Dreamer (The Dream World Chronicles Book 1)

by Camille Peters

  Iris’s brow furrowed as she lifted a seed from the bag, one stained black, nothing like the vibrant ones she’d previously run her fingers through. “What’s this, Caspian?”

  His easygoing smile faded. He released Angel and crouched on his heels in front of Iris for a closer look. “That looks like a nightmare seed.”

  “There are more. See?” Iris sorted through the seeds and held some on her palm, which were as dark as the first. Caspian took them from her, staring at them in disbelief.

  “Impossible,” he murmured. “My powers are incapable of capturing details other than those befitting dreams…unless the whispers are true.”

  Iris had gone pale. “The balance is tipping?”

  “It’s only a rumor,” Caspian said hastily, eying her pallor with great concern. “Rumors I have no doubt have begun thanks to the unusual dream dust thefts. But…yes, some are wondering if those thefts are only one manifestation of that possibility.”

  Foreboding knotted my stomach, tight and painful.

  Caspian frowned at the seeds in his palm, caressing them with his thumb as if he could wipe away the darkness staining them. “It is one possible explanation, though I’d hate for it to be true. I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of dark magic could transform a dream seed into a nightmare one, or how such a thing could be managed without anyone seeing it occur. But if it is the work of a Nightmare….this is really bad. If Dreamers have fewer seeds to plant in the cultivating fields, then there will be fewer details to create dreams, which will result in more nightmare winnings.”

  His words swirled like a storm through my anxiety-laden mind. Suddenly the beautiful morning was no longer as lovely or peaceful as it’d been before our sobering conversation. Although it was still filled with the usual golden sunshine, the caressing, floral-scented breeze, and the laughter of the Dreamer children playing nearby, shadows and darkness lurked beneath the surface, slowly spreading.

  I watched young Dreamers run around the park, their countenances filled with smiles as they attempted to capture a butterfly with their glittery power, powers that looked as feeble as mine had before acquiring Mother’s dream dust. How would the tipping balance affect them and their future, the future of everyone else in the Dream World? Would their powers forever undeveloped because of whatever forces were tipping the balance?

  I set my jaw. That couldn’t happen. But what could a new Dreamer such as myself—one struggling just to earn my place in this magical world—possibly do with my own limited powers?

  Chapter 16

  I sat crosslegged in the air in Maci’s bedroom as I waited for Darius while Stardust floated nearby, poring over her detective notes. I twirled my most recently acquired dream jar in my hands, examining every detail of the dream, as if it could provide me with the elusive answers about the nature of my rare powers and how I could potentially harness them to prove I belonged in the Dream World.

  I’d been collecting dreams after almost every weaving, both needing the solace that came from that familiar activity and hoping to better understand my own powers. But just as my own dreams at night were elusive, the answers to my myriad of questions remained out of reach, as slippery as the snippets of dreams I managed to capture. For despite my increasing powers, I still had yet to capture a full dream.

  “Nemesis?”

  I startled at Darius’s voice and hastily returned the dream to my bag. Questions filled his eyes as his gaze followed the movement and lingered on where I’d hidden the dream. My heart pounded in trepidation. Had he seen what I was hiding?

  “What is it?” I asked airily.

  He said nothing for a moment, a silent battle in his expression, as if debating whether or not to confront me. Finally he sighed. “Are you ready for the Weaving?”

  I managed a nod and shakily removed my needle and thread, but it was impossible to concentrate on my weaving when I felt the heat of Darius’s gaze either watching my every move or lingering on the bag where I’d hidden the dream, his look suspicious. My apprehension increased. My secrets were no longer safe if he suspected I was hiding something.

  My fears were confirmed the following evening when Stardust and I arrived at my Weaving. Darius seemed to have been waiting for quite a while. He sat perfectly motionless in the air, turning a familiar glowing pink jar over in his hands, his brow puckered in concentration as he studied it.

  I immediately recognized the jar—it was the very one he’d stolen from my bedroom, the one he’d promised to one day return. Like all his previous promises, it was yet another he’d broken. He looked up at my arrival before hastily pocketing my dream.

  “That doesn’t belong to you.” I snapped.

  He bit his lip, looking slightly guilty. “I need to study it a bit longer before I can return it…or perhaps you can save me the trouble by simply telling me what’s inside it.” He fell silent, granting me the opportunity to confess; when I didn’t, he simply shrugged and continued. “I keep thinking back to the night I first acquired this—the night I gave you a nightmare. I would love to discuss the details of that night when you decide to stop lying to me. Why won’t you admit you received my dream?”

  “Because I didn’t.” But my voice wavered; each time he brought it up made it more difficult to continue denying it. “I can’t dream.” That at least I could be honest about.

  “I can’t deny there’s some truth to your claims,” Darius said. “The primary reason I wanted to give you a nightmare was because I found something rather interesting in my investigations after I witnessed that first unusual burst of magic you performed on Earth.”

  “What did you find?” Stardust demanded.

  “Something rather unusual in the weaving records,” Darius said. “I stumbled upon it quite by accident when looking something up for Mother. Apparently, you’re listed as an unusual Mortal, one for whom Weavers seem incapable of weaving. Half a dozen were assigned over the years before they finally gave up. Their investigations into your inability to dream was surprisingly sparse. Strange the Dream Council didn’t look more into it, but perhaps it’s not so surprising after all, given their usual incompetence in matters like this.”

  “It’s true I’ve never had dreams, and that includes yours.” But my thoughts whirled. I’d had Weavers who hadn’t been able to weave for me? Then how had I seen Darius’s nightmare?

  “I admit I didn’t expect you to actually receive my dream considering the magical activity I’d discovered around you,” Darius continued. “But I always welcome a challenge. Imagine my delight when I succeeded where everyone else had failed. There’s no doubt you saw my nightmare—it yielded me a lot of dream dust, the most I’ve ever received from a Weaving. You must have been very afraid of my nightmare. Between that and the undeniable fact you could see me, it was clear you were an unusual Mortal.”

  This finally silenced me. How could I deny the fact that his nightmare had generated dream dust? I swallowed the last of my denials with the lump that had formed in my throat. “The least you could do is return my jar. Whether or not I saw your nightmare doesn’t give you the right to steal it.”

  He pulled my bottled dream from his pocket. I motioned to take it, but he held it out of reach. “Not so fast. I have no intention of giving it to you until I discover why it’s so important.”

  Stardust sped over to grab it but he easily dodged her.

  “Try that one more time and I’ll drop it.”

  Stardust froze. By her horrified expression it was clear she still remembered what had happened the last time a dream had escaped on Earth.

  Darius smirked and returned his attention to my captured dream, combing over every surface. “It’s a strange item. Although it appears to be empty, I can feel magic pulsing within it, yet I’ve never heard of a method of bottling up magic. Magic is always in some form, whether dream dust or something created from it. I’ve wanted to open it in order to examine it more carefully, but if it does contain something like I suspect, I don’t want
to risk it escaping. But what sort of magical substance would be invisible? It sure is puzzling.”

  Despite his claims of being unaware of what the jar contained, his look was a bit too knowing. I shifted nervously beneath his perusing gaze. Considering there were only a handful of magical things invisible to Dreamers and Nightmares, it likely wouldn’t be difficult for Darius to deduce the jar contained a captured dream, if he hadn’t already.

  I took a calming breath, but it did little to loosen the anxious knots tightening my stomach. “If it’s so strange, how come you haven’t shown it to the Council?”

  “What good is evidence if I haven’t figured out what it is? No matter how much I study it, the answers still elude me.” His gaze met mine. “Are you sure you don’t care to enlighten me, Nemesis?”

  “Not a chance.”

  He shrugged. “No matter. It would only spoil the thrill of figuring it out for myself—and I will, one way or another.” He pocketed it.

  My hands balled into fists. It was as if he was robbing me all over again, keeping the very evidence that could be used against me.

  I yanked my supplies from my bag. Darius smirked and calmly removed his own. My heart sank. Up until now, he’d waited impatiently for me to finish before he even unpacked, but evidently tonight that wasn’t his plan. The Weaving would probably be over before I could stitch a single detail.

  Sure enough, he started weaving before I’d even organized my flowers, his rapid movements and elaborate stitches extremely distracting. I shielded my quilt from his view as I repeatedly matched wrong flowers together and unpicked. Unsurprisingly, Darius finished before me, but he made no motion to give Maci his dream. Instead, he proceeded to his favorite pastime: taunting me.

  “You’re doing remarkably well. I’d never have guessed you’re a novice. Zero wins. Impressive.”

  I tried to ignore him, but already I felt my heart pounding furiously.

  He eyed my pile of waiting flowers, the corners of his mouth twitching. “I see once again you’ve managed to bring half of the Cultivating Field with you. Don’t they have rules against a Weaver hoarding all the details?”

  I bit my lip and leaned closer to my dream quilt, but it was impossible to focus with Darius’s silky insults intertwining with my concentration.

  He eyed my jagged stitches. “Your stitchery is excellent. I see you’re going for a fuzzy dream riddled with blank holes. Mortals just love dreaming about nothing in particular.”

  I slapped my needle down. “What’s your problem?”

  He dropped his sarcastically friendly act, his typical scowl firmly back in place. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking that question? From the moment we met I’ve tried to help you, and yet you repeatedly ignore my advice, as is evident by your repeatedly using far too many details for a newborn dream. Magic is an art, not a jumbled mess like that.” He pointed to the tangled threads and half-sewn flowers of my unfinished dream still on my lap, one that under his scrutiny seemed even rougher than usual. “Why aren’t you listening to my advice?”

  “Because you gave it,” I snapped. “I have no reason to trust you.” Any Weavings I lost were due to my lack of practice, not the dreams I chose to create.

  He was silent a long moment. “I see. It appears my attempts to help you have only made everything worse because you’re convinced I have an ulterior motive to see you fail.”

  “That sums up the situation nicely,” I said tartly.

  He sighed. “I’d hoped that by helping you I could have earned your trust by now, but it appears I’m no closer now than when we first met. And here I thought you were just stubborn. Or perhaps I haven’t gone as easy on you as I’d thought.”

  “Stop pretending all your actions have been noble,” Stardust snapped. For the past several minutes she’d been shifting her glare between my needle and Darius with an expression like she very much wanted to stab him with it. “Any nightmares created below their full potential are more a testament to your laziness than to the goodness of your heart.”

  Bolt poked his head from the staticky fields of Darius’s hair. “Darius isn’t creating easy nightmares because he’s lazy. He told me it’s because he wants to give Eden a chance to beat—”

  “That’s not true,” Darius hissed, but a blush lightly brushed his cheeks, defying his words. He avoided my eyes. “Even if it were—which it’s not—I’m not doing it for her sake, but to maintain the balance between the Dream and Nightmare Realms. It’ll cause havoc if one becomes too powerful.”

  “I’m sure that’s the reason.” Bolt winked at me.

  My pulse sped up at the reminder of the recent danger to the balance, while Stardust gaped at Darius in disgust before frowning at my unfinished dream, nowhere near completion. “How much longer?”

  “Probably an eternity,” Darius said. “I hope you brought provisions to be camped here forever.”

  Stardust glared at him. “I wasn’t asking you.”

  “Do you need to be somewhere?” I asked her.

  “I’ve discovered a clue to the mystery we discussed earlier.” She gave me a knowing look, but I hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about.

  “Can’t you do it when I finish?”

  She shook her head. “It’s too important to delay.”

  I suspected the real reason she wanted to leave had nothing to do with investigating or even because she was bored, but was motivated solely by her growing dislike of Darius. But she’d never abandoned me in the middle of a Weaving on nights Darius was being unusually difficult; normally she stayed loyally by my side and defended me against his taunts.

  “Fine,” I snapped. “Don’t forget to pick me up afterwards.”

  Darius gave an exaggerated yawn. “If she ever finishes.”

  Stardust hesitated in the window frame. “Are you sure?

  “She’ll be fine,” Darius said. “I would never harm my weaving partner.”

  Stardust didn’t look convinced, but after a little more prodding from me she left. After reminding me several more times he didn’t have to wait for me and could easily give Maci his nightmare right now, Darius settled down with History of Legends. Other than the rustling of pages, Maci’s soft snores, and the click of Bolt’s knitting needles, there was blissful silence, the perfect environment to work.

  I fought to push away my returning worries of the Universe’s balance in order to carefully weave my dream together, occasionally looking up to see if Darius was watching before I unpicked. Often he wasn’t—instead either reading his book or admiring himself in his weaving mirror—but once or twice I caught him peeking over his book to monitor my progress. Whenever our gazes met he hastily looked away, and each time he did so, Bolt looked amused.

  I paused in my work when I heard Darius stir. I looked up to find him subtly nudging a floating book towards me, which he’d opened to a section on dream construction. “What’s that?”

  “Oh, just some advice. Since you’re determined to suspect my motives, I hoped that an expert might persuade you.” He pushed the book a few inches closer with his pinky.

  I frowned at the book—one that was clearly from the Nightmare Realm and thus would be no help to me—and firmly shook my head before returning to my stitches, completely disregarding the book. “You are quite the puzzle.”

  “You can’t be the only one having all the fun.” His grin was unrepentant…and rather adorable. With it came the feeling I’d been fighting from the moment we’d met—the one that tugged me towards him.

  I determinedly pushed it away and returned to my dream, but it was difficult to construct with the feeling of Darius’s warm gaze on me. I looked up to find he’d scooted his book even closer. He caught my gaze and nodded towards it, his eyes wide with invitation to steal a peek.

  I frowned. “Why are you pretending to help me? I’ve been in the Dream World long enough to understand that Nightmares and Dreamers are never friends.”

  “Most aren’t,” he agreed. “But that
doesn’t mean there can’t be an exception.” He gave me a rather endearing sideways grin.

  I frowned. Just what game was he playing? Why was he so determined to earn my trust? And if he wanted it so desperately, why was his treatment towards me constantly changing? One moment he was rude and condescending, the next he claimed he wanted to be friends, as if he were battling two parts of himself in every one of our interactions. It didn’t help that I wanted to accept his friendship, even though doing so would undoubtedly be foolish, especially with my situation with the Council so precarious.

  But that didn’t change the fact that my determination to ignore him hadn’t helped my circumstances; I was no closer to winning Weavings than when we’d started. Could I risk heeding his advice? I fiddled with my stitches as I deliberated. Darius waited a few moments more before interrupting me again.

  “Hmm, the book doesn’t appear to be working. Perhaps I need a new approach.” He picked up his completed dream and pulled out another detail from his bag to add to it. I tried to ignore him, but my curiosity compelled me to watch.

  He lit up the moment he captured my attention. “I think my nightmare could use another detail. Let’s see, which one should I add…hmm, perhaps I should select a detail that will not only enhance the dream, but whose flower is similar to the one it’s being connected to, either in color or shape. Matching the flowers as closely as possible will add another layer of strength to the stitches and allow them to enhance one another, thus making them more effective in my dream.”

  He motioned towards the quilt in my lap with his eyes. I looked down at my unfinished dream, whose own details were arranged randomly. From my overload of information during my three weeks of cramming, I faintly recollected reading about the advantage that came from pairing similar details together, words which coincided with Darius’s own advice.

  Which meant that in this instance, he was sincere in his assistance. I sent him a questioning look, but he’d already set aside his needle and returned to his book, as if he hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary.