Raven Feathers

Chapter Three

"Night Dreaming"

Kera started awake, jumping immediately from a deep sleep into alarmed awareness. She leapt from her bed, not even casting an eye on the empty side, and rushed to her son's room. He stirred blearily in the semi-dark of the room.

"Wha-za matta?" The words were slurred and heavy with sleep.

"Ash... Ashling, listen to me. You have to answer me, do you understand?"

"Mom?" He asked drowsily, swaying drunkenly with sleep. "Wha-"

"What did you dream about? Who did you dream about? You must tell me Ashling. You have to tell me!"

Ash shook his head slightly, as though trying to throw the sleepy confusion from his mind. "Dream?" He asked, already grasping onto the fading tendrils at the command. A wistful smile crossed his face suddenly as his lids came to rest low across his eyes. "Daddy was there. We were running and laughing and spinning... and it was great." And in the dark of night with sleep dragging down his body, he shrunk before her sight. Something remarkably close to lucidity entered his eyes even as they softened with the innocence of a younger age. "Daddy's not here anymore, is he?" And the words were that of a young child.

Kera felt something in her break at the plaintive tone. "No, baby. No he's not. Lay down, Ash. That's it. Now go back to sleep. Get your rest. You need to sleep." She stood by his bed, stroking his hair until his breaths evened out. Then she turned and returned to her own room. She did not sleep for the rest of the night, but dreams of what might have been plagued her mind.

*~*~*

She was in the same ballroom again, but her posture had lost its confidence. Her hands were fisted in the material of her gown, twisting and pulling at the fabric in her nervous wringing. Then she saw the crowd part and knew that he was walking towards her. Without a word, he took up her hands, one of his own ensnaring her waist, and lead her onto the dance floor.

Neither said a word for most of the night, content just to dance beneath the arched ceilings of the ballroom. Kera laid her head gently on Korbin's shoulder and allowed him to lead her blindly from the hall. Still swirling and dancing in time with the faint chords of music drifting outside, the couple came to a stop beneath the starry canopy, another storm presenting a smouldering backdrop behind the black, starred awning.

"Korbin..."

"Shh." He whispered softly, bringing his fingers to her lips and shushing her with a soft croon. "No need to say anything. I understand."

"Oh Korbin, what am I going to do? Ash was asking for his father again today. Asking why he had to go. He just doesn't understand, and I don't know what to say."

"Then just give him what he wants." Kera's head jerked up as he said that, eyes wide.

"Wha-what? Don't even joke about that Korbin."

"I'm not joking," and she could tell from the seriousness of his voice that he was not. "I could give him his dreams... if you'll give me mine."

"Korbin... I... what are your dreams, Korbin?" A mixture of emotions clouded her face, moving from sad to confused to just plain tired and weary. All worn expressions etched into a young face.

"Stay with me, Keaira. Stay with me here. Never wake up, never die, never grow old. Just stay with me, and never return to that world that has hurt you so much. Live your dreams, Keaira, and live them with me."

"I... I can't. Not forever... Korbin, that's so... so long. I couldn't leave everyone, everything I've ever known for forever, not eternity. Even if it made all my dreams come true."

"Think about it, Keaira," he said softly as he pressed the cold lips of his white porcelain mask on her closed eyelids. When she opened her eyes once again, she was staring up at the ceiling of her room, a warm body curled in her side. She jolted at first, a tremor of fear running down her nerves until she saw the small, familiar shape of her boy. Dried tracks of tears ran down his ruddy cheeks.

She wiped sadly at the traces of his tears, her hand lingering on his cheek. She stood quietly from the bed, carefully shifting her son until he lay curled about her pillow and then walking to the kitchen. A cold mug of coffee lay on the counter, and she wrapped her own frigid hands around it, eyes staring blankly and sightlessly into the darkness outside their window.

*~*~*

She was rocking Ash, smooth back and forth motions as she rubbed his back in soothing circles until his sobs died into gasping hiccups which then eventually subsided into shallow, measured breaths. Kera carried her son carefully to her own bed, laying him in the spot his father once occupied.

Craig had come by that day, collected the things he still had in the house, and left. Kera did not blame him for wanting to leave as quickly as possible. She herself had felt uncomfortable with the feelings rushing between them, an emotion still disguised as love, a drowning sadness, but most of the feelings were still wavering, unsure, and unstable. Craig left too quickly in fear of the emotions Kera knew she stirred within him. And Ash watched as his father turned his back, the man never seeing his son watching wide-eyed from the shadows.

Kera cried with him that night, not so much for losing Craig as for Ash losing his father, and as she clutched Ash tighter to her body, she welcomed the dreams for the first night in days.

*~*~*

The ballroom was back, filled with people, light, and music, and Kera remembered why it had been so hard to forget this room, this dream. For days she had gone without, and she had missed it horribly.

A hand snaked around her waist, and Kera jumped straight up and stiff until the other hand began to caress her cheek in an oddly familiar yet now strangely intimate gesture.

"Ash will be happy?" Her voice resigned, defeated, hoping.

"He will always have his dreams."

"Yes." The word both an acknowledgment and an answer.

Korbin nodded and held her closer. Nothing more needed to be said, and for a brief moment, Kera felt a dizzying nausea grip her.

Then slowly the tension melted from her frame, dissolving with the slow mincing steps she felt her body automatically taking as she began to follow Korbin who led her gently and mindlessly out the arched doorway. The sound of her son's laughter was the sensation that brought her back from the newly descended fog obscuring her mind, and Kera stared wide eyed into the basin of glowing water. She could hear noise and sound emitting from the bowl now, and watched as her son lived another happy moment from younger ages, further embellishing the tale with each new dream.

Kera sighed happily at the smile on her son's face, a burden finally lifting from her small, tired shoulders. Korbin stepped forward to replace it with his own hands.

Kera's hand hovered over the water, the appendage mimicking the movement of a gentle caress through the boy's hair. "When can I see him again?" She asked in a low, sad voice.

"You won't."

With a hard jerk, Kera tore from his arms to stare at him in horror. "What... what do you mean?"

"He's dreaming now, a perpetual, endless dream. And while I can travel through dreams. You cannot."

"Why not?! Why can't I go see my son?!"

"Silly mortal," Korbin whispered fondly, the endearment rolling off his tongue sweetly, a succulent, tasty word. "Have you not figured it out. You were marked. You were to be taken, and yet when I saw you dance, and you turned your raven mask to me, I knew I could not... not kill you at any rate. I fell in love with you Keaira, my Little Dark One, my beautiful little raven."

"I don't... I don't understand. Marked? Killed?! Why me? Korbin?"

Kera shuddered violently, taking a halting step backwards in fear and revulsion as he slowly removed the full face mask of blank white that had obscured his face until then. And she found herself immobile as she stared at the sunken eyes of black fire and prominent cheekbones jutting from his face of tightly pulled skin. The flesh stretched more like bone across his face.

"Korbin isn't my only name, you understand. I've been called other names in the past, but Korbin is my favorite. It means 'raven,' you see, and I have always held a soft spot for my beautiful ravens, my lovely harbingers of death."

"Other names... what other names?"

The man smiled down on Kera, and she trembled visibly beneath the mockery of a human smile. His skin was stretched thinly across his mouth, showing the expanse of his teeth in more of a snarl, though she knew he was truly attempting to smile, truly attempting to express his happiness, and somehow, that thought only frightened her more. "I have been called many things. An angel, a reaper, a demon, a devil... but those are only titles, not names. I won't list them all, but I will give you the one that will make most sense to you. You Keaira, you call me Korbin, but to most... they know me as Death."

Kera inhaled sharply, and swayed dangerously on her feet, but Korbin reached out a skeletal hand, pale and bonelike, to steady her.

"You have nothing to fear from me," he told her gently. "When I said that I had fallen in love with you... I meant it. I would never hurt you nor your son. Because I know to hurt him would kill you as well, and if I could not kill you in your sleep as I had been ordered to, you have no reason to fear that I would do so now."

"I... I was supposed to die... Death," a shudder racked her frame as though the revelation only now was being fully absorbed, "YOU," she did not spit the word, but all her anger, all her spite, all her fear transformed the sound of her voice. "You..." only a whisper now, "were supposed to take me... but..."

"I couldn't take your life." Korbin supplied gently, no condemnation, no anger, merely the infinite patience that comes with age, that comes from watching eternity pass by and knowing that eternity still lies ahead. And he continued in the same impossibly patient, gentle voice. A voice she had never imagined belonging to Death. "I couldn't kill you, not when I knew it would force your eyes to close and that dark, raven colored passion to dim. I don't expect you to love me, Keaira. You are young after all. But you will come to respect me and love will follow eventually. We have all the time in the world you see. I can't kill you, but I can't really let you live forever, either. It would destroy too many laws, the laws of Natural Order, and then 'They' would kill you anyway because your existence could threaten Nature itself. Life requires Death. And there are ways for mortals to die that do not involve Death's -- my -- hands or my scythe. But if you sleep, if you stay with me in your dreams, I won't have to kill you because you won't truly live, and if you are neither alive nor dead, 'They' have no control over you. Just as 'They' have no control over me. I will continue to do my duty, but now... oh now I will not be alone, and we can be together for all eternity. Always together, always loving, and always dreaming. Keaira, my beautiful raven, my beautiful goddess of Death."

The sound of Korbin's voice seemed distant to her now, as though she were hearing the words from behind a curtain, and she knew that someone was speaking these words but she could neither see them nor understand what was being said. And yet in some small, unreachable corner of her mind, Keira understood all too plainly, exactly what Korbin had said to her, all his truths and misdirections and hidden meanings, and she lost herself until all conscious thought had fled to be replaced by a protective haze. But in that small region, that closed area of her mind where all was heard and understood, Keaira could not help but think when she heard Korbin's final words that she was not dreaming anymore. Somewhere, she had crossed an indefinable line, and dreams or hopes for happiness had changed. Keaira was no longer in a dream. Death had stolen her soul and captured her within a never-ending nightmare, an incubus of the night that had drawn her in, and now would never let her go.

Korbin reached forward and caressed her face in a parody of love and caring. Keaira trembled one last time before stilling, and an oppressive silence descended on the natural form of the now tainted cave.

Keaira slumped slightly against the stone bowl and let a single, bitter tear fall unchecked onto the shimmering surface where her son was laughing happily and carefree. An explosion of sound reverberated endlessly on the walls as the drop hit the center of the basin until the noise morphed into the same roar of silence that had always pervaded the chamber. She imagined she heard the call of a raven in the distance, the cawing, screeching death knell of the dark bird, and she imagined she heard Korbin answer with the same inhuman cry in the silence. And Keaira's body shook with soundless sobs that seemed to form from beneath the mask of raven feathers she still wore, the droplets of salty sadness now falling silently onto the frozen surface of the water.

Korbin came to stand beside her, drying her hopeless tears of mourning with his skeletal hand, and the silence stretched on forever.

~*~*~

Meanings of the Names

Korbin - Raven
Keaira - Little Dark One
Kera - Pure
Ashling - Dream, Vision