Dreamscape: Saving Alex

by Kirstin Pulioff

  “I have to. My feelings don’t outweigh the greater good of the rebellion. We can’t afford for one of our generals to be distracted.” I heard a twinge of sadness in her voice.

  “You sound like your cousin,” I said.

  “Not really. He’s a smart leader, but we don’t always agree.” She gave me a direct look.

  Silence stretched between us, and I looked away. I couldn’t ignore her hint.

  “Enough of this,” she said, pulling her vest straight. “There’s fun to be had. Ready?”

  “Absolutely!”

  She led me further down the dusty road past the training field, where a group of archers practiced. Younger boys lined the edge, captivated as General Amos shouted out orders. Deep lines marked his face, and his arms remained firmly folded across his chest.

  I sighed and turned my attention back to Melody just before she moved around the edge of an old wooden barn. Green paint peeled off in strips, revealing worn planks and empty holes where the birds had nested. The smell of freshly turned dirt and warm hay wafted towards me. It was heaven. I took a moment to peek inside the building, amazed at its simplistic beauty. Rays of sunlight burst through the holes in the rotten planks, and horses half-hid in the shadows, their manes sending flurries of dust through the air as they pranced around the edges of their enclosures.

  I wished I had my art supplies. This was a painting waiting to be created.

  “This is it,” Melody said, breaking my reverie, gesturing around the corner. I peeked around and saw an open field where a set of long tables overflowed with groups of women and men.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  “We join in the fun.” She pulled me forward through the tall grass. A few heads lifted as we came closer, but most stayed down in concentration. “What do you want to do first?”

  “I don’t know, what are my choices?” I asked, looking down the long tables. Excitement buzzed from every station. I leaned closer to Melody and whispered, “What’re they doing, exactly?”

  She pulled me down the open space. “We’re putting together some of our weapons and defense mechanisms to prepare for battle. Here,” she said, pointing to the table in front of us, “is where we’re making packets of dragon weed pollen and vials of its oil.”

  I balled my fists together and shook my head. “No dragon weed.” I had been burned enough. Even the sight of the dust sent a wave of prickles down my spine.

  She pursed her lips but didn’t question it. “No dragon weed—got it. Then here at this table, we’re sewing feathers onto vests.”

  “Feathers for defense?” I laughed.

  “Of course. They make the perfect camouflage. Why’d you think we wore them?” she asked.

  I blushed but met her gaze. “They’re pretty.”

  She stared at me for a moment, then smirked. “Moving on,” she said, pulling me to the next table. “How about doing a little welding?”

  I looked at the brown and copper components on the table and then back to her. “I’ve seen these before. What are they?”

  “They’re acoustical enhancements—”

  “Hearing devices,” I said. “That explains it!”

  “Explains what?” she asked with a furrowed brow.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, shaking it off.

  “No, tell me.” She placed her hands on her hips. “I’m curious.”

  How could I tell her without the embarrassment of admitting my early capture? I grabbed a couple of the wheels from the table and balanced them in my palm. “Some of the people I ran into in Lindle had one.”

  “Who?”

  “Just some people.” I shrugged.

  “People from Lindle? They had one?” She grabbed my hand, her face paling.

  “Yes…”

  “This is awful. They’re not supposed to have any of these devices. What do we do now?”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, giving me an incredulous stare. “If the enemy has their hands on this, then they know one of our advantages.”

  I turned to face her and grabbed her hands. “No, not the enemy. The people I met, they were performers—rebels like you, me, and everyone here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Who were they? Did you get their names?” she asked.

  I was sorry I had brought it up at all. Turning our day into an interrogation wasn’t my plan. “Deakon had the ear thing, and his friend Pipes was traveling with him.”

  Her look softened. “Pipes? You saw him?”

  “He was one of the first to recognize me, and he helped me escape the capital.”

  “It’s not the capital,” she said, reflexively. “How did he look? Was he all right?”

  “He was fine. Wait,” I said, giving her a sidelong glance. “You didn’t…Pipes?” The lanky man I remembered and the poised beauty before me seemed like an odd pairing.

  She looked off towards the trees. “It was a long time ago. Did he sing for you?”

  I pressed my lips together and smiled. It made complete sense. “Yeah, he did. What happened between you guys?”

  “I’m sure you know how these things go sometimes. We had different callings, in life and in the rebellion. I’m glad he’s alive,” she said, looking back at me with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Now that that’s taken care of…do you want to make some of them?”

  I hesitated. This seemed like something I could handle, but I didn’t want to make it awkward for her. “What else is there?” I asked, looking at the crowd gathered around the last table. Even from a distance, I saw sweat beading around their temples and tense exhaustion on their faces.

  “That,” she said with awe, “is our newest weapon.”

  “Weapon?” I asked, taking a hesitant step closer.

  “Our reclamation team scavenged an electric whip last week from the woods surrounding Berkin. They’ve been busy reverse-engineering it ever since. Do you want to take a look?” She didn’t wait for me to respond.

  I crept up behind her, finding a spot near her side where I could peek over a shoulder. Most of the people had their fingers twisted in a web of wires. Small metal chips and bits of wire littered the table. Women inserted spark plugs and electric circuits into a metal cylinder. Next to them, a second team twisted and secured copper wire around a long strip of leather. Sparks flew from the far edge of the table, where a few people hid under a haze of smoke, soldering the pieces together.

  Melody bit her lower lip and smiled, but I knew the power these weapons contained. Even the lowest voltage meant death. This was not good.

  I wiped my hands along my leggings and tugged at one of the feathers on Melody’s vest. “I’ve made my decision. I want to work on the ear things,” I said, pulling her back.

  “What?” she asked, reluctantly prying her eyes away. “Sure, if that’s what you want.” She glanced back once more before joining me.

  “It is,” I said and strode back to the last table. The workers only casually glanced up as we took two of the empty spots at the far end of the table. They were entrenched in a web of wires and wheels.

  “What do we do?” I whispered.

  Melody smiled. “Just follow my lead. Once you put one together, the rest are easy.”

  A tangled mess of bright gears and coiled wires flashed from the center of the table. I watched Melody, grabbing the same materials she did until I had a small pile in front of me.

  She inserted the copper wire between the gears and folded the electrical pieces behind a leather strap. I followed her movements, a step behind, until the first pieces were connected and a loose but complete device sat in my hand.

  “Easy, huh?” I asked, stifling my laugh. “I seriously hope no one’s counting on me to create these things.”

  “No, we’re counting on something much bigger,” she joked. “Besides, it doesn’t need to look good, it just needs to function.” She twitched her nose at th
e botched device in front of me.

  I smiled but looked away, drawn to the table behind us. A loud cheer erupted, followed by a buzz and a crackle. I stood on my chair to get a better look, and my sense of dread tripled. A blast of blue light erupted at the table. Streams of electricity spiraled around the whip, sparking with sporadic bursts of blue flame.

  “Yeah! You did it!” Melody cried.

  Half the people from our table rushed over for a closer look.

  I didn’t share their feelings. They didn’t know what power they wielded, and that disturbed me.

  “What’s everyone looking at?” a deep voice asked from over my shoulder.

  I jumped, then exhaled deeply. “You scared me,” I said to Arrow.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “What’s going on?” He peeked behind me, pulling out a strip of jerky.

  My mouth watered when he took a bite. Had that much time passed?

  “They figured out how to make the electric whips work,” I said, returning my focus to the table. “I don’t think it’s such a good thing.”

  “Really?” he asked, surprised. “Why not?”

  “They’re bad.”

  “Bad for us or them?”

  I gave him a half-smile. “Both.”

  “Hmm,” he said, shrugging. “Sometimes we have to take risks. Most of our devices started out as dangerous. Dangerous doesn’t have to be bad if it can be channeled rightly.”

  “Who decides that?” I asked, looking back at the blue flames.

  “That’s a good question. I guess I do.”

  “Then I hope you know what you’re doing. They don’t.” I cringed as the whip lit one of the chairs on fire. “Turn the lever off!” I yelled, waving my arm.

  I turned around as the fire leapt to the next chair. “Do something,” I said, pushing him towards the crowd.

  Arrow laughed and covered his chest. “They have it under control. And now, I have this,” he said, grabbing the wiggling ear device from my hand.

  “Arrow, no!” I yelled, chasing after him as he darted towards the stables. “Give that back.”

  “You lowered your defenses. That’s not a good idea.” He couldn’t hold back his grin.

  “It’s your home, I’m supposed to be safe here,” I said. “Now give it back!” We reached the stables, and I leaned over to catch my breath.

  “I’m happy to hear that,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I’m glad you feel safe here.”

  “What?” The pounding of my heart threatened to drown out his words.

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying your time here. I was worried it would be boring after all we’ve seen the past few days.”

  “Boring? I don’t think anything here could be boring, especially with your cousin keeping me company.”

  Arrow flashed his charming smile. “Ah, Melody. She’s a handful,” he said. “Come to think of it, that makes her a perfect fit for you.”

  “Hey, take that back,” I said, making a grab for the hearing device.

  He caught my hand and lowered it to his side, pulling me closer. “I meant it in only the best of ways.” His voice deepened as he looked at me.

  “I… uh…” The words escaped me again.

  “Let’s see what you’ve been doing this morning,” he said, slipping the device over his head.

  “Please, no,” I said, reaching for it, stepping forward into his arms.

  His grip on the device held and his body pressed close to mine. I froze. The mischievous gleam in his eyes twisted my stomach.

  “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

  My heart drummed. At that moment, only him.

  “I’m sure you’re mechanically inclined. It’ll work. I’d bet my life on it,” he said, turning the lever on the bottom.

  I couldn’t stop him. I could hardly breathe, let alone move quickly enough to grab it.

  “Alex, you did it! Want to give it a try?”

  I grabbed it a little too quickly, bringing that warm smile back to Arrow’s face. “I take it you didn’t get a chance to test it yet?”

  My head stopped mid-shake, and my eyes popped open. I could hear everything down to my heartbeat, including its rapid increase when Arrow touched my elbow. Nothing remained private under the microscope of this machine. Flushed and embarrassed, I turned to see Arrow smiling.

  I pulled the piece off my ear, and everything returned to normal. “That’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. How did you come up with it?”

  “We have a collection department that scours the countryside and forest for useful items, and our engineers are remarkable. Anything from the most basic, outdated technology to the newest intelligence devices that we are lucky enough to get our hands on comes back here. We try not to let anything go to waste.”

  “Clever,” I said, handing it back.

  “And effective. These were originally used to help the elders hear like they used to, but over the past few years we amplified the acoustics and adapted them for reconnaissance.”

  I put the earbuds back in and squinted in the distance, weighing their value as I tried to recognize the distorted sounds. The shuffling of feet blended with the electric hum, and the exaggerated exclamations from the people at the tables melted into an indiscernible roar. I imagined with time, sorting out the sounds would be easier, but it gave me a headache. At least I finally understood how Deakon had heard me.

  Booms echoed in my ears when Arrow tapped me on the shoulder, and I pulled the device off. He brushed his hair off his forehead and looked behind me. “I’m glad you’re settling in nicely. I just wanted to check in to see how you were doing today, but I can see you’re in good hands.”

  I turned to follow his gaze and saw Melody squint as she watched us intently.

  “I’d like to talk later, if that’s all right,” he said.

  “Oh? What about?” My cheeks felt warm. I hoped I wasn’t reddening.

  “I don’t want to go over it now, but there’s some stuff I should tell you. Things we should’ve talked about earlier. Just come find me when you get a chance,” he said, looking past me again.

  “Yeah, sure, later,” I stammered. What did he want to talk about? My mind raced, but couldn’t settle on anything specific.

  I watched him run off, and when I turned back, Melody stood behind me, a smirk on her lips as she unhooked a device from her ear. “These things,” she said, “you never know when they can come in handy. So…you and my cousin…I was right.”

  “What? No, it’s not like that,” I said, feeling my cheeks burn again.

  “You say that, and yet I heard something much different. And my eyes don’t deceive. Look,” she said, leaning in. “I’m the last to judge, and frankly, it’s none of my business.”

  “It’s complicated,” I said, trying to find the right word.

  “Complicated?” She snorted. “That might be the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard.”

  “What do you know about it?” I retorted, rubbing my fingers together. “Like you said, it’s none of your business.”

  “You got me there. But how much do you know about what you are?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed heavily. “About being the Golden Hero. What do you know?”

  “Not very much,” I admitted, feeling a lump gather in my chest.

  “You see,” she said, leading me to the edge of the stables. “We know more about you than I think you know about us.” She sat down and picked at the flaking paint on the edges of the stables beside her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know how to say this in a way that will make sense,” she said, changing positions to fidget with her feathered fringe. “You see, Lockhorn has a long history of summoning the Golden Hero when we need help. In the past, the Hero appeared at each crisis point to aid us.” She stopped tugging on her vest to look at me. “We’ve been waiting for you for years now.”

  I tried to ignore the
accusation in her eyes, but my stomach dropped. How was I supposed to know?

  “So when we heard that you were finally here, Arrow went out in search of you. Didn’t he tell you this?”

  “We didn’t really talk much,” I said, pulling handfuls of grass out of the dirt so I didn’t have to look at her.

  She leaned back against the wall. “Do you even know how you got here?”

  “I won’t be forgetting that anytime soon,” I said with a scoff. Being eaten by light pixels wasn’t the sort of thing I’d easily forget.

  “Not what happened to bring you here, but how you were summoned?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Yes, a big difference. No matter how you get here, one thing is always the same—the summoning. There’s only one way a hero enters our world.”

  “And that is?”

  “By a death spell.”

  “A what?” I asked in a whisper.

  “A death spell,” she said. “It’s our strongest magic. It’s the only magic we have left, really. We didn’t have the foresight to preserve the wisdom of the ancients. But the death spell…it transcends all worlds and all rules. When it’s cast, nothing can stop it.”

  I stared at her, feeling my face pale and a piece of grass fall from my shaking hands. “How does it work?” I asked, although I didn’t really want to know the answer. Anything called a death spell couldn’t be good.

  “That’s the tricky thing. It only works for some, and only with a sacrificial death. Only in the direst of situations has anyone tried to cast it.”

  “So to get me here…” My voice trailed off as my mind wrapped around the meaning of her words. “Someone had to die.”

  “You’re starting to understand. But not just anyone died.”

  “Who?” I asked, closing my eyes to avoid the answer.

  “King Helio,” she said, “Arrow’s brother.”

  I inhaled sharply.

  “Yes, so before you get too close to him, try to remember the price he’s already paid,” she said, a bit too pointedly. “And there’s one more thing we know about the heroes.”

  I looked up.

  “They never stay.”

  I stared at her, letting the implications of her words sink in. “Thanks, Melody. I wouldn’t have known.”