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Burgess was back.
By now, Dream could recite his little proposition by heart, complete with the expletives when he lost his patience, the way he’d glare and yell as if that would do anything at all. At first he’d been controlled, calm and commanding, but time had shortened the fuse on his temper. Extended silence might seem difficult to a human, but Dream found it quite easy to sit there and not say a word, especially when every time he did so he provoked such amusing levels of frustration. His captor was incredibly easy to rile, had moods that stormed and raged, and no matter how calm things always started out, Dream would have his entertainment in the end.
It began as it always did.
“Give me back my son, give me wealth and immortality, and I will—”
Blah blah blah.
It was not even worth listening to, a poor example of rhetoric that was the exact opposite of compelling, and Dream let his eyes drift past the man to rest on his favourite spot on the far wall. Before he’d been so rudely interrupted, he’d been in the middle of a Midsummer Night’s Dream, and he was impatient to get right back to where he’d left off. The human’s droning voice was swiftly tuned out, replaced with a much more pleasing script.
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine—
Dream blinked and suddenly Burgess was gone, apparently having finished his rant without him noticing, leaving two guards sat at a table by the stairs. Perhaps he’d become a little too good at ignoring him. No matter. Dream turned his gaze to them, new ones by the looks of it, and considered what to do next. They avoided his eyes nervously—oh? Skittish hires this time? Well, well, he was being spoiled—and so completely missed his slight, smug smile. It wasn’t quite Roderick Burgess.
But it would do.
Thirty-seven guards quit in the first year.
Dream spent the next seven making good on keeping his record. It was easy, too easy, because even with his powers bound he was still the King of Nightmares, and even without using his voice he could still be as terrifying as one. Humans were such fragile creatures, with so many little vulnerabilities for him to exploit, and it seemed they found being stared at unceasingly for hours at a time ‘disturbing’ and ‘intolerable’. That was, at least, according to the one young man who hadn’t even bothered going upstairs to give his resignation in person, leaping up from his chair after Dream had stared him down for seven hours straight and proceeding to yell hysterically at the woman he’d been paired with.
It had been the boys first day.
Dream had been particularly proud of that one.
Most learnt quite quickly not to meet his eyes—warned that his gaze was hard to look away from, that even his waning power could entrance a mortal—but no one could hold out forever. Trapped as he was, their minds still knew him, knew enough to be afraid, and a primal part of them loathed to have him out of their direct line of sight. Even the veterans, the hardened criminals, were no match for it, forced to compromise between logic and instinct, and Dream found himself incredibly satisfied by how they all kept their eyes so very carefully averted. Skittish at the prospect of looking him full in the face. Fear was a kind of respect, Dream knew, and he would have it from them all.
Burgess wasn’t happy about the staff turnover.
The old man brought it up one day, before even mentioning his son, standing tense in front of the binding circle with eyes like fire. “I know what you are doing.”
Dream very much doubted that.
“I will not let you go.” Burgess said. “Not until you give me back my son. Not until you promise me all that I deserve.”
Dream had no problem with him getting what he deserved.
“—will give me wealth, power and—”
“Sir?” The guard for today was timid, but still brave enough to interrupt. “I don’t think its listening.”
Dream found himself wondering where he was finding all of these people, how Burgess was ensuring the silence of those who left. Surely one would be loose lipped? Surely one would spread rumours of his imprisonment? The Dreaming must be in ruins by now, the damage done to the dreamers themselves apocalyptic, and it should be more than enough for someone to realise that something had happened. Lucienne perhaps, so diligent in her library, or Fiddler’s Green. The other Dreams and Nightmares, they must have noted his absence. They must have known it was out of character, that he’d never just leave.
Surely that would be enough to inspire someone to come looking.
He couldn’t decide if the thought of being found like this filled him with hope or horror.
Horror.
Definitely horror.
He soon discovered an unexpected weapon.
Dream hadn’t been clothed when they’d trapped him in the glass cage. His robe had been taken along with his tools of office. It truly didn’t bother him, besides the fact he was sometimes cold, because modesty was a painfully human ideal. Surely they had done it to humiliate him, to leave him so exposed, but they had tried to mock him with human means, and he found the whole thing quite confounding. The idea that he would break because he was naked was ludicrous. He was aware of how it was supposed to be humiliating, had walked through quite a few dreams where sudden nakedness had made for quite the nightmare.
Quite the fantasy too.
It was something he discovered when attempting to figure out why one of his guards wouldn’t stop blushing.
“Erm. He’s naked.”
“It’s not human John.” The other guard rolled her eyes in exasperation.
“Sure looks human,” The aforementioned John muttered, cheeks flaming red as he averted his eyes, but even as he did so they kept drifting back. “Human enough that this whole thing is a little indecent, wouldn’t you say? Old man Burgess keeps a naked chap locked in a glass cage in his basement and pays us to stare at him all day.”
“We’re guarding it.”
“It’s unseemly. Especially for you. As a woman—"
“Oh don’t be so modest,” The woman snapped, Dream hadn’t caught her name yet. “It’s a job, it pays well, and you need to get over it.”
John grumbled a little, but he didn’t argue any further, and the basement was once again silent. They both must have thought that was the end of it, done and dusted, but their little discussion had planted an idea into Dream’s head that wouldn’t quite let go.
John quit later than week, muttering about ‘indecency’ and ‘temptation’.
Dream was almost tempted to laugh about that one.
The woman left was made of sterner stuff though—Elizabeth, he found out a month later—and she lasted a full year before she finally snapped. Her hands had been shaking for months, she’d had dozens of shift partners leave, and she’d developed a nervous habit of pacing relentlessly the longer she had to stay in Dream’s presence. What finally got to her though was when a storm knocked out the power, the lights in the basement going dark, and from there all it had taken was one look into his glowing eyes for her to lose her nerve entirely.
It was petty satisfaction to be sure, but it didn’t matter. Even without his powers he could still do this, was still himself—
Even trapped he was still Dream of the Endless.
Jessamy died and Dream stopped playing.
Ten years passed as he grieved, unconcerned by the mortals that guarded his cage, the rumours of his power fading with every passing year.
One day someone grew bold enough to tap the glass.
For a moment he didn’t react, too listless to care, but when they tapped again something in him stirred. Annoyance. The sound was irritating, a dull little ring, wood striking stone like someone was reaching a stick across the binding circle, and it was interrupting his train of thought. This time it was poetry—he’d been steadily working his way through Emily Dickinson after he’d finished with Keats, slow enough to enjoy—and he would not have the words ruined by some inane sound. The tapping continued, accompanied by laughter, and oh they had forgotten hadn’t they, they no longer knew just what they had trapped in this cage of glass. It spurned him to anger, pulled him out of quiet grief, and he fixed the man tapping on the glass with cold, seething eyes.
He stumbled back, blanching stark white, and tripped right into the water surrounding Dream’s cage.
Jessamy would have loved that.
The thought crossed his mind one day that, if he played it right, he could probably entice one of them to let him out. He’d noticed some of the looks, not quite the embarrassment he loved to prey on, and not quite the fear, but something a lot more appreciative of his human form. The thought was immediately dismissed, the appreciation wouldn’t go that far, and the very thought of it was vaguely nauseating. He’d have to engage, to lure, and to do so would be to stoop lower than he could abide.
In fact, the very fact he had considered it enraged him so much that he had the most successful week of his imprisonment—
Six guards quit under the pressure of his furious gaze.
“—did you see the paper today?”
Dream was in the middle of designing a new wing of his palace when he heard the whisper. His eyes were closed, they probably thought he was sleeping, and if he were human he would have sighed in annoyance. Why did they have to start talking now? He’d just decided what the arches were going to look like when he’d been pulled out of his thoughts. Dream tried to ignore them, as he ignored Burgess, went back to thinking about whether he wanted—
“Oh yes. Scandalous isn’t it?”
—gold or silver. And the floor, perhaps it could—
“That’s what I said! And my cousin well—”
Dream opened his eyes.
This particular lot were relatively new, had only been working for a few weeks, two young men looking at making quick and easy money. Something about starting a business venture together. They weren’t looking in his direction, too busy gossiping amongst themselves, but it only took a moment of determined glaring before they turned to face him. The magnet of his gaze was undeniable, unavoidable, and not one of these hapless, stupid mortals could fight the pull. As soon as they met his eyes they paled, eyes widening in terror, and abruptly cast their gazes to the floor. Excellent. They were even easier to scare than he’d thought.
“Sorry.” One of them squeaked, seemingly without even meaning too. “We’ll be quiet. Won’t we Ed?”
“Yes. Very quiet.”
Dream didn’t acknowledge them, dismissed them the moment they spoke, and then closed his eyes once more.
There. Blissful silence. Much better.
So, about those arches—
“Just don’t look at him. Don’t give him a reason to pick you—”
Dream’s eyes were closed, in the middle of designing a small cottage to put in the Dreaming, a place of warmth and peace. Perhaps he’d add something to the library next, something for Lucienne. She’d always talked about an expansion.
“Pick me?! What does that mean?”
“Shh!”
If he were not so trapped he would have smiled.
Sometimes things were different—
The elderly man was looking at him with wide, tortured eyes, horrified to an extent few were when they looked on his form. Burgess had a talent for briefing his guards well, for picking them to not care for what they were guarding, but humanity was tenacious. Humanity was, at its core, kind.
Dream knew this.
The other guard—another man, young and blonde—tried to persuade him, grabbed him by the arm and told him to get it together. Said that it wasn’t human. That it didn’t matter.
“This is not what I signed up for,” The old man said, his arm still held fast in the younger ones grip. He stared him down with eyes like broken glass, like memory. “Human or no, it does matter. Evil is evil, and this is evil.”
Dream knew what would happen next.
There was a scuffle, a gunshot, a cry of pain, and then there was blood across the floor. Dark and sticky, warm. The old man who’d tried to defend him was dead like Jessamy. The young blond was swearing under his breath, unbothered, undaunted, as if the life he had took meant nothing. Well—there was something that could be done about that. Dream examined it all, the blood and bone, the men whose names he didn’t know, one who’d wanted to protect and one who didn’t. He saw it all, took it in and made a place of it in his memory—perhaps he’d put it in Fiddler’s Green once he was free— a shrine of mourning to go beside the rest.
Then he set his eyes upon the remaining guard and went to work.
There were others too.
One young woman, Rosaline, had liked to hum Mozart under her breath, or Tchaikovsky when she was particularly bored. Another, Clive, avoided Dream’s eyes by reading aloud, worked through all of Agatha Christie’s works within a month before he moved on to Tolkien. Dream absorbed them both, listening intently from his cage. Time went on, humanity progressed, one day Robin snuck down a record player—“What the fuck are you doing?” “If I don’t have something I’m going to go mad.”—and on one memorable occasion a budding actor used his shifts to practise soliloquies. Jeremy, as he’d been called, had hated Hamlet.
It spoke to him. The creativity, the joy, the hope, but his power was bound, and so was he. All he had was burning eyes; because in this circle he was a nightmare and they would not let him go, they did not know they should.
Dream found he could not hate them.
The humans that came, the ones that hummed songs and read books and quoted poetry—
He let those stay.
Burgess died and it meant nothing.
His son was right to fear, too look at him and see a timer set against his life, because Dream could not forgive what he had done to his raven. He might have lied, of course, gotten out and taken his revenge nonetheless, but Dream couldn’t bring himself to so much as nod his agreement. Pride it was, then. There were worse sins that could be his downfall, he supposed.
He didn’t find out he’d missed his appointment with Hob Gadling until a week past the date.
It almost made him consider taking Burgess’s offer.
Almost.
Alexander Burgess was not his father.
But he was just as mind-numbingly boring to listen to, and almost as entertaining to rile.
Dream’s silence bothered him for different reasons—reminded him of weakness, made him feel guilty—and all really he wanted was to get rid of him. For a price, of course, always the same price. He couldn’t risk it otherwise. The little boy trying to wiggle his way out of a deserved punishment, whining and whinging that it wasn’t fair. Coward. Alexander Burgess was never going to face his crime with courage, never going to understand that judgement was inevitable, and Dream would watch and wait.
He would ignore him.
Shakespeare had been his favoured distraction of choice when the father had come to beg for power, had drowned him out as he droned on and on, but Dream found himself drifting towards Marlowe for the son. Doctor Faustus came easy to his mind, seemed oddly apt, and so he looked past his captor to stare at the wall, settled down for the long haul, and began.
Till swollen with cunning, of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And melting heavens conspired his overthrow.
Dream hadn’t meant for it, the lines had come unbidden to the forefront of his mind, but he felt his lips quirk upwards in amusement. He found himself—
Thunk.
Alexander Burgess had swung a fist at the glass.
It presented a new little game.
Dream found that it was even better when the boy caved to rage, when he yelled and threatened, because made him sound so very much like his father. That man they’d both hated. Alexander Burgess had a demon in him, underneath that soft demeanour that he tried so very hard to embody, and Dream could draw it out with ease. All without saying a word, without looking at him, without even acknowledging him, and as hard as the foolish boy might try, he could never stop himself from giving Dream the rise he always looked for.
The stricken expression on his face when he did so wasn’t just satisfying—
It was glorious.
He stopped coming down as often after the twentieth year, cowed at last by his failure to get what he wanted, and Dream was almost disappointed. The guards continued to rotate, old faces joined by the new, and they continued to quit in fits of fear, and though it provided him an ever changing supply of prey, it was an endlessly tedious cycle. Until one day, two of these new faces glared at each other from the moment they started their shift, spoiling for a fight. Old school rivals, it seemed, stuck together by chance. An unfortunate coincidence.
For them.
Dream’s eyes gleamed.
This would be fun.
Dream was not going to suffer through one more conversation on who should be the one to win Love Island this year.
The guards left within a day.
Inspiring terror remained infinitely entertaining.
Dream had been working on the latest one for about a week—a skittish young man who had just decreased the amount of shifts they spent guarding him—and he knew that he was almost there, knew that all it would take was a little push. It ended up being even easier than he expected. First he dropped his phone, fumbled when he tried to put his earphones in, hands shaking as he tried to recover, and then he made the mistake of glancing too far to the left.
It was over as soon as Dream met his eyes.
“I can give you a pay rise?” The first guard said, the one who had been there longer, sounding resigned. “Lot’s of people hit this point and, well—”
“Will you walk into my parlour? said the Spider to the Fly,” Dream thought as he continued to stare.
The other one blanched.
“No. Absolutely not.”
Dream escaped, of course. He had always known he would.
The magic of the binding had been crude.
It was always going to weaken, always going to shatter, but it had proven an incredibly effective snare nonetheless. The damage that had been done was incalculable. The greed of a foolish, petty man had wrought havoc on billions of lives. The fear of the son only compounded it, a true legacy of the father, extending Dream’s imprisonment only to avoid his own end. And—
Paul McGuire had come down alone once.
He’d stared through the glass and looked him right in the eye.
There was something Dream could have done to him if he’d stayed, if he’d had hours of time to work his will, but it was only a moment. Only a minute.
And Paul had already known he was guilty.