different part of the room.
‘Hey Dizz,’ he said. ‘I did it too.’
‘Oh Ryan that’s great! Are you okay though? That was quite a rough landing.’
‘Yeah. I think so.’
‘You sure? You hit the mats with quite a thump.’
‘Yeah no worries.’
He sat up.
Daisy was sitting on one of the benches at the end of the room between Teemu and Katya, who had also succeeded in morphing her stick.
‘Tristram said you might come back quite spectacularly,’ smiled Daisy. ‘That’s why he told us to sit over here.’
Ryan hauled himself to his feet.
‘It was pretty cool,’ he said, impressed by how far from the pool he had ended up. ‘I don’t know what Tristram was on about with not jumping in too hard. I’ll definitely be doing that again.’
He walked over and sat down with them.
‘No Billy yet?’ he grinned.
‘No,’ said Katya. ‘He seemed a little bit frustrated. Maybe he has given up?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Ryan. ‘But it’s not like it was that difficult. Are you guys heading back for another go?’
‘No, I’m okay I think,’ said Daisy. ‘Teemu here had a bit of a shock when his stick set on fire.’
‘No, no, it’s what I planned,’ said Teemu, who was barely visible, having settled on a colour that was identical to that of the wall behind him. ‘Go back if you want t…’
He was interrupted by the return of Moira, who hopped out of the pool without nearly as much drama as Ryan.
‘Hey,’ she said, fluttering her wings and waddling over to join them. ‘Isabella’s gone.’
‘Oh that’s a shame,’ said Daisy. ‘She didn’t manage a morph.’
‘So who does that leave?’ asked Katya.
‘Billy and Sophie for a start,’ said Ryan. ‘And that French kid.’
‘And Earl,’ added Moira.
‘Oh yeah, the cowboy,’ said Ryan. ‘Anyone else get the feeling he’s a little slow?’
‘Ryan!’ scolded Daisy. ‘That’s not very nice, is it?’
‘Well, I’m just saying. Anyway, I fancy another go. It will give me a chance to rub Billy’s nose in it.’
‘You’re very competitive, aren’t you?’ said Moira.
‘What? And he isn’t?’
Ryan got to his feet.
‘I’m heading back in. Hey, where’s chameleon boy gone?’
Sure enough, Teemu had silently disappeared from their midst. Daisy stretched out a hand to make certain he wasn’t just extremely well camouflaged, but he was truly gone.
‘Oh,’ she said with a smile. ‘In that case I’ll come with you.’
She and Ryan walked over to the poolside and searched for the dream. When they found it they saw an image of Billy and Sophie in a heated debate, with Tristram doing his best to moderate.
‘Check this out,’ said Ryan, taking a few steps back and then running forwards and somersaulting into the dream.
Daisy giggled and hopped in after him.
They arrived back on the hilltop just in time to see Billy and Sophie turn their backs on one another and stalk off in opposite directions. Tristram seemed a little flustered, but greeted their return with great warmth.
‘Ryan, Daisy; great to have you back! I’m glad to see you’re keen to get the practice in. At least it gives me a chance to have a break from these two. They really don’t like one another, do they?’
‘Well, they are family,’ pointed out Ryan.
‘I would have thought that was a good thing,’ said Tristram. ‘I always got on well with my brother and sisters.’
‘You always got on? You mean you don’t any more?’ asked Daisy.
A shadow passed over Tristram’s face and he hung his head.
‘No, not exactly. It’s a long story and not one I want to trouble you with. Find yourselves new sticks and have another go. Try something different if you feel up to it.’
And with that, he turned his back on them and wandered over to where Frédéric was still beating his stick against a tree in an attempt to chop it down.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Ryan as they watched him go.
‘I get the feeling it’s a subject that makes him sad. Poor Tristram! I wonder what could have happened to make him feel that way. He’s so happy normally.’
‘Well, he clearly doesn’t want to share it with us so I’m not going to get too worked up about it. Hey look, there’s a good stick. Maybe you could turn it from a dead one to a living one again?’
He picked up a gnarled branch and handed it to her.
‘No, I think I’ll do what Tristram said and try something different. What did you do?’
‘I launched my stick off the hill and it landed miles away,’ said Ryan proudly.
‘Really? That’s amazing. Can you show me how you did it?’
‘Err, sure.’
Ryan picked up another stick and led her out of the trees to the place he had thrown his spear from.
‘It cleared that gate down there,’ he said, pointing.
‘Oh my gosh! Did it really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t think I could ever throw something that far. What emotion did you use to make it happen?’
‘I dunno. Anger, I guess. I thought about how my dad would put me down if I failed to make the shot.’
‘But your dad’s lovely, Ryan. He wouldn’t put you down.’
‘Really? You obviously don’t know him at all.’
It always annoyed Ryan the way people spoke about his dad as if he was some kind of demi-god. He had a way of charming people that disguised other aspects of his personality and it made Ryan sick.
With a grimace, he hurled his stick down the hill. This time it became even longer and more stream-lined than before and hurtled beyond his previous effort, burying itself in the ground in the middle of the distant field.
‘Wow! That was amazing!’ Daisy squealed with glee.
Ryan opened his mouth to reply but suddenly found himself tumbling out of the pool at high speed. This time he did clear the crash mats and hit the ground with a heavy clunk, before finally coming to rest against the wall.
There were gasps from those gathered on the bench, which now included Billy and Sophie, both of whom had managed to channel their dislike for one another into successfully completing the task.
‘You okay Ryan?’ asked Sophie, trotting over to him.
‘Yeah I’m fine,’ he replied, getting to his feet.
It wasn’t boyish bravado either. He really was fine. Despite his ungainly landing he had barely felt a thing. With the adrenaline really flowing following another successful throw, he gave one look at her and then hurled himself back into the pool. He reappeared almost exactly where he had been standing before.
‘Ryan, that was brilliant!’ said Daisy, throwing her arms round him and giving him a huge hug. ‘You’re really getting the hang of this, aren’t you? Come on, show me how to do it.’
Ryan had never felt so good about himself and his confidence was soaring.
‘Okay, just try and think of something that makes you really angry and then channel it into your throw.’
‘Okay!’ said Daisy excitedly.
She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up some angry thoughts. Suddenly her eyes snapped open and she cast her stick into the air. It travelled a modest distance before landing in the grass.
‘Oh,’ she said, slightly disappointed.
‘What did you think of?’ asked Ryan.
‘I thought about when Mr Watson gave us all those history essays the day before we broke up for Christmas. I thought that was really unfair.’
‘You can’t use homework to do it!’ said Ryan. ‘You’ve got to use something that makes you really mad.’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ said Daisy. ‘I thought that would do it. It did wind me up a bit.’
‘What about the way the other k
ids at school make fun of you?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Daisy airily. ‘That sort of thing doesn’t really bother me.’
‘Come on. There must be something?’
‘I’ll tell you what; I’ll try and think something up if you try to turn your stick into a tree.’
‘All right, I’ll give it a go,’ said Ryan confidently.
Once again he closed his eyes and formed the image of his dad in his mind. He tried to capture the emotions it brought forth and channel them into his stick.
I want a tree, he thought. I want to be holding a sapling. I am holding one.
He opened his eyes but the stick remained.
‘Oh,’ he said, scratching his head. ‘That didn’t work.’
‘What didn’t work?’ asked Tristram, once again appearing out of nowhere.
‘Dizz, I mean, Daisy wanted me to turn this into a baby tree,’ he said.
‘And you were still thinking about your dad?’
Ryan nodded.
‘Ah, right. If you managed to get that to work I’d be seriously impressed. The problem you’ve got is that you’re using the wrong type of emotion. You won’t be able to create something like that using negative feelings. It just doesn’t work that way. You need to think of something happy, or at least positive. I’m sorry; it's something I should have mentioned earlier.’
Ryan frowned. All he could think of was his dad, whose face had lodged itself at the forefront of his mind. Try as he might, he couldn’t shift it. In the end he just shrugged at Tristram and hurled the stick away. Once again it changed shape and flew beyond the gate and into the field.
Tristram smiled and Ryan braced himself for another dramatic return to the training room. But instead of the land being ripped from under him it began to fade away, and before he knew it his first Dreamweaving lesson was over.
11
As soon as Ryan awoke he was acutely aware of how hungry he was. In fact, though