Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,44

hold it together.

—Slow it—she said.—Slow. Breathe deep. Imagine I've got a knife at your throat and I'm making you do this, now do it, put it inside me—

—Prove it—said Brad.

—What?—said Honora.

—Prove that you're not. Not naive—

Brad stood up. His gaze locked on her and she felt unable to look away, mesmerized, as if he were holding her head so that she couldn't turn away. The air around was absolutely still, not a whisper of wind in the air, but she felt a strange shift in the currents, something akin to a breeze lift gently at the nut-brown curls nestling on her neck. Although he stood fully ten feet away, she knew it was some force that Brad was exerting.

—What are you doing?—

—Prove it to me—Brad said again.

—Don't—said Honora, unable to take her eyes from his.

Brad didn't take a single step closer, but he continued to fix her with his gaze. She was unable to move. She felt the silver buckle of the patent leather belt around her skirt open, the belt passing itself through the loops of her skirt, moving off her like a live thing, like a snake which dropped at her feet. Then she felt a button of her blouse gently popping open above her breasts, followed by the next, and the next down to her waist, and the blouse being lifted back from her shoulders exposing her breasts to him.

—Don't—Honora said again, her arms fallen at her side, held down by a strange paralysis, not knowing how to resist, wanting to fight back and reverse what was happening, think it back as with the elementals, but not finding the strength.

—You can stop it any time you want—he said.

—God, I just can't move! Don't you see I don't want this?—

—Any time you want—

Was he right? Could she stop it? She tried, but couldn't. There was nothing she could do. Then she felt the button go at the side of her skirt and heard the tooth rasp of the zip opening, and the skirt fell around her legs, lying in a hoop at her feet. At last she felt the elastic of her panties being rolled down her thighs and falling to her feet.

Brad stepped forward.

Control. Lee fought for control, imagining that Ella's sharp fingernails on his throat were indeed a knife, until in the dream it was the gleaming blade she would plunge into his neck if he failed to please her; open the door, I love you for ever, he pushed inside her and she squeezed him to her, laying her head back on the grass. It was unbearable this dreamside sex, like making love on a live cable of electric wire. Stay with it, she was whispering, stay with it, but he knew it would have to finish or stop or the dream must break. He was clenching handfuls of her hair in his fists and the grass and daisies growing at the side of her head were mixed up in her hair, and she became a human shape of glittering white-hot energy, pulsating and glittering and burning. He felt they were making love astride a howling wind and over a rushing current and then when he felt her coming he gave in to the current and the wind and felt his body spurting light from every pore of his body as the dream imploded and was over.

The next morning Lee woke up next to Ella, feeling strange, dislocated and energized. She was still sleeping. He kissed her, and in her hair he found a daisy head, two daisy heads, and torn blades of grass. He woke Ella to show them to her.

Grass and daisy heads on the pillow: evidence in the day's eye of what had been transported from dreamside.

Honora Brennan woke up alone in her bed and pushed back the bedcovers to inspect the speckled crimson stains on the sheets, as if a pressed flower had been squeezed into the linen.

Honora felt inside herself for the blood of the broken hymen.

S I XT E E N

Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,

In sleep a king, but, waking, no such matter

—Shakespeare

Honora was not seen on dreamside again. It was obvious to the other three that she had made a conscious decision not to return there. It must have taken some struggle. Entry into dreamside had once required considerable discipline and effort; now they were caught in an undertow which delivered them there unasked, and not to be drawn there whenever they slept