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Matthias was dreaming again. Dreaming of her. For years, he had been having the same dream, a beautiful woman in the eye of a storm, curly hair flowing around her shoulders and down her back. She looked powerful, as though she held Matthias’ heart in the palm of her hand. As the storm raged around her, she watched Matthias struggle to get closer, to share in her power and her life despite the danger surrounding him.
And the dream ended the same way it always did, with Matthias reaching for something just out of reach, an outstretched hand grasping at the air. As he sunk in the icy waters, she seemed to mourn the loss of someone she didn’t even know. She was entrancing, worthy of being revered. Matthias needed her gone, away from his mind and departed from his every waking thought.
The first time he told his mother about the dream, shaking and wet from sweat as though he had actually swum in the waters of his dream, she told him it was an omen of something to come, an omen of his future. She pushed the hair from his eyes and told him a tale of a saint, one who brought dreams into reality and could shape the world as he saw fit.
To a child, such stories seem wonderous, full of possibility and magic. Something to be believed in until the world sharpens and forces pragmatic things like reason and good old-fashioned sensibilities onto a person. Matthias’ father would often scold his mother for telling him such fanciful tales and filling his head with nonsense.
“He must learn the word of Djel,” his father said, “and listen to the wellspring. The Saints are myths.”
As the dreams continued and Matthias struggled to forget about the siren he met every night, his father grew more and more frustrated with him. The omen his mother told of was not an omen, his father said, it was a temptation in him that could lead to ruin.
They subsided for a while, and he thought he was free. He grew up to become a respectable Fjerdan boy, with humility in his face and courage in his heart. When the town elders discussed the dangerous Ravkans across the border and the witches they harbored, he listened attentively and understood them to be a blight upon the world.
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The night the soldiers came, the Grisha wielding fire, Matthias was awake. He had had the dream again, an enchantress luring him to his death. Or was she a maiden attempting to save him? The details didn’t matter, he told himself, he needed to ignore the seduction and find Djel.
Yelling poured in through the window from the streets, fire already licking at the outermost homes of the village. Panic burst in his chest as he glanced at the sleeping form of his baby sister in the bed across the room. Matthias ran to wake her, shake her awake, until the door burst open, his mother’s pale face illuminated by moonlight.
“Go,” she mouthed at him. “Run. I will protect her.”
Like a fool, he believed her.
Matthias crawled out of the window, the cold air blustering around his bare head. He didn’t have the time for a coat, much less a hat. He risked a glance backwards as he fell out, his mother scooping his sister in her arms. Then he did as he was told, and ran.
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Now, lying awake on a boat far from any home he had ever known, Matthias thought often of the stories his mother would tell in secret. Powerful men and women, wielding the very skills the drüskelle found to be despicable. Saints of the Ravkan sort, Grisha in disguise. He knew they were lies, bedtime stories to get him to fall back asleep during long winter nights. But there was something about them that kept drawing him back.
What would it be like, such a talent lying at one’s fingertips? The ability to manipulate wind, rain, fire, with just the flick of a wrist? It was a dangerous train of thought, paramount to treason.
The boat rocked once, more violently that usual, the walls dripping with accumulated sea water and sweat. Matthias couldn’t sleep any longer. At least they would be landing soon, fresh drüsje-hunting to be done on the Wandering Isle.
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“What’s wrong with you?” Matthias challenged. “Would you fornicate with a dog?”
His fellow drüskelle in training looked at him with a smirk, replying, “What does the dog look like?”
Matthias watched as the others went above deck, roaring with laughter along the way, and as he went to follow, the girl they had most recently captured spoke.
“What crimes?” she asked, in starkly textbook Fjerdan.
He didn’t want to look at her. The drüsje was identical to the woman in his dreams, even the same piercing green eyes. As he turned back, she stood her ground, putting on a brave face despite the rotting condition of the cell around her.
“How do you come to speak my language? Did you serve on Ravka’s northern border?”
“I’m Kaelish, and I can speak any language.”
The conversation only devolved from there, and really, he shouldn’t have been conversing with her at all, a prisoner, a witch. But when she begged for water, his will began to crumble. He left without a word, but the seed was planted. He did bring water for them, anyway, doing his best to forget about her, the abomination. No matter what she did in his dreams.
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Freezing water engulfed his lungs as he faded in and out of consciousness. The storm raged on overhead, though Matthias felt as though he could hear the splash of someone swimming nearer. For a moment, the clouds parted, moonlight streaming down from above, and as his head ducked beneath the water, a hand reached for him.
It was like his dream, this time different but similar enough that Matthias was almost confident that he was asleep. Rather than ethereal and perfect, hovering above the water, the woman, the seductress, the witch, his savior held tightly onto a piece of the ship, kicking frantically and stretching for contact. He could’ve laughed at the sight. The god forced to reckon with human limits. Then she took ahold of his shirt firmly, yanking him above water.
Matthias coughed up water and, in his delirium, as the girl opened her mouth to speak, he expected some grand appeal, commending his tenacity and imparting wisdom upon him. Instead, she said, “Wake up, you miserable lump of muscle.”
Reality was not as kind as dreams, even the dreams where you drown.