Dreamthief

by Tamara Grantham

Twenty-nine

  I woke during the hour right before sunrise. Sitting up, all the sleepiness drained from me. That giddy, light-headed feeling returned when my mind played over last night’s events.

  Kull kissed me.

  After dressing, I grabbed my bag with the dream catcher and my mirror and headed for the door.

  Kull slept like an overstuffed bear carcass with his legs hanging off the couch’s edges. He looked pretty, too, his eyes closed peacefully like a baby’s. Even though he wasn’t awake, my stomach knotted at the sight of him. I wanted so much more.

  I suppressed my feelings and left my apartment, dream catcher in hand.

  Waves crashed in the distance. Evidence from last night’s storm covered the island. Tree limbs lay strewn across Seawall Boulevard. Water gushed into the storm drains, carrying palm fronds and empty soda cans with it.

  I crossed the street and stood on the seawall. Wind tousled my hair as I inhaled the scents of the sea. The sun still hadn’t crested the horizon, which was how I wanted it. For this spell to work, the conditions needed to be perfect.

  The first rays of sun counteract negative energy. Assuming everything went well, by the end of the spellcasting I should know who had made the dream catcher.

  Standing on the seawall, I watched the waves crash over the sand. It reminded me of another time. Over a hundred years ago, on this very island, the worst natural disaster in American history had played out. It was the storm of 1900. There were no meteorologists or Doppler radar. The storm hit without warning, taking the lives of over six thousand souls. With so many lives lost, the remaining survivors had nowhere to put the bodies, so they stacked them on barges and dumped them out to sea, thinking their problem was solved. Days later, the bodies came back. They washed up to shore, partially decomposed.

  I scanned the ocean. Reliving such a horrific scene hadn’t been my intention, but sometimes the ghosts of the past demand to be remembered. It would be foolish of me to forget.

  The survivors had erected this wall I stood on to protect them from future storms. I wondered if it would protect me.

  Finding a staircase, I descended the wall, and stepped onto the beach.

  I scanned the horizon. This early, I was the only person out here. The sky matched the gray water. Foam frothed as the waves crashed along the beach. I found a spot near the water and sat on the sand.

  Opening my bag, a shiver ran down my spine as I pulled out the dream catcher and mirror. I placed the dream catcher in front of me and the mirror beside it. In the muted moments before sunrise, the dark talisman looked unnatural, as if it sucked out all the light surrounding it.

  I opened my mirror and scanned each of the figurines. Dragon, elf, Wult, pixie, and goblin. Each glowed with their respective magical colors. Inhaling, I picked up the dragon first. I held the statuette over the woven loom. The magic remained dormant, so I replaced the dragon and moved on to the elf.

  As soon as I held the figurine over the loom, blue Faythander light glowed from the elf. I drew back.

  Elven magic.

  I called the magic again just to make sure. Blue light shone from the statue. But how could this be possible? Goblins had attacked us at the temple ruins. Clearly, they were involved. Were goblins and elves working together? The thought seemed ludicrous. They were sworn enemies. They hated each other with a deep-seated prejudice that went back centuries.

  I tested the Wult and pixie with no magical reactions. When I picked up the goblin statuette, my heart thumped. Perhaps my mirror box had become tainted once I’d lost it.

  I tested the goblin.

  Nothing.

  I thought I knew enough about Faythander magic to discern whether the enchantment was elven or not. I was half-elf. I understood elven magic, and this was not elven magic. Yet the facts stared me in the face, and I had no choice but to accept them.

  I replaced the statues and clicked my mirror case shut.

  The first sunrays of dawn lightened the sky. I stared at the enchanted dream catcher, my heart thumping, and prepared to spellcast it. If an elf had enchanted the loom, I had to know who.

  I stretched my hand over the woven fibers, feeling the taint of dark magic contact my fingers before I touched it.

  Sunlight warmed my face as I touched the loom. Even with the dawn, its taint nearly overpowered me.

  An image flashed through my mind. I saw a carcass-strewn battlefield. The red sky matched the bloody carnage. My impulse was to draw back, but I kept my hands on the loom.

  I pushed the image aside. Instead, I thought of the word that would reveal its creator.

  “Illuminate,” I whispered.

  As soon as the words left my mouth, the scene shifted.

  In the dreamer’s eyes, the world became symbols. The logic we experienced in our world got shut out, and instead, we saw thought, we saw feeling, but we did not see reality.

  I wore the form of a grizzly bear as I stood in a study. Books surrounded me, some stacked as tall as towers.

  A girl entered the room. She wore a blue robe with a cowl kept low over her face. In her hands, she held an ordinary-looking dream catcher. Blue thread wrapped the white loom—the sort of thing you’d see for sale at a gas station.

  She stopped when she reached a column of books, and only then did I realize that an elven man sat behind the stacks. He took the dream catcher from the girl, and then he stood.

  He was so tall that I couldn’t make out the features of his face. With a whispered word, he waved his hand over the loom. Black magic burst from his fingers and coated the loom in slime.

  It oozed over the threads, darkening them, until the loom looked nothing like it had before.

  The two people exchanged money, and then the vision faded.

  Before I could pull away, the scene shifted once again.

  I saw the same battlefield, but this time, a woman stood at its center. Although, to call her a woman was unfair. She was otherworldly. I had no idea whether she was elven or pixie or human. Lush black hair fell over her shoulders. She wore a suit of armor made of red scales. Spikes tipped her shoulders and kneecaps. Her smooth, orange-colored skin clashed with her strange, crimson eyes. Her pupils were the oddest things to look at—instead of one pupil, she had three. Long and slitted, they fanned out from the center, each intersecting the other at the middle, reminiscent of a ceiling fan’s blades.

  I shuddered when I looked at her. I got the distinct impression that she had slaughtered all those people piled at her feet. Her face revealed no expression.

  I released my grip on the dream catcher. My breath sounded loud in my ears. Who was the woman on the battlefield? Or perhaps, what was she? Was she the Dreamthief?

  The vision of the man and young girl stayed with me as well. I tried to make sense of it. I didn’t recognize either of the people, though in a dreamstate, that was no surprise. Both had seemed familiar to me.

  I thought of the girl first. She seemed young. Although I couldn’t see her face, I felt she was human. Other than that, I had no way of identifying her, so I thought of the man instead.

  He was surrounded by books, which I assumed denoted his intelligence. Also, when he stood, he’d towered over me, which in my mind meant he was important.

  I heard footsteps and turned. Kull stood behind me, a can of Dr. Pepper in hand. I stood and brushed the sand off my jeans.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “Looking for you.”

  I rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache throb. Not even eight-o’clock, and already a headache. I blamed it on Kull.

  “I thought you might have missed your morning meal, so I brought you this.” He held out the can. “I hear spellcasting can be a strain.”

  I wanted to protest but took it instead. Ice-cold carbonation burned down my throat. The headache dulled. Food is the way to a man’s heart, blah, blah—it’s the other way around. Never accept a Dr. Pepper from a man you might have a very small crush on.

>   “Did you discover the source of the spell?” Kull asked me as I tucked the dream catcher in my bag, grateful to get the thing out of my sight.

  “I think so. But it’s not what I expected. The magic is elven.”

  He knitted his eyebrows. “Elven?”

  I nodded.

  “There were two people involved in its casting. A young girl and an elven man. I got the impression that he was intelligent and possibly high ranking.”

  “If so, this does not bode well. It means the elves have been compromised.”

  “You’ve spent time with the elves recently. Did you notice anyone acting strangely?”

  “Elves have no personalities. It’s impossible for me to say.”

  Touché. I rephrased my sentence. “Did anyone seem unusual?”

  “Not that I noticed. Did you see anything else?”

  I pondered the vision. Surely I’d missed something. The magic in the spellcasting was familiar, it was definitely elven magic, but it seemed very advanced. Only a few people knew how to control magic like that. Euralysia could have, but the person in my vision had been a man, so it obviously hadn’t been her. I could have done it if I’d had several years of preparation, and—

  I gasped as the truth sank in.

  Kull raised an eyebrow.

  “It couldn’t be,” I whispered.

  “Who?”

  No, no, no. All my life I’d sought his acceptance. Why did it have to be him?

  “You’ve discovered this man’s identity?”

  “I think so.”

  “Who is it?”

  There were other mages in the elf kingdom. It could be anyone. There was no way it was him. Yet I couldn’t deny that sinking feeling I felt deep inside.

  “My father.”