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Darius clicked his locket shut and sighed as he glanced down at Maci with deep concern. Despite him needing the magic earned from another successful Weaving, I sensed his worry and frustration that Maci experienced continuous nightmares. His jaw tightened as he glared at his partner.
“Is this really the best you can do?”
She threw her hands up. “Believe it or not, I’m trying. If you really want me to win, why don’t you let me?”
“That’s not how it works,” Darius said. “There can be no pity wins. You must create a winning dream for your Mortal, and you’re not.”
“Because she’s not mine,” the Dreamer snapped. “She belonged to Maci’s original Dream Weaver before she went and got herself suspended.”
I smiled, something that was becoming more frequent as I allowed myself to let light back into my heart. Even though she’d been taken from me, Maci wasmine,and nothing could change that. It only strengthened my resolve to do what I’d come down here for.
Darius glared at his weaving partner with the same skewering look he always gave her whenever she referred to me. Whereas before I’d been too hardened to recognize it, now there was no mistaking what kind of look it was:protective.
“Eden didn’t get herself suspended.” As he spoke, Darius’s gaze flickered towards where I was hiding in the shadows on the roof, as if he could sense my nearness in the same way I always seemed to be able to sense his.
“I don’t care how she lost her Mortal, only that I got stuck with her...and you,” the Dreamer grumbled.
“While it cannot be denied that I’m a talented Weaver, I’m not an unbeatable one,” Darius said. “The problem is you don’t care at all for your Mortal. Unlike you, Eden loves Maci, and that made all the difference in the dreams she constructed for her.”
His words seeped into my heart and I knew they were true. I did love Maci, just as I loved Stardust and, most importantly,him. Recognizing these feelings further softened my heart.
The Dream Weaver didn’t linger after Darius’s declaration, and after a long moment of looking towards my hiding place with an expression like he was experiencing an inner battle, he left, too. I waited a moment to be sure I was alone before I slipped into Maci’s bedroom to fulfill tonight’s purpose, one which I hoped would be the first of many steps to invite light back into my life.
Two of the laws of the Dream and Nightmare Realms were that Weavers were never, under any circumstance, to create a dream or nightmare without a partner attempting to create its opposite, and that a Weaver must never weave for another’s Mortal. I was about to break both.
I knew the law, but in this moment I didn’t care. Unlike what I’d done to the Cultivating Fields, there was a higher purpose in breaking this one: should I succeed here, I’d be creating light, not darkness.
I floated closer until I hovered above Maci, who still tossed and turned due to the lingering effects of Darius’s nightmare. My heart softened as I watched her sleep restlessly. Poor girl, to be saturated in fear night after night. I knew what it was like to be trapped in endless night, unable to escape my prison of darkness. If she could experience a glimmer of light in her endless cycle of nightmares, I wanted nothing more than to give that to her.
I stroked her hair back before I removed the four flowers from the Dream Cultivating Fields I’d had with me before my suspension, the only ones I had left. I examined their lackluster details. Weaving them together wouldn’t form a spectacular dream, but it’d be a dream nonetheless. Any dream was better than nothing. Even if I could never return to my old home and the place I yearned to be in the Dream Realm, I could at least give Maci one night of pleasant dreams.
I carefully studied the flowers for a potential story such random details could possibly form, and a simple one came to me. I carefully wove, doing my best to make each stitch precise, for I couldn’t mess up. I had to use these last dream flowers them to create the best dream I could make. Maci deserved it.
The dream I wove was one I felt had been locked inside me for a long time, one whose presence had helped me continue to move forward, no matter how dark I felt. The dream itself was of night, one filled with plenty of starlight as beautiful as the place at the summit Darius had taken me to.
Soon the darkness gradually dissipated as dawn arrived. The sun slowly rose as I stitched, melting away the velvety night to light the sky in the golden sunshine and promise of a new day. I felt the dream was a reflection of the hope and light that had begun to enter my own heart, my belief in sunrises and new beginnings, my resolution to be different than who I was before. While nothing could take away the night I’d passed through, I could at least think back to its stars and allow my experiences to better appreciate the new day to make it even brighter. These thoughts and emotions seeped through my fingers with every stitch, granting additional power to the dream.
When the dream was finished, I carefully tucked it around Maci. It seeped into her, but unlike when I’d been her Dream Weaver, I didn’t watch my dream in my weaving mirror or by entering it. Instead, I watched Maci as the dream played across her mind’s stage. Gradually, her furrowed forehead smoothed and she relaxed beneath her blankets, a soft smile filling her face as she slept, revealing the dimple in her cheek.
Warmth seeped over me and I smiled, too.
Chapter 23
Inibbled my lip as the bubble message bounced impatiently against my hand, urging me to open it. Dread knotted my stomach as I hesitated. If it was from the Council, that meant they’d learned of the forbidden weaving I’d performed for Maci, an offense that would surely result in my suspension.
Part of me only felt relief at the thought of finally escaping this dark and gloomy world, while the other part of me felt aching regret; how could I leave the Nightmare Realm after Darius and I were finally becoming close again and I’d begun trying to walk towards the light?
Stardust wriggled beside me as she impatiently eyed the message. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
“I’m afraid to,” I admitted.
“It’s not gold, so it’s not from the Council, if that’s your worry.”
Her words gave me the courage to take the ivy-colored ball and stroke around the rim. It melted into thin green ribbons, which twirled gracefully in the air to form cursive scrawl in handwriting I recognized as Darius’s:
Dearest Eden,I’m anxious to speak with you. Will you accompany me somewhere magical this morning so that we might talk? Please. Your Darius
My attention lingeredon the wordsYour Dariusuntil they popped, but even though they’d disappeared, they were already engraven forever on a special place in my heart.
