The caravan leader didn’t even blink. They clearly knew more than they’d ever let me in on. He met the gaze of as many of his group as he could. “The rest of yous, go as you will. Help as you can, but know, it’s here. The mechanics has released their virus at will. They be stripping Dreamland of her resources, preparing for the change.”
What did the travelers hope to accomplish?
“If we is to fight back, if we is to remain, we will be with the needing of all the gifts they try to steals. We must with the finding of them be first, or all hopes is lost.”
“Dreams save us.” I couldn’t tell who’d said it.
Rulak grabbed my arm as everyone dispersed. “You’s, we will need, but you must be big with the careful.”
“What’s going on?”
“Best you learns as we go.” He led the way to Kelsi who still stood outside the shield. She hadn’t moved.
“Then what do I need to be careful of?”
“The dream sickness, my Riv-boo.” He stopped and let go of my arm. “I knows what you is. I knows this sickness could be big on you. Could’s kill you, it will. But you has a power we needs.”
“Are you going to tell me what the symptoms are, fill me in a little since you seem to know so much, or are you just going to wait until I’m dead?”
He let out a quick sigh. “Things be different this times around, my Riv-boo. I don’t knows what to expect.”
“Great.” I shrugged flippantly. “Then the sickness might not even be that bad. Right?”
Thunder crashed over his expression. “Coulds you not be a child rights now?”
A child? “You’re the one who kept me in the dark while you obviously knew more about me and my role in all of this.” I flung my arm to the few members of the caravan still gathered around us. “And now you’re trying to keep everything a mystery and tell me I might die helping you, but it’ll be okay. Why? Because you have use of me.”
“My Riv-boo—”
“And don’t think it hasn’t escaped me that I was a nobody—a nobody—to you and your entire tribe, that I was a burden, until I came back and you could use me.”
“River!” Rulak straightened to his full height and towered over me. “I foughts to keeps you here. I knew always you’d be a valuable part of our caravan. Don’ts you ever think you were nots.”
“Words, Rulak. Those are just words. I was never accepted.” I pushed past the knot in my throat. “I was never anyone’s boo.”
Rulak clenched his fists and bowed his head.
Mam Dika took a hesitant step forward. “River, its be my fault. I was scared of whats you would bring. I stops him from charging you into the circle, calling you ours.”
I stared at her, my faced folded in frustrated outrage.
She glanced at Rulak. “He says you be needed, that we hads to carry you as our own, but you beings here, you comings from the sea so early, we knews something was wrong. Coulds be with you. Coulds be with Dreamland.”
I shook my head, not knowing what to say.
“We hopes it was with you.” She gestured toward the world around her. “Its was not.”
“My Riv-boo,” Rulak said softly behind me. “You has gifts we need if we are to save the Dreamlanders from the change.”
All the rage evaporated, not because their reasoning or justification was valid, but because I finally knew. Knew why I was never good enough to be allowed in. Why I was always banished as an outsider. “Why don’t you ask your dragon?”
“The dragon man’s left, he has. Had to go. Other’s to speak to. Big things to do. He gave me you.”
I opened my mouth to spew my frustration in a verbal vomit, but stopped at the look in his big, dark eyes. His salt-and-pepper beard hung from his chin inches from my face. He’d called me his. He’d claimed me as his.
He nodded. “He gave me you, my Riv-boo. He told me who and what you is, whats you will be. But with that, he gave you me.”
I swallowed. “I don’t understand, Rulak.”
He ruffled my hair, tugging my head to his shoulder. “I knows it. I knows it. If I could has told you before, I would has. But . . . had I done so, she would have found you too soon.”
“She?”
He let me go, raising his bushy eyebrows.
I stared up at him feeling like a little boy.
Zoe tugged on my hand.
“She can’t’s be with the going.”
“Rulak, you can’t keep her here.”
“She can’ts be with the going where we go.”
“And why not?”
“It is with the forbidden.”
I clucked my tongue. “I think a good many things are breaking here, rules being one of them. I’m taking her with me.”
“But the dream sickness.”
Her grip tightened.
Bo hadn’t stopped with us. He’d continued toward his ship and had passed through the shield. He stood like a frozen in mid-step.
We slipped through the golden wall of light and air with a satin shush.
Kelsi blinked at me, her gaze flickering to Rulak. I know you.
Rulak didn’t break stride.
I paused at Bo, but scrambled to catch up to Rulak.
Zoe let go of me. I heard her murmured voice and Bo’s gentle rumble.
“Rulak, wait.”
He didn’t.
I met him stride for stride and a half, having to dance a quick step to keep up. “What’s going on?”
“Best we be with the showing.” He reached out with his right hand. The gentle waves of the beach drew closer between one breath and the next.
I looked up at him out of the corner of my eye, then back out to the sea. The ship drew closer as if pulled on a string.
Rulak disappeared with the tell-tale pop of Place.
Bo stopped next to me, his chin lowered, his eyebrows raised. “Did he just board my ship?”
Kelsi let out a long sigh and took his arm.
“Did he just board my ship without my permission?”
They dissipated as well.
Zoe took my hand and smiled up at me.
I didn’t know where we were going or how I could help, but there was no sense in standing on the beach. I reached for Place and the sense of Kelsi’s Who. The soft sand disappeared and was replaced by the hard boards of the deck.
Zoe let go of my hand and walked toward the main mast. She touched it, her lips moving as she talked to the ship.
“Zo.” I didn’t need her getting sick again, not when I had no idea where we were going.
She impishly grinned at me.
Whatever that meant. I searched for Rulak.
He stood on the other side of the main mast, tucked behind some rigging and a few barrels. He gripped the thick wood, his fingertips going white. He closed his eyes.
Kelsi frowned, her hands wide, her petite mouth opened. Her body shimmered, fading into wood and then reemerging into something stronger, silver. She flickered in and out for several moments.
The air shifted.
As did the floor.
The rails rose and morphed into walls. The sails dropped, transforming into curtains. The masts folded into a ceiling.
What was Rulak doing?
With the sky shut out, the men and women gaped at one another in blatant masks of uncertainty.
I was right there with them.
Zoe flopped on a blue couch with a wild grin, bouncing a couple times before finding her seat.
Kelsi stopped blipping. She held her arms out and took in her new appearance.
I raised my eyebrows and took a step back.
Silver light radiated from every pore of her skin, only to circle back, piercing her heart and running behind her to double back. Her eyes were white, her long, straight lashes blue.
Rulak let out a long breath and shook out his hands. “We needs her on the land. Trusts me. You’ll have her back when we’s be done.”
Bo’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Good because I like my ship the wa
y she was.”
Rulak moved to the exit.
I went to go after him, but I wanted to discover what he’d done. Night’s Cruelty had morphed from a clipper ship to a wagon. A wagon. If this . . . Wait. Was it possible that Rulak and his caravan had found ships similar to Kelsi, that their wagons were more of her sisters? How many of her kind were there? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? How many wagons were in Rulak’s caravan?
But that didn’t matter. Well, it did. It just didn’t matter enough.
I raked my fingers through my hair and followed him out the wagon.
Rulak took a stumbling step back, his hand on his head.
I cleared the stairs and stared at our new surroundings.
A tangled cobweb of glass tree houses sprawled before us in disarray as if it had been tossed by a child with a stick. The white, nearly translucent trees glowed in individual strings of pastel light.
Keening clawed at the air.
People screamed for help.
Houses hung sideways.
One lay in shattered bits on the ground.
The people—I’d never met anyone like them before. Bo had mentioned he’d met blue people, but I hadn’t. Their bright yellow, sometimes white, hair cascaded around their shoulders as they ran through the streets. They flung their long, lithe limbs in front of them as if they couldn’t see where they were going. One rammed himself into a tree trunk.
Three of the glass houses directly above him shook.
I ran a finger along my jaw in thought. “What are we supposed to do here?”
Rulak turned to me, his expression grim. “Now, we needs you, my Riv-boo.” He faced the crumbling landscape before us. “Now we needs you.”
A WOMAN TOOK a child and hurled it to the ground with a screech.
The child barely touched the trampled blue grass before he leapt up, his hands and feet out like an attacking spider.
A man roared unintelligible words as he beat himself against a tree.
I took a step back. “They’ve all gone insane. What kind of sickness would do this?”
Bo glanced at Rulak as his men gingerly stepped out of the wagon. “Is it contagious?”
The caravan leader nodded.
Small fingers gripped mine.
I gave Zoe’s hand a gentle squeeze. Had I known things were this bad, I wouldn’t have brought her with us. “What do you need me to do?”
Rulak stepped out of the way as a dream spinner ran toward us, screaming. “Figure out how to tell the ones we can save from those we can’t’s.”
“How do you expect me to do that?”
Three children stumbled toward us, their arms extended like zombies.
I swallowed and kept my eyes on them.
The older man gave me a long, tired look. “If’s you cannot, then we can’t’s be with the helping and must leave in the now.”
“What do we do with the rest of them? Leave them behind?”
“We has to.”
The lead girl, her hair a bright yellow, reached for Zoe.
Zoe shied away, ducking behind me.
How were we supposed to help them if we couldn’t touch them? “How is it contagious?”
“Touching, breathing.” Rulak put his palm on the spinner girl’s head.
She stilled, her big, black eyes remained on Zoe.
The two boys behind her stopped as well.
We had to get them out of there. All of them. We couldn’t think of abandoning them. That was ludicrous.
“We can’t, Riv.”
“Did you read my mind?”
“It’s all over your face.” Bo squeezed my shoulder. “If this is an epidemic, we could contaminate healthy people.”
“Dreamlanders don’t get sick.” So what did this mean? Something was obviously wrong.
“Yes,” Rulak said fiercely, as another group came toward us. “They does.”
“And what do we do with the sick ones?” This was all impossible. Impossible.
“They’s takes care of themselves with the dying.”
Dying? My gaze dropped to Rulak’s hand on the girl’s head. He put his other hand to the chest of an approaching woman.
She stopped, her black eyes glazed, her mouth open.
“You’re contaminating yourself.”
“I can’t’s be with the sick. You hears Master Jeomy. He’s not with the lying.”
I ground my teeth. Dreams crack it!
“My Riv-boo, please. This be big with the serious. I needs you to tells us which ones we can save, and which ones we can with the not.”
And how was I supposed to do that?
A wave of support wrapped around my heart like a comforting blanket.
“Thanks, Zo.” I licked my bottom lip. Why me?
Why not me? Why was I standing there asking stupid questions when there were people who needed our help? Either we got them out of there, or we didn’t. If we didn’t, they would die.
If I started touching people at random, I would come down with the sickness myself.
Sure. Great plan.
Wait.
Why me?
I was a man of dreams. I understood how Dreamland worked. I could—
I let go of Zoe’s hand and stared at my own. I could what?
My gut twisted and something coiled inside me like a prowling cat ready to pounce. The energy traveled down my arm to my clawed fingers. I frowned at it.
Then, threw whatever I’d gathered like I was casting a net.
The people in the glen froze. The little girl. The two boys behind her. The woman and those who had been moaning behind her.
Bo’s crew turned to me, all three of them who had their head poked through the door, that is.
Zoe smiled and folded her arms over her chest.
Rulak closed his eyes and sighed in relief.
Bo walked through the frozen people. “Concentrate, Riv. Which ones are safe?”
Like I could tell. I didn’t even know—
I didn’t even realize what I knew.
Right. I searched with that part of me that tied me so intimately to Dreamland.
Threads.
Each person had them. Faint. I could barely see them. I can’t even really say I did. I sensed them. Sensed they were there, tying each person to Dreamland.
No. Not any longer.
They were fraying, becoming thin.
This sickness ate away their connection to their home.
Where would they go if they could no longer live here? If they no longer had what it took to exist?
They would disappear.
Disappear.
Which ones were beyond saving? How quickly was the sickness spreading? How fast did it work to sever the tie between them and their home?
Time moved. Fluidly—like seeing several movies, one on top of another on a liquid surface. I watched as they worked in their Burb, laughing and talking, spinning dreams, pulling dreamers through the web constructing their homes.
I saw them sicken.
Saw them worsen.
Saw them loose their sanity, their bond, their minds.
Quickly. The sickness acted extremely quick.
If I could keep each person suspended in a moment of time, maybe we could get them to Mech or another mechanic, someone who could save them.
How many dream spinners were there in the Delta?
Thousands.
I couldn’t hold them all. Could I? Could I?
I was already starting to tire.
I’d just have to get over it. I had to bear through it, had to find a way. I could do this. I could. I had to.
Why?
Because if I didn’t, these people would die. They would cease to exist.
No. Why did I care?
I blinked. They were people. Of course I cared.
Not good enough. Why would I put myself through any more trouble than I already had? Why would I push myself harder? Would I dare the breaking point? What happened if I reached the point where I wo
uld die? Would I sacrifice myself for them?
Frozen people and their yellow freckles and black eyes. They were people. People who existed, who mattered, who loved and laughed, and lived.
I was a man of dreams, born from Dreamland’s womb. My purpose was to abandon her servants, to destroy them and find others.
I had my Why. I refused to admit I’d been born to kill innocent people who’d done nothing wrong, who lived only to serve. I wasn’t doing this because I thought I was good enough to save them.
I was doing it because I knew I wasn’t.
Screw Dreamland. I was fighting back.
Bo gripped my arm and nodded. He must have read something in my expression. “Men, with me. We grab as many as we can. Take them into—”
“No!” Rulak roared. “If you touches one with the sickness, you becomes one as well.”
Losing their connection to Dreamland.
I couldn’t keep them all in suspended animation.
No. I couldn’t. But how would I decide who lived and who died?
“My Riv-boo, please.” Rulak balled his fists and pressed them to his forehead before throwing them down, his fingers splayed. “Tells us which ones is safe.”
“None of them are, Rulak!”
“Then we must with the abandoning of them.”
“No! We have to help them all.”
Zoe let out a yelp, leaping into the air with a grin. Her dark eyes danced as she clamped her lips shut, her hands clasped behind her back.
“We can’t’s!”
“But—”
“River!” Bo hung his head, the muscles in his jaw ticking. “I don’t like it either. We can’t risk coming down with this, too. Not until we know how to cure it.”
“Do we have a cure?”
Rulak sighed. “No.”
Crack it.
I had to find a way.
Rulak’s tie to Dreamland was the strongest. My gut shook with the intensity of his connection.
Well, some of us weren’t of Dreamland. Were we?
I looked at Zoe. She had no threads I could see. To this new-found vision, she glowed. As did Bo.
What would the sickness do to them? If they weren’t connected, had no ties, then it couldn’t attack them.
My original plan would work.
I met Bo’s gaze. “Take them all.”
He narrowed his eyes, his crow’s feet deepening. “And what of us?”
“It’s attacking their connection to Dreamland. They’re Dreamlanders. They can’t survive anywhere else. But you? You’re not from here.” I took Zoe’s hand. “None of your men are.”
Dream Killers - Complete Season 1 (The Dream Killers Book 3) Page 20
