The Three Furies (Erec Rex) (25 page)

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Beauty of Dreams

T WAS IMPOSSIBLE to tell how long Erec and Wandabelle moved small amounts of muck from the stable to the river. The work was going a little faster, which meant that Erec had to move more animals inside. Wandabelle had been right. The animals were amazingly quick to re-create the mess, to the point where they had to be moved outside again.

At least the job was more fun with a friend to work with.

"Do you notice that we never get hungry here?"

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Wandabelle shrugged. "I don't eat much, anyway. Just a little dew now and then, when I'm in the mood."

"And we never have to sleep?"

"I don't ever sleep." She pursed her lips, correcting herself. "But I suppose I am sleeping now, though. I guess there is no choice here. That's probably why I can't escape."

"If only there was a way to wake you up." Erec gave that idea some thought. "Don't worry, Wandabelle. I'll do my best to get you out of here. Even if I end up leaving before you. I'll come back for you."

"Promise?"

"I promise." He looked around the stable. It was just as filled with gunk as when he first arrived. "That is, if I ever leave here at all."

Wandabelle fluttered through the air on her sparkling wings and landed in front of him. "We do need to escape, Erec. The clowns are in big trouble with me locked away. They won't last too long without a leader. I should have fixed things for them already, but I had no idea that I would be captured." She sighed. "You see, their old king and queen were--"

"I know. They were killed."

"In a sense." She touched a finger to Erec's nose. "Thank you for helping me."

His nose itched, and he rubbed where she tapped it. "No thanks yet." Erec crossed his arms and paced, careful not to slip in the guck. "I don't think this is doing any good. You're right. Let's not waste any more of our time here. We're going to find another way out."

They walked into the village, dodging tarantulas and running from a tribe of headhunters shooting arrows at them.

"Maybe we should both help someone else," Erec suggested. "It could get people into the right frame of mind. If we all shared the jobs, we might at least be able to get some people out of here."

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Dark waves crashed onto the gray shore of a nearby beach. Erec saw a man sweeping the sand off the beach, not making a dent as the waves continuously pushed more right back around him. Crabs scuttled by, biting his ankles. That job looked like torture.

"Want some help down there?"

The man approached suspiciously, as if he didn't trust his ears. "What did you say, boy?"

"We'll sweep with you, if you like. Could help you get done faster."

His eyes bugged. "You would do that for me?"

"Sure." Erec and Wandabelle had no brooms, so they used their hands to push sand off the beach and into the water. Of course, all of the sand they moved rushed right back onto the beach with the next wave.

"Maybe we have to go faster," Erec suggested.

A few people gathered by the street above them, watching in amazement at the three of them working together.

"Come on down and join us," Erec called. "Maybe if we all pitch in, we can actually do this."

A few came down to the beach to watch or work, and others ran to spread the news. Soon the entire group of villagers was standing on the beach. Eyes bugged out of their heads, and hands clasped over their hearts.

"I haven't smiled in eons," a woman said. The deep lines in her face looked almost cracked in two from her grin.

"Well, don't just watch," Wandabelle shouted. "Push some sand into the water with us. It's fun!"

Oddly, it
was
fun. People ran forward, hands on the ground in front of them, splashing into the cold surf. Others scooted on their bottoms, pushing sand with their feet and giggling.

"I haven't done a wretched thing but clean toilets since I've been

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here--except for throwing me sabers at the lot of you." Erec recognized the man who was dressed like a pirate. "This is like paradise!"

"A vacation at the beach!"

The man who had spent thousands of years sweeping the sand was beside himself with joy. Tears streamed down his face. His broom fluttered faster than Erec could have imagined, spurred by renewed hope. "Thank you." He gripped Erec's shoulder. "Even if your idea doesn't work, I'll never forget this day. I feel so much better."

"Tomorrow," shouted the toilet scrubber, "we finish the beach. Then we all move on to hunting down the ants!"

A man with a bow and arrow clasped a hand over his chest. His chin trembled. "Thank you! And the day after that, we scrub the toilets! Then collect the garbage!"

Plans were made as people splashed and rolled in the water with glee.

"Oh, dear," Wandabelle whispered to Erec. "This isn't working at all. Have you noticed that there isn't any less sand now than before?"

Erec nodded. "They're a lot happier, though."

"True. But it would be nice to really get them out of here. We have to find some way to change things. . . ."

Change things.
That phrase sounded familiar.

Change . . . That was what the Hermit had been teaching him. The thing he couldn't remember.

He could hear it now, his own voice, faint, in the back of his mind:
Change your dreams.

That was it! The Hermit had showed him how to change his dreams. Well, this was a dream, wasn't it? Maybe he could change things here, too.

How had he done it before? He had placed objects near him while he slept. He could touch them, pull them into his dreams, make them become whatever he wanted them to be.

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Erec tried to remember what he had with him now. His backpack had a lot of things. The Hermit had thrown shells and starfish into it. A nice round shell sounded perfect now. It would be much bigger here, inside his dream--their shared nightmares. But how would he find it and bring it here?

Control. He had to pay attention to his body.
Change your dreams.
Where was his body now, really? It took a certain awareness, he knew, to be able to tell while he slept. He had done it before.

Focus. Think.

You are asleep.
Change your dreams.
Realize that. Feel where your body is, what's around it.

A spark of awareness popped into his head. He grabbed onto it. His hands were empty, but something clung onto his back. It was his backpack, he was sure. Could he open it in his sleep? Was it possible?

With immense effort, Erec shoved himself forward and the backpack slid off his arms. The floor felt hard. The beach before him flickered, and then came back. He was lying on the sand, moaning. People were gathering around him.

"Are you okay?"

Forget this picture. Open the backpack.
Erec felt torn between two worlds. The beach overwhelmed him with its sights and sounds. The other, the hard floor, only became solid if he really thought hard. He fought against the beach image, the dream.

Open the backpack. He felt a zipper, pulled. Was he really doing it? Or was this just another dream?

He felt things inside it.
Reach a hand in, Erec.

He shuffled on the floor, still asleep but moving. He could sense things around him. People? He heard snores.

Or were those waves? No, they were waves crashing on the beach more ferociously than ever. People were gathered around him, talking about a seizure, wishing there was a doctor.

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No! He had to keep focused. His hand roamed in his backpack. Feel for something round. . . .

There it was. A sand dollar--in his grip.

No, it wasn't a sand dollar. It was an enormous fan. He pulled it right into the nightmare of the beach.

His hand became gigantic, like a skyscraper. It dragged something onto the road facing the beach. The thing was so big that it stretched into the clouds, reaching from one end of the beach to the other.

Everyone watched silently as his hand shrank to normal size. A solemn mood settled on the group. A miracle was happening.

"Um . . . we better move off of the beach." Erec jabbed a thumb toward the road. The villagers followed Erec silently, back behind the giant fan. "Grab onto the netting on the back of this thing and hold tight. I think it will create a lot of wind, even on this side."

People lined up, arms woven through the steel mesh behind the fan. Erec knew where the button was to turn it on, of course. It was his fan. And he knew that it would work.

With a swift kick, Erec flipped the switch. Fan blades began whirling. The pressure soon sucked him so tight against the steel that he could hardly breathe. The sand from the beach sailed far out over the ocean as easily as a giant would blow dust off a matchbox. Clumps of wet sand that lay beneath lifted away too, in huge chunks. Every time wet sand washed ashore it blew, too, followed by rocks that danced more like feathers. Soon the shore was a clean, bare slab of bedrock.

Erec kicked the fan off, and they all pried themselves away from the metal. In a blink, the fan vanished.

"I . . . I did it!" The man whose job was to clean the beach rejoiced, broom still in hand. "I can go home now! Thank you!" He hugged Erec and Wandabelle. "Thank you all! King Augeas? I can go!"

The king's face appeared in the sky. "Yes?" His voice was oily.

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"You think you finished--" His jaw dropped open. "You . . . how did you do this? Did you get help? Because I don't know if that's fair."

The man waved his broom at the sky. "A deal is a deal, good king. Am I free to go?"

The king huffed and grumbled some. "Fine. But don't expect anyone you know to be alive anymore."

The sand sweeper vanished from the beach.

Villagers crowded around Erec and Wandabelle, crying and hugging them.

"You did it!"

"That is the first person ever to leave here!"

"How can we thank you?"

A shy voice asked, "Can you help me catch all the rats, you think?"

Erec winked. "I'll try my best, ma'am."

"How did you do that?" Wandabelle and Erec were sitting on a patch of grass. Villagers stood far enough away to give them space to talk, but close enough to shoo away the bigger cockroaches and fight off any wandering minotaurs that might bother them.

"It's a dream-control thing. I can bring objects from the real world into this nightmare we're all in."

She giggled. "I knew you could help us, Erec."

Neither said it, but both of them realized a sad fact: While Erec might be able to free the people that had a job, he still would not be able to help Wandabelle escape. The king had been smart not to make any deal with her.

"Are you going to get yourself out of here now?"

Erec shook his head. "I'm going to help everyone else escape first. I can't just leave them in this place." As he said it, he realized that if he succeeded, Wandabelle would be left in the nightmare alone. That sounded like a horrible idea.

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She read what he was thinking from his face. "Don't worry about me," she said. "Being alone couldn't be worse than before, when everyone was awful to me."

Erec called out, "How many people live in this place?"

"Nineteen, before you two came," the toilet scrubber said, walking over. His voice was filled with awe. "So twenty-one. Guess it's twenty, now that Cadmus is free." He clapped Erec on the shoulder. "Puts me to shame, it does. We've done nothing for one another all this time, and your first day here you already set someone free."

"My first day? No, I've been here months."

The man laughed. "I remember back when I thought like that too. No, days are just very long here. Long and dreary. But the nights is worse. That's when all the nasties come out. They last forever, too, because we can't sleep."

This place was sheer torture, Erec thought. He felt like he had been here forever already. "Well, I guess I have my work cut out, trying to get everyone out before tonight." Erec smiled. "Don't tell the king how we're doing this, or he might figure out how to stop me."

"Aye, aye, cap'n. Griffin at yer service, here. Anything you need, you just tell me, ya hear?"

"Thanks, Griffin. Right now I'm just going to think a bit about blasting some blasted rats."

The beauty of dreams, Erec realized, is that anything can happen in them. Rats can be vanquished by starving serpents, inescapable traps, or even rodent-eating starfish if he chose. But the best way to catch them, he thought, was with starving cats. King Augeas wanted all the rats to be caught and eaten, and this covered all of the bases.

He struggled for that feeling of awareness, touching in his backpack for anything remotely catlike. Nothing seemed right.

Then Erec felt some very tiny bumps--sand that had fallen in