The War for the Waking World

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  TWO

  INTO THE CALAMITOUS NIGHT

  ARCHER LEAPED UP, CAUSING THE EASY CHAIR TO ROCK violently, and raced toward the front door. In walked a motley crew. First? A young man with a mop of blonde hair and skin way too tan for winter, followed by a girl Archer’s age, appropriately pale with owlish glasses and white blonde hair tied back in a light blue band. The woman who came in last looked like the girl aged thirty years but had her hair dyed a bit darker.

  “Buster!” Archer exclaimed, flying to hug his brother. “Amy, Mrs. Pitsitakas—I am so glad to see you.”

  “Glad to be off the road,” Mrs. Pitsitakas said.

  Amy nodded emphatically. “Yep.”

  “Dude!” Buster said, squirming out of the embrace. “I saw a flying elephant—I kid you not.”

  “I believe you,” Archer said. “Now, move so I can lock the door!”

  “I’ve already done it,” Mrs. Pitsitakas said. “We don’t want what’s out there . . . getting in here.”

  Pigtails jiggling, Kaylie peered around the corner. “Hurry, hurry!” she said. “We’ve got chocolate milk and cookies!”

  “Rock on,” Buster said, charging toward the kitchen. Amy and her mom followed.

  A splintering crack of thunder shook the house. Only, it wasn’t thunder. A blue-green flash flooded through all the windows. Archer charged back into the den and peered through the picture window. Far beyond the roofs and trees of his neighborhood, a brightly pulsing mushroom cloud rose into the night sky. The color seemed supernatural, like something from the Dream. Whatever it was, Archer was glad it was miles away.

  Something shattered in the kitchen, followed by a frightened chorus of screams. Archer raced from the den and tumbled into the kitchen to find his father, his little brother, Buster, and his friends Amy and her mother, their faces twisted in horror. Their backs were pressed hard to the sink and counters, trying vainly to back up farther. A gibbering snarl turned Archer’s attention to the other side of the kitchen.

  There, a three-headed wolf crouched. It had eyes like red-hot coals, jaws full of tusk-like teeth, and fur-lined bat wings. It seemed ready to spring, but one person stood in the creature’s path and defied it.

  “Bad dog!” Kaylie yelled. Archer couldn’t have been gladder his little sister was far from the typical eight-year-old. Kaylie was a fellow Dreamtreader, and one of the most powerful ever. She held up her hand, and a ball of pink lightning swirled in her palm.

  “Sit, doggie!” she commanded. “Heel!”

  The wolf heads snarled. Suddenly, all three heads began to speak at once. “Stupid girl,” it chorused in a wet slur, “you think we are some mortal pup? We will eat you!” The creature pawed at the ground, shredding the tile with its talons. It flared out its wings, gave a tremendous flap, and rose into the air.

  “Kaylie, look out!” Archer cried. He readied his will, the massive reserve of mental energy that allowed Dreamtreaders to create from imagination. But he needn’t have bothered.

  Kaylie stood her ground, pajamas and all, held up her hand, and the ball of lightning became a long staff made of pink driftwood. She took the staff in both hands, stared up at the hovering creature, and yelled, “You . . . shall not . . . pass!”

  She slammed the staff to the floor, creating a rippling wave of white flame that rolled along the kitchen floor, and then rose in the shape of a hand of white fire. It snatched the wolf creature from the air and slammed the beast to the floor. The thing arose unsteadily, all three heads wobbling loosely, but the burning coal eyes all still gleamed. Gnashing its teeth and snarling, it leaped.

  Mrs. Pitsitakas darted protectively in front of her daughter as did Mr. Keaton with Buster. Kaylie had it covered, though. She swung her pink staff and sent a white wave of power crashing into the creature. With the sound of a thousand shattering glasses and a faint howl, the creature burst into a swarm of darting sparks, and then vanished. There was nothing left behind but a cascade of falling ash.

  “No giant newspaper this time?” Archer asked, snatching Kaylie off her feet. “Had to go stealing Gandalf ’s line?”

  “It just felt right,” Kaylie said, snuggling close. Archer reluctantly put her down and turned to his frantic family and friends.

  Buster joined their embrace and gave his surfer-lingo stamp of approval by saying, “Sis, you just dropped the hammer on that thing. Gnarly!”

  “W-what was that?” Amy’s mother cried out, her mouth half-twisted as if she might scream. “That . . . thing, it’s not possible. And K-Kaylie . . . what did you . . . how did you do that?”

  Amy didn’t give Archer the chance to answer. Her owlish green eyes wide with fear and fury, she grabbed him by his coat and demanded, “You know, don’t you? You know what’s happening?”

  Archer mumbled, “I—”

  “All this time!” she interrupted. “You were doing that Dream stuff, the top-secret stuff, right?”

  “Dream stuff?” Amy’s mom blurted. “What dream stuff?”

  “I . . . it . . .”

  “Why couldn’t you stop it, Archer?” Amy asked, her voice sad and plaintive. “Why couldn’t you?”

  The question felt like a sledgehammer to the gut. Archer had asked the same question of himself over and over again in the hours since the Rift occurred. There were answers, but all in a tangled web: the Nightmare Lord, the Lurker, Bezeal, Rigby—they’d each played a role. Even the Wind Maiden, Archer’s best friend Kara . . . well . . . former best friend. In the end, she had turned out to be at the center of it. In all their many schemes and plots, they’d managed to rip and tear and gouge the Dream fabric until the Dreamtreaders finally couldn’t mend it fast enough.

  Archer’s father spoke, his voice quiet but braced with iron, “Son, if you know what’s happening, I think you’d better tell us.”

  Archer faced his father, the others, endured their accusing and frightened eyes, and said, “You won’t believe me.”

  “We just saw a three-headed, flying wolf-thing!” Mrs. Pitsitakas practically spat. “Try us!”

  Archer’s father grasped his son’s shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. “A week ago,” he said, “none of us would have believed any of this crazy stuff. Those shadowy things that took me, the sky splitting open, all that happened at the hospital, and then . . . this.” He gestured at the pile of ash, the remnants of the creature. “But now, we’ve seen too much to doubt. Just tell us what you know.”

  THREE

  NO SAFE PLACE

  ARCHER TOOK A DEEP BREATH, LOCKED EYES FOR A FEW moments with Kaylie, and thought of Master Gabriel, the leader and trainer of all Dreamtreaders. Before the Rift occurred, it would have been against the rules to tell people about Dreamtreading, to reveal age-old secrets, and to expose the hidden world. But now?Archer wondered. The Rift had changed things. The hidden world had been exposed. Everybody was a part of this now. Master Gabriel may not like this,he thought, but my family and friends’ sanity—maybe their survival—depends on their understanding. Survival . . .

  Archer knew just how he’d do it. He gave a glance to Kaylie. She nodded back. “Okay,” Archer said. “I’ll show you what I know—what Kaylie and I know. But to do it, we need to go downstairs.”

  “To the basement?” his father asked. “I don’t see—”

  “To your workshop, Dad,” Archer said. He didn’t give them time to argue, but instead strode away and bounded down the steps. He heard them following behind but waited until his family and friends were all inside the basement workshop. Archer shut the door . . . and locked it. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  Archer stood by his father’s workbench and gestured to an intricately built, ornamental wishing well his father had been working on lately. It was one of many such pieces in the room. Archer’s mother had so loved the family wishing well in the backyard that Archer’s father began building beautiful models of it to buoy her spirits as she battled the cancer that eventually took her life.

  “You’ve been
crafting again, Dad,” Archer said.

  His father swallowed deeply and set his jaw. “She wouldn’t want me to give up,” he whispered.

  “No, Mom would never want you to give up,” Archer said. “These wells are incredible. I think maybe Kaylie and I got the creative ability from you.”

  “You got the brains from your mom,” Mr. Keaton said with a quiet laugh.

  “Could be,” Archer said. “It’s the creativity and the brains together, I think, that make Kaylie and me Dreamtreaders.”

  His father echoed, “Dreamtreaders?”

  Archer explained the basics of Dreamtreading as best as he could. The Nine Laws, the moral and physical rules that governed life in the Dream; the Creeds, a kind of anthology of Dreamtreader wisdom and lore; the Three Realms of the Dream, Forms, Pattern, and Verse; Breaches, the small tears in the Dream fabric; and the Rift, the cataclysmic collapse of the barrier between the Dream and the Waking Worlds—everything from Master Gabriel’s summoning to the Nightmare Lord’s downfall to the present day. More than that, Archer showed them what Dreamtreaders could do. Calling up just a small measure of his mental will, Archer went to work.

  The well’s original cinder blocks and mortar melted away by Archer’s command, revealing the wall of half-frozen earth behind it. A glob of silver-gray appeared. It spun in the air like metallic taffy and began to form long cylinders. An interlocking grid of carbon-steel struts formed next, and then something like molten granite flowed over it all . . . and hardened. Before the astonished audience could take three breaths, Archer replaced the basement walls, floor, and ceiling with ten-foot-thick, carbon steel, blast-proof shields.

  Amy and her mother gasped. Archer’s father made no sound but gaped. Only Buster said anything, and that was a whispered “Whoa.”

  “Pretty impressive, Archer,” Kaylie said.

  “You feel it, don’t you?” Archer asked. “Since the Rift? We’re—”

  “Stronger,” she said. “Much stronger. And we can do it in this world.”

  “I don’t understand,” Amy said. “What’s with the bomb shelter?”

  “He’s keeping us safe,” Mrs. Pitsitakas said.

  “Safe? What?” Amy exclaimed, her owlish eyes wide with confusion. “But, Archer, we can help you.”

  “Maybe,” Archer said. “But for right now, until we can figure out how to fix this, you’re better off here.”

  “Dude,” Buster blurted out, “you’re gonna leave us here?”

  “What about Kaylie?” Mr. Keaton asked, his voice pleading. “She’s just eight. She’ll be in danger. She can’t—”

  “Dad,” Archer intervened. “Did you see what Kaylie did to that wolf monster?”

  Mr. Keaton’s mouth closed with a snap.

  Archer nodded. “Kaylie is the strongest Dreamtreader ever. She’ll do okay, I think.”

  “Better than okay,” Kaylie said, smiling smugly and crossing her arms.

  Archer grinned, but his expression became serious as he strode toward the newly created blast door. “Listen to me. Mrs. Pitsitakas, Dad, please keep everyone down here. You saw it. There’s crazy stuff—deadly stuff—going on outside.”

  Archer’s father paused. Then, he laughed. “Never thought I’d see the day when you’dbe telling meI’m grounded.”

  Archer smiled. It felt like his father was finally coming out of his grief-stricken depression. “Well, you’re not grounded,” he said. “Not really. You can open this door from the inside. You can get out. I just don’t want you to. It’s not safe.”

  “We’ll bunker down here, son,” Mr. Keaton said. He held up his cell phone. “Looks like we’ve still got service, so we can call you, right?”

  “We still have service?” Archer echoed. “Really?”

  “See,” Mr. Keaton said. “Five bars.”

  “That’s surprising in all this chaos,” Archer mumbled. “So, yeah, I guess call us if you need us.”

  “Will do. And be careful.”

  “Razz?” Archer called out, staring at the ceiling. “Razz, come here. I need you.”

  There was a melon-sized puff of blue smoke, a streak of purple sparks, and a shrill voice from the midst of it all, saying, “Here I am!”

  Razzlestia Celeste Moonsonnet—Razz to her friends—hovered just above Archer’s shoulders. The Dreamtreader breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Glad to see you,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what would happen to you . . . with the Rift.”

  “Dude,” Buster said, “you’ve got a flying rat with two tails!”

  “Awwww!” Amy cooed. “It’s so cute.”

  “I am not a rat,” Razz said, her words fringed with feistiness. “Nor am I an it. I am a flying squirrel of dreamy proportions with an unrivaled fashion sense.” She struck a pose in midair, pushing her acorn-top beret to one side of her fuzzy head and twisting her body to emphasize the shimmer of her sparkly boutique tunic dress.

  “Oooh, pretty!” Kaylie exclaimed. “You look like a thousand facets of blue corundum!”

  Archer looked sideways at his precocious little sister. “Blue corundum?”

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, her grin revealing a distinct lack of sorrow. “Sapphire, silly.”

  “Anyway, Razz,” Archer said, holding out his hand so she could perch, “you’re coming with us, but on the way out, make sure you get your bearings. I want you to know how to get back here.”

  “Why, boss?” Razz asked.

  “So I can send you back from time to time to make sure they’re all safe.”

  “Right, Archer,” Amy quipped. “You mean, to make sure we aren’t sneaking out. Yep?”

  Archer smiled thinly. “C’mon, Kaylie, we have some Dreamtreading to do.” He gave the huge spindle wheel on the blast door a spin. After a pressurized hiss, he pulled the massive door open. “Close this behind us,” he said. “And don’t open for anyone but us.”

  Archer turned to leave, but Kaylie yanked on his shirt. He stopped and turned. “What?”

  “There’s one more thing,” she said, her eyes widening. She turned to her father, her brother Buster, and Amy and her mother. “You need to keep control of your imaginations.”

  “What do you mean, sweetie?” her father asked.

  Archer went very rigid and whispered, “Of course.”

  Kaylie frowned, and Archer could see the familiar dilemma forming on her brow: how do you explain something extraordinarily complex to non-hyper-geniuses?

  “We Dreamtreaders have always been able to create things out of thin air,” she began at last, “but only in the Dream. The Rift has mixed everything up, mixed the Dream and Waking together, allowing the free exchange of Dream matter and the Waking World. People can create like Dreamtreaders now—that’s why everything’s gone so crazy. That’s why monsters like that wolf-thing can appear. You have to be careful what you let yourself imagine because . . .”

  Archer’s father nodded and said, “Because we might summon up something else? Something terrible?”

  “That’s right,” Archer said. “It’s kind of like what Dreamtreaders are trained to do, but it could happen randomly. One minute, you think everything’s normal, the next minute a weird thought enters your mind and—”

  “Whoa!”

  All eyes turned to Buster who had both hands wrapped around a gigantic cheeseburger.

  “Dude!” Buster said. “All I did was think of it and, shazam!” He took a monstrous bite. “Mmm, so good.”

  “Cool!” Amy exclaimed, holding a tall strawberry shake in her left hand.

  “Okay!” Archer growled. “Great, so you see how it works, but don’t mess with it. One wrong thought could be a big problem.”

  “Hey,” Buster said. He took a wobbly step and seemed to sway. He dropped the cheeseburger and started to fall, but his father caught him. His eyes flickered and he said, “Like . . . I feel wrecked. So tired now . . . all of a sudden.”

  “I think I’d better sit down,” Amy said. She found a spot on the workbench. “That
making stuff. It really takes a lot out of ya. Yep.”

  “It’s your mental energy,” Archer explained. “Your brain isn’t used to working at this level.”

  “Archer,” his father said, “what happens if you create something really big or really complex?”

  “For Dreamtreaders, we get tired,” Archer said. “For regular people, I’m not sure. It wouldn’t be good.”

  “Good safety tip,” Buster muttered, rubbing his eyes.

  “Look, I know how fun the new power can be,” Archer warned, “but this isn’t something to fool with. Keep your thoughts clean.”

  “No worries, dude,” Buster replied. “We’ve got Dad’s old workshop TV, and we’ve got our phones to play games on. We’ll be fine.”

  Archer took one last look at his family and his friends, and then pulled the blast door shut. There came a dull clank from inside. They were locked inside.

  FOUR

  STORM WARNING

  “BRRR,” RAZZ MUTTERED IN THE WINTER AIR OUTSIDE Archer’s home. The front yard was covered with snow that had begun to melt and then frozen over during the night. “So cold. Time for a new outfit.”

  In a purple puff of smoke, Razz reappeared, decked out in an arctic pilot’s uniform, complete with a thick woolen scarf, goggles, and a leather bomber jacket.

  “Good idea,” Archer said. “Kaylie, let’s gear up.”

  It required the barest, tiniest amount of will, Archer noticed, to transform his clothing completely. For Kaylie, he thought, it must have been as easy as breathing. But in the end, they were both as warm and protected as they could be, decked out in military issue, cold-weather combat jackets, insulated fatigues, and combat boots.

  “What are we doing?” Razz asked. “The Rift’s here. There are no more breaches to mend. What’s our job now?”

  “For starters,” Archer said, “we help people.”

  “There’s a lot going on,” Kaylie said. “Where do we start?”

  “Up,” Archer said. “We’ve got to get a bird’s eye view. And then we go where the trouble is.”

  “Roger that, captain!” Razz said, soaring skyward.