In the Dreaming

by Isobel Bird

  He laughed then, and Annie found that it made her feel much better. It reminded her of living, and of good times, and she needed that right then. There had been a lot of death in the evening’s activities. Now she thought she understood the purpose of it, but she needed to do something to take her mind away from it. She wanted to dance.

  “I should find my friends and get ready for the midnight dance,” she said. “Can you take me to them?”

  “That we can,” said the Holly King, opening the door of the little chamber and ushering her through.

  She and the kings walked up the stone steps. When they reached the door at the top, the Holly King took the blindfold out once more and tied it around Annie’s eyes. He took her hand and led her to the door. Again she heard a door opening, and then someone helped her through. Then it was a long walk in silence as they wound their way through the woods.

  After a while the king took Annie’s blindfold off. She looked around. Even in the dark she saw that she was somewhere sort of familiar. A path stretched out in front of them, and the king pointed down it.

  “Down that way you will find the mortal world,” the Oak King said, sounding very mysterious. “I believe you will find what you are looking for there. Go to them. But do not speak to anyone of what you have seen tonight. It was for your eyes alone.”

  Annie turned to the Holly King. “I’m sorry I was kind of a jerk earlier,” she said. “I know this was all just part of the game.”

  “No offense was taken, little hedgehog,” the Holly King said. “My brother was lucky to have you by his side. I should hope for such a fearless squire when my turn comes to die.”

  “Well, you never know,” Annie said. “I might just come back and find you.”

  With that she turned and walked away, leaving the Holly King and the Oak King to return to the forest as she walked down the path to the Midsummer dance.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Come on. We’re going to miss it if we don’t hurry.”

  Kate sat up. Tyler was standing above her, pulling on her arm. What was going on? Where was she? She looked around and saw that she was still in the woods. Then she remembered—she’d been dancing. But where were they? Where was Maeve? She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her head.

  “Kate, come on,” Tyler said. “What kind of faerie princess are you, falling asleep before the Midsummer dance?”

  “But we were dancing,” Kate said. “Don’t you remember? I picked you. I picked you over the others.”

  “Well, you’ve been having a little nap since then,” Tyler said teasingly. “I guess the dancing was a little too much excitement.”

  “I went looking for you,” Kate explained. “You were dressed as a raven. Then I met Maeve and there was this faun and then—”

  “I think you’ve been dreaming,” Tyler said, laughing.

  “But it happened!” she said. “I remember everything: the masks, and the dancing, and Scott.”

  “Scott?” Tyler said. “You dreamed about Scott?”

  Kate looked at Tyler. Did he really not remember what had happened? Worse, had she dreamed it all somehow?

  “But you were the one I picked,” said Kate again, trying to get him to admit that it wasn’t her imagination. “You’re the one I love.”

  She stopped as soon as she said the words. Tyler was looking at her, a peculiar expression on his face. “What did you say?” he asked.

  Kate couldn’t take it back. She’d said what she’d been thinking of saying all night. And now that she’d actually done it, she knew that it was true. She really did love Tyler. She’d been afraid to admit that, but her experiences in the woods had made her see that it was how she really felt.

  “I said I love you,” she said again, standing up and facing Tyler.

  “That’s what I thought you said,” Tyler replied. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  Kate felt her heart racing. She’d just told her boyfriend that she loved him. More than that, she’d said it and she’d believed it. It wasn’t just something to say because she thought she had to. It was something she felt inside. But did Tyler feel it, too, or had she made a huge mistake? She looked at his face, waiting for a response.

  Tyler took her in his arms and pulled her to him. “I thought I’d be the first one to say that,” he said. “In fact, I was looking for you so I could. But since you beat me to it, I’ll have to settle for being a copycat. I love you, too, Kate.”

  He kissed her, his mouth closing over hers and his arms pulling her to him. As they stood there in each other’s arms, Kate didn’t care whether the events of the night had been a dream or not. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she and Tyler were in love. But where had Scott gone? Maybe he was out there somewhere, camping with his friends. She didn’t care. What had happened with Scott on the beach wasn’t important now. She had told Tyler that she loved him—and he had said it back.

  “They’re starting the dance,” Tyler said as they let one another go. “Let’s go.”

  He took Kate’s hand and pulled her down the path toward the music. She hurried along, eager to join the fun and anxious to see her friends so she could tell them what had happened.

  Cooper stormed through the woods. She couldn’t believe the night she’d had. This was one Midsummer she wanted to forget, and soon. She’d been dragged through the woods, put through a weird ritual, and then abandoned by the people who had staged the whole thing. What was wrong with these guys? This wasn’t how Wicca was supposed to work. She wanted to find Archer and Sophia and give them a piece of her mind. It was one thing to throw some surprises their way, but it was another to chase them through the woods. She didn’t want any part of it. She didn’t like being thrown into situations beyond her control.

  Now all she wanted to do was get out of the woods, find her friends, and be done with it. She’d had enough of faeries and Midsummer and, frankly, magic to last her about a hundred years. If she never heard another “blessed be” or “merry meet” it would be fine with her. She didn’t want to dance. She didn’t want to play dress-up. She just wanted to be left alone.

  She wasn’t sure where she was going. She’d run out of the cave and into the woods without really thinking about it. But now she heard music. It wasn’t the same kind of music that Bird, Spider, and the others had been playing. It was ordinary music—good but nothing special. That was one thing she had to admit about what had happened, the music had been fantastic. She didn’t know where those kids had learned to play like that, but they were amazing. If only they hadn’t been so weird, and if only she didn’t feel so angry, she might actually try to find them and play with them. But she was angry, and she wasn’t going to calm down any time soon.

  She walked in the direction of the music. Although she didn’t have any interest now in joining the remaining festivities, she knew that Annie and Kate would be at the dance. She wanted to find them so she could tell them what had happened to her. There was something else she wanted to tell them, but they weren’t going to like that part very much.

  Annie couldn’t wait to find Cooper and Kate and tell them all about her night. Everything had been so real, so vivid. She’d experienced things that she would never forget. Best of all, she had begun to accept some things about herself, and about her parents, that she’d been keeping hidden for far too long. Her time with the Oak King and the Holly King had showed her that she needed to remember. She needed to remember her mother and her father, and she had to remember how much they had loved her and how much she had loved them. She had to stop hiding from the past and learn to accept it, as difficult as that was to do.

  Her mind was almost bursting with new thoughts and new feelings. She couldn’t believe how perfect the ritual had been. It was as if it had been created especially for her. How had they known what she needed? How had they staged everything so carefully, so beautifully? Everything had been just right, from the costumes to the performances by the various actors. She didn’t even like to think of
them as actors. They’d seemed so real to her, so alive. She wanted to remember them as the characters they had played, as the Oak King and the Holly King. She couldn’t think of them as just ordinary men in costumes. They meant more to her than that.

  She thought of all the things she wanted to do when she got home. She wanted to ask her aunt about her father and mother. She wanted to talk about them and about their lives. She wanted to find out more about her mother’s artwork. There were so many things she didn’t know because she’d been afraid to ask, afraid that talking about them would mean telling someone that she felt responsible for her parents’ deaths. But now that she had told someone she knew that she could do it again.

  She would start by telling Kate and Cooper, though. They were her best friends. They were like sisters. Even more important, they were a circle. Magic tied them together. It was something they shared, and it was something that was as important to her as blood. As she neared the clearing where the dance was, she knew that more than anything she wanted to see them and tell them everything.

  Kate, Cooper, and Annie entered the ritual area at the same time, but from different parts of the woods. It took them a minute to find one another in the crowd of people who filled the clearing. The bustle of the bodies made it hard to move, but each made her way to the same place to one side of the festivities.

  “You won’t believe what I’ve been doing,” Annie said happily.

  “No, you won’t believe what I’ve been doing,” Cooper said gruffly.

  “Well, neither of you will believe what I said to Tyler,” said Kate dreamily.

  For a moment they all spoke at the same time, tripping over one another’s words until Cooper held up her hands. “One at a time,” she said. “Annie, you first.”

  “I was part of this really cool play sort of thing,” she said. “Some of it was really sad and really hard, but mostly it was fantastic. I don’t know how they did it. Where were you guys?”

  “I was in the woods chasing Tyler around,” Kate said sheepishly. “It’s hard to explain. But I met the Faerie Queen and ran into Scott and this guy dressed like a faun. Then I had to pick one of them to be my true love. It’s all kind of weird. The important thing is that I told Tyler I love him.”

  “You did not,” Cooper said, momentarily forgetting her own story.

  Kate nodded. “I did,” she said. “And he said it back. This has been the best Midsummer night ever.”

  Hearing her friends’ excitement, Cooper wasn’t sure she wanted to tell them about her experience. They both seemed to have had great times. Had the ritual she’d become part of simply gone wrong? She couldn’t tell. But either way, she had made a decision.

  “Um, I have to tell you guys something,” she said.

  Kate and Annie looked at her expectantly. She knew they were waiting for her to share some great story about her evening.

  “It’s not quite as great as what you guys said,” Cooper told them.

  Behind them, the music was growing louder. People were forming a circle, and Tyler was calling for Kate.

  “Come on, Cooper. The dance is about to start,” Kate said. “What did you want to tell us?”

  Cooper sighed. “I don’t think I want to be in the group anymore,” she said.

  About the Author

  Isobel Bird has been involved in the world of paganism and witchcraft for many years. She lives and dances beneath the moon somewhere in New England.

  Credits

  Cover art © 2001 by Cliff Nielsen

  Cover © 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  IN THE DREAMING Copyright © 2001 by Isobel Bird. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  “Mask Making Ritual.” © 2001 by Isobel Bird.

  EPub © Edition JULY 2001 ISBN: 9780061756528

  Print edition first published in 2001 HarperCollins Publishers

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

  Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand)

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com