The Dreamer, Part Two

Light that blooms in every direction, light that would surely overwhelm the senses of any of our readers, that is what our hero sees. The Dreamer in all of his long life to come will never to his dying day see the night sky as bright and glorious as it is now. Stars overhead blossom like flowers on a summer day then burn themselves out in evanescent displays of light. The Milky Way is clearly visible here and it flickers and ripples in an ever changing ribbon across the sky and lastly there is the moon. It dominates the horizon, a full moon bathing the city in its light like a street light lit by God. As astonishing as the brightness and shear size of the moon is for Saviero it only seems to add emphasis for something silhouetted before it. For rising out of the ground in front the The Dreamer is a structure that combines both elements of the organic and the inorganic, a leafless metallic tree. And sat atop it is the falcon that had led our young hero to this place.

 

“Okay, I’m here now.” Saviero pauses and looks reproachfully at the bird of prey. “I know you can understand me. I don’t know how the hell I know that but I do, so I would like some answers now please.” As The Dreamer watches a dramatic transformation takes place before his very eyes. To Saviero’s amazement the bird in front of him begins to double in size, it grows rapidly spreading its wings as it expands. Eventually the shape of the enormous bird bloats out the wondrous sky.

“Welcome little dreamer, welcome to the city. You’ve come far to get here, but I wonder just how much further you have to go?” Before the astounding size of the strange creature it occurs to our hero how unafraid he is and how normal this seems to be to him. And when he asks his questions it is to him as if he has asked these things before.

“What are you? I remember you but don’t know from where.” There is amusement and sadness in the spirit’s voice

“We have talked in one form or another many times Dreamer, but upon death it is always forgotten.” The being draws its wings as if in weariness and for a moment it pauses before speaking. “…But you are here now and we have a little time before you must face your nemesis. At this Saviero speaks.

“My nemesis? Do you mean the thing that attacked me and my…my friends? Wait a minute! My friends! Why are they here? Please, what is this place?” At this the great falcon stretches out its wings, it’s span covers the entire city in shadow.

“This place is the reality of this land.” As the being speaks an explosion of images etch themselves into Saviero’s mind. “This place is the foundation of its spirit, it is the reflection that the city casts into a primordial dreamtime. And your essence, your very soul is what currently sustains the city.” With that a single feather falls from the falcon’s wing and falls upon our hero, smoothing his world.

 

What is happening to our hero? It is to him as if a great wall had crumbled to dust within his mind and with its destruction the full force of what was locked away within had swept him away. The first feeling for young Saviero is one of horror as thousands of conflicting identities and memories threaten to destroy his very individuality. Slowly but surely his psyche begins to reassert itself, his mind sorting and processing the vast amount of information that had been reawakened in his soul. And with this reawakening of his mind he can feel his old power returning to him. Slowly at first but then faster and faster as if this alien city is invigorating him with its might. Eventually he realises something…the city isn’t just returning his old powers to him but is actually pushing painfully into his old boundaries and limitations left open in his mind...and he realises he’s been living a lie for when our young hero’s parents tragically fell to…tuberculosis he was just twelve years old and they had left him all alone. But it was ok our hero can escape their memory, he can fly and in that act become a beacon of hope, justice and truth…in a world that hates him for who he is. His parents were immigrants, so for them there would be no comfortable home in the suburbs. Instead they were put into a cramped, dimly lit, disease ridden apartment, where they had been killed by a disease that would have been treated if they were white Americans…And he had flown away from that truth with his super friends to defend a city he hated just as he had run away from everything that had ever hurt him in his life.

 

The feeling ends abruptly as Saviero forces the process to stop through sheer force of will.

“Stop it! Stop showing me these things! Stop giving me these thoughts! I don’t want them, I don’t want to remember the people I love dying!” But the falcon’s eyes fall mercilessly upon our hero in the darkness of his unconscious mind.

“I do nothing little dreamer. We are inside your thoughts and your mind. It is the land itself testing your worth and if you are proved not worthy…” the falcon pauses for a moment, “…then, unlike your friends, it is highly unlikely your soul will ever leave this place again.”

 

This time as the city’s energy twines and wraps around his mind our hero closes his eyes and gives into the sensation. When he opens his eyes he’s in the middle of his first act as a superhero, stopping a bank robbery. “You see?” says Saviero launching himself at one particularly unfortunate criminal “When they died I wasn’t ready, I didn’t really understand what was happening. I kept asking people in the foster home when they would be coming back but and when I found out they weren’t…” As The Dreamer judo chops one criminal into a very sorry state indeed he turns to face the falcon sat on the bank counter “I couldn’t deal with it”. The spirit’s voice is gentle.

“A new guardian of the land is selected every time the old one dies, although killing one is a difficult task indeed. Each guardian is connected to each other all the way from the first to the very last. They have to show no weakness, mentally or physically, for if they do then that becomes the cities weakness as well.”

Saviero winces as one of his stray energy blasts sets one civilian on fire. “So this is a test of my worth then?” The falcon just sits impassively upon the desk “So if you don’t mind me asking, am I the only one of my kind, and how long has this been going on?” It’s almost as if Saviero already knows the answer to his question but he has to know. “No, you are not the only one of your kind, when this planet was young it created many millions of guardians and bound each of them to a particular place. You have already met a memory of one, the Native American by the name of Antinanco. He is the one who killed your friends, is destroying the city as we speak and who sent you here. You must defeat him in combat and save the city or the land will be broken and only death shall rule in its place”. As Saviero goes to ask his next question the strange power that had been roaring into him begins to dry up. First it is an ocean, then a stream and finally a tickle until at last it is one final drop. “There is no more time for questions Saviero, your test has been decided.” The Dreamer’s face becomes drawn and pale as he asks “What is my test then?” the answer is one that takes him completely by surprise. “You must save your parents from death itself”

 

And he’s standing in his parents apartment, he remember all this vaguely and to his eyes it’s exactly as he remembers it. “Please don’t make me have to go through this again…” His voice when it comes out is higher and more child like “So I have to do this as a seven year old, you fucking twisted fuck, you’re uno che va in culo a sua madre!” a familiar voice plays through Saviero’s head at this.

“I do not have a mother Saviero so it would be highly unlikely I would do that. But for now you still have both of your parents and if you want to save them, as you so often have in your dreams, well, now is your chance…” The voice fades from Saviero’s head leaving him alone in the room with his sick parents. He doesn’t want to relive this childhood memory as these were the three worst days of his life. He hadn’t really understood what was happening but between the frequent visits from the local doctor and his mother starting to cough up blood he had understood just enough to know that whatever it was, it was bad.

 

Saviero’s dad would be the first one to be taken away. Being white he would be admitted to the main city hospital. The day the ambulance comes for his dad will be the last time Saviero ever sees him again. He would later die in the hospital surrounded by friends and family, the same family who had disowned him when he chose to stand by a young Italian immigrant he had gotten pregnant. Saviero’s mother would die two days later in the tiny clinic that served as the hospital for the Italian part of the city.

 

With this in mind Saviero spends the day before his father is taken away desperately trying to find a solution to the deaths of his parents. He first tries using his powers and when he discovers they have been stripped from him he attempts a visit to the various city hospitals. In doing so he finds in the upper class hospitals discrimination and racism or in the case of the smaller local clinics, a lack of proper medical supplies and knowledge. By the end of the day he is exhausted by the effort of wracking his brain for an answer and is even half-heartedly attempting to contact some of the super heroes of this period with either the power or the brilliance necessary to counteract the illness. At nightfall he sits besides his dad, his head buried in his arms.

“Dad”

“Yes Savi?” there’s a pause as Saviero’s father hacks a bit more blood into a handkerchief.

“Why did you stay with us, me and mum? You could have left, kept it quiet, no one would have known and you wouldn’t be ill now.”

At this and with visible effort Saviero’s dad turns on his side, his face is pale and there is a small amount of dried blood on his lips but his green eyes are focused and he’s still handsome in the evanescent light.

“Yeah I wouldn’t be ill…I’d still be in a good job I guess and I’d still have a load of pretty women on the side…I’d probably have a membership at that golf club. But you know what? I’d be dead inside, rotting, like before…but you know what, you and your mum - you let me live.”

With that the man and boy lie in silence as first the evening and eventually the night fades away. The next day his dad is taken away to hospital and Saviero spends the rest of the time until night fall holding his mum’s hand, comforting her between fits of coughing. When the sun rises the next morning Saviero’s behaviour is noticeably different: he’s calmer, more resigned. While his mum is being taken into the clinic for the last time he steals some white carnations for her from the flower seller down the road and stands by her bedside lost in thought. He remembers the smell of her hair in the morning, the way the clothes she used to wear would catch the light outside, the sound of her sewing late into the night in their dark cramped apartment. The dying woman before him seems to be more a faded photo of a woman compared to the vivid image of his mother conjured up from his childhood.

“Ok, I understand. I know why you brought me here”

Saviero uses a chair next to the bed to reach his mother, delicately kissing her upon the cheek. As he steps down away from her she starts convulsing on the bed and as Saviero watches her a tear caresses his face.

“I spent so long here, at least in my mind. I was always the hero, flying in to save them.”

His dying mother in front of him suddenly seems so far away and the man he will one day become is so close to what he is now.

“But I can’t save them can I? And no matter how many people I rescue now it’s not going to bring back the ones I love, is it?”

“No, it’s not.” The falcon is perched delicately upon the bed where Saviero’s mother died.

“So why are you going to save them now, if not to keep quiet the dead?”

As the falcon says this it launches itself at Saviero and as it does this it changes shape and size becoming a million different people. For a second it settles on the form responsible for Saviero’s friend’s deaths but then it shifts again becoming a perfect mirror of Saviero. The two twin images blur into each other and the hospital around them is shattered by the silence of beating wings.

 

In the three days since the four were destroyed the city has subsided into chaos. Shattered glass and overturned cars lie wreathed in a savannah of grass. Skyscrapers and roads are cracked and broken and in the centre of the city a cocoon of tree limbs act as a nest for something that was forgotten by the city long ago.

 

Speckled against a blue sky a flock of birds descends from above the city, making its way towards the web of plant matter. It passes cracked glass and silvered puddles and when it does so reality appears strangely distorted. For the image in the reflections is not that of a mass of sparrows but of a monstrous bird of prey. Upon reaching the ground the flock curls in upon itself, pressing close together until it forms a solid mass of fowl. Abruptly it implodes in upon itself and a single solitary figure steps forward from the maelstrom of feathers. The being then begins making its way towards the ring of police outlining the ominous mass.

“Stop and identify yourself or we will shoot!” Sunlight glints from a number of M4 rifles trained upon the stranger. In reply the figure reaches up and pulls back the hood of the sweater he is wearing to reveal a dark haired Hispanic man in his early twenties with almost luminescent grey eyes.

“Go ahead man, your weapons can’t hurt me now.”

With this the leader issues orders to open fire upon the figureA as they do so he reaches out with one hand and makes a crushing motion. Roots beneath the man’s feet erupt from the ground and unleash themselves on the team’s weapons, crushing them or tearing them out of their grasps. As the strange being moves forward he casually reaches out and lifts the commander of the team off his feet and brings him close to his face.

“I’m not here to hurt you, I understand you’re just doing your job. But, my friend, if any of you follow me you will be injured, if not by me then by something worse, do you understand?”

The man in his hand just nods “Now that we’re cool, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got a pissed off land spirit to deal with.” With that Saviero chucks the terrified officer into the hands of his fellow team mates and carries on walking.

 

As Saviero walks inwards towards the heart of the city the world around him seems to darken. Where once there was a clear blue sky a blackened and bruised skin stretches overhead. He can no longer feel the pulse of animal and plant life surrounding him and what he can feel of the land’s essence is sickly and warped. Finding the origin of this disturbance is not a difficult task for standing at the centre of the city roped between a number of skyscrapers is a giant antic cocoon of tree limbs. Stopping just below the mammoth structure Saviero announces his presence.

“Antinanco come down here, we need to talk.” There is a rustling sound as first one and then countless more spiders erupt from the nest and delicately lower themselves from the globe. As they reach the walkway they cluster together forming a mound that slowly rises up into a roughly horrid form that with a low chittering voice begins to speak.

“You survived my first attack? I’m quite impressed. Most normal humans would have been ripped apart by it. But then again you’re not a normal human now, are you?”

Saviero makes no indication of hearing Antinanco’s words.

“Let’s see -  large portions of the city destroyed, my friends and thousands of innocents dead including some of the people you were originally meant to protect. Please, my amica, tell me why I shouldn’t use your entrails to decorate the city?”

The figure has been morphing as they speak becoming more and more human as time passes, more like the Native American man that destroyed Saviero’s team and the city.

“Because for one I doubt you have the power to do so and secondly you’ll never find out why I did th…” The Native American man’s words are cut short as he’s blasted back by a massive swarm of birds and insects that explode from Saviero’s hand.

“No man, you see: that was what we call a rhetorical question. I think I’ll just kick the crap out of you.”

With that Saviero throws himself forward splitting his form almost as if his body was light shot through a prism. He becomes at once a thousand heaving rats, a pack of wild dogs and a flock of birds all of which curve inwards towards Saviero’s nemesis. As they hit Antinanco they become a whirling tornado of stabbing claws, beaks and teeth all intent on ripping the being in the centre to shreds. Although at first it looks as if this technique is weakening his foe at the centre of the chaotic fauna he gradually recovers. Reaching up slowly with a half flayed hand the Native American man beckons to the heavens and in response the blackened sky above the two spirit-men unleashes a heavy torrent of rain. The temperature in the area plummets as the rain falls, so by the time the first drop of water hits the ground it freezes upon contact, coating whatever it hits with ice. As the monsoon of water hits the melee on the ground it becomes a deadly ice storm smothering wings, freezing rats solidly to the ground and scattering the yelping hounds. Running flat out the mongrels manage to clear the localised storm and as they do so they converge upon each other, melding together briefly to form a rough impression of Saviero’s badly damaged form. As quickly as the image appears it is gone, replaced by a sleek Peregrine Falcon which streams forward into the city. A single bald eagle tails the bird from behind, matching its speed despite the natural difference in movement between the two species.

 

As the falcon attempts to escape the eagle behind him as the sky above the two of them begins to darken in a most unnatural way. It is as if as the two birds fly all the light from the land miles around is being absorbed and fed into a single sinister purpose. At last it seems as if Saviero no longer has the energy to evade his purser so he lands in a part of the city left mostly undamaged by the invasion. He morphs back to his human form just in time to observe the eagle before him doing the same, it seems to take all of Saviero’s energy to merely stand up. With the two men fully formed they stand and face each other in the sudden darkness. They stand at the edge of what was the central park for the city until large swaths of it were destroyed.

“Let’s finish this,” is all Antinanco says as he reaches once again towards the sky.

Saviero seems to tense slightly as the man before him says this and suddenly stands a little taller. “Yes let’s,” he mutters to himself.

There is a pause and the very sky itself seems to explode with light as the energy that Antinanco had been absorbing from the sun is poured into a single destructive light beam. It rains down upon Saviero like an arrow striking from heaven and for a moment it strikes him full force, exploding in a spray of light. However when the darkness around the figures clears Saviero is whole and undamaged with a strange haze of gas uncoiling itself from him.

“Not exactly new. You did that one on me and my friends last time so I compensated by just creating a layer of ozone above me.”

Oddly, the man before Saviero does not look surprised, instead all the anger has drained itself from his face leaving a sad and tired looking man. He goes to raise his hands at Saviero again but tree roots break free from the ground and wrap themselves around him.

“No. No more of you trying to destroy me or the city and its land. This is my place of power and I’m not going to let you hurt anything else!” as Saviero speaks he begins to rise up in the air as he does so the winds whispers around him and clouds blossom into life.

“I summon the slumbering glass giants that sleep on boardwalks and plazas! I awaken you, the concrete river and the iron road. In the name of Atlas, come to attack this foe! All things that walk, crawl and fly!”

At each word the city groans, the air vibrates and the wind screams. From each and every point comes the sensation of movement as if things hidden behind a curtain had brushed our reality. One could imagine the sound of the city’s sky scrapers waking and joining together to march upon a common threat to their existence. The railways and roads swarming over streets and alleyways like huge centipedes and snakes. Eager to strike their venom into heart of the spirit in front of Saviero, and finally one could see the living creatures of the city converging upon the park in their droves. All those things that could easily be seen or felt in the hearts and minds of the people of Centropolis if they ever opened their eyes converged upon the park. For a moment there is a pause like the last breath of spring and then they strike against Antinanco with a force that not even Saviero can completely protect himself from. It is the force of the ghost or the memory of the land’s last guardian being ripped apart and left to die.

 

When it is over our hero wakes upon the soft grass of the park. What destructive forces, our reader should ask, were felt here to have caused such a crater in the ground? Saviero climbs down to its centre to find at its core the badly damaged head and torso of the heinous villain who almost destroyed Centropolis. As our hero bends down next to him, Saviero’s nemesis turn his head ready to speak his last words.

“You’ll be just like me one day… I thought that the power I was given would last forever, that I could use it to guard my people. When the colonials came our tribe was one of the first to be enslaved…” he stops to breathe in hoarse half choking gasps.

“…we were at war with the tribe in the next valley and their chief sold our land to the invaders. They came and killed anyone who resisted, raped our woman and took our land. I tried to use my powers…tried to call on the land’s spirit…but it was gone and I was alone, a ghost in this new land. I couldn’t kill myself either…until I found you.” He fixes his burnt and scarred eyes upon Saviero, he reaches out and places his one remaining hand on Saviero’s knee.

“One day…you’ll be just like me…”

Our hero sits by his side for a long time just looking at the old man’s body and then, just as now, all he can do is wonder just what he had done.