by Carrie Ryan
“Ah,” Ardent said. “Yes. This is a dream I had long ago. I have only visited the Library once, but I left this here as my donation. It was such a significant thing, this dream, and I could scarcely keep myself from revisiting it today.”
He motioned out over the balcony at the fungus forest below. “You see, everything here is a symbol for something else. The mushrooms represent the decay of the Wizards of Meres; the tower is the impenetrability of my arrogance; and as you can see, Annalessa has brought me here, above one and outside the other.” Annalessa smiled demurely.
The bovine harpist struck a lovely chord. Ardent stared at it, lifting a finger to his lips. “Not really sure about the cow, though.”
“Okay,” Marrill said. The thought of seeing the inside of Ardent’s mind made her more than a little uneasy. “Weren’t we looking for something, though?”
Ardent stood up slowly. “Indeed. The dream ribbon. I fear we will have to make our way to the Shell Weavers themselves to uncover that one. We simply have to find Tanea Hollow-Blood and—”
“Ardent, watch out!” Annalessa yelled. Marrill jumped back. Yellow fire spurted from Annalessa’s hands, scorching the harping cow.
“What in the—”
The cow lurched forward, wreathed in flame, and standing on its back legs like a man. The firelight glinted off the edge of a butcher’s knife glued improbably to one hoof. Its eyes glowed red as coals. With a mighty moo, it threw up its knife-wielding hoof and charged straight at them.
Marrill leapt aside. The assassin hurtled past her, swiping the air where she’d been standing. A second later, its momentum carried the creature off the balcony, a long MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO following it all the way to the ground.
Panic and adrenaline pumped through Marrill’s veins. “What did that symbolize?”
Ardent’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “That’s never happened before. It wasn’t a part of my dream.” He glanced at Annalessa, and Marrill could see real fear in his eyes.
“Nightmares,” Annalessa said. “It may be the entire Library is infested.”
Ardent drew a deep breath. “Which can only mean the void is drawing closer,” he declared solemnly. “It must almost be upon us.”
“We have to find the Shell Weavers and get the dream ribbon,” Marrill reminded him. “Before it’s too late!”
Annalessa traded a look with Ardent. “The nightmares,” she told him. “You’ll have to draw them away.”
He nodded and then stepped forward. “Take care of her,” he told Annalessa. Then he reached out and trailed his fingers through the air by her face, as if afraid touching her might cause her to disappear. “And take care of yourself.”
Annalessa laughed. “I’m just a dream, silly old man.”
“But you’re my dream,” Ardent told her.
She smiled at him. Then, without a word, Annalessa picked up a bowl full of soup from the table and spun toward Marrill. “This way, fast,” she said, thrusting the bowl into her hands.
Marrill nearly protested, but looking for reason, she realized, was not the way to go when dreaming. She stared down into the bowl.
The soup was brown, the color of a paper grocery bag. A bubble rose up in the middle of it, then popped. A coiled mass of tentacles bobbed up where the bubble had been.
“Eeewww,” Marrill managed. Then the tentacles twitched and fanned out in radiant colors, just like the helpful anemone from the painting earlier. The soup swirled, and Marrill felt like she was falling down into a long, papery hallway.
When she looked up, Marrill found herself hanging upside down like a bat from the ceiling of a cave. The floor below was a field of flowers, but not like any flowers she’d ever seen. More like multicolored fans, again reminding her of the anemones.
“Hey, where did you come from?” a voice nearby asked. She turned to find Fin standing next to her. Or rather, hanging next to her. He was upside down as well.
“Fin!” she cried, throwing her arms around him. “You’re okay!”
He hugged her back. “Yeah, this place is weird.”
She released him and stared down at the sea of fans beneath them. “Any idea where we are?”
Fin shook his head. “None.”
Marrill took a cautious step, waving her arms for fear of losing her balance. As she did, little particles danced through the air around her hands, swirling gently. The air, she realized, wasn’t air at all. It was water. They were submerged completely, though it was no trouble to breathe or speak.
She turned, searching for a familiar purple cap. “Where’s Ardent?” she asked.
“I haven’t seen him since we got here.” He scratched his head. “Unless he was the one wearing the basilizard mask earlier?”
Marrill shrugged. “Maybe?”
Fin strolled along next to her, shuffling his feet against the ceiling and causing phosphorescent bits of silt to drift down around them. “Any luck finding the bolt of dream ribbon?”
She shook her head, feeling defeated. “I haven’t even found the Shell Weavers.”
Fin stopped. “But I thought…” He looked down at the field of fans covering the seafloor below. “Isn’t that what those are?”
Marrill blinked. “Wait,” she said. “The anemones are the Shell Weavers? I thought the Shell Weavers were people!”
“I guess not,” Fin offered.
She tilted her head. “How did you figure it out?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He frowned. “Dream logic? You know how sometimes there are things in your dreams that you just know even if you can’t explain?”
“Kinda like how we figured out that cow was evil earlier.” She frowned. “Though maybe that was obvious because of the knife.”
Fin stared at her skeptically. “Um, okay. Sure. Probably.”
“It made sense at the time.” She waved a hand at the sea fans. “So all we have to do is explain the situation to the Shell Weavers and ask them to help.” She bent her knees, getting ready to push off the ceiling so she could get closer to the creatures.
Fin grabbed her wrist, holding her in place. “Except they won’t understand you. I tried earlier, and it seems like they only speak in dreams.”
Marrill closed her eyes and took a deep breath of water. So she couldn’t explain their predicament to the Shell Weavers, couldn’t ask them for help. How, then, could she convince them to give her the ribbon?
She thought and thought. Throughout her life, Marrill had always had a special place in her heart for animals. She knew them, and liked them, better than most people. You just had to understand their language, that was all. You just had to come to them on their own terms.
She tried to remember everything she knew about this place, listing it in her head. The Library of Dreams. Collected from all across the Stream. People came here, like Ardent, to make a deposit.… She let out a deep sigh, swirling barely visible plankton in front of her eyes.
That was when it came to her. Deposit. She’d thought about it like dropping something off at the bank or returning a book to the library. But deposit had another meaning, too. It could mean layers of accumulation, like sediment dropped out of water—or calcium laid down by coral. And wasn’t this whole place a coral reef?
“How did I miss that?” she muttered out loud.
“Miss what?” Fin asked, confused.
“These aren’t anemones,” she explained. “They’re coral polyps. They build their reef out of deposits made from dreams.” She laughed, still struck at how obvious it was. “Yurl even explained it to us, right from the beginning!”
Fin still frowned. “Uh, sure. How about I just take your word on that?”
She nodded. “And if we want to make a deposit, the Shell Weavers will come collect it. All we have to do is dream our own dreams.” She paused, tapping her finger against her chin as she thought it through.
“But it has to be something the Shell Weavers will respond to. Something to make the poor agitat
ed creatures feel safe, despite all the nightmares flooding the world.”
Fin gulped. “Nightmares?”
“Because of the void,” Marrill explained. “It’s getting super close, and Ardent said that’s causing them.”
Fin looked around. “Are we safe here?”
Marrill shrugged. “Ardent’s supposed to be distracting the nightmares. He should let us know if things start getting too dangerous.”
“But—”
Marrill grabbed his hand, squeezing. “Don’t worry. Just dream of something happy and safe.” She closed her eyes, already knowing exactly what she planned to dream about.
Drowsiness settled around her. “I’m going to see my mom again.”
CHAPTER 14
The One Where You’re Falling
Fin stared at the twinkling lights of the Khaznot Quay. A warm breeze blew across the bay, bringing with it familiar scents and sounds: pirates haggling deals on the docks, butterbeast roasting in the market, winds howling down from Nosebleed Heights. The little boat he stood in rocked softly, the wash of waves like the hush of a lullaby.
He sighed, content.
Marrill had told him to dream of something happy and safe, and this was as happy and safe as he could remember—the night his mother had brought him to the Quay.
A familiar hand landed on his shoulder. He knew what would happen next, and he tried to slow the memory down, to savor it. His mother would point up into the night sky, to the brightest star in the heavens, and tell him, “No matter what happens, so long as that star is still there shining, someone out here will always be thinking of you.”
He held his breath, waiting. But when she lifted her finger and he tilted his head back, he found only emptiness above. The sky was thick and black, almost viscous.
Not a single star shone in the darkness.
He twisted, trying to turn and look up into his mother’s eyes, but she held him fast. Her hand was almost painful on his shoulder. The waves grew choppier, tossing the little boat violently from side to side.
“Where’s my star?” he asked, the question edged in panic.
His mother’s voice came out cold, hard. “I guess this means you’ve been forgotten.”
Drums began to sound, the beat matching the tempo of his heart. Growing louder. Stronger. More familiar. Dread began to pool in his gut.
“Mom—”
The woman behind him laughed. It was a cruel sound, sharp edged and biting. And he knew then that the woman holding him fast wasn’t his mother. She was the Crest of the Rise. “I told you I would come for you,” she hissed in his ear. “Because you belong with us.”
Fin struggled to break free, but it was impossible. Large, dark shapes heaved around him in the darkness. Warships with the sigil of the Salt Sand King blazing to life on their hulls, the dragon-under-waves symbol outlined in fire.
They were coming for him. Bearing down on his tiny boat. Above him the sky broke apart, shattering in a spiderweb of red lightning. At the head of the Rise armada, a ship burst from the water, her metal hull cutting through the waves like glass.
The figure on the bow wore the familiar armor, but something was different about him. He was smaller, narrower. As he neared, he tore the iron mask from his face, and Fin saw himself.
It was Vell. It had to be. Clad in the Master’s armor, captaining his ship. Except the boy’s hair was shaggy like Fin’s. His cheeks a bit rounder than Vell’s, and the way he held himself looser. Fin’s thief’s bag hung from his hip.
“Sorry, jog,” the boy in iron said as he called for ramming speed. The armada—led by the metal ship—bore down on Fin’s little boat, only heartbeats away from crushing it into driftwood.
Fin had no choice but to dive overboard, remembering too late that he didn’t know how to swim. The brackish water closed over his head, pressing tight around him. He flailed and kicked but nothing worked. He just sank deeper, his lungs burning.
Breathe, a soft voice whispered in his head. He shook his head, panic shooting through him like lightning. Breathe, the voice said again, more insistent.
He didn’t have an option. He fought as hard as he could, but eventually his mouth opened and he sucked in a gasp of water. He felt it fill his lungs, thick and cold. He waited for the choking sensation, for the coughing to overtake him, but nothing happened.
He could breathe underwater!
Fly, the same voice told him. This time he did as he was told and reached for his skysails. They fell open with a snap, and the next thing he knew he was soaring through the water. He laughed, the sound erupting from him in a froth of bubbles. He spun and swirled, twirled and dipped.
In moments he’d made it to shore, and he hauled himself out of the surf. He expected to find the giant wooden piers of the Quay stretching above, the sand dirty at his feet. But instead when he stood he found himself in the middle of a lush garden, surrounded by flowing green leaves and flowers of all colors. Every scent imaginable wafted through the air, and quite a few unimaginable ones, too.
He looked behind him. The Khaznot Bay was gone. But he could still hear the drumbeats of the Rise pounding, and he knew, somehow, that they continued to chase him. He wasn’t safe.
Before him stretched a path. He started down it, slowly at first but then gaining speed. He raced through twisted gardens, feeling more and more lost, until he rounded a curve and realized he was no longer alone. He slowed, ducking into the underbrush. A wizard sat on a bench just ahead, her iridescent robes spread around her like ribbons of cloud. It wasn’t until we saw her defining feature that he recognized who it must be: Tanea Hollow-Blood. One of the Wizards of Meres.
Ardent had mentioned she had a rather magnificent beard, Fin recalled. He had to agree.
She seemed to be talking to someone. Fin shifted closer, trying to see who. A sharp gust of wind whipped through the garden, bending the saplings almost to the ground. He threw up an arm as leaves pelted him, rain beginning to fall in painful dollops.
“You can’t travel back in time!” Tanea shouted, her voice carrying on the wind. “It is possible, yes, but the power it would take to open the way, it’s beyond imagining! It’s never been done!”
Thunder crashed overhead, a streak of red burning through Fin’s closed eyes. His gut clenched, and his heart raced. He knew what red lightning meant. He knew who Tanea was arguing with.
Fin shouted a warning, but it was too late. The Master of the Iron Ship advanced toward Tanea, his white beard whipping in the wind, his eyes cold blue behind his metal mask.
Tanea raised her hands. “Wait, no! Please!”
The Master’s cruel iron fingers clutched at her robe. Tanea Hollow-Blood’s head twisted to the side. Her eyes caught Fin’s just moments before her pupils turned to dull metal. Fin blinked, and all that remained of Tanea Hollow-Blood was an iron statue.
Fin clamped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late. The Master knew he was there. He turned slowly until he was facing Fin and raised a gauntlet-clad fist. Fin fell back, scrambling to put as much distance between them as possible.
His back hit against something solid, and he spun to find a fountain blocking the path. He began to scramble around it when he noticed something odd about the reflection in its water. It wasn’t of the garden. There were no trees or bushes, no cloudy sky.
Instead it looked for all the world like a tunnel made of paper.
“Jump,” a soft voice told him. It was the same voice that had guided him earlier. But this time it wasn’t just in his head. He turned and found a woman standing behind him, directly between him and the advancing Master.
“Hello, Fin,” she said.
“Annalessa,” he breathed. “Wait, you remember me?”
She smiled and nodded. “Of course I do.”
He frowned. “You saved me.”
She leaned forward, pressing her cheek against his. “Take care of my wizard for me,” she told him.
Then she pushed her fingers against his shoulder, t
ipping him backward into the fountain. The familiar paper tube surrounded him, carrying him away again into someone else’s dream.
CHAPTER 15
Try Wiggling It a Little
Most people didn’t understand the Pirate Stream. Not the way Coll did. He may not have had Stream water running through his veins, but he had something close enough etched into the flesh of his body.
He hadn’t been born destined for the deep Stream, not even close. He traced his line to princes and kings, to sons of great responsibility meant for even greater destinies.
But all of that was gone now. Some by his choice and some not. Now he worked for Ardent. Or Ardent worked for him. They’d been traveling the Stream together for so long it was sometimes difficult to remember.
Coll only knew one thing: His ship was his home. His crew was his family. And his loyalty to Ardent ran deeper and purer than the headwaters at Meres.
Which was why it made him uneasy to stand and do nothing while the giant void drew ever nearer. He paced across the quarterdeck to the port railing and back, looking once again to the horizon. No more than a thousand yards offshore, the cool blue waters of Oneira ended. They didn’t turn gold and spread out into the Pirate Stream. They just ended. The water poured away from them in what had to be the top of an enormous waterfall, thundering into darkness.
The void was already upon them. Coll could feel the pull of its destructive current tugging at the boards of the Kraken’s hull.
“Should I weigh anchor?” Remy asked. She twisted a knot of rope nervously in her fingers. It was a habit she’d picked up from him.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“How much longer?” she pressed.
“Until I give the order.”
Her expression turned stormy, and she crossed her arms, leaning back against one of the masts, waiting. Under any other circumstances he might have smiled, keeping it hidden from her, of course.
But these weren’t ordinary circumstances. In fact, Coll couldn’t really remember what ordinary was anymore.