by Emma Hamm
“Yours?”
“Of course not.” A few more of the lights danced towards her. Up and down they bobbed, landing on her hair and shoulders.
“You look like a fairy.” He smiled as the soft words crossed his lips.
“Used to be one,” she whispered. “Or one of them did.”
“Wren.” He leaned forward to brush off one of the lights. “You know this is a dream.”
“It can’t be,” she whispered. “I would know if this were a dream.”
Her response made little sense to him. She had always controlled her dreams with ease. Or she had when he had first met her. Perhaps she was too startled to recognize the dream that had been her own making. He didn’t understand why E wasn’t stepping in.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t a dream,” he said.
“You might be.” Her hand opened to allow the light freedom. It was caught on the wind and pushed towards his face. He stepped backwards, but it continued to hover just before him. Inside its depths, he could see another dream.
This was weird even for Jiminy.
He had never been a fan of heights, and they were easily hundreds of feet off of the ground. His stomach lurched as he took a deep breath and settled down onto the edge with her. His feet hanging over the edge was enough to send his nerves spiraling.
Thankfully this wasn’t his own dream. This would have been a nightmare for him.
“I usually know when I’m in a dream,” Wren muttered.
“Yes, you usually do.”
Her big grey eyes stared at him for a few moments before she let out a long breath. Her feet stopped moving as she realized that this was, indeed, a dream. She was so easy to read for him. Her thoughts played across her face like an open book.
“Okay. So this is a dream.” She frowned at one of the lights. “What was I doing before the dream?”
Jiminy grinned. “Sleeping I’d imagine.”
She blew out a puff of breath that stirred the strand of hair which had drifted across her face. She leveled him with a glare. “Aren’t there rules about telling dreamers that they’re in dreams?”
“Yes.” He leaned back on his hands to avoid looking at the cliff edge. “But you don’t handle dreams the same as the others. How did you not know you were dreaming?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head as she looked around them. Wren appeared to be as surprised as he was that she was dangling this high off the ground. “I have a feeling it has something to do with the real world. But I can’t put my finger on it.”
He pondered her confused tone for a few moments. The silence was not filled with the voice of her creature as he had expected. It had been so curious last time and spoke to him with such ease that he had assumed E would make itself known once more.
“Have you considered that E might be a Dream Walker?” he asked her. “I’ve never met any other creature who was so aware of the dreaming world.”
“E isn’t a Dream Walker.” She said quietly. Her fingers scratched at the edge of the cliff and crumbled bits of it away. The lights scattered in the wake of the falling stones. “Why are we here?”
He shrugged. “It’s your dream, not mine.”
She looked up at him an arched an eyebrow. The mischievous expression almost made him grin.
Burke wasn’t going to encourage her. He was elated that he could see her again. Staying away from her dreams had been incredibly difficult. He had grown used to her odd quirks and how many times he had been forced to hide smiles behind his hands whenever she spoke to customers. Not having her in his life had been uncomfortable.
In essence, he had missed her.
Her eyes slid past him, back towards the city that was stretched out before them. He watched her lids lower as though she had recognized some bit around them. Hope bloomed in his chest. The sooner she recognized the dream, the sooner she could control it.
“Wren?” he asked. She was too intent, glaring a little too hard at the light coming from below them. Almost as though she was uncomfortable in the knowledge.
“E.”
Burke relaxed once more. “Right, you’re talking with the Curiosity. I’ll stay quiet.”
“No,” she muttered, “E isn’t here. That’s why the dream is so foggy.”
“What?”
“I’m confused,” she whispered as she stared even harder at the ground. “I don’t feel right, Jiminy. E is gone, and I don’t know where I am.”
He blinked at her. Wren was hardly even speaking the way she normally did. Her voice was slurred, and her eyes were half mast. She was usually lucid in dreams, but now she was reacting the same way any normal human would. Jiminy hadn’t expected to find her like this.
The gears in his head turned until thoughts finally clicked into place. “Wren, did the Five send people to come and get you?”
She glanced at him with giant grey eyes. “I don’t remember. Is it even possible to remember the waking world in a dream?”
“You can. You have to think, Wren. Did someone come and get you?”
She pressed a palm against her forehead and squeezed her elbows against her ribs. “I think so. I remember water and… and a lion. But that doesn’t make any sense!” Her voice grew loud with frustration.
Lyra and Jasper. Of course they had sent the two agents he disliked. He growled. “I told them not to send those two. They’re too meddlesome. Wren, they likely hit you with a nulling dart. It separates you from your creature.”
“You mean E is gone?”
Burke knew the exact moment he lost control of the situation. She shuddered, once, twice, and then a fog started to roll in towards the city. He wanted to swear, but instead he reached out to grasp her arms. She was still shaking. Her eyes were locked onto the white mist that was slowly swallowing the light beneath them. He didn’t have much time.
“Wren, look at me.” Slowly, her eyes eased away from the city. “You have to stay calm or you’ll lose control of the dream.
“But E-”
“E is fine. It’s probably sleeping or waiting for the drug to wear off. Just like you.”
Her eyes danced over his features, and for a moment, he thought that she was going to be okay. He had her. The dream was so nearly under her control. But then her eyes moved again. As though a magnet was drawing her gaze, she looked back down at the city.
“Wren?” he asked quietly.
“I remember this.”
“This place?’
“This nightmare,” she shuddered. “I remember what happens here.”
His nostrils flared as a metallic scent on the air was pushed towards them by the wind. He didn’t want to admit that he knew the scent. Blood.
Slowly, he turned to glance behind them. In the darkest recesses of her dreams, the shadows were beginning to stir. The lights blinked out one by one. Each time they cracked open, and shadows spilled from what was once glowing.
The darkness had the vague shape of men. But their edges were constantly warped as wind blew through them. They brushed past the two seated on the edge of the cliff and trailed down the edges like a waterfall of pitch black. An army of shadows moved towards the city.
His head snapped back towards Wren. Her eyes followed the dark forms, and her expression remained flat.
“I know them,” she whispered, “or I used to.”
“You need to control the dream, Wren.”
“I can’t,” she whispered as she watched the shadows while they started to take on recognizable shapes. “Not without E.”
“For God’s sakes, Wren. You have to!”
He didn’t know if the shadows were a threat to them. It didn’t appear that they even looked at the people on the cliff. They continued to stream down towards the city and swallowed the lights in obsidian swirls.
“What is happening?” he asked her.
“Death,” she whispered. Her eyes remained on the city as though it was necessary for her to bear witness. “They used to eat souls.”
/> He could hear the screams then. Soft, the sound started with the low wail of a child. Even high on the cliff, he could hear the pathetic sound. Then another scream, and another, joined the sound of the child until it reached a crescendo of anger and pain.
The shadows were swallowing people whole. They had gathered together into a wave of pain and anguish that devoured the city before them.
“Wren,” he moved away from the edge. “Wren, we should go. Take us away from them.”
“Have to watch,” she said quietly. “They’re mine to watch.”
“They aren’t!” he replied fiercely.
She looked at him then. Burke stopped breathing as he saw that black sludge stained the pristine white of her dress. It looked like blood but dripped like sap off of a wounded tree.
“This is my nightmare,” she whispered. The lavender hair floating around her slowly turned black as ink.
Burke refused to listen to her rambling. He wrapped his arms around her and stood up with her. He used his back as a shield against the horrors that were happening in the city below and turned her face towards his neck.
“Wren, darling,” he whispered into her hair as she shivered in fear. “I need you to focus on getting control of this dream. We aren’t here. This isn’t real.” He knew how real this would feel to her. Burke was beginning to fear that this was a memory they were locked in.
Dreams were fragile things. They were created usually from an experience that the dreamer experienced during the day. But sometimes, a rare dream bloomed from a long buried memory. Those were much more difficult to control and much more dangerous to a Dream Walker.
“Did you hear me, Wren?” he asked her.
Her hands clenched harder around the fabric of his shirt before she nodded.
“Don’t open your eyes. None of this is happening if you keep your eyes closed.”
It was happening. Of course it was happening. Burke needed to stall. There was always a key to a dream. He simply had to find the one thing that had triggered this memory. A button, sort of, that could be pushed which would propel the dreamer out of the dream.
He just had to find it.
A shadow formed passed her shoulder. Unlike the others, this one did not immediately jump down the cliff. Instead, this one looked directly at the two standing at the edge of the cliff.
Of course it wasn’t going to be this easy. How did one fight a shadow? Jiminy had been in many situations in dreams, but he hadn’t been in this one.
“Jiminy.”
He glanced down at her, and the strong column of his throat convulsed as he saw her eyes were open. She wasn’t looking at him, but through him. Once more, Jiminy had become part of her dream.
“What did I say, Wren?” He held her chin between his fingers and forced her to look at him. “Keep your eyes closed.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t.”
The shadow started to walk towards them. He could see now that it was made of an inky substance that glistened in the moonlight. A wide mouth of teeth was the only feature on its vaguely human head. The mouth was gnashing as it stepped forward.
“Don’t hit me for this,” he told her.
He curled his body around her in hopes that he could startle her out of the nightmare. His much larger body molded to hers. Heated flesh pressed against heated flesh She blinked and stared up at him. An inhale pressed her chest against his, and her mouth opened as though she was about to speak.
He wasn’t going to give her time to think. Burke leaned down to press his mouth against hers. She was even softer than he had imagined. Suddenly, the dream became one of his own. His hands tunneled into her long strands of curls and pulled her towards him.
A dream is not reality. A dreamer can only be what they think themselves to be. Yet she was everything he had imagined. He could not taste her, but he could feel every inch of her skin that was pressed against his. He could feel the heartbeat that thumped against his chest. He could feel the way her muscles softened as she leaned into him.
Reluctantly, he pulled away from her. A blush stained her cheeks a becoming red. Her lips were a glistening strawberry red that he wanted to taste again.
It was too late for that.
He felt the shadow move more than he saw it. The slow stumbling walk had been easy to ignore when he had her warm body in his arms. Except now it wasn’t stumbling anymore. Rushing forward, it swallowed all the light around them. He felt heat against his side. Pain bloomed along with a bright flourish of blood that splattered past them in slow motion. Surprised, he pressed a hand against his side and felt how cold the skin was around it.
He would be bleeding in the physical world as well. For a Dream Walker, any harm in a dream was reality. “Wren.”
She flinched away from him.
“Wren, you have to make them disappear.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide, and her chest heaved as she sucked in great gasps of air. He had lost her to the nightmare once more. “I can’t do it.”
“You can, and you must. I am wounded in the real world if I am wounded here.”
She shook her head. “Then you should leave. You’re already hurt.”
“I’m not going to leave you alone with those things.”
“You should,” she whispered before flinching again when one of the shadows brushed by her. Its hand trailed down the long length of her arm as it passed. His eyes widened as she saw the bright line of silver blood upon her flesh.
“Wren, why is your blood silver?”
“It always has been.”
“That’s not part of the dream?”
“None of this is a dream, don’t you get that, Jiminy?” She hugged herself. Her hands smeared the silver blood in bright glittering streaks. “This is a memory.”
“I’m not going to leave you here alone.” He lurched forward, turning her so that his back was to the shadows. Any pain should be his to bear. His thumbs lingered upon the high arches of her cheekbones. “You shouldn’t be scared and alone.”
He didn’t know what made him say it. Perhaps it was the fact that he had never seen her afraid. Even when a Satyr was threatening bodily harm, she had refused to show any kind of fear. She had babbled and argued. Jiminy had never seen her so silent.
She pulled back slightly to look up at him. Grey eyes that reminded him of a storm connected with his hazel eyes so soundly that he swore he felt a zing of electricity run down his spine.
“It is mine alone,” she said quietly. Her hand raised to touch the cleft in his chin as a sad smile stretched across her face.
One step was all it took for her to slip out of his reach and fall backwards into the darkness. One step and all he could do was grasp at air. His hands were frozen into claws as her dress fluttered and snapped in the wind.
“Wren!” he screamed at her falling form.
Harm be damned, he wouldn’t let her hit the ground. Not by herself. He lept off the edge of the cliff without thinking of the damage it would do to his mortal body.
His body became an arrow as he desperately tried to reach her. Arms outstretched, he willed his body to be less human and more mist so that he might reach her in time.
He hit her hard and wrapped his body around hers. Mist like body became solid as he held her close to his chest.
“Take control!”
Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she clutched his shirt in her fist. “I can’t, Jiminy. I can’t!”
Moments after she spoke, time stopped around them. They hovered mid air as the wind gentled.
“Wren?” he asked.
In his arms, she stiffened. Her eyes flipped backwards in her head, and her body twisted to bend over his arm. Painfully, she contorted as her muscles seized. He curled her body towards him while being painfully aware that it was not longer Wren that he held.
“Don’t get too close to her.” The voice was not Wren’s. E had returned though its voice was slightly warped.
“Too late for that.”
“You keep saying that,” the creature grumbled. Its usual power was not in the words that were muttered.
Burke frowned. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked as he gently held Wren’s body away from him.
“Still fighting against the barrier. I feel very tired.” Her eyes were drifting shut.
“You’re in a dream.”
“And only just managing to control it,” E muttered before opening Wren’s eyes again. “She’s off limits, Dream Walker.”
He felt the power inside of him raise in answer. His eyes changed to a glowing blue. “You do not tell me who is off limits, Curiosity. And I believe you are a Dream Walker just as I.”
“Perhaps,” E murmured before clicking its fingers. Everything around them disappeared. Both Jiminy and Wren’s body were now standing in a meadow full of flowers and butterflies. The same meadow as the first dream and the meadow E had told him Wren liked the best. Now he wondered if it was E that liked the meadow more than Wren.
Jiminy looked around for a moment before he turned back towards E.
The creature looking through Wren’s eyes blinked. “You need to go now.”
“And leave her in this dream she’s going to turn back into a nightmare?”
“I need you to wake up, Burke,” E said. “She’s in your world now. Haven. They took her and blocked me from her mind. I need you to take care of her for me.”
“If they blocked you from her, then how are you talking to me?” He had to ask.
“She’s awake now.”
“What? How is that possible?”
E looked at him with a sad expression on Wren’s face. Burke found it disconcerting as he knew the body before him but did not recognize the movements.
“I’m the one that’s asleep,” E replied. “Now go to her. She needs one of us.”
Burke woke up.
CHAPTER 6
Wren’s head was pounding. She could feel every heartbeat thump against the inside of her skull. The last time she had felt like this had been after she drank enough to put a troll under the table. Had she been drinking?
Honestly, she couldn’t remember. She raised a hand to press against her temple and let out a soft sigh. She winced as even that minimal sound was too loud for her sensitive ears.