn't . . ." They both heard the twist of the doorknob and broke apart in the second it took for the door to swing open. Yoohyeon looked between them with cursory curiosity before stepping through, effectively parting them as both girls stepped back to accommodate her stride.
Yoohyeon was partway down the hall when she turned her head over her shoulder and beckoned, "Coming?", a hand grabbing at the air behind her. JiU imparted one last look to Dami, eyes giving thanks and apology in equal measure while her sad smile said simply, "don't worry". And then JiU jogged to take Yoohyeon's outstretched hand as she fell in line beside her. Dami watched as they passed Gahyeon and Handong's room without breaking stride, though JiU's lingering stare clearly indicated a desire to check in. She didn't assert it, and soon after the two were too far down the stairs for Dami to see.
What's your play, JiU? Moreover, what's hers? Wanting to feel relieved by JiU's conclusion but only feeling more perturbed at her peculiar compliance despite, Dami pivoted the urge to trail them into SuA and Siyeon's bedroom instead.
SuA was donning the cloak of the Placare Aranea when Dami entered at her permission. "What?" SuA challenged Dami's distracted expression, mistaking Dami's lingering dubiety for judgment. "Gagnier's about to make her rounds. Someone's gotta tell her we're too sick to entertain guests today."
* * *
Their meals, it turned out, must have been prepared by the Placare Aranea this whole time, for the girls found the table empty as they converged into the dining room out of habit. Madame Gagnier, newly returned from phoning into town to call off today's visiting professors ("tell them one of us has fever and more of us are beginning to feel under the weather," SuA had instructed, "and that it may be some days yet before whatever we're passing among ourselves clears the air."), was given a new directive of "make food". The girls followed her into the kitchen and watched with intrigue as she collected from the larder and various cabinets flour, brown sugar, butter, dry yeast, salt and eggs, before putting together that she intended to make some kind of dough. SuA quickly specified, "Just eggs! Scramble us some eggs! So that we might eat before noon!", and Madame Gagnier moved right on to cracking the eggs into a cast iron pan.
As the girls put back the remainder of what Madame Gagnier had pulled out for her dough, they realized how woefully understocked the kitchen actually was. It was doubtful the meals they had become accustomed to had ever been prepared on site. Where were the meats? The fresh fruits and vegetables? Most of what they came across was either canned, jarred or dried. There were eggs, milk and butter enough to stretch between the eight of them a few days more, but once they were out, they suspected they would be out for good. In all their months, they had never seen a delivery made to the chateau nor Madame Gagnier travel into town. They had always assumed it must have been the elusive staff that brought in what the chateau needed. They had been partially right, anyway. They ate their eggs with this in mind, finishing every last bite, and though their stomachs rumbled for more, they did not ask for seconds.
Before anyone could wonder aloud how next to proceed, SuA directed them all into the dining room, claiming Madame Gagnier's seat at the head of the table by standing behind it. In front of her on the table was the Nightmare Book, a silver handbell, and seven fresh composition journals with seven pencils aligned neatly beside. SuA remained standing, arms crossed behind her back, until the girls filled the seats in front of her, their obedience expedited by a curiosity they innately understood would be satisfied sooner if they complied.
"It's time we embrace what we have," SuA began, picking up the stack of journals. She began to distribute them in the clockwise serving motion Madame Gagnier had engrained in them. She noticed the habit midway through the motions, and instead of finishing her circle, rebelled by rounded back the way she came to distribute to the other side. The pencils she merely rolled in the girls' general direction, rooting herself back at the head of the table where she felt most in control. "The spell we cast last night proves there's a power between the seven of us we've yet to properly harness. And I think the key to us recovering what we've lost, keeping us safe once we're reunited, is going to be understanding that power. You felt it, right?" SuA's gaze landed on JiU, lingering before looping Yoohyeon into the same question. "You don't deny that you've experienced magic?" JiU nodded, looking to Yoohyeon who in the moment was meeting SuA's gaze.
"Consider me a convert."
"Good," SuA nodded through a sigh of relief. "That's good. Then, as the senior-most person here versed in magic, you'll hear me and agree when I say we seven need to formally form a coven." Dami, who had been flipping through the pages of her uncreased journal to indeed find them blank, snapped the cover shut and raised her gaze abruptly.
"You can't ask that." SuA glowered in Dami's direction, hackles rising in response to what was perhaps her least favorite word -- cannot.
"Excuse me? Why not? Why wouldn't I?"
"Three of us can't give consent, for one. And JiU and Yoohyeon--"
"Can speak for themselves," SuA cut Dami off, seeing but not understanding the bolt of fear that shot from Dami to JiU, but not to Yoohyeon. "But before they do, might I counter that we don't have the luxury of clear consent? Our sisters are lost. We could easily become just as lost looking for them. But at least if we're bound, we'll have a string between us that we can tug to find our way back to one another. We don't know anything about where this glyph might take us except that nightmares prevail there. I mean, how disorienting are your dreams, even the good ones? We need to be each other's kite strings, or we might all blow away. Think for a minute. Handong, Gahyeon, Siyeon, they were with us in that casting. I felt them. Open. Lending. The flow doesn't feel like that forcibly taken. Wherever they're trapped, they're already giving everything to get back to us."
"It's true. Handong said as much herself," JiU murmured, glancing between Dami and Yoohyeon. "Even before last night, Siyeon thought she was reaching out. Remember, in her dreams?"
And Gahyeon's, too, Dami admitted to herself, reluctant to say so out loud and bolster SuA's argument. It would only make it that much harder to avoid admitting the truest reason she opposed it. SuA couldn't know yet. But JiU? JiU knew better. Said she knew better, anyway. What was she doing even entertaining the idea of bonding with Yoohyeon when she knew there was an impostor in their midst?
SuA nodded, validated. "Look, in a perfect world, I'd want an emphatic "yes", too, but in case you haven't noticed, our sisters have been programmed to be compliant to anything. And they'll stay that way if we don't succeed. I won't abuse them. Will you?" Dami begrudgingly shook her head, clenching her jaw against SuA's patronizing tone. SuA's gaze carried the question to JiU, then Yoohyeon, who both shook their heads in turn. "Great! So. To the present of mind, then, though depending on how you answer that may be proven otherwise . . . JiU? Yoohyeon? Do you know what it means to be bound?"
"Explain it to us plainly," Yoohyeon requested, reclining easily in her chair. She rocked a pencil between her fingers, looking every bit someone who could afford to say no if not pitched to correctly. It was a stark juxtaposition to the way JiU leaned in closer, knowing regardless of what it all meant that this was an imminent fate and therefore her very near future.
A Trojan horse rides up to the gates of Troy. Dami observed, wondering at what opportunity she could stick a torch in its gut and reveal Yoohyeon's charade. Wondering if JiU would let her. Wondering if she would have to do it in spite of JiU, and the rift between them that might cause, especially if they were bound to be bound.
"Dami's right, it's not something to be entered into lightly. A blood pact is forever. A lifetime. Possibly beyond that, even, but who can know for sure? When you bind yourself to another, your soul embraces them as a part of you. You become sensitive to their presence, their absence. You can feel them in ways you've never felt before. Wafts of their emotions. A sense of where they are. What they might be experiencing. It's not a loud frequency; it takes careful tuning into to make sense of, but the frequency is always there. And because of that connection, you become more conductive to their energy as well. You can achieve . . . so much more than you ever could apart."
"And the downside?" Yoohyeon chuckled softly, looking intrigued.
"The absence," SuA reiterated, the sudden, steep solemnity in her tone striking the casual grin from Yoohyeon's face. "It aches. Deeper than you ever thought your body could feel. And when there's disharmony between the bound? It's like you don't even know yourself anymore . . . Keeping straight what belongs to you and what doesn't is . . . well . . . They are you. A part of you, anyway. There's no unbraiding that cord once it's twined. To try is to fray oneself. The folk tales of mad witches aren't all patriarchal propaganda . . ." SuA let this warning sit in the air, taking the opportunity to watch how it settled over JiU and Yoohyeon.
JiU sat back in her chair, pressed by an unseen weight which she then put words to. "You're already bound to Siyeon and Dami." Not knowing whether it was a question or a statement, SuA nodded anyway. "You would bind to us, too? Take all of us on in that way? I didn't think we were . . . that is, until very recently, you didn't seem to have much interest in the rest of us. Now you would tie your life to ours?"
It was a valid question, one SuA was admittedly happy to receive for it meant that JiU understood the magnitude. Happy to receive it, considerably less happy to answer it. But if they were to be bound soon anyway, SuA could not hide her truer heart for much longer. "If it means my life is longer for it, if it means Siyeon's gains hers back, then yes. Yes, without question." JiU's expression was one of understanding. SuA suspected JiU herself would consent to the binding purely out of a pragmatism they shared, and so the lack of sentimentality must not have offended her. She didn't need to strengthen the pitch; SuA easily could have ended her answer there. But she was compelled, in Siyeon's memory, to confess, "Siyeon saw what we could be. The day of the picnic, she encouraged me to get to know you all. She didn't like that we were together alone. It didn't make sense to her. I thought she was all I needed," SuA looked to Dami, "I thought getting to know the rest of you would only make me more vulnerable. Give me new problems." Her eyes fell to the Nightmare Book. "But I see it now, it's isolation that has made us vulnerable. We're seven meant to be one. I believe that now. And I wish we had more time for me to convince you why I do, but last night was enough to prove it for me. We were brought together for a reason. I refuse to believe our time together is meant to be this short-lived."
"What do we do? I mean, how is a binding done? Can we perform it now?"
No. SuA felt Dami's protest like a boom of thunder overhead, sending a tremor through the shell of her skull. Her eyes flitted to her, narrowed and questioning, widening at the barely-restrained desperation she saw within Dami's gaze. She followed those wide eyes as they flickered, just briefly, in Yoohyeon's direction, and received one other thought, as much emotion as it was language. It felt like fear. Not Yoohyeon.
What the hell does that mean? SuA thought to herself, for their bond was more akin to morse code than telepathy, transmitting the simplest of shorthand. Anything longer or more nuanced tended to take more effort. Noticeable effort. And Dami clearly wanted her distress kept private or she would have protested aloud. For now, SuA would have to buy time until they could speak alone.
"We could, but it'll be stronger performed under the right conditions. There's no imperative until we can cast the glyph anyhow. We have time until then. I suggest you both take it, to be sure. Entering into this with unconfronted doubt will only hurt us all the more." JiU frowned, but it was nothing to the full-faced scowl that flashed across Yoohyeon's visage before she could check it. SuA saw it, having thought to look for it, and caught Dami's gaze anew, met with knowing eyes.
"So then what are the journals for?" Yoohyeon sighed, picking hers up and flipping through it.
"Glyph practice. And dream-logging. While we're mastering the glyph, I think it'd be prudent to become more aware of our inner workings. You're familiar with lucid dreaming?" Yoohyeon shrugged.
"I know what it is."
"It's time we learn how to do it. Or at least try. I found a book on the topic in the billiard room." SuA produced the book from the seat of her chair and held it upright long enough for the girls to glimpse the cover before she set it down beside the Nightmare Book. "I also found this." Also from the seat of her chair, SuA plucked up a pouch. Loosening the drawstring, she tipped it over the table. White, flowery buds with long yellow stamens spilled out. "Calea zacatechichi. Also known as bitter grass. "Consumed, they help with dream recall. We need to know as much about our dream patterns as we can."
"And the bell?" JiU asked, piecing together that nothing on the table was without deliberate purpose. SuA stared down at it with a hardened expression. The hand at her side flexed into a fist before she unfurled it to reach for the handle.
"This--" balancing the handle between three fingers, SuA lifted it level with her head and gave it a slight swing. The sound that came out was crisp, almost ethereal, and loud in the silence. All eyes couldn't help but attend. "--is how we train ourselves to sync until it's second-nature." Careful not to let the bell sound again, SuA lowered it back to the table and reached for the Nightmare Book, opening it up to where the dreamscape glyph was drawn. She angled the book right-side up in Siyeon's point of view, then stepped behind her, picking up a pencil and placing it into Siyeon's right hand. Siyeon's fingers accommodated the familiar shape with ease, leaving SuA only to direct the pencil tip as she splayed open the journal and placed it to the page. Together, SuA meticulously copied the glyph before them, making sure to do so in one smooth, connective motion. She let go of the pencil and straightened back up. "Can you draw that again?" Siyeon did so, the end result somewhat lazier, but recognizable. SuA squeezed Siyeon's shoulder with proud affection. "Good. Good, that's a start." SuA looked up, looked at the way the girls had thought to seat themselves. JiU across from Yoohyeon -- curious. Dami between Siyeon and JiU. They'd have to mix it up a bit to help Gahyeon and Handong along.
SuA pushed the book down the table to Dami. "First thing's first, let's start learning this glyph."
* * *
By lunchtime, the girls' hands and stomachs were cramping to detrimental affect. Madame Gagnier had been commanded to stay out of their sight, which had kept her confined to the master bedroom. None of them wanted to fetch her only to command her to feed them, so JiU took it upon herself to venture into the kitchen and discover what she could scrounge up. Recalling the cellar in the blueprints, Dami volunteered to search it in case it contained more food storage. SuA volunteered to join her. Yoohyeon stayed upstairs with JiU, seeming intent to keep her company at all times, finally giving Dami the opportunity to bring SuA into the loop.
"And JiU believes you're right?" SuA didn't bother to whisper; the earthen walls of the partially-mortared cellar did plenty to keep their voices from carrying.
"That's what she said. But she's not acting like it. She seemed just as ready as Yoohyeon to get on with the binding. Which begs the question, what wants into our circle, and why?"
"Do you really think it's possession? She might not be acting herself, but to be someone -- something else entirely? It doesn't align with what the coven did to the others."
"About the coven. Placare Aranea. That's what Yoohyeon said Madame Gagnier identified them as. I looked it up. It's Latin for "appease the spider". The Ojibwe people have a spider-like deity. The dream catcher we found in Solange's room? It's her totem. It represents the web she weaves to capture the bad dreams of her worshippers. I wouldn't have thought to research the Ojibwe if Yoohyeon hadn't brought up looking into the history of this place. Remember?" There was a faint flicker of recall in SuA's eyes. "It turns out she was right about the girls before us, too. Those are their pages in the Nightmare Book. I checked after what you said; just as many chapters as there were girls. Yoohyeon's been oddly accurate for someone who denied something like this could even happen. She changed her tune rather quickly, didn't she?" Without even being aware she was doing it, SuA's head bobbed ever so slightly. "And just last night, JiU told me she brought a spider into the house. She was keeping it in a jar in the north wing. I found Yoohyeon there yesterday, before Siyeon went missing. We split up because Handong fixated on the portraits. I didn't find the spider. But the jar was smashed." SuA's eyes roved in Dami's, not seeing her but seeing the pieces that Dami was laying out, seeing the same way Dami had the insurmountable coincidences falling neatly into a bigger picture.
"But what would a god want with Yoohyeon?" SuA's bafflement was so earnest that for a moment the harrowing gravity of the situation lifted, allowing the corners of Dami's lips to twitch up in amusement. Was that envy in SuA's voice? Not even the insight of their bond could help Dami make full sense of SuA's ego sometimes.
"I don't know. But I think you just might've killed her cult. So maybe the question ought to be, 'how does she plan to form a new one?'" SuA's eyes widened before she shut them and hung her head, shaking it slowly.
"If we bind with Yoohyeon, who knows what we'd be exposing ourselves to," SuA said their now shared fear out loud. Dami exhaled in vindicated relief and nodded solemnly. "Damned if we do, damned if we don't," SuA muttered, throwing a hand out against the wall in a brief smack of frustration, smart enough to land her palm and not her fist against the cobblestone. "Damnit. Damnit damnit damnit," she smacked the stone with every reiteration. "You couldn't have found a way to tell me any of this sooner? Before I educated a disciple-less god on how to infiltrate us?"
"I don't think it would have made a difference. The second we formed the casting circle with Yoohyeon a part of it, whoever was -- is -- inside of Yoohyeon felt what we could do. They're sticking around because we're its best prospect." Dami shifted her weight uneasily, seeming to think better of saying something.
SuA noted her discomfort and pressed with a blunt, "And?"
"I think it was by its power that you were able to cast as potently as you did. The seven of us are stronger together, yes, but . . . reduce us to six? Exclude Yoohyeon, when Yoohyeon possesses the most of our strength? Whatever has her might want us, but we need them." Dami's brow furrowed, gaze listing off to the ceiling. "I think I understand what JiU's doing."
"And what's that?"
"She's trying to get close enough to glimpse the face behind the mask."
Dami turned away from SuA, searching for something to legitimize their alibi. Walking to a canning rack, Dami plucked up a mason jar filled to the brim with pink-stained vinegar. Swimming inside were beets. She showed it to SuA before lobbing it to her, freeing her hands to scoop up a few more jars. One had rhubarb, another cucumber. The one that Dami hugged particular tight to her chest was a jar of shredded cabbage. They had found the pickled vegetables. For the first time since arriving, they would taste a semblance of home.
* * *
" Ughhk," JiU's face squinched as she scraped her tongue against the back of her teeth, swallowing down the lingering bitter taste of her tea reluctantly. It was night, nearly bedtime. The day had flown by, hours sunk into SuA reading aloud the book on lucid dreaming from cover to cover. There wasn't much they could do for Siyeon, Gahyeon and Handong except hope they were somewhere inside, listening, absorbing, learning something they could put into practice to find their footing in their new realities. The rest of them paid sharp attention, conceptualizing their mindfulness and the steps they would have to take to hone it, realizing how slippery a skill lucid dreaming was to even begin to grasp. Nothing about it felt innate or natural. To be alert in restfulness, awake while asleep, to remember even as memory itself was being rearranged and tucked away. This wasn't a muscle that could be strengthened by mechanical repetition, like drawing the glyph over and over and over again. Each dream would demand of them their utmost focus.
The others expressed milder versions of JiU's disgust, eyes squinting and noses wrinkling as they quickly downed SuA's brewed bitter grass. After, SuA collected each of their cups personally, making sure every last drop had been drained from each. Their supply of the bitter grass was limited; she could make this tea for a week longer, maybe less if tonight proved they needed to up the potency. Every drop mattered.
"You all have your journals?" SuA asked. JiU brandished hers in the air in lieu of speaking, still smacking her tongue. "Keep them by your bedside. The second you wake up, even a little bit, reach for it and write what you remember. Don't just fall back asleep. Don't do something else first. Capture everything. And while you're sleeping, try to find signs that you are. Remember your totem. Visualize it as you're falling asleep. Something you wouldn't expect to see. The more detailed, the better."
JiU had bargained for only one night more alone with Yoohyeon, but in light of their lucid dreaming training, JiU proposed, and SuA seconded, that they keep their current sleeping arrangements. Having more to a room, with at least a handful of them having to make their beds on the ground, was a needlessly disruptive environment for focused sleep. Dami disliked the idea of JiU continuing to be alone with the suspected spider god, but at the very least she could take small comfort in finally wrapping her head around JiU's behavior. JiU wasn't blind. JiU was, in fact, crafty and, as much as Dami wished it wasn't so, uniquely qualified to play counterspy from her perch in the spider's lulled clutch. She did not fight JiU on the matter. Much. She didn't want to blow JiU's cover, after all. Still, watching JiU's bedroom door close with her shut out on the other side was its own kind of nightmare, one she suspected would keep her from dreaming awhile yet.
* * *
I don't want to be here.
She's at the mouth of the forest, standing on the white stone path. So is Siyeon. Except on a different path. A separate, but identical path, and she can see herself and Siyeon simultaneously, as if out of her body somewhere up in the clouds. She must be out of her body; it's the only explanation as to why she's not watching herself jump her separate, parallel path to join Siyeon in hers. That's the way it's meant to be; they're bound, after all. They were bound before they even met. Bound to meet. Bound to be together.
I don't want to be here without her. SuA recognizes the exact dusk they're in. It is yesterday's dusk, still so vivid in her mind because she has yet to truly move on from it. She has kept replaying how she would do things differently, how she would have charged the tent she waited outside of, how she would have pulled the tether of their bond immediately instead of tried to search the house first, knowing all the while something was amiss.
They're wearing the same nightgowns, nightgowns SuA has since discarded, not in the hamper that no longer emptied itself, but in the kitchen stove, ready to be kindling. She does not need a totem to know she is dreaming. She needs to see how things proceed, however, to determine if this is a dream or a nightmare.
What is that in Siyeon's hands? Not Joker, but in the other, rolled loosely at her side. Parchment? Her intrigue brings the scope of her vision narrowing in. No, canvas. It has the weave of canvas, with edges crude and frayed as if cut jaggedly with a knife. SuA can only glimpse a shadowed portion of the image inside of the tube, but it is enough to make out that it is of people. Dami's words come back to her, about Handong's fixation in front of the portraits, and SuA knows then beyond a shadow of a doubt who is on the canvas. It is them. The seven of them. But why is it important?
What are you trying to show me, Siyeon? As if responding, SuA watches as both her body and Siyeon turn to face the forest and begin down the path. SuA feels panic. She doesn't want to go back in there. There is failure in that forest. Shame. And smoldering bodies burned by her hand. She knows they are dead, but also knows she is dreaming, and while it had been the easiest thing to do, to tip a torch and walk away, the idea of facing what was once only implication makes Siyeon's attackers feel real again. Alive again. She can already anticipate how her subconscious might manifest such a feeling.
Take me somewhere else. Show me something else, SuA pleads, refusing to follow Siyeon and herself in the forest, instead staying perfectly still, watching them recede alone, apart, into darkness. She hates this feeling of separateness. This third-person narrator who is somehow her, somehow witnessing instead of being, and then it hits her. This point of view she's in, far above and looking down, are the eyes of a player examining a board. She's plotting. Of course she's plotting. The very act of learning to lucid dream was one of many maneuvers in her long game. Now she doesn't feel so separated. She feels integral to the well-being of the two lone girls in the forest below, entwined with them in the sense that she is the master of their fates. She knows instinctually that if there is a god inhabiting Yoohyeon, this is how it has seen them from the offset. Small insects moving as if free, oblivious of the killing field they're already trapped in.
Dami has shown her the name of the god she suspects. SuA knows she need only speak it to know for sure. That if it is this deity, a now-disciple-less deity at that, It would not be able to resist turning its eight eyes upon her, needing to know and be known. Or would it be Yoohyeon's eyes SuA was faced with instead? Had the spider shed its pervasive birds-eye view to walk among them? Could she do the same?
I can bring Siyeon and SuA back together, she thinks and as she does, her now bifurcated sight of Siyeon and herself converge back into one lens as their separate paths bend inward to eventually meet. They join hands and at once SuA is one with her body, feeling Siyeon's grip, warm and firm. To touch again! To be. She is so overcome, looking down at her hand in Siyeon's not from the god-lens, but from her own two eyes once more, that she does not realize they are back in the chateau until Siyeon squeezes her hand and points out the window. SuA follows the gesture and spies Handong sitting in the ledge of an upstairs window. She artfully throws a black paper plane. By simply perceiving it, the words SuA inexplicably knows are written inside make themselves known to her.
. . . I think they are a cult . . . I think I'm asleep; everything feels like a dream. Sometimes I can navigate it, and other times . . . Wake me up! All in Handong's voice. So she had been reaching out!
"What else do you know?" SuA asks, taken aback by the sound of her voice, now with a tongue to form her thoughts aloud. Hearing herself is strange. She's not even certain who she's asking, but Siyeon responds by squeezing her hand, and in an instant they blink out of the chateau and back to the forest.
They are on the outskirts, looking out at the cliffs. A broad, blue sky and the sea below are nearly inseparable in the distance beyond the drop-off. Before SuA can wonder why here, she feels tremors in the earth before a horse-drawn carriage bursts from the trees. The horses are crazed, eyes bulging, galloping at a pace nothing short of breakneck, and SuA only needs to look up to see why. Towering above on eight thundering pillars is a titanic spider. A god-like spider, each of its four distinctive abdominal spots black holes wide enough to swallow the carriage below in their circumference.
"This is your nightmare," SuA realizes aloud, though she cannot hear herself above the pursuit. "Of the spider . . ." Click. The sound of the last piece falling into place. "It is a spider. It's the spider. It's been the spider from the start."
SuA's eyes drop from the horrific height just in time to note the horses have no intention of slowing their rapid approach toward the cliff's edge. "I don't want to see that!" She screams, closes her eyes, and turns away. She feels Siyeon squeeze her hand. The crazed whinnies of the horses and the hammering footfall abruptly end. SuA opens her eyes and realizes she's back in the chateau, on the second floor this time, looking out on the courtyard. It is dusk. A new dusk. Light spills from the opened front doors below and so too does JiU a moment later, running as if being pursued as she whips her head over her shoulder. She does not lose speed until she reaches the white gates, where she comes to a contemplative stop.
"We're still here . . ." SuA says without knowing why, pressing a palm to the window pane. All she knows is she feels betrayed, incensed even as she watches JiU glance back again, one hand gripping the bar of the gate. She pounds the pane with her palm in protest as JiU steps forward, now more beyond the gate than behind it. "Don't you dare, we're still here!" She is so angry, she feels herself slipping.
"JiU!" SuA shouted in the darkness of her bedroom, springing like a jack-in-the-box from her pillow. The moment she realized where she was, she dutifully groped for the journal on her nightstand, though with how she still shook with outrage, she doubted this dream was in any danger of fading soon. The blade of her forearm collided with something much too soon, much too close. Eyes she had been holding shut to prevent the details of her dream from slipping through like sand through fingers opened as SuA turned her head. Siyeon was beside her, somehow still asleep despite SuA's disturbance. This wasn't the bed SuA had put her in.
You came to me in the middle of the night . . . SuA marveled, taking in the way Siyeon was curled facing her atop the covers. How close their hands still were. SuA's pinky twitched, then gently curled around Siyeon's. Were we holding hands? She needed only recall her dream to be convinced they had been. SuA allowed herself a minute longer to sit in awe of Siyeon's tenacious spirit, then reluctantly released her pinky to begin penning the visions Siyeon had led her through to paper.