Note: I had been away for a couple weeks, so this scene somewhat overlaps with the previous.
This Cabeswater was both familiar and foreign. Adam recognized it well enough to know he was in Cabeswater, though not all the pieces were in place yet. He stood in a construction zone of sorts, a living dream, and in the way of dreams, the things he could identify were not quite true—that rock formation used to be taller, that tree had too skinny a trunk, the crooked wooden swing that had hung there was missing.
Was he truly back in Henrietta? Could he walk out of Cabeswater and find himself in solid, unchanging environs? Adam didn’t think so. He’d been at school, studying, hundreds of miles from Henrietta. Cabeswater had snatched him, not physically but mentally or spiritually or… something. The body he wore now was not physical.
How long could he stay separated from his physical body without it giving up on him?
If Ronan had created this place, there had to be a way to contact him, let him know he needed help. The question was where would Ronan be? The clearing Adam stood in looked mostly finished, but maybe there was some area Ronan was focused on building or refining. That assumed Ronan did anything in a methodical way, but Adam had no other options. He didn’t know which direction to start in, how large this Cabeswater was, anything.
He closed his eyes against a rising wave of anxiety. What if I’m already dead? He shook his head, deciding he could tackle that problem if and when it arose. And if he was dead and this was the afterlife, well, there were worse outcomes when faced with eternity.
Ronan, Adam thought and then immediately pushed the that thought away, too. He didn’t want Cabeswater to fabricate a clone of Ronan in an attempt to appease him. Show me, he thought. Show me where he is, or where he goes when he’s here.
Adam opened his eyes and saw the path bending ahead of him through the trees. It looked as though it had always been there. It begged the question, “How could you have missed it?” Yet hanging beside the seemingly well-worn track was a splintering wooden swing that definitely hadn’t been in evidence minutes before.
He hesitated. The appearance of the path might be anl answer to prayer, but the swing felt ominous.
“What do you want?” he asked the trees. “What do you need? Why am I here?”
The trees rustled and whispered but Adam could not distinguish any distinct words. Did this Cabeswater speak some other language? God, did it speak that weird dream language from the puzzle box? If so, he was screwed.
No time. No time to stand around and ask questions while his body slowly died in a dorm room somewhere.
He began his trek through the strange new Cabeswater.
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