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Chapter 9

There was no need to wonder which of them had dreamt Sevor into their company; it didn't really matter, for he was with them now, and the real question was how all of them would proceed from here, wherever here might be. Yet while the others pondered their next step, Drew wandered to the rough brick road that she had seen so many times in her dreams. There had once been a road like this that she had touched as a child, and not, she was almost certain, in a dream. It had been outside her great-grandmother's house, a house that she associated with nightmares because they had always visited her in great number the few times she had visited there. It was a house heavy with history, and for her, heavy with ghosts. A house where she was never alone, even if the corners of the room were sprayed by sunlight and seemingly empty of life. When she had looked into the fading eyes of her great-grandmother, she felt as if they alone shared the same vision of this house. The old woman's eyes were full of phantoms, her gaze far away as she wandered through a world that only she could see, and only her visiting great-granddaughter could share. Looking back over the years, Drew finally realized that the old woman, swaying forlornly in her rocking chair, oblivious of her surroundings, was not the senile fool that the other adults whispered her to be. She was a Dreamer, just like her great-granddaughter, a Dreamer who had populated her house with the wisps and fragments of her dreams, a Dreamer who had lived so many years in a world that never felt like home, a Dreamer who was living out her dwindling days wandering wherever her last dreams might lead.

Yet there were more dreams haunting that house than could be accounted for by one old Dreamer's presence. Perhaps there had been other Dreamers who had lived and died in that old house; perhaps slave women who had climbed the narrow, winding back stairs with their hands full of laundry or balancing a tray of food and their eyes full of green meadows or of themselves balancing gracefully in the deep curtsey reserved for the indolent Southern belles. Perhaps there had even been other Dreamers in her family, women who had chafed beneath their petticoats and rehearsed manners, chafed for another world that existed only in their dreams. And like her great-grandmother, all of them, slave and belle alike, had never known escape, had never slipped beyond the house and run free down the rough brick road to see where it might lead. Instead they had filled the house with the ghosts of everything that had eluded them in life, and had left these bits and pieces of longing to haunt any future Dreamer who might pass this way. They had haunted her great-grandmother, and while Drew had slept beneath the same roof that had once sheltered them, they had haunted her as well, slipping into her dreams, wailing softly, chasing her to the edge of a cliff and waiting for her to plunge off. And she had always snapped awake crying, tangled in blankets on the floor by her bed, her eyes darting into the now darkened corners for the movement of a graceful hand or the turn of a gently curving cheek.

Her dreams in that house had been especially vivid, and had followed her throughout the years of her childhood, but the most common of these dreams had always ended with the rough brick road looming before her, its weathered face watchful, as if it was waiting for her parents to desert her so she could finally walk its surface unhindered. And as the uneven pavement stretched before her now, she understood what had haunted her dreams while she slept in that house with the old woman whose eyes were infinitely sad and distant, and she knew why she had cried each time she had opened her own eyes and found herself on the cold, hard floor. All of those Dreamers had wanted to escape, had wanted to slip away into the worlds they dreamt, but they had failed, each and every one. So they had waited, or at least the bits of themselves they had dreamt into life and then left behind waited, and they had watched for other Dreamers, for a Dreamer like her who might one day step from the safety of the cliff and plummet not to death, but into a dream that did not end on the floor beside the bed. And she had cried because she had wanted it as badly for herself as they had wanted it for her, had even jumped from the cliff willingly as they stood by and watched, and had been heartbroken when she had opened her eyes on the same walls and shadows that had bound them, and bound them still.

So little had changed since those childhood dreams, although the house had passed from the hands of her family when the old woman had died, and the brick road had been torn up to make room for a flat gray strand; so little had changed, for she still wanted to escape, and more than anything, she feared opening her eyes to find herself tangled in blankets beside her empty bed. So little had changed, except for the fact that this time, her parents a distant memory even before they drove away, she was ready to see where the lonely road might lead.

She felt Gyfree as he stepped up beside her, felt him even before he slipped his fingers through hers. It was not, however, his voice that sounded.

"You know, that road was never here before," Sevor announced as he stepped forward to stand at her other side.

Drew raised her eyes from the road to glance up at his face. "I dreamed it here?" she asked, although the answer was already in not just his eyes, but also her own.

"It's your dream, so who else could have done it?"

"Have you dreamed of what lies at the end of this road?"

He shrugged his shoulders, but his eyes glinted as mischievously as Mischa's had when Drew had first seen her. "Not yet."

"Let's find out," Drew insisted, setting a foot upon the road.

"We don't have time," Timi protested frantically. "We have to get back to our world as quickly as possible if we want to stop my Figment."

Drew looked at the other woman, and at the sight of the age-old phantoms flitting through the Dreamer's eyes, Timi grew silent. "This road has always been in my dreams so that it could one day take me where I most wanted to go," whispered Drew.

"Where is that?" Gyfree asked, an anxious edge to his voice, his fingers tight on hers.

"Your world," Drew murmured, her eyes afloat with all those bits and pieces of the dreams of dead women.

"But Gyfree is still connected to our world," Timi said softly, her eyes uncertain. "He can carry us all back in a flash, just as he claims he did when you found my Figment."

"Back to where we started," Drew breathed. "But this road was dreamed to take me wherever I wanted to go. Wherever I was brave enough to go. And this time that means straight to the Figment, wherever he might be." A ghostly smile drifted across her face, the same smile she had once seen flit over her great-grandmother's lips. "We all came here, leaving nothing of ourselves behind. It would be such a waste to go backward instead of forward." The cliff awaits, sighed the dead women. And this time when she jumped, she intended to land exactly where she dreamt.

Without another word, Drew placed her second foot onto the road, its surface warm and inviting even through the soles of her shoes. One by one the others followed, Gyfree walking at Drew's side while Sevor and Timi trailed a few steps behind, the road stretching before them full of a promise that, after untold lifetimes, would finally be kept.

 

She had always arrived in a swirl of silver flecks, her exquisite face emerging as if conjured by some wonderful magic, her perfect form stepping from the mist like a dream come to life. Not a nightmare come to life, like him, but a beautiful, heart-stopping dream. Now the silver motes danced across the ground like wayward dust, dissipating slowly into the endless gray until there was no silver left to be seen, and no beauty to disappear with it into the void. Her body had dissolved into those silver flecks, so at last he knew the silver, like the ice he had found deep within her, had not been her invention. Even the beautiful face, the one he had so mistrusted, had been real. It was the one she had been created with, and the other face, the hideous one that had driven him away, was the mask she had gained over time. The mask provided a face of passion for one who had been born free from all passions, a face of greed for one born too cold for its taint, a face that spoke of betrayal only because she had herself been so often betrayed. He knew now, as he had never suspected before, that she had begun in innocence, just as he had begun in innocence, and that they both had understood too late that they had been born not from love or need, but from fear. It had driven them to hatred; it had consumed them with the need to destroy those who feared them long before they were something to fear.

Long ago she had sought him out and seduced him with the promise that they were two of a kind, and despite the shifting features that had revealed her deception, she had been right. He now knew that even when she had tried to deceive, every lie she had used had been based on truth, whether she knew it or not. They had indeed been kindred, the two most powerful Figments created by one world's most powerful Dreamers. They belonged together, for together they would be stronger than either could be alone. Only together could they accomplish their goals; only together could they kill their Dreamers and break free from the limits that thwarted them. She had wanted to bring them together, and had resorted at last to the one thing she thought would successfully combine their powers into one. And she had been right. He knew she had been right, for he held her inside himself now, held all of her memories, her thoughts, her desires, her fears, and most of all, her power. Everything that had once been hers, had once been her, was now his. The two of them were together almost exactly as she had envisioned. The only thing she had failed to envision was that together they would wear his face and speak with his voice and live in his body, that he would be her master whether she agreed or not, for without him, she would never see, or speak, or feel again.

Fire and ice sparked in his eyes, and at last he could see through both. The fire was an old friend, and he had seen its view of things many times before. But the ice was new, and it showed him things he had never suspected, taught him things he had never imagined. Everything she had ever known, he now knew, so he knew why she had needed his help to slip into the world harboring his Dreamer, for it had for years harbored her Dreamer as well, and just like him, she had watched and waited for an opportunity to slay the being who had dreamt her to life and then kept her at a distance much greater than arms' length. He could see it all now, see it just as she had seen it, could see it all unfold in her memory with the fuzzy overcast of a cheap home video. He could even see her as she sprang to life, a small ice maiden with a finely sculpted face, could see the rusty-haired wide-eyed child screaming in a room full of other children, could see the lights flashing on to chase the icy young vision away. He could see her wandering through the worlds of dream and void, lost and without purpose, until the one day she had been found by a Figment with slathering jaws and wild eyes. This Figment had befriended her, had told her they were two of a kind, had kept her company as they wandered together, had taught her about the worlds of waking, of dreaming, had taught her the ways of the void. Then he had begged her to help him kill the Dreamer who had brought him to life, to slip her exquisite face into the Dreamer's dream, and to entice him into her cold arms. Then, the Figment told her, he would emerge for the kill, but it could not be until then because if the Dreamer detected his presence too soon, he would awaken from the dream.

The thought of killing a Dreamer was new to her, but she agreed readily enough simply because her friend had asked, and she had slipped into the Dreamer's dream, and had stood there, her breathtaking face touched by a smile, her tiny arms open. The Dreamer had been bewitched, had not been able to tear his dream eyes from her perfect face, had reached out dreaming and taken her in his arms. But the other Figment had not appeared as he had promised, and she was left alone in the strange Dreamer's dream, his suddenly cold and lifeless body stiffening in her arms. The dream faded around her, and she found herself in the waking world, standing by the bedside of a dead man with blue skin, his arms frozen as if something precious lay in his embrace. She had freed the Figment, freed him without knowing that she would be the one to kill, freed him and then never seen him again, for she had served the sole purpose for which he had befriended her.

Yet she had learned from him, and most importantly, had learned that a Dreamer could be killed. She had watched her Dreamer before, watched him with longing and even with love, but now her watching began to change. He had made her beautiful, but he had also made her deadly, and if her beauty was not enough to win his love, then perhaps her deadliness would win his life. It was true that she had not enjoyed killing, and that the thought of killing him was still more than she could tolerate, but now as she watched, and now as she waited, she began to think of the unthinkable a little more each day.

Other Figments befriended her as she waited and watched, but these were no different than the first, and in time she realized that for everyone who saw her she had one purpose only: to seduce with her beauty and to slay with her touch. For them she killed, and killed often, because she hated being alone, yet after each killing she was more alone than before, for each killing set her apart, and it wasn't long before she was a Figment feared by others. In time, she would be feared by all others except one, all except him. He knew now why she had deceived him, for she had learned that it was the only sure way to get what she wanted. And she had wanted him, had wanted him almost as much as she had wanted her Dreamer, and she had played every trick she had learned simply so he would take her in his arms, take her and burn her, take her and not feel the cold that her Dreamer had created in her core.

But it was long before she and he had met, long after she had decided that the unthinkable was thinkable after all. So many had died in her arms, that one more would seem like nothing, even if that one more was the Dreamer she both adored and abhorred. She would stand before him and risk everything. If he smiled she would disappear, unwilling to harm him. But if he frowned, if he turned to run, she would pursue him until he had been wrapped in her lethal arms. She still waited, still watched, but now with a purpose in mind, and for the perfect opportunity. She didn't want one of his nightmares, for if she slipped into one of those he would already be predisposed to flee; she wanted one of his rare pleasant dreams so that the test would be fair. And at last such a dream unfolded, and she slipped into its folds slowly so he wouldn't startle as she suddenly took shape. She had approached so carefully, the smile on her face gentle and pleading, her eyes and her hair and her skin shimmering with bright silver flecks, and he had looked at her through dream eyes filled with horror, and he had run. There had been a moment when she almost crept away in defeat, but then she remembered the look in his eyes, the look that acknowledged nothing of her beauty, and she chased him just as she had promised herself she would.

Never before had she been required to run after her prey, and she realized almost immediately that he was better at fleeing than she was at chasing, but now that she had taken the first step, she refused to stop until she had finished the last. She chased him all through his dream, breaking through walls that sprang up between them, never losing sight of her prey. She chased him until out of the grayness that marked both dream and void there appeared a bright point of light. Her Dreamer dashed for the light, his small form swallowed by a flash of brilliance as he dived into its corona. Wherever he had gone, she was determined to follow, so she too dove through the light.

The landscape of a dream vanished, and she found herself in the teeming streets of a waking town. People were milling wildly about as if something unprecedented had just happened and they were uncertain whether to be excited or terrified. A particularly noisy group swarmed at the edge of the growing crowd, and there in their midst stood a small, rusty-haired boy with darkly frightened eyes attached to her exquisite face. As they stood there and faced each other in the dawning light of a young day, and she saw more clearly than ever before the fear and revulsion in his eyes, something deep inside of her shifted, like two blocks of ice slipping against each other, and her entire body quaked. Let him fear her, she decided. Let him really fear her, and have good reason for his fear.

Without even removing her eyes from his stricken face, she reached out and seized the person nearest her, touching a pounding heart with her little lethal hands. Like a whirlwind of ice she tore through the crowd, touching and killing all in her path, littering the street with ice-cold corpses as she worked her way in his direction. All around her the people scrambled to escape, trying to break through the bodies pressing in from all sides, knocking against each other in their frenzy to flee the beautiful and merciless specter of death in their midst. She gloried in her newfound power, gloried in the frantic fear that she had brought to this sunny world, and she even laughed as the people ran each other down in their haste to escape. Those who had been trampled by their fellows fell victim to her as she moved toward where the boy still waited as if spellbound, for she deliberately stepped on them with her icy little feet until they were colder and harder than the ground to which they had tumbled. No longer was it a chore to kill, an unpleasant task that she had learned to merely tolerate; killing was an unexpected joy, a thrill that shivered down her icy spine. Death was far sweeter than she had realized before, far sweeter than anything else she had ever tasted.

She was upon him now, standing face to face, and she raised her hand slowly, relishing the moment in advance, raised it and held it just a fraction above the space where his heart raged wildly in his chest. The eyes that looked into hers were no longer frightened, but sad, so oppressively sad, that she faltered, and in that moment she lost him. With a suddenness and ferocity that threw her to the ground, the land beneath her feet heaved and bucked like an animal that feels the claws of a predator piercing its hide. She was thrown back to the spot where she had started, thrown over the layer of dead bodies that shrouded the ground to land in a heap in the dirt, ice flaking from her skin to drift to the ground like new-fallen snow. How long she sprawled there stunned she had no idea, but when she scrambled back to her feet and again raised her eyes toward the spot where she could feel him still standing, there was a man looming at his back, a man with tears rolling unchecked down his cheeks as he held the lifeless body of a boy in his arms.

"Enough!" boomed the man, and in his voice it seemed she could hear the very ground beneath her feet and the sky above her head crying out, could hear the shriek of distant trees and the rumble of mountains. "There will be no more killing! No more deaths like the death of my son! The land has chosen me as its Keeper, has chosen me to expel you, and with the help of the land, that is exactly what I intend to do." Laying the dead body gently on the ground, he crouched for a second, tears spilling from his face to the still one at his feet, and then, head still bowed, he lifted his hands toward her, palms facing out, and a storm of green slammed into her body, pushing her relentlessly back step by step until she could feel the light slipping past her skin and the darkness of her Dreamer's deserted dream reaching out to pull her back.

She plummeted through the layers of the dream, falling forever through the endless gray, but she did not fall alone. Somewhere behind her she could feel her Dreamer falling too, could feel that he had been banished just as had she, and she exulted for he had not escaped her after all. She knew what she must next do, and even as she fell she carefully laid her plans. When she landed at the beginning of his dream, she didn't stay. She was done with the usual watching and waiting. With all her strength she flung herself into the nearby waking world and leaned over the drab metal-framed bed where his small body tossed and turned, and taking a deep breath of the air that hung heavy with his scent, she placed her hand on his thumping heart. As her hand brushed against him, his eyes flew open, and there in the dark, in a room lined with other dingy little beds, they stared at the ice in each other's eyes. And then he was gone, the bed beneath her empty, and she could feel him as he fled through the gray, single in body and mind, back toward that distant light.

Despite the Keeper who would assuredly be waiting beyond that light, she plunged after her Dreamer, and this time she knew she had the advantage, for she was accustomed to traversing the realms of dream and void, and he had never been here before other than when dreaming. Yet even now he was not as powerless as he seemed, for each time she thought she had him within her grasp, her hands were slapped away by something unseen, as if he carried a phantom guardian strapped across his back. Even awake, he was a vivid Dreamer, and able to dream her at bay. She was kept an icy breath away as he sped once more toward the light, and this time when they burst together into the other world, the Keeper was waiting, tears still streaking his face, his mouth compressed as grimly as an executioner's.

The Dreamer scurried forward to cower behind the Keeper's back, but she stood defiantly facing him, ice streaming from her eyes and her lips more grimly frozen than his. Again he raised his hands, and again the green slammed into her, but this time she was prepared, and as the green met the ice it parted and fell lifelessly to the ground. Another wave of green swept over her, but it too was repelled and nullified by the ice. Again the Keeper struck at her, and again, but each onslaught was easier to ignore than the one before. After a while, she stepped forward, a smile creeping coldly up her face, her own hands lifting as silver flecks flew from her fingers in a miniature blizzard. She knew that she could kill this Keeper, this man new to his power, and that her Dreamer would have nowhere left to run. Her fingers curled in anticipation and shards of blue crashed through her eyes as she moved ever closer to the man who stood motionless before her, green light outlining his fingers and shining in his tears. She had almost reached him, almost tasted his death on her tongue, when the Dreamer stepped from behind his back and took the man's hand in his own.

The boy faced her, his chin lifted high, his eyes like stone. He looked directly into her eyes, looked at her as if he understood her at last, looked at her as if she was everything that he most despised, and suddenly she was frozen in place by those young, implacable eyes. The clasped hands of the Dreamer and Keeper lifted together, and this time a stream of ice-laced green slammed into her, and it was colder and more piercing than even she could bear. Somehow he was using her own nature against her, using a cold more cruel than she had ever been to slice through her icy shield so the power of the land could drive her backward, step by unwilling step, and try as she might, there was nothing she could do to counter the force her Dreamer had brought against her. Ice squeezed through her pores as she fought him, but it was hopeless, and she knew it was hopeless. Soon she was back to the light, its glow filling her eyes and its presence roaring in her ears, and then she was alone in the gray of either the void or a dream; at that moment she didn't quite know which, nor did she care, for in the end they were much alike to a Figment hurt and alone.

For a long time she wandered forlornly through the gray, and for a while she could still sense her Dreamer on the other side of the Barrier that enclosed his new world, could even sense the strange course his life had taken. She knew that the Keeper had adopted him as his son, could sense that he finally had found a home, and that though there were many in that world who feared him, there were also many who loved and admired him. Unlike her, he was far from alone. Solitary, perhaps, but not completely alone. He was not fully happy, but he was not fully unhappy either, and much of the pain that had shaped his dreams and brought her to life was gone. Most importantly, however, she could sense the memory of her held strongly in his mind, so strongly that whenever she neared the Barrier the force of his awareness turned against her to thrust her away again. She waited, but her presence within his mind only strengthened over time, and the moment came when she was closed off from him completely, when she could no longer sense anything of him at all. It was then, and only then, that she turned back into the populated pockets of the void. And it was then that she finally met her future lover, finally met a Figment more terrifying than she had yet been, finally met someone or something worthy of her desire.

He knew now how deeply she had wanted him, just as he had always deeply wanted her. And they had each other at last, had each other in a way that neither had suspected when her icy eyes had first met his fiery ones, when her frigid skin had first steamed against his. He could feel her now, feel her stirring deep within, moved by the very memories that he had probed so closely. She was gone from his embrace, would never return to his arms, but she was as alive and aware as she had ever been. Her voice whispered within him, no longer seductive or deceptive, for it seemed too late for passion, and she would never again be able to keep anything secret from him. So she whispered instead an idea, and as she whispered, he too knew exactly what must be done. They would have their Dreamers, would use all of the power and deceit that they now shared, and would finally bring their Dreamers to death. Given the new strength he and she had gained together, they could easily conquer any world without their Dreamers stopping them, but this had never been simply about power, never been solely about escaping limitations. This was about death, about revenge, about hatred. This was about tearing out the hearts of those who had failed to love them, about punishing them for every disappointment that existence had dealt their creations. This was about the joy of killing, a joy they had each known apart, and the only real joy they had left to share.

 

The brick road was rough underfoot, and it curved ahead as far as the eye could follow. In the waking world it would have eventually circled back over itself, but it was a dream road and its tendency to veer continually to the left did not keep it from carrying them perpetually forward. It had always curved in Drew's dreams, and so it curved here, yet at the same time it carried them straight toward their destination, just as it had always carried her parents straight away from her. Down this road she walked, Gyfree by her side and Timi and Sevor a few steps behind. Soon the stately trees lining the road faded away and the ground to the sides vanished until it seemed as if they were traveling through a heavy, gray fog that no light could ever penetrate. To the sides and above there was nothing but swirling eddies of gray, yet the road still stretched ahead as clearly as before, its bend to the left as marked now as it had been the moment they had set forward.

Timi and Sevor stared wide-eyed out into the gray as if they expected something monstrous to lunge at them and swallow them whole, and then in unspoken agreement edged closer to the two Dreamers in the lead. Around them the gray twisted into shapes that would one moment seem hauntingly familiar, but would then dissipate before a name could be given to whatever had seemed to lurk there. None of the elusive shapes ever evoked the sense that they were something either comforting or welcome, but since no hint of gray ever intruded upon the road itself, in time even Timi grew accustomed to the gray forms dancing in the corners of her eyes.

No one was certain how much time had passed when the ghostly shapes of trees began to emerge once more from the gray, and pale brown earth again materialized beside the ruddy bricks. The four walked on without speaking, but the sound of their footsteps striking the rough pavement grew louder and quicker, and soon the trees began to solidify and the ground to burgeon with the green of living things. A pink-streaked sky broke through from above, pushing the gray aside like a visitor who had overstayed his welcome, and as the companions glanced up, they could see the sun just beginning to peek over the tops of the trees. A cool finger of breeze slipped through the leafy branches to caress their faces, and on the breeze was the perfume of woodsmoke and cooking food. The road veered left into a thick copse of trees directly ahead, and as the four entered the shadowy thicket, they suddenly found soft earth beneath their feet. When Drew glanced over her shoulder, the brick road that had carried them here was nowhere to be seen.

"There's a town just beyond these trees," Gyfree announced as the last wisps of a dream seemed to fade from his eyes. "We'll find both Mischa and the Figment there."

The eager light that blazed in Sevor's eyes at the mention of Mischa's name was extinguished with the introduction of the Figment. His mouth set in determination, he snapped, "What are we waiting for? We have things to do here, and little enough time to do them."

Without another word, the four companions moved from the shelter of the trees and out onto the open path. There before them was a small cluster of homes that made Drew pause in the midst of a step, and blink as if she needed to loosen the sleep from her eyes. The houses scattered before her were both hauntingly familiar and disturbingly foreign. They reminded her of the many houses that she had lived in as a child, always different yet always the same, as if each wore a slightly varying mask over the exact same face. As she had grown older she had reached the conclusion that it mattered little where she lived, for the entire country she had spent her life in was filled with one endless string of uniform tract homes that only pretended to be individual and apart. Whatever the mask, underneath it was always the same: same dusty living room, same constricting bedrooms, same dimly lit bathrooms, same cramped kitchen, same barren feeling as if no one had ever lived there before, and no one really lived there yet. To her the houses she inhabited were just like the people she encountered: vaguely dissimilar on the outside, disturbingly similar on the inside, and somehow, in the end, vaguely unreal. The only real house was the one in which her great-grandmother lived, and the only real person was the dreaming old woman with the faraway eyes.

Even the streets each house had occupied had been much the same, lined with the occasional scraggly tree and the same threadbare lawns, with the same cars crouched in the same driveways beneath their own facades of uniqueness. The only real street had been the one paved with rough red brick, and that was a street that had never been built for cars even though cars were known to trespass often. And that was what felt so disturbingly unfamiliar here. The houses were the same as all the houses she had ever known, but the street was not the same street at all. No cars parked there, in driveways or next to sidewalks, for there were no driveways, no sidewalks, no pavement at all. Each house had been set down in the middle of green grass, grass more green and full than the faded and overmowed lawns of her memory, and each was surrounded by towering trees that seemed to hold their branches over the roofs as if protecting those within from any chance elements. The houses were also spaced much farther apart than those she had known, but at the same time they seemed much closer, for their porches formed the sides of a large semicircle and their front doors all angled outward as if trying to keep in touch with each other; there was a distinct feeling that they all belonged together, had chosen somehow to share this space, and had not been thrown up one on top of the other by some impersonal force that was indifferent to the prospects of strangers listening to each other fight and love, shout and cry and sometimes whisper, in a house that truly was right next door.

Out of one of these familiar yet alien houses a gray-haired man rushed, his hands outstretched, a tiny, beaming woman on his heels. "Gyfree, lad!" boomed the man. "We were expecting your father, not you. The trees have been whispering since before the sun came up that the Keeper was on his way, and I must say, we certainly need some help here. The strangest things have been happening ever since Mischa and that young man showed up yesterday."

The round-faced woman pushed the man aside and threw her arms around Gyfree's waist, giving him a quick hug and smiling up into his face. "It's not often we get visits from you and your father, at least not anymore, like we did when you were just a little lad. Are you traveling together? Have you come on ahead to tell us he was on his way? You should know that the trees would be so excited that we couldn't help but hear their news."

Gyfree returned the woman's hug, but there was no smile on his face and his eyes were like dark pits of quicksand in his face. "My father is dead," he announced sharply. "Killed by two Figments."

The color washed from the man's face and his hands trembled, but the surrounding trees only sighed. "But the trees . . ." the man faltered.

"The trees were telling you that I was coming. The land has chosen me as the new Keeper," Gyfree finished for him.

The woman lifted a hand to gently cup the face scowling above her. "Poor lad," she murmured. "So much pain to bear, and then such a large burden on top of it."

"Aren't you worried about my selection as Keeper?" Gyfree snarled. "Mischa certainly was."

"Of course not!" the man exclaimed, his eyes equally filled with sorrow and surprise. "We know you, lad. We feel your connection to this land. In our opinion, you were the only and obvious choice to replace your father once he was gone. We are saddened by the loss of our old, dear friend, but there is nothing to cause us concern."

"Actually, there is much to cause you concern," Gyfree retorted, but the hard edge had left his voice and his eyes had lightened to their usual luminous brown.

"Let's discuss whatever we need to discuss inside," the woman interrupted. "I have a feeling you're all in need of breakfast and a chance to get off your feet. And you can introduce us to your friends once you're all comfortable and warm."

Gyfree actually smiled, and so did the sunny little woman as she slyly watched his fingers close over Drew's.

"Excuse me," Timi interrupted, "but where is Mischa and the . . . man she's with? We need to find them as soon as possible."

The woman turned her sly smile to Timi. "Don't worry, child," she replied gently. "They will be right at your fingertips as soon as you get a little rest."

"Where are they?" insisted Timi.

"Why, they're locked in the back room of our house," answered the man. "Along with several young people from this town and those two giant creatures who flew them here."

"Giant creatures?" echoed Gyfree and Drew.

"Call themselves hummeybees," the man explained.

"They're big," exclaimed Drew, "but I wouldn't describe them as giant!"

"Well, young lady, I don't know how big something has to be before you can call it giant, but those things are pretty darn close. At least they were when they arrived. They were as big as me, after all, and although I'm no giant, I'm also not some strange creature flying through the skies and carrying a person between my legs. After they got here, they shrank back down to about the size of my fist, but I still can't help seeing them like they were the first time I set eyes on them."

Gyfree and Drew exchanged worried frowns. "Mischa isn't a Dreamer, is she?" asked Drew.

Gyfree simply shook his head.

"Her . . . companion couldn't dream something into reality, could he?" Drew pursued.

"No," Gyfree answered firmly, although his eyes churned with uncertainty. "But we know almost nothing about the hummeybees: what they are, what powers they possess, what harm they are truly capable of doing. All we know is that they seem to be completely loyal to the . . . Mischa's friend."

"Enough!" briskly chided the woman, directing a mock frown at the entire group. "Inside now, all of you! Mischa and her man and those hummeybee things are going nowhere, so let's move along and get you some food. And don't tell me you're not hungry, because you have to be. What you're doing wandering around without a single pack amongst you is a mystery to me."

With a look of shocked dismay, Gyfree glanced over his shoulder, only to find that he was in fact carrying nothing at all.

Sevor politely cleared his throat. "Since you all came to my world dreaming, you weren't exactly paying attention to the more mundane details of life," he clarified.

The couple's eyes widened, but the smiles on their faces remained welcoming. "Inside, now, all of you," the woman scolded, and like obedient children they allowed themselves to be steered in the direction of the house and through the door.

As she passed over the threshold, the floor seemed to suddenly shift beneath Drew's feet and she reached instinctively for something to grab onto and steady herself. Yet the moment she faltered, or perhaps even the moment before, Gyfree was there, a strong arm wrapping around her waist to keep her on her feet. She leaned against him as if he was the only solid reality in her world, as if her own continued existence relied on him holding her near. She was only vaguely aware that the others had passed farther into the house, and that she and Gyfree stood completely alone in the entryway, was only vaguely aware that the others were even alive. There was Gyfree, and there was her, and there were the fluctuating corridors of a dream house crisscrossing before her. Then there were lips, warm and pulsing with life, and they were parting hers, and there was breath, his breath, steaming in her mouth, and a sweet flavor, his flavor, tingling on her tongue. She closed her eyes as his mouth plunged farther into hers, and then his mouth was gone, and she opened her eyes to the golden brown alive in his. A faint smile ghosted over Gyfree's mouth, and she noticed that his lips were as flushed as hers felt. "Sorry," he mumbled, "but I know what effect these houses have on me, and I was hoping a little distraction would help both of us adjust."

With difficulty, Drew moved her lips and tongue in a way that had nothing to do with a kiss. "Shouldn't we be joining the others?" she asked hoarsely.

"In a minute," he answered, his lips hovering just above hers, his breath warming her cheeks. "Our hosts know how I react every time I visit, so they expect me to take a while before I make it all the way inside." His lips brushed hers again, and her own responded as if this was the real purpose for which they had been created, and the only purpose worth serving. The two Dreamers clung together, neither feeling the walls swaying around them nor the floor shivering beneath their feet, alone in a world that felt like a dream even though they were not necessarily dreaming, as a room full of others ate and chatted nearby. After some time, Gyfree again lifted his head, his breath speeding now across her cheeks, his eyes a bit wild and his hair far more disheveled than usual. "I think we should probably join everyone before they decide to come find us," he whispered.

Drew lifted a finger and trailed it around his lips. "Not that I have the slightest objection to your solution, but what is the problem with this place that there was the need to resort to such rough-and-ready action?"

Gyfree nipped playfully at her finger before answering. "I don't know exactly why, but buildings this close to the Barrier have always felt tenuous and unreal, at least to me. They've never had that effect on anyone else, at least not until now."

Drew nodded in understanding. "It feels almost like stepping into someone else's dream. It's a bit unsettling." She clung to him as another wave of dizziness shook her. "Does it ever go away?"

"No, but you'll get used to it," he assured her.

A voice called from somewhere within the house. "Gyfree! Young lady! Where are you? You've had plenty of time to adjust!"

Gyfree grimaced as he once more clasped Drew's fingers firmly in his own. "We're coming," he called as he led her down the snaking hallway and into a room that seemed alternately huge and tiny, its walls receding and then closing in as if some giant heart pulsed around the people gathered there.

"There you are," the woman announced with a twinkle as she jumped up to herd the two Dreamers to a table that blinked in and out of existence beneath Drew's eyes. "Now sit and eat. Timi and Sevor have very politely introduced themselves, and have been amazing us with the story of what all of you young people have been up to."

Drew gulped at the bucking and rippling chairs circling the table, then squeezing her eyes shut as Gyfree squeezed her hand, slid into a chair that felt far more solid than it appeared. When she finally squinted her eyes open again, she carefully focused on the faces surrounding her rather than on the pulsating walls of the room. After a few minutes staring into Gyfree's smiling eyes, she was even able to accept the savory roll and fresh juice that she had been offered.

As the last crumb vanished from Drew's plate, the woman smiled warmly and patted the Dreamer on the head. "Now it's time to decide what to do with all the people locked in my back room," she declared.

"How did everyone end up in your house?" Gyfree inquired.

The man cleared his throat, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment as he explained, "Our son, Peyr, brought them here, supposedly because Mischa's handsome friend needed to rest; at least that's what he told us. But Peyr didn't really seem like himself, and when we saw how strangely everyone else was behaving too, well, we just decided to lock the door behind them. Especially after they all crowded into the same room as if their lives depended on it. Peyr included, even though he has a perfectly nice room of his own."

"We knew help would be on the way soon, and we didn't know what else to do," his wife added, an anxious note creeping into her voice. "If we had known what trouble Mischa and her companions would bring when they first arrived, we would have tried to do something sooner. But despite those hummeybee things, they seemed harmless enough. And when they asked Peyr to take them into the town, we saw no reason to object."

"It wasn't until they came back with so many others that we started to wonder just what was going on," continued the man. "And when they all scrambled into our back room behind Mischa's man, well like we already told you, we decided to just lock the door and wait for help."

"Just how many people do you have locked up here?" Timi asked, a worried frown creasing her face.

"Counting Mischa and that gorgeous young man, about twenty," answered the woman. "Maybe even more. They kept milling around that young man so much it was difficult to keep track."

Groaning, Timi dropped her head into her hands. "Now what?" she wailed plaintively.

Sevor wrapped a reassuring arm around her stooped shoulders. "It's really quite simple," he told her. "We go get Mischa and the Figment and leave as quickly as we can. Once the Figment is gone, the others should all return to themselves."

Timi raised clouded eyes to Sevor's face. "It might be that simple, but it might not. Now there may be others who are so ensnared that separation from the Figment could kill them too. How can we be certain whom may be safely left behind and whom may not?"

The question hung heavily in the air, so heavily that, for Gyfree and Drew, the quivering walls and table suddenly seemed too weighted to move. Everything was finally still, and for the moment everyone was frozen in place, immobilized by their uncertainty and fear, so that Drew once again felt as if she and Gyfree were completely alone, not in the room beneath the stairs, and not in the entryway of this dreaming house, but alone in the midst of a group of breathing statues, so alone that she could almost feel the insistent pressure of his lips on hers, could almost taste him on her tongue, could almost feel his heart thrumming with her own. And she could clearly see in the dark pools of his eyes that he felt as she felt. They had known each other for only a blink of time, had come closest in the world of dreams, and yet he was the only person she had ever met who was as real to her as she was to herself. If she closed her eyes she knew she would still see him just as clearly, would probably even feel him with the same intensity he had felt her all those times she had slipped away dreaming. With that thought she suddenly realized that she had felt him intensely from the beginning, had felt him outside the door before he entered the room beneath the stairs, had felt his frantic heartbeat as he ran down the brick road in her direction, had even felt that spark that gave him life, and by holding it in her dreams and breathing her own fire into it, had kept him alive when death should have quenched it. He had done nothing to coerce her feelings, no more than she had done anything to coerce his, but his hold on her was as sure as the Figment's hold on Mischa.

Drew's eyes widened as they stared into Gyfree's, and she saw the answer she had reached reflected in the dark core of his eyes. A smile trembled on her lips as she again felt the phantom presence of his kiss. "We must wait until they're all asleep," she murmured, her voice sending ripples through the stillness of the room. "Then we'll be able to remove Mischa and the Figment, although we must do so quietly and carefully. If anyone wakes up immediately because they can feel the Figment leave, then we must take them with us as well. Those whose sleep is undisturbed should be safe."

"What can we do if the Figment has snared someone other than Mischa? Sevor is our only chance to free Mischa. Who will free any others?" Timi asked anxiously.

"Maybe one of you'll dream up another solution," Sevor quipped, although his eyes were solemn and dark above his smiling lips.

"We have no choice," Gyfree announced, his eyes still entangled in Drew's. "We must keep an eye on the Figment, and we must do our best to free anyone in his grasp. And right now that simply means keeping him and his victims with us at all times. What that means later, not even Sevor's dreams may tell."

The sound of a throat clearing drew everyone's attention toward the corner where the middle-aged couple huddled, standing side by side as if only together could they remain on their feet, their fingers intertwined and faces pale reflections of each other. "If it's any help," the man informed them, the lines in his face suddenly etched as deeply as the fear in his eyes, "I think they're sleeping now. Things were pretty rowdy there for a while, but shortly before you showed up, it quieted down. There hasn't been a peep from that room for a couple hours now. Just a buzzing sound and a lot of slow, heavy breathing."

"Please," added the woman, her pupils mere pinpricks of panic, "Peyr is all we have. You have to get him away from the Figment anyway you can. If we'd known it was a Figment Mischa had with her, we would never have opened our door. Please, whatever it takes, please get Peyr back."

"We'll do whatever we can," Timi reassured them. "But try not to worry too much. Peyr might be fine."

If anything, Peyr's parents looked even more concerned. "They're all this way," said the man, moving toward a door that pulsed as wildly as Drew's heart as she turned her eyes in its direction. Her hand reached instinctively for Gyfree's; gripping his fingers and squinting her eyes she followed the man, woman, and her companions down a slithering hallway and stopped with them outside a rippling door. As the man had reported, there was no sound from beyond the door other than the snuffling sound of people sleeping and a steady, rumbling buzz.

"The hummeybees!" exclaimed Timi, her face awash with sudden consternation. "What are we supposed to do about the hummeybees? They certainly aren't going to allow us to meddle with the Figment in any way."

Once again Gyfree and Drew locked gazes, and as a message seemed to pass between them, flecks of blue as hard as steel shot through the brown of Gyfree's eyes. "It will work," Drew said, a note of apology creeping through her voice. "It may not be something you welcome at the moment, but it will work."

"What will work?" questioned Sevor, his eager eyes intent upon the door, impatience lending an uncharacteristic edge to his words.

"Ice," whispered the two Dreamers, their locked eyes flooding completely blue as they summoned a small sliver of the dream they had shared once before, a dream not unlike the one that had long ago given birth to the Figment who had pursued Gyfree to this world. Ice flowed from their dreaming minds, ice slithered down their arms and fused their hands together, ice glistened in the air around them, marking with brilliant crystals the boundaries of a world that was theirs and theirs alone. Yet beneath the ice where their fingers joined, and beneath the silvery blue that coated their skin and engulfed their eyes, they were bound by a warmth that no one else could see.

"Open the door, Timi," Gyfree finally whispered through stiff lips, and as the door swung inward, he and Drew stepped through together, bringing a fragment of winter in their wake. Across the room the two hummeybees stirred as if only they could feel the treacherous blast of cold, but as their wings shimmered into motion and their stingers shivered in alarm, the Dreamers exhaled a breath of ice that stopped their wings in midbeat, arresting the delicate membranes like flower petals startled by an early frost. Caught in an icy web as intricate as a snowflake, their fuzzy bodies hung suspended in the air a few inches above the Figment's perfect face, black and yellow stripes wan in the gripping cold. And as the hummeybees dangled above him, the Figment opened groggy eyes and blinked in confusion.

With a lethal swiftness belied by his wry smile and easy manner, Sevor darted past the fog of cold emanating from the Dreamers, through the tangle of sleeping bodies toward the shining hub around which they all seemed to radiate like the spokes of a wheel, and forcefully stuffed one of their hosts' colorful napkins into the Figment's mouth, binding it firmly in place with another. Then, without a single pause, he threw the Figment over his shoulder and hurried from the room. As he passed the couple still huddled in the doorway, he smiled disarmingly. "Sorry about your napkins," he stated softly. "Didn't dream I would need something to keep this one quiet, but decided it might be a good idea anyway."

Timi had scurried in behind Sevor to kneel at the side of Mischa as she slept, body curled tightly against the Figment, dirty tear tracks smudging her face. Yet once Sevor had disappeared into the farthest recesses of the house, Mischa was not the first of his victims to stir. A young man slumped next to the door, head buried in his knees, suddenly jerked awake and scrambled to his feet, eyes clouded by more than just panic. "Mustn't sleep," he muttered disjointedly. "Must protect him. Must always protect him."

A whimper sounded from the doorway. "Peyr," whispered the woman, reaching out an unsteady hand to take him by the arm. "Just go back to sleep."

The young man shook off his mother's restraining hand and tried to push his way through the door, clearly intent on following the path that had carried the Figment away from him. His father stepped in front of him, face grim, as clearly intent on holding his son in place as his son was intent on escaping.

Gyfree's voice was still cold and brittle from the ice shrouding him and Drew. "Let him go," he insisted. "I don't want anyone hurt, and in his condition, he will try to hurt you. And forcing him to stay will cause him far more harm than good."

The man's face hardened and darkened, but he stepped aside as instructed, and watched with eyes as haunted as any Dreamer's as his son dashed past without a glance at his parents' tortured faces.

"Follow him," Gyfree ordered. "Sevor may need your help if he becomes violent."

The man's face darkened even more, and his eyes flashed, but without a word he turned to follow his son, and face as pale as his was dark, eyes as dull as his were flaming, his wife turned to follow him.

A whimper slipped through the surrounding murmurs of exhausted sleep, and then a wail, and the Dreamers turned to see Mischa thrashing in Timi's arms, her eyes wild with fear and her face bruised with a pain buried deep within her skin. "Where is he?" she cried. "I need him, I need him." Tears streaked from her eyes to glisten against the dried paths on her cheeks, as if her face held the furrows of numerous dusty riverbeds that had suddenly been flooded by a long expected rain. "He needs more than me, so much more. I'm not enough, I'll never be enough, but I still need him. I need him, I need him," she sobbed.

"Shhh," Timi soothed, her pale face luminously soft, her own eyes spilling tears. "He's waiting for you. He wants you to come to him right now. Let me take you to him."

Mischa fell silent as Timi helped her to her feet, but the tears still coursed down the paths on her cheeks, and the overflowing pools in her eyes reflected the dark pain in her face. With Timi a step behind, Mischa followed unerringly in the path of the Figment whose heart kept hers beating, whose lungs kept her breathing, whose smile kept her lost, whose needs kept her ignorant of her own.

From amid the tangle of bodies another head lifted, a snarl of dark hair framing two bleary eyes. "What's all the noise?" a woman's voice asked drowsily as several others nearby tossed restlessly and grumbled in their sleep. "What's going on?"

"Just go back to sleep," Drew murmured, her voice as heavy as a dream, and the young woman's eyes slid shut as she settled back to the floor, and around her several others also stilled as sleep carried them farther and farther away from the Figment's hold.

Alone amidst a room full of sleepers who did not know what it meant to dream, the two Dreamers sighed, hard ice melting from their eyes, breath evaporating the ice from each other's faces, fingers stirring against palms. "What do we do with the hummeybees?" Drew asked with a smile that freed the last shards of ice from deep behind Gyfree's eyes.

"We certainly can't leave them here," Gyfree responded with a smile of his own. "They will thaw out eventually if we don't keep an eye on them, and Peyr's parents have more than enough to worry about already."

Drew reached out her free hand to touch the frozen creatures, tracing with one finger the motionless wings that still shimmered with a rainbow of color as if even now they took flight. "They're so beautiful," she murmured, "and so dangerous. Just like a dream. Do you think they'll be safe to thaw out at some point?"

"I don't know," admitted Gyfree, reaching out his own finger to gingerly touch the sharp point of one ice-hard beak. "But I do know they are too cold for us to carry." His eyes darted around the room until they settled on a crumpled blanket thrown haphazardly over a few half-naked torsos. Without making a sound he moved across the room and whisked the blanket away, returning to wrap it around the hummeybees. Throwing his improvised bag over his shoulder, he smiled crookedly at Drew and announced, "We'd better go help the others. They're certain to have their hands full."

Without a backward glance, the two Dreamers left the room, quietly closing the door behind them so that the sleepers clustered on the floor could rest undisturbed by anything close to a dream.

 

 

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