"I'll try," Bron said. He calmed himself, drew a deep breath, reached down, and took Galadriel's face in his hands.
He shook his head, gritted his teeth. Her skin felt surprisingly cold and moist, reptilian. He recalled a snake that he'd found under a board when he was a kid—a big king snake the color of a rattler, as cold as rubber on a cool day.
"What are you thinking?" Olivia asked.
"I was thinking that she feels cold," Bron said. "Like a snake, when you pick it up in the winter. It's barely alive."
"What do you feel for her? Compassion?"
"Nothing," Bron admitted. "I don't like her."
"You don't know her well enough to make that decision," Olivia suggested. "You're afraid of her, and we tend to try to destroy people we fear. But what if there is a side to her that you haven't seen? She was trying to impress you by showing how wild and reckless she could be, but there's more to her than that. You could help her become a better person. If only she had a little more ambition, if only she could dream. It's our dreams that shape us, all of our hopes and desires...."
Bron closed his eyes, shut out the lights of the room, the sound.
"Dreams shape us," Olivia whispered. "We come into the world as infants, empty of purpose and thought, and someday a dream comes along and gives our life a direction, a purpose. Everyone's dream is different. Some dream of loving, or being loved. Some dream of fame or glory. Others dream only of being of service to the world.
"Could you love this girl," Olivia asked, "if she found a purpose for life?"
He wondered at that. Right now, Galadriel's life was a waste, a bore. He wondered if he really could change that.
I don't have that kind of power, Bron thought.
"I feel like I'm just standing here," Bron whispered. "Nothing is happening."
Olivia sighed. "Here," she said. "Maybe I can help." She walked behind him and put her arms up over his shoulders, so that her hands touched his face. He felt her warmth as her body leaned into his back.
A memory flared.
Suddenly he was transported back in time. Bron found himself as a child, standing upon a bridge over a roaring river. He was cold, and shivering. His butt stung from the spanking that Mr. Golper had given him. A kitten meowed plaintively in its bag, floating in the river, as the current carried it downstream.
Mr. Golper pulled at Bron's hand, dragging him toward the car, but Bron fought and turned to see if his kitten was still alive.
Something changed. His memory of events seemed to twist.
Suddenly the bag sprang open, and the kitten's head popped up in the water. It meowed plaintively as it tried to swim to shore, the fur of its head looking slick and black. Its tiny white paws lashed at the waves.
Swim! Bron cried in his memory. You can do it!
Bron tried to stay for a moment, hoping that the kitten would escape.
Mr. Golper whirled in anger, lashing out at a willful child. "Come on!" he said. "Let's go. Live or die, that kitten is none of our affair."
But Bron wanted it to live. With his whole soul he cried out, "Boots! Come on!"
Mr. Golper jerked Bron's arm, pulled him away.
In his imagination, the kitten was swimming blindly against the current, borne downstream toward rocks and white rooster-tails of foam.
Something inside Bron broke.
A stone seemed to erupt from Bron's chest, as if it tore free. Bron staggered backward, winded, and stared at his chest, as if perhaps the Alien had burst out. He was in the hospital room, blinking.
Purple sparks lashed out of his hands, flashed and popped around Galadriel's head. She gasped, and her eyes flew wide. She let out a strangled cry and rose up for an instant, clutching at Bron. She grabbed his shirt, and then fainted.
Bron waited to make sure that she really was out, then Olivia invited, "Come, sit down."
He sat on the couch with her beside the bed, so exhausted he wasn't sure he could stand any longer. He bit his lip, brooding. For a long moment, he said nothing, then at last blurted, "You screwed with my memories!"
"Only a little," Olivia said.
"Could you have been any more obvious in your manipulation?"
"Not if I tried," Olivia said. "You still remember what really happened that day. I didn't take that away from you. I didn't try to insert new memories in your sleep. I only showed you a possibility, one that you had never imagined."
"What do you mean?"
"When you left the bridge," she tried to explain, "the bag was floating away. You've always believed that the kitten drowned, and perhaps it did. Probably, it did. But maybe it escaped. It could have fought its way free and climbed ashore downstream. It happens every day. Cats are surprisingly resilient. Even now it might be living with some family who loves it."
Bron fell silent, considering the possibility, and he remained quiet even after Marie Mercer returned.
They said goodbye, with Galadriel sleeping peacefully, her face pale and breathing slowed from sedatives.
Bron remained subdued as they drove toward home, with clouds growing black over the red mountains. He closed his eyes, weary to the bone.
He felt like that kitten, tossed into dangerous currents, bound by conventions and responsibilities. There was no solid earth beneath his feet, and he was beginning to feel desperate.
Perhaps he too could get free.
Chapter 16
Numerous Plans
"When you're a child, it seems that everyone has plans for your life but you. There comes a time when you must take control of your own destiny."
Olivia drove home from the hospital as Bron nodded off. By the time they had gone five miles, he was sound asleep. When they reached the house she roused him and offered to make him dinner, but Bron staggered from the car.
"That wore me out," he explained groggily.
Olivia fixed him with a measuring gaze. She'd never seen him like this. "It can be tiring," she admitted, though it had never made her that tired. "Go lie down. I'll bring you some dinner in an hour."
Bron went to his room. It was late enough so that Mike would be out taking his evening rounds. Olivia made hamburgers and fries. Outside, with the coming of the storm, the wind raged and the cottonwoods beside the house swayed. Here in the mountains, the clouds swept in low over the valley floor, and when lightning began to strike, it seemed to be right on top of her. In the clear mountain air, the thunder snarled and boomed as if it were meting out the judgments of god.
Mike went out to secure the barn. The cattle often went mad with fright in such storms and would huddle under the cottonwoods down by the creek. One bolt of lightning, a few years earlier, had killed nine head of cattle at once. It was a terrible loss, of course, but Olivia had learned something from it: all nine of those cattle were surprisingly tender.
Later she had heard from another farmer that electrocution caused the muscles to relax, and at some slaughterhouses, cattle were electrocuted in order to tenderize the meat.
Today, though, they didn't want a herd of tenderized calves, so Mike stood out back and called them into the barn.
She fixed dinner and let Bron sleep. Mike came from the fields and announced, "The calves are all in. Wisdom's Promise had her calf this afternoon—a sweet little heifer."
"Everything look okay?"
"The mother and calf are fine. They're in the birthing stall, under a heat lamp."
Suddenly blinding light flashed outside, followed by a boom that nearly took Olivia off her feet.
"Zeus is pissed," Mike said. He looked out the window, just as a web of light tore through the clouds. "What's Bron up to?"