Part 37 (1/2)

His throat burned, and so did the base of his skull. His chest felt hollow. Live or die, he told himself. Live in the past, or live now.

Live, whispered the kra'a.

You're not alone, said Jenny, her presence spreading through his mind, filling the dark places, drawing him close and warm. You will never be alone again.

Perrin closed his eyes and drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

”Come in,” he said.

And the world turned upside down.

Perrin lost his body. He lost his mind. Merging with another was overwhelming-in the same way that being hit in the ribs with a baseball bat tended to hurt, just a little.

He found himself, though, all the disparate pieces of his soul sliding into place, st.i.tching together like a human quilt of patchwork memories. He was surprised it looked like a quilt until he realized that the symbol was important to Jenny. He didn't know how, just that it was.

He felt her with him, her own patchwork wrapped around her like a s.h.i.+eld. He sensed her uneasiness-that he would see too much and not want her.

Minds were never meant to be this close, she said, inside him.

Perrin surveyed the patchwork of his life, s.h.i.+mmering dark blue, with silver st.i.tches that pulsed as though filled with strange blood, or maybe just the sea. Both of us have been alone for too long. We're used to our own company.

And then he folded her into a memory.

Perrin found himself back in his body, only he was much smaller, and the world was dark. Fifteen in human years, resting on the seafloor, drifting in any direction the current pushed him. Not much current where he was, which was sandwiched between rocks. Crabs scuttled. Fish brushed against him. In the distance, he heard whale song.

He was barely conscious. Sinking into dreams.

Look, Perrin said, feeling Jenny draw close. These are the dreams a Kraken needs.

Dreams of the sea, songs of the sea. Music flowed through him, a natural harmony born from the slow rumble of the earth, and the hush of deep waters, and the hum of minds all around him: fish, distant Krackeni, migrating whales, and, somewhere, dolphins. Notes and shards, drawn into him, filtered through the kra'a into the Kraken, which he felt beneath him, sleeping so still and warm.

Perrin's younger self slipped deeper into dreams, and the music faded.

Until there was nothing but a silver beach, and silver waves, and a girl sitting beside him, with her hands held tightly in his.

”h.e.l.lo,” she said, in the dream, and her voice was a younger, softer version of the spirit-woman who pressed close against his side. Even here, he could not see the face of the girl. But he felt her. He felt her as though she was inside his soul.

Just as she was now.

Oh, Jenny breathed. Oh, my.

And the boy he had been said, ”I missed you.”

Perrin pulled Jenny away from the memory, but she went reluctantly. As did he. It was so real here, like this.

Dreams, he told her. The kra'a gave the Kraken those dreams of us on the beach. I didn't realize it, at first. And when I did, there seemed to be no harm. The beast slept.

All it needs is dreams? It seems too easy.

It's not easy.

Will I need to sleep?

No, he told her. You just need to . . . be.

Perrin tried to show her more, though it was hard to know which memories would be helpful. He had forgotten certain things, encounters with Pelena, who had journeyed with his family into these waters to train as a candidate; and A'lesander, who would tag along with her, and tease him. Sometimes cruelly, he realized now-though at the time, it had seemed like nothing.

I was nave, he said.

You were so young, Jenny replied. You thought you were safe.

Perrin felt the kra'a hovering on the edges of their minds.

Show her, it said. Show her why you were stolen from me.

No, he said.

Show her, insisted the kra'a.

Perrin resisted, with all his strength. The kra'a overpowered him.

And he found himself in the old nightmare.

Flashes only. He saw again that powerful, wild-haired Krackeni tutor, who trained the candidates, venturing down to him with her b.r.e.a.s.t.s bared.

Her voice, haranguing him for not doing his duty to produce children who might carry singer blood, or bodies suitable to host a kra'a.

Her hands, reaching out to touch his kra'a, determined to read his mind and discover his reluctance.

She found you, Perrin whispered, feeling Jenny crowd close, watching his memories. She found us. I did not know we were bonded, but she must have realized that, too.

Perrin, Jenny said, but her voice choked into silence, and he found himself dragged down into his old body, reliving how that Krackeni tutor fled in disgust and panic, only to return with others.

Ambus.h.i.+ng him. Surrounding him. Holding him. Paralyzing him with poison so they could reach into his mind.

Vile. Impure. How did this happen? When was he with the humans? We must speak with his father, someone will be punished, could the kra'a have been in error? No, yes, it does not matter, just the Kraken, the Kraken has been tainted, and we must not tell the others, we must not breathe a word, no one ever has to know a human was in the mind of the beast, inside the kra'a, inside him-and there, there it is, do you see-just snip it, cut the thread, cut her out, cut her out, cut her out now before he realizes what But Perrin had realized what they were doing. And the rage that filled him in his memories was rich and cold, and ugly. Because this was all he had. She was all he had. And here they were, violating the mind of a Guardian, trying to alter his dreams-which was against the laws of their people. Laws that meant nothing, it seemed.

He remembered the nimbus of blue light. He remembered the poison burning away and regaining his ability to move. He remembered power surging from his mind into the mind of the one about to make that final cut. A cut that would have stolen away the girl on the beach. A cut that would have killed his heart and destroyed the dream bond burning in his soul.

He remembered destroying the Krackeni tutor's mind, with a thought. He remembered reaching up, unthinking, grabbing that slender neck, and crus.h.i.+ng it with his bare hands.

He remembered feeling nothing afterward. No remorse. Nothing but the relief of a man who had survived attempted murder.

Perrin tore himself away, but sank into another memory that was almost worse.

The past bloomed like fire inside his head, pain like fire-hooks buried in his body, restraining him, dragging him to a slab of natural stone on the seafloor. He felt the stone beneath his brow and hands holding him down. He heard his father singing, and, when he screamed, no one tried to help him.