"Right this way," the servant said, guiding Serena and Dreanna through the foyer and into the mansion's living room. The room, greater and more immaculate than any room of any home Dreanna had ever seen, was supported at each corner by four marble pillars. The walls, lined with great works of art, stretched up perhaps twenty feet, as they had to. If the ceiling wasn't so high, the brilliant glass chandelier dangling above them would be considered a walking hazard. Dreanna spun around as she walked, taking in the sight. "I can take your bags, if you'd like."
Serena graciously waved away the offer. "Thank you," she said, "but I'm afraid we'll need everything we have on us." Dreanna shifted her weight and let her right shoulder bear the bulk of her rucksack, giving her left a well-deserved rest. "Although some refreshments wouldn't go unappreciated. The journey to get here was as long as it was arduous." She looked to Dreanna. "Isn't that right, apprentice?"
"Mm- Yes!" Dreanna half said, half squeaked. She had been studying under Serena for nearly two years, but her heart still nearly leaped out of her throat at any acknowledgement from her. "A bit of tea might, uh… do me well?"
Serena gave her a warm smile and turned back to the head servant. "It should do me well, too."
"Of course." The servant bowed. "Have a seat, I'll get someone to work on it right away," he said, guiding the two to the sofa standing along the wall farthest from the door. The tea was done and in front of them by the time they sat down and set their bags aside.
"Where is the master of this house?" Serena asked, lifting up her cup to sip. Dreanna watched and shadowed her, lifting and drinking from her own cup, but with none of her master's poise or grace.
"Out, I'm afraid," the servant said. "On business, as he was when this began. I sent for both you and him at the same time, but have had no word from him." Serena had received that sending three and a half days ago.
Dreanna looked up at her mentor, who thought for a while and tucked an errant strand of stark white hair behind her ear. She absentmindedly ran a finger through her own dark curls, running it along the single white streak brought on by the magics she and Serena practiced. Finally, Serena spoke: "Is the girl well?"
"As well as one can be, given the circumstances. Once you've finished your tea, I'll be happy to show her to you so you can wake her, Master Dreamwalker." He placed a hand on his chest and bowed deeply.
Serena waited for him to rise again before speaking. "Thank you, sir, but I don't believe I'll be waking anyone today." The man narrowed his eyes at her, as if trying to decipher a riddle. Dreanna looked up at her quizzically.
"Miss Serena," Dreanna said, "if you're not waking her today, then when? You've told me so many times that it's not safe to leave someone taken in a Fell Dream for too long. She's been asleep for nearly four days."
"I am aware, Drea," Serena said. "The situation is dire, but I have no intention of waking this girl." She set down her cup and placed her slender, pale hand over Dreanna's. "This will be your first test."
Dreanna shivered as if cold water had been poured down the back of her collar. "Miss Serena, I-I've never entered the Dream on my own, I-"
"Can." Serena interrupted her. "You can. Every day of your apprenticeship with me has led you to this moment. For you to continue on this path, to learn and to grow, you must Dreamwalk on your own." She squeezed Dreanna's hand. "I've taught you everything you need to know to this point. And besides that, today's your luckiest day of the year!"
Dreanna pulled her hand loose from her mentor's and counted the days on her fingers. She was fourteen days shy of her fourteenth birthday. Serena was right. She lowered her hands and looked to her feet. "I…"
"Do you not trust my judgement, Dreanna?" Serena asked.
"No! Never!" Dreanna said. This wasn't completely true. She wondered every day why a Dreamwalker as famous and beautiful and graceful as Serena Lu would take on such a skittish and clumsy apprentice, but never asked her out of fear that she would realize the error of her ways and abandon her on the spot. "I just… I'm afraid."
"I was afraid to enter the Dream by myself too, when my time came…" Serena placed a hand on her apprentice's shoulder. "But I made it out just fine, and so will you."
Dreanna took a deep breath and let her mentor's words settle in her mind. "Okay." She turned to the servant. "May we see the girl now?"
The bedroom was large. Larger than any bedroom Dreanna had ever had, anyway. The collection of dolls in the far corner of the room gazed holes into her as she plodded along behind Serena, who glided effortlessly across the floor and stopped in front of the bed where the sleeping girl laid.
The girl, maybe four or five years Dreanna's junior, appeared peaceful, but both master and apprentice Dreamwalker could sense her inner turmoil. A Fell Dream had taken her, and she couldn't wake from it. Not on her own, at least.
Serena grumbled to herself. The bed sat in the corner of the room. To begin a Dreamwalk, the ritual candles must be arranged in a half-circle around the Dreamer. It's very dangerous to move a Fell Dreamer, which meant the entire bed had to be moved. "Move the bed out of the corner," Serena said to the majordomo and two of the butlers. "And don't disturb her."
"Of course, ma'am," they said and got to work. The Dreamwalkers, meanwhile, got to work producing the materials for their ritual from their rucksacks. Seven colorless, odorless candles to be arranged in a half-circle around the Dreamer, a set of moonlight-scented incense sticks to lull the Dreamwalker to wakeful sleep, and two pendants of silver and sapphire to be held by the Dreamer and Dreamwalker.
Once the bed was moved and the candles were arranged, Dreanna turned to one of the butlers and asked, "What is her name?"
"Alicia," the butler said.
Dreanna repeated the name to herself. "Alicia." She placed one pendant on Alicia's chest and clasped the girl's hands over it. She then turned and watched her mentor light the candles and incense in quick succession, with precise movements informed by decades of experience; although Serena would never let slip how many decades.
Serena guided the butlers out of the room and, before leaving the room herself, turned back to Dreanna. "If you need me, I'll be right out here." Dreanna nodded, clasping her own pendant to her chest, and watched Serena leave, closing the door behind her. With a shaky breath, Dreanna laid down on the floor, parallel to the bed and Dreamer but outside of the candle semicircle, closed her eyes, and let the scent of moonlight guide her into the Dream.
Dreanna opened her eyes. She was standing upright, home in Serena's study. A layperson might remark of how odd it is to see such a familiar place in someone else's dream, but Dreanna knew better. A Dreamwalker doesn't simply enter someone else's dream. Rather, a Dreamwalker meets a Dreamer halfway when they sleep. The dream she was in was just as much hers as it was Alicia's, and the Fell Dream keeping her asleep could affect her just as well if she wasn't careful.
She turned and inspected herself in one of Serena's many floor-length mirrors and ran her hand through her curly hair, as bright white in the Dream as her master's was in the waking world. It was all the proof she needed that the ritual had worked. She was Dreamwalking with Alicia. All she had to do now was find her.
Dreanna went for the door. She reached for the doorknob, but found herself at a loss when her hand collided with nothing. She knew well that the door to Serena's study didn't lock, but it seemed her unconscious mind still knew how to trap her. Dreanna grumbled to herself. What good is a door that doesn't open? she wondered. She looked up and around the room, which had a high ceiling in real life and an even higher one in the Dream, and spotted, near the highest height of the tallest bookshelf, an open window.
She ran to the nearest ladder and began to climb, using familiar books to mark her progress. She passed Moonstone and You and Sleep Paralysis: A Study on the Waking Nightmare quickly, but after passing Silver Nights suddenly found herself at Moonstone and You again. She looked up, confused. The window was farther from her than when she was on the ground, and getting farther. She looked down and instantly regretted it. The ladder led down to an impossibly deep void. She clung nervously to her perch. A fall from any height in the Dream could wake her up.
Climbing further was a lost cause, but a downward plunge would end the ritual. Dreanna scanned her immediate surroundings. She found another window, closed but still able to be opened, on the wall opposite her. She fixed her gaze on it and didn't let go, for fear that doing so and looking back would give it time to change. She took a shaky breath and rocked her body, shifting her weight from side to side, and rocking the ladder with her. The ladder tilted far enough to the right to put her in leaping distance of that wall's bookshelf.
She held her breath, and jumped from the ladder, catching it only by her hands before finding her footing, still never looking away from the window. She sidled along the bookshelf to her new right. When she could sidle no longer, she reached for the window's lever and cranked it open. Then with another held breath, she jumped from the bookshelf into the window and climbed through it.
The window led her outside, to an open-air market not too far from her and Serena's home, but still not so close that she could just climb out a window into it. She wandered a bit, weaving through and around the featureless crowds, and slowed as she approached her and Serena's most frequent stop: Stan Sterling's Silverware. The metal silver had a special connection to the Dream and was vital to the practice of Dreamwalking.
"Oh, look at this!" Serena suddenly appeared beside Dreanna and approached the shop. Or rather, it was Dreanna's dream approximation of Serena. Despite the Dream's best efforts, no imitation could match the beauty or perfection of her true master. The dream Serena picked a pair of spoons out of Stan's selection and showed them to her. "You remember what these are, Drea?"
"Uh, yes! Of course! I believe…" She inspected the spoon with the large, round head. "This is a soup spoon…" The other spoon's head was large like the first, but oblong. "And this is a dinner spoon. Right?"
Serena beamed at her. "Very good!"
"Not bad at all, missy," Stan said from behind his counter. "Wasn't too long ago you couldn't tell a dinner fork from a fish fork. How the time flies." Dreanna laughed nervously. She had only gotten lucky the last time she'd been asked to identify a fish fork and wasn't sure there was any difference between the two utensils at all. "What'll it be this week?"
"Same as every week, Stanley," Serena said. "The full set. No need to wrap it, I'll be taking it straight to the smelter."
"Okay! You know the usual price?"
"That I do. I- Oh, dear." She shuffled through her bag. "I must have left my purse at home." She turned to Dreanna. "Drea, could you be a dear and fetch my purse for me?"
"Yes, ma'am!" Dreanna turned around and suddenly found herself about to fall off the back of a horse-drawn wagon. She caught herself on the wagon's tarp covering and clambered back inside, where she was alone. She looked around, sighed, and sat down against the tarp wall. Something crunched inside her pocket. She reached in and fished out two ripped halves of an acceptance letter for an apprenticeship under Serena Lu, the greatest Dreamwalker the world had ever known.
This was a bittersweet memory. One which she relived frequently in her normal dreams. It only made sense that it would find her while Dreamwalking. Perhaps it was an omen of the Fell Dream, and of Alicia. She certainly didn't want to be here, after all. Or maybe she was lost in her own mind, drifting further and further from her mission.
She looked to the exit, where she had nearly fallen. There was no portal to take her back to the market or any sign of the sleeping little girl. Only empty fields and heavy rain, just as there had been in the waking world. Dreanna leaned further against the tarp and sighed. She was stuck. She closed her eyes and thought. Maybe if she called to the driver, he could lead her to a way out in some indirect way. He seemed very helpful in real life.
When Dreanna opened her eyes, she was somewhere else. She picked herself up and found that she had been exactly where she started: in Alicia's room, on her back, performing the Dreamwalking ritual. The candles were laid out exactly as she remembered them and had been burning for barely any time at all. She sighed and rose back to her feet. She had woken up. Head hanging and shoulders slack, she trudged up to the door to tell Serena she had failed.
At least, she would have, if the door weren't lacking a doorknob. She turned to the bed, which was empty of any and all little girls. What good is a door that can't be opened? What good is a bed with nobody to sleep in it? She was still Dreamwalking!
"Psst!" A tiny voice called out to her in the darkness. "Get under here!" An equally tiny hand waved from under the bed. "Before it finds you! Hurry!" From the other side of the door, Dreanna could hear heavy footsteps. Her skin crawled at the sound of long, sharp claws raking against the wall, already loud and only getting louder. She went flat and crawled under the bed, meeting her charge, the little girl Alicia.
The door clicked open. Darkness poured into the room. Clawed, scaly feet stomped through the doorway, stopping in the middle of the room. It gave a low hiss and waited, curling a long, spiny tail around its leg. Dreanna fought the urge to laugh. She looked at Alicia, herself fighting the urge to cry. Of course. Of course! Of course, the Fell Dream was haunting her as some fairy tale creature, some make believe monster. She was so young, and so little. How could she have known better?
A Dreamwalker's job is to banish the Fell Dream and guide the afflicted Dreamer back to the waking world. If Dreanna could banish any Fell Dream, it would be some nonsense lizard man. She climbed out; hearing Alicia whisper a tiny "No!" behind her. She rose to her feet and turned to confront the lizard man, its spiky back facing her. She opened her mouth to shoo it away, but was interrupted before she could say anything.
"Dreanna." Her heart stopped. She felt like she had just plunged into an ice bath. Slowly, she turned to face the source of that voice. She was no longer in Alicia's room. She was in the main room of her family's home. Her mother, only barely lit by the fireplace, looked through her rather than at her, with a wrathful gaze. "What is this?" She showed Dreanna the acceptance letter she had in her memory of the wagon, whole and untarnished.
Dreanna didn't answer. She tried to look away, but her defiance only aggravated the Fell Dream of her mother. The Dream contorted, twisting itself around her. Her mother's image followed her eyes, appearing wherever she looked, growing closer and closer the longer she went without speaking. She slammed her eyes shut, but even then she could still see her.
"Dreanna," she said again. "What is this?!" Her voice was louder and more forceful than it likely ever had been in the waking world.
The Dream twisted itself again, pressing itself against Dreanna's chest, running along her vocal cords, forcing the words out of her mouth. "It's a letter of acceptance. From Serena Lu." She tried fruitlessly to avoid meeting her mother's gaze. "Th-The Dreamwalker. I applied for an apprenticeship under her and… she accepted me. I'm going to be-"
Her mother cut her off. "No, you're not." She held the letter in both hands. "The last thing you need to be doing is running around in the big city with some hokey magician."
"Mother, it's not hokey! Alexander's son would have died if that Dreamwalker hadn't woken him up!"
"You already have a place. Here. At the inn."
"Mother-"
"Don't interrupt me!" The shadows around them grew darker and longer. The fireplace grew brighter and hotter. Dreanna's chest tightened. "I'm sure the last thing this Dreamwalker needs is to be shadowed by some stupid girl who can't keep her head out of the clouds."
"I can be better, mother…" Dreanna's vision began to blur. "I can grow… and learn…"
"You already know everything you need to here."
The darkness was suffocating. "Please…"
Her mother tore the letter in two and threw it to the floor. Dreanna tried to scream, but made no noise, and scrambled to pick it up. "No daughter of mine is going to waste her life playing magician."
Dreanna fit the two pieces back together and looked up at her mother through bleary eyes. "And… what if I leave anyway?"
"Then you are no daughter of mine."
Dreanna's chest heaved. Her lungs deflated, but just like before, she couldn't cry. She had heard her mother say it in real life. She had heard her say it a thousand times over in her normal dreams, but she still wasn't prepared for it. She let go of the note, dropping to her hands and knees, weeping silently as she choked on the Dream's shadow.
A gentle hand reached down and touched her shoulder. She let it guide her back to her feet and turned around. Before her stood Serena Lu. The real Serena Lu; the greatest Dreamwalker in the world. She waved her free hand, forcing the Fell Dream to retreat and filling the room with light.
Dreanna wrapped her arms around her master and wept into her chest, wailing as loud as she could without the Fell Dream weighing down her lungs. Serena met her apprentice's embrace, holding Dreanna's head to her chest, and whispering to her: "You're okay… You're okay…"
When Dreanna couldn't cry anymore, she looked up and saw her master still staring down the Fell Dream. She followed Serena's gaze, expecting to see her mother again, but instead found a stranger. The stranger was another woman, as well-dressed and as graceful and beautiful as Serena, but with cold and callous eyes. The woman glared at Serena, exactly as Dreanna's mother had glared at her. Dreanna looked back at Serena. Her face was emotionless and resolute, but even she couldn't hide the sadness in her eyes.
Serena waved her hand again and dismissed the Fell Dream. It was gone for now, but it still couldn't be destroyed until the Dreamer was woken up. Serena sighed and smiled at Dreanna. "You're okay?"
Dreanna nodded.
"Good." She ended the embrace, but held onto Drianna's hand. "Let's go find Alicia."
Together they found Alicia and woke her up. In only a few hours, she was back to playing with her dolls like nothing had happened. Serena returned to her room to find her showing Dreanna her entire collection, sharing all of their names and interests with the little Dreamwalker. "The servants are preparing the guest rooms right now."
"That's good," Dreanna said. Waking a Fell Dreamer up is only the first step in ending the Fell Dream's effect on them. They'd likely be staying with Alicia for a few days, at least. "Have you met Princess Marmalade?"
"Oh, goodness, I haven't! Where are my manners?" Serena knelt down and shook the doll's hand. "It's a pleasure! I hear your orange orchards are lovely this time of year."
Alicia's face took on a dark expression. She and the doll both looked away from Serena. Dreanna whispered to her. "Her parents were murdered in an orchard."
"O-oh! Goodness!" Serena raised her hand to her mouth. "I'm so sorry, I should have known!"
"It's okay," Alicia said for the doll. "They got what they deserved." Before any of them could start to unpack that, a butler rang the dinner bell from the hall. Alicia dropped Princess Marmalade to the floor and ran to meet it, squealing with delight. Dreanna picked up the doll and sat her back down on her shelf.
"Maybe it's a good thing we haven't met her parents, hm?" Serena asked, concerned, yet amused. Dreanna gave no reply. "Drea?" Serena tried to look at her, but her apprentice wouldn't meet her eye. "I'm not upset with you."
Dreanna took a moment to respond. "When you were tested like you tested me today, did you pass?" she asked. "Did you wake your first Dreamer?"
Serena thought for a while. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I woke my first Dreamer by myself." She sat down next to Dreanna. "But I don't believe I passed my test, either."
Dreanna looked at her, confused. "But if you succeeded in waking the Dreamer…"
"My master sent me into the Dream so that I would grow and learn. But I met the challenge easily, and woke the Dreamer with little trouble, neither growing nor learning."
"Oh…" Dreanna deflated a little more. "I still don't feel like I've done either of those things."
"You have," Serena said, "whether you know it or not." She swept a white lock of hair that had been brown only a few hours ago from her apprentice's face. "Meeting the Fell Dream and being cowed by it is a rite of passage that all Dreamwalkers experience at some point. Myself included."
"Really?" Deanna asked. She couldn't even imagine it.
"If we never fall, then we'll never learn how to pick ourselves back up." Serena stood back up and brushed off her skirt. "Feeling better?"
"A little." Dreanna got up after her. "I am kind of hungry, though…"
"Then it's a good thing dinner is on." Serena opened the door for her. "After you."
"Thank you." Dreanna left the room, with her master in tow shutting the door behind her.