“How are your magical reserves?”
Now he asked, after slowly draining her with making perfect right angles. “Adequate,” she answered, somewhat surprised to find it was true.
“Enough for one attempt then,” Zoltan said. “When you are ready, step into the Dream, keeping a mental grip on your portal. The portal must remain perfectly established as you’ve created it. This is your anchor, understand?”
She did, as this wasn’t entirely new. When she traveled mentally through the Dream, she employed the same methodology, as she’d been taught, to be able to return her mind to her body. Now she better understood Zoltan’s insistence on a crisply constructed portal. This doorway would serve not only to guide her back out of the Dream, but to bring her entire physical form back into its correct reality.
“I understand,” she answered, infusing her tone with earnest sincerity.
“The ancestors rejoice,” he replied drily. “I want you to step in and back out again. That will be sufficient for today’s exercise. If you accomplish that without trouble, then tomorrow you may attempt to travel.”
A thrill of excitement struck through her fast and bright as lightning, followed by the dull boom of thunderous dread. What if she screwed up? A mistake on this first attempt could have ramifications from wounding her pride to damaging her career to killing her outright.
Or stranding her in the Dream forever, her sanity gradually eroding until she became another element of it, some dark night terror to plague humanity.
“At your leisure,” Zoltan prompted blandly, “though I shall point out that holding the portal open as you are is draining your magic when you’d be better served using it in the Dream, especially to get yourself back out again.” He paused. “Unless you’re afraid to try.”
Deliberately needling her? Apparently the sensitivity of her pride outpaced her fear of death—or worse—because that worked. Taking a steadying breath, securing her mental grip on the reassuringly crisp and geometrical portal frame, Rose stepped into the Dream.
It was easy. So very natural to her that she felt almost pulled in, a sense of harmony settling in her bones that she’d never felt in all her life.
She fully intended to obey her teacher and step right back outthrough the portal. Instead, she paused, utterly captivated. Being inside the Dream in her physical form was unlike anything she’d experienced or expected. The landscape felt somehow more real than anything she’d experienced before, the sensations vivid in startling ways. When she reached into the Dream from outside of it, she’d always maintained a sense of that otherness, that it was a place where she did not exist.
Now, it was as if she participated in one of her own dreams, but with perfect clarity. Her body feltrightin exactly the opposite way it had always felt slightly wrong. She moved through the Dream with the grace and ease she’d envied in others. This was home.
The Dream swirled and morphed around her, showing her common aspects of her dreaming life. Her childhood pony, Aster, came trotting up, rainbow ribbons braided into his mane, sapphire bells in his tail, and when he nuzzled her hand, looking for treats, the visceral memories exploded in her mind. Those velvety lips, surrounded by tickling bristles, touched her palm. The hay-sweet scent of his breath overwhelmed her. The sight of his dewy dark eye, cocked coyly at her, full of knowing and affection. She had to take a moment to understand, to remember that Aster, already an older pony when he’d become hers, had passed on a couple of years before. That’s why his presence surprised her so.
The knowledge hit her hard, like a punch to the heart: Aster still lived in the Dream. In this realm, he hadn’t died of old age and loneliness, years after she left for school. Here, he lived forever.
And so could she.
The moment she thought it, the trained student sorceress in her recognized her peril. Yes, becoming lost in the Dream presented all kinds of dangers. Losing your way, not being able to find your way back, those posed very real problems. But the greatest danger of all came from longing and love. In the Dream,she could live forever, with none of the pain of living. The truest danger wasn’t not being able to leave; it was not wanting to.
In a sudden panic that she wouldn’t be able to force herself to go if she lingered even another moment, she spun around, finding the rectangle of the portal behind her, its very perfection a clear sign that it wasn’t part of the Dream. She didn’t want to go back through, though. The portal resisted, as if filled with glue or molasses. Her body felt as if it might come apart, the spaces between her cells expanding and wanting to explode. It was as difficult to go back through as it had been easy to step in. She felt as if she would dissolve entirely if she stepped through. That knowledge came to her with bone-deep intuition. The Dream seemed to agree, warning her of extreme danger.
But that couldn’t be real. She belonged in the waking world, not the Dream.
Didn’t she?
Yes. She did not belong in the Dream. She was a human being, not a dream creature. This strange experience came simply from this being her first physical excursion into the Dream. Perhaps another of those lessons she needed to learn for herself. She mustered all the sorcery within her to push through the portal, feeling as if she reached for the same skills she used to stabilize any living creature that came out of the Dream.
She popped back through, finishing the stabilizing of her physical form, and becoming aware as she did of the tears of heartbreak streaming down her face.
Master Zoltan stood in the same place, hands still folded neatly behind his back, spectacles winking with afternoon light. He frowned at her fiercely and she quailed. She’d expected castigation for having lingered so long in the Dream. She wondered—was tempted to ask—how much time had passed in the waking world. But she didn’t want to betray how she’d waffled, nearly failed to return. The texts had all said going into the Dream wasthe hard part, not returning. She didn’t understand how she’d so very nearly failed. She opened her mouth to apologize…
But in that moment, something shot out of the still-open portal to the Dream, causing Zoltan to exclaim in alarm, his sorcery bristling in the air to contain whatever nightmare his student had carelessly admitted into the waking world. “I told you to ward the portal,” he shouted at her.
“I thought I did,” she yelled back. Sheknewshe had. It wasn’t like her to be so sloppy. She spun also, trying to get a good look at the colorful blur flying in a whirlwind about the small studio. It arrowed straight for her and—though she knew she should have her sorcery ready—to her chagrin she ducked. It shot past her head and wheeled on wingtip.
A searing burst of oneiromancy blazed past her on the same path, catching the flying creature even as Rose cried out in alarm. She didn’t want it hurt. She didn’t know why.
Zoltan cursed, his sorcery ineffective. “It’s your evocation,” he snarled. “You must send it back.”
Rose still hadn’t gotten a good look at whatever it was, this time making herself stand still as it hurtled toward her. She held up an arm, elbow bent, and it landed there with a whoosh of feathers, trailing the dust of the Dream, and painfully drawing blood from the bare skin of her forearm with its tiny talons.
She stared at it, bemused, not having expected to see a more or less normal-looking kestrel. It could have come from the mews at Northbrooke, any of several of the petite kestrels kept there for hawking and other falconry parties. Except that it was the most beautiful bird she’d ever seen. The russet of its feathers showed vivid rust in contrast with the blue breast, the exact smoky violet-blue of a winter sunset. Its eyes were ringed with a glittering gold almost metallic in sheen.
This was no ordinary kestrel, nor was it a creature generated by dreams. It was far too luminous for the former and tooreal for the latter. Even the most skilled oneiromancer couldn’t smooth a living being to this extent and, even then, the creatures rarely survived for long. It would be such a shame if this bird didn’t live. Though it looked as if it could. It looked to be perfect.
