River Of Dreams

At 2:17 in the morning, the brass hands of Mara Lind’s clock began moving backward.

She woke beneath the slanted ceiling of her riverside apartment with the sound of water running through the walls. Not the blunt rush of the town river outside, striking its stone banks, but a thinner current, quick and secretive, threading beneath the floorboards. Her glass of water trembled on the sill. Across the room, moonlight lay in a pale stripe over the rug.

Then the floor dipped.

Mara caught the edge of the bed. “No.”

The boards bowed as if something immense had passed beneath them. A blue-green gleam slipped through the cracks, brightening the room from below. It moved in ribbons, curling around the legs of her chair and climbing the wall in wavering reflections.

The current had come.

She had dreamed of it for three nights, always just beyond reach: a river flowing under Bellwether, beneath streets and cellars, carrying sparks like drowned stars. Each time she woke before she could see where it began. Each time, a voice called her name from the water.

Tonight the voice came again.

Mara.

She swung her feet to the floor. The boards were cold enough to bite. Her wool socks darkened with a sheen of light, though no water touched them.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

The river answered with a low, musical pull.

Her coat hung by the door. She snatched it from its hook, shoved her feet into boots, and grabbed the brass key her mother had left behind. The key had never fit any lock in the apartment. Mara carried it anyway. It was the only thing she owned that had belonged to her mother without an explanation attached.

The glow gathered beneath the rug.

Mara lifted it.

A narrow seam had opened between the boards. Beneath it, instead of joists and packed earth, she saw steps descending into blue darkness. Water ran down them without wetting the stone.

Her first thought was to wake the landlord. Her second was that the landlord lived three floors above and would call the police before she could finish speaking. Her third was the voice.

Mara.

It sounded closer now. Not beneath the apartment. Beneath her.

She put one hand on the wall and stepped through the opening.

The air below was cold and silver. The stairway dropped farther than the building had any right to contain. Behind her, the apartment shrank to a square of yellow light. The rug lay crooked over the gap. Her bed, her chair, the clock with its backward hands - all of it looked strangely distant.

“Just to the river,” she told herself.

The steps shifted under her boots.

Mara stopped.

The stone beneath her left foot softened, becoming mud. Water curled around her ankle. She jerked back, but the stair behind her had vanished. In its place stood a brick archway, its ceiling low enough that she had to bend.

The apartment’s light went out.

Ahead, the current slid through a tunnel no wider than a hallway. Its surface shone without reflecting her face. Along the walls, doors appeared and disappeared, painted in colors that hurt to look at. Somewhere beyond them, bells rang underwater.

Mara tightened her grip on the brass key.

“Who’s calling me?”

A ripple traveled against the current.

She followed it.

The tunnel sloped downward. Her boots struck stone, then shallow water, then stone again. The walls changed as she walked. Brick became black rock veined with pale roots. The roots pulsed faintly, as though the town above had a sleeping heart.

She passed a doorway and saw a kitchen on the other side. A little girl sat at a table, drawing a river with yellow chalk. The girl looked up.

Mara knew that face.

It was her own, at seven years old.

The child lifted a finger to her lips.

Mara stumbled onward.

A second door opened onto the town square, but the square was flooded to the rooftops. Fish moved through the upper windows. A man in a red scarf stood on the courthouse steps, calling for someone who never appeared.

The current tugged at Mara’s boots.

She tried to step away. The water seized her ankle.

“Let go.”

The tunnel gave no answer. It pulled harder.

Mara dropped to one knee and drove the brass key between two stones. The metal rang. The current shuddered, and for an instant she saw a thread of gold running beneath its blue-green surface.

The voice came from that thread.

Mara, come to the source.

She pulled herself forward, dragging one leg through the water. “I’m coming.”

The tunnel changed.

The walls slid apart, opening into a street she recognized and did not recognize. Bellwether’s narrow lanes stretched beneath a sky without stars. Every window was dark. The cobbles gleamed as if rain had fallen, though the air remained dry. River water ran along the gutters, flowing uphill toward the old hilltop cemetery.

Mara rose.

A bell struck somewhere nearby.

One.

Then another answered from behind her.

Two.

She turned.

At the far end of the street, three figures stood beneath an iron arch....