Chapter 10
Thorn fell into the Dream like breaking through a thin skim of ice on the pond.
Surprisingly familiar—and nothing like the dank prison of the root cellar—the landscape of the Dream sucked her in, embraced and liberated her. She rejoiced at her escape, reveling in the vibrant colors and chaotic dance of it all. She had done it.
The world around her solidified and, before long, she forgot she was in the Dream entirely.
She was walking through the cottage, sunlight pouring in the windows, but the rooms weren’t quite the same.
They led into others she’d never seen before.
She marveled at the vast library that seemed to go on forever, wondering how she’d never thought to visit this part of the house before.
This library had been here all along, unlocked and available to her.
Why hadn’t she been reading these books?
Going to a shelf, she eagerly withdrew a tome that she somehow knew would answer every one of her questions—though she couldn’t recall at that exact moment which questions—and she opened it.
The pages blurred before her eyes, however, no matter how she squinted at them.
The letters on the page seemed to knot up and slide away.
Still, she came away feeling as if she’d learned something hugely important.
Filled with excitement, she wandered into the next room, which turned out to be a garden, but so much more glorious than her own.
Flowers grew taller than her head, enormous blossoms unlike any she’d ever seen before, redolent of some sweet scent that reminded her of honey and forbidden romance, the erotic slide of a lover’s skin, their petals draping lavishly and dripping with colors such as she’d never before seen.
She ran her fingertips along their velvety edges, and they caressed her in return, beckoning her into something that felt like love.
Then she stood on the edge of a pond, crystal clear and sparkling with turquoise depths, shapes of silver and gold flitting sinuously through them.
A little girl stood on the far bank of the pond, long black hair flowing nearly to her knees, multicolored, iridescent roses on her dress. Thorn remembered this girl.
“Hello!” she called with excitement, but her voice seemed to vanish, muffled into nothingness. The girl waved and went skipping away.
Thorn wandered through the roses that grew along the fence.
They were purple—a deep violet in the center and lavender at the petal tips, their black thorns like Moriah’s claws, long and lethally sharp, grabbing at her clothing and her skin.
She tried to retreat, but couldn’t, the blossom-heavy canes snaking above and around, filling even the blue circle of sky above.
She wanted to go back to the pond, to the library, but couldn’t.
The roses held her captive and the Dream …
The Dream.
Was this a dream?
No, she was in a dream. In the Dream and she needed to manipulate it, not become a part of it.
That’s what the books had said, some waking, rational part of her remembered.
This was the danger of entering the Dream, that it took a person into itself and made you a part of the fabric of it.
And the Dream wasn’t only of your own self and memories, but spun from all the dreamers in all the world in all of time.
One could encounter anything in the Dream, perhaps contributed by someone who’d murdered thousands in war or lost their entire family.
As if evoked by her thought—and possibly it was—the brilliant garden dimmed, darkening with unnatural night, something sharking through it toward her, smelling of old blood and rot.
She struggled against the roses holding her, crying out as their thorns pierced her skin, adding the scent of her fresh blood and pain, her screams loud in her own ears but swallowed up in the next moment.
She had to get free, return to the safety of the cottage.
Thrashing, she tore herself loose, leaving flags of flesh behind, and ran for the cottage.
The shadow creature loomed behind her, ever closer, even as the cottage receded, growing small in the distance.
The other little girl stood in the kitchen doorway, beckoning to her.
If only she could get back, she’d be safe.
“I am here to keep you safe,” Jada said, suddenly stepping into her path and opening her arms. “You’re only safe with me. Come to me.”
Thorn started to, then saw the chains in Jada’s hands. “No!” she sobbed, beset with terrible grief. A vast and terrible sleepiness washed over her and she crumpled to the ground, sinking into it, dissolving.
That distant, waking part of her thought hard. She was becoming lost in the Dream. None of this was real, and yet it was all too real. The roses snarled and whispered, shaking their canes at her. Back to the cottage, they urged.
You’ll never be safe.
You’re only safe there.
Jada smiled and rattled the chains. The soil covered her over like a soothing blanket.
The little girl with the long black hair ran past, giggling wildly.
“You’ve come this far,” she said to herself. “You entered the Dream when the books said almost no one was powerful enough to do that. But you did it and without anyone teaching you. You can get yourself out again.”
Remember, the roses whispered.
Remember where you’re going.
Out.
She didn’t want to go back to the cottage, once again enticingly near. The little girl stood by the garden gate, waving to her. “Come and play!” she called. “I’ll hide and you seek.” She opened the gate and ran out.
Thorn, feeling herself young and small again, like the girl who was her and not her, gave chase.
She ran for the gate, her feet sinking into mushy, sticky soil, her legs weak, and she moved slowly as a tortoise, the enticing opening drawing farther away.
The little girl had disappeared and Thorn was alone.
Giving up, she began to sink into the muck.
Then the black cat Moriah was there.
Still as a statue carved of ebony, the cat sat on her haunches, tail curled primly around her front paws, only her emerald eyes showing life.
They snapped with anger. “Foolissh, foolissh, child,” she hissed.
“You will be lost forever. Think. Make a doorway and leave. Control the Dream or it controls you. I didn’t help you awaken for you to be lost in the Dream. ”
Sobbing, Thorn tried to reach the open gate.
She needed out. The purple roses waved their thorny canes, petals dripping like violet blood.
The monster sharked its way back and forth before them, barring the way.
Control the Dream or it controls you. Flexing her fingers, she drew the magic into and through them.
It trickled out like egg yolk, thick and buttery yellow.
She flung it at the monster, spattering it with sunshine.
Howling, it dove at her, but she ran toward it, heart pounding.
And then she was through it. Braver now, she ran at the roses, who held out their arms to embrace her, chattering with excitement.
She wanted out, out of the garden, past the fence of roses and out of the Dream.
The arched gateway suddenly loomed before her, encircled by roses.
Now Moriah sat on the other side, just as unmoving, gaze expectant.
Make a doorway and leave. She needed a portal.
Tracing the outline of the gate with a finger in the air, Thorn funneled her sorcery through it, imagining it like the silver-blue of Oneira’s.
It sputtered and went out like a candle flame on a wet wick.
The monster swirled past, suddenly pouncing, and the little girl screamed, tufts of black hair flying like the feathers of a bluebird caught by a hawk.
“Not real,” Thorn said, her words muttering away and becoming blue butterflies with tiny teeth.
They settled on her bare arms and set into painfully nibbling on her skin, as if to prove her wrong.
This was real, in a way, and she could be trapped here forever, gradually blurring into the landscape, perhaps becoming a monster herself who chased other unfortunates.
“I won’t let it be real.” She wasn’t sure if those words ever made it past her lips.
Trying again, Thorn thought of how her psychometry work felt, especially when she explored complex levels of an object’s provenance and history.
That sorcery she’d learned well and practiced with ease.
Perhaps she could apply those skills to the Dream, assessing and exploring its nature, finding the path through.
At first, the Dream poured out, searing her sorcerous senses, making her stagger, and sending the carnivorous butterflies into a bloody blue cloud.
Moriah growled a warning and Thorn wrestled the power of the Dream.
It was far too vast, comprised of too many people and animals and fragments of thoughts and memories going back eons.
She couldn’t possibly parse all of that, any more than she could drink an ocean.
Pulling back, she tried again, but just one slice, just the bit right before her.
The Dream coexisted with the waking world, so all she needed was the boundary between.
Narrowing her psychometry to the width of a paring knife, she peeled away at the space within the gate, thinning it to transparency so that another realm began to show through.
Hopefully that was the waking world and not another Dream space like the ones she’d already wandered through.
It did look like forest beyond, with the strong, dark columns of trees, patterning one after another into the infinite forest.
Heartened, she kept peeling away, until suddenly the skin between the Dream and the waking world popped, like a blister exploding outward.
Moriah leapt away, racing off up a tree to perch on a low branch and dangle a leisurely paw, chin on the other.
The butterflies eagerly swirled through the ragged, oval opening, fluttering off in vivid azure specks through the forest. Thorn hoped that wouldn’t be a problem.
Could dream butterflies survive out there?
For the waking world continued in winter, a contrast to the warmth of the Dream garden.
Perhaps they’d freeze, which might be for the best, though she felt terribly sorry for them.
In desperation, Thorn crawled through the uneven opening, having to wriggle to fit her hips through the squeeze.
No neat, perfectly rectangular doorway for her.
She wept and struggled, her mind splintering into fluttering butterfly fragments.
Then she popped through, falling in an ungainly heap on solid ground.
She’d made it. The forest floor outside the garden remained blessedly stable, no sifting or wriggling.
She became aware of the chill in the air and the sense of reality, colors making sense again.
Turning around, she saw the hole into the Dream sewing itself up, like a wound healing.
And just in time, as the monster sharked toward the opening, lunging partway through, teeth gnashing.
Thorn jumped back with a small shriek and the portal closed over its snout, clipping off a chunk with a couple of fangs.
The severed piece fell to the leaf litter, twitched, then thinned to a shadow of itself until it vanished entirely. Maybe the dream creatures couldn’t survive in the waking world. Her butterflies had likely already vanished.
Now that the portal had closed itself and disappeared, Thorn looked at the white fence with its winter-hibernating rose canes threading black and threatening all through it—and to the cottage within.
A sense of unreality still shivered over her skin.
She’d, of course, never seen her home from the outside.
The rambling cottage looked picturesque as in a storybook, with its gingerbread eaves and many-paned windows, slumbering within the winter-bare garden.
In fact, it looked utterly abandoned, no lights within, no smoke curling from the chimney.
How long had Jada been away this time? Perhaps it had taken her much longer to wake herself up than she’d realized.
Or maybe it always looked this way. Everything looked kind of wrong, as if the shadows had extra edges and the colors had shifted into something like in a painting.
Not quite real. Like in the Dream. Could it be she was still in the Dream and not the waking world?
She wasn’t at all sure how to tell the difference.
Shivering, Thorn realized it was more than the chilling sense of unreality and dreadful worry that had her cold within and without.
She wore only the gown, stockings, and slippers she typically wore around the house.
It hadn’t occurred to her to bring the blankets from the root cellar and, of course, she hadn’t been able to prepare and have handy the cloak and gloves she used for her winter rambles around the garden.
And she couldn’t go back for them. The wards prickled against her face, even sharper from the outside than they’d felt from within.
So, the wards had been keeping people—or something—out, as well as keeping Thorn in.
And now, here she was, outside, alone, and unprotected.
Still, all of these things were signs she was in the real world and not the Dream, right?
It had been so long since she dreamed that she couldn’t remember if people got cold in them.
At least she wasn’t in the root cellar. And it would be stupid to stay here.
Rubbing her arms as the chill worked its way into her, Thorn turned her back on the cottage and surveyed the shadowed columns of tree trunks darkly marching into infinity, the lone path that wended to the distant road. Whichever way she went on that road, she might freeze before she got to shelter.
Looking up to where Moriah silently watched from the tree limb above, tail dangling languidly, just the tip twitching, Thorn considered her questions, wondering which the cat might be mostly likely to spend breath answering. “Which way should I go?”
The cat only watched with glowing emerald eyes. That’s what Thorn thought. It would be up to her. “Can you at least tell me if I’m still in the Dream or awake?”
In answer—or rather, in lieu of an answer—Moriah stood, stretched, then leapt to the ground light as a shadow. “Some lessons, child,” the black cat said, not unkindly, “you must learn for yourself.”
“Please don’t leave,” she cried, but the cat vanished, becoming one with the deep shadows of the forest. Leaving Thorn alone, as always.