Chapter 3 – The Nightmares

—the nightmares began.

Teller thought of them as sensory deprivation nightmares: no sounds, no smells, no Air-sense, just physical feelings, he’d not had one for ages, and he hated them.

Tonight, was an old favorite—drowning. He was close to someone he trusted, sat in a long boat rocking gently in the river-pipe. Then he was overboard, tied by his wrists in harsh River-folk ropes and being pulled through the water. He struggled but he couldn’t get free, and every time he tried to relax and get his bearings, another tug would pull him farther under. He could feel the bubbles against his bare fur, water in his nose and ears pushing against every surface of his being, trying to push him out. He struggled as his arms were pulled different ways, then went slack again. His lungs burned with the strain as he tried to keep his mouth clamped shut. The ropes tightened and dragged his head against the keel of the boat. A sharp pain sliced across his head: he gasped. A stuck-out nail, or sharp splinter? No time to think about that now, his mouth was full of water, his throat had gone into spasm and he couldn’t control the flailing. He wanted to cough but the water was everywhere. The ropes pulled again, and he flailed against them. All his muscles burned, his lungs filled, the ropes pulled hard and—

He gasped. The cool night air tasted of vinegar. He felt down his arms, not dry but it was sweat not water on his fur. He sat up, still panting and rubbed his face.

“Hey, be quiet up there, there’s children trying to sleep here!” A voice from downstairs. His new neighbors, by the sound of the Bridge-folk-accented male voice. He breathed in and clamped his mouth shut: counted slowly, two, three, four. He let the breath out slowly through his nose. His clicker beetle still ticked on his table. Still sleep-span then, the noise was quieter now though, so, late sleep span. There was no way he’d get back to sleep now anyway.

He started to pour some water from a jug on his table into the bowl that went with it, to wipe his face. Teller had the wrung out cloth over his mouth when a loud banging at the door broke his spell. He threw the cloth back into the bowl.

“Shreds.” Then to whoever was knocking, “What? What do you want?” He really couldn’t stomach a row with his neighbor this early in a span.

“Keep your fur on,” said the small voice from beyond the door. It was Don-po, one of the village constables. “The chief sent me, the midwives have finished the autopsy. She thought you’d want to know.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Shall I wait?”

Teller went back to his cloth, now soaked again. He began to wring it out, slowly and noisily over his basin.

“No, I’ll meet you there,” he wasn’t prepared to specify how long.

The flannel felt cold against his skin. He sighed. He’d not dreamed of his home with the River-folk for ages, and it made something catch in his throat. Maybe it was the lie of even that phrase “Home with the River-folk”. He laughed a bitter laugh, though no-one was listening.

He turned to leave through the driftwood door. He patted himself down for keys in his loose long jacket. No, the keys were there, that wasn’t what his subconscious had stopped him for. But why then? He went back to his table, there was a small drawer in it. One he hadn’t opened for quite some time. It still slid smoothly on its runners. Inside was a small, heavy, sacking bundle, smelling faintly of oil. He unwrapped it without thinking and took out the slender tube within. It felt beautifully smooth and cold to the touch, and fit snugly into his hand. He ran a digit over the one bump on its surface: a button for the firing mechanism.

He’d had the thing for ages, it had cost him a whole cycle’s worth of tallies from a particularly shady Machine-folk dealer who’d been passing through the Bocado, and once he’d had it in his hand, he’d had to possess it. Funny, he wasn’t usually like that with ‘stuff’ but something about this odd, beautiful thing. The way the surface was metal but smooth, ‘machined’ the dealer called it, whatever that meant. That came in the conversation with the warnings. “Have the button at the top of your hand and don’t point it at anything you don’t want to kill.” The dealer wouldn’t demonstrate it in the bar: even the Bocado had limits. Mas had bought it anyway. Not stopping until he was home, and testing it on his front door when he got in. He’d nearly fallen down the flight of rickety wooden steps. A metal spike had shot out of the end, still connected, so it had become a kind of short metal spear. He’d still held the other end of it, but only just. The kick from it had been powerful. Lethal. His door would never be quite the same again, but out of tallies, it took him till his next job to get the door patched. He had pulled the thing from his door. The weapon had become a full stride in length and the end that had gone through the wood was sharp as a stylus. It had taken him the rest of that sleep span to work out that stowing the point again required a hell of a lot of pushing, then it had clicked back into place and the button popped out. He’d mostly left it in the drawer after that.

Except for now. Now felt different. He locked the door, the smooth feel of the cylinder in his jacket pocket. It bumped gently against his leg as he went down the stairs. It felt comforting.