Our Mother the Mountain

23. We Feed It Dreams

"The thing he wants, the end that he obsesses over, is already happening. Her powers, influence, it's all fading away here. Soon there will be nothing left that she can touch. When that happens, she may be easily pulled into your world. Perhaps Ethan's dream will come true."

"Is it still his dream if he can't remember that he wants it?"

"Such is the nature of dreams. The eye sees more clearly in dreams. But then it all fades, with a simple wakening. What was so exquisitely felt, so deeply, is shallow dust in the sunlight. It slips through the mind like sand through fingers. It's cruel, isn't it, my beautiful darling?"

"What is, Mama?"

"All that the creature learned, it learned from humans. How to fear. How to not trust others. How to plot for itself, and expect lies. The Mold itself is no dream. It depends on us, on our emotions. What we feed it. We feed it our dreams, and it shows them to us....one way or another. That's all it is."

"Like a child."

"Precisely."

—---------

He walked outside barefoot, ignoring the sting of frosty grass on his feet. Karl strode across the quiet, grey-lit garden until he stood underneath the linden tree. Mia's cross was now on this plot as well. The engineer paused to look at it as he stepped around the area, eyeing the still-blooming flowers. Once more he straddled the line between Miranda's discovery, and safety.

He waved the hammer, hearing the strange rumble of a magnetic field around him. Karl heaved a sigh, closing his eyes. As he used to do, he now focused on the rotating magnetic field, and the whispers of the mold around him.

When he opened his eyes, he was assaulted by the too-sickly smell of his own cigar smoke. But it had worked; he was Somewhere Else.

The magnetic field had picked up pieces of rock, along with various garden debris. They swirled in a slow, fluctuating tornado around him. The sky was deep shades of burgundy and red, and the grey ground was threaded with black, until it met its boundary. Unlike before, the manor swayed against the shimmering air, right side up, every window spilling with warm buttery light. At least he'd straightened that out, he thought grimly. Karl shifted, peering across the not-quite-blurry edge of remembered place and time. Mycelium-trees threaded out here as well, probing, searching, but never moving past their forced edge.

He was supposed to feel his mother here. Maybe even more here, right? This was what he'd call a supernatural boundary. It was a creation of the Mutamycete, but it was something more, because he'd buried her nearby. It changed things. So Eva told him. But his mother was no more here than she was inside his actual beating heart. She seemed to exist as a feeling, a faraway memory buried under worse nightmares than anything Miranda ever showed him, did to him.

He had been happy to die as a child. It wasn't only because of Miranda's treachery, wasn't because he was kept in a literal cage and forced to listen to other crying children around him. Karl knew that if he escaped and somehow returned to this manor, it would never bring his real mother back to her own form. He had been young enough to believe in a sliver of hope of heaven. That they would be reunited.

Now here he was with electromagnetic powers, and here she was, buried in the garden, wielding some quiet influence over the cliffside.

What a waste, for both of them.

His head was already throbbing. Karl ignored it though; he was being as safe as he could be, grounding his body, standing in this tried and trusted spot. With another wave of a hand the field fell, and he remained Somewhere Else. Well, now what? He had to admit that though he usually had a mental plan for everything, he was a bit lost.