Beyond the Dreams We Know: A Collection Read online

  BEYOND THE DREAMS WE KNOW

  BY

  RACHEL NEUMEIER

  BEYOND THE DREAMS WE KNOW

  Collected stories by

  Rachel Neumeier

  Published by Anara Publishing 2018

  Cover art and design @ WillowRaven 2018

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Rachel Neumeier

  Contents

  Heart’s Desire

  A Walk on the Beach

  Fire and Earth

  Vigilante

  Audition

  Lila

  The Kieba

  Endnotes

  Also by Rachel Neumeier

  Praise for Rachel Neumeier’s Books

  Acknowledgements

  Heart’s Desire

  This novella takes place a short time after the events of The City in the Lake.

  Neill, with his difficult family relationships and strong sense of duty, was always my favorite character in City. From the first, I knew that any story set in this world would feature Neill.

  _______________________

  -1-

  Neill found the great forest unexpectedly looming before him, though he’d gone less than a day’s ride from the Lake.

  He had come out to ride alone, a rare and treasured opportunity. Ordinarily his days were filled with a continual round of duties and obligations, but the weather had cleared at last after days of rain and mist and more rain, and no one had been minded to stay penned up in the damp and chilly Palace when sunlight danced at last across the Lake and the whole Kingdom beckoned. Cassiel had taken one look at the clearing skies and declared a general holiday, riding out with a crowd of companions and attendants and musicians, as well as nearly all the young ladies of the court.

  Muriel had gone as well. Neill had seen her among his brother’s company. His eye had gone to her as it always did lately, whether he willed it or no. This morning Muriel’s amber-gold hair had been braided with green ribbons and coiled in a figure eight at the nape of her neck; her amber-brown skirts looped up and tied with more green ribbons to be out of the way of stirrups and splashing mud. At the moment Neill had glimpsed her, one of her many friends had been handing up a basket, the kind with a woven strap mean to lie across a horse’s withers before the saddle so that delicate goods might be carried safely. Muriel had been laughing as she fastened the basket in place and bent to check its contents.

  Muriel was always laughing. She was a light-hearted girl; light of heart and easy of temper and quick of tongue, always best pleased when surrounded by friends and merriment. She and all her friends had naturally been delighted with the proposed outing, and why not? A fine spring day, an unplanned holiday, dozens of easy-tempered young men ready to wait on a lady’s slightest wish. Not to mention Cassiel himself, free of heart and fancy but certainly intending to marry, and that soon.

  Since Cassiel had taken the throne, every father with a marriageable daughter had sought a place for his girl at court; how not? Any family able to bring forward a young lady with looks and breeding and wit and poise had rushed to find her a place. Even among the rest, Muriel stood out for all those qualities. Naturally Cassiel was as much taken with her as anyone—of course he was. Anyone could see it. Neill could hardly mistake it. Especially when his brother had reined his pretty chestnut mare back beside Muriel’s bay for one moment and another, delaying the departure of his whole party. Neill had not heard what they said to each other. Commonplaces, no doubt.

  Commonplaces were enough to make companionship and then friendship and then courtship, with young people as easy of manner and light of heart as Cassiel and Muriel. Neill knew that very well.

  The company had taken hawks and hounds to provide ostensible reason for the outing, but it was hardly a hunting party. No doubt those baskets contained pastries and cream cakes and early strawberries as well as more solid fare, not to mention the pavilions and rugs rolled up and brought along by the servants so that everyone might have a place to lounge in comfort while they enjoyed an early supper. No doubt everyone would have a wonderful time and come trailing home tired and happy through the dusk.

  Neill had not been in the least inclined to join his brother’s company. He had intended to make use of the day’s unexpected quiet to consider one and another of the pressing matters awaiting his attention. There were the accounts from the tinsmiths, which did not seem entirely in accord with Neill’s knowledge of the mines; and the chilly, wet spring weather was creating problems for the northern farmers, who sent word that they could hardly get seed in the ground without it rotting. He needed to consider whether to have surplus stores of grain sent from the City to the northern farmers, and if so, which grains. Would they have time to plant and harvest wheat after the weather settled, or would it be better to suggest they put their fields into oats or cowpeas or hay? Or perhaps it would be best to send a broad variety and let each local farmer choose what he would plant according to his knowledge of his own fields and resources.

  There were always such urgent matters waiting consideration, and generally a lack of uninterrupted quiet in which to consider them. With so many gone for the day, obviously Neill was presented with an excellent opportunity to complete many important tasks.

  But he had stood at the window of his study, which overlooked the Palace’s courtyard, and watched his brother’s company gather, sweep up seemingly the entire court and all its staff, and ride out with no pomp at all but a great deal of noisy good cheer, Muriel’s bay in the fore right along with Cassiel’s chestnut. Somehow, even after that clamor had taken itself out of the courtyard and down into the City and away toward the Bridge of Glass, Neill had been unable to bring himself to appreciate the renewed quiet and peace. The tinsmiths’ accounts had failed to hold his interest. Even the important questions raised by the conditions facing the northern farmers could not quite capture his attention.

  First he tried closing his shutters to shut out the sunlight and the spring breeze and the sparse voices of the much-reduced residents of the Palace. That did not help at all, because he knew that the sunlight and the breeze and all the rest of the world pressed upon his closed shutters. In the end, with an unusual sense of annoyance, he entirely gave up his anticipated day’s work, weighted each stack of papers with a fist-sized round stone collected from the shore of the Lake, went down the stairs and through the courtyard, saddled his black mare with his own hands, ignored all cheerful suggestions that he might still catch up with his brother’s party, and rode out of the City the other way, toward Tiger Bridge.

  The stone tigers that lined the bridge stared unblinking from their plinths into the day and the distance. When Neill drew rein and looked down into the Lake, the reflected tigers wavered gently with the movement of the water so that they seemed to move and breathe and it seemed they might at any moment turn their heads and shrug off their stone and leap from their plinths.

  At dusk, perhaps they might. Neill had known it to happen. He had seen stranger things than that.

  Tiger Bridge had been decorated with more than tigers. The flowers and leaves once caught in fine relief all along the bridge had blurred with time and weather and the slow encroachment of lichens and mosses. In the reflection of the bridge, of course, all that intricate carving still gleamed as bright and new and delicate as ever. Neill knew exactly what those cleanly carved flowers would feel like under his hands, just as he knew the ghost-sound made by the velvet paws of living tigers.

  He looked up deliberately, away from the reflected bridge and the reflected City, and sent his mare forward into an eas
y swinging canter across the bridge.

  Neil had intended...he hardly knew what he had intended. A long slow day’s ride with no company but his own, no sound but his own breath and the hoofbeats of his mare, perhaps later a meal at some inn where no one knew him and he knew no one. A word with a farmer here or there, a chance to see for himself how the spring lay on the land.

  Certainly Neill had expected to be back before his brother’s company. He was not inclined to have Cassiel return to the Palace, ask after him, and discover he was not there. He did not want his brother to think, Neill went out after all...But not with me?

  Cassiel would not ask him why. But Neill did not wish to see that question lingering unasked in his brother’s eyes. Especially when he could hardly frame an answer, even to himself.

  Muriel had come to court only this past winter. A girl, hardly a woman; she was not quite twenty—more than ten years younger than Neill; much more of an age with Cassiel. Her father, a wellborn man of the City, had undoubtedly had an eye for the new young King when he had encouraged his daughter to seek a place at court. But it was Muriel’s own skills, not her autumn-colored hair nor her dancing eyes, that had won her that place. Her beautiful penmanship and quick wits, her friendly manner and clever turns of phrase had earned her a place among the small army of scribes and secretaries without whom the business of the Palace and the City and the Kingdom would immediately become hopelessly confused.

  So it was that Neill had met her, for all that business passed under his eye. All those scribes and secretaries ultimately worked for him, and so it was his duty to become acquainted with them all.

  It had been no chore to become acquainted with Muriel. There was no falsity to her; she was genuinely a cheerful, friendly girl, even with Neill, who did not encourage familiarity from any of the staff or the servants or the courtiers.

  Of course she had happily joined the company so enthusiastically making plans for the day’s pleasure. She was too friendly and warm-natured a girl to hold herself aloof. Neill could perfectly well have joined them himself. He knew that. Remaining solitary today had been his own choice.

  He had meant to ride alone. But he had not intended to ride all the way to the edge of the great forest, far less pass into its chancy reaches.

  Neill drew rein where the sunlight gave way to the reaching green shadows of the forest. A path began not far away; he marked that at once, without surprise. Of course there was a path. He would hardly have found the forest here before him, less than a day’s ride from the Lake, if there were not going to be a path. Though from his vantage here it seemed hardly wider than a fox’s track, he knew that if he nudged his mare that way, he would find it wide enough for a horse and rider. More than likely it would widen still further if he went on out of sight of the edge. All ways that led into the forest were easy. Only later, once one had gone farther in, would a man find the way becoming steep and crooked and difficult.

  Even if one kept to the true road, obstacles might well wait for a traveler. A little track like that one...obstacles were inevitable, on such a path as that.

  His mare, plainly wondering at Neill’s irresolution, swiveled an ear toward him and took a step toward the visible path. She checked at his light touch on the rein, but tipped both her ears back in a sharp comment about a rider who did not know his own mind. Neill had to chuckle, though he had not seen much amusing in the day before that moment. His mare had better sense than he did himself, sometimes.

  The mare’s name was Raven, which suited her as she was as wise as the bird from which she took her name. She was not large, but pretty and well made, with sloping shoulders and straight legs. She was not young, for Neill had picked her out from among the rest many years ago, but she was still swift of foot and sound of wind. She was not precisely good-natured, for she had too much wit and too keen a humor to allow docility. But she had good judgment and good sense, and she never put a foot wrong on broken ground or misjudged a jump.

  When she tucked her chin and took another step toward that trail, Neill let her go, though he hardly knew even yet why he was of a mind to humor either the mare or the unpredictable whims of the great forest. Except that he was of no mood to turn and ride away, back to the City and the Palace and the endless round of his waiting duties.

  Cassiel would no doubt have forbidden him, if he had been here. He would declare Neill indispensable and bid him keep to the sunlit farmlands. But if Neill were truly indispensable, that would speak ill indeed of his ability to train the many functionaries of the Palace who among them actually saw to all the important daily tasks that had to be overseen.

  Among them, various scribes and secretaries. And among that number, of course, one particular woman with hair like autumn leaves and quick humor and a generous nature that won her friends as easily as breathing.

  A woman such as Muriel might someday become more nearly essential to the smooth functioning of the staff than Neill himself, for folk obeyed him out of respect and a little fear, but they would listen to Muriel and follow her suggestions because they wished to please her.

  Cassiel could do far worse for himself than a girl like that. Muriel would make a fine queen. Neill knew that perfectly well.

  On consideration, Neill thought the staff and the court—and his brother most of all—might very well spare his own presence for some little time. Besides, he was his father’s son, and so perhaps had less need to be wary of the forest than others might. So he rode forward, hardly considering his reasons or the reasons that might have brought the edge of the forest to this place before him. His heart beat more quickly as he passed into the green shade, but he did not look back.

  -2-

  Eliet rode away from her brother’s farm in the grey light that came before dawn, along the road, west.

  She rode away from her home while the mists still lay silvery and cold over the wide pastures and the owls called from the barn where they nested, and she drew rein at the edge of the great forest just as the first rays of the sun peeked above the horizon behind her.

  She had not wanted to leave the farm that was her home. She had been born there; had lived her whole childhood there; had grown into a woman there. She had married there, beneath the big oak that stood in lonely splendor a stone’s throw from the brood mares’ paddock. They had draped the oak’s branches with streamers of sweetly fragrant honeysuckle and mignonette, and Eliet had stood up before everyone, blushing and shy, to trade marriage vows with Chares, second son of the finest town weaver. Eliet had been eighteen, heartlight and happy. She had believed Chares the handsomest man in the Kingdom, and the kindest. She had believed herself blessed by fortune, lucky beyond measure to have been the girl who’d caught his eye, lucky again that Chares loved horses better than wool and was glad to leave his father’s house and come to her own family’s farm. She liked visiting town well enough—Brewer’s Vale was small, but prosperous; there were two dozen shops there, in addition to the market twice a month. But she loved her family’s farm better. She lost nothing by marrying and gained everything, and when she thought of the future, she had only imagined it would be as sweet as the past.

  Six years later she had stood alone among the crowd of her family and his and watched as Chares had been buried in her family’s plot, marked off from farmyard and pasture and garden by its hedge of roses and spirea and lilac. Her mother’s headstone stood there, and her father’s, and her uncle’s, and others. Losing each of them had been a grief to those they left behind, but they had all died old, leaving children behind to mourn them.

  Her husband’s carved headstone was not the same. His stone had been raised up beside the small stones that belonged to his sons, Eliet’s tiny twin sons, that had neither of them lived to draw a hundred breaths, and the one that belonged to their little daughter, who had lived only long enough to give everyone hope she might not die.

  On that day, standing silent witness to her husband’s burial, Eliet had laid down her heart among those headstones.
She had sworn she would never weep again. She would never love again, never look at another man, above all never bear another child in her body. She was done with love, and loss, and mourning.

  She smiled wryly now, here at the edge of the great forest, to think of that stone-hearted certainty. From seven years farther on, she could see she had been very nearly as young and foolish at four-and-twenty as she had been at eighteen. She had mistaken grief for insight, but deep grief was no more a font of wisdom than happiness.

  No doubt like most women—aye, and most men—she would manage to be one kind of fool or another all her life. If not necessarily young.

  Eliet curved a hand across her softly rounded belly and looked as far as she could see along the road that led forward from the ordinary countryside and in among the great trees. She could not see very far, both because bright morning had not yet broken through this misty dawn and because the road curved gently as it entered the forest. But she did not turn to look behind her. She did not want to see the road that led back.

  It seemed she had become the sort of fool who would not look back at family and home and all her familiar life, but only forward, along the road that would lead her...she did not know to what place or what fate that road might lead her. But she hoped. For a new life. For her heart’s desire: a child that might live. For a daughter or a son who would belong to the future and owe nothing to lost dreams and old sorrows.

  Not that she knew how to build that new life for herself, with or without a child. At thirty-and-one, she was surely old enough to know better than to ride away from her old life when she had no idea how to build a new one. Old enough to know that even if she gained her heart’s desire, there would be no easy answers and no smooth path into the future.