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“And who has the incredible ability to view and enter dreams?” She gave me a tight smile. My stomach twisted.
“Me.”
“Very good, Eden.” She stroked my hair like she was praising a pet. “You’ll need to enter dreams, find these emotions, andtakethem. You’ll do that for your mother, won’t you, dear?”
I stared blankly at her as her sinister expectations swirled through my mind. Trinity had laid the groundwork for such an idea months before, but back then I’d wanted to use it to help the Dream Realm, not likethis.
But before I had a chance to respond, Mother seized my arm to yank me to my feet and lead me from the room. I instinctively knew where we were going: down to Earth, where Mother would expect me to enter nightmares in search of something I didn’t particularly want to find.
My heart pounded with every step. Whatever Mother’s ultimate plan was, this wasn’t a promising beginning. While I didn’t know Mother’s ultimate scheme, I knew I didn’t want to be a part of it...yet I had little choice, and that was the worst part.
* * *
Mother tookme to our old village. It felt strange to be so near the shadows and ashes of our former and now burned home. While I’d been here every night since my assignment to weave for Easton, it hadn’t been to dream watch. Returning here for my primary childhood pastime stirred up happy memories I no longer wanted to remember.
Mother paused just outside the gate surrounding the bustling village as the early morning vendors set up for market. “Your task is to find a nightmare and enter it. Once inside, steal every emotion of fear you can find.”
“What will you do with the emotions?” I asked.
Mother smirked. “I’ll turn them into nightmare flowers so that they can be used to enhance weavings. Nightmares never need lose again.”
I shuddered at the thought. “I’ve never seen emotions in a dream before. Either they’re invisible or they become such a seamless part of the dream they can’t be found.” Or perhaps they only existed in the Mortal and not the dream itself, a possibility I had no doubt Mother would refuse to accept.
Her eyes flashed. “We haven’t even begun and you’re already uncooperative? I don’t like that, dear.”
I shrunk in on myself and lowered my eyes. “I’m just telling you what I’ve observed.” My voice was small.
“And I’m telling you that I don’t care. I want a Mortal’s emotions, and you’re the only one who can get them for me.” She dug her fingers into my arm, sharper than she ever had before, and dragged me towards the clamor and bustle of the village, where she pushed me towards my old dream-watching tree. “I’ll be waiting.”
I had no choice but to do Mother’s bidding. I climbed the familiar nooks and grooves of the tree and crawled along the bough to my usual perch, where I peered through the branches down into the village square. It was a few hours past dawn, so many of the dreams I saw were either faded or entirely forgotten, but I still managed to spot several floating lazily near their viewers. I breathed a soft sigh of relief.
“None of the dreams are nightmares,” I called down to Mother.
“Look harder. Only searching a nightmare is acceptable.”
Sheer will wouldn’t cause more nightmares to have won last night’s Weavings just because that’s what she wanted. Why did Mother always expect the impossible? Yet I still obediently—albeit reluctantly—scanned the bustling villagers several times before I caught sight a brown, murky nightmare hovering above Wendy, whose droopy eyes revealed her lack of sleep the night before.
My stomach sank. “I found one.”
“Don’t just sit there,” she snapped. “Enter the dream and steal its emotions.”
With great trepidation, I fully locked my gaze onto the nightmare. The familiarwhooshwashed over me as my consciousness rose from myself to soar towards the dream.
I found myself immersed in a pool of snakes. My first instinct was to shriek but I couldn’t, not when I was currently trapped in Wendy’s perspective, making me nothing more than an observer to the dream’s unfolding story. It didn’t matter considering Wendy shrieked and flailed enough for the both of us as hundreds of snakes slithered over our flesh and coiled around our body.
I searched for a means of escape, only for my breath to hook when I caught sight of a giant python on the shore, slowly uncoiling itself to slither closer.
Fear squeezed my chest. Escape, I needed to escape. I forced myself to still my frantic, hyperventilating thoughts in order to concentrate on my magic so I could sever my connection to the dreaming Mortal and pull my body into the dream, but concentration was difficult to cling to with the feeling of countless tongues tickling every inch of my skin. The python inching closer to us provided the necessary motivation for me to seize hold of the power within me and use it to yank myself away from Wendy’s memory of the dream and myself inside it.
My body yanked inside the dream to join my consciousness with a murky splash. I promptly sank into the pool of snakes before pushing myself to the surface with a shaky gasp. I swam through the scaly bodies and clambered to the shore opposite the giant python. There I yanked snakes from my hair and from around my limbs and threw them back into the hissing pool before I curled into a shivering ball and watched as the brown-spotted python slithered ever closer to Wendy, whose terror seemed to have paralyzed her within the sea of snakes.
Despite the fear filling her eyes, I couldn’t see any signs of the emotion within the dream itself. I frantically looked around, for the sooner I found what Mother wanted, the sooner I could leave. Although I spotted a few holes in the dream’s construction and faded remnants of whatever details and threads had been used to create it, nothing remotely resembled emotions. Unsurprising; how could something one experienced within one’s heart be seen by the naked eye? Even if they could, this nightmare was not where I wanted to search for them; if it ever ended, I’d find a way to convince Mother to allow me to search for emotions within a dream instead.
Wendy’s bloodcurdling scream stilled my frantic thoughts. All the air left me as I swiveled to face her. The python had reached Wendy and curled itself around her body, but rather than suffocate her, I watched in horror as it began to eat her alive, beginning at her feet to slowly swallow her entire body.
Nausea overcame my senses and I felt on the brink of a faint. I refused to linger until Wendy woke up. When her screams smothered as her head became consumed by the monstrous snake, I summoned my powers and forcibly ejected myself from the nightmare.
The force pushed me out of my dream-watching tree. I managed to save myself from a painful fall by digging my nails into the bough and letting myself drop not-so-gracefully to the ground, where I crumpled in a heap. Rather than ask if I was alright, Mother pressed her hands to her hips and looked down at me expectantly.
