Dreamfire (48 page)

My apprentice. Look what I let happen to you. I tried to tell them I wasn't ready, that I'd be a terrible teacher, but no one listened, and now look what I've done.

“You can change this,” he told her. His voice was weak, but she felt comforted to hear it, even if his words were absurd.

He had never gotten what he deserved from life: not from his parents, not from the county, and certainly not from her. She hated herself for not having been strong enough to be the teacher and friend he needed. She hated herself for hurting him again and again.

“You have the power, Josh,” he said. “Please,
please
believe it.”

She didn't have any power. She had fallen for Feodor's tricks, and for Gloves's, too.

Around them, the walls and ceiling began to slowly fade, becoming pale and misty.

“Josh,” Will whispered. He was pleading now, tears in his eyes. “Just this once, don't be afraid of your power.”

She felt his hand close around hers and realized how cold her skin was. The ceiling above her looked like a cloud, and she imagined that behind it she'd find a beautiful spring sky, not another nightmare.

“In the limo, you said that no one ever sees you, that they let you get away with everything because you're special. You said they would let you off the hook no matter what you did. Well,
I
see you, Josh. I don't know all your secrets and I haven't been around all your life, but I saw you when you were mad at me in the school lobby, and when you were scared and falling into Haley's arms, and when you were kissing me in the kitchen. I
know
you, and I know what kind of power you have because I've seen you in the Dream, too. And I am the one person who is not going to let you off the hook.”

He stopped speaking for a moment to catch his breath, which rasped each time he inhaled. Then he said, “I don't want to die tonight. Neither do you, but you'll give up this fight because you're too afraid to trust yourself. You'd rather believe you're a screwup who always gets let off the hook than admit how amazing you are and take responsibility for being so strong. If we die tonight, I'll know the truth—that we died because you were afraid of being special. That's
your
dreamfire, Josh, admitting how strong and smart and great you are. It's easier for you to stay small. But I know you, Josh, and I don't think you're small, not a bit, so don't you dare just lay there while the Dream shifts and drops us into God knows what nightmare to die.”

His hand tightened around hers, and she realized she was crying again. Her eyes were so sore, she thought she must have been crying for days now. Behind Will, the blurry white walls looked like feathered wings extending from his busted back.

“Go on,” Will whispered. “The Dream is shifting, but you can stop it. Hurry.”

Haley believed. Young Ben believed.

But if Will believed …

“How do I…?” she asked, the words half-formed.

“You
know
how,” Will whispered, so fervently that in that instant she did know.

Her eyes closed, and she let the Dream come to her, this Dream that had been her second home, her escape, her playground. She broke Stellanor's First Rule like she'd never broken it before, allowing not just the fear within the Dream to come to her, but the joy, the sweetness, the sorrows and delights and memories and wicked fun. She opened herself to secrets and dark corners and swore to set the twisted roads straight and turn the sky right-side up again. She reached out to the edges of this universe, this reflection of the World rippling on the surface of a pond, and gave herself up to the voices of the dreaming.

Her father had always told her not to give in to the dreamer's fear, but tonight the dreamfire was her own and greater than that in any nightmare, greater than the terror Feodor had forced into her. This fear swirled around her like dark, icy water, and she knew that the Dream felt it. Tonight the Dream quit speaking and listened to her, to what she needed to tell it.

My name is Joshlyn Dustine Hazel Weavaros. I have walked your lands all my life and calmed as many storms as I was able. I have risked my life and the lives of those I love to heal you. Now I am seventeen years old, I am claiming my own, and it's time to return the favor.

A ripple moved through the Dream, as if it had been waiting generations to hear her voice and was amused by her unnecessary forcefulness. Josh's hands filled with sand and cloud and someone, maybe Will, said, “Go on, then. You know what to do.”

She was the floor, she was the walls, she was the shards of broken mirror. Her arms stretched across the ceiling and beyond into other dreams. Her heartbeats were the seconds of time; her breath was change.

She held out her hands, and the Dream stilled. She, Will, and Haley were suspended in a melting white room, but she made the walls and floors hard again, put everything back in place.

“Josh,” Will whispered, but he used a different voice this time, a voice that was awe and pleading combined.

She opened an archway to the familiar archroom in her basement at home, but no one was there, so she opened another archway—a new one, which took only a thought—to the living room, where Deloise was sitting on the couch with a cup of tea in her hands, her beautiful face aged by worry.

When the archway opened three feet in front of her, she jumped up so fast she forgot about her teacup and let it roll off her thigh, spilling tea down the leg of her lavender jeans. For three seconds she stared through the archway, her mouth agape, and then she shouted, “Saidy! Whim! Get in here! Hurry!”

Josh's mind drifted, only half-conscious of what was happening, until she felt the night air on her skin. Out in the World, rain was falling, and the stretcher Josh rode bounced up and down as Saidy rushed her toward an ambulance. Cold water splashed her face, reminding her of the rain in Warsaw—but this was only World rain, only the ocean running in circles. Josh saw her bloodied arms sparkling with fairy dust.

The metal bars of the stretcher clanged as they loaded her into the ambulance. The doors closed and the vehicle tore onto the road with its siren wailing. The pain in Josh's head and her elbow came back, along with the overwhelming sense of weakness, but she opened her eyes and saw Will looking at her from the stretcher beside hers.

She reached out with her good hand and found his under the white sheet that had been thrown over him. His gaze was detached and serene, and Josh hid nothing from him when she gazed back. She felt his pulse slowing under the skin of his palm and squeezed tighter.

“Stay,” she whispered. Her throat burned, but she said it again. “Stay.”

A sort of smile came onto Will's face and his fingers closed around hers, but his heart skipped one beat, then another. Josh remembered holding on to Ian's hand when they went through the archway into Feodor's universe for the first time, remembered how hard she had held on, so hard she had dragged his spirit back into the World.

She thought she would hold on to Will twice as hard.

Through a Veil Darkly

Feodor Kajażkołski Is Dead (No Thanks to the Junta)

By now many of you have heard the news—news that even the junta couldn't cover up. Three teenagers—Josh Weavaros, Haley Micharainosa, and Will Kansas—faced off with legendary madman Feodor Kajażkołski in the pocket universe to which he was exiled in 1962.

And they won.

At the time of this writing, Josh Weavaros is currently in a medically induced coma after suffering a depressed fracture to her skull and exhibiting unusual brain-wave patterns. She is so covered in bruises that she's unrecognizable. Will Kansas required a skin graft to cover a massive wound on his back. Only Haley Micharainosa, who suffered a concussion and minor contusions, has been released from the hospital.

And where, you might ask, where were our leaders when these three teenagers were in such dire need? Nowhere to be found. Josh's own grandfather, Peregrine Borgenitch, dismissed an eyewitness who had WATCHED the three enter Kajażkołski's universe, and continued to insist that doing so was impossible. He was holding a press conference and was in the middle of a sentence expressing just that sentiment when Anivay la Grue received word that Josh, Haley, and Will had returned. Even if the eyewitness had been wrong, the possibility of him being right should have warranted an immediate response from the Gendarmerie.

Less than six months from now, the Accordance Conclave will be held and proposals accepted for what form the permanent North America dream-walker government should take. A lot of people have said they'd just as soon keep the current arrangement. I hope that the gravity of this incident causes them to reconsider.

 

Thirty-eight

Josh regained consciousness
several times before truly waking up. Once to the sound of kind women's voices telling her, “Open your eyes, honey,” and a whiny mechanical beep; a second time when she was moved from one bed to another; a third time just long enough to hear her father say, “She's falling asleep again. Is that safe?”

In between, she returned to jagged nightmares where Feodor led her through ruined cities, through forests burned to cinders beneath smoking gray skies, to the black shores of oceans of blood where red waves rose to douse her in stinking pink froth.

When she finally roused herself from the chemical bog of sedatives and pain medications, Haley was sitting at her bedside. Everything around her—the sea-foam-green walls, waffle-knit white blankets, and rock-hard pillows—confirmed her suspicion that she was at St. Dymphna's Hospital.
Home away from home,
she thought. After the chaos of her dreams, the sound of nurses' chatter in the hallway and the hum of televisions in other rooms reassured her that she was safe and sound.

She groaned, and Haley looked up from the notebook in which he was writing. He smiled at her, a sweet little Haley smile. For the first time since he'd come back to town, he wasn't wearing a single article of Ian's clothing; now he'd dressed himself in very grubby jeans and a yellow turtleneck with a red-and-green Christmas sweatshirt over it.

“Hi,” Josh said, half choking on the word. Her throat felt like it had been scratched by a cat. She tried to move, but her body had turned to stone and a frumpy cast encased her arm all the way up to her shoulder. Light from a large window drilled into her eyes. “What day is it?”

“Thursday.”

Thursday?
“What day did I get here?”

Haley smiled again. Aside from the purplish remainder of a bruise on his temple and a bandaged wound on his neck, he looked fine. Better than fine, in fact. Peaceful.

“Sunday.”

She had never managed to knock herself unconscious for four days before.

“Is Will all right?” she asked, trying to sit up. She noticed that purple and green bruises covered her arm that wasn't in a cast. “What happened to me?”

Haley rose and found the controls on the side of the bed. Sitting was much easier with mechanical assistance. “Will's okay, and the bruises are from thrashing around on the floor while Feodor tortured you. You have a lot of them.”

Josh winced. She never wanted to relive those memories.

“How okay is Will?” she asked.

“He went home yesterday. But he needed surgery and lots of stitches and a skin graft.”

Either all the blood was rushing from her head or else she was passing out from relief. She closed her eyes and relaxed the muscles that she had tensed upon waking.

“Your dad is mad at you, though, for going into Feodor's universe. Will says he's really just relieved that you're not dead, and he's using anger to avoid the fear he felt.”

Josh smiled, opening her eyes again. “And you're talking.”

He blushed. “Kinda.”

“No, it's very cool.”

Haley hesitated and then said, “When we got to the hospital, I was the first to wake up, so I had to make up a story for the doctors.”

He was so adorably pleased with himself. “Really?” Josh asked.

“I told them we were abducted by aliens. They made me talk to a psychiatrist.”

Josh laughed. “You'll have to fill me in on all the details so I can back you up.”

Haley smiled at his feet.

“Oh,” she asked, “have you seen Winsor? How's she doing?”

Haley lifted his head, no longer smiling. “She's the same.”

“You couldn't get the canister?”

“Davita brought it. But … I couldn't…” His face twisted with frustration, his lips pursing the way they did when he was angry. “It's like a puzzle box.”

Josh nodded, disappointed but unsurprised.

“I think the canisters are meant to be long-term cages,” she told Haley. “We might need, I don't know, a physicist or somebody to take it apart before we can get her out. Maybe someone at Willis-Audretch would know how.” Haley looked relieved at the idea of bringing in expert help.

“What about all the other souls, the ones hooked up to Feodor's machine?”

The relief in Haley's face vanished. “I don't know. I think … they're probably lost in the Dream. Even if they could find their bodies, I don't know if they could get back in.”

Josh blew out a long breath.
This is bad,
she thought.
I don't know how to fix this.

She wondered if her newfound abilities as the True Dream Walker would help, and hoped so.

Haley touched her cheek, and she looked at him. He opened the fingers of her left hand and pressed something cool and heavy into her palm. “Ian asked me to give you this.”

Josh lifted her hand and saw her lighter, the one Gloves had tried to kill her for. The words
To J.D. Love Always, Ian
were still engraved in the rose-gold plating, but now there was a new dent—a dent that underscored “
Always
.” Josh ran her thumbnail along the groove.