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Imogen woke to the scraping of hard nails on raw wood. The candle snuffed out long ago, the wax cool and blue-white from the sliver of moonlight that pierced the narrow space between wall and curtain. Her eyes adjusted as she looked around for the source of the noise. It came again from Laudna’s side of the room, where the shadows were deeper, near black and impenetrable.
Laudna? Imogen called out with her mind, but the woman didn’t answer. Imogen stood. Her veins began to crackle as a spark of lightning lit up her fingertips, and she set it hovering in the air to bring a little light into the room.
The shadows surrounding Laudna’s bed barely lessened, which was typical of her, but the shape in the bed was not.
Her bones were too long, feet spilled over the end, the toenails dragging on the floor. Her arms wrapped tight across her skinny body, bent in odd places, too many elbows, cricked around her chest to meet fingers at her distended shoulder blades. A ghastly veil was thick across her face, black blood and ichor leaked from under it to stain the blankets. Imogen had seen it before, the form of dread Laudna took whenever she needed to fight. It was always unsettling to see her sweet and gentle friend as this horror, but Laudna only did it in defense.
Imogen lit a few more sparks and sent them swinging round the room to find the source of Laudna’s fear, but the search came back empty. They were alone.
Laudna! She shouted it into the woman’s mind, unwilling to break the silence with her voice. Not with Zhudanna snoring softly in the next room over. That sweet old woman was oblivious to the trouble that seemed to find Imogen wherever she went, and she wasn’t about to wake her up to one now.
Laudna’s strange, elongated form twisted wretchedly in the bed as she hugged her limbs even tighter. In spite of the rustling, in spite of her spine extending, her bones growing sharp, giving her an extra three feet of height, Laudna was still asleep.
Imogen moved a little closer. She put out the light in her fingers and reached gently for Laudna’s arm. The purple lightning in her veins was slow to let the light die, and it made her hand a stark contrast to the thick black shadows that enveloped Laudna.
“No,” Laudna whimpered. The veil that consumed her broke the word and whispered it through hundreds of shades of the woman, each with a different inflection: angry, violent, raging, sorrowful, tired. They’d been traveling for two years together, but Imogene had never seen the form of dread while Laudna slept. Knowing her consciousness was buried even further inside all those teeth and razor nails set her spine shivering. Anybody else might just kick off and run. But Laudna didn’t have anybody. She had Imogen. And Imogen had a long history of staring down nightmares.
Imogen grasped the woman’s deathly pale arm, her fingers gone all the way round it even halfway up the forearm and said her sorries for the invasion as she pushed her mind through Laudna’s veil.
It was too easy. Her friend’s mind opened with a touch, drank her in, and deposited her in a darkened wood, deep into a moonless night. The air was wet and heavy with the threat of rain. Cold seeped in through her clothes and skin, chilling Imogen to her core. A little way in the distance, through thick underbrush and fallen trees, stood a little shack. Its roof caved in on one side, its walls green with moss and ferns, the thing was half consumed by the forest, but there was a little candle lit in the window.
She’d seen shacks like this before. Little flashes of places when Laudna spoke of her history, different hovels she’d moved into before another angry mob forced her out. She always said it with a smile, that hearty wholesome laugh, but images bubbled up as she spoke and Imogen knew she missed them. You don’t build a home without leaving a piece of yourself in the walls.
This shack was all of these together. Laudna was inside it. She must be.
Pâté de Rolo was tending a little garden to the side, bright pumpkins and proud carrots standing in neat rows. He was taller than Imogen in the dream; a humanoid figure in an immaculate black suit, his sharp rat claws gripped tight around the handle of a spade as he stood to watch her, the knuckles white beneath the bristly fur. Around his shoulders he wore a bright red cape of fleshy ribbons that trailed into the bare wet earth at his feet. One was longer than the rest, snaking behind him up the spongey wooden steps to a fallen porch and underneath the door. Laudna would be behind it. Pâté was her puppet; she must be holding his string.
A lavender glimmer in the sockets of his raven’s skull dimmed as Imogen approached. His skull jerked toward her; the beak opened in a mocking jeer.
“Oi, purple girl! The lady’s occupied. Now be on your way.”
The boisterous accent Laudna gave her puppet in the waking world was darker here, the voice low and sharp as broken teeth.
“She knows me, Pâté.”
“I’m well aware of you meself, cowgirl. This is private business. Don’t need you prying into the lady’s skull.”
The dead rat’s tail swished like an angry cat’s, disturbing the black suit and red ribbon cape. Imogen trained her eyes away from those ribbons that moved like living things, wet and solid. She set her jaw, sensitive to the accusation. “It aint prying if she needs my help.” She breezed past Pâté and let a little bit of lightning crackle through her fingers as warning, but the jeering raven skull said no more.
The steps bowed dangerously far as her feet landed on them. The porch was spongey with rot. The doorknob sunk ever so slightly in her hand, hard metal giving in to the soft wood of the door. Imogen frowned at the thing, at the oppressive sense that everything around her was decomposing. She probably should have expected it of Laudna’s nightmares, but the woman was so kind, so warm and loving, it was easy to forget she came from decay.
The door of the little shack opened to a raucous tavern. Shouted orders, playing bards, off key songs sung at the top of several lungs, fights brewing, lovers necking in the corner and Imogen almost slammed the door in terror, but their minds were silent. It was just her and Laudna in here. A dream of a tavern did not hold the same danger for her. Still, she stepped cautiously in and kept her hand against a steadying wall as she searched the place for Laudna.
The lamps inside didn’t reach as far as they should. The shadows were far too deep and the corners of the place were barely visible, but the warm interior of The Spire by Fire was unmistakable. Far above, red banners were tacked to the rafters, long enough to dangle partially down the wall. They looked like they’d peel away with a light breeze and fall wetly across the tables.
The handsome katari man behind the bar nodded to her in recognition; he didn’t seem to notice the fleshy banners. Pâté poured drinks with him at the bar and danced nimbly through the crowd, playing wait-staff. Imogen didn’t recognize any of the other faces in the tavern, but they were all unique, specific to some memories Laudna never shared, or ones she’d buried deep enough to keep them from bleeding into Imogen’s conciousness. When they moved past her eyes and into the periphery, the faces turned impressionistic. At the far edges, they were no more than scribbles over a dark void where a face should be.
Imogen continued her search for Laudna upstairs, where a familiar set of flower adorned horns towered over the thinner crowd. Fearne stood at their usual table while Dorian tripped over his words.
“I’m not saying she isn’t useful, but it’s going to be very hard to remain incognito when she’s dripping everywhere.”
Imogen stared hard at the air genasi and burned her thoughts into him as she stormed across the room. None of us blend in, Dorian. You’re blue, Ashton’s green, Fearne’s a six foot tall goat woman and Letters is a dang gold robot! She was halfway to the table before she remembered he couldn’t hear her. She was already in a mind, and if she needed to say something, she’d have to get her vocal cords involved.
“Maybe we can use it,” drolled Ashton. “I like fights. A fight is a good distraction, and if we roll up with that thing nobody’s gonna start with diplomacy.”
“Thing?” asked Imogen, but the group ignored her.
Orym stood on the bench by Ashton. His graceful hand on the hilt of his sword belied his casual stance. “I hate to say it, but the guards will think she’s a monster.” His expression turned pained. “I can’t fight every guard in the city when they decide to run her out of town.”
“Yeah!” Chetney chimed in from where he was spit polishing the table. “I may be a monster myself, but I’ve got the decency to hide it!”
“I don’t want this group to go scaring people,” said Fresh Cut Grass. “It was bad enough when she only spooked small kids, but now it’s hard to even…” He trailed off, his skinny metal arms turned up in a helpless shrug.
“Even what,” asked Imogen, a hard edge to her voice. “Where is Laudna?” She was missing from the table while the group stood around and talked about her like she was just some thing.
Another Imogen leaned hard on the table, exasperated. She held herself up with gloved fingers that barely disguised the damaged skin that lightning made of her hand. How the true Imogen missed seeing her, she could only guess.
“I don’t know how many times I told her if she kept it up her face was gonna stick that way,” said that other Imogen.
“I never said that.” Imogen looked desperately around for Laudna. “That aint me, Laudna, you know I’d never say that to you.”
Her double looked up, and the rest of the group finally saw her. “Who let you in here?” The double drawled out her words in a way that made Imogene flush.
There was a slick of black ichor under the table, and Imogene left the group to trail it. Drops of the stuff carried her deeper into the shadows to a tall door flanked with brooms and a mop bucket. Ichor leaked from under the door; a sticky puddle that gummed against Imogen’s boots.
“Should we kill her?” asked Fearne in her sweet and gentle voice as the snakes on her staff began to hiss.
Imogen turned, furious, and spoke to the sleeping consciousness that surrounded her. “You know that aint Fearne, Laudna. Fearne loves you.”
“Oh, no,” said Fearne helpfully. “I was talking about you.” Fire erupted from her blackened hand, but the false Imogen was faster. Her eyes lit with a violet glow. Lightning crackled from her fingers and lanced toward Imogen, but she caught it in her fingers, twisted the bolt in two and sent them back toward her aggressors. The bolts landed and the heads popped in a shower of wet red ribbons. Imogen yelped and backed against the door, her boots splashing that sticky ichor up to stain her dress.
The bodies still stood. Those ribbons were wriggling up from bloody necks, twisting into the shape of heads. A lower jaw popped into place on the false Imogen. Horns grew solid on Fearne. Behind them, Ashton took up his hammer, grinning as he gave it a practiced swing. Fresh Cut Grass’s buzzsaw whizzed to life. Imogen’s fingers found the doorhandle on the broom closet and she squeaked inside to put that bit of wood between her and certain death.
“Laudna?” she whispered. The closet was pitch black inside, and cavernous. Imogen’s boots squelched under her feet, and a deadly cold traveled up her spine. “I know this is your subconscious, but you made that other Imogen’s eyes glow purple. We’ve been together long enough, you know my eyes go white when I use magic.” She held out her hands to keep from bumping into anything, but the trace of purple lightning in her veins couldn’t illuminate much.
“I’m sorry darling, I don’t know how I made that mistake.” Laudna’s voice seemed to come from everywhere in the room. It echoed and cracked, turned wispy and thunderous, and an icy claw of fear slipped into Imogen’s heart.
No. This is the sweetest woman I’ve ever met. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Imogen lit the spark that lived in her fingers and found Laudna’s face inches from her own.
It was the slick black of tar, the eyes were empty hollows scooped out of it, the teeth white shards of bone stuck into a melting face and it was big. The hollow eyes were level with Imogen’s and Laudna’s long nose poked at Imogen’s navel.
She had become the veil she wore in that form of dread; her bones broken so many times they were nothing but splinters held tenuously together with black oozing ichor.
Imogen left the light hovering in the air and rushed forward to hug her. Her arms sunk into the tar, the dim purple light in her veins extinguished as Laudna enveloped her.
“I’ve tried to dispel it, but it only gets worse,” wheezed Laudna, her voice apologetic behind the grate of whispered screams.
“This is only a nightmare, Laudna.” Imogen said it for herself as much as for the creature before her. She pulled away from the face. Laudna was stretched across the massive broom closet, arms draped over shelves and dripping down the walls, legs folded and folded again under oozing skirts. Imogen reached into the ichor that made Laudna’s arm and found fragments of bone, shreds of flayed skin. She wished she had Letters’ ability to heal. Anything better than a crackle of lightning and the ever-present press of unwanted thoughts, but it was only her and Laudna here. Imogen pressed the shards of bone between her hands and prayed to any gods listening that Laudna could pull herself back together. “Don’t you worry, we’ll get out of this nightmare and everything will be alright.” She tried not to think of what gods might take an interest in the undead.
Pâté cackled behind her. “I’ll tell you what’s a nightmare! Anytime Laudna looks at a child!” Imogen turned to find that raven skull illuminated behind her. The pitch black suit vanished in the gloom and left nothing of his form but a glimmer of red at his shoulders and stark white claws.
“Pâté!” Laudna exclaimed. Her fragmented hands clasped together in delight and the impact splashed Imogen with ichor. “See, Pâté is here, Imogen. You should rejoin the group. I’ll be fine here. I have company, now.” The dead eyes behind her veil were sad. Laudna was lying. Even in her nightmare she was trying to put Imogen first.
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“Nonsense, darling. I won’t be any help with you at the library like this and I’m afraid I’m a little stuck at the moment…” she gave a chuckle that sounded like rusty knives.
“I told you, she don’t need you,” growled Pâté.
Lightning buzzed through Imogen’s veins and crackled at her fingertips. “Well maybe I need her.”
“You don’t” said Laudna. She melted into the shadow, thick tar bubbled away until only the white of a thousand needle teeth remained, tilted into a resigned grimace. “You’re incredible, Imogen. Amazing. Beautiful. You don’t need my dead weight.” The shadows took that word and pounded it against the walls: dead dead dead.
Pâté squawked and cackled, the glimmer of violet light in his empty eye sockets burned a little brighter. Imogen pushed him backwards with a little spark of electricity to drive home the shove. Tall as he was, there was only bone and fur beneath the suit, and he folded over as Imogen followed Laudna into the dark.
“You don’t weigh much,” Imogen grumbled. “And you’re not dead weight.” She pushed through the ichor to gather her friend’s bones. “We’re getting out of here in pieces if we have to.” Her hand bumped something solid, furred, with a wormy little tail a naked skull at its head. She pulled the dead rat from the ichor and knew for sure.
“That aint Pâté.”
The red cape lifted up its ribbons like snakes rearing to strike. They plunged for Imogen, the edges honed to bloody daggers. She threw up her hands to try to catch them in a burst of electricity, but a massive hand of splintered bone and black tar gripped the ribbons tight and slammed them into the ground.
“Pâté would never try to hurt my Imogen.”
The creature in the raven skull crooked its head up from the place it bent to the ground. It squawked again. “If you keep making that face, you’re going to stick that way.” Its voice was different, condescending and feminine. That purple glint of its eyes so bright it almost shimmered black at the edges. Its riotous laugh rang through the room “And then everyone will leave you!”
“It’s never stuck before,” said Laudna, curiously, as though she only just thought to argue with the thing. Ichor dripped away from her head as the bones of her skull joined together. Black tears fell down her white face to join the sluice of ichor that drained from her. The shards that extended her fingers half the length of Imogen’s arm drifted closer together. Skin joined them back to an unnaturally long hand. “Oh,” mused Laudna. The smile behind the veil was made of a hundred needle sharp shards of teeth. “This is a nightmare! Imogen, you’re so smart.”
“Praise me later, Laudna. I really need you to wake up. You’ve gone all form of dreadful in the middle of Zhudanna’s.”
“Oh no! That poor woman. Yes, I think it’s time we cut this short.” Laudna found her sewing scissors from somewhere amidst all that dripping goo and snipped the fleshy ribbon connecting her to the false Pâté.
Imogen was less precious with the thing. She pointed her forefingers at the creature’s head and fired two crackling bolts into it, exploding she skull in a shower of blue and lavender sparks. The body in the suit slumped to the ground, in pieces before it even hit the squishy tar covered floor. It moldered quickly, sizzling into the rest of the goo that sloshed in waves out the door. In the smoke that she’d made of that skull, she saw just the hint of a human silhouette; a little smirk in the haze as it dissipated to nothing.
The cape of ribbons remained on the ground. Laudna pulled at the ribbons, kept pulling, and as she did her bones collapsed back down. The ichor left her, and she was merely the lanky horror she’d always been wearing that form of dread. “You came to my rescue.” Even now, after two years, she sounded surprised that Imogen might care to rescue her.
“Of course, Laudna. I love—” The sentence cut short as Imogen was ejected from the dream. Laudna opened her eyes beneath the black veil and looked up at Imogen with a smile made of far too many teeth. She cricked her neck and began to shrink back to a human shape. The veil turned hazy and vanished like smoke.
“Was that D?” asked Imogen, her voice hushed, afraid to wake their landlady, but the woman was already standing in the doorway.
“Are you dearies having trouble sleeping as well?” Zhudanna stood blinking in the gloom, her eyes squinting behind thick glasses.
Imogen shook the light out of her hands and put them both behind her back. “Yes ma’am.”
Laudna sat up in bed, prim as you please, her smile pointedly only showing a proper number of teeth.
Zhudanna shuffled over to the window and peeked out the curtain. “Sun’ll be up soon anyway. I’ll put the kettle on if we’re all awake. Maybe a nice cup of tea will help settle the soul.”
She bustled off down the hall, humming as she went.
“So, you met D.” Laudna sighed. “Did she hurt you?” The woman’s long fingers were already fussing over Imogen, looking to comfort any bumps or scrapes.
Imogen chased after those hands, wrestled them under her own, and kissed the blackened nails at her fingertips. “I was worried she’d hurt you! I can deal with nightmares, Laudna, I’ve got experience.”
“You’d think I’d have enough of my own.” Laudna smiled sadly and looked down to the little crumple of fur and bone on her nightstand that made the real Pâté de Rolo. “D can be… a lot. I’m sorry you had to meet her.”
Imogen waved away the woman’s concern. “I knew that wasn’t really Pâté. The real one’s nicer.”
Laudna pulled dark red sinew from somewhere and looped it around the rat’s little paws, lifted it like a marionette and spoke in his cockney voice “I’ve been slandered, I have! This is a case of stolen identity!”
Imogen groaned, patted her horrifying friend affectionately, and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Let’s not keep Zhudanna waiting. She’s already lost enough sleep over us and she’ll only fuss if we let our tea get cold.”
Zhudanna had already set a tray with their cups. She designated their teacups during the rental agreement. A tall cup shaped like a newly opened lily for Laudna, crystal clear at its thin top going down to milky opaque at the heavy base. For Imogen she chose a low cup shaped like a yellow daisy with overlapping petals, its delicate handle a twisting green stem dotted with sparkling translucent dew. Favorites she’d made years ago and shared with them now out of love, and a bit of pride for her work. Her own cup was a sturdy brown mug with clay mushrooms blooming all around it, large enough to fit half the teapot, which allowed her to knit for a long time before reaching the end of her tea.
Imogen took over the brewing and poured their tea as Zhudanna settled into her armchair. Laudna took the low stool next to her, long hands folded over knobby knees, her thoughts abuzz with residual anxiety from the nightmare. Her faint smile did a poor job masking her worry, and snips of that dreamt conversation were loud in Imogene’s mind.
…that thing, she’s a monster, scared children…
Imogen placed the tall cup in Laudna’s spindly hands and lingered there.
D was only preying on your insecurities, Laudna. Our friends would never say those things, and you are not going to get stuck looking like that.
I’d just find another shack if I did. Move on again…
Imogen turned fierce and gripped Laudna’s shoulder. I love you, Laudna. You’re not moving on from that, no matter what you look like.
Laudna’s wide eyes opened even further in surprise. She smiled and rubbed a black tear away from her eye before it could fall.
Zhudanna didn’t seem to notice. She riffled through her knitting bag and came up victorious with a ball of yarn the warm yellow of clover honey. She began to cast new stitches on a set of double pointed needles, pausing every so often for a sip of tea.
Imogen sat on the floor and took a sip from her own cup.
Do you think we should help Zhudanna get a new prescription on those glasses? I don’t know how she didn’t see my lightning or your form of dread…
Better not press it, darling. I don’t think there’s another landlord in Jrusar who’ll have me.
“You girls are awfully quiet,” said Zhudanna. She took another needle from the bag and continued her stitches.
“Lost in thought, I suppose,” mused Laudna. “Bad dreams.”
“Uh, what’re you working on, ma’am?” Imogen asked to turn the conversation away from nightmares.
“Gloves, dear.” Zhudanna reached over and patted Laudna affectionately on her knobby knee. “This one is always so cold, and I’ve found a lovely yarn with a good stretch to it. They should keep your hands warm no matter how long your fingers get.”
Laudna froze under the woman’s hand. Imogen matched her. The only sound was the gentle clicks of Zhudanna’s bamboo needles coming together.
“You—you’re not frightened?” asked Laudna after some time.
“Of you, girl?” Zhudanna laughed and continued to knit. “Oh, no. If you were going to eat me, you wouldn’t bother paying rent!”
Imogen snorted into her tea, laughing.
Laudna stifled a giggle. “That’s quite pragmatic of you, Zhudanna.”
Imogen scooted a little closer to Laudna’s legs and leaned into them. “The group is pretty pragmatic, too. They haven’t run from us yet.”
“No,” agreed Laudna. She squeezed Imogen’s shoulder. “Thank you.”