Chapter Thirteen
It was a most dangerous risk for a dreamwalker to take.
Though it could at times shortcut dreamwalking, giving one’s body a much-needed jolt to wake up before hitting the ground, the depending factors were great.
And if the dream one was in had no end, no bottom, well…
She remembered all too well the son of one of her father’s advisors, paralysed in bed, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling as his soul remained in a constant state of free fall.
Years had passed, and he still hadn’t found land or a way back to his body.
All because he’d tried to shortcut his dreamwalking.
Elara felt the strangest sense of déjà vu before it dawned on her that this was the exact helplessness she had felt when pushed off the cliff by Enzo.
This time, she did not scream, only prayed and prayed, arms flung out, as she flew down, and down, and down.
The dreamscape rippled away, the heavens morphing and shifting.
A blur of colours, of scenes. She saw a city that resembled Castor, though with no sky she’d ever seen in Celestia.
She saw a cemetery—crooked tombstones all in a row.
She continued to fall as other dream worlds flitted past. She saw her Moon Kingdom again, then a palace surrounded by deserts made of pure gold, a blazing orb in the sky behind it.
She saw one underwater, and one wrapped in vines and flowers, and one that floated in clouds and seemed made of ice.
She saw a wild, dark tangle of forest, and a figure kneeling there, hopeless, as shadows reached out yearningly towards him. A head of curls lifted, golden eyes empty and haunted, and Elara saw—
‘Enzo!’ she screamed, reaching out to him as the wind whipped around her, willing herself to fly, to move, to get to him.
She tried her shadows, but a blinding blaze of silver light flashed before her, sharp and searing, and she screamed.
Where in the skies had that come from? She tried again, but once more it came, as though trying to block her shadows.
It was familiar, this power—it had escaped from her before.
Enzo disappeared and she continued falling and falling until finally her body slammed on to the ground, limp, as she groaned.
She lay there, the wind knocked out of her, which she knew was silly since her body could not be hurt like that in the Dreamlands.
She had seen Enzo. And the look he had given her…
Her stomach lurched at the thought. Dreams could never be trusted. But they had felt real, those golden eyes on hers…
She stood shakily, taking stock of where she was. To her surprise, she had landed right outside Eli’s manor once more. She nearly wept with relief.
She held the snakestone to her eye, breathing the cool air in and out—now dry, the rain having stopped.
The sky had lightened a smidgen too, to a dark grey so unlike the pitch-black sky in the waking world.
The footprints now, to her relief, reappeared just as golden as before, this time stretching around the side of the manor.
Though shaken, she remembered her task—to retrieve the hidden prize.
She followed the prints until she stood by the neatly manicured hedges of the maze that spiralled in upon themselves.
But right by the entrance, letters had been carved into the dirt, tufts of grass ripped up, the words rendered crudely, as though with clawing fingernails.
Three lines.
IT IS WATCHING.
IT IS WAITING.
RUN.
Elara did not hesitate, launching herself away from the maze.
But too late. The hedges altered around her, growing and closing in, until she was completely trapped within the maze.
She tried to measure her breathing, tried to will calm over her racing thoughts.
She held the snakestone to her eye, trying to find a way out of the dense vegetation that encircled her—pleading with it to help her.
The golden footprints that had been leading towards Eli’s prize now shifted to pure white as the snakestone took up her new request, and she pelted after them, twisting and turning.
This time, when she veered left, something hurtled into her. She was taken down, and struggled, wrestling with the figure on top of her.
As it pulled away, she recoiled.
‘No,’ she sobbed. ‘No, no, no. Eli, please.’
Above her stood Sofia. She looked as she had before death, her face beautiful, eyes big and grey, her hair long and black as midnight silk. Elara didn’t know why she raised the snakestone, why she looked beyond it. Maybe to convince herself this wasn’t real, that this wasn’t her dead friend.
The sight made her curl in on herself. At Sofia’s throat was a gaping wound, the same that had killed her, inflicted by Ariete’s hand. And her skin…it was blistered, raw and seeping, burned and marred. From Enzo’s fire, she realized, when he had returned to the opera house and set the place ablaze.
‘Please, Eli, stop this!’ she screamed to the sky as she lay there, Sofia merely staring at her silently. She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Let me out, Eli!’ she pleaded.
Sofia pinned Elara to the ground, which gave way beneath her as she struggled. Elara screamed, trying to force Sofia off her. But the gory ghost remained, a weight upon her chest, until she couldn’t breathe.
Hands sprang from the mud, caressing her limbs, her hair, the grass now a bog as her body began to be dragged, deeper and deeper, into the peat.
‘Please!’ she begged the spectre. But Sofia merely watched as the light grew dimmer and dimmer.
And, like all the other figments within the dream, she did not listen.
‘Silvertongue!’ Elara roared. ‘Stop this now. Silvertongue!’
She launched her shadows out of herself, trying to wrap them around the hands that gripped her.
But the shadows bent and buckled under her will before breaking free. They began to twine through Elara’s hair, following the pattern the hands were making.
‘Elara?’ Eli’s voice finally sounded through the dream, far more distant than before, echoing in the grey sky.
‘Eli,’ she cried, choking. ‘Get me out of here. This isn’t funny.’
‘Elara,’ the voice came again, distorted, ‘what are you doing to my dream?’
She struggled, but the more she did, the more she tried to stop the shadows and the hands, the tighter they laced. One coiled around her throat, and she let out one more bloodcurdling cry before they bound her arms to her body, grabbing and scratching.
Sofia blinked vacantly, looking down upon her the way a mourner would a grave.
‘Eli, I’m not doing anything,’ Elara wheezed, her breath a mere stream as panic took hold of her, as well as the choking shadows. ‘It’s not my magick.’
‘Well, it’s not mine either!’ There was panic in Eli’s voice that only furthered her own.
She heard Eli’s breathing halt. ‘Elara, you need to leave. Now.’
‘Help,’ she gasped, squeezing her eyes shut as a sob escaped her, the dirt pushing its way into her mouth.
‘Someone’s here. Someone that shouldn’t be.’
‘Who?’ She coughed. ‘Eli, help!’
‘Elara, someone is watching. Wake up.’ Alarm was high in his voice.
She tried to respond, but the dirt was thick in her mouth now, the taste of the soil an earthy, vile tang. She spat and wheezed.
‘Elara,’ Eli snarled. ‘If you don’t wake up, Enzo is lost. Think of him. Picture him and allow it to anchor you. Then wake the fuck up.’
She felt something slap her cheek and she tried to cry out again, but she couldn’t make a sound as one of the hands in the bog crawled around her face, forcing dirty fingers into her mouth.
She tried to scream but instead gagged at the taste of soil and rot.
The mud rose around her until the light and Sofia were wholly swallowed.
Buried alive. She was being buried alive.
She whimpered, refusing to accept that this would be the end of her, trapped within a Star’s dreams for eternity when her love waited in another. She would save them both.
With that in her mind, she closed her eyes tightly, ignoring the hand within her mouth, the dark, wet cold of the earth that tried to claim her.
She conjured a memory. Enzo, on his knees in the dirt, cupping Light between his palms as her favourite flower grew between them.
She forced herself to feel it—the warmth of his light, the hope within it.
She imagined him giving her the forget-me-not now, the blue petals soft and fragile against her fingertips.
I will never forget you.
She held on to Enzo’s Light, even as the bog completely enveloped her.
She allowed the Light to shine over her, to search until it illuminated her tether.
If she could have sobbed with relief, she would have.
But instead, she forced her hands to wade through the thick mud, grasping it and yanking.
With an almighty heave, it pulled her from the bog, and as she gasped for breath, trying to blink away the dirt, her tether wrenched her back into the waking world.
Elara came to, gasping as she pitched forwards. Cold—she was so cold. And wet. Hands touched her and she screamed, pushing them away as she whirled, looking around.
‘Where am I?’ she cried.
‘Elara, Elara, it’s me. Look at me, Elara, look at me.’
She had never heard such command in Eli’s voice and turned until she found his dark gaze. He held hers, steady, and she could feel his charm wrap around her, trying to smooth the tumultuous waves of anxiety and fear crashing within her mind.
‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Easy.’
‘Am I still in the Dreamlands?’ she sobbed again. She was wet, and her ankles—they were stuck. She looked down and nearly lost all composure. She was in the marsh. Surrounding her were gravestones—the same ones she had seen from the carriage.