by Jules Hedger
"The monsters?"
"My dreams," Cirrus murmured. "No matter how many monsters I create with my fingers, these nightmares are still in my head." Cirrus took off his spectacles to wipe his eyes. His hands shook noticeably and I instinctively moved closer. His distress was compelling and I couldn't help myself. He was like an angel caught under the back wheel of a truck. "I am so tired, Maggie," he sighed. "They won't let me sleep. No matter how hard I try to chase them away, they're still there. They're still in my world, they're still in my head, and I can't get rid of them!" His fist slammed down on top of the desk with a giant bang, frightening my heart into my throat. Cirrus lowered his head into his arms as a tentative knock sounded on the door. "I'm sorry . . ."
"Cirrus? Maggie, is everything ok in there?" Marty asked hesitantly from the hallway.
"She can take care of herself, Martin," Cirrus said loudly from between his fingers. And it was as if those words sprung him suddenly into action. He seized the contract and the pen from the desk and held it out to me expectantly.
"Sign the paper, Maggie," Cirrus said, his voice breaking slightly into a plea. "I need to sleep again."
"How can I help you sleep?!"
"As I was with your uncle, I can be with you," Cirrus said. "Your protector, your guardian . . ."
My eyes narrowed defensively. "You were never my uncle's guardian."
"Of course I was. Who do you think made sure his dreams never ate him alive?" Cirrus responded quickly. "Make no mistake, unless he put that poison into his veins, I protected him. His sleep was cool and calm. And now I can protect you."
"I really doubt that –"
"Don't fool yourself, Maggie. Someday you'll be like your uncle: lonely and unappreciated, pent up alone because no one understands your creativity, or dreams, or whatever you might possess," he snarled. "But I can be in your mind the way I was in your uncle's mind. And in the darkness of your sleep, I can escape from those monsters outside. I can find peace."
"But what if I say no?" I insisted, my voice climbing in volume. "What if I say that you can have my uncle and have my throne and go straight to hell?!"
This brought Cirrus up straight. His sharp face was temporarily confused and I let the shocked silence settle in heavily.
God, I need another drink.
But he regained his composure quickly, too quickly for me to think of anything smart to continue on with. His forehead smoothed and he calmly placed his glasses back on his face. But the jaw was set. And his eyes were fierce.
"I am already in hell. I would rather die than live in this nightmare of waking." Cirrus said calmly. "Call it selfish, but I'm past caring. And if this world has no one to rule, it will collapse into anarchy. And my monsters will feast."
"I want to leave now," I said quietly. "You're obviously upset."
"Am I scaring you? Maggie, you should never be scared of me." Cirrus was suddenly the definition of composure as he walked gracefully back to the fire. "I am only trying to be fair. Enter the Reign Walk and save your uncle and lead your people. Lose and I will shape this nation into a new world. With you." Cirrus's eyes locked onto mine and I found I couldn't move. I stood frozen as his gaze bore into every crevice of my body. "Let me share your soul, Maggie," Cirrus said softly, "and I'll let your uncle's go."
In those eyes, shifting back to green, I saw that he was deadly, madly serious. And despite the madness, I knew it was one of those moments where you can't conceivably believe it, but you have to move forward. Because you don't know where you came from anymore and couldn't go back if you tried.
"I don't have a choice," I said finally.
"Of course you do, but you're a smart girl." Cirrus smiled and pulled out his pocket watch. "It doesn't work, you know. But it's my symbol." He clicked it open to the watch face and tapped the glass softly. "Eye on the prize, sweetheart."
I walked slowly to the desk and picked up the necklace. It was cool and weighed hardly anything at all as I lowered it slowly over my neck. It rested lightly on my chest above the white neckline of my tank top. My symbol.
Cirrus's shadow fell over the table as he settled behind me. "A dreamcatcher. I take it the irony isn't lost on someone as clever as you." He rested his hand lightly on mine when I placed the pen back on the desk. "For the first time in my life, I feel a certain sense of relief," his low voice spoke in my ear.
My heart pounded like a drum. His hand wrapped gently around my waist to rest on my right hip bone.
"The Walk begins when you touch ground. And ends when that necklace is around my neck or my watch is in your hot hands. Or we both burn." He kissed me softly behind my ear. "We could be so strong, you and I. Together, we could be the storm that shakes the sea."
His hand pushed against my bone, a pressure of possession. But I wasn't his yet.
"Good luck, Maggie."
He moved suddenly away from me and if it wasn't for the table's support my legs might have melted down into the rug. I didn't dare turn around. I listened to him walk across the room and heard the door open and shut. Even without looking back behind my shoulder, I knew that the room was empty.
As if to mark the moment, a flare of heat spread across the skin of my chest where the golden circle of the dreamcatcher rested. It was the first toll of the clock; the hoisting of the sails. And with it came a rush of feelings: nerves, terror . . . want. I shook my head at that one. I would have to be crazy to let any of his poetry affect me. But as the heat faded away it left behind it awareness. There was a connection between us now and I I couldn't deny that was exciting.
I walked back into the front room where Marty waited. The soft jazz was still piping serenely out of the ceiling. Cirrus wasn't anywhere to be seen but the secretary took one look at the necklace and squeaked. That must have been incredibly embarrassing because she turned fire-engine red and put her face so deep in the appointment book that only her hair bun showed over the top of the counter.
Marty gave me a knowing look, his eyes drawing themselves down to the necklace hanging around my neck. "Game on, then?"
"Yeah. Game on," I sighed. Marty gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
"The news will be going out through Palet right now. They'll be watching for you."
"Great."
"Did he say anything about . . . a deadline?" Marty grimaced at his awkward way of questioning if I had an expiration date.
"Six days. And then the necklace will . . . burn into my soul. Or something like that."
"Yeah . . . it will." Marty sighed and looked awkward. "But don't worry, I'm sure you'll claim his symbol before that happens. And in the meantime, make friends. Gain followers. That's a good tactic." Before I could ask him how he expected me to do that, Marty was moving efficiently onwards. "Look, I need to sign some papers before we leave. And then it's up to me to leave you on the ground. Will you be ok for a minute?"
I nodded and watched him walk over to Cindy. I felt a bit faint. Looking around for a chair, I saw that the front door was open a crack. Marty was flipping through the papers with the pen cap in his mouth, trying to make Cindy giggle. Her bun sunk lower into the book. So he didn't notice when I walked towards the front door and pulled it open to the front porch.
My vision swirled with purple mist. Nothing howled or screamed and I didn't see any of the grounds that I had seen out of Cirrus's window. All I could see was a light violet haze that clouded anything beyond into indiscernible shapes. The ground beneath me, however, seemed solid as I took a step onto the front stairs.
The mist tingled on my face and a cloud spread itself across my mind.
"I'll just . . . wait outside for you, alright?" my voice said. Marty was muttering to himself as Cindy pointed out yet another red X. I turned down towards the steps again and put another foot out the door. My brain seemed to think it an enormous task to put one in front of the other. I tried shaking my head to lift the pressure from my temples, but the mist whispered into my ears and my eyelids fluttered.
Marty handed the completed papers back with a frown and looked over to where he thought I still stood. When I wasn't there he looked curiously around and saw the front door standing open. The mist was already beginning to snake itself into the room to curl around the edge of the front mat.
"Oh, motherfu –" Marty gasped and ran towards the opening to look out. He could just make out my indistinct shape near the end of the steps.
"Maggie! Don't move!" He yelled. My body wavered as a faint sound murmured on the edge of my hearing. "Don't take another step! We're in the air!"
I heard it again – a faint, muffled voice – and stopped my descent. The mist sighed louder into my ears and urged me forward. I took another step down towards the bottom.
Marty rushed down the steps, brushing away the mist from his ears. He could see my body nearing the end of the stairs where the ground cut off into air and fog.
"Stop, Maggie! Stop!" He was only a few feet away from reaching me when my feet met empty space instead of ground and I fell off the steps into the mist. He grabbed frantically into the air but his fingers grasped only the smooth silk of the cool sky. Gazing off the edge of the stairs there was no trace of anything solid, only a slight commotion like a hand swipe through smoke. He turned back to the office and hurried back up the steps. Cirrus would have to know that his opponent had fallen out of the cloud. They would have to find me, and quickly, before someone else did and ruined the game.
Chapter 5
A world of unimaginable color and depthless darkness, Palet is made from both dreams and nightmares and while I don't dream, I have it under good authority that dreams are hardly predictable. So when it comes to Palet, expect the unexpected.
Like, for example, falling off into a fucking cloud.
I felt my feet leave the ground and my body drop, but I heard nothing but whispering and saw nothing but the mist.
What a sense of letting go! A sense of freedom and empty and blank thought; listening to the wind whistling up and over my ears was the closest I've ever been to dreaming. It filled my leather jacket with a cool wind that was luxuriously soft on my bare skin. My feet dangled in the milky whiteness below and I felt like I was floating more than falling in that halfway point between sleep and awake. The familiar feeling of vulnerability I always experienced when I pumped myself higher on childhood swing-sets began to creep into my stomach.
However, it wasn't long until the wind settled down around my body. The whiteness around me started to merge and blend with colors. Shades of green dominated over the blues, reds, and yellows as they blurred together and melted into more defined shapes of rocks, rivers, and trees. These shapes fell around and beside me to join the world at the same time my feet lightly touched a ground of leaf-covered dirt still forming beneath my feet. The stars floated up in firefly sparks around my head through the scattering of tall trees to join the blackness of the night sky above me. Sounds came at me next, the soft chirping of crickets and the rustle of warm wind in the branches of the trees and bushes. This world felt saturated in awe. I reasoned all my senses must have come back to me doubled in intensity.
For a world of dreams, I thought, it feels surprisingly real.
I walked forward hesitantly through the brush and found that the forest seem to stretch endlessly around in every direction. So this was the playing field.
My hand toyed nervously with the necklace. Find Cirrus. Chase him down. Steal his dreamcatcher. Regain my rightful place on the throne.
What in the hell have I gotten myself into?
With no previous instructions on what to do on my own, I began to think that my adventure to Palet was one that could have constituted more previous planning and preparation. Weren't fighters given weapons? I could really use a big knife or machete. Something to hack with.
The darkness seemed to curl around the edges of the brush and between every gap in the trees. Small lights danced in the distance and short chirping kept up a steady beat as I walked hesitantly to the edge of my clearing. My mother had always told me to stay in one place if we ever were separated. In the big department stores, it was something that I had found especially hard to stick with. Usually all I wanted to do was hide in the clothing racks and pretend to be a jungle queen amongst the taffeta. Now, as the night air blew against my face, I was suddenly aware of my current vulnerability and, with no clothing racks to provide shelter or safety, I started to look around me for a suitable place to sit and wait for daylight.
"This is already gearing up to become the worst summer vacation ever," I grumbled to myself as I settled down on a clear piece of ground. But for all the soft noises, gentle wind and peace it was a long while before my thoughts grew muddled and sticky and my mind finally gave up its grasp on consciousness. The darkness was just turning into gray when I finally let the twilight birds sing me to sleep. For my first night in Palet, the air was warm, the skies were clear, and the rivers were calm.
The necklace throbbed once, but I didn't feel it. It was searching, sending out its message to the other. Its partner and lover. The Reign Walk had begun.
Six days to go . . .
I breathed evenly in my dreamless, forgotten existence of sleep. The sky streaked itself with reds and purples as it soon would the sky lines of New York. The city would slowly be brought into light and the sounds would finally wake up from their slumber. The streets would once again be filled with the urban ambiance of taxis and shouting.
But until it caught up with the accelerated time of Palet, it was still a city sleeping. And a world away, I would only remember blackness, one lost night in millions, like all the others.
Chapter 6
And when she was good, she was very, very good . . .
The forest hummed with unseen life and dripped water from its branches. The ground beneath where Maggie lay inhaled as if to take in the sweetness of skin while the night stars faded slightly. Dreams flitted in and out of the trees. They must have felt the warmth of the sun creep over the horizon, preceding the sunrise that would force them to retreat back and disappear into the red of the sun. A breeze blew up through the trees and the sky into a manor window open to welcome the night air.
The breeze, sensing unrest, hesitated for a moment. It turned around quickly to flee but was snatched up by a shadow. The shadow quickly threw the curtains back over the window and looked curiously into its hand. It leaned down to inhale the air it held cupped carefully in its fist, still cool and fresh from the forest dark.
Cirrus exhaled and he could feel his blood start to warm with the life that the sleeping girl radiated. He smelled cornflakes and damp soil. At his side the pocket watch pulsed once.
Yes, we've begun to move.
The dawn light started to slowly filter in through the cracks in the window's curtains and a breath of fresh air pushed through to enter the small and stuffy laboratory. Cirrus turned back to stoop over his work table. Exhaustion lined his face and dust rested on his light eyelashes. Perhaps he would stop for breakfast soon, if Cirrus felt like it would do him any good; if it didn't then no matter. It wouldn't be the first time.
Cirrus had thrown everyone out in a rage after Maggie fell. Neither he nor Marty had known what to do.
"We were above the Wilds! She could be anywhere! In any dream!" Cirrus insisted. "Anything could get at her! We need to find her!"
"To be perfectly honest, Sir," Marty had replied hesitantly, "would that not be a good thing?"
"The Reign Walk requires a controlled environment Martin. I must make sure she is safe, ensure that she falls into the right hands." Cirrus's gaze was unwavering as he bore down on Marty. "Mine. That necklace and that girl. Mine."
"I'll go to the Council." Marty walked to the door. "But it would have helped if you had told her your house had already lifted away."
"If you find her, keep tabs. The Walk has technically begun. And she has a vicious head start," Cirrus had called after him.
Cirrus's hands trembled as he knelt closer to the table. His b
are arms stretched and strained as he wound the cogs tighter. Oil smeared his hands and forearms; his skin was hot and tender.
Light radiated from a particularly horrifying project drawn from a nightmare he had of a small, blue bottle fly that can burrow its way into a person's brain and tickle their thoughts. He had woken up terrified and weeping. Cirrus's nightmares were vivid; it was hard sometimes for Cirrus to differentiate them from real life. He didn't like to think about sleep often.
He had worked on his pet for over three days now and his mind could hardly take anymore concentration. A bead of sweat dripped slowly down his neck and down the arch of his back, making him shiver indulgently.
The darkness of his workshop was only broken by the thin light of a candle and the almost imperceptible outline of the sunlight around the curtains. The candle wavered dangerously as Cirrus let out a shaky breath and sensed around again for the new presence in Palet. He found it, still breathing regularly in a dream forest that had happened to appear in the Wilds. What dream was impossible to know. But the image glittered in his mind as a radiant light that would guide him out of the terror of his dreams and into the sane, rational world of the living. He could still win; she might have had a head start, but he had the upper hand.
"Where are you?" he whispered. "Time to come home."
Cirrus turned away from his work table and the light of the blue bottle fly faded away as he set about to another task. He faced a long shelf of tools and works half finished. Rummaging through his work shelves with some difficulty, he frowned at the odd bits and ends of dreams he had previously started on and then forgotten: a teddy bear that smiled through needle teeth; half of a stuffed quail with a small stop watch fixed into its center; even a baby blanket wearing thin at the edges.
Behind an old porcelain ballerina and covered in a greasy piece of cloth was a red, wooden box Cirrus had all but forgotten. He pulled it off of the shelf and placed it carefully on the ground, rubbing his dry eyes at the sudden rise of dust.