Chapter 14 The Running Dream
The dream began in the dark, as most of Daisy’s dreams did, but this time the darkness was alive. It rippled and seethed, opening into a tunnel that pulsed with the stink of mold, blood, and home. She crawled forward, knees scraping raw against stone, hands slick with something too thick to be water. Around her, the shadows moved, shifting in time with her heartbeat.
Then came the rat. It perched on a ledge just ahead, red eyes fixed on hers, whiskers twitching with anticipation. Daisy’s mind tried to make it ordinary, but the rat grew with every blink, swelling to the size of a dog, then a wolf, then something that barely fit the tunnel. Its fur was matted with gore, but the red eyes burned clean and bright.
It spoke. The voice was old and sharp and eerily familiar, echoing her mother in some syllables, herself in others.
“Blood remembers,” said the rat. Its mouth barely moved.
Daisy wanted to run, but her arms and legs had turned to ice. She stared at the rat, unable to look away.
“Where are you taking me?” she tried to ask, but the words fell out thick and wrong.
The rat turned and ran, and Daisy was forced to follow. The tunnel twisted and narrowed, the walls throbbing in and out with the pulse of a living thing. Each time Daisy hesitated, the rat stopped, flicked its tail, and waited. Sometimes it turned to look at her, and she could see herself reflected in those bloody orbs, face gaunt and pale, hair straggling down in muddy ropes.
The tunnel opened, and suddenly they were in a forest. Trees rose up like prison bars, black and endless. There was no sky, only more branches, and somewhere in the distance, something screamed. The rat darted through the undergrowth, and Daisy pushed herself to her feet and followed, barefoot, the earth cold and wet under her toes.
She heard her name whispered by the wind. “Daisy.” Sometimes it sounded like her mother, sometimes like Delia, sometimes like nobody at all.
The rat led her to a clearing. In the center was a door, taller than any she’d seen, made of iron so dark it ate the light. No hinges, no handle, just a surface pitted with old scars and a single symbol: a spiral, etched deep, fresh as a wound.
The rat sat before it, waiting.
Daisy reached for the door. As her hand neared the spiral, the metal grew warm, then hot, then white-hot. She screamed, but the pain was sweet, and her hand locked on the mark. The iron sizzled, the spiral glowed.
“Blood remembers,” the rat said again, and now its voice was entirely her own.
The world inverted.
She woke gasping, heart pounding in her chest. Sweat drenched her shirt; her fists had knotted in the thin blanket so tight her nails left crescent moons in her palm.
Dawn bled through the cracks in the roof, a watery gray that barely counted as light. Daisy rubbed her eyes, then froze.
There was something on her pillow. A single red scale, no bigger than a thumbprint, but sharp and luminous. It caught the dawn and glimmered, and when Daisy picked it up, it pulsed under her fingers, just once. The spiral on her wrist throbbed in time.
She stared at the scale, memory of the dream vivid as flame. It wasn’t possible, but here it was: a piece of something wild, something dangerous, something hers.
A crash from below yanked her back. Boots thundered on the stairs, voices barking orders. Daisy shoved the scale into her satchel and scrambled to the tiny attic window. She pushed it open and peered out: no ledge, two-story drop, hard ground below. She looked back at the door, then down at the cot, still warm from her sleep.
Voices rose. She heard the innkeeper’s wife, brittle and sharp: “What’s all this noise, then?”
A man answered, voice deep and cold. “We’re looking for a girl. Brown hair, slum accent, scar on her hand. She’s dangerous.”
Daisy pressed her back to the wall, body flat. Through the floorboards, she could see the shadow of a tall, broad man with a streak of silver at the temple. There was a scar that ran from eyebrow to jaw, pinning the face into a permanent smirk.
Cornelius Blackwood.
Daisy’s mouth went dry. The rumors hadn’t done him justice. He moved with the confidence of someone who never lost a fight, who didn’t mind killing and didn’t mind being seen doing it.
He was at the top of the stairs now, hand on the hilt of a blade. “We know she’s here,” he said. “Don’t make us tear the place apart.”
The innkeeper’s wife appeared behind him. She glanced up, met Daisy’s eyes through the slats, then looked away as if she hadn’t seen anything at all. “Attic’s empty,” she lied, voice bored.
Blackwood scowled. “You let a stranger in, you’d better hope she didn’t take anything worth dying over.”
The woman shrugged. “If you’re so eager, check it yourself.”
He grunted, pushed past her. Daisy listened as the boots hammered toward the trapdoor at the back of the room.
The innkeeper’s wife turned, her eyes hard and fastened on Daisy. She mouthed: Go.
Daisy stuffed the last of her things into her satchel, the knife, bread, and scale, before creeping to the trapdoor. It was swollen with age, but she got it open just as Blackwood’s hand rattled the doorknob at the front. She squeezed into the crawlspace, ignoring the splinters biting into her palms, and slid feet-first down the ladder. At the bottom was a mess of barrels and a window barely big enough for a cat.
Daisy didn’t think. She wriggled through, catching her shirt on a nail, and landed in a heap behind the inn, knees and elbows bruised but nothing broken. She heard Blackwood’s voice above: “She was just here. I can smell it.”
Daisy darted for the hedgerow, sticking low, blood roaring in her ears. She slipped between a row of garbage bins and crouched behind the last, heart banging.
Behind her, the inn’s back door swung open. The innkeeper’s wife stepped out, eyes sweeping the yard. She spotted Daisy, gave the slightest nod, then bent to pick up a basket of laundry and started hanging it on the line as if nothing in the world was wrong.
Inside her pocket, the scale grew hot. Daisy gripped it through the fabric, feeling it beat in time with her heart.
She waited until Blackwood stomped out the front of the inn, cursing, then cut across the yard and into the thicket beyond.