The Sandman and the War of Dreams (5 page)

My telling it to you will make that so.

I was once a Star Captain in the Golden Age, born to guide the stars that would not stay still. Stars are an amazing phenomenon—all but the rarest stay in place. You see them in the night sky, and you always will. But a few—a precious few—are restless, driven on and on by too much energy or curiosity or even anger. . . . These are the ones we call “shooting stars.”

As a star pilot, I belonged to the League of Star Captains, a cheerful brotherhood devoted to the granting of wishes. We each had a wandering star that we commanded. In the tip of our star was our cabin, a bright compact place, much like an opulent bunk bed. We journeyed wherever we pleased, passing planets at random and listening to the wishes that were made to us as we passed. If a wish was worthy, we were honor-bound to answer it. We would send a dream to whomever had made the wish. The dream would go to that person as they slept, and within this dream, there would be a story.

If the story was powerful enough, the person would remember it forever, and it would help guide them in their quest to make the wish come true. These dreams were considered one of the greatest treasures of the Golden Age. But to create the dream in the first place, we had to be asleep. So we were often asleep and dreaming, even as we flew, and our stars would awaken us if trouble lurked.

And trouble wasn’t difficult to find. Dream Pirates prowled every galaxy. They were nasty, stunted creatures who lived by stealing dreams. At first they ruthlessly plundered these dream treasures of the Golden Age for the bounty they could raise for their return. But then they discovered an even more wicked motive for this crime. If they
consumed a dream, it made them stronger, tougher, and more powerful in every evil way.

So we Star Captains fought hundreds of battles with the Dream Pirates, at least until the great war that ended them. We weren’t without help—the other planets and Constellations of the Golden Age banded together and formed the greatest fleet in the known universe, led by the most brilliant and fearless captain in history, Kozmotis Pitchiner, Lord High General of the Galaxies. It was Lord Pitch (as he was called by his sailors) who sailed unceasingly to every corner of the heavens and hunted down legion after legion of Dream Pirates. Though he was victorious and had become the greatest hero of the Golden Age, he paid a most terrible price. And that is where this story of my life takes an unexpected turn.

The tragedy of Pitch and what brought him low
became the center of my journey. It is the story of Pitch and his lost daughter.

Of how she became lost.

Of how Pitch was broken past healing.

And of how his daughter became the one you call “Mother Nature.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

The Heart Becomes the Hunted

T
he War of the Dream Pirates was vicious and bloody. The pirates knew that if they lost, they would never again be as powerful as they were at that very moment. So they became more clever, devious, and cruel with their tactics: They would destroy whole planets. Extinguish stars. Eliminate entire Constellations.

For eons the pirates had been seen as dangerous criminals. Now the people of the Golden Age viewed them as an evil that had to be eradicated. Soon hate became the center of how this war was waged, and hate is a powerful force.
It can make bad men worse and good men nearly mad.

Lord Pitch had been noble and fair at the start of his campaign. He’d fought honorably against the pirates. When he bested their ships, he took the survivors prisoner. He fed them well and urged them to renounce their wretched ways.

But the pirates saw this thread of humanity as a weakness, a weakness that could be used against Lord Pitch. They’d thus far failed in their attempts to assassinate him, and their attempts had been many. Now, however, they realized with cold calculation, if they failed to kill him in body, they would simply destroy his spirit.

They began to hunt for that which mattered most to the valiant sailor: his family. Lord Pitch kept his wife and child housed safely on the small moon of a planet deep in the heart of the
Constellation Orion. It was a lovely moon and was well protected by the many asteroids that encircled it. Each asteroid was a small fortress, armed with a platoon of the elite of the Golden Age Armies.

Emily Jane

Lord and Lady Pitchiner were doting parents, their palace a thrilling place to raise their young daughter, Emily Jane. She was a wild and joyful child, with raven-black hair as thick and flowing as a horse’s mane, which was fitting, as she was always on the run. Like her father, she loved to sail. She was constantly in her own small schooner, venturing around her moon and its asteroids.

Lady Pitchiner, ever vigilant in her care of their only child, often ordered Emily Jane to stay close, to take a guard with her, or simply to stay home. But Emily Jane disobeyed her mother frequently. She
couldn’t stop herself from slipping out alone and doing as she pleased. Her father loved his girl’s wild heart, so he turned a blind eye to her disobedient sailing ways.

Fate can be as peculiar as any dream or story, for it was one of these little secret adventures that saved Emily Jane’s life.

Dream Pirates had been reported off the tip of Orion’s sword. Lord Pitch hurriedly said his farewells to his wife and daughter before preparing to hunt down the scoundrels. The family never liked saying good-bye; they tried not to think of the dangers that would be faced. But this time Emily Jane had made for her father a silver locket containing her picture. He was very pleased by it and put it around his neck as he kissed her.

“I’ll be back soon,” he told her.

“Promise?” she said.

“On my soul,” he replied.

Lord Pitch was a man of his word. And he reassured himself that his family was safe. Their moon home had many defenses against a large attack.

But the Dream Pirates had not planned a large attack. They had something more intimately sinister in mind.

Several dozen pirates, shadowy and expert, slipped past every guard, every outpost, every defense and made their way to Lord Pitch’s villa.

The villa was spacious, columned, almost castlelike. It was carved from moonstone, so the rooms had a soothing, cool glow of reflected light, even in the darkest night. But this night seemed particularly dark.

All in the villa were asleep except one—Emily Jane. After bedtime she had slipped out her
bedroom window and into her schooner docked close by. She hadn’t yet traveled far when she spied a school of Star Fish, swimming low in the moon’s atmosphere. She loved Star Fish—a favorite game was to tie her schooner to the leader and ride along with them as they swooped and dove through the canyons near her home.

Star Fish

The Dream Pirates, so intent on infiltrating the villa, had not seen the girl sneaking out. Emily Jane had already cast off when the pirates were surrounding the villa and readying to strike. They could feel the sleeping dreams of Lady Pitchiner and of the entire household. To the Dream Pirates, dreams were like blood to a vampire. Dreams made them hungry and sometimes stupid. Could they feel the dreams of Lord Pitch’s daughter? They were too impatient and crazed to
make sure. “She must be in there somewhere,” they reasoned.

And so they charged.

A Dream Pirate attack is swift and ragged. Like awkward phantoms, the pirates often fly in lurches and jerks, and they usually destroy everything that gets in their way.

Lady Pitchiner startled awake as the pirates smashed their way through the house, coming closer and closer to where she lay. She could hear the alarms sounding, but would help come in time? She doubted it. She ran into Emily Jane’s bedroom and locked the door. But the bed was empty. The covers hadn’t even been pulled down.

Good!
Lady Pitchiner thought.
She’s out on her ship!
For once, she was thankful rather than angry that her daughter was so rebellious.

The pirates were smashing down the door.
Lady Pitchiner had only an instant to act.
They’ll be looking for us both,
she thought. So she grabbed a large doll and held it in her arms, as if it were Emily Jane, and sat very still. The door splintered into pieces, and the pirates poured in. Lady Pitchiner knew the awful fate of those taken by Dream Pirates—their souls sucked dry of dreams, leaving them to become mindless slaves . . . or worse.

They must be made to think that we have died,
she thought desperately as the pirates clamored closer. Keeping just enough of the doll exposed under her cape so the pirates would see it, she ran for the window. Straight into and through it. The glass shattered. Lady Pitchiner was gone.

The pirates pressed at the window, staring down. The fall was more than a mile.

Emily Jane had heard the alarms and the explosions echoing through the canyons she was
coasting. She knew the ruckus could only be coming from her home. She knew the sound of a Dream Pirate attack. They had attacked her father’s ship when she and her mother had first come this moon. And though she was wild, she was not foolish. She stayed with the Star Fish. Perhaps if she rode among them, she would not be seen. The Star Fish swam swiftly through the canyons, in a near panic from the sounds of battle.

Between gaps in the canyons peaks, Emily Jane watched in horror as her palace was riddled with explosions. She could make out the window of her own room, then the awful sound of shattering glass, and there was the unmistakable figure of her mother falling.

Emily Jane turned away. She closed her eyes tightly and would not open them; she let the Star Fish take her where they would. The Star Fish
darted on and on, away from the embattled moon, through the rings of meteors, and out into the ocean of space. Soon Emily Jane could no longer hear anything but the lulling sound of the wind as she was pulled farther and farther from her doomed home and into the eternity of space.

C
HAPTER
N
INE