Chapter 265 - Three Months in the Belly of the Earth

Author Note: A reminder that things get horrifically dark. I warned you before, and I’m warning you again.

Content Warnings for A Builder of Dreams:

Disturbing Imagery and Themes, Body Horror, Graphic Death, Suicide. 

Siobhan

Month 5, Day 4, Sunday 7:00 p.m.

At first, Siobhan had worried that Grandfather might find out about her investigation. But then she realized that he had no reason to suspect what she was up to and certainly wasn’t spending time idly chatting with any villagers who might unwittingly reveal her. In fact, while she was investigating, he had been taking hours-long treks into the woods that stretched out from the north and east of their land. Every time he returned, he looked grim, and Siobhan suspected she knew why. He was finding more evidence of the curse. 

He had no time to discover her rebellion. He didn’t even have time to supervise her studies lately. 

This was disheartening, but she’d continued to work on her own, completing whatever assignment he left for her on the blackboard in her schoolroom. Afterward, she would take the opportunity to look through the various reference texts on the bookshelves for information about curses. “I’m not some child who needs constant supervision to achieve anything,” she’d muttered to herself angrily. “It’s actually good that he’s not here!” 

Claudio’s reputation had continued to spread, and after the sheep slaughter, people were even more interested in his magic. When Grandfather got frustrated with too many people coming to the house, the villagers collaborated to invite Claudio down to the inn for another free meal. 

Mrs. O’Dredricks was the one who delivered the news, about an hour before dinner on Sunday. The stench of her desperation was almost tangible as her fingers twisted together nervously and her gaze kept flicking away and back to Claudio’s. 

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Aimee clapped her hands together with excitement. “You’re so popular, Mr. Tierney,” she teased. “But are you sure you want to miss out on my cooking?” 

Grandfather had just returned from one of his treks into the woods, and had been on his way toward the stairs, but he stopped and turned back. “I suppose you’ll be wanting him to perform more magic for you?” 

Mrs. O’Dredricks smiled awkwardly. 

Grandfather stared flintily at the back of Claudio’s head. For the first time, Siobhan felt that maybe Claudio did have some reason to think Grandfather was hostile toward him. But really, it was probably just that Grandfather didn’t trust Claudio to be able to keep his mouth shut properly if people started asking him about the curse. 

“We will accompany you,” Grandfather announced, and Siobhan nodded to herself. It appeared she had been correct. 

At the tavern, a group of villagers was already waiting. One table had been left free, and the bar and other tables were packed to the point that a few people had been forced to sit on overturned buckets and stools along the walls. The atmosphere was tense, but while everyone fell silent at their arrival, many people also brightened hopefully. 

Grandfather cleared his throat and clasped his hands behind his back, which drew everyone’s attention from Claudio to him. But instead of speaking, he hesitated for a few seconds as his eyes roved over everyone gathered. He straightened his shoulders further, cleared his throat a second time, and announced, “No doubt you are all wondering about the recent attack. As I promised, I tracked down the magical beast. However, when I found it, it had already died—” He paused as the villagers burst into chatter. 

“What killed it?” someone asked. 

With a quelling look that restored the tavern’s silence, he continued. “It likely died from whatever disease drove it mad and induced it to venture so recklessly into the village. I disposed of it and any traces thoroughly, so as to keep its illness from spreading to other animals. I can only hope that I eradicated all of it before it had a chance to spread.” 

A young woman raised her hand. When Grandfather looked at her, she asked, “Can’t you put up wards?” 

He gave her a polite smile. “Even I cannot place wards over an area as large as the village, or against all potential forms of harm.” 

That was true, technically, but Siobhan knew Grandfather was somewhat downplaying his capabilities. After all, the day after she turned twelve, he had started designing a protective artifact for her that was supposed to cover a huge range of possible dangers. He had been quite proud of the concept and design, though Mom was the only one who understood any of the details when he bragged about them at length. 

It had been meant to be a gift for Siobhan on her thirteenth birthday. But then Mom had come back early, without Paimon, and eventually died. Siobhan’s thirteenth birthday had passed unremarked by everyone but Aimee. 

Now, Aimee pulled Siobhan to sit down at the empty table, then leaned over and whispered in her ear. “He could at least put up wards ‘round the house, though, right?” When Siobhan met her gaze, Aimee produced a strained smile. “Just in case. After all, this all started with that blood egg.” 

Siobhan felt a sudden surge of fear and wondered why she hadn’t considered that. Perhaps it was the talk of maledictions. It was true that Mom wouldn’t have targeted Siobhan, but if what killed Mom had been a curse, as seemed increasingly likely, wouldn’t that make it more likely for Siobhan to be targeted next? After all, if she counted the blood egg and the sand in her room, there had been three incidents around their house, placed perfectly for Siobhan to encounter. Suddenly, her decision to trek through the night to The O’Dredricks’s house seemed incredibly reckless. 

Aimee tugged Siobhan’s braid and brought the tip of it around to tickle her nose. “You won’t be harmed, little beaut>. I will speak to him about it. Just in case,” she repeated. 

Siobhan scrunched up her face and took her braid back. Silently, she pledged that in the name of good sense, she wouldn’t go traipsing around alone any more.

“Then what about you, Mr. Tierney?” Mrs. O’Dredricks asked. “Your dreams bring good luck. If our dearest wish is protection from…” She shot an uncomfortable look at Grandfather. “From whatever might be endangering us, do you think the luck could be guided toward that purpose?” 

Claudio rubbed the back of his head awkwardly and, for once, didn’t start bragging dramatically. “Please remember, I have never claimed that my magic really can affect people’s luck or make their wishes come true. But I’m happy to help people build whatever dreams they want, even if just to ease your minds a little.” 

The woman sobbed, lunging forward to grab his hands and bow thankfully before him. 

He withdrew one of his hands and patted her on the head like she was a little child. “Alright, alright now. No need to cry. It will be a happy dream.” After he had worked his magic for a short while, he returned to their table to take a few quick bites of foot. He turned to Grandfather. “Would you like a dream, too? Seeing you participating in a little levity might ease everyone’s tension.” 

Grandfather huffed disdainfully. “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. I would rather bend reality to my Will.” 

Claudio gave him a small, acknowledging smile. “You’re a wise man.” He turned to Siobhan. “What about you? I could give you a dream about flying into space? I hear you’re quite obsessed with the idea.” 

Siobhan shot a quick look at Grandfather. “Do you think it would actually keep me safer?” 

He gave her a look a dry and flat as old hardtack. His meaning was clear. 

Claudio winced, then ducked his head to cover his embarrassment. 

Siobhan felt a pang of sympathy for Claudio, but shook her head. “No, thank you. I don’t need to cheat. I’ll achieve the real thing on my own.” Any dream Claudio could give her would just decrease the impact of her future achievement. And besides, she wanted her actual grandfather to experience it with her, not some fake, dream version of himself. “And superstition is a symptom of a weak mind,” she added. 

Claudio ducked his head further, but Grandfather gave her an approving smile. 

Aimee cleared her throat loudly. “Siobhan is such a creative, hard worker. She’s spending hours researching away in the study room by herself every day lately, it seems.” She tapped her fork a little too aggressively against the side of her plate. “I’m sure her plans are vivid and detailed enough to match up to Mr. Tierney’s wondrous dreams.” 

Grandfather looked from Siobhan to Aimee—who gave him a hard look which morphed into a smile so fast that Siobhan almost didn’t catch it—and then back to Siobhan. He set down his own fork. “Ambition may be satisfied by many types of power, but very rarely without knowledge. Have you made any new advancements to your implausible scheme?” 

A burst of warmth and brightness burst open in Siobhan’s chest, like a tiny sun. She grinned. “Yes! I didn’t bring my binder, but I have a couple really good ideas!”

“Oh?” Grandfather crossed his arms, leaned back, and raised his eyebrows. “I will be the judge of that. Let us hear them, then.”

She launched into an explanation of her latest ideas while Claudio returned to sharing out his magic. But Siobhan and Grandfather weren’t the only ones to refuse his offering. 

Old Lady Hebbers was the first to say something aloud, and, half a dozen mugs deep, she did so without any sense of reticence. “I’m not having my mind tampered with by some twiddling little pup of a thaumaturge like you,” she announced with a slight slur, slamming her mug down and glaring up at him despite her hunched back. “Titans below, I wouldna’ even let the Master Sorcerer go poking around inside me.” She looked around at the rest of the villagers, her mouth twisting meanly. “You’re all fools, is what you are. Do you really think some dream will keep you alive if another of those horrid monsters comes for you?”

Another woman let out a long, controlled breath. “I’m glad someone finally said it. Haven’t any of you taken to heart the stories and warnings about things tampering with your mind?” She had come to Grandfather several times over the years asking for wards and other magical solutions to various problems that she was convinced were brought about by malice against her, either perpetrated in secret by her neighbors, or based on some old superstition she thought she’d seen omens about. Grandfather had grumbled that what she really needed was a consistent dose of an anti-anxiety potion to keep her unfounded worries from morphing into paranoia.

“He could be doing anything in there,” a man said, his head ducked but his voice loud enough to be heard. His wife had been one of the young women most charmed by and curious about Claudio, and even Siobhan had heard about the man getting drunk and slapping the poor woman for this offense.

A handful of other people either piped up in agreement or seemed to lose some of their enthusiasm in favor of worry, but Claudio seemed unfazed, and the majority of villagers filling the tavern laughed off worries of the detractors.

“Mr. Tierney was invited here by Master Kalvidasan, who is at least honorable, and nothing bad has happened to anyone who’s dreamed a wishing dream,” the woman who had first accepted Claudio’s services weeks ago said, glaring out at everyone, seemingly oblivious to Grandfather’s offended expression at this description of him.

Siobhan reached over and patted the old man’s wrinkled hand comfortingly. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Siobhan assured him. “It’s just that Claudio’s magic has been a little more flashy recently. And he does everything for free, which is just a sign that he has no sense of self-worth. You can remind them how great you are on the next sea hunt. Haul in a whale, or a deep-serpent.”

Grandfather huffed and wiggled her back and forth with one large hand gripping the top of her head, but seemed secretly pleased.

Siobhan understood why some people might be reticent to accept strange new magic. Ambiguous, emotive fears often stemmed from childhood fears and superstitions. Magic that tampered with the mind was one of the more widespread fears, even though most non-thaumaturges probably didn’t understand how it worked at all. Siobhan didn’t share that particular phobia—only a healthy wariness—but some of her mother’s lullabies still made her skin crawl when she was trying to sleep, and she sometimes worried about the more gruesome stories Grandfather had told her about magic gone wrong.

For instance, she would never, ever be so foolish as to cast through her own flesh, even if everyone else in the world started doing it and assured her it was entirely safe. Even the thought of it made a spot in the center of her chest tingle and her skin tighten.

After that evening, Siobhan continued with her investigation, this time focused on any recurring dreams. There were more people having them than she had expected, and for a short time, she suspected that it might have something to do with Claudio. While many of the people who had received a curated dream from him refused to tell her what they experienced within—either from fear their wish wouldn’t come true if shared, or because they were embarrassed—everyone who had been having what she stubbornly continued to call nightmares made it quite clear that these had nothing to do with the dreams Claudio had given them at all. She would have remained suspicious, because obviously they couldn’t be trusted to know that, until she found that several of the people who had refused his services were also affected.

But the more dreams she transcribed and drew sketches of, the more she was sure that they were relevant. Perhaps even the key to it all.

While the dreams might have seemed varied, she had discovered a theme.

The dreamers were always in a strange, alien place. Very often, there were parts of the landscape that looked like fungus, veins, or roots. And in looking at her sketches, she felt that those could all be variations on the same thing that people simply didn’t know how to label. And in these dreams, people were either intently searching for something or trying to get somewhere. Finally, they were intensely aware of danger, often along with the feeling of being observed or hunted by some unknown, unseen force.

And they all insisted that these dreams were actually quite lovely.

But despite Siobhan’s efforts, after she had interviewed everyone who was willing to speak to her, the investigation began to stall out.

She screwed up a handful of courage and hope and approached Grandfather once more. Rather than tattle on herself, she tried quietly suggesting that maybe she could help with whatever his research was, in some small way. He grew immediately angry, shot her with a horrible stinging hex that left her backside buzzing with pins and needles for half an hour afterward, and sent her to her room.

Siobhan buried her face in her pillow and cried with anger and frustration at the unjustness. The tears left her feeling worse than before, but she was both relieved and spiteful that she hadn’t started out with showing him the evidence in her grimoire. If he was this reactive to just the suggestion of her involvement, what would he do if he found out she had disobeyed him?

Three days later, there was another incident.

This one had been down at the lighthouse, a tower which Grandfather called a “disappointing little lookout,” even though it was taller than his magic research tower and, Siobhan thought, quite impressive. This time, the O’Kervicks had been hit, and the consensus was that it was something horrible.

Unfortunately, Siobhan didn’t hear about it until several hours later. For once, people’s gossip was vague and hushed, almost as if they were afraid to be caught talking about it. She tried to ask around about what had happened, but all of the adults seemed reluctant to tell her, and even the question seemed to be a conversation-ender.

Fed up, she coordinated with Rory, set up a scheme, and they sneaked out to look at the scene together. As she had half-feared, there was nothing out of the ordinary at all around the lighthouse the O’Kervicks operated. Whatever had happened, Grandfather had once again erased every last speck of evidence.

So late into the night that it was almost morning, something woke Siobhan. At first, she thought she had been having a nightmare, but her heart wasn’t pounding, and she heard sounds of shouting. It was Grandfather’s voice, and seemed to be coming from the tower, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. The shouting stopped quickly, and, feeling sorry for Claudio—who had no doubt been berated—she fell back to sleep.

In the morning, she realized that she wouldn’t have been able to hear anything past the tower’s wards. She had either dreamed the shouting, only imagining that she was awake, or Grandfather’s voice had come from somewhere else.

She combed and braided her sleep-mussed hair as she thought over the events of the day before. Whatever this latest clue was, she needed to know. And she had an idea about how to find out.

After breakfast, Siobhan did the dishes for Aimee and took the opportunity to steal a bottle from one of the cabinets. She uncorked it, took a sniff, and jerked back with her face screwed up against the burning pain of strong liquor in her nostrils. It wasn’t meant for drinking, she knew, but as an ingredient in some of Aimee’s fancy dishes from Silva Erde. “Absolutely vile,” Siobhan muttered with disgust, then grinned triumphantly. “It’s perfect!”

She tucked the bottle into the waistband of her pants, threw on a light cloak to hide everything and, after yelling that she was going to visit Rory to whoever might be listening, ran out of the house.

Of course, she wasn’t actually going to visit Rory.

She stopped at Old Lady Hebbers’s and pounded on the door. It took almost a minute of insistent knocking and yelling for the old woman to open it.

The hunched, leathered old woman scowled out at Siobhan with the kind of wrath that could only come from being woken with a horrible hangover. “What do you want, you hell-spawn?” she croaked with a horrible waft of rancid breath.

Siobhan shoved the bottle of liquor into Old Lady Hebbers’s face. “I want to come in for tea.”

The woman uncorked the bottle, sniffed it much like Siobhan had done, and then took a swig. She squinted at Siobhan with bloodshot eyes for a long few seconds, and then stepped backward. “Come in, then. But I don’t have tea or cookies. And I wouldn’t feed ‘em to you even if I did,” she added after a moment of thought.

There was only one chair in the room, so Siobhan sat on the edge of the low table.

Old Lady Hebbers took the chair, along with another sip of the cooking alcohol. “What do you want, girl?”

“Tell me about what happened to the O’Kervicks,” she demanded.

The old woman let out a cawing laugh that quickly devolved into phlegmy coughing. She grinned widely, showing off a few empty spaces where teeth had once been. “You remember when Old Pappy O’Kervick died?”

Siobhan nodded. “About three months ago. He choked to death on a piece of chicken gristle.” He had been one of the oldest people in the village, except for the woman before her.

“One o’ the only bearable people in this stars-forsaken place,” the old woman grumbled. “Right shame, it was.” She fell silent, looking into the distance, until Siobhan cleared her throat pointedly.

“Keep your britches on, brat. So yesterday, they found Old Pappy, out of the grave.”

Siobhan’s eyebrows rose high. “Someone dug him up?” she asked incredulously.

Old Lady Hebbers tilted her head to the side dramatically. “Either that…or he dug himself up.”

Siobhan’s heart was pounding. She leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

“They didn’t find any shovels marks around the grave. And only one pair of footprints.”

Siobhan shook her head. “But how could he still be alive?”

“Child, he wasn’t alive.” The woman grinned again at whatever expression Siobhan was wearing. “They found Old Pappy kneeling in the kitchen, half-rotten—only recognizable by his clothes. His rib cage was all the way split open and spread out, and there were fresh bits of animal and slime and bile an inch deep, all spewed out everywhere around him. Mighty similar to the sheep slaughter, all of it covered in human bite marks.”

Siobhan gasped. “Human?”

Like Mr. Hagarty had done, Old Lady Hebbers tried to clack her remaining teeth together, giving Siobhan a gruesome, humorless grin. “Whatever had got Old Pappy up and moving again was burnt out, and he just sat there rottin’ away in his own juices.”

Siobhan lifted a hand to cover her open mouth.

The old woman leaned back in satisfaction. “And, well, we know it was animal meat because none o’ the villagers are missing, and there weren’t any strangers in town yesterday, and Old Pappy left a clear trail from the grave to the kitchen, so we know where he’d been. But some of the ripped up meat and bones…it looked suspiciously like baby limbs. I saw a teeny tiny little hand with my own eyes. Pale, tender, and soft, just torn apart and swallowed whole.”

Author Note:

Latest chapter discussion thread (and more rambling thoughts about this chapter by me) on the Alcove: https://alcove.azaleaellis.com/t/chapter-265-weekly-discussion-three-months-in-the-belly-of-the-earth/790/1