The Way of the Ram Read online

  At approximately 8:45 PM last night, a surge at the power plant overloaded some breakers. The resulting outage caused a chain reaction of effects that, while noisy and possibly distressing, were quite harmless and temporary.

  Rolling blackouts were implemented in uptown and downtown Megatropolis to counter the surge, requiring a test of the grid. This included all the emergency lights and floodlights in both districts.

  Slightly afterward, technicians noticed that the power failure had left some sewage pumps non-functional, causing a spike in pressure in the pipes. This led to a series of small explosions causing a sound similar to gunfire. Damage to the Megatropolis border wall has been accounted for, and crews are working around the clock to seal the gaps.

  Said a spokesman for the Megatropolis, “The holes in the wall caused by the power failure will take a few days to patch. In the meantime, please do not approach these gaps, as they will be under heavy guard. We do not anticipate more than a minor delay in regular shipping and manufacturing services. The train to the quarry will be taken offline while the full scope of the outage’s effects is assessed. All pigs have been asked to remain in the city until further notice. Fleece City will be the first to know once regular services have resumed.”

  Chapter 20

  The shattered pelvis was repaired, but the middle-aged miner still seemed unable to walk. Healer had been trying for half an hour to get him to calm down. Dreamer hung back, trying to keep to her observation role, but Healer could tell she wanted to intervene.

  “It just came out of nowhere,” the poor quarry sheep mumbled. “Just, bam. It’ll happen again, I know it.”

  “Please try to slow your breathing,” Healer said in as soothing a tone as he could manage. “Let’s get your hooves on the ground and take some steps.”

  “Back off, guy,” the worker shouted, curling up on the mat table. “I think I’ll stay right here.”

  “You don’t have to go back to work right this minute,” Healer answered. “We can figure this out.”

  Dreamer cleared her throat. “Can I try?”

  Healer looked over his shoulder at her. “Try what?”

  “I’ve been working with my dad on exactly this sort of thing. I think I know what’s bothering him.”

  Healer stepped aside and motioned for her to approach. “Sure. I’ll try anything.”

  Dreamer drew close to the patient. He peered at her from under a furrowed brow.

  “I recognize you. You’re Shiver’s daughter. No one forgets those eyes. They said Scurvert got you… that you’ve barely returned to the quarry since then.” He pointed a shaking hoof. “I don’t want to go back. Surely you of all people would understand.”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “Like you, Healer took away my physical wound, but the mental one remained. In time, I was able to fix that too.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll show you. Just focus on me.”

  “Your eyes are glowing too. You folks are…”

  The patient trailed off as he relaxed into Dreamer’s gaze. While Healer waited, Swifter approached and tapped his shoulder.

  “Hey, dude.”

  “Yeah, Swifter. What’s up?”

  “Did Gobb ever come in today?”

  “Nope. Check out the newspaper on my desk.”

  Swifter stepped around the corner into Healer’s office and looked. “Oh, wow. Yeah, we heard everything from University. Kept me up all night. That was no industrial accident. Those guns were after something.”

  “Slept right through it.” Healer shrugged, turning back to his patient. The article bothered him, but he had work to do.

  Swifter returned to his patient at the other end of the gym as well.

  Dreamer and the patient snapped out of the trance. They both smiled.

  “I feel… better,” the man said. “I understand now. Thank you very much.” He shook her hoof and Healer’s. “Thank you both.”

  Healer walked him out and returned to Dreamer. “What did you show him?”

  She grinned. “I took him back to the scene of his accident in the mine. We walked through the last couple of minutes before the scaffolding fell on him. We pinpointed where he had gotten sloppy in his safety check. Essentially, we discussed which aspects he could control and which he couldn’t. I think the exploration of what he could have avoided and what was just dumb luck helped alleviate his fear.”

  Healer paused. “Wow. And you passed up a psychology major?”

  Dreamer laughed. “I spend way too much of my spare time on this to want to study it in school. Quiz me about the gods sometime. Is that all for the day?”

  “No, it’s going to be a late evening. You can head out any time you want.”

  “Well… I heard it’s going to be a nice night.” Dreamer shifted. “I thought I’d walk home for once. But no one should cross the fields alone at night, so I figured I’m stuck here until you close the place up.”

  Healer rolled his eyes and gave her a gentle smile. “Can’t argue with that logic. Almost as if you planned it ahead of time.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I’d be happy to walk you home tonight.”

  Chapter 21

  “It’s cold out here! You sure you don’t want to just get a cab?” Healer stopped on the porch, avoiding the chilly night breeze.

  “It’s cheaper to walk. We can go the quickest way, straight through Fleece City.” Dreamer leaned against him. Neither said anything for a minute. She enjoyed the quiet out here, but she had to say what was on her mind. “What you’re doing is incredible, Healer. Your clinic is exactly what these people need.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Healer took a deep breath. “I wrote one last letter to Ponder after all. I told her exactly what was happening, both in the world and in my own head. I wanted her to know, but on some level I’m sure I wrote it just to vent, to make myself feel better. Well, writing it didn’t help. Everything’s become false and hollow. Ponder’s peace, my clinic, our time together, everything.”

  “Wait, slow down. What do you mean ‘our time together?’” Dreamer stepped closer to him.

  “I know what’s happening here. I love that we’re reconnecting, but I don’t want to think about what will happen when things change again.”

  “Explain, please?”

  Healer thought for a minute before unlocking the clinic’s front door and leading Dreamer back into the much warmer entryway. He shut and bolted the door before speaking again.

  “The reason you’re allowing me into your life is because I’m doing things ‘right.’ You love the clinic and what I do here, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it can’t last forever. We know the pigs have not honored Ponder’s bargain. It’s only going to get worse as long as she and Mauler are still imprisoned. Now that I know that… it puts a time limit on the viability of my project here.”

  Dreamer shook her head. “Alright, so things haven’t improved as much as we hoped they would. How does that necessarily affect your clinic? Or us?”

  Healer sighed. “Something happened at the Megatropolis last night. On top of that, Pincher was at Boxer’s gym making threats the other evening. He even reached out… asked Boxer and the others to rejoin him. Like he knows something is headed our way. This whole thing is coming apart at the seams—I can feel it. We’re going to have to take the fight to the pigs again soon. And when that time comes, you won’t hang around.”

  “Healer…” Dreamer had to compose herself from the sudden watering of her eyes. “If the pigs force us to fight again, you know what I’ll think? I’ll think, ‘he gave it his best shot.’ You honored my wishes. As hard as it was, you accepted the peace that Ponder brokered. You tried to make something with that peace. You proved to me that you’re not just out to take the most violent option.”

  “You mean…”

  “I mean it was stupid of us to break up. There was no reason for it. If I had k
nown that this was your plan to fight for Ponder and Mauler’s freedom, I’d have stayed with you the whole way. So if that day comes when this clinic fails and we have to go to war, I will stay. Because this time I’ll know that it was forced on us.”

  Dreamer leaned in to give Healer a kiss. He returned it. Just like when they had kissed in the burnt-out wreckage of Old-Timer’s bedroom, their minds connected and the voice called out to them both.

  The Healer is right. The storm is coming. If you face it together, you will be given all you need to prevail.

  This time, Dreamer knew the voice. It was that of Arghast. It reminded her of her previous conversation with the Father Orchid. Realization hit her.

  She withdrew from the kiss. “Feeling better?”

  Healer grinned. “How could I not?”

  “There’s something I want to do for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Now that you’ve seen how I help people with mental trauma, I want to try it on you.”

  “Well… alright. If you think it will make any difference.”

  “It couldn’t hurt.” Dreamer brought her face close to Healer’s again.

  Chapter 22

  Even though she knew there was nothing to fear, Dreamer took an involuntary step back from the flames that sprang up in front of her. Cloned dogs, warthogs, and pink city pigs ran in every direction. Healer broke away from her and ran across the burning grass.

  The night was pitch-black due to the rain clouds hanging overhead, not yet releasing their contents onto the plains. The fire cast orange light across the yard. A column of black smoke rose from the house beside her. She took off after Healer, following him around to the front.

  She nearly ran into him—he had stopped dead in his tracks, staring at a terrified adolescent lamb.

  “It’s… it’s you,” Dreamer stammered.

  “Yeah. I’m here, so…” Healer’s gaze traveled down the path. Some twenty feet away from them, the old grey ram stood facing the fence. Old-Timer turned his head back to look at the lamb.

  “Run away, my son.”

  Dreamer saw the look on the ram’s face and knew that this was the moment. She willed the memory to come to a stop.

  The attacking clones, the flames, the smoke, and young Snapper froze in place. Only Dreamer and Healer kept walking. They approached Old-Timer.

  Healer gulped. “Look at his face. He knew this was the end.”

  “For him, maybe. But not for you. There’s not an ounce of fear in his eyes.”

  Healer reached out, tried to touch his father’s face, but of course his hoof only passed right through. Reluctantly, he tore his gaze from Old-Timer and looked beyond to the fence line.

  Frozen midstride, the murderer stood in a gap in the fence. The firelight illuminated the yellow-green eyes, bulging in savage glee. He was towering, invincible, inescapable.

  “I have a question for you,” Healer said. “How true to life is this? Are we looking at what was actually seen, or is there a chance that this memory is warped by all the nightmares?”

  “I honestly have no idea. That pig is at least twice Scurvert’s size. He does look similar, though. Maybe it is a nightmare version of him.”

  Healer let it go and returned his attention to Old-Timer. “I’d better take advantage… I guess this is the closest I’m going to get to the real thing.”

  “Take as long as you need, Healer. You know that barely any time is passing for our physical bodies.”

  Letting out a long sigh, Healer drew close to the image of his father. “I just don’t know what to do anymore, Dad. I tried doing things the way I thought you would have if you’d been here. That only ended with Ponder and Mauler imprisoned. They were the only inheritance you really left me, and I lost them. Then I tried doing what you told me to do. I found a way to use my powers to help out hurt sheep within the system, the way you imagined. Now that I know the peace we bought was a false one, that way feels lost too. The pot’s boiling over and even the Megatropolis is struggling to keep the lid on it. I have no options left. I could use some guidance.”

  He stepped away and looked at Dreamer. “That’s it.”

  She leaned in and embraced him. “Alright. Let’s go.”

  When they returned to the physical world, they were still holding one another. They stayed that way for a long time.

  After a while, Healer shifted his weight. Dreamer sensed that he wanted to ask something, but was reluctant.

  “What’s on your mind?” she prodded.

  “Look… it’s late. Tomorrow’s Saturday. You told me you’d come back early in the morning. You’ve got all your school things with you. It’s kind of pointless to send you all the way home now. You should just stay here tonight.”

  Dreamer smiled. “Can’t argue with that logic.”

  Chapter 23

  On Saturday morning Healer opened up the front door and gave an eager smile to his first patient, who waited on the porch with her mother.

  “Thanks for being flexible,” Healer said. “I think this is going to do her a lot of good.”

  “Of course,” the older ewe replied. She made herself a steaming drink from Healer’s coffee machine and took a seat by the door.

  Healer guided the little girl over to the toy chest. Dreamer was already sitting on the play mat among a selection of toys.

  “Dreamer,” Healer said with a smile, “this is Whisper.”

  The little girl had the tawny fleece of one born in the quarry. Now that Healer had the two of them in the same room, it occurred to him that Whisper looked like a young version of Dreamer.

  Picking up a soft doll, Dreamer approached. “Hi, Whisper. Healer told me that you still needed some help. He said that you got hurt. He took care of the cuts and bruises, but he told me you are still having nightmares. I can make that go away. What do you think?”

  Little Whisper reached out to receive the doll from Dreamer. She sat on her hindquarters and hugged the soft stuffed sheep with both forelegs. “That would be nice, Miss Dreamer.”

  “OK, Whisper. I’m going to have you relax. You can hold your doll. Just look at me. Try to think only about my eyes.”

  Healer kept his distance, letting Dreamer work, expecting to only have to wait the usual two or three seconds. When a full minute passed, he drew closer, becoming concerned. Finally, he reached out and shook Dreamer’s shoulder, causing both of them to emerge from the trance. Whisper looked afraid. Dreamer looked discouraged.

  Healer waited for one of them to fill him in, but no one did. “What happened? Why did that take so long?”

  Dreamer glanced at him. “There’s… a block. I can’t explain it. I can see her memories right before and right after the incident. But not during. There’s something else there. A mental scar. So I can’t walk through it with her to help her move on from it. I wish I could show it to you…” She trailed off. “Maybe I can. Come here and hold my hoof. Whisper, I’m going to try again. But this time, I’m going to try to show Healer what we are seeing. Alright?”

  “Yes, that’s fine.”

  The peculiar violet glow overtook Dreamer’s eyes as it always did when she invoked her power. Healer closed his eyes and focused on her, as she had instructed him to do in the past. This time, when he opened his eyes, he was in the middle of the street in the quarry village with Dreamer next to him.

  She gave him a blank look. “Oh. That’s interesting.”

  Healer looked around at the familiar brick homes and red dunes. “Am I in the memory with you?”

  “It looks that way. I was trying to just show it to you… I didn’t think you’d actually show up here with me. Come on, this is right before Whisper got hurt. There she is.”

  Healer followed Dreamer away from the large Optera totem and down a winding path toward the mining grounds. Whisper was backpedaling off the road, a pair of dogs advancing on either side of her. The girl had strayed out of bounds instead of doing her work. The dogs lunged, but they never fou
nd their mark.

  For less than a second, shorter than the blink of an eye, there was something else in the place where Whisper stood. But Healer did not have time to see what it was. Then Whisper was back, lying on the ground covered in bites. The dogs were gone. A group of adult quarry workers had dropped what they were doing and were running in her direction.

  “The memory just skips over the moment of the actual attack,” Dreamer said.

  Healer stared at Whisper. “There was something in her place during the skip,” he said. “What was it?”

  “That,” Dreamer fumed, “was the obstruction.”

  “While we’re in these memories,” Healer began hesitantly, “you’re pretty much running the show, right? Can we see that again?”

  Dreamer grinned. “Oh, I can rewind, skip around, go in slow motion, whatever you need. Think of it as a movie running all around us. The only thing we can’t do, of course, is change anything we see.” With that, she took control of the memory and brought it back by a few seconds. When the dogs leapt at Whisper, they did so at half speed. At the moment the skip happened, Dreamer froze the scene entirely.

  The obstruction occupying the space where Whisper had stood looked like some kind of half-alive abomination. It covered an area of ground the size of a backyard trampoline, squatting wide and low, resembling a neglected mushroom, a node of slime mold, or a cancerous lesion. Despite Dreamer freezing this moment in time, it gave an occasional twitch. Here and there splintered bones jutted out from between the swollen lumps of its amorphous body. Unaware, purposeless, barely animate, it sat there taking up space in Whisper’s mind.

  “What in…” Healer’s words failed him. He approached the blob with caution.

  “It’s a mental scar,” Dreamer said. “The memory is locked away in there, I’m sure of it. We need to destroy this thing to access it. Then I can help her process what happened.”

  “You said we can’t change anything we see.”

  “I was talking about the memories, things that have already happened,” she said. “This isn’t supposed to be here. This is a block formed around the moment we need to be able to see. We’ve got to be able to fix this somehow.”