The Thread That Binds by Cedar McCloud

Author:Cedar McCloud [Cedar McCloud; Cedar McCloud]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Numinous Spirit Press

***

We decide to take the journey in two weeks' time, during the full moon. Dreamwalking is easiest for me on the new moon, but we can't wait that long. Now every time I'm on the dreamscape, the briars rise to greet me. I can't meet with the spirit of Soil, Sea and Sky, and even worse, I'm losing sleep at night. No matter what I do, my fear of what the garden might reveal wakes me up before I can reach the end of the thorns.

Lilja calls me the morning before the dream journey. I consider not answering it, knowing it could wreck my already delicate emotional state. This is the fifth call this week. She's moving into her own apartment, but retrieving her belongings from the family house is proving tricky.

"Next time you speak to Oran, tell em e can have the pots and pans, but e can't have my Grandren's tea set. No. Don't tell em that unless the tea set is already in your hands, e'll probably smash it otherwise," e says, after telling me how Corday and his spouse got thrown out of the house when they came to retrieve Lilja's clothes.

"Okay," I say, my stomach churning, "I'll go sometime when e's at work."

I'm terrified of Oran when e's angry. It doesn't matter that I'm nearly as big as em now. If e so much as scowls, I become a child cowering in the closet again. I hear eir voice in my head before e even starts yelling, accusing me of all sorts of ridiculous things. The accusations rarely make sense, but that's not the point. The point is to make us feel small and make em feel in control.

"You'll have to go when e's home," says Lilja. "E threatened to accuse anyone who removes my things from the house of stealing. If you go secretly, e might accuse Corday of breaking in, and things will get even messier than they already are. You'll have to reason with em. You're the only one who can."

I don't want to do this. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Even when they're apart, I end up in between. Is that how it's always going to be?

"Tabby, please," Lilja says, "it's the least you could do after practically throwing away your astral tech degree and moving hours away from me. I thought we were going to stick together forever. I barely even got to see you this Solstice. I was so lonely."

"We invited you to come with us to Rhee's family's farm, but you said no," I remind her. "Didn't you end up spending the holiday with Corday?"

She sniffs disdainfully. "I was too upset, so I stayed in my room all night. Ever since you left home, it's been hard on me. I thought you'd be coming back to live and work in town, but then you got that job at the Eternal Library. As if you forgot all about me."

"I'm only two hours away, that's not so bad," I say.

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