At the onset of an unexpected journey, Matthew MacBride sat hunched behind the wheel of his Ford Escort and prayed for the world to burn in hell.
Instead, he got rain.
Figures, he thought as he drove northwest along Cabrillo Highway. I ask for one thing, get something else altogether. Lucky me.
Not that he cared—not really, for he'd pretty much decided that this little drive up into the Cambria hills was going to be a one way trip. In fact, he thought, I might very well be driving through the gates of heaven pretty soon—this fucking stairway to heaven looks like it's going to keep winding up and up until it breaks through the clouds and pokes God in the butt.
Which might have served the Big Guy right for allowing so much pain, disease, corruption, and other mortal follies to run rampant in His world, for allowing Matthew to sample a heaping plate of death when he was ten and his father had died—for allowing Yvonne to break up with him after seven years of going steady.
In church too, during Reverend Lanks' sermon...
"Matthew...I have to talk to you."
"Right now?"
"Yes. This can't wait."
"Um, okay."
"Matthew...I've been sleeping with Tyler."
"Oh."
"Now, I know you're mad at me, I know you're hurt, but I couldn't keep it inside any longer. I know that it's not something you want to hear, but I had to bring myself to tell you the truth. No more secrets between us."
"Uh-huh."
"We're good friends, you and I, and I want it to stay like that, but sometimes I need more than just a friend. I have...physical needs as well."
"Mm-hm."
"And this has nothing to do with your weight. It has nothing to do with you. It's just...there are things you can do with certain friends, and things you can't do with others. I don't want our relationship spoiled because of something like sex."
"Oh."
"God, I feel so much better finally getting this off my chest. Are you going to be okay?"
"Um...sure."
Yvonne may have sugar-coated it, but Matthew knew perfectly well what the score was: he was overweight, balding, and his penis was more modestly-sized than was fashionable for his generation. While Yvonne was into working out at the gym, going rollerblading, and playing volleyball at the beach, he was a couch potato who preferred renting DVDs, eating pizza, and sleeping in on weekends. How he'd ever managed to snag a girl like Yvonne—and hold onto her for a good, solid run—he hadn't a clue, except that at one time she'd sworn it wasn't looks that mattered, but what was on the inside. She'd said she liked his sense of humor, how he always seemed to have the right advice whenever she needed it, how he wasn't obsessed with football and army movies like a lot of other guys.
Still, Matthew was fat, bald, and needle-dicked. Oh, he was an eager participant whenever it came down to some good old fashioned, genital-to-genital contact, but that didn't necessarily mean he was good at it. Or, as good as a woman like Yvonne needed him to be. Once she'd hit her mid-twenties, she'd become obsessed with her biological clock; suddenly she needed a fellow hard-body, a prime example of southern California vanity (and one who was hung like a horse, as Tyler allegedly was) to prove, in the gym and in bed, that she was impervious to the passage of time.
Matthew had gone for a nighttime drive. An hour along the highway and he realized he'd left San Luis Obispo in a fight or flight reaction that would have put his viking ancestors to shame. No route in particular, just somewhere relatively isolated where he could die in peace.
In retrospect, dying young was probably something no one in their right mind would want to do unless burdened with some sort of horrific, incurable disease—or, perhaps, if someone was stuck on the receiving end of a breakup with the only girlfriend he'd ever had (and would probably ever have). Many had chosen suicide as a solution to such circumstances, though its effectiveness was questionable since one was usually never heard from again upon exiting the flesh.
Matthew had considered asphyxiation, pills, getting drunk and hanging himself—but what if, in his stupor, he made a gross miscalculation and ended up doing only enough damage to prolong his suffering until the medics arrived? No, better to drive off a cliff at ninety miles per hour, fast and furious.
Such was Matthew's ironclad intention for about the first five minutes prowling around the sleepy Cambria hillsides, with the numerous saloons, shops, and restaurants perched at the edge of the deep, dark Pacific. The town was elvish, a leftover relic from the old world that was kept around primarily as a tourist attraction.
Good, Matthew thought. Small and quiet. No one to get in my way.
However, the longer he drove, the more he thought, and the more he thought, the more he began having doubts about what exactly he was intending to do. Kill himself over a woman? Perfectly logical in one sense, utterly insane in another—especially considering the storm. Cambria's epicenter behind him, the evening had turned pitch black, as if all that existed was the fogged-up window, the sheets of rain, the flashes of Matthew's headlights against a brief muddy field of view that most certainly wasn't part of Cambria anymore, wasn't part of anywhere—
—he didn't spot the pothole until it was too late, at which point the two front wheels of his Escort suddenly hiccuped. The car came to a shuddering halt, Matthew almost hitting his nose on the steering wheel.
"Shit!" he exclaimed. He shut off the engine and got out to examine the damage. It wasn't a very big pothole, but the surrounding rainwater was turning the whole area into one gigantic mud hole. Even now, the abundant flow soaked the ankles of his pants. It was obvious his car wasn't going to budge without a tow truck.
Matthew slouched his shoulders as he surveyed the darkness. Really paying attention this time, he saw nothing but trees and undergrowth wilting under the torrential downpour.
He was quite lost.
Well, this must be it, then, he thought. This is where I die. I wonder how long it'll take to drown if I just lay down on the road and open my mouth? Or will some animal start pecking at me first? What if I'm half-eaten, but before I die, some dude happens by and takes me to the hospital, and the doctors keep me alive so that I have to live the rest of my life without arms or legs—damn it. Suicide was a complicated business.
Pulling out his last bit of determination, Matthew lay down in the mud and stared up into the darkened sky. Cold rain pelted him, matting the wispy hairs on his head and soaking his clothes. In a moment, he actually felt like the water was washing him away, dissolving him into the ground. He felt calm, he felt relaxed, he felt ready for death. Everything seemed ready, except...
...he had to piss.
With a sigh he got up again and spit water from his mouth, wiped his eyes—and just like that, his moment of bravado was gone, replaced with embarrassed amusement. What was I thinking? This is ridiculous. I'm not going to die just by lying down on the ground like some tribesman.
He started walking, searching for a suitable place to urinate—as if it mattered where in all the excess water he deposited his piss. Already he knew that he didn't have the courage to go through with the whole self-service-suicide thing, knew that he should start making his way home before he missed Frasier.
As if on cue, the storm worsened. Matthew considered waiting it out inside his car, but then he started worrying about mudslides and so decided he'd do better trying to get out of the situation affirmatively rather than passively. After rummaging in the trunk, he came up with a small flashlight; the batteries were half dead.
By now, the rain was sweeping the countryside in huge, multi-layered torrents. Loud cracks of thunder roared overhead. Matthew tried to walk where the puddles weren't too deep, but more often than not he ended up wading through hidden dips and miniature sinkholes. The road had become a treacherous ravine, every step of the way a disaster in calculation as Matthew slipped and fell, got to his feet, and slipped and fell again.
Well, this isn't good, he thought as he hauled himself over a boulder that had slid into the middle of the road. What if I really do die up here? No one would know. In a thousand years, they'll find the petrified remains of my car and put it on display in a dinosaur exhibit, but good ol' Matthew MacBride...they'll never even miss me. The concept became more and more foreboding with every step he took, and as flashes of lightning split the sky, as the worst of the storm seemed to hover in an area precisely over his head, he actually heard himself whispering a prayer—
—a prayer he didn't finish, for suddenly the sky opened up and a bolt of lightning ignited a nearby oak. The force of the bolt sent Matthew's heart racing (faster than it was already) as he tried to leap out of the way. His meager athletic skills eluded him, however, and he missed his footing, fell onto his back. To his horror, the flaming tree came crashing down on him. He let loose a stifled scream before the impact sent him spinning into unconsciousness.
As he crossed into the indigo darkness, a single thought broadcast itself in his mind:
Now I'll definitely miss Frasier.
Moments later:
The cloaked shadow of a four-foot-tall man separated itself from a nearby clump of foliage and approached Matthew's comatose form. Waving his hand in the air, this man shaped from darkness snuffed out the last lingering embers of the fallen tree. Then, with a quick swoop of his arms (and, again, without making physical contact), he lifted the entire oak above his head and hurled it several feet out of the way.
The man crouched beside Matthew, examined his ears, and then muttered under his breath, "My Goddess. Human."
Several possible courses of action presented themselves to the cloaked man—immediacy won out in the end. He reached down and with a strength that belied his small stature, hoisted Matthew over his shoulder.
In this manner, Matthew was carried off into the shadows, from rain world to dark world, the only witness to the whole ordeal being the rain and the wind and the flashes of lightning scalding God's Earth in a time-lapse maelstrom.
Matthew was floating in darkness.
At first, there wasn't much to it. He knew he was being carried somewhere, knew he was still alive, though his soul seemed hesitant to reanimate his body just yet. Too much discomfort, too much pain.
He let himself float.
Gradually, at a distance, his senses awakened, one by one, to the rain, the wind, the sound of thunder rumbling overhead—but he himself decided it was best to curl up inside, where it was warm and dry.
His soul shifted. Not far from where a scorched oak lay bruised and battered, the saturated ground swelled into a gently rolling hillside carefully camouflaged by an armada of sycamore, cypress, oak. Hidden behind this arboreal barrier was a large mansion. Elven in design, it was the sort of place remembered in history books. In its day, the mansion had been the site of magnificent parties, the home of a grand lineage; today, it was cold, drafty, and quite lonely for any inhabitants hardy (or destitute) enough to dwell within.
On the second floor, and at the southernmost end of a long, dark hallway (the mansion faced west), there was a bedroom that swam with shadows—imagined spirits under the assault of the storm. Though dry and, for all outward purposes, safe, the young man who lay curled up in the large banistered bed had wrapped himself tightly in the blankets and was trembling like a leaf. His anxiety, however, was only half-inspired by the whispers of the wind, the rhythm of the rain—
—holy shit, thought Matthew, suddenly finding himself pressed into the scene. Here, he was himself, but he was also someone else, wearing someone else's body and occupying someone else's bed.
In another person's head!
It was early evening; he felt as if he'd been bedridden for ages, though. He was still young, his adolescence only recently having peaked and delivered him into adulthood, and yet he felt too old to move a finger, a toe, even, lest he risk breaking something. He was shackled, the bearer of a burden he'd carried since birth. A life as unspent as his should have been warm to the touch, eager for youthful memories, summertime excursions by the beach, first kisses from girls, weekend cruises along the California coast—like the people on TV. Instead, he was here, always here, his thoughts cluttered with broken images of distant dark places, heavy, pungent odors, and rough, malignant sounds.
Dark dreams.
The storm outside is no match for the storm within, he thought, clutching the bedclothes tightly. The phrase tumbled about in his head, begging for release.
It took a little while, but Matthew—Arrow?—eventually worked up the courage to leave the bed. As he padded quickly to his desk he noted that his body was uncommonly fit and flexible. With a deft movement of his hand, he lit a candle—no matches required. He sat himself in the old, worn chair. His journal rested atop the desk pad; the candlelight cast a flickering glow across an elaborate bow and arrow engraved in the journal's cover.
That's my name, Matthew thought. Arrow.
He flipped to an empty page, tried to write something insightful. It was hard—all he knew were the walls that encapsulated him, the splintered wood of the chair against his backside, lightning, thunder, rain, the necessary solitude of a gatekeeper—
—he thought of Her, and tried ineffectually to recall his most recent dream. The details were elusive; the only memory his brain allowed him to keep was of Her, the young woman who'd routinely haunted his nocturnal ramblings for weeks, months...perhaps years, even.
So very familiar, Matthew heard himself think, and yet I cannot even recall her name.
He had no idea who the woman was beyond the fact that she was elven, half human, half elf—like himself (himself?)—very pretty, and very insistent about something, though what, Matthew couldn't say, for every time he realized he was having a dark dream, he awoke in a sweat before he could properly investigate.
This night, the cycle had repeated itself three times.
Lightning flashed, thunder rolled. Leaving the desk, Matthew returned to his bed, sat next to the headboard, where his dreamcatcher hung.
Share with me, he thought intensely, but the catcher was dormant, dreamless. She comes to me in my dreams, demands something of me which I cannot understand, then leaves without a trace. What am I to make of that?
It was impossible to answer his dream-self's question—but the need to know, the curiosity set Matthew into motion as he stepped across the room and pulled open the heavy wooden door that led out into the hallway. Poking his head out first, he saw that all the night lamps had been extinguished, which meant it was somewhat safe to go wandering about without having to worry about Darius catching him.
Darius...my master's name ....
Matthew stepped into the hallway. Holding out his right hand and calling light, his palm began to glow as he made his way towards the stairwell. In his head he tried to piece together any fragments of the night's dreams, tried to make sense of his incessant restlessness.
Yana. The name had been whispered a thousand times in his head. The girl of his dreams was named Yana. She'd come to him, taken his hand, led him somewhere deep inside the house. Somewhere...down. Somewhere he'd never been—a place that couldn't possibly exists because it was so big, so complex there was no way it could fit anywhere on the Greensbough grounds.
Maybe, he thought, his dreams had taken him somewhere beneath the mansion—a secret cavern accessible via the keep. It was, after all, the only place Darius had never permitted him to go.
Matthew knew the secrets Darius stored within the keep were for his eyes only, and Matthew had never much questioned them—but his dreams, as of late, had been persistent in arousing his curiosity. His whole life, in fact, was one big curiosity. He knew not who his parents were, though he was fairly certain one of them—most likely his mother—had to have been human, for he had a human's height, a human's proportions, and his skin was darker. He was an orphan, he knew, of the old world, and a gatekeeper in the new. Darius was his mentor and coworker; together they lived in isolation. It was often lonely, but it was home, and, until now, Matthew had mostly succeeded in filling his waking hours with as many distractions as possible: conversing, studying with Darius, exercising on the promenade, tending a journal between household and groundskeeping chores...and keeping watch.
It was different now. His assigned position wasn't enough. He'd always accepted. Now, as if a hidden switch had burned turned on, he suddenly found himself filled with the desire to know.
"When the student is ready," Darius would always say, "the teacher will present himself." Such epiphanies were almost always followed by some sort of menial job—dusting shelves, scrubbing floors, clearing out gutters or drains, fetching Darius' bathwater.
Matthew's dream-self had spent his entire life in wait.
Master's obsession with being ready is so terribly important, Matthew thought, making his way down the hall, still amazed by the qualities of his elven body, the features of his surreal environment, but so caught up in his dream-self's conundrum that he didn't stop to analyze. He's taught me language, history, magic, the defensive arts, but for what? The new world has forsaken the ways of magic. "Someday," he always says. "Someday it will be different." But for four-hundred seasons, every day has been alike. Surely we are not here merely to keep house.
Matthew kept his lighted palm cupped close to his thigh and descended the winding stairwell that led deep into the bowels of the mansion. Though he knew he was unobserved, he moved quickly and kept himself acutely aware of any shadow not his own. It wasn't that he was frightened of the darkness, for he'd lived in the mansion all his life, and darkness was an integral quality. Rather, he didn't want to get caught by Darius, whose mana wasn't currently detectable, but whose presence could manifest itself at a moment's notice. (It had happened before, and during less strenuous circumstances.)
Down, Matthew told himself, spiraling deeper into darkness, so deep that the sounds of the storm could hardly be heard at all. At the foot of the stairwell was the entrance to the keep—
—glowing within by some unnatural light.
He started forward, then stopped just before he reached the threshold. His skin prickled, almost electric. He extinguished his light, felt along the floor with his foot. When he found a small pebble, he picked it up and hurled it at the entrance. The pebble bounced off an invisible barricade.
A security spell, thought Matthew. Probably placed here by Darius.
He squinted. It was obvious there was something going on at the far end of the keep, but he needed a better vantage point. Tightening his abdomen, eliciting a tempered warmth from within as he called another spell, this one vastly more intricate than his light spell, Matthew worked to undo the barrier. Since he'd studied under Darius, reverse-engineering the man's magic wasn't overtly difficult. It was strenuous work, though, and took more than a few minutes. When at last he was through, and the doorway was unblocked, he sighed deeply, leaning against the wall and wiping the sweat from his forehead. He was very nearly winded; his heart was thumping madly in his chest. Were it not for the lure of the unknown, he might have turned around and gone right back to bed for an extended nap.
Stepping past the threshold, Matthew gazed about the keep. The chamber was long and narrow, with a low, arched ceiling. Neither he nor his dream-self had been here before, but from the look of things it was mostly emergency supplies: food, tools, and nameless crates stacked to the ceiling. All about the pillars and walls hung a countless number of feathered dream catchers, which swayed in an ethereal breeze. Some were big, some were small, some were ancient-looking, and some looked as if they'd been freshly hung—but most fascinating was the sound of the place, a wide-open sort of quietness filled with the subtle swish of water against stone. This was augmented by a thousand distant voices whispering and sighing in a delicate choral orchestration.
The after-echoes of life, Matthew thought, walking slowly through the chamber and experiencing a myriad of emotions as instant recognition burned in his brain. Yana had taken him here, in his dreams—only then the keep had been three times as large, and a hundred times as ominous—and yet now, during wakefulness, the collective presence was unmistakably real, unmistakably familiar.
Matthew realized that he was standing amidst the catchers of his dream-self's elven brothers and sisters.
Gwendolyn Pendragon, Baisy North, Katalla—Katalla the fire Seer? Perias, Davyd, Mikail—Mikail Watershed? The flutist? Marcus, Debussey, Stephanie—Princess Stephanie of the Marcus Order? Yes, he recognized many of the mana impressions from Darius' history books—it had to be so! He could hear their voices, their songs, he could feel their presence.
Is this our charge, then? he wondered. To tend to the memories of the dead?
As Matthew's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that the dream catchers had been arranged in families—all but a few lone ones that hung on the same pillars with certain groups, but which had been placed at a noticeable distance from the others.
Yana's was one of the loners. When Matthew recognized her mana impression, his heart started pounding in his chest. Her catcher had been constructed out of crude materials, and its feathers were matted and dirty, indicating that she had probably been poor and had subsequently utilized whatever materials were handy. Nevertheless, the design was marvelous. It may have been built from scraps, but the artistry surpassed that of even the wealthiest lord's. Indeed, Matthew knew his dream-self had been proud of his own catcher until seeing this one.
All this time, living a mere layer above a keep full of sleeping spirits—the well. There was a well.
Matthew looked towards the far end of the keep. Sure enough, a large well rested atop a shallow step. A wavering glow emanated from inside.
The breeze picked up, and the choral symphony became more excited as Matthew approached the well. Whether or not this was just his own perception becoming more sensitive, he wasn't sure, but he felt compelled to peer inside, to discover what was sure to be the source of something unfathomable.
What he saw took him quite by surprise: faces, bodies—hundreds of elven men, women, and children floating beside one other with eyes closed and arms crossed over pale, semi-translucent torsos. The longer Matthew gazed, the more he saw as the rim of the well expanded beyond his peripheral vision, giving the sea of sleeping bodies endless boundaries.
He trembled. He bit his lip and curled his toes, hearing the ringing of a thousand voices as they whipped through his essence with an almost-but-not-quite tangible force. All the elves' experiences and all their dreams were hitting him at the same time, coming at him from every direction. He wanted to pull way, to run from the chamber for a moment's silence, but he couldn't, not just yet, for there she was—
—Yana.
Matthew followed her voice, listened to her spirit's call and ignored all the others as best he could. He found himself focusing on her sleeping form. She was young, not very far into adulthood. Mid-twenties, maybe, like him. She had blond hair that had been chopped short; her face was delicately chiseled and caught in an expression of weary pain. Of course, he'd seen all this before, in his dreams, but never with such detail, and never so up close.
Yana... The name rang out clearly in his mind as he reached for her. Why have you come to me?
With a sudden, violent jerking of her body, Yana's eyes flew open. She gasped—and so did Matthew, who blinked and found himself submerged in the well water. He cried out in alarm, bubbles blocking his view as he started swimming upwards through an impossibly wide expanse of water. All about him the elves' arms, legs, and unbridled hair brushed against him—not of their own accord, but at the whim of the current. The effect was most unpleasant, especially considering that the proportions had been thrown off; three feet had become thirty, cold and murky.
When he reached the surface, Matthew grabbed onto the stone rim and hauled himself out, his breath coming in great gasps and mingling with the cacophony of the keep. It was chaos, and he could stand it no longer. He ran from the well, from the keep, up the stairs two, sometimes three at a time. Once on the ground floor of the mansion, once the voices from below were replaced with the more bearable patter of the thunderstorm, he stopped and dropped to his knees. He slicked back his wet hair and found that he was crying, a recollection of great sadness and fear overcoming him.
They sleep because they are safe, he thought, but it is ultimately better to be alive.
Confusion jumbling his thoughts, he sat shivering on the cold stone floor and wondered what to do next—and then he remembered: this was just a dream, he wasn't really here...was he?
His mind receded, and just as he'd once left his flesh body behind for the solace in sleep, so did he leave his dream body, naked, wet—sobbing softly in the darkness—for the solace in utter slumber.
Want to read the rest? Then I’m afraid you’ll have to take out a second mortgage on your home and pick up a copy of The Reformed Citizen, available at a book store near you. Don’t worry, though: I hear it’s really good. 
