The Afterlife Series Box Set

  “A penny for your thoughts,” said Mick.

  I shook my head. “I was only thinking how I was sure I could beat you back to the castle.” I got up and leaped into the air.

  “Never!” said Mick and leaped after me.

  Abhik sat next to me at dinner. I was starving and kept shoveling food into my mouth. Abhik looked at me with a grin.

  “Sometimes you are a little weird, do you know that?” he asked.

  “I know,” I said while grinning back.

  At the same time Mick came out from the kitchen as he always did when dinner was served and everybody had started eating. He walked around among the tables and talked to people, asking them if they enjoyed the food. They would always applaud him. It was his little ritual, and I knew he loved it. When he passed our table our eyes met and we both smiled secretly. Abhik saw it immediately.

  “What is going on with you two?” Abhik asked later when we were alone in the common room where we studied for the next day’s dream-catching class. I froze in the middle of a sentence in my book, All Men Are Dreamers: Seven Ways to Catch a Human Dream. I stared at Abhik. He had his nose in another of our textbooks called You May Say I'm a Dreamer, But I'm Not the Only One.

  “What? What do you mean?” I asked and pretended that I didn’t know.

  “You and Mick. I saw you two earlier today. He helped you get onto the big rainbow over the ocean. The hardest one that no one in our class has yet climbed. And at dinner you exchanged looks that I don’t know what they mean.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. I felt like a silly schoolgirl. “What looks?”

  “You did that thing with your eyes that you sometimes do.” Abhik tried to imitate me, but with no luck.

  “What are you talking about?” I said and threw a pillow at him.

  Abhik just let it go through his body with a plunging sound. “Aw, that hurt,” he said and bent forward trying to catch his breath.

  “Why didn’t you move?” I asked as Abhik laughed and threw a pillow at me. I ducked in the last second and it hit a vase in the corner that fell to the ground and broke.

  “Oops,” I said. Then we laughed.

  “There is definitely something going on between you and Mick again,” Abhik said. “It is nice to see you happy again.”

  I shrugged. “Well don’t get too attached to it. I don’t know how long it will last.”

  “So are you together again?”

  I shook my head and tried to sound convincing. “No. We are just friends.”

  Abhik laughed. “Yeah right.”

  “No, seriously. We have promised each other to put everything on hold until Jason arrives. Then we will see what happens. Mick has told me he will wait for me.”

  Abhik became serious. “He said that?”

  I nodded. “Yes. He wants me to have closure.”

  “Wow. That is really big of him. I don’t think that I could do that.”

  “Well he’s a great guy.” I paused and thought about what I had just said. He really was. I was beginning to think that there was something really wrong with me for not marrying him. Now that I didn’t have him here with me all the time, I really wanted him more than ever. I didn’t understand myself at all. I didn’t want to be like that. I didn’t want to be someone who always wanted what she couldn’t have. I didn’t want to risk losing everything on account of some feeling or some silly dream.

  Abhik sighed. “I really hope that you will not hurt him again.”

  I stared into the fireplace that always burned. It made a crackling sound. I liked having it here; it gave the room a great ambiance.

  “Me too,” I said.

  Chapter 15

  “If you want to catch a dream, it is important to first of all find your own inner peace.”

  Mr. Ngodup Dhamdul was, as always, floating in the air in the lotus position with his eyes closed. Now he opened them slowly and stared at us with his narrow brown eyes with that big smile he constantly wore on his face. I always felt good in his classes. He made us all feel good.

  “And how do I do that?” he continued. “How do I find my way to that center of my inner self where there is completely peace and I am in total balance, you might ask.”

  Some of the students nodded. Mr. Dhamdul’s smile grew wider even though I would have thought it wasn’t possible. “First of all, you have to make sure that nothing is troubling you. You need to cast your care, as we say. To be a great dream catcher you must never have strife in your life. You mustn’t hold on to the past or have any unforgiveness in your heart. Bad feelings will cause you to fail at this as well. You have to clean your heart of worry and anxiety. All these things are like poison for you.”

  That was a lot, I thought.

  “So what do you think? It sounds impossible, right?” he continued.

  A couple of my classmates agreed with him. Mr. Dhamdul shook his head heavily. “Nothing is impossible in this world you belong to now. Reaching inner peace isn’t either. You can do it, if you make a decision today that you want to.”

  Nigel raised his hand. “But how do we actually physically catch these dreams? How do we hold on to them and what do we do with them?”

  “Aha, the practicalities. You want to know the technique?” said Mr. Dhamdul

  “Yes,” Nigel said.

  “We are getting to that. Don’t be in such a rush. Being in a hurry will get you nowhere when it comes to dream catching.”

  “Because it will disturb our inner peace and cause us to lose our balance?” said Frederic Cornwell with a mischievous grin imitating the teacher’s mystical calm voice. His sister sniggered loudly next to him, but Mr. Dhamdul didn’t take any notice of them.

  After half an hour of boring theory lessons each of us received a net. Mr. Dhamdul asked Nigel to lie down and fall asleep on a mattress on the floor. Ten minutes later he was snoring and caused giggling among most of the students. He even drooled on the pillow.

  “Come closer and look at his eye movements,” Mr. Dhamdul whispered. “The Rapid Eye Movement has already begun. That is when Nigel is dreaming. Now if you focus on the top of his head, you will begin to see something that humans are not capable of seeing. It might take a while for you to learn how to see it, but you will eventually.”

  We all stared intensely at Nigel. A rainbow of different colors suddenly seemed to appear. “Is it like colors?” I asked.

  “Yes! Yes!” Mr. Dhamdul said with great excitement that caused Nigel to snort and turn in his heavy sleep. “Keep looking and tell me what you see,” Mr. Dhamdul whispered.

  I looked at my classmates and realized they were all staring at me. Apparently they hadn’t been able to see anything yet, so they were somehow expecting me to tell them what they were supposed to see. I turned to look at Nigel again and now the colors seemed to be moving around and then it all turned into what looked like a bubble. Shapes appeared in it. It looked like people. Soon they had bodies and faces and they were walking, running, and doing stuff, like a small movie or a play taking place on top of Nigel’s head. It seemed so surreal. The people seemed to be talking now, but I couldn’t hear them, so I went closer. Everybody stared at me like I was watching something they couldn’t see.

  “It looks like a bubble. It has people in it,” I said.

  “That is it! That is the dream. It is inside that bubble. Very good, Meghan. I am impressed that you can see it so early in your training. Now pick up your net and try to catch it, but be very careful not to scare it off,” Mr. Dhamdul said.

  I lifted the net and went closer. I stretched my arm out and moved the net close to the bubble with the dream, but the bubble moved, so my net came back empty. I tried again but the same thing happened. Nigel started moving in his sleep. He began tossing and turning. The bubble seemed to become flaming red. I turned to Mr. Dhamdul for help. He looked pensive for a few seconds.

  “When you miss, it might cause the dream to go bad. So now he has a nightmare. Look at his tormented face while he i
s dreaming. We have to be very careful when we try to catch the dream. You don’t want to catch it when it is a bad one. Those are impossible to change. We have to wait to see if it calms down a little,” he whispered.

  We stared at the dream for a few minutes and eventually its colors changed again. Blue and yellow colors were mixed into the red and Nigel’s face seemed calmer.

  “We are fortunate,” Mr. Dhamdul whispered. “Look at how the colors are changing. Always look at the color of the dream before you try to catch it. Now I am going to try.”

  Mr. Dhamdul looked very focused and stood still in front of the bubble for a long time, just staring at it, like it was an animal that needed to trust him first. He reminded me of a dog on a hunt when it had found its prey. Then he slowly stretched out the net, but as he did the bubble jumped and he missed.

  “This one is tricky,” he whispered. “I will try another approach.” He closed his eyes and took in a couple of deep breaths before he neared the bubble again. I think Mr. Dhamdul was the first spirit I had ever seen fly like he was in slow motion. Slowly he came so close that he could reach out and almost touch the bubble. I held my breath while he froze in the air and became completely still. Nothing on him moved. Not a breath, not a blink, not one single movement.

  Slowly and soundlessly he then reached out with the net again. But still the dream moved just in time for him to miss it.

  Some of the students giggled while Mr. Dhamdul tried to suppress the growing irritation inside of him. Then he closed his eyes and started humming. He meditated for a few minutes. “Some of them are just impossible,” he said when he opened his eyes again and had regained his peaceful self. “As you just saw with your own eyes, it is very difficult to catch a dream. It takes years of training. This one in particular is very hard.”

  I kept staring at the bubble on top of Nigel’s head and suddenly I felt an urge. I felt like I could do this. “May I try one last time?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Mr. Dhamdul said.

  I floated silently toward the dream, and when I got close, I put the net down. I sensed the confusion in my classmates’ expressions as I left the net behind. But I tried not to take any notice of it. I didn’t want to break my concentration. The bubble seemed to know we were trying to catch it so it started to roll back and forth, constantly changing its direction. It moved like a small animal trying to avoid being caught. I suddenly remembered from my childhood that I used to catch lizards with my bare hands. I smiled at the memory and carefully reached out both of my hands and with one quick movement I grabbed the dream and held it between my hands. I heard the whole class gasp behind me and I felt like everything had stopped. Now I was holding the bubble between my hands, while it was trying constantly to escape, but I had no idea what to do next. Mr. Dhamdul looked at me with huge eyes.

  “So … what do I do now?” I stuttered. The bubble was slippery and difficult to hold on to. The people in it kept moving around and talking, but all I could hear was distant voices as if from a radio or TV in another room.

  Mr. Dhamdul floated toward me. “I … I have to say … That was really impressive, Meghan. You have a real talent for this. I have never had a student catch a dream on her first try. And never ever with her bare hands.”

  All eyes were on me and I felt a little insecure. This was the second time in a short period that I had done something like this.

  “How did you do that?” Mr. Dhamdul asked.

  “I … I don’t know. I just … I mean it is a lot like catching lizards,” I said.

  The entire class burst into a huge laughter and that was quite a relief for me. In the bubble I spotted Nigel talking to a girl and I suddenly felt like I was looking at something I shouldn’t be looking at. It was Acacia. He was dreaming about her. I lifted my head and looked at her, but then I realized that I didn’t even know if the others could see the dream at all. By the look at Acacia’s face, she didn’t see anything. Maybe all she saw was the bubble. Maybe she didn’t even see that.

  “So what do I do with it now?” I asked again.

  “Let it go for now,” Mr. Dhamdul said, seeming a little perplexed for the first time. I did as he said and placed the bubble back on Nigel’s head again. The bubble seemed confused and started spinning around like it was afraid I wanted to catch it again, but soon it calmed down. Mr. Dhamdul told us to get back to our desks while he gently woke up Nigel. He seemed a little confused as he got back to reality, and the class laughed at him as he wiped away the drool from his chin.

  “Thank you Nigel,” said Mr. Dhamdul, “for kindly letting us borrow your dream today.”

  Nigel blushed and glanced in Acacia’s direction. I was the only one who knew why. Then he went back to his seat while Mr. Dhamdul continued.

  “The next step is to look into how we open up the dream after catching it and, most importantly, how we change it.”

  “Wow! How did you do that?” asked Abhik as we left the classroom. We were floating through the corridors where torches burned on the white marble walls. On our way we passed the walking armor who greeted us.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I guess I was just lucky.”

  “No, you are getting good at everything. That was amazing. Most of us only saw the bubble. We didn’t even see the dream inside of it. For the most part, I only saw colors moving and sometimes not even that. But I did see how Mr. Dhamdul looked at you.”

  After lunch, I went to the library to pick up a book on dream catching. I was beginning to think that it might be my talent. I seemed really good at it and I liked the idea of being able to help humans by telling them information through their dreams—like Mick had helped that woman tell her husband she was all right. That was really cool.

  “You are making headlines at the school these days,” a voice said when I turned a corner in the corridor. I spotted Mick leaning against the wall, looking casual and appealing. He moved slowly toward me.

  “What did you hear?” I said and suppressed a smile. I couldn’t help being a little proud.

  “That you caught a dream on first attempt with your bare hands.”

  I shrugged. “I guess they are right, then. It was my second attempt, though.”

  “That is amazing. I have never heard of anyone do that before. You are really growing strong.”

  “I guess.”

  Mick ran a hand through his blond hair. He gave me a look like I was an idiot. “What? Aren’t you happy? You are one of the best students this school has ever had.”

  I sighed. “Of course I am happy. I just don’t quite know what to make of it. It is going a little fast for me.”

  Mick tilted his head. “You don’t like change, do you?”

  “It just takes some time getting used to it. That’s all. I’ve never been a good student. I was never the teacher’s pet or anything. And it’s kind of taking me by surprise.”

  He nodded. “I see what you mean. But once you realize what you are capable of, I tell you, it is a whole new world out there.”

  “Was it like this for you, once you realized what you could do?”

  “Yes. It does remind me of that,” Mick said with the trace of a smile. “I didn’t do all those things you are doing, but I was the best student during my final year too.”

  “So how did you handle it?”

  “I kept practicing and eventually got better at controlling it.”

  “Maybe I should try that,” I said. “I have to get going now, I have a class in a few minutes and I need to go to the library first.”

  I started floating slowly toward the library again. Mick escorted me. We stayed quiet most of the way. Suddenly I felt his hand in mine. I turned to see if anyone was behind us, but we were alone.

  Chapter 16

  The next couple of weeks really changed how I looked at myself. I kept growing and doing wonderful things I had never done before. And I became quite the celebrity at the school. People looked at me with a mixture of awe and respect. No one spoke of
the cancelled wedding any longer. Instead, everybody wanted to see me do something amazing. It was a positive turn, and I enjoyed that part of it. But at the same time, I had never liked being the center of attention either, so I kept mostly to myself and tried to avoid being in big groups of people. If someone approached me I would politely talk to them, but try to get out of it as quickly as possible. But inside my confidence slowly grew. I knew now that I had a lot of talents. And I was really good—everybody kept telling me that. But I had a great respect for what was happening as well. By now I had little if any control over my talents and I was careful not to misuse it.

  Every day I trained in my room. I practiced making things appear between my hands. But what appeared was never what I intended. And I couldn’t quite see the silver lining in it. With Mick, it had always been food, but with me it was all kind of things. I had books appear when I was trying for a cup of tea. I had a coconut roll out of my hands onto the floor when I wanted a pencil. I had no control over it whatsoever. And I never knew what was coming. At one point a whole tree appeared in the middle of our dormitory, when I was trying to make a necklace. I had no idea how to get rid of it again, so I had to ask Rahmiel for help. Fortunately she made it disappear with just a look.

  “It is a good thing that you are exploring your talents, but maybe you could do it outside from now on,” she said.

  So I continued outside for the next couple of weeks. Every day after school I went into the yard and tried as hard as I could. One afternoon I had a little breakthrough. I wanted to make a butterfly and put it in the garden. So I concentrated and thought about a beautiful purple one. I rubbed my hands together and they turned burning hot. Then I felt that something inside of them. As I opened them I was holding a small cocoon. I was so happy. Finally something that was really close to what I wanted to make. I put it in the Butterfly Garden, and checked on it every day. Finally one day when I got there, it had hatched. I looked around and saw a beautiful blue butterfly flickering around a flower close by. It had to be it, I thought. It just had to be. It wasn’t exactly what I had wanted but it had finally come close. I was getting better and it wouldn’t be long before I could finally control it.