The sandwich and crisps tasted surprisingly good. The pictures in the book were charming, showing the bright white temples of Hera and Zeus, the rugged wooden shrines to Frey and Freya. Some pictures had people in them—Unwary folk carrying flowers and honey cakes to a temple of Lucina, the Roman goddess of childbirth, or folk of the Wise lighting candles in the temple of Persephone at Eleusis. There was even a photograph of a deacon of Dionysus sacrificing a goat. Rachel turned that page quickly.
The next page showed a photograph of a picturesque ruin of an old temple, tall marble columns and sand-colored rubble. Rachel paused and cocked her head this way and that. If she turned it a bit, it looked rather like the princess’s vision. She leaned over and read the inscription.
Oh. Of course!
Rachel grabbed her calling card. Did they have a range? Talking glasses worked across the ocean. She tapped it and called experimentally. “Nastasia, Siggy, Zoë, Gaius!”
There was no answer. Sighing, she rose and paced. Where was Sandra’s talking glass? She found a mundane telephone but not the familiar green glass. She had to tell someone! She…
“Rachel?” Zoë’s voice came from her card.
“Yes!” Rachel cried.
Other voices came from the green card.
“Hi, there!” cried Joy
“Hello,” the princess said politely.
“Loud and clear,” came Valerie’s response.
“Rachel, is that you?” The last one was Gaius.
“Nastasia? That vision of yours. Did it look like this place?” Rachel cried excitedly. She held the calling card in front of the book.
“Perhaps,” came Nastasia’s voice. “I am not entirely sure. Many ruins look alike.”
“That looks rather like the place we saw in dreams!” said Gaius. “Where is that?”
Rachel said, “It’s the Temple of Saturn. In Carthage.”
There was a moment of absolute silence.
Then Gaius called excitedly, “Okay. I think I might be able to do something to help. Um. I’ll call you later!”
“Bye!” she called, delighted that he still sounded like his old self.
With a pang, she realized that her letter would not arrive where he was until tomorrow. He did not know the truth yet.
Siggy’s voice came over the card. “Hallo, Griffin? Did you call? Sorry, I was in the loo trying to convince Lucky that toilet bowls are not drinking fountains for dragons. I gather the card I hid in the off-campus-talkie-room downstairs worked! It’s tied both to your card and to ours, so we can all speak to each other. Clever, wasn’t it? Actually, it was Goldilocks’s idea. What’s up?”
“We found the place,” she said. She held up the picture.
In the card, she could see the calculating look on Siggy’s face. He slid his hands into his pockets. “I’m not sure that’s it. Nastasia, can we see it one more time?”
“Yeah!” Valerie was standing beside him. “We should compare the two images.”
“I don’t remember it as well as I did, but…I don’t see why not,” Nastasia replied. “Give me ten minutes to go inform the dean of this latest development.”
Zoë’s voice joined in. “Griffin, come meet us.”
“Um…how?” asked Rachel. “I’m in London.”
“Just go to sleep and dream of Roanoke.”
“Right. I’ll do that.” Rachel had intended the reply as sarcasm, but an idea came to her. Running back into the bedroom, she grabbed her wand from her bag. Then, she lay down on the bed and took a deep breath.
“All right. Here goes!”
Pointing the wand at her face, she fired off one of Gaius’s bedazzlement spells and tried very hard to keep thinking about Roanoke.
• • •
They cantered across the star-studded ocean, moonbeams flying about them like lances. The waves rose and fell beneath them like mountains. His arms held her waist firmly. Leaning down, he whispered in her ear.
“Weren’t you heading for Roanoke?”
Rachel blinked.
She was riding her dream unicorn across a dark ocean filled with stars that moved beneath the surface like fish. Behind her rode Dream Gaius. He gave her his too-cheerful grin that didn’t quite look like real Gaius. Apparently, her girlish subconscious was not able to entirely capture Gaius’s spirit, though Dream Gaius then followed the grin up with a very Gaius-like quirk of his eyebrow. “Roanoke?”
“Oh! Right!”
Rachel recalled standing on the commons. Ribbons of mist curled about the lamp posts. From behind her came a shout. Zoë, Siggy, Joy, Valerie and Nastasia pelted across the dream-grass toward her.
“This is…very convenient,” Rachel laughed. She turned to thank Dream Gaius, but he and the unicorn were gone.
“So…what do we do now?” asked Joy. “Stand back while the princess shines her princessy splendor?”
“Something like that,” drawled Zoë. “Nastasia?”
Nastasia concentrated, a furrow between her brows. The landscape around her and the others started to change. Rachel kept her eyes on them, so that her dream did not separate from theirs. Soon they were standing among blurry ruins.
She walked around examining different angles. It was difficult, because Nastasia did not fill in anything she had not seen, so if Rachel stepped away from the princess, things became merely fuzzy and gray.
“Here, I think.” She recalled the photo from her sister’s book.
A vivid, crisp landscape sprang up overlapping part of the princess’s blurry one. Nastasia frowned petulantly, looking annoyed. Rachel’s initial excitement grew dull and the pain that had been quieted by the memory of the Comfort Lion came rushing back. She pushed it aside and concentrated on the task at hand.
“Definitely the same landscape,” drawled Zoë.
“What do we do now?” asked Valerie. “I could go out and try to contact my dad. But it would take time for me to reach him on this phone-forsaken island. I’d have to get my cell and run to the docks. And he hardly has a lot of contacts in…where is Carthage these days?”
Rachel consulted a map from her mental library. “Tunisia.”
“Really?” Valerie looked surprised. “Weird. How did Aeneas end up in Northern Africa when he was sailing from Troy to Rome? Wasn’t Troy in Greece?”
“Not Greece, Asia Minor. What we now call Turkey.” Rachel tilted her head, thinking. “Speaking of Greece. I just thought of a possible way to get a message to the Wisecraft safely. I’ll be right back.”
Chapter Thirty-Four:
A Unicorn to the Rescue
Rachel remembered.
A grassy hillside appeared around her. Nearby, a spring burbled from an opening in the hillside. The waters danced with a melodious rhythm. In the distance, islands sparkled on a blue, blue sea. Nearby, ten women lounged on the steps of an amphitheater, nine draped in white, and one clad in black. Seeing this last figure, who rose to her feet with panther-like grace, Rachel began to run.
“Mrs. March! Mrs. March!” Rachel tried just dreaming that she stood next to the black-clad woman. However, the dreamstuff of the amphitheater and the hippocrene were not affected by her attempts to control what was around her.
Rachel ran.
“Rachel, how nice to see you again.” Cassandra March had covered the distance much more quickly than Rachel could have. Now, she gazed down with very dark eyes that reminded Rachel of Sandra’s. “That was good work you and your friend did in Transylvania. The Wisecraft caught Rupert Lawson and his colleagues, thanks to your information and the breath-theft talisman you turned in.”
“We found the demon’s place of power,” Rachel blurted out, but she could not help but feel very pleased at the other woman’s news.
Mrs. March’s pupils grew wide, exactly the way Rachel knew hers did when she accessed her memory, matching clues. If it meant the same thing, Mrs. March was thinking very fast.
“Tonight is the dark of the moon,” said Mrs. March. “They’re going to
kill somebody.”
“Right.”
Mrs. March wet her lips. “We must stop them. Where is it? I’ll wake up and tell Cain.”
“The Temple of Saturn in Carthage.” Rachel recalled the photo.
The ruined temple appeared beside them, on the side that was away from the hippocrene and the Muse. Only, this time, a temple was rising out of the rubble, bricks and stones coming together to reform the ancient building. In front of it stood the bronze structure Rachel had seen in one of the books in the library, a bull-headed furnace with arms outstretched to accept its victims. Under it, a fire roared.
Cassandra March grabbed Rachel and yanked her sharply, pulling her behind a pillar.
In front of the furnace-statue and the reforming temple stood the bull-headed demon and a number of purple-robed Veltdammerung cultists, some of whom were playing drums and woodwinds. One of the cultists had her hood back; a riot of red curls spilled down her shoulders. Beside her, gazing blindly ahead, as if he were asleep and not lucid, stood Juma O’Malley.
“No!” Mrs. March gasped, whispering. “They found him! It never occurred to my husband that they might not bother looking for his physical body and would just grab his dream self.” She looked around frantically. “Rachel, I must go tell Cain. Get yourself back to safety.”
With that, Cassandra March vanished.
Rachel peeked around the pillar to take one last look, to make sure she had not missed seeing anything.
“Have you spoken to my sister?” said a familiar voice.
Rachel spun around. The ghost of Remus Starkadder stood behind her, still dressed in his native finery with his huge white accordion sleeves and his black vest.
“Oh, it’s you!” She put her back to the column, so the Veltdammerung followers would not see her. She figured that with all the drums and music, they would not hear her, so long as she kept her voice down. “Um…no. Gaius spoke to her. But that was two weeks ago. Didn’t she come to see you?”
“She did, once,” he said, pacing back and forth. He seemed more solid than when she had met him at the Dead Men’s Ball, but not nearly as solid as her Elf had been. “But she has not come back. I have not heard anything regarding Romulus.”
“How long do you have?” Rachel asked politely.
“The time has passed. I have been granted…an extension.” The ghost fidgeted nervously.
“Oh. Well. That’s good.”
“Maybe.” He stared off into the distance beyond the hippocrene.
Suddenly, he started and turned around, gazing back and forth between the Greek mountain side and the Tunisian ruins.
“Where…are we?”
“In dreamland,” Rachel replied. Without moving from behind the pillar, she indicated the ruins behind her with a motion of her eyes. “There’s a demon over there.”
The already pale ghost grew paler. “What are you doing in such a place? Hardly seems a safe location for a young girl.”
“I’m not really here,” Rachel whispered back. “I’m in London, at my sister’s flat. I’m just dreaming I’m here.”
“Seems like a strange dream for the daughter of the Duke of Devon,” he muttered back.
From behind them came a heartrending wail.
“Mama! Mama, no! Don’t hurt me! You promised you wouldn’t hurt me. Mama! No!”
Rachel spun and peered around the pillar. Two of the purple-robed figures held Juma stretched out in the air by his arms and legs. Serena O’Malley stood between them, holding him under his back, or trying to, as he writhed and struggled. She seemed to be attempting to move him up the stairs of the temple toward the outstretched arms of the bronze statue.
Gaius’s words came back to her: If there’s anything worse than mothers getting paid for letting their children be killed…but only if they don’t cry—I don’t know what it is.
Swallowing, her mouth dry, Rachel thought: Maybe this.
Kneeling down, she peered around the pillar for a better view. Was could she do to help him? She had not yet mastered the Glepnir cantrip. Perhaps she could paralyze someone, but there were many people there. Had she had her wand, she might be able to freeze a number of them very quickly, but her wand was back in England, lying on the bed with her sleeping body.
Listening to Juma’s piercing shrieks, as he begged his mother to remember her promise not to hurt him, was too painful for her to bear. Rachel could not stand it. She could not stay here and watch. She would…
She had turned away from the temple. The ghost of the Transylvanian prince had vanished, but her unicorn was back. The beautiful white beast with its shining spiral horn munched grass next to the burbling hippocrene.
Rachel’s lips parted in excitement.
“Unicorn!” Rachel raced to the beast and hugged it. Pressing her cheek against its sleek neck, she whispered. “You’re a figment of my dreaming imagination, right? Can you change shape…if I want you to? Like other dream things?”
The unicorn nickered in agreement.
“Okay.” She thought of an image very, very clearly. “I need you to look like this.”
The unicorn shimmered and assumed the new form.
“You need to go over there.” She pointed toward the temple and furnace-statue. “Run!”
Over by the temple, Serena and her two helpers had carried the struggling Juma up the marble stairs and through the columns. The statue was a mere three feet away. Juma was crying and cringing away from the extreme heat radiating from the open furnace. The desperate, struggling boy caught sight of the former unicorn.
“Mama,” he shouted with joy. “Look!”
Serena turned her head. Her gaze fell upon a tiny elephant with big floppy ears advancing on her in a charge that would have done Hannibal proud.
“No!” she screeched, her face a mask of hatred and ugliness.
Then, everything about her changed. Her expression became gentle; her manner startled and timid; her hair less fiery and more auburn. Shock and dismay crossed her features.
Screaming like a banshee, she grabbed her son with all her strength and yanked him away from the startled cultists.
“Juma! This is a dream!” she shouted. “Wake up. Sweetie, you must wake up!”
“Jellybean!” Juma called to the tiny elephant, who was actually a unicorn. “I love you!”
Then the young man was gone.
Rachel slumped against the pillar, taking large gulps of air in sheer relief. She had not even realized that she had been holding her breath. It was all right. Juma had woken up. The real Jellybean would be there to greet him.
To her delight, the moment she stopped concentrating on the false Jellybean, the unicorn reappeared beside her, glorious and unstained. It nuzzled her face. She put her arms about its head. Pressing her forehead against its soft nose, she let out a single sob of relief.
Behind her, at the temple, she heard the angry screech of Serena O’Malley reverting to her evil version. It was time to be away from here.
Rachel recalled standing next to her friends in Nastasia’s fuzzy version of the ruins. The others were still there, waiting for her.
“That was hardly what I would call coming right back—” Zoë’s voice cut off when she saw Rachel’s face. “What happened?”
Rapidly, Rachel told them.
“So, they tried to sacrifice that kid with the stupidly-named elephant?” asked Sigfried. “He should have called an elephant Peanut.”
“I think that elephant suffered from stunted growth, boss,” offered Lucky. “Wasn’t it kind of small? Or did they grow it that way to make it snack-sized? I mean he named it after candy, he must have expected somebody to eat it, right?” Lucky looked hopeful.
Valerie gave both of them a dark look. “This is serious, boys. What are they going to do next? Go get Juma in person? Grab a kid from a nearby town? Do you think…”
But Rachel never got to hear Valerie’s question, because at precisely that moment, she woke up.
• • •
Someone was banging on Sandra’s door.
Rachel jumped off the bed, catching her wand before it clattered to the floor. From her bags, she grabbed one of her school robes. It must have been the one she had worn on All Hallow’s Eve, because there were still traces of grease paint on the collar that the laundry bean tighes had failed to remove. Throwing it over her nightgown, she stuck her wand next to some packet in the pocket and ran to the door, skidding to a stop on the polished wood of the floor.
They had not discussed visitors. Did Sandra want her to let people in?
“Sandra? I know you’re in there. It’s your neighbor, Marie. I thought I heard something. Open the door.”
Rachel stood still, torn by indecision.
The voice grew louder and more angry. “Open the door!”
Rachel took a quiet step backward and then another. She recognized that voice.
It was Serena O’Malley.
Turning, she ran, looking left and right for a place to hide. Not finding an obvious one, she settled for a trick she had used often in hide-and-seek games. She raced into the bedroom, bunched up the covers, climbed under them, and curled up into a ball beneath one of the mounds, in the hope that the blankets would merely look rumbled and discarded. She held her hand over her mouth and tried to breathe very quietly.
There was more banging, and then much more banging, followed by a loud crack. Then came the sounds of a woman’s footsteps moving through the apartment. Laying in the stifling heat under the covers, Rachel began to tremble. Her blood roared in her ears. Her whole body was shaking. Her heart hammered so loudly against her ribs that she was surprised she was not receiving complaints from the barges on the canal outside her bedroom window, much less the next room. She felt more frightened than she had at any previous point in her life.
She was alone with the violent, crazy woman who killed Mortimer Egg Jr.’s mother, and there was no one she could call for help. No one who would come save her. Her wand was in her pocket, but she was too frightened to reach for it, lest that motion be the one that betrayed her. She wished she had brought the plushy lion under the covers. At least she would have had something to hug.
The footsteps paused at the bedroom door and then move past. Rachel’s heart missed several beats. Dare she hope?
Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Page 43