Episodul 6 · While Awake

Soles woke with both hands pressed against his stomach.

The dressing was higher, beneath his shirt. He checked it before he could stop himself, then lay still, listening to the dogs moving in the kitchen.

He could remember killing the man.

That was the part he tried to move around while he got out of bed. The grip beneath his cheek. His own weight driving the point home. Relief so fierce that, even here, it left a little shame behind.

The relief had belonged to somebody else. So had the shame of wanting to leave the fighting and go home. Soles had expected a soldier to be less afraid. The man had shaken behind a cart, then stood up anyway. He could remember both.

He sat on the edge of the mattress and named things he could see. His jeans on the chair. The door. The light switch with the screw he had meant to replace. He was home. His feet touched his own floor.

Maxim called from the kitchen.

— You up?

— Yes.

— Breakfast is a threat, not a promise. Come before I improve it.

Soles took his time getting there. Maxim had made toast and left the butter close enough to reach. Lucky lay between the table and the stove, occupying both routes through the kitchen.

— The soldier died, Soles said.

Maxim stopped spreading butter.

— What soldier?

He had meant to ask about the workshop. Instead, the dream came out in pieces: the mud, the wound, the house the man wanted to reach. He left out the garden until Maxim asked whether he had dreamed of the same person before.

— I touched his plant last night. Then I was watching the battle.

— In the garden you told the nurse about?

Soles put down the toast.

— I didn’t know you knew.

— You mentioned it while I was there. She asked whether the dreams were bothering you.

He remembered the question now. He had said no because the real room was already full of things he could not bear.

— It doesn’t feel like the others, he said.

Maxim considered that without laughing or agreeing too quickly.

— Tell the doctor at the follow-up. Tell him properly. You’ve been through enough that guessing at it yourself seems a poor bargain.

Soles nodded. He finished half the toast while Maxim described the pump someone had brought into the workshop with a rag stuffed where a seal should have been.

For a few minutes, he could think about something he understood.

When Maxim went to wash the dishes, Soles closed his eyes.

He wanted to see whether he could remember the leaf without seeing the soldier. The shape came easily: a narrow blade bent toward the ground, light gathered along its middle.

Cold bark touched his palm.

He opened his eyes.

The kitchen remained around him. His hand rested against the rough edge of the table, beside a splinter his father had sanded badly and called good enough.

Soles lifted it. Then he shut his eyes and reached for the image again.

The smell of toast faded. The floor beneath his feet softened, and when he looked up he was standing under the tree.

He turned so quickly that the branches swayed across his vision.

He had been awake.

Somewhere behind him, water ran into a sink. The sound was faint and oddly distant. He tried to find the kitchen in the gray spaces between the plants, but saw only stems and low shrubs.

Soles crouched beside Leonatus’s plant.

A second shoot had begun beside the first. He checked the base. Both carried the same faint light. Beyond them stood someone who had not been there last night.

— Were you real?

The man stood beyond the leaves, facing away. Soles moved around the plant to see him properly. Armor crossed the broad shoulders. Mud darkened the hem of a tunic. His head was bowed as if he were listening to something far away.

Soles stopped an arm’s length from him.

— Leonatus?

The man remained still. When Soles moved into his line of sight, the eyes passed across him without catching. He had the sickening impression of standing in front of someone who could not see the room he occupied.

He reached toward the man’s shoulder.

His fingers passed through the armor.

The leaves behind him were solid. The man was not.

A sharp clatter sounded overhead.

Soles flinched. The tree and the soldier vanished, and he was back at the kitchen table with hot tea running toward his sleeve.

Maxim caught the cup before it reached the edge.

— Soles!

He stared at the tea. His hand had knocked the cup over. Lucky had jumped up, and the chair beneath him felt suddenly much too high.

— I was there, he said.

— You were sitting here.

— I know.

Maxim moved the cup away and put a towel across the spill.

— You heard me?

— Water. In the sink.

— I asked whether you wanted more toast.

Soles remembered a distant voice, a sound he had failed to give words. The kitchen had kept happening while he was somewhere else.

He looked toward the stove. Toward the door. Out there, the man with the pistol would have had all the time he needed.

Maxim sat opposite him.

— We call the hospital if that happens again and you can’t answer me.

Soles agreed. He wanted to argue that he had chosen to go, but he had not chosen the spilled tea, or missing the question, or leaving his own body sitting helplessly beside a hot cup.

He dried his wrist and put both feet firmly on the floor.

— Next time I try it, I’ll tell you first.

— Next time you try it, you put down whatever you’re holding.

Soles moved the cup to the far side of the table. He would need to know whether he could return without a noise dragging him out. That question could wait until somebody was beside him. He had spent the last few weeks depending on strangers noticing when he was in trouble. Deliberately making himself helpless deserved more thought than shutting his eyes over breakfast.

Maxim left for his first collection after clearing the table. Before going, he made Soles promise to keep the phone nearby.

Later that morning, it vibrated beside the empty bread plate.

Found a driver who might know something. Coming to get you. Don’t try to walk there to prove a point.

Soles read it twice. Then he put the towel aside and answered.

Yes.