Dreamfever

by Kit Alloway

  She closed her eyes for a moment. She’d been to the pool half a dozen times, three times with Josh and three with Haley. She knew how to kick, to stroke, to float.…

  We must be fifteen feet under by now.

  The water reached her waist, so she unhooked her seat belt. “Get ready to swim,” she told the dreamer, but he’d closed his eyes and was holding out his arms like he was inviting the water to take him.

  “Stop that!” she said, and when he didn’t react, she slapped him.

  He started, lips parting with surprise.

  “I’m getting out of here, and I’m taking you with me.”

  “No, I want to die.” He held out his arms again. “I’m at peace.”

  How can he be sitting there like Buddha under the tree while he’s drowning? Mirren wondered furiously. This is a nightmare—

  A nightmare.

  She slapped him again. “Hey!”

  “Ow!”

  “If you’re at peace, why are you so scared?”

  The boy’s lips parted, and then his fear rose to the surface, even as they sank deeper into the water.

  “I just don’t know what to do!” he told Mirren, blurting out his problems like she was his best friend. “Mom is always mad at me, but she’ll never forgive me if I go live with Dad, and I hate Leann and the way she nags me about my grades.”

  He went on and on while the water level inside the car rose. Mirren kept hoping that the emotional disclosure would be enough to resolve the nightmare, but when the water reached her chest, she felt she had to interrupt him.

  “That’s a lot to deal with,” she said as calmly as she could. “Why don’t we talk more once we’re back on dry land?”

  The dreamer surveyed the car’s dim interior. “I think what’s done is done.”

  “No, it isn’t!” she cried, panic overwhelming her. “I’m going to the surface, and I’m taking you with me!” She grabbed his shoulders. “The water pressure against the car doors is too strong for us to open them yet. We have to wait until the car fills. Then the water pressure will equalize, and we can open the doors and swim to the surface. You have to take a deep breath and hold it right before the water fills the car, okay?”

  The water was already lapping at their chins.

  “This is never gonna work,” the dreamer said. For the first time, he looked upset.

  Mirren wished she could slap him again, but her arms were underwater. “Yes, it is! It is! Ready? Now!”

  She took in a deep breath, but she had waited too long, and a gulp of water entered her lungs along with the air. Immediately, she coughed, and she’d lost half of her air before she was able to overpower the spasms in her chest. Still, she felt her lungs seizing up, trying to expel the water, and beneath that, despair.

  I can’t make it.

  The car was nearly pitch-dark. She groped along the door, feeling for the handle. Every second she didn’t find it was a second wasted, and by the time she wrapped her hand around it, she didn’t know if she was seeing black spots because light no longer reached the car or because she was already passing out.

  The door opened grudgingly, but the meager breath in her chest wasn’t enough to draw her toward the surface. She kicked, meaning to kick off the side of the car but instead just smacking the door with her foot.

  The surface was a misty green light far above, and her legs were heavy. The terrific shoes Deloise had helped her find weighed so much. She paused to take them off, but afterward, her legs felt no lighter. Was the surface getting dimmer instead of brighter? Mirren realized she was forgetting to use her arms.

  I’m going to die, she thought very calmly. I’m just … going to die.

  She began to understand how the dreamer had faced his death so peacefully. Or at least pretended to. Like him, deep inside she was terrified. But the water was so cold, and each time she moved she lost what little heat she had accumulated, and finally she could no longer hold off the need to cough and watched those bubbles of air she had fought so hard for drift away.

  Like tiny moons, she thought, and closed her eyes.

  And then something jerked her, hard, and she was cold again, very cold, and she struggled against a tight, warm noose around her neck, pulling her, pulling her, and then her head burst above water and she heard herself gasping and the dreamer laughing.

  She opened her eyes. He was laughing.

  She tried to speak and ended up coughing, and the dreamer caught her when she threatened to slip under again.

  “I thought you were a goner,” he said. His eyes were bright, elated. “When I got up here and realized you weren’t with me, I was sure you were dead.”

  He looped an arm around her waist and helped her to the pier, where she clung to a wooden piling slick with moss.

  “You went back down for me?” she asked between coughs.

  “Yeah.” Somehow he managed to shrug sheepishly while still treading water. “I’m actually captain of the swim team.”

  They both began laughing, and Mirren was coughing again when she splashed onto the archroom floor in a puddle of green water.

  * * *

  “How can you say she resolved the nightmare when the dreamer had to save her?” Peregrine demanded.

  Mirren wasn’t even on her feet before the politicians began arguing.

  “Haley, Haley,” she said between coughs, turning her head from side to side. “Get me out of here. Haley, get me out of here.”

  She caught sight of Will, and Haley was beside him, and the two of them lifted her bodily off the floor. They didn’t even discuss a plan, just linked their arms behind her back and under her knees, and they had her out of the archroom before anyone could protest.

  “I’m freezing,” she said, clinging to Haley. She just wanted everything quiet, to sit down, to get warm.

  They guided Mirren into the empty men’s room. “Set me down, set me down,” she begged.

  They set her on unsteady feet, and her knees dipped dangerously before steadying. Haley drew Mirren into the communal shower and turned warm water on over her, not bothering to fuss with their clothes before wrapping his arms around her and stepping into the spray.

  Standing between the hot water and Haley’s warmth, she realized she was going to live.

  At least, one more day.

  Eighteen

  Will and Whim stood guard at the men’s locker-room door while Mirren changed. Deloise, who was not biologically related to Kerstel but had nonetheless inherited her practicality, had packed not only dry clothes for Mirren, but also dry shoes, a few toiletries, a protein bar, and vitaminwater.

  Whim wasn’t helping much with the guarding; he only had eyes for his tablet. “Which is better? ‘Mirren inspired the dreamer to heroism’ or ‘By playing the damsel in distress, Mirren tricked the dreamer into affirming the importance of life’?”

  “Which one means she drowned?” Will asked.

  Will needed to be done for the day. He hadn’t slept the night before, and he’d spent most of Mirren’s trial watching Josh instead of the archway. She seemed no different today from any other day in the last four months, and she hadn’t knocked on his door the night before.

  “Maybe I can combine them,” Whim mused.

  When they reentered the large archroom behind a mostly dry Mirren, a few people began clapping. A few others booed—one woman started hissing like a cat. Mostly, though, people were silent.

  Minister Innay made the announcement. “By a vote of four to three, the junta has determined that Amyrischka Rousellario has passed the second trial.” Afterward both the clapping and the booing were louder.

  “Because she has successfully passed the first two of Agastoff’s Trials,” Minister Innay continued, “we now charge Miss Rousellario with her third and final trial, a terrible task, known as the Proving. The junta charges you to locate the Karawar, also known as the gathering whistle, and present it to the junta. You have nine days to complete this task.”

  Immediat
ely, reporters showered Mirren with questions. Davita rushed her out of the room before she could answer, Haley on their heels, and Will and Whim followed, with Josh and Deloise bringing up the tail.

  They left through the front entrance this time and exited the building into the park above. Among the park’s decorated arches, the protesters had doubled in number, and whatever semblance of order had existed before Mirren’s trial was gone. Before she got halfway to the curb and the waiting limo, one of the protesters hurled an egg at her. The shell fragmented into a hundred pieces when it smashed against the side of her face, and yolk dripped onto her dry T-shirt.

  Will was still frozen with surprise when the protesters let loose, eggs flying from all directions. Josh twisted one fist up in a protester’s shirt collar and pulled the other back for a punch, but she stumbled after the woman ground an egg into her eye.

  Despite Will’s confused feelings toward Josh, a sense of protectiveness spurred him to hit the protester as hard as he could. He’d never hit a woman outside of the Dream, but he didn’t hesitate to do so then, or to raise a threatening fist when she straightened up with a sneer.

  “You want anoth—” Will began, and then half a dozen eggs riddled his body. Some of them, he discovered, were frozen solid and felt like paperweights. He fell to his knees.

  “Run!” Josh shouted, covering her dripping eye with one hand.

  Davita hustled Mirren into the limo parked at the curb, but Haley was on the ground wrestling with a guy twice his size. As Will tried to rise from the pavement to help his friend, the woman he’d hit earlier slugged him in the gut. Josh reached his side in an instant, her eye squished up against further attack, spinning like a whirling dervish of pain as she cleared away the protesters who had gathered around Will. She even head-butted a man.

  When the protesters had backed off enough, Josh grabbed Will’s hand and dragged him toward the limo. Will saw Deloise break a man’s nose with the heel of her palm while Whim pulled Haley up from the ground, and then they were all diving through the car doorway.

  Someone grabbed Deloise’s ankle as she tried to pull it inside the vehicle, and she used her other foot to kick him in the face.

  “Go!” Josh yelled at the driver, and he tore away from the curb with the back door still hanging open. Whim wrapped his arms around Deloise’s waist to anchor her. More eggs pelted the vehicle, each shell bursting like a firecracker.

  “He took my shoe!” Deloise protested.

  “You’re lucky that’s all he got,” Whim told her, and he dragged her deeper into the limo.

  * * *

  After hours of ice packs, ultrasounds, and waiting for an ophthalmologist to come pick the eggshell out of Josh’s eye, they were released from the ER into Davita’s care. Mirren was wearing a neck brace and had her arm strapped to her side, Josh looked like a very short pirate in her eye patch, Haley’s ear was bandaged beside his black eye, and Deloise was wearing a paper surgical shoe over her bare foot.

  All in all, Will suspected they’d gotten off easy.

  Despite attempting to land anywhere else, he ended up sitting next to Josh on the ride home. He felt awkward, but he doubted she could tell because he was sitting by the eye she couldn’t see out of. The doctor had said she had to wear the patch for a couple of days, but he didn’t expect any damage to her vision.

  Will’s relief confused him. He’d been up all night, obsessing over her betrayal, yet he couldn’t stomach the thought of anyone hurting her. Neither of them had hesitated to defend the other, but he still didn’t want to be anywhere near her.

  “I don’t mean to be indelicate,” Davita said as they got on the highway headed back toward Tanith, “but I’d like to talk about the Karawar for a moment. Only if you feel up to it, Mirren.”

  Mirren had been unable to stop crying in the ER, and the doctor had given her a sedative—a strong sedative. Will suspected that if she hadn’t been wearing a cervical collar, she wouldn’t have been able to sit up.

  “I don’t care,” she whispered.

  “I care,” Josh said. “Forget the next trial—why did we get attacked back there?”

  “Apparently the crowd didn’t agree with the junta’s decision to pass Mirren,” Davita said.

  “Most of the protesters were there before we arrived,” Whim pointed out. “And some of those eggs were frozen, which means they planned this at least a day ago.”

  “How did they know we were going to use the janitor’s entrance?” Josh asked. “Davita, did you tip them off?”

  “Of course not,” Davita said, but Will could tell Josh didn’t trust the answer. He didn’t either.

  “I thought I’d win them over,” Mirren whispered. “If I did well.”

  “There weren’t any protesters when Mirren came into Braxton for the Learning last week,” Josh said. “What happened between now and then?”

  None of them knew. Like Mirren, Will would have expected her success to bring people over to her side, not alienate them.

  “I’ve been monitoring DWTV and The Daily Walker,” Davita said, “and they haven’t posted anything overly critical. A few editorials that were, perhaps … unkind.”

  “What about online?” Josh asked. “What about Through a Veil Darkly, Whim?”

  “I’m practically running a Mirren fan club,” Whim told her. “Which you’d know if you bothered reading it.”

  Josh opened her mouth to retort, but Deloise said quickly, “What about the comments you said were weird?”

  “What comments?” Mirren asked.

  Whim shrugged uneasily. “Just, you know, a few conspiracy nuts have basically blamed her for every single political screwup and scandal since the beginning of time. Including the St. Edward’s Island Massacre.”

  “That was more than a hundred years ago,” Deloise pointed out. “Accusing Mirren of being involved doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Yeah, I tried to explain that, but nobody really wants to hear it. I think some people are getting a kick out of being over-the-top. I mean, who would actually believe that Mirren’s going to lead the Gendarmerie in a coup? It’s the Internet, you know? It’s all just hyperbole.”

  “Hyperbole?” Davita asked, her voice rising within the limousine. “Two gendarmes were beaten by a crowd in Braxton last night.”

  “Oh,” Whim said with a wince. “I did not know that.”

  “I can’t have someone Mirren is associated with fomenting rebellion,” Davita told him.

  “I’m not fomenting anything!” Whim replied. “I wasn’t even part of that conversation!”

  “Why not?” Will asked. “You’re the moderator, aren’t you?”

  Even Deloise was angry at Whim. She smacked the back of his head and said, “Did you at least ban those people from the site?”

  “Yeah, of course,” he said. “I mean, I will.”

  “Oh, my God,” Josh said. “What else are they saying?”

  “Everybody loves her,” Whim protested. “Everybody except the people who don’t want a queen and the people who … think she’s Adolf Hitler. But it’s really a very small group of people who have flipped out. I assume they’re the ones who showed up with eggs today.”

  Will remembered the twisted expression of the woman who’d smashed the egg in Josh’s eye. Her rage had billowed around her.

  Isn’t all of this somehow disproportionate? Will wondered. What is it about Mirren that makes people act like idiots? Is there really that much animosity toward her parents, all these years later?

  Or is it something else?

  Mirren was crying again. “Can we talk about this later?” Haley asked pointedly.

  “Yeah, of course,” Whim said, straightening up. He put a hand on Mirren’s shoulder, which made her jump. “Don’t worry, friend. We won’t let anything happen to you. That pretty head’s gonna stay right where it is.”

  Mirren cried harder.

  “Whim!” Deloise cried, and smacked the back of his head again.

 
“This is all very disturbing,” Davita said. “I think we should arrange professional security for you, Mirren.”

  “The Accordance Conclave is less than two weeks away,” Deloise said, pulling a package of tissues from her purse. “You just have to hang on a little longer.”

  Mirren dried her face slowly, taking deep breaths as she did so. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being childish.”

  “No, you aren’t,” Haley told her.

  “You really aren’t,” Josh said.

  Mirren wiped her nose. Somehow she managed to look elegant even when crying. “Maybe I should quit. Maybe the dream-walker community is trying to tell me that they don’t want me to lead them. Maybe we don’t need to wait until the AC to hear them.”

  Everyone protested—except for Haley, Will noted. He kissed her hair and said nothing.

  “But you’re so close,” Josh said. “All you have to do is give the junta that thing, that—what’s it called?”

  “The Karawar,” Mirren said.

  “Yeah,” Josh said. Then she added, “What is that?”

  “It’s an ancient horn,” Mirren said tiredly. “When blown, it emits a sound that only dream walkers can hear. The archaeological evidence suggests it called dream walkers to an annual meeting, before the advent of quick communication.”

  “Why would Peregrine want it?” Josh asked.

  Mirren and Davita looked at each other with identical expressions of bewilderment. “I don’t know,” Mirren admitted. “Everyone stopped using the Karawar after the Industrial Revolution. My family only held on to it so it wouldn’t be lost.”

  “So you have it?” Deloise said. “What would happen if you gave it to Peregrine and he used it?”

  “My understanding is that all the dream walkers in the area—up to three or four hundred square miles—would hear a whistling sound and feel a strong urge to walk toward Peregrine. But the urge wouldn’t be undeniable, and since almost no one knows what the sound means, most of them would probably fight off the urge and stay home.”