Dreamfire (11 page)

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After more than a week of learning dream theory and basic hand-to-hand combat techniques, Will went into his second nightmare with Josh.

Will watched as Josh touched the looking stone in the archroom. Instantly, a vaporous image of a man with a bomb strapped to his chest appeared in the empty archway. Josh frowned at it, and another image took its place. She jumped from one dream to another as quickly as if she were changing TV stations with a remote.

“When can I learn how to use the looking stone?” Will asked, and she glanced at him.

“You didn't need any lessons last week.”

“You just put your hand on the stone? There isn't any more to it?”

“There is for most people. But you must have some sort of knack for it. Believe me, if I'd known, I never would have let you near it.” She frowned, then lifted her hand from the looking stone. “There is one thing we should discuss before we go in, one of those mysteries of dream theory: Chyman's Dilemma.”

“Chyman's Dilemma,” Will repeated, trying to commit the name to memory. “Okay. What's that?”

“When we go through the archway into the Dream, the archway sort of … keeps track of us. It's called
ligamus
. If we were in-Dream and Deloise walked into the archroom, she'd be able to see us in the Veil, and she'd be able to jump in and help. When we resolve a nightmare, we always come out the same archway we went into because of
ligamus
. But sometimes we don't manage to resolve a nightmare, and it ends on its own because the dreamer wakes up or starts having a different dream or whatever. In that case, the Dream shifts and dumps us in some other nightmare.”

“You can't just open an exit before the Dream shifts?” Will asked. He didn't like the idea of being randomly dumped into a nightmare.

“There's almost never enough warning. If the Dream shifts with you in it,
ligamus
no longer applies. The Veil vanishes and the archway can't track you any longer.”

“Why not?”

“Nobody knows. It's another dream-theory mystery, and it happens pretty frequently. Chyman's Dilemma is sort of the common cold of dream theory.” She put her hand back on the looking stone, and after an instant, a nightmare popped up. “If we trigger Chyman's Dilemma, resolving a nightmare will no longer cue the Dream to release us. We have to open an exit in order to leave. That's why you never,
ever
go into the Dream without your lighter and compact. Once you trigger Chyman's Dilemma, they're your only way out.”

“What happens if you forget them and trigger Chyman's Dilemma?” Will asked.

From the guilty look on her face, Will understood that Josh had been hoping he wouldn't ask that question. “Then the only way to get out of the Dream is to find another dream walker who can open an exit for you. But the Dream is vast. The chances of finding another dream walker are very small.”

“So if you get lost in the Dream … you die?”

Josh nodded and glanced away. “You die in a nightmare you're too tired to fight.”

That is not good news,
Will thought. He decided that remembering to take keys into the Dream was now the single most important thing in his life.

“Anyway,” Josh said, obviously eager to change the subject, “if you do trigger Chyman's Dilemma and then open an exit, there's a small chance that the exit will lead to an archway other than this one, because
ligamus
no longer applies. But that pretty much only happens in cases of multiple shifts, and there's sort of an unspoken rule of hospitality regarding lost dream walkers who come out of the wrong archway.”

Will could just imagine the look on the face of a Pakistani dream walker if Will and Josh suddenly walked out of his archway. But he supposed it had happened before.

Josh was staring through the archway at a nightmare in which an old man tried to crawl from his burning home. “By the way,” she said, her voice strained, “what are you afraid of?”

Will blinked and wondered if he'd heard her right. “What?”

She fiddled with the pendant she wore, clearly uncomfortable discussing something so personal. “I was talking to my grandma last night, and she pointed out that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to go rushing into any nightmares full of things you fear. We should stick to things that don't freak you out too much, at least to start. So I thought I'd ask what you're afraid of.”

Will compiled a list in his head:
Loneliness. Guilt. Being where I'm not wanted.

Aloud, he said, “Drowning. You?”

“Birds,” she replied immediately.

They didn't look at each other.

After a long silence, Josh asked, “How do you feel about mobs?”

“Fine. Great. I love mobs.”

“Let's try this one, then.”

Through the archway, Will saw a middle-aged woman running through a house. In each room, faces were pressed up against her windows; people were beating on the glass and screaming. The woman raced from one window to the next pulling curtains and blinds, but each opened up again as soon as she left the room.

Lots of doors,
Will thought, trying to remember what Josh had taught him.
Plenty of easy exits.

“Here's the plan,” Josh said, speaking quickly. With one hand she touched her pocket to make sure she had her lighter and compact; Will doubted she was aware that she did it. “The dreamer's afraid of the mob getting into the house. We can't fight a whole mob, so we have to convince her that those people aren't a threat. I'm going to reassure her that the house is sturdy and will protect her, and if she believes me, the nightmare should resolve. Got it?”

“Got it. What do I do?”

“Observe. And try not to get killed.”

Nice to feel needed,
Will thought, but in truth he was relieved.

They jumped through the archway. Josh had explained that they could step through, but they'd just end up falling. If they jumped, they were more likely to land on their feet.

Josh pulled it off. Will landed on a coffee table, stumbled, and fell onto an overstuffed red couch. The dreamer, who was struggling with a Venetian blind, stopped muttering to herself and stared at them both.

“We're here to help,” Josh said.

Will scrambled up from the couch. He looked around the living room, at all the faces pressed against the windows, and wondered how much pressure the glass could withstand before it would shatter. In his mind, he saw the glass bursting and the faces streaked with blood, and there wouldn't even be anyone who could help him.…

“The house is very strong,” Josh continued. “There's no way those people can get inside. The doors have lots of locks and the windows are made of bulletproof glass. You're safe inside the house. They can't come in.”

Suddenly, Will realized what was happening. He'd let the dreamer's fear take him over, just like he had in the Meepa nightmare.

You're safe in your egg,
he told himself, practicing what Josh had taught him.
You are surrounded by the strong walls of your egg, and nothing can hurt you.

He imagined the egg around him, not made of eggshell but of an iridescent energy force field that would incinerate anything that tried to pass through it. The fear passed.

The dreamer listened to Josh's reassurances, stared at her for a moment, and then gave a hopeless cry and ran into the next room.

Josh and Will looked at each other. “Well,” she said. “That didn't work at all.”

“What now?”

“Follow her. Improvise. But if that mob gets in, we need to abort immediately.”

They found the woman in the kitchen, where the bright sunlight outside was obscured by dozens of faces pressed up against the window above the sink and the sliding-glass door. The sight of the door disturbed Will; faces were pressed against it even at floor level, as if people were lying on top of each other outside with only their heads touching the glass. The woman was muttering again: “Listening, like they can't hear anything…”

Josh quickly dragged a curtain over the door, darkening the room. “We're here to help,” she said again.

The dreamer gave her a look that implied Josh was being ridiculous and then ran to the next room. As they followed her, Will glanced over his shoulder and saw the kitchen growing light again as the curtain over the sliding-glass door drew itself back.

They ran into a bedroom. “We can push this against the window,” Josh said, pointing to a wardrobe. “It will work much better than the curtains.”

“What's wrong with you?” the woman cried. To herself, she whispered, “Here I'm doing everything I can—they're all walking around like it's St. Patrick's Day—the bloody curtains won't stay shut—”

She ran back into the hallway. The bedroom curtains swished open as if by magic. Faces were pressed so hard against the glass that they were flattened and misshapen.

“This isn't working either,” Josh said.

“I noticed,” Will said. “What do you want to do?”

“I don't know. I need to think.…”

The woman ran past the bedroom door and they followed her into a parlor full of cream-colored furniture and dried roses in porcelain vases. All the available surfaces were decorated with tiny glass animals and seashells.

Josh sat down on the sofa and thought. Will didn't know how she could ignore the woman, or the flattened, slobbering faces crammed against the windows—they were starting to creep him out—or how she could be so calm just
knowing
that she was inside a nightmare. She might have been sitting on the couch in her own living room.

Will felt useless. If Josh didn't know what to do, he certainly didn't.

“If he tells me to calm down one more time—so help me God—all I'm asking is that he listen for ten minutes—look at that curtain rod, it will never hold—”

The woman was trying to move all the little glass unicorns and baby deer off the windowsill so she could pull the curtains without sending all her tchotchkes to the floor. Josh tried to help and the woman chucked a glass sea lion at her.

It hit Josh in the face. “Ouch!”

Will knew he couldn't help. He couldn't convince the woman that she was safe.

But he could listen.

Will was a good listener. He'd been reading self-help books since he was twelve years old—they had a lot to say about listening. He knew how to be patient and quiet and mirror what someone said to him.

He listened to the dreamer.

“So help me God—I've told them all a hundred times—”

“You've told them all a hundred times,” he repeated.

The dreamer stopped moving glass animals to stare at him.

“All you're asking is that he listen for ten minutes,” Will said. “That curtain rod is never going to hold. They're all walking around like it's bloody St. Patrick's Day.”

“They keep telling me to calm down,” she said.

“You shouldn't calm down,” he said, and he saw that this was working, that she was focused on him instead of the mob. “This is no time to be calm!”

“Exactly!” she cried. “There is good reason to be upset!”

“Plenty of reasons!”

She waved her arms around, accidentally tossing glass animals in all directions. Josh ducked. “I have every right to be hysterical!”

“Damn right you do!”

“So help me God—”

And suddenly, in a cloud of warm relief and gratitude and a sense of having been heard, Josh and Will rolled out of the Dream and back into the archroom. Josh landed sitting down, Will on all fours.

Wait a second,
Will thought.
I was just getting going.

Josh was grinning at him, and she looked a little amazed as well. Her smile, covered in glittering fairy dust, appeared almost magical.

“That was…” she said. “I don't know how you did that. I don't even know
what
you did.”

He tried not to be smug. “It's called active listening.”

“Active listening,” she repeated.

He nodded. “Yeah. We thought the nightmare was that she was afraid the mob would get into the house, but what she was afraid of was that no one would acknowledge that she had a good reason to be upset.”

“That's a weird nightmare.” Josh stood up. She was still smiling, and Will knew he'd earned a point in her mind. Maybe a couple of points. “That was good, Will.”

She offered him a hand up. He accepted.

“It would have taken me at least two more minutes to figure that out,” she added.

 

Nine

“So, listen, about
this adoption thing…” Will said as he and Josh made their way down a poorly marked path through the woods.

Josh felt herself tense up at his words. “It's traditional for apprentices to join dream-walker families. Lots of apprentices don't have families, actually, so adoption is pretty common.”

The tradition of apprenticeship among dream walkers had originated in a legend about the True Dream Walker. Supposedly he had once taken in a band of orphans called the Wussuri and turned them into ultimate nightmare-fighting champs. Josh knew she should have anticipated that her father and Kerstel would formally adopt Will, but somehow it had taken her as much by surprise as it had him.

“Yeah…” Will said. “I just don't want to be a burden.”

Josh glanced over her shoulder at him. “It's not a burden; it's tradition.” She felt like she should say something else, but all she could think to ask was, “Would you rather stay in the county home?”

“No, of course not. But I … If it's cool with you, then that's great.”

She didn't look back this time. “It's cool with me,” she said, which was a complete lie. It actually made her stomach knot up like a friendship bracelet. “We can increase your training schedule.”