She sat up and looked over at her friend whose eyes were just visible under his hood by the light they reflected. They seemed alert but content.
It had been a close call but Amriel had done it. She and her friends were safe, for now.
“How are you feeling Amriel? What are you thinking about?”
Amy wasn’t too sure how to respond. She felt a mix of things that she couldn’t understand and trying to explain them was difficult.
“I… I don’t know. I feel wide awake but at the same time I think I want to go to sleep. I feel safe but I feel like I’ve forgotten something important and that makes me feel…worried. Very worried.”
Amy gazed out of the window at the mountain looming up beside them. Somehow it made her feel uneasy. The night sky was losing all of its light but it seemed to Amy as though an extra dark shadow, a deeper black on top of the sky’s inky midnight blue, was creeping around the mountain, as if it was trying to swallow it. She felt as though she was being watched and the hairs on her neck prickled uncomfortably. She turned to the Arbiter who was watching her very closely. Having never seen his face she had become quite adept at gauging his emotions from the look in his eyes and the sound of his voice. Right now, his eyes were expressing a very deep concern, which didn’t help her already anxious feelings. Evidently, he had guessed at what she was thinking.
“You feel like someone is watching you, or that there is some kind of unseen horror waiting for you. You cannot define it, like a child who fears the slightly open cabinet in his room.”
Amy looked again at the mountain. She was sure the pitch-black veil had crept a good distance further down the mountain towards them and unexplainable terror gripped her.
“Flee Amriel.”
The Arbiter’s voice was deathly quiet but steady.
“He is trying to break into your mind and you must keep your thoughts out of his reach. Flee, in any way that you can.”
Amy hesitated for only a moment and then put the car in gear, slamming the accelerator deep into the foot well. Huge plumes of snow were kicked up by the tyres, then they found some kind of grip and the car shot backwards. Amy swung the wheel around hard so that they reversed straight around the shack and onto the open pathway, then she shifted into first gear and ploughed forward. Thankfully the snow on the path was not very deep, having been trodden down frequently by the locals, and the tyres found the earth underneath the thin layer quite easily. Amy was able to travel extraordinarily quickly, given the conditions.
The car ride was undoubtedly the most uncomfortable, terrifying drive of Amy’s life. She flew through the snowy passes with no real sense of direction, just blindly trying to distance herself as much as possible from the fear instilling shadow behind them. The car slid from time to time when it hit deeper patches of snow, or worse, ice, and there was a real danger that she would clip the higher walls of snow on either side of the path causing her to roll. Amy kept checking the rear-view mirror but it was difficult to make anything out through the snow flying up behind them and the constant bouncing and jerking of the car itself as she tried to keep it on the twisting path.
All the while the Arbiter sat in utter silence beside her, always looking forward, never blinking or looking behind them. In truth he was more worried about Amy’s mind breaking under the attack than he was about her rolling the car. She was powerful, albeit poorly trained, and in her human dream state her mind would simply alter reality to keep her physically safe. Keeping out the shadow that pressed on her mind was another matter entirely. Human minds fixated dangerously on the things that they feared and fixating on the presence of the enemy would make it very difficult for the Arbiter to keep the enemy at bay.
All the while, the Arbiter was fighting to delay and confuse the enemy as much as possible but now that Gorhoth knew who Amy was, it had become infinitely more difficult to shield her from his searching mind. She needed to close her own mind and in order to do that she needed to wake up. This was what concerned him most. He knew she was not in a regular sleep right now. The pattern of her dream state was different. She had entered her dreams much earlier than usual for the evening and she had not yet remembered who he was. Worse than that, she seemed to be stuck, unable to wake up properly in her physical body. Something must have happened, forced her into an unnatural and prolonged unconsciousness. Whatever it was, it was powerful. He could see the concentration and alertness in her eyes. She was completely and utterly immersed in the dream world around her.
Soon though, it appeared that Amy’s mind had slipped back into reality at least momentarily. The dream had faded and gone unclear and when she shook herself back to concentration, they were suddenly in flat terrain, leaving the hills and mountains behind them.
It happened almost seamlessly. The mountains had suddenly dropped a good fifty kilometres behind them, the snow had disappeared and they were gliding smoothly along a great motorway. The occasional road sign told the Arbiter that in her mind, she was in Italy. Clearly Amy had slipped into consciousness long enough to see where her friends were and had brought the location back with her into her dream state. It was no longer the Himalayas behind them, it was the Alps.
The Arbiter also noticed one very positive upshot to this drift in Amy’s mind. It seemed to have cleared her thoughts of the shadow following behind them and this had clearly shaken off the enemy for the time being. The Arbiter took the opportunity to arrange a decoy dream for the enemy to follow. How long would it take for him to realise and come looking again?
Amy seemed to be cruising endlessly along smooth sweeping highways. Clearly, in the physical world her friends were doing the same and the smoothness of the ride was impacting on Amy’s dream. Whilst this meant they were in relative safety, physically, it meant that mentally Amy would have less stimulation to help her wake up. She was still stuck in her dream.
The Arbiter waited patiently. There was no point in trying to instigate any kind of change. She would start to wake up when she was ready and for now she was safe. Instead, he carefully tried to work out what had happened.
“Tell me Amriel, have you always wanted to come to Italy or was this trip more of a ‘spur of the moment’ kind of thing? You invited me along very last minute.”
Amy opened her mouth to answer but froze. The words would not come to her easily.
“Ahhh… really spur of the moment I guess. I just needed to get away from home.”
“It was very good of your parents to let us use the car, normally you would take the train, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, but I don’t like the train.”
Amy’s eyes darkened slightly and she became a little pensive.
“Don’t really like the train…”
Her voice seemed wistful, like she was wrapped in another thought.
The dream was shifting, pivoting around her wandering mind. The Arbiter could start to see cloudy images of a train carriage around them. Amy was standing beside him, about to sit down. There was a high-pitched squeal and a sudden jolt, but Amy had returned to dreaming about the car. It had been enough for the Arbiter to work out what had transpired. She had been knocked unconscious on the train.
The Arbiter regretted bringing up the issue. Making Amy’s mind run through the memory had its downside. Her mind had clearly twisted the sensations from the train-ride into something which could be explained in her current dream. She was breaking very hard and pulling over to the side of the road. All the while, a high-pitched squeal was coming from one of the wheels.
“We must have gotten a small rock jammed in the brakes.”
As she pulled over the dream fluttered. Something was tugging on her consciousness in the physical world. The Arbiter waited apprehensively but within seconds the dream zone was firm again and Amy was fully alert. He felt disappointed but had not really expected her to wake up just yet.
Then two things happened simultaneously which turned disappointment into a controlled fear.
Police suddenly appe
ared behind them, lights flashing, and pulled off from the highway lanes, coming to a stop behind the range rover.
At the same time, the Arbiter felt a strong tug at his mind, strong and now familiar. Snipping was trying to contact him again. The last time Snipping had done this it was because they had been stuck in the Swiss mountain pass with an unconscious Amriel to look after and only the human boy for help.
It had surprised the Arbiter that Snipping had been able to identify him in the dream plain to begin with. He had asked Snipping to explain and when Snipping did, the Arbiter had made him swear not to tell a soul or to make the contact again unless it was desperately urgent. Now here he was.
As the police got out of their car and started walking slowly towards them, the Arbiter made his decision quickly. He jumped through the dreamplane to Snipping.
This time the imp seemed to have been expecting that the Arbiter would have limited time because his message was short, fast and to the point. He explained himself as soon as the Arbiter had appeared. He started to speak even as he was bowing low in a habit of respect.
“Sir, it appears the enemy has control of the police and has sought to stop us running. The human boy has a plan but we will not get far without help. Near to here the car map says there is a forest. The boy will wait until the police have nearly reached our vehicle and then he will pull away as fast as possible. He says this will force them to run back to their own car and give us a headstart but the chase will be on. We will need somewhere in the forest to hide and we will need some way of ensuring we are not followed there. I must return. Apologies for contacting you sir.”
With that, the Imps’ dream zone faded away. As a dream state worker, he had absolute mastery of the ability to slip in and out whenever he pleased.
The Arbiter quickly returned to Amy’s dream zone but not to the car directly. The police could easily be the exact same police as Snipping was handling, controlled by the enemy and it was imperative that he remained hidden from the enemy for as long as possible, or all might be for naught. He floated on the edge of the dream, watching and waiting. The police spoke with Amy for a little while but made no threatening signs, then suddenly they waved for her to keep moving and she sped off. Clearly these were not the dream echoes of the physical police. The Arbiter also guessed that her sudden departure in the dream state was probably encouraged by the sense of acceleration in her physical body as the human boy carried out his plan of speeding away. With the enemy absent from the dream zone, he returned to Amy.
Amy didn’t bat an eyelid at the Arbiter’s reappearance. It was as if he had been there the entire time, and certainly, in Amy’s mind, she had never noticed him leave while she was distracted by the police. Be that as it may, the Arbiter needed her to shift her dream state, fast. So long as they stayed in the car she was going to be unable to help create a distraction or a hiding place for her friends and they would need the help urgently.
Snipping had said they were going to make for a nearby forest, which presented the obvious next step for the Arbiter to take. He needed to direct Amy to a forest where she could start to create some changes.
“Amriel, unless I am very much mistaken, aren’t we close by to the forest where you lived with your parents? Your home that I visited before?”
Amy looked up, a little startled, and carefully glanced out of the windows at the area around them. They were in rolling green hills and indeed, the trees scattered throughout the landscape were getting rapidly more prolific, taller and stronger in appearance.
The Arbiter’s idea had worked. Amy’s mind jumped very quickly to the forest that she had visited in previous dreams. Somehow, it had become powerfully implanted in her mind. Exactly how or why this place had lodged itself in her memory the Arbiter could not be sure and there was no time to ponder the matter now.
“Absolutely!” Amy replied to his question. “We’re basically driving through its outskirts right now. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I just thought it might be very nice to visit it again. You know, take a break from the car drive and walk in the fresh air.”
Amy thought this was a splendid idea. It was just a question of finding somewhere to pull off the highway and enter the forest paths. The Arbiter reacted lightning fast to use her uncertainty to his advantage. He still needed to find a way to create a block for the police following Snipping before he worked out a hiding place, and when Amy’s mind was uncertain it was at its most malleable. He could shift her thoughts easily with his input. Uncertainty was like an open receptor for third party ideas.
“If you take the next exit we could take the ferry across the river.”
The Arbiter proffered the solution to Amy’s unspoken question.
“It’s a bit small and old but I think it would carry the car quite easily. Luckily a car like this should have no problems on the rough forest tracks, it would be a shortcut to your home.”
“Perfect!” replied Amy with a smile.
She flicked on the indicator and gently pulled over into the exit lane which curled back down under the highway.
Not much further along she pulled off onto a rough dirt side road, which was simultaneously bumpy and slippery. In the shade of the trees the ground had become soft and mossy but rocks littered the way and caused the car to bounce around with odd jerks. The setup was perfect, but useless if the Arbiter couldn’t get Amy to turn it into a reality for her friends.
“Would you like me to drive Amriel so that you can take a break and keep an eye out for the path to the river ferry?”
This idea was not accepted so readily by Amy’s mind but with a little convincing she stopped and they switched places. The Arbiter carried on in silence as Amy sat back and relaxed a little. He needed her to try and return briefly, to create both the rocky path and the ferry. Sheer luck may have saved the plan. What it was precisely, the Arbiter did not know, but something in the physical world must have pulled at Amy and she slipped half out of the dream zone for a short space of time. The Arbiter sensed the tug on the world around them as Amy drew the dream into the physical world. He couldn’t be certain precisely what it was that she had created but he was confident that the plan would work. Now Snipping and the boy just needed to have their wits about them to look for a change in the world. The Arbiter could not afford the time or the risk to help them any further. They would need to manage on their own for the time being.
Amy quickly returned fully to the dream plane, never having completely left it. As she fully took control of her own zone however, the Arbiter felt an immediate change around them. The light dropped sharply and a dark presence pressed on Amy’s mind with renewed vigour. The last creation had clearly enabled the enemy to pinpoint her in the dream plane and he was trying to gain access to Amy’s mind again. Shadows filled the gaps between the trees behind them and Amy started to fidget in her seat. She was looking at their surroundings with darting looks. The Arbiter could see her eyes flicker between the two side windows, the space in front of them and the rear-view mirror with a rapid nervousness. She clearly sensed the present danger but couldn’t do anything about it.
Her mind bent on escape, she twisted the path they were driving on. Suddenly they were facing a little ramp which was clearly designed to level the connection between the path and the little ferry which stood still and firm, banked up against the ramp’s two end poles. The wooden beams which created the base of the ramp looked unevenly spread, and discomforting gaps lay between the planks. If anyone in their right and conscious mind had seen the thing they would undoubtedly have turned back at this point. A regular person would scarcely have trusted their own weight to the ramp, let alone the full weight of a massive range rover.
The helpful thing about the dream plane is that things are not always as they seem and rules of the physical worlds hold absolutely no authority. If Amy dreamed that the ramp was strong enough to hold them, then hold them it would. This was why the Arbiter admired the untamed power of the human mind and its
creativity. They were not bounded by the narrow-mindedness of the elves. If Gorhoth was afraid of Amy and her abilities, he was right to do so. Then again, if he broke into her mind now, there was no telling what terrible things he could achieve by manipulating her. With this thought, the Arbiter drove carefully onto the ramp.
The wood gave an almost movie-perfect series of creaks and groans but showed absolutely no sign of giving way under the weight of the vehicle. As they reached the ferry, however, they lurched in their seats as the wheels rolled onto the deck. The full weight of the motor over the front wheels caused the back end of the ferry to sink deeper into the river. The Arbiter gave the accelerator a firm, fast prod and the front and rear wheels simultaneously pulled and pushed the car quickly onto the vessel. Little waves swept out from the ferry’s edges as it rocked back and forth slowly. The guiding rope which was threaded through extremely solid looking metal rings along one side was pulled taught and gave a deep bass-filled twanging noise but otherwise held firm. The ferry was not sitting so deep in the water as one might have expected but it was at the limits of its capacity without becoming unevenly loaded.
The Arbiter quickly got out of the car and found the long heavy rod used to push the ferry along. Luck was on his side. It seemed that Amy’s mind was too distracted to have realised how heavy the ferry should have been to push. Her mind was making the task easier, evidently because she was anxious to reach the opposite shore. If her mind considered crossing an easy task then it would be easy. The danger, as the Arbiter knew, was that sometimes the human mind would perceive things as being very difficult or even impossible when trying to escape something in a dream. He had seen it before. They would be trying to run away from something, fleeing a fantasy induced terror, but for some reason their mind told them they could not run properly. They stumbled and fell constantly and put things in their own way. It was an odd quirk of the human mind and the Arbiter was grateful that it had not afflicted Amy so far.
Bridge Between the Worlds (Dreamwalker Book 1) Page 26