“Tonight, then,” he said, “my children will search for the thief. And tomorrow I’ll be gone with the dawn.”
They spoke no more on the voyage. Emesea had fallen asleep coiled over the enchantress’s red skirt. The dragon woke as if by instinct when the shore floated over the horizon.
Turquoise waters ebbed and flowed over a beach of white. The sand was so fine-grained that it felt like mist between Hiresha’s toes. Tethiel scooped it up and laughed as it sifted between his crooked fingers. The dragon cartwheeled within a wave. The fronds of palm trees clattered in the breeze.
Their boat was carried onto land by Skyheart. She walked on her seven arms with a slippery gait. The enchantress bid the kraken farewell with another promise to return, to negotiate a peace.
On the same beach but at night, they had no kraken to move their barge. Hiresha beckoned Pharaoh’s Wisdom to float ashore, taking care not to crush any of the thousands of baby tortoises scurrying from their eggs into the water. Tethiel helped carry one tiny reptile to the surf, though he also cheered when a gull swooped to catch another.
She wished Spellsword Fos could have shared this land reunion. Glancing over the tree line, she hoped to see him running out over the sands to greet her. The improbable did not happen.
I will see him again, she promised herself, and all others left behind.
Hiresha contented herself with the idea of finding Fos in Oasis City. She had landed on a distant shore, but all the lands had opened to her. No empire guardsman or enchantress could threaten her again. No prison could hold a dreamer.
Night swirled back to day in Hiresha’s mind. The circling perspectives felt as enlivening as flight, but she knew the time had come to end the dream inversion, for now. Both aspects of her spoke the keystone words.
“May dream part from truth.”
A hand shook; a chest trembled. The enchantresses understood this was not just a beginning of a new life. It was an ending. Lives in my dream will cease. But no matter what the result, Tethiel will be beside me.
Hiresha in red faced herself in blue. They nodded to each other and completed the unlocking phrase.
“May the sleeper wake.”
They expected two to become one, for their sight to be halved, but that did not happened. Not yet.
The enchantress in red glanced behind. She turned, gripping her crimson gem across her chest. Something in the sky had caught her eye. The moon was faint in the daylight, and it was full. A moment before, it had been a crescent.
It had changed. It was a sign.
Hiresha gazed down at her red dress and thought of all that had happened while wearing it. All that did not happen. She had never rescued Tethiel from the bane’s den. Emesea had never become a dragon.
She did not want it to be the false facet, but she could hardly deny the moon. The enchantress wearing the blue dress felt the weight of tiredness return to her eyes, and she knew that she had learned the language of a kraken. She had swum with Skyheart. She had seen her die.
Hiresha also knew she was free. She had crossed the Dream Storm Sea.
The full moon rose over the waves of Hiresha’s dream. Many people claimed they could spot a dragon curled in the markings on its face. Those blotches brightened as redness flowed over the disk. The white surfaces darkened to a ruddy shade. Some would have called it a blood moon. To Hiresha, its hue was between fire opal and ruby.
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a tale told of the Lands of Loam.
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Dream Storm Sea Page 28