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But Stardust was already darting through the crowds towards the door and I was forced to follow. The Nightmares were immediately swallowed up by the swarming crowd, but I should have known Stardust was too determined to allow her suspects to slip away so easily. She scanned the throng carefully before darting forward. I did my best to keep up with her rapid movements, but she was quickly lost in the crowd.
I paused with a sigh as I awaited my cloud’s return. I hadn’t been waiting long when I suddenly felt the familiar lure midst the crowds that always accompanied Darius’s presence. I stiffened and frantically searched for him before spotting him several yards away, browsing the clump of nearby stalls.
A rush of warmth filled me at seeing him…followed by the icy reminder of what he’d done. I both yearned to confront him and wanted nothing more than to hide before he spotted me. Fear won, urging me to slip into the apothecary. I peered through the slit in the curtains to watch Darius, who was staring at the door with a look like he meant to follow. I tensed. Had he seen me?
He frowned for a moment before giving his head a little shake and returning his attention to the souvenirs. I released a whooshing breath, but even my acute relief wasn’t strong enough to completely mask the disappointment I felt at not having a chance to speak to Darius. How could I experience both at once?
I remained in the apothecary, both to wait until Darius had left and for Stardust to find me. Unlike Mortal herb shops that were damp and dusky, the apothecary was flooded with dancing sunlight. Scents tickled my nose, pungent and sweet. Herbs hung drying in the windowsill, lucky shamrocks grew from pots lining the floor, and in the corner a Dreamer ground a blue and tangy powder with a mortar and pestle.
After rummaging through bowls of gemstones and miniature moon rocks, I explored the brews used for magical healing and the array of bottled senses, lingering at the sounds—the roar of a dragon, music box tunes from centuries past, lullabies in extinct languages, and the beat of pixie wings. It was midst these explorations that Stardust finally found me.
“There you are,” she said grumpily. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Why did you feel the need to hide from me?”
“I spotted Darius.”
Her bad mood immediately vanished as she accepted this reason readily, as I knew she would. “Those other slippery Nightmares got away from me, which means I’ve lost my chance to investigate what they’re up to.”
“Perhaps you’ll find another opportunity before the festival ends.” But I hoped she wouldn’t; I didn’t think I could bear another encounter with either Blaze or Trinity, and especially not Darius.
The memory of his betrayal tainted the enchantment of the remainder of the festival, no matter which wonders we visited. I felt as if a dark cloud followed me as we explored an art show highlighting the past year’s greatest sunrises and sunsets and wandered to the Weaving Museum, made up of marble columns carved with patterns of constellations. I didn’t linger there long, not with the huge displays of prize-winning dream blueprints, weaving threads I could never afford, and newly invented weaving stitches beyond any skill level I could ever hope to achieve.
Being surrounded by such weaving excellence served as a smothering reminder of my own mediocrity, and for a brief moment I felt nothing but hatred for the craft. Was Trinity right? Did the answer to my potential lay not in weaving, but in my ability to see—and possibly explore—dreams?
I hurried into the lobby to escape these tempting thoughts. Near the exit hung midnight-blue curtains stretching from marble floor to ceiling, where constellations were embroidered in gold threat that matched the surrounding columns. I peeked through the slit. “What is this place?”
“The Velvet Sky Theatre,” Stardust said. “It shows performances of this year’s most acclaimed dreams.”
“I thought Dreamers couldn’t see dreams.”
“These are only recreations made from submitted blueprints of the dreams that yielded the most dream dust. I’m sure they’re nothing like real dreams, but other than weaving mirrors, they’re the closest Dreamers ever get to seeing real ones.” She nudged the back of my legs. “Watch a few and tell me how accurate they are.”
“I’m sure they’ll only make me feel inadequate, and I already get plenty of that from Mr. Ego.” But I couldn’t quite quench my curiosity, so I drew back the velvet curtain to slip inside…only to freeze when I once more spotted Darius, who’d just entered the museum.
I stiffened, even as I marveled at how easily we were drawn to one another despite being somewhere as crowded as the festival. Once again I was torn between wanting to see him and not wanting to be hurt by him if he couldn’t be trusted.
In the end I still couldn’t face him, so I ducked into the theatre to avoid being spotted. There, dozens of dreams and nightmares, all masterpieces, lit the stage.
They were obviously not real dreams, but were like a play with magic as its actors, more elaborate than any performance I’d seen in my home village. Some were distinct stories told entirely in a single sense, while others inspired famous Mortal inventions and legends, glistening ideas planted in the night that blossomed into a life of their own on Earth. One dream stretched four and a half months for a comatose Mortal, and a single continuous nightmare had crept into a Mortal’s daily delusions and was in its thirteenth year.
I squirmed in my seat. “Do you think I could ever weave so well?”
“Maybe if you practiced more,” Stardust said wryly.
I rolled my eyes and turned back in time to see that the next nightmare had been submitted by Darius. I lurched forward. “They’re showing one of Darius’s Nightmares.”
“What?”
An incredible nightmare entirely in sound resonated through the theatre. Even without any other senses, each carefully selected resonance suggested an array of details to taunt the imagination. At its conclusion, curly scrawl stated it’d been created as part of Darius’s final exam at the Academy a few years previous.
“That creep got featured for one of hispracticenightmares?” Stardust scoffed. “I’d hate to see his abilities in several more years.”
Great, my partner was skilled enough to be featured in the weaving highlights, selected from a pool of millions of dreams every year. This didn’t bode well for my future hopes of winning. My feelings of inadequacy and anger deepened with each passing moment Darius’s nightmare filled the auditorium.
There had to be a way to increase my skills. Perhaps the answer trulydidlie in Blaze and Trinity’s suggestion: if I’d been granted such unique powers, shouldn’t I use them? The more I considered the solution, the more determined my desires became: the next time I went dream watching, I was going to try to explore the dream.
Chapter 27
Night had fallen while we’d been inside the theatre. Bubbles of flickering fireflies lit the trees lining the paths like miniature suns floating in the settling darkness. I used the glow from one of the nearby trees to scan the festival schedule. “The flying colors show is in an hour. We should go and find a good spot.”
