Or is there something even more wrong with me? Bron wondered. Had he been bred to be cold and callus? Did that lie at the root of his problem?
Or maybe he was just scared to try to fix Galadriel, afraid that he wouldn't be able to do it.
"Bron," she said. "You have been hurt so much, it's going to be hard for you to reach out. You've got to overcome that!"
Bron had never actually wanted to kill anyone. He might have been angry and hurt, but he'd never acted on that anger. He'd never lashed out at someone.
"You're right," Olivia said, trying another tactic. "She's a danger to others. Maybe it would be just to let her die. But have you wondered why Galadriel's such a danger? It's because she just doesn't give a damn about anything—you, herself, her future. The thing that she lacks, the thing that nobody else in the world can give her, is yours to give. You can do more than just help her survive. You've never felt what she's feeling right now, so you don't understand her, but you could make her whole."
Bron studied the red-rock cliffs to the north for a moment, and his dark eyes flicked up with interest. Olivia felt small for using this tactic. Men have a powerful instinct to save others, to risk their lives. That's why from time immemorial, men have gone to war. She was using Bron's instinct against him, but she told herself: it's not just to save Galadriel. It's to save Bron, too.
Bron asked, "How do you do it?"
"I usually sneak up on them at night," Olivia said. "It can take a long time to reorganize memories—"
"No, I mean how do I do it? How am I supposed to fix her?"
"Look, ducks are born knowing how to fly south for the winter," Olivia said. "Just touch her forehead. Instinct will take over."
Olivia bit her lip, then fell silent. She started the car and drove slowly back onto the highway. The new white Corolla was as much as one could hope for in the way of camouflage. With the overbearing summer heat, white was the color of choice for cars in Saint George, and with the tinted windows, she and Bron were about as anonymous as one could be.
Yet as she peered up the road at a sedan approaching in the distance, she could not help but feel that a noose was tightening around them.
The Draghouls are coming, she thought. We can't see them, but I know they're here. I can almost feel them....
A phone call to the hospital that afternoon confirmed that Galadriel was in the Intermountain Regional Medical Center, undergoing treatment.
Mike had left a note at the house. He was up in the hills, checking on the cattle that were out in the open range. He wanted to get them back out of the hills before the muzzle-loader hunters descended on the area.
So Olivia offered to drive Bron to the hospital. Reluctantly, he agreed to go. He didn't want dinner. He paced around the house, nerves on edge. While Olivia got ready, Bron went outside. Clouds were scudding in from the south, big thunderheads streaming up from the Pacific.
Bron stood by the Corolla and watched some birds flitting by the rail fence—bee eaters that seemed to dance in the air, hover and dive, snatching up flies and mosquitoes and honeybees. He tried to capture the rhythms in his mind, put their dance to music.
The air smelled of dust and a rising storm.
Bron went to a rose bush by the hummingbird feeders. From a distance the white roses looked tawdry. Their petals were aging, burning brown on the edges. Bron picked the nicest blossom and peeled away the older petals.
"Ready?" Olivia asked as she came out of the house
"As I'll ever be," he mumbled.
Olivia eyed the white rose. "Nice touch," she said. "I thought you didn't care if Galadriel lives or dies?"
"Aren't you supposed to take gifts when you visit the sick?"
They piled into the car and headed through town, past the juniper forest and then out of the valley altogether, where the sagebrush poked up through rocks. Once the scenery turned bland, Bron's thoughts focused inward. He sat staring out the window, clenching and unclenching his fist.
"You all right?" Olivia asked, just to fend off the silence.
"I feel like I'm being asked to take a test," Bron said, "in a subject that I've never studied before—never even heard of."
"Relax," Olivia urged. "You'll do fine." He wasn't sure she believed it. "Now that you recognize what's going on, I think that these incidents will become fewer and farther between. I know that you didn't really want to hurt Galadriel. Once you wish her well, if you wish her well strongly enough, I think that she will heal."
"What about Melvina?" Bron asked. "I might have accidentally taken something from her, too. I... didn't like her."
"She lives so far from here, you can't do anything for her today. She'll stay the same cramped, miserable person that she is now—until you return the ambition you've taken."
Bron considered. He didn't want to see Melvina again, but his reluctance shamed him. Olivia talked about it as if it were a done deal. "When would we go?"
"Maybe next Saturday?" Olivia suggested. "You're going to have to learn how to use your powers anyway. We could make a day of it, maybe find something fun to do up in Salt Lake? When was the last time you went to the water park, or took in the rides at Lagoon?" Lagoon was a large theme park in the northern part of the state.
"I went to the water park last year, but I haven't been to Lagoon since... I was eleven." Olivia smiled. "We should go to Lagoon, unless there's something you'd like better? 'Lion King' is coming to Salt Lake—the musical."
"That would be fun," Bron said, but there was an edge to his voice, a lack of enthusiasm. He didn't really want to go. She was the one who loved musical theater.
"No, wait a minute," she suggested. "Why choose between the two? We can do both!" She talked excitedly as she made plans—suggesting that they go to one of the better places for dinner: Zinn Bistro.
Bron broke in, "If I give these people ... ambition, what happens to me? I mean, I don't have much myself, or at least not so much that I want to get rid of any."
"As I understand it," Olivia said, "you were the one who was cleaning the Stillman's house, doing the dishes, fixing the meals, taking care of the children—all on top of going to school?"
"Yeah," Bron admitted.
"You've got more ambition than is good for a kid your age."
"Yeah, but what if I give too much away?"
Olivia glanced out of the corner of her eye, kept her attention on the road. "I don't know much about dream assassins," she admitted. "No one does. There hasn't been one for a long time...."
"Why's that?" Bron asked.
Olivia chose her words carefully. "Too few are born."
"My parents were dream assassins, right?"
Olivia shook her head. "No." She sounded a little bewildered. She finally said, "I told you that masaaks don't have a lot of offspring. That's part of the reason that there aren't many of us. But you should know that our talents are ... like hair color. Most people in the world—throughout Asia and Africa—have black hair, more than seventy percent. Us memory merchants, we're like people with black hair. Most masaaks have my gift, though few have it so powerfully. You're ... like an albino, which is a very rare thing, even for a masaak. Your parents could have been... anything."
"So there are other kinds of masaaks," Bron asked, "with different talents?"
"Let's not worry about that right now."
"You said that we don't have a lot of children," Bron said. "But there are other reasons why we're so few, aren't there?"
Olivia smiled. "In the old days, the humans sometimes killed us. They called us witches or warlocks...."