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“Not until you morph into something smaller.”
Stardust sighed. “Fine, but I’m not staying hidden forever.” She cycled through several options—a butterfly, a bird, a ladybug—until she finally settled on a dragonfly.
“Not a sound,” I warned. “Stay small until we’re inside my bedroom, don’t fly into the open, and stay close by so you don’t get lost.”
Mother looked up as I inched the door open. “There you are. Any more dawdling and I was going to come looking for you. I’m about ready to head into the garden and want you to join me.”
“Let me drop off my bag in my room first.” I sauntered sideways to the ladder, Stardust’s dragonfly form flying closely behind.
Mother gave me a stern look. “If you go upstairs, you won’t come back down. It’s not easy to forget seventeen years of your pulling that trick on me.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Stardust darted briefly into view as she peered over my shoulder. “She has colored hair, too,” she hissed excitedly into my ear. “She must be a Weaver. Perhaps she’s the one who—”
I quickly caught her to muffle her. She flew frantically within my cupped grasp, banging against my hand in her attempts to escape.
Mother stared. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” Before she could question me further, I awkwardly clambered up the ladder one-handed and released Stardust once we were safely tucked inside the attic. She popped back into her normal form, fuming.
“You nearly squashed me!”
“What part of being stealthy did you fail to understand? Mother saw you, I’m sure of it. Some detective you are.”
“I highly doubt she saw me, but even if she did, she won’t suspect I’m a cloud because I was shaped like a dragonfly. For your information, not every cloud can change shapes. It’s a unique power that only I possess.”
I rolled my eyes, dumped my bag in the middle of the floor, and curled against the pile of pillows near the window, in no mood to return downstairs to a long morning of gardening. Stardust promptly began examining my bedroom, poking her nose in random places.
“What a fascinating place, except—” She crinkled her nose. “It’s quite stuffy in here. Can you open a window?”
I sniffed the air. “It smells fine.”
“It smells like dirty laundry. Earth sure is messy.” She twirled around the beams of the slanted ceiling and paused to jiggle one. “Surprisingly unstable. I didn’t know Mortal structures were so dangerous. One crack from this and it’d tumble down and crush you. Buildings built from soft clouds are far more practical.”
“Real practical considering such buildings don’t exist,” I said. “We have to make due with stone and mortar.”
“Of course they exist; the Dream World is full of them.”
I scrunched my forehead. “The Dream World?”
“The magical world in the sky where I’m from.”
I scrambled to a sitting position. “There’s a secret world where magic exists?” Was one of the legends whispered amongst the villagers actually true?
“Of course,” Stardust said. “Everyone with magic lives there.”
Then why didn’t I live there, too?
“It’s a fantastic place,” she continued. “The streets are paved with gold, the trees grow jewels, and the buildings are made of clouds. Dreamers use their powers to paint sunsets, create flowers, and develop new senses, but their main purpose is creating dreams, which yield powerful magic.”
“Dreams arecreated?”
“Yes, by the Dreamers and Nightmares who live in the Dream World.” Stardust opened my trunk at the foot of my bed and began pulling the contents out at random. “Where else would they come from?”
Hundreds of different thoughts swarmed my mind at once, making it difficult to know which question to ask first. “Are dreams created for everyone?”
“Everyone who is Mortal,” she said. “Every magical being has a weaving assignment. As the primary source of dream dust, Dreamers and Nightmares rely on dreams to strengthen their powers.”
