Dream Master Nightmare!

by Theresa Breslin

  Cy nodded again. Matt had printed all their parts out on the computer so that they could read them if they got stuck. Cy stuck his card in the pocket in the folds of his cloak and wandered outside. Matt’s actor friends in Saxon and Viking costumes were already walking about among the crowds. They had brought all their equipment in a horse-drawn cart. Matt had told Mrs Chalmers that they would be useful to make up the numbers in the battle scenes. Some of them helped run the Battle Drill for the Children’s event at the York City Jolablot Festival, where they taught youngsters Viking combat skills. He’d said it could be quite spectacular how they handled their special weapons, and that they’d probably show off a bit with their battle techniques.

  Cy moved around the field. Soft shadowing evening was creeping up on day. The sun caught the glint of the coloured ribbons and metal foils and threw the light back at the sky. The rest of his class were gathered at one end behind a rigged-up theatre curtain. They were having noisy sword fights with each other. Cy was so restless that he could not even watch, far less join in. He went back indoors and sat in the boys’ dressing room.

  Matt stuck his head round the door. ‘Better now? You go on in five minutes, but Mrs Chalmers is doing the cues, so she’ll give you a call.’

  Cy shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Suppose I forget what I’m supposed to say?’

  Matt looked at him and grinned. He waved his hand in the general direction of the field outside. ‘Shall I tell them to ad lib then? Let the characters do just what they want? I had to take a firm line with Chloe to make her give up her fan! Just think what she might do with no-one restraining her!’

  Cy shuddered.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Matt. ‘Anything you say has to be better than that.’

  Cy could imagine the performance his classmates would put on if they were allowed to write their own parts. The Dream Master was right. For unconstructed stories – think ‘chaos’ and ‘shambles’.

  Matt smiled at Cy. ‘If you get stuck, just do what every other storyteller I know does. Make it up as you go along. As long as you remember the outline then a bit of flair and imagination never go wrong.’ He gave Cy a quick wave and was gone.

  Cy caught sight of Vicky as she went past the door. She smiled at him. ‘Break a leg.’

  ‘You too,’ said Cy.

  ‘Doesn’t it just make you puke that Chloe is the princess?’ Vicky made a gesture of sticking two fingers down her throat.

  Cy laughed and made gagging noises.

  ‘Why don’t you just retell the story so that something majorly awful happens to her? After all,’ Vicky called back over her shoulder, ‘you are the skald.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cy aloud. He turned and looked into the make-up mirror. ‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘I am, amn’t I?’

  ‘Please do NOT get carried away with yourself here,’ said a peevish voice.

  Cy blinked. The Dream Master had appeared, sitting on top of one of the hampers in the corner of the room.

  ‘This is a piffling little production in a farmer’s field, for heaven’s sake! I mean, dahling, London West End, it isn’t!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Cy.

  ‘Come on,’ said the dwarf. ‘I can see it in your eyes. You’re stage-struck! The lure of the lights. The smell of the greasepaint . . . the roar of the lion.’

  ‘Crowd, actually,’ said Cy.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I’m not anyway,’ protested Cy. ‘I was just thinking about being the skald though . . . and about my Viking dream. The story has got to go the way the skald says . . .’

  ‘The story goes like this,’ said the Dream Master nastily. ‘Cy goes back to his Viking dream.’ He pressed his face closer to Cy’s own. ‘And then Cy returns to march with the army of the English King Eadred who—’

  ‘No!’ cried Cy.

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ The Dream Master stamped his foot. ‘Don’t you understand? If you decide to change your Viking dream then I cannot help you.’

  ‘I am going back to exactly where I was previously,’ declared Cy. ‘I cannot abandon Hilde and her grandfather.’

  ‘Then you are on your own,’ said the dwarf. He stood up and very abruptly he drew his dreamcloak around him.

  Cy sat for a moment thinking things out. It seemed obvious now. He had to be in command of the dream, not the other way around. He would have to direct the dreamsilk, not let it lead him. And . . . he glanced quickly at his watch. He didn’t have much time. He had to do it now.

  Slowly from his pocket Cy took the piece of dreamsilk. It quivered softly in his fingers. Then very gingerly, and with great care, Cy laid it out on the palm of his hand.

  CHAPTER •18•

  THE LITTLE FRAGMENT of dreamcloak vibrated gently. Cy let it ripple through his fingers. He could see himself in the long mirror which hung on the back of the dressing-room door. Beyond his own image was the make-up table with its own mirror above it. The double image reflected the table on which lay the cardboard Viking helmet . . . which turned slowly on its axis.

  ‘Ah!’ Cy gasped, and his heart leaped like a stranded fish.

  How could it turn like that? A cardboard helmet couldn’t move by itself. Cy twisted his own head around. The cardboard helmet was still, unmoving, on the make-up table. Cy turned back to the mirror. In the mirror beyond, the helmet head was swivelling slowly, turning to face him . . . Cy’s throat closed with fear. He knew what was about to happen. In a few seconds he would see the nose-piece, the eye sockets, and then that murderous look would blaze forth at him. His head spun. The helmet seemed to get bigger, enlarging so much that it filled the mirror, moving upwards, looking down on him from a great height.

  Cy squinted up at the figure which towered above him.

  ‘Waken up, swineherd skald.’ Harald kicked Cy not very gently in his ribs. ‘We have almost finished eating, and now we want a story. You will tell us a tale to see us through this night.’ He stretched down, hauled Cy to his feet and shoved him through the hut door out into the night.

  The Viking warriors were grouped around a great fire, and moved aside to let Cy sit among them.

  Cy chose a position near Hilde and her grandfather, and looked around him anxiously. The Dream Master had said that he would not come to help, but . . .

  ‘You didn’t see a small dwarf by any chance?’ he asked Hilde.

  ‘Dwarves are maggots,’ said a warrior sitting close by, ‘born of the flesh of Ymir, the Frost Giant.’ He glared at Cy suspiciously. ‘I met a dwarf once in a dream I had, where fearsome dragons with many people swallowed in their great bellies, roared and blew out smoke. We do not want to know of dwarves.’

  The man next to him hit him across the back. ‘No, Ivar, you misunderstand the boy, he is beginning his story.’ He leaned across and cuffed Cy in a friendly manner. ‘Tell us the tale of the small dwarf.’

  ‘Eh?’ Cy’s head was ringing. If that was a friendly push, then heaven help him if they started getting rough. He looked more closely at Ivar. He was the Viking whom the Dream Master had saved from being run over by the City Tour Bus in York! No wonder he was suspicious of dwarves.

  ‘The dwarf,’ prompted the other man. ‘Tell us the story of the little man.’

  ‘What little man?’ Cy looked around him in bewilderment. ‘Where is he?’

  The Viking roared with laughter. ‘You tell us,’ he said. ‘Begin at the beginning.’ He took a long drink and wiped his hand across his mouth. ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Cy, as a thought occurred to him, ‘I don’t know if he has a name.’

  The Vikings around the fire looked at each other uneasily. ‘A man with no name? How can that be?’

  ‘Swineherd,’ said Hilde in a low voice, ‘if your life depends on your storytelling, then prepare yourself to meet your gods – soon.’

  Cy looked at her blankly.

  ‘Each thing, on the earth and under it, must be named,’ said Hilde. ‘Else it cannot exist. They think that w
hat you say is an ill omen. Do not speak unwisely here on the night before a battle, not if you wish to see the morning.’

  The Vikings were whispering to themselves. One or two had laid their hands upon their swords or axes.

  Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic, Cy told himself.

  Harald turned his mad eyes towards him. ‘What is this story you have to tell us about a little man who keeps his name a secret?’

  ‘Oh no!’ thought Cy. Now he would have to tell them another story first, before the real one which he had planned. What story could he tell them quickly about a little man who kept his name a secret?

  ‘If you dare call me Rumplestiltskin, I’ll sue,’ said a familiar voice in his ear.

  A great light switched itself on inside Cy’s head. ‘That story. Yes, indeed, that is a very good story,’ he gabbled. ‘It’s called Rumplestiltskin. There was once a miller who had a daughter, and he told everybody that she could spin straw into gold . . .’

  ‘I do not like that story,’ said Hilde, when Cy had finished. ‘The daughter should have kept the gold for herself.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Harald, ‘the king must have all the gold. You are a great skald, boy. I am glad that I spared your life.’ He laughed out loud. ‘Tomorrow we shall all have gold!’ He raised his axe in the air and began to sing.

  Cy and Hilde whispered together as the flames leapt up in the darkness, and the Vikings’ voices rose in a great battle-song.

  ‘I think I might know a way to get us out of here,’ said Cy quietly.

  ‘We cannot escape,’ said Hilde. ‘Harald has put a tether rope around Grandfather and tied him to his own wrist.’ She glared defiantly at Cy. ‘I will not go without him.’

  Cy smiled at her. ‘Nor will I,’ he said.

  CHAPTER •19•

  CY KNEW THAT the most important thing was the Time. He needed to get it just right . . . ‘I know what you are planning . . .’ said an irritated voice.

  Cy turned his head. The Dream Master stood directly behind him.

  ‘ . . . and I’m telling you now, it will never work. Firstly, what makes you think you have the skill to manipulate that piece of dreamsilk like that? And don’t forget, you’re due on stage in the school hostel field in about three minutes Your Time.’

  Cy clenched his hands tightly. What was it his Grampa always told him? ‘Never mind if other people don’t have confidence in you, try to have confidence in yourself.’ Cy gazed resolutely back at the little man. ‘And that is exactly where I intend to be.’ He looked around nervously. ‘Although I may have company with me . . . temporarily.’

  ‘You do know the meaning of the word “temporarily”, I trust?’ sneered the dwarf.

  ‘If you’re not going to help, then go away,’ said Cy rudely.

  ‘No way,’ said the dwarf, ‘to use a twenty-first centuryism. A morbid curiosity compels me to stay. Definite disasters do delight—’

  ‘Shut up!’ said Cy. ‘You’re wasting precious time.’

  The dwarf withdrew a few paces away in a huff.

  ‘What are you whispering about?’ whispered. Hilde.

  ‘I’m getting ready,’ said Cy. He turned his head to look directly into her bright blue eyes. ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked her.

  She looked straight back at him. ‘No, not really,’ she replied. She heaved a sigh. ‘But . . . my choices are somewhat limited, so . . .’

  An edge of daylight was beginning to show along the horizon. Around the fire the Vikings were stirring themselves to make ready for the coming battle.

  Cy spoke low and urgently to Hilde, ‘Go with me on this, and please do exactly as I tell you.’

  Then Cy stood up and raised his arms high above his head. ‘I have a story,’ he said, ‘a tale to tell of heroic deeds, of a glorious battle fought and won by mighty men.’

  Harald and Ivar raised their heads and looked at Cy. Harald nodded approval. ‘Yes, this is good,’ he said. ‘We will have a glorious battle.’

  Cy glanced upwards at his own wrist, where he could see the face of his digital watch. Quite soon now Basra would be reading Cy’s cue line. Cy grasped the dreamsilk. ‘In a faraway land,’ he stated determinedly, ‘called Schoolhostel, there lived Hilde, a blue-eyed princess, and her grand-father . . .’ Cy paused. Was that enough? Did he only have to mention them once to get them back with him into the Viking Saga story in the twenty-first century?

  ‘Don’t forget yourself, Sieve-head Cy,’ murmured a not unkind voice.

  ‘ . . . and Cy, the swineherd skald . . .’ Cy added quickly. He looked again at his watch. The numbers hadn’t clicked round. ‘What’s happening to my watch?’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth to the Dream Master.

  ‘This may come as a surprise to you, but they don’t have digital watches in tenth-century Northumbria,’ said the dwarf.

  ‘Blast it!’ shouted Cy. He pulled his watch from his wrist and threw it down on the ground.

  Both Harald and Ivar grabbed for it at the same time, and as they did so Cy realized that his piece of dreamsilk had caught in the strap.

  ‘No!’ he shrieked.

  Too late.

  There was an almighty crack, a rush of splintering white light, and then they were falling, tumbling through TimeSpace, to land with a thud on the playing-field of the school hostel.

  Harald was first on his feet. ‘Where is this place?’ he snarled. ‘How have you brought us here?’

  ‘You’re in my story,’ said Cy nervously. He reached out quickly and snatched back the watch and his piece of dreamsilk. ‘You have to do what I say,’ he added quickly.

  ‘Oh there you are, Cy!’ Mrs Chalmers came hurrying over. She grabbed him by the arm. ‘You’re on. Now!’ She gave him a little push as he hesitated.

  Hilde’s grandfather raised his hand and addressed Mrs Chalmers. ‘Good lady,’ he said. ‘What place is this?’

  ‘The school hostel,’ said Mrs Chalmers. ‘And if you’ve come to see the Viking play then please hurry up and find a seat.’

  Ivar put his hands over his eyes and began to moan. Harald let out a roar.

  ‘Quiet please,’ ordered Mrs Chalmers briskly. ‘Sit down there on the grass at the side and listen to the Viking Saga.’

  ‘A Viking Saga,’ Harald repeated the words carefully. He took off his helmet and looked round in confusion. Then he passed his hands across his face. ‘Am I dreaming?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hilde. She sat down, and the rest followed her lead.

  As Cy began his Saga, Hilde took her grandfather’s hand and began to edge away from Harald. Harald gave her an evil grin and held up his wrist. He still had the tether rope attached.

  At the front of the audience Cy announced the Saxon princess. Chloe swept out from behind the curtain and began to overact dreadfully.

  ‘Oh my,’ she simpered. ‘Someone save me from these awful Vikings.’

  ‘Here is a noble Saxon princess . . .’ said Cy.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Hilde loudly.

  Chloe glared at her. ‘Yes I am,’ she said. ‘It’s my part. I am the Saxon princess.’

  Harald stood up at once. ‘You are?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Chloe firmly. ‘Definitely. I get captured by the Vikings.’

  Harald’s eyes narrowed. He took his knife from his belt and cut the rope which bound Hilde’s grandfather to him. Then he advanced on Chloe. ‘I do not mind exchanging one for the other. You seem more biddable and can be no more unpleasant than the squalling cat I captured earlier.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure about that,’ Cy muttered under his breath.

  As Harald approached Chloe, she stopped speaking suddenly and pointed at him. ‘You’re wearing my pendant,’ she said. ‘Give it back to me.’

  Harald looked down at the pendant which was hanging round his neck. ‘I found it,’ he said. Then he gave a wicked grin. ‘But certainly you may have it if you wish. Come here and I will give it to you.’

  Chloe marched
across the stage.

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Cy.

  Harald grabbed Chloe and hoisted her high up in the air. Then he swung her almost upside down over his shoulder. Her scream was long and terrified. He ran to where the horse and cart was standing and flung her inside. Then he leaped up, grabbed the reins and made off across the field, nearly running down Ivar who had tried to follow him.

  Ivar shook his fist. ‘Road rage!’ he yelled and chased after him.

  ‘Omigosh,’ said Cy. ‘Omigollygosh.’

  ‘Keep on storytelling, my good swineherd skald,’ said a voice in his ear, ‘and I’ll attempt to rescue Chloe Clappermouth.’

  The audience clapped and cheered. ‘Amazing acting,’ said Mrs Chalmers. ‘That Viking looked so real.’

  Matt nodded. ‘Their costumes are absolutely authentic,’ he agreed. ‘But they do tend to ham it up a bit.’ He looked at Cy. ‘Can you cope?’

  ‘I’m short of a princess for this story,’ said Cy.

  ‘No you’re not,’ said Hilde, and she stood up and marched out in front of the audience. ‘Now,’ she demanded, ‘which Viking thinks he is going to take me prisoner?’

  ‘I do,’ said Eddie.

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ said Cy.

  ‘But you’re not me,’ said Eddie. ‘And I’m capturing the princess.’

  And he stepped forward, bravely if rather stupidly, Cy thought.

  Hilde seized a polystyrene battle-axe and delivered a resounding thump to the side of Eddie’s head. He staggered and fell down. The audience roared.

  ‘Anybody else?’ asked Hilde.

  There was some shuffling among the Vikings as Cy’s classmates all tried at once to move as far away from Hilde as possible.

  ‘Control yourself!’ Cy hissed at Hilde. ‘You’re supposed to get captured.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘I do,’ said Cy. ‘And I’m the skald. So either you do it my way, or I’ll call Harald back.’

  Hilde hesitated, and then crossed to where Basra was standing. ‘Capture me,’ she ordered him.

  ‘Emm . . .’ Basra hesitated. He looked up at Hilde and then across at Cy. ‘Should I?’ he asked.