Makers

Cora led Adam through the landing and into the kitchen. It was the biggest one he’d ever seen, and the glossy appliances made him feel like it was built for a restaurant, not a family home. Cora led him over to the large central table and dropped him onto a stool. Adam winced as he sat, his left side flaring in pain again. He wondered how injured he actually was. Broken ribs? Internal bleeding? He was sure Cora’s family had a top-notch first aid kit, but maybe he should’ve asked them politely to take him to a hospital.

“Stay here a second, I’ll go get Iris.” Cora disappeared through a side door and Adam found himself alone. In the quiet of the kitchen, he could hear just how loud and cruel his thoughts had become.

He made something, something dangerous.

Cora was right. He had made it, he accepted that now. There was only one place a thing like that could’ve come from. With all the books he’d read, and all the movies he’d watched, he assumed he’d seen the limits of what the human imagination could conjure up when it needed something dark and terrible. He’d seen evil in all its forms, but he’d never seen anything like the Nightmare. Made by fear, and pain, and hopeless insanity. What would a monster like that possibly want? And it did want something, Adam was certain. He could remember the way it looked as he’d fled. Beneath the look of horror on its face, there was thought, there was intelligence. There was a being with purpose. Adam visibly shuddered to think of what such a purpose might be.

The only things on the other side are what we put there.

Whatever the Nightmare wanted, whatever desire it had, came from Adam. So the question was, what had Adam wanted, in the midst of that beating? To stop Marcus, that was obvious, and hadn’t it been the first thing the Nightmare did? But it had done more than that. It had come for him next. Why would it do that? What had Adam really wanted? What would anyone want when they feel themselves breaking into pieces? When they lose all sense of who they are, reduced to a single impulse to end their pain at all costs. And when your world is nothing but pain, doesn’t that mean ending everything?

The side door to the kitchen swung open. Cora had returned, and with her was an older woman. Not an old woman, but “older” was what came to mind. She was perhaps fifty, but it was impossible to say for sure. She had the same air of someone who had lived a great deal more than someone her age, and her older appearance only made this even more potent. He noted that she did not look like Cora, her lighter hair and features removed the possibility that this might be Cora’s grandmother.

“This is Iris,” said Cora as she approached. “Iris, this is…” A look of anxiety crept over her face, as they both realised he’d never even told her his name.

“Adam Ledger,” he said to Iris, trying not to look as pathetic as he felt.

Iris came over to him, scanning his various injuries in a practised manner. The family doctor, perhaps?

“Pleased to meet you, Adam.” She spoke softly, and it sounded genuine. “Do you mind?” She gestured towards his injured left side, and Adam nodded his consent. She lifted his dirty school shirt and Adam could see a red and purple bruise covering this side from just above his waistline up to his chest. Cora inhaled sharply at the sight, but Iris simply examined it for a few moments and lowered his shirt back down. “At least three broken ribs, maybe more.” She looked at his face, swollen and covered in dried blood. “A bit worse for wear, but no serious damage there.”

“Are you a doctor?” asked Adam.

“I’m a maker, with a few… specialities, you might say.”

“What is a maker? Everyone keeps saying that but no one’s told me what it means.”

Iris and Cora exchanged curious looks. “Your parents, they never spoke to you about this?”

“No, why would they?” Adam heard the defensiveness in his voice. He did not want to talk about his parents and resented the question. Why couldn’t they just give him a straight answer?

“Well, because being a maker is almost always hereditary,” explained Iris, her voice reacting to Adam’s by going in the opposite direction, a tender counterbalance to his anger. “But it seems you are an exception there too. Quite extraordinary, given what I’ve heard about… the incident at the bus stop.” She looked at Adam with pity, not bothering to hide it or excuse it, but to simply let him know that she was sorry for what he’d gone through, and for what he had yet to face. She seemed all-knowing in that moment, like she’d lived countless lives and could now read the patterns in others. Even though she might not be able to see into Adam’s future, she could certainly predict where the present moment was taking him, and it was nowhere she’d want such a frail young boy to go. “I’ll fix those ribs for you now,” she said with such conviction that Adam just nodded his thanks. There was no doubt in his mind that Iris would do as she said she would.

She lifted his shirt again. “A maker is just a person, Adam, different from all the others in only one meaningful way. Our imagination.” Adam thought he saw something in the air around her now, barely visible, only there if he really looked for it. Not cracks, but something less damaging. An opening rather than a breaking. “The world is not what you think it is,” continued Iris, and Adam felt the throbbing ache in his side begin to fade. “It’s a collection, nothing more. All living things adding their unique perspectives, merging them together until a Consensus is reached. Until a reality is made. But not the reality, Adam. There is no such thing.” The pain was gone now, and Adam looked down to see the bruise had receded into a small, yellowish patch less than half the size of what it was, like weeks of healing had passed in those few precious moments. “Humans were the first living things with the imagination to make changes. To disagree with the Consensus. And we made many things Adam, strange and wondrous things. It was easier back then. There were fewer of us.” She spoke like she was telling him a story from her childhood, one filled with nostalgia and the bitterness of a person facing the sunset of a day they never wanted to end. “Now the world is stagnant. Bloated with people but starved of any real imagination. The Consensus grows stronger every day, like slowly-drying concrete. The once malleable liquid we could shape as we pleased is becoming cold and hard, paving over everything the world once was, and most of us can’t even recognise the bitter irony of it all.” She paused, and considered Adam for a moment. “Only the strongest of us can make changes now. Only those with imaginations that are still defiant, still free.”

Adam sat there, breathing quickly but painlessly thanks to his healed ribs. “So, the cracks are just… they’re just…”

“They are what happens when you force the Consensus to change,” finished Iris. “Some see cracks, others, smoke or mist. For me it’s always been a shimmer, like sunlight on water. It changes from person to person, and of course, from the severity of the change itself.”

Adam could not look at Iris anymore. He stared at his hands instead. They had done nothing for him when Marcus was beating him to a pulp. His entire body had been useless, abandoning him to the violence. But his imagination hadn’t. It had fought back. In his moment of need it had done what his frail body could not. It had made a change, and brought the Nightmare out of the dark recesses of his mind and into reality. And it had saved him, hadn’t it? Yes, it had saved him, but not by choice. It had not attacked Marcus for hurting Adam, it had attacked him because he was there, and because it wanted to. If what Iris had told him was true, then there was no limit to the things he could have made, the heroes he could have called forth from the cracks to protect him. The good-hearted, honour-bound type, like the hero he always pretended to be in his fantasies. But what had he created instead? What did that say about the person he was, deep down? When push came to shove, he’d called upon the strongest part of himself for help, and it had not been a hero. It had been a monster, the worst he’d ever seen. Shame burned hot within him, and he felt a wave of nausea in his stomach. Not wanting Iris to read his feelings, as she seemed so capable of doing, or to be sick all over their pristine kitchen floor, Adam kept his head down and his mouth closed.

Iris let him sit there in silence, but not for very long. “You are not the first to make a monster. Not by a long shot.” Her voice was compassionate but stern, like a parent who knew they couldn’t blame a child for making a mess (that’s what children do, after all) but they certainly could get them to clean it up. “This monster, if what Cora says is true, might be the worst one the world’s seen in a very long time… I cannot say for sure, but my instinct tells me you will need to play your part, if we ever hope to unmake it.”

Adam chanced a look up at her face, dreading what he might see there, expecting the same disappointment he always saw in the eyes of adults. Or worse, the indifferent way his dad had looked at him ever since his mum left. Like he was staring right through him, as if he wasn’t there at all.

In Iris’s ageing, graceful face, he saw neither. Only a quiet expectation. Almost a challenge. As if she was saying, there’s more to you, we both know it. So get out there and prove it.

The front door banged open and frantic shouts echoed from the landing into the kitchen. Adam, Cora, and Iris all snapped their heads towards the noise as one, then scurried over to the adjoining door to see what was happening.

A group of people were gathered around something in the middle of the landing. Adam recognised Cora’s mother, but the rest were strangers. Iris pushed her way through, and Adam got a brief look at the thing on the ground.

It was a man, writhing in a hauntingly familiar way. Eyes bulging, mouth screaming without a sound. A man driven insane with fear.

There was no need to ask what happened. There was no question in Adam’s mind.

The man had met the Nightmare.

“Bring him upstairs - easy now, watch his head - and put that boy in my office and lock the door.” The man speaking was tall, dark, and handsome, everything Adam thought a good hero should be. As the writhing man was carried up the stairs, Adam was escorted towards a door on the left hand side of the landing. It was wooden, and intricately carved. It also looked thick and formidable, and it had a rustic deadbolt that would’ve been more at home in a dungeon.

No one spoke up against the tall man’s orders. Even Cora and Iris let Adam be escorted away without so much as a second glance. The tall man didn’t help carry the writhing man, he simply stood in the centre of the landing and watched his words move everyone around him, shaping reality just as he wanted it, with no cracks, mist, or shimmers in sight. Adam got the impression that this was someone who was so used to the world bending over backwards for him that he’d stopped thinking of it as a place that was shared. Too much evidence pointed to the fact that it was his world. He was at its centre, and everyone else was only here because he allowed them to be. It was not a cruel thing, just as a lion is not cruel for following its nature and killing an antelope. But it frightened Adam all the same. What would a man like that do to someone who could not fall in line when he commanded them to? What would he think of the boy who had disrupted his world so thoroughly that he was forced to second-guess the control he believed he had over it?

Adam was shoved lightly into the office, and the wooden doors made a creaking sound as they were closed behind him. There was a deadbolt on this side as well, which reassured him that they were probably more decorative than practical. This was not a prison cell. One look around the spacious room was enough to convince him of that.

Books sat in orderly rows along the walls. Couches formed a comfortable seating area around a table inlaid with a beautiful map of the world. Stands of different heights and widths were tucked into corners and the gaps between furniture, all of them holding rare and interesting looking things: a vase painted in the style of the ancient Greeks, a moving model of the solar system made entirely from dark hued wood, an hourglass filled with clear, glittery crystals that made fractal patterns with the light shining through the large, arched windows. And the capstone of the room was the desk. Imposingly big, yet mostly bare, it was positioned beneath the windows and had an elegant mahogany chair behind it, seeming to say in no mixed words, here sits the one in charge.

Adam felt drawn to the room, and walked slowly among the stands, browsing the books along the walls, and feeling like he might just be in a daydream after all. How else could he explain all that had happened to him in the span of a single afternoon? Alone in this fascinating place, he felt like he’d been a fool to believe any of it could actually be real. The beating, the Nightmare, the House of Aetos, and Iris’s healing. The makers - people that could change reality itself. And now this room, like it had been pulled straight out of a mystery novel. It probably even had a secret passage hidden behind one of the shelves. He tried tipping a few books just to check. Nothing happened, but he was still convinced this was all just one of his elaborate fantasies. Maybe he’d fallen asleep in class? Or perhaps the beating really had happened, and he was in a coma in the hospital right now. Even that grim thought was a relief. Anything that drew a line in the sand between his old life and the moment the Nightmare had arrived, was fine by him.

The creak of the doors and the sound of footsteps entering the room made Adam turn, filled with anger that anyone would interrupt his fantasy now that it was finally getting good. The tall man was walking towards him, a look of intense displeasure on his face. Adam felt his cosy belief that this wasn’t real slip away. There were some things his imagination could never get right. The complexity of another person’s emotions, especially when it was so far removed from his own, always had a shallow feel to it. But there was nothing shallow about what this man was feeling. It went straight to his core, and whether by choice or natural design, he didn’t try to hide a thing.

The man walked straight over to the mahogany chair and sat down on it with a practised grace, then he gestured to Adam to take one of the seats across from him. Adam obeyed, choosing the seat furthest from the man. It was made with wood and leather and had a pleasant smell and a comforting feel to it, but Adam’s instincts were screaming at him to get up and run. Even the expansive desk separating them created no sense of protection, like the walls of a tent when it’s late at night and you hear the sound of something large sniffing around your campsite, making you painfully aware that the only barrier between you and death is a sheet of cheap polyester. Adam hated camping, and he hated sitting here at the mercy of this man.

“Introductions first, I think,” the man said, as if politeness had been ingrained in him at a very young age. His voice was like the rest of him, picture perfect. “My name is Dorian Aetos. My daughter Cora, you know, and I believe you’ve also met my wife, Elena, and our healer, Iris.” He stopped and waited expectantly for Adam to make his own introductions.

Adam was feeling so anxious that it took him a few moments to actually remember his own name. “Adam Ledger,” he said with little confidence, and Dorian raised an eyebrow.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened today, in your own words,” said Dorian, and Adam felt like he was being lured into a trap. It was obvious Dorian already knew exactly what happened, so why get Adam to repeat it now? Was he trying to catch Adam out in a lie, or force some sort of confession out of him?

Adam began to describe everything that had happened since he arrived at detention. Even though it had only been a few hours ago, it felt like digging through old, half forgotten memories. He spoke jarringly at first, but eventually fell into an uneasy rhythm. When he was finished, they sat there in silence for what felt like a very long time.

“That is quite a story, Adam. Quite a story.” Dorian was leaning back now, fingers casually interlocked over his lap. “There are, of course, a few major problems with it.” Adam felt his adrenaline spiking. Heart racing, vision narrowing, palms sweating, and that instinct, that deep, visceral impulse to run. “The first, and largest by far, is that you say this, Nightmare, stopped coming after you when you fled. That it seemed to… reconsider. That it was thinking for itself.”

“It did, I mean… it looked like it did,” said Adam, trying to think through the fog of anxiety.

“Oh I’m quite sure of it,” said Dorian. “That man you saw on my floor, the one in a bad way, to say the least, is what we call an Inferno. It’s a rank, or more accurately, a title, that is used by makers all over the world. Even we don’t remember its origin and we remember almost everything. But it’s obvious that it came from humankind’s mastery over fire. Ember, Flame, Blaze, Inferno. They’re titles of increasing power. The Inferno have been the strongest makers in the world for over half a millennium, yet you saw what that Nightmare did to him.” He leaned forward now, hands resting on his desk, almost like he was preparing to leap over it. Adam had a sickening vision of being crash-tackled out of his chair and borne to the ground, torn apart by this powerful man’s bare hands. “I am also an Inferno, as is my wife. We may look young, but we are older than most of what you call history. So believe me when I tell you, I know what is possible to make, and what is not. Do you really expect me to believe that a child, with no training whatsoever, could make something that even I couldn’t? Something with true consciousness?” He looked at Adam like they were sharing some ludicrous joke together. His mouth was all smiles, but his eyes stubbornly held onto their displeasure. The result was unsettling. It made Adam think of something volatile, like a bomb or volcano, something that could sit still for long enough to fool you into believing it’s safe, then the next moment it consumes you, with wrath and fire.

“It was an accident,” was all Adam could say. The words drained the smile from Dorian’s face.

“Oh I’ve seen plenty of accidents Adam. Most monsters so dangerous that even the unimaginative masses we call mirrors can remember them, were nothing more than accidents. Makers who had cursed themselves with their own lust for power. The Upir, or vampire as you probably know them. The Lycanthrope… werewolf. Beneath the dramatics and fancy enhancements, they were just makers. Powerful makers of course, but no more powerful than any other Inferno. Certainly no more powerful than me. If I wanted to turn myself into a monstrosity like that I could, right here, right now. But to make a being from nothing, with entirely its own mind, the complexity of human thought, the intricacy of human desire. No… no, that is something entirely different. That is something that has not been seen for a very long time. That maker would warrant a title we have not needed for over five hundred years… that is what we would call a Wildfire.”

Silence filled the space between them. Dorian watched Adam like he expected him to spontaneously combust at any moment. Or was it that he expected him to reveal something? To offer up some explanation that would satisfy his need to understand, that would reassure him that there was no Wildfire out there, and certainly none in this room. But Adam could give him nothing. He thought about lying. Maybe if he just admitted that someone else had made the Nightmare, someone older, then maybe Dorian would let him go home. But then what? Going home meant going back out there, where the Nightmare was. It could be waiting for him in his house right now for all he knew, lurking under his bed, or in his cupboard. Just thinking about it made him start to shake. He hated the man across the desk from him. He couldn’t help but think of Dorian as just another spoiled, entitled bully, comparing him to the cruel yet popular kids in school. He’d seen what happens when they start thinking someone else is becoming a threat to them, that they might soon be dethroned from their position of influence and power. They get nasty. They fight dirty. Believing they have everything to lose and nothing to gain seems to bring out a desperation that makes even the mightiest look rotten inside. Adam was still afraid of someone like that, but his fear of Dorian paled in comparison to his fear of the Nightmare. He would rather keep Dorian’s attention, if that’s what it took to have him as a barrier between himself and what was waiting for him out there.

“I’ve told you everything. Please, can’t you just stop it somehow? Just kill it, or make it disappear, or something?” For a second he remembered how he’d felt when he first saw the Nightmare, its face contorted with fear. The frail way it moved. Adam had felt deep pity for the thing, almost an urge to protect it. Then he remembered what it had done to Marcus, and quickly squashed those feelings like a cockroach beneath his shoe. If Dorian could kill it, then that’s what he wanted him to do.

Dorian’s mouth was smiling all on its own again. “Well, that’s just it, Adam. It would seem I can’t ‘just kill it’, as you so eloquently say. It’s exponential, you see. The difference between an Ember and a Flame, why, it hardly matters. The difference between an Inferno and a Wildfire however…” he paused, and when he continued, Adam could hear the edge in his voice. Was it sadness, or was it bitterness he heard grating against every syllable, like each one had committed a great offence that must soon be dealt with. “One could burn this town to the ground, it’s true… but the other… the other could burn the whole world down with it.”

Adam could hear his own blood thumping in his ears. He noticed his hands were shaking and buried them beneath his legs. Dorian was letting his words sink in, content to let Adam figure out the implications on his own. If the Nightmare was more powerful than Dorian, and whoever had made it was equally as powerful, then Adam was more than just a threat to this man. He was a threat to all of them, to Cora and her mother, to Iris and every maker they knew. What would Dorian do to protect everything he has and everyone he knows? What would Adam do in his place? Suddenly Adam was struggling to breathe again, like his ribs had been rebroken. He didn’t know what Dorian was capable of, but he knew without any doubt that he would not let someone so dangerous just walk away from this. Stopping the Nightmare would not protect him from Dorian and the other makers. It was too late. All they would ever see when they look at him now was a threat. A monster. A Wildfire.

“I don’t want to burn anything down.” Adam heard his voice say these words without any conscious decision to speak.

“Yet you say you’re the one who lit this particular fire, and believe me Adam, it will burn down a great many things before it goes out.” He surveyed Adam carefully, his face was so expressive that Adam could almost see the shifts in his thinking. The furrow between his eyes softened for the first time, and it was clear he’d decided to try a different approach. “I can see you’re a good person, Adam. A kind person. So kind you might even try to take the blame for something you didn’t do… to protect a friend.” He gave Adam a warm smile, and it was relieving to see he was actually capable of them. It confirmed a nagging question in the back of Adam’s mind, that this man was indeed human, not something imagined, something brought into this world through cracks. Adam latched onto that warmth like a person at sea latches onto a lifeline. He couldn’t help it. The need to be accepted is an addiction all human beings share. “You can tell me the truth, Adam, she will understand. Just tell me it was her, and I promise we’ll keep you safe. Then you can go home.”

There was a gleam in Dorian’s eyes now, a kind of hunger and excitement that reduced him in Adam’s mind, making him seem less commanding, like he’d given up some higher purpose in exchange for some base desire. Adam felt like the room was tilting on an axis, the walls and floor slowly spinning around him, leaving everything blurry and out of focus. Dorian had never believed Adam made the Nightmare, not for a moment. He wasn’t threatened by this scrawny kid in front of him, and he wasn’t afraid that a Wildfire had revealed itself for the first time in centuries. He just thought he was being lied to. That Adam was keeping something from him, something he’d wanted for a very long time. His Wildfire.

“Enough.” The word was spoken softly and Adam recognised the voice instantly. The room stopped its lopsided spin. Iris had joined them. Twisting in his chair, Adam could see her walking casually across the room, Elena at her side.

“Let me handle this,” said Dorian, and there was such a threatening undertone in his voice that Adam recoiled, but Iris and Elena didn’t break their stride until they came to a halt on Adam’s left side.

“He’s telling you the truth, as much as he knows of it anyway,” said Iris. “Even Elena agrees. There’s only one person who can tell you if she had a hand in this or not, and she’s sticking to her story. If she’s lying, it’s not difficult to guess why. I did warn you not to push her so hard. A parent’s expectations must grow with the child. You’ve always asked too much of her, too soon. And look where it’s gotten you.”

Dorian’s face had lost most of its handsomeness as every feature was drawn into a centre point around his nose, as if Iris was force feeding him something horribly sour. Yet he did not lash out at her, despite how much he clearly wanted to. Adam got the impression she was the only person in his life that could speak to him like this and get away with it.

“I’ve expected no more of Cora than I have for any of my children. The Aetos name is the expectation. She carries the same burden as us all.” Dorian looked at Elena, daring her to question this, forcing her to say out loud whether she sides with him or not.

Elena spoke like she was having trouble opening and closing her jaw, every word a fight against her urge to grimace. “Cora is different, we’ve always known that. But maybe… maybe she’s not different in the way we want her to be.” Adam thought he caught the disappointment in her voice, but there was also great affection there. He had no doubt that Elena cared deeply for her daughter, and he once again felt grateful she was here, one of the few adults he’d ever felt he could trust on instinct. He was even more taken with her now that there was a man like Dorian here to compare her with. Someone who only triggered his instinct to run.

Dorian was looking at his wife as if she’d reached across the desk and slapped him. “Can you really be so blind? We’ve spent years waiting for a sign that Cora is a Wildfire, and now we’ve seen the proof with our own eyes, and yet you believe this - this half-baked story - this obvious lie - she’s just trying to cover up the fact that she made something dangerous.” He spun towards Iris, a hint of madness in his eyes. “If anything, you’re the reason she’s lying! You’re always filling her head with those stories of rogue makers - as if I’d ever let her be one of them. You’re teaching her to be afraid of her own powers!”

“And you’re only seeing what you wish to see, as always,” said Iris, so calmly it snapped Dorian out of his fever.

“I am seeing exactly what’s in front of me,” said Dorian, controlled once more. “But perhaps we are all losing sight of what’s important right now. The truth about Cora will come out, but first we need to deal with this… Nightmare.” He turned back to Adam, almost surprised to see him still sitting in his leather chair, gripping the edges of his seat so tightly his fingers were going pale and numb. “We might not agree on who made it, but we can all agree on why it was made.” He smiled, his mouth curving upwards to reveal pearly white teeth, while his eyes stayed narrowed, making him look unstable and dangerous once more. Adam got the distinct feeling of being cornered, with all chance of escape now well and truly gone. “Which means… we’re going to need your help, Adam Ledger.”