This chapter is brought to you by: Dreams - The Cranberries
Nyla and Paul emerged into Mediation Chamber that evening with a stubborn slowness. Paul stared at their mother as though she were a stranger, and wariness veiled Nyla's eyes when she glanced at the Reverend Mother, but this time she nodded to her, the nod one gives an equal.
Their mother closed the door behind them.
"Children," the old woman said, "Let's return to this dream business."
"What do you want?" Paul said.
"Do you dream every night?"
The two children shared a look, giving silent consent to each other to continue. "Not dreams worth remembering," Nyla said. "I can remember every dream."
Paul added, "Some are worth remembering and some aren't."
"How do you know the difference?"
"We just know it." Paul replied.
The old woman glanced at Jessica, then back to the children. "What did you both dream last night? Was it worth remembering?"
"Yes." Nyla began. "I dreamed of a cavern...and water. There are people all around me, with eyes all blue and no whites in them."
Paul added, "I dreamed of a girl there: very skinny with big eyes with that same blueness. I talk to her and tell her about you, about seeing the Reverend Mother on Caladan."
"And the thing you tell this strange girl about seeing me, did it happen today?"
Paul thought about this, then: "Yes. I tell the girl you came and put a stamp of strangeness on me."
"Stamp of strangeness," the old woman breathed, and again she shot a glance at Jessica, and returned her attention to the two. "Tell me truly now, Nyla and Paul, do you often have dreams of things that happen afterward exactly as you dreamed them?"
"Not always." Nyla said.
"I've dreamed about that girl before." Paul added.
"Oh? You know her?" the old woman questioned.
"He will know her. I see her too, but not as frequently as Paul." Nyla supplied.
"Tell me about each of your dreams."
Nyla began. "We're all in a little place in some rocks where it's sheltered. It's almost night, but it's hot and I can see patches of sand out of an opening in the rocks. Everyone's...waiting for something...to go meet some people."
Paul continued. "The girl is frightened but trying to hide it, and Nyla and I seem excited. The girl says: 'Tell me about the waters of your homeworld, Usul. Isn't that strange? Our homeworld's Caladan. I've never even heard of a planet called Usul."
"Is there more to this?" Jessica prompted.
"Yes, but maybe she was calling me Usul," Paul said. "I just thought of that." Again, he closed his eyes. "She asks me to tell her about the waters. And I take her hand. And I say I'll tell her a poem. And I tell her the poem, but Nyla has to explain some of the words - like beach and surf and seaweed and seagulls."
"What poem?" the Reverend Mother asked.
Paul opened his eyes. "It's just one of Gurney Halleck's tone poems for sad times."
Nyla began to recite it:
And shadows under the pines -
Solid, clean...fixed -
Seagulls perched at the tip of land,
White upon green . . .
And a wind comes through the pines
To sway the shadows;
The seagulls spread their wings,
Lift
And fill the sky with screeches.
And I hear the wind
Blowing across our beach,
And the surf,
And I see that our fire
Has scorched the seaweed.
"That's the one," Paul said.
The old woman stared at the two children, then: "Young ones, as a Proctor of the Bene Gesserit, I seek the Kwisatz Haderach, the one who can see into everything. Your mother sees this possibility in both of you, but she sees with the eyes of a mother. Possibility I see, too, but no more."
She fell silent and Nyla saw that she wanted one of them to speak. They waited her out. Presently, she said: "As you will, then. You've both got depths; that I'll grant."
"Can we go now?" Nyla asked, getting slightly impatient.
"Don't you want to hear what the Reverend Mother can tell you about the Kwisatz Haderach?" Jessica asked.
"She said those who tried for it died." Nyla replied.
"But I can help with a few hints at why they failed," the Reverend Mother said.
She talks of hints, Nyla thought. She doesn't really know anything.
But Paul said: "Hint then."
"And be damned to me?" she smiled wryly, a crisscross of wrinkles in the old face. "Very well: 'That which submits rules.'"
Nyla felt astonishment. She's talking about such elementary things as tension within meaning. Did she think our mother had taught us nothing at all?
"That's a hint?" Nyla asked.
"We're not here to bandy words or quibble over their meaning," the old woman said. "The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose."
The two Atreides children stared at her. She said purpose and and the word buffeted Nyla, reinfecting her with terrible purpose. She experienced a sudden anger at her. Fatuous old witch with her mouth full of platitudes.
"You think one of us could be this Kwisatz Haderach," Paul said. "You talk about us, but you haven't said one thing about what we can do to help our father. I've heard you talking to my mother. You talk as though my father were dead. Well, he isn't!"
"If there were a thing to be done for him, we'd have done it," the old woman growled. "We may be able to salvage you two. Doubtful, but possible. But for your father, nothing. When you've learned to accept that as a fact, you've learned a real Bene Gesserit lesson."
Nyla saw how the words shook her mother. She and Paul glared at the old woman. How could she say such a thing about Father? What made her so sure? Her mind seethed with resentment.
The Reverend Mother looked at Jessica. "You've been training them in the Way - I've seen the signs of it. I'd have done the same in your shoes and devil take the Rules." Jessica nodded.
"Now, I caution you both," said the old woman, "to ignore the regular order of training. Your own safety require the Voice. The girl seems to have quite the talent for it, but for the boy...he needs far more, and desperately." she stepped close to Paul and Nyla, and stared down at them. "Goodbye, young humans. I hope you make it. But if you don't - well, we shall yet succeed."
Once more she looked at Jessica. A flicker sign of understanding passed between them. Then the old woman swept from the room, her robes hissing, with not another backward glance. The room and its occupants already were shut from her thoughts.
But Nyla had caught one glimpse of the Reverend Mother's face as she turned away. There had been tears on the seamed cheeks. The tears were more unnerving than any other word of sign that had passed between them this day.
***
Nyla stepped into the training room of Castle Caladan, and closed the door softly. She stood there a moment, staring across the big room bright with the light of noon pouring through the skylights. She saw her brother seated with his back to the door, intent on papers and charts spread across and ell table.
She smirked at his position, as Paul remained bent over his studies.
"Gurney would kill you if he saw your back to the door like this," she said as she strode across the room.
Paul looked over at the small girl.
"I know, I heard you coming down the hall," Paul said. "And I heard you open the door."
"The sounds I make could be imitated."
"I'd know the difference."
He probably would, Nyla thought. I certainly do, with the help of our mother's deep training. Nyla pulled up a chair across from Paul, and sat down facing the door. She did it pointedly, leaned back and studied the room. It struck her as an odd place suddenly, a stranger-place with most of its hardware already gone off to Arrakis. A training table remained, and a fencing mirror with its crystal prisms quiescent, the target dummy beside it patched and padded, looking like an ancient foot soldier maimed and battered in the wars.
"Nyla, what're you thinking?" Paul asked.
Nyla gazed at her brother. "I was thinking we'll all be out of here soon and likely never see this place again."
"Does that make you sad?"
"Sad? Not really. We'll still have all our family. A place is only a place." she glanced at the charts on the table. "And Arrakis is just another place."
"Have you seen Father yet today?"
Nyla scowled, a pang of missing the Duke. "It would be nice if he'd come up here, but it's clear how busy he is. I hope he'll be along later." she changed the subject: "I see you've been studying about storms on Arrakis. I read a little bit about them, they sound pretty bad."
"I'd say! These storms build up across six or seven thousand kilometers of flatlands, feed on anything that can give them a push - coriolis force, other storms, anything that has an ounce of energy in it. They can blow up to seven hundred kilometers an hour, loaded with everything loose that's in their way - sand, dust, everything. They can eat flesh off bones and etch the bones to slivers."
"Why don't they have weather control?" Nyla asked.
"Arrakis has special problems," Thufir Hawat suddenly entered the training room. "Costs are higher, and there'd be maintenance and the like. The Guild wants a dreadful high price for satellite control and your father's House isn't one of he big rich ones. You both know that."
"Thufir, have you ever seen the Fremen?" Paul asked.
"I have seen them," he said. "There's little to tell them from the folk of the graben and sink. They all wear those great flowing robes And they stink to heaven in any closed space. It's from those suits they wear - call them 'stillsuits' - they reclaim the body's own water."
Nyla swallowed, suddenly aware of the moisture in her mouth, remembering a dream of thirst. That people could want so for water they had to recycle their body moisture struck her with a feeling of desolation. "So water's precious there," she said.
Hawat nodded, thinking.
Paul looked up at the skylight, aware that it had begun to rain. He saw the spreading wetness on the gray meta-glass. "Water," he said.
"You'll learn a great concern for water," Hawat said. "As the Duke's children you two'll never want for it, but you'll see the pressures of thirst all around you."
Nyla wet her lips with her tongue, thinking back to the day a week ago and the ordeal with the Reverend Mother. She, too, had said something about water starvation.
"You'll learn about the funeral plains," she'd said, "about the wilderness that is empty, the wasteland where nothing lives except the spice and the sandworms. You'll strain your eyepits to reduce the sun glare. Shelter will mean a hollow out of the wind and hidden from view. You'll ride upon your own two feet without 'thopter or groundcar or mount."
And Nyla had been caught more by her tone - singsong and wavering - than by her words." When you live upon Arrakis," she had said, "khala, the land is empty. The moons will be your friends, the sun your enemy."
Nyla had looked at the Reverend Mother and asked: "Do you see no hope, Your Reverence?"
"Not for the father." And the old woman had waved Jessica to silence, and looked down at Nyla. "Grave this on your memory, girl: A world is supported by four things..." she held up four big-knuckled fingers. "...the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing..." she closed her fingers into a fist. "...without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!"
A week had passed since that day with the Reverend Mother. Her words were only now beginning to come into full register. Now, sitting in the training room with Thufir and Paul, Nyla felt a sharp pang of fear. She looked across at her brother's puzzled frown.
"Where were you woolgathering that time?" Hawat asked.
"Did you meet the Reverend Mother?" Nyla asked.
"That Truthsayer witch from the Imperium?" Hawat's eyes quickened with interest. "I met her."
"She..." Paul hesitated, having trouble articulating what he wanted to say to Hawat about the ordeal.
"Yes? What did she?" the Mentat questioned.
Paul took two deep breaths. "She said a thing." he closed his eyes, calling up the words, and when he spoke his voice unconsciously took on some of the old woman's tone. "You, Paul Atreides, descendant of kings, son of a Duke, you must learn to rule. It's something none of your ancestors learned." Paul opened his eyes, and said: "That made me angry and I said my father rules an entire planet. And she said 'He's losing it.' And I said my father was getting a richer planet. And she said. 'He'll lose that one, too'. And I wanted to run and warn my father, but she said he'd already been warned - by you, by Mother, by many people."
"True enough," Hawat muttered.
"Then why're we going?" Nyla demanded.
"Because the Emperor ordered it. And because there's hope in spite of what that witch-spy said. What else spouted from this ancient fountain of wisdom?"
Nyla looked down at her right hand clenched into a fist beneath the table. Slowly, she willed the muscles to relax. She put some kind of hold on me, she thought. How?
"She asked me to tell her what it is to rule," Paul said. "And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do. She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men."
"How'd she figure your father attracted men like Duncan and Gurney?" Hawat asked.
Paul shrugged. "Then she said a good ruler has to learn his world's language, that it's different for every world. And I thought she meant they didn't speak Galach on Arrakis, but she said that wasn't it at all. She said she meant the language of the rocks and growing things, the language you don't hear just with your ears. And I said that's what Dr. Yueh calls the Mystery of Life."
Nyla smirked. "How'd that sit with her?"
"I think she got mad. She said the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. So I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: 'A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.' That seemed to satisfy her."
"Thufir," Nyla asked, "Will Arrakis be as bad as she said?"
"Nothing could be that bad," Hawat said and forced a smile. "Take those Fremen, for example, the renegade people of the desert. By first-approximation analysis, I can tell you there're many, many more of them than the Imperium suspects. People live there: a great many people, and..." Hawat put a sinewy finger beside his eye. "...they hate Harkonnens with a bloody passion. You two must not breathe a word of this. I tell you only as your father's helper."
"Father has told us of Salusa Secundus," Nyla said. "Do you know, Thufir, it sounds much like Arrakis...perhaps not quite as bad, but much like it."
"We do not really know of Salusa Secundus today," Hawat said. "Only what it was like long ago...mostly. But what is known - you're right on that score."
"Will the Fremen help us?"
"It's a possibility." Hawat said. "I leave today for Arrakis. Meanwhile, you two take care of each other or the sake of an old man who's fond of you, eh? Paul, sit next to your sister facing the door. It's not that I think there's any danger in the castle; it's just a habit I want you to form."
Paul got to his feet, and moved around the table. "You're going today?"
"Today it is, and you two will follow tomorrow. Next time we meet it'll be on the soil of your new world." He walked over and put a hand on each Atreides' shoulder. "Keep your knife arms free, eh? And your shields at full charge." He released the grips, patted at their shoulders, and strode quickly to the door.
"Thufir!" Paul called.
Hawat turned, standing in the open doorway.
"Don't sit with your back to any doors," Paul said.
A grin spread across the seamed old face. "That I won't, lad. Depend on it." And he was gone, shutting the door softly behind.
Paul sat down next to Nyla, and straightened the papers. "One more day here," he said.
Nyla looked around the room. "We're leaving. The idea of it is suddenly more real to me than it's ever been before."
Paul nodded. "The old woman said a world is the sum of many things - the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns - the unknown sum called nature. A vague summation without any sense of the now."
"The question is, what is the now?"
Paul was lost in thought for a moment as he finished straightening the papers, before walking over to the weapons placed on the exercise table. Nyla looked to him with an impish smirk. "I do believe it's fighting time?"
"So it's sass for your elder today," Paul said.
"Two years does not an elder make," Nyla quipped back.
"Where's Duncan Idaho?" Paul asked. "You can't have him walking in and catching you."
"I heard a guard say Duncan's gone to lead the second wave onto Arrakis," Nyla said. "All we have to fear is poor Gurney who's fresh out of fight and spoiling for music."
"I thought it was decided in council that you not being allowed to fight they'd best teach you the music trade so you won't waste your entire life."
Nyla laughed. She went over to the table and pulled a shield belt, buckled it fast around her waist. "Let's fight!"
Paul's eyes went wide in mock surprise. "Guard yourself today, sister - guard yourself." He grabbed up a rapier, laced the air with it. "I'm a hellfiend out for revenge!"
Nyla lifted the companion rapier, bent it in her hands, stood in the guile, one foot forward. She let her manner go solemn in a comic imitation of Dr. Yueh.
"What a dolt the Duke sends me for weaponry," Nyla intoned. "This doltish boy has forgotten the first lesson for fighting one armed and shielded." Nyla snapped the force button at her waist, felt the crinkled-skin tingling of the defensive field at her forehead and down her back, heard external sounds take on characteristic shield-filtered flatness. "It's just as you've secretly taught me: in shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack," Nyla said. "Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!" Nyla snapped up the rapier, feinted fast and whipped it back for a slow thrust timed to enter a shield's mindless defenses. Paul watched the action, turned at the last minute to let the blunted blade pass his chest.
"Speed, excellent," he said. "But you were wide open for an underhanded counter with a slip-tip."
Nyla stepped back, chagrined.
~~~~~
Here we go with chapter two! I see a lot of Dune fanfics with female OCs that have been trained in combat, whether by Duncan or some other force. This isn't quite realistic, as (unfortunately) faufreluches is heavily gender segregated. That's why typically women become Bene Gesserit and men become Mentats or join the Spacing Guild. There will indeed be an amount of canon divergence, but I think for Nyla's character arc it's far more interesting that Paul secretly trains her to fight. Duncan likely has heard whispers of it, but chooses not to report it for his own amusement.
Any questions/thoughts? I want to make the story as book-accurate as possible, and I've only read Dune (although I will start Messiah soon). So if I've made any unintentional lore errors, let me know! Leave 'em in the comments!
-Marten