Also, none of the broken dreamplanes spun. They all floated, the willow roots working as if carrying the planes along sand.
I glanced at Bo.
His smile widened.
We sailed through the graveyard. He pointed us toward one in particular. This one was green from far away, but as we got closer, I noticed mountains. Plural again, not singular. Tall, tree-like people inhabited the plane, their wide bodies made of twisting, living ropes in varying shades of pink and purple and green and blue.
My pulse quickened as a worrying itch tingled between my shoulder blades. “Bo, there are a lot of living things on that plane.”
He put his hand on my arm and latched onto my gaze with his blue eyes. “I told you things were different.”
“This much?”
“They would have rung the bell if they were in danger.”
I didn’t like it. Too many things could still go wrong.
Night’s Cruelty pulled up to a strip of sand along the edge. Normally, I would have called it a beach, but the sea hadn’t come with us.
I tried to see if the water had somehow managed to follow us. No. The dreamplane remained untainted by the Sea of Dreams. Was that the reason the dreamplanes were healing?
Possibly.
The railing rolled upward. I jumped back with a yelp.
Bo moved away as the entire ship changed shape, growing walls, windows, furniture. The crew sidestepped the modifications as if nothing strange was occuring.
I tried to calm my heart rate as I followed Bo to the new door. “What just happened?”
Kelsi stepped into the long room, her entire body silver, except her pitch-black eyes. We are settled, captain.
I stared at her in wonder and surprise.
“Thank you, Kelsi.” Bo opened the door and stepped out, the world rocking with his departure. “Zoe, are you coming?”
She made a beeline for the door.
I followed at a more sedate pace, and realized the reason for the rocking as I stared at a set of three iron-work steps. A wagon. I frowned as certain parts of what had happened when I’d been possessed came back to me. “Oh, right. The wagons are ships.”
He clapped me on the shoulder, dragging me down the steps. “You should have seen the look on your face. Almost as good as when you were possessed by a woman.”
Heat flushed my face.
He chuckled and let me go, leading the way into the forest of vine-people. “Don’t draw steel and don’t take anything without asking permission first.”
Zoe ran ahead.
I wanted to call out, to keep her closer, but Bo didn’t seem to have a problem with it.
The vine-people moved aside as we walked between them, staring down at us with big, leafy eyes. Their bodies groaned, but I didn’t hear a single voice.
We broke through into a clearing and a cacophony of noise. Dozens of kids milled around, talking and laughing. Several were up in the trees, building houses. The trees helped with their vine arms.
Olivia broke from a group on the ground and sauntered toward us. Her dark eyes twinkled as a slight smile graced her lips. Had she grown taller? Her black unicorn hide tunic adorned her slim curves. Her dark skin reflected the pale light from above with a healthy glow. “Rivah. You’re back.”
I stopped a few feet from her and smiled, shoving my hands in my pockets.
She closed the distance and gave me a hug. She stepped back and turned to the meadow. “Do ya like wha’ we’re doin’ here?”
“Looks like you’re making quite the life for yourself.”
“Tha’ we are. Tha’ we are.” She clasped her hands behind her back and walked along the edge. “Wha’ are you two boys doin’ here, eh? Savin’ us lot again? Because if ya are, can I decline? The last time you tried to ‘save us,’ ya nearly got us killed.”
I rolled my eyes with a puff of breath.
Bo leveled a look at me. “He wouldn’t stop worrying about you. Had to check on you himself. After he feels comfortable with your safety, we’re off.”
Olivia raised her chin, her cheeks gaining a bit of color as she smiled. “An’ where will ya be off to next?”
Bo touched one of the vine people, wonder relaxing his expression. “He’s got a lot to learn about sailing, so I figured we’d go out to sea. Give him a heading and see if he can get us there.”
“I know how to use Place,” I said with a glower.
“With a ship?” He shook his head. “Now I can add vine people to the list. How’s it working out here?”
She smashed out her lips with a shrug. “Good so far. We have everythin’ we need. The dreamplanes are providin’ more’n evah before. We have real food. There’s a whole field of potatoes just over the hill there. There are bread trees.” She laughed. “Can ya imagine it? Bread trees.”
Bo stared up the nearest trunk. “It is Dreamland. I’ve stopped asking myself if I could imagine anything.”
She leaned against the tree he touched. “Do ya have ta take us back?”
I stopped next to her and crossed my arms over my chest. “Yes. You’re dreamers, Olivia. You have to go back to where you belong.”
“Bu’—” She clicked her tongue, surveying the meadow of kids. “Life on Earth isn’ anythin’ like this. Nothin’ like this. Kole an’ I are on our own. We don’ have a home.”
“What about the other kids? What about the ones with brothers and sisters? Moms and dads?”
She nodded. “Sure. Send ‘em back if they wanna go, but those of us that don’? Are ya gonna force us ta leave?”
“Do you have any idea what’s happening to your body?”
She raised her petite eyebrows. “Do I care?”
“I think you should. What happens if your body dies? Do you die here?”
“Wha’ if our bodies are already dead? Rivah.” She stomped away and came back, her expression firm. “Kole an’ I have nothin’ ta go home to. If we choose it, you have to agree ta allow us ta stay.”
I scratched my brow with my pinky and flicked my fingers at Bo. “Any help here? Leaving dreamers in Dreamland, with everything we know, is a bad idea.”
He shrugged. “We know a lot more than we did before, sure.” He scrubbed his face, then looked away. “But if they don’t have a home to go to?”
“We have no idea what a toll this is taking on their bodies on Earth.”
“We don’ care, Rivah.” Olivia flexed her hands. “Wha’ part o’ tha’ aren’t you gettin’?”
I folded at the waist and stretched my neck, needing to buy time before I responded. I straightened. “You’re currently in two different places.”
“No. I’m righ’ here.”
“That’s what it feels like, maybe, but the reality is you’re here and you’re there.”
She rolled her eyes and thumped her back against the trunk she’d been leaning her shoulder against.
“What affect is this having on Dreamland?” I pushed off and paced toward Olivia. “Harley already opened the borders between this fold in reality and your world. What are the affects there? What kind of a strain is it going to put on you, on all of you?”
“If I had a choice, I’d choose here.” Olivia elongated her neck, crossing her arms her chest. “I don’ care abou’ m’ body ovah there. I choose ta stay here.”
“I don’t think that’s a choice you get to make. Bo. Help me out here.”
Bo shook his head with a shrug. “You may just have to get comfortable with the idea there are no right answers here, Riv.” He ambled toward me, grasping my shoulder on the way by. “You have a fairly decent heart. Do what feels right.”
“But what if it’s wrong?”
He smiled, the corners of his eyes dragging down in the shadows of the starlight. “Then, fail well.”
WHO DID I think I was anyway? Their savior? I’d done one heck of a great job there, hadn’t I? If they wanted to stay, who was I to say otherwise?
But the idea of dreamers being trapped in Dreamland just
seemed—
Strange? Why? Dreamland existed for dreamers. It should seem silly that Dreamlanders resided in this land, or dustmen or nightmares.
What was happening with their bodies, though? I had Bess trapped inside the dream net. What did that mean for her? And why had she gone silent? I vaguely recalled something about taking drugs to get to sleep.
Was she fine on Earth?
It wasn’t quite the same, though, was it? I had her dreams trapped in the net. Her soul was free to go wherever she willed it. Olivia and the other dreamers of the graveyard were trapped souls.
Ugh! How had things gotten so complicated?
“Look,” Olivia said quietly beside me, “we appreciate everythin’ ye’ve done, or tried to do fer us, so don’ think we’re ungrateful.”
I nodded and squinted into the dark sky, the pale light of a drifting dreamplane bathing the landscape in red. “I understand. We won’t offer help unless you ask for it.”
She pushed herself off the tree with a smile that lit her pale eyes. “Thank you, Rivah. Why no’ spend the nigh’ with us? You’ll be non-comatose this time, so it’ll be a trea’.”
The tips of my ears burned as I followed her into the meadow. “Yeah. Thanks.”
She threw a grin over her shoulder. “No worries, mate.”
The kids were much better at taking care of themselves than I was, especially out here. Olivia showed me around as she collected greens for dinner. She talked to the plants, asking them if it was all right to take from them. Her eyes shone with gratitude as she stared up their trunks to hear what they had to say.
“How do you do this?” I asked.
She turned her smile to me, her hand still on the bright blue tree walking beside us with long, slow strides. “Do wha’?”
I gestured to the world around us. “How do you adapt so easily?”
She shrugged. “I don’ know. When i’ was just me an’ Kole, we were out on the stree’. Us against the world. Then we came here. A few weeks of enjoymen’, a dus’man who cared abou’ us.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to hide the twinge in my heart from her admission.
She stooped down. “Can I gathah you?”
“I am ready, dreamer,” a wispy voice answered.
Olivia tugged a purple weed from the ground, depositing it into her basket. “Ta.”
The leaves relaxed in Olivia’s metal basket without another word.
I knew what it was like to be unwanted, an outsider, but I had no idea what it was like to be alone, to have no one to rely on. Since the sea had released me, I’d known that as long as Mech and I kept our heads down, Rulak would protect us.
“Eh! Don’ go all long in the face. It wasn’ tha’ bad. We had people lookin’ out fer us. Us stree’ kids, we go’ our own system. We don’ ge’ lef’ out long.”
“You’d really be okay with being stuck here?”
She cupped the head of a furry dandylion.
The flower nuzzled her hand and growled, his seed-eyes closing briefly.
“This is a lo’ bettah than the streets. No worries. Here, the world takes care o’ us, now that thin’s are back to bein’ righ’. Well, bettah than righ’, really. Whatevah you and your friends did, ya fixed this place. We’re healin’.”
“Not me so much.”
Her eyebrows jumped as she rose and strolled away.
“You were on the ship, though, before. You were looking for a way out.”
“I was lookin’ for a safah place for the softah ones. Even when thin’s were bad—and they were—I would’ve chosen ta stay.”
“Your brother?”
She flinched and dropped her gaze, skirting a pod of pansies.
They bickered, flailing their short leaves at one another.
“He wants ta leave.” She stuck her finger between the two main combatants.
The purple blossom glared up at her with his one remaining stamen, his petals ragged and torn.
The pink flower flung his leaves like a wet dog, pollen flying into the air with soft glitter.
Olivia rose and continued strolling at a slow, easy pace, resituating the basket along her arm. “He wants ta see wha’ kind o’ life he can make for himself. Wants ta go ta school. Somethin’ with accounting. He loves numbahs.”
I recalled the dreamer I’d first met in the net who had dreamed of being a dancer. When that dream had been crushed, he’d been forced to be an accountant. It’d been the death of him. Not everyone was made the same. “Are you going to keep him here?”
She touched the swaying vine dangling in front of her, her lips pinched.
I squinted up into the rope-like branches of the roaming, groaning trees.
“He wants ta force me ta come back with ‘im.”
That was no more a good idea than her forcing him to stay.
“We’re all we’ve had for so many years. It seems strange thinkin’ of him leavin’.”
I nodded. I had no experience to empathize though. What would it feel like to belong to someone else? To have people who wanted you there? Who would bring you back no matter where you’d gone?
Olivia’s dark lashes dropped before rising to the canopy of the trees. “I knew a boy like you once.”
I narrowed one eye at the violet vine tree beside me, not knowing if I wanted to hear what she meant. “Like what?”
“A lonah. He didn’ le’ anyone in. He didn’ know how.”
I flattened my lips along my teeth. “I didn’t realize I was so easy to read.”
“I don’ thin’ you Dreamlandah people have discovered how ta put shields ovah your expressions. You’re like a book. I could read ya covah to covah.”
I glanced at her.
She ducked her head, the basket hanging from both hands. “The hardah he fough’ with ‘imself to let others in, the hardah i’ was fer ‘im ta do it, ya know. He though’ he was broken, tha’ there was somethin’ wrong with ‘im.”
“What happened?”
“The righ’ people came along. He let it come natural and, last I checked, he had a big family, kids mostly, who he’d give his life for.”
I licked my lips in emotional unease, and petted the silky leaf of the violet tree keeping pace with me. A waft of musky vanilla met my nose.
“Don’ thin’ there’s anythin’ wrong with ya jus’ because you’re no’ like everyone else, Rivah.”
I loved the way she said my name. “Thanks.”
She grinned. “Enough wool gatherin’. We have a suppah to prepare.”
The tents and stuff that had been on the ground were relocated up into the branches of the trees. Large platforms were erected and small fires were lit within the branches of the living vines.
The trees kept the fires contained with their vine-limbs, maintainging rock rings around them, and keeping constant vigil over the sparks. Pixies fluttered about, assisting the trees where they could.
I’d never seen a pixie. I’d heard stories about them. Zoe had wings I likened to a pixie. They sprung from the flowers in an explosion of glitter-pollen, darting through the embers.
I spent my time traveling through the branches, moving from one tree to the next under the light of the stars and the fires that illuminated each tree. Food was plentiful—a different kind of soup at each tree.
Harper played her fiddle, a wild grin on her face. The vine people seemed to enjoy her efforts. They swayed, and the groans came out in words and song as they joined her. Zoe was deeply entrenched in a group of kids I didn’t know, but they were all about her age. She giggled madly as she ran after them.
Olivia sat on a bench vine, staring across her fire at a kid on the other side.
I gestured toward the area beside her, my eyebrows raised.
She nodded and scooted over.
The kid in question was older, though I couldn’t quite tell by how much. He had a young face, but his eyes . . . I don’t know. Something about them bespoke age. His shoulders were hunched, his clothes ragged. Well, all
the kids’ clothes were, but his more so. His long, red hair was matted. His face didn’t look like it’d been cleaned in days.
“Who is that?” I asked.
Olivia flicked a stick at the fire. “Asher. We picked him up a few months back. Unlike the other kids, he’s been gettin’ worse.”
“Everyone’s different.”
She raised her chin, her eyes crinkling.
I settled my elbows on my knees. “How’s he getting worse?”
She shook her head. “Can’t put my finger on it. He just—he’s getting’ dirtiah, skinniah. He won’ eat. Keeps givin’ his food to the others instead of keepin’ anythin’ for himself.”
“Hmm.”
“An’ then there’s tha’.” She flicked her fingers in Asher’s direction.
I studied the boy, trying to figure out what she was talking about. He sat there, his dark eyes flitting about.
Then I noticed his fingers, constantly moving. His palm remained on the vine bench he sat on. However, where his fingers touched, gold dust sprang up. It didn’t glow and it was hard to see in the low light, but there it was nonetheless.
The gold dust touched the vine close to my feet. Glitter shot into the air, followed by a long, twisting vine. A pixie popped out of the tip as it continued to lengthen and grow
I left my perch and sat beside him. “Hey, I’m River.”
Asher wrapped his arm around his knees and buried his chin.
“What’s your story?”
He looked away.
“Do you need anything?”
He shook his head.
I rubbed my forehead with straightened fingertips. “Well, you know, Bo and I are going to sail off tomorrow. You’re welcome to join us if you like.”
He glanced at me, his lips flat and pushed out, his eyes squinted.
Olivia tossed something small into the fire. “Would ya mind if I joined you?”
I smiled. “Not at all. Are you after anything in particular?”
“Meh. Maybe some clothes for the little ones. For me, too, for tha’ mattah. I’ve outgrown this.”
I leaned back, watching the stars. “Not a problem.”
“I’ll come,” Asher said, his voice rusty as if it hadn’t been used in a long while and lower than I’d expected, more like that of a man instead of a boy.
Dream Killers - Complete Season 1 (The Dream Killers Book 3) Page 25