The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) - Maggie Stiefvater Page 0,11

further into the earth. His fingertips brushed grubs and earthworms, moles and snakes. The grubs uncurled as he passed them. The earthworms joined him in his journey. The moles’ fur pressed against him. The snakes coiled around his arms. He was all of them.

He sighed.

Aboveground, Orphan Girl rocked and sang a little lament to herself, looking anxiously up at the sky.

“Periculosum,” she warned. “Suscitat.”

He didn’t feel any danger, though. Just earth, and the ley’s energy, and the branches of his veins. Home, home.

“It’s down here,” he said. The dirt swallowed his words and sent up new shoots.

Orphan Girl hunched her back up against his leg and shivered. “Quid —” she began, then continued, stumbling, in English, “What is it?”

It was a skin. Shimmering, nearly transparent. Enough of him was below the surface of the forest that he could see the shape of it among the dirt. It was fashioned like a body, like it was germinating beneath the ground, like it was waiting to be dug free. The fabric of it felt like the cloth of the bag in Matthew’s room.

“I have it,” Ronan said, his fingers brushing the surface. Help me hold it. He might have only thought it, not said it out loud.

Orphan Girl began to cry. “Watch out, watch out.”

She had barely finished saying it when he felt …

Something

Some

one?

It was not the cool, dry scales of the snakes. Nor the warm, rapid heartbeats of the moles. It was not the moving-dirt-softness of earthworms or the smooth, slow flesh of the grubs.

It was dark.

It seeped.

It was not so much a thing as not a thing.

Ronan did not wait. He knew a nightmare when he felt it.

“Girl,” he said, “pull me out.”

He snatched the dream skin in one of his root-hands, rapidly trying to commit the feeling of it to memory. The weight, the density, the realness.

Orphan Girl was pawing at the soil around him, burrowing like a dog, making frightened little noises. How she hated his dreams.

The darkness that was not darkness crept up through the dirt. It was eating the things it touched. Or rather, they were there, and then they were not.

“Faster,” Ronan snapped, retreating with the skin clutched in his root fingers.

He could leave the dream skin behind and wake himself up.

He didn’t want to leave it. It could work.

Orphan Girl had a hold of his leg, or his arm, or one of his branches, and she was pulling, pulling, pulling, trying to unearth him.

“Kerah,” she wept.

The darkness gnawed up. If it got ahold of Ronan’s hand, he might wake up without one. He was going to have to cut his losses —

Orphan Girl fell back, tugging him free of the soil. The blackness burst up through the ground behind him. Without thinking, Ronan threw himself over the girl protectively.

Nothing is impossible, said the forest, or the darkness, or Ronan.

He woke. He was trapped in place, as he always was after he brought something of any size from a dream. He couldn’t feel his hands – please, he thought, please let me still have hands – and he couldn’t feel his legs – please, he thought, please let me still have legs. He spent several long minutes staring up at the ceiling. He was in the living room on the old plaid couch, looking at the same three cracks that had made the letter M for years. Everything smelled of hickory and boxwood. Chainsaw flapped over him before settling heavily on his left leg.

So he must at least still have one leg.

He couldn’t quite formulate what had made the darkness so terrifying, now that he wasn’t looking at it.

Slowly, his fingers began to move, so he must still have them, too. The dream skin had come with him and was draped halfway off the couch. It was gauzy and insubstantial looking, stained with dirt and ripped to shreds. He had his limbs, but the suit was a wash. He was also starving.

His phone buzzed, and Chainsaw flapped up to the back of the couch. Ordinarily he would not have checked it, but he was so unnerved by the memory of the nothingness in the dream that he used his newly mobile fingers to pluck it from his pocket to be sure it wasn’t Matthew.

It was Gansey. Parrish wants to know if you killed yourself dreaming just now please advise

Before Ronan had time to formulate an emotion about this knowledge of Adam’s, Chainsaw suddenly ducked her head down low on the back of the couch. The