I lay motionless on the couch, eyes half open, struggling to transition back to the waking world. Details of the room filtered into my awareness in a jumbled manner, mixing in with the horror of that final revelation. The feel of the couch beneath me. The glare of the floor lamp across the room. My mother’s face, tense with concern, as she leaned over me and said, “Jesse? You all right?”
“I’m fine,” I whispered. The act of speech felt alien. Everything about this world felt alien. It was as if half my soul was still trapped in the dreamscape, struggling to process what it had just learned. I looked down at my hand and saw that it was empty, but what did I expect? That the feather would return to this world with me?
Terra Prime. The road to the tower began there. If the avatar girl was right (and if I was interpreting her meaning correctly) I would have to travel back to that cursed hellhole to find it.
Shit.
“Did you find her?” Tommy asked from his perch on the arm of the couch.
I drew in a deep breath and tried to steady myself, so that they would not see how shaken I was. “She found me.” I pushed myself up to a sitting position with some difficulty; my muscles ached as if I’d been running for hours. Mom reached out to help me, but I waved her off. “I’m good. I’m good. I just need to draw before I talk.”
I knew from experience that the memory of my dream would fade quickly, so I took up the pad and pencil that were waiting on the side table and began to sketch as quickly I could. I started with the sand pattern, blocking in the major shapes and then filling in the finer details around the edges. But the vision in my mind was already fading, and soon I realized that I was sketching and erasing the same lines over and over. I could sense that they weren’t right, but I no longer had a clear enough memory of the design to know how to fix them. Damn. This wasn’t something that usually happened to me.
With a sigh, I accepted that no further effort was going to improve the drawing, so I turned to the next page and began to sketch the avatar’s feather. That, at least, went well. God alone knew if the design of the feather was significant, but at least I had a good picture to work from in figuring that out.
Finally, I had drawn as much as I could. I leaned back and stared at my sketches in silent frustration, angry at myself for failing to draw the avatar’s design perfectly. Usually, I did better than this. Mom reached over and took the pad gently from my hands so that she could look more closely at the sand design; Tommy peered at it over her arm. “What is it?”
“Some kind of map, I think. Or the key to unlocking a Gate. I’m not sure.” I put down the pencil and stretched my drawing hand, working the muscles loose. “When I asked her how to get to the tower, she drew that design. In sand, on the ground.” I hesitated. “The Shadows used a pattern like that when they activated the Luray Gate, to take us to Terra Prime.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re thinking . . . what? That she was telling you to go back there?”
Fear rose up in my throat; I had to swallow it back to force words out. “I can’t think of any other reason why she would show it to me.”
“But do you believe you need to go back there?”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell them that there was some other way to find out how to fight the reapers. But the lie would be so obvious neither of them would buy it. “I need to go somewhere to find answers, and right now, that looks like the only option. I can’t just sit around waiting for more clues. The next time the reaper comes for me you may not be around to wake me up. And then it’ll all be over. No second chances. So if you have a better plan—any plan—then tell me, I’m listening. Because I can’t think of anything.”
She looked at my sketch in silence for a moment. Then: “You’re sure that finding this tower will help?”
I sighed. “I’m not sure of anything. All I know is that dream-wraiths are trying to kill me, and without knowing what they really are I can’t figure out how to defend myself.” I rubbed a hand across my face, wiping away the first hint of tears. “That tower is where reaper history and Dreamwalker history intersect. If the information I need is anywhere, it’ll be there.”
“That’s all well and good,” Mom said, “but you need to have a plan.”
I blinked. “A plan?”
“You can’t just go over there and hope that clues will come to you.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “You . . . you would let me go?”
“Seriously?” Tommy asked.
A corner of her mouth twitched slightly. “I think we’re beyond the point of my ‘letting you go,’ Jesse. You’ve already run away from home twice without asking my permission. What am I supposed to do to prevent it from happening again? Lock you in your room for the next ten years? Put a tracking bracelet on you? Or maybe spend every waking moment wondering when you’ll disappear again without telling me, and I’ll never know where you went, or if you’ll ever come back?”
I felt my cheeks flush. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Don’t think that means I’m letting you just run off on your own. I want to hear a plan from you first. Where you’re going. How you’re getting there. Who you intend to travel with. It’s no less than I would expect if you were planning a trip on this world, Jesse. So you will give me that much, or God help me, I will lock you in your room for the next ten years, I swear it.”
“I understand,” I murmured. The threat was strangely soothing. Going to Terra Prime was no less frightening a concept than it had been ten minutes ago, but at least now I wouldn’t have to lie to my family. Or make up stories to divert them when I left home.
This is all theoretical, I warned myself. I can’t just go to Terra Prime and ask if anyone has seen a shapeshifting building. I have to narrow down the search area somehow. I took the drawing back from my mother and stared at the avatar’s design. Was there another clue hidden in it? Something that would tell me exactly where I had to go? If so, I couldn’t see it.
I will figure it out, I told myself stubbornly. One way or another.
Then I looked at my mother and brother and corrected myself: We will figure it out.
I stood on the back stoop looking up at the moon, resting my eyes. All I could see after hours of computer research were lines connecting the craters on that satellite, like a giant connect-the-dots game.
The avatar girl had shown me a pattern. Part of it was familiar to me and revealed that the path to the Dreamwalker tower led through Terra Prime. So maybe some other tangle of forked lines or angled fragments was meant to tell me where on Terra Prime I was supposed to go. If that was the case, wouldn’t the information be coded in a way that I could understand? What sense would it make for her to give me a message if there was no hope of my reading it?
Following that logic, I had scoured the internet, searching for any pattern on Earth (my Earth) that could help me interpret what I’d seen. Tommy downloaded an image recognition program and set it loose on the internet, which netted us a lot of fantasy art but nothing that looked useful. The three of us spent hours searching, each glued to his or her laptop screen, scrolling through endless galleries of prehistoric maze carvings, Buddhist mandalas, and even Australian dream paintings, until our eyes were red and mental exhaustion was setting in. All to no avail.
Now, staring at the moon, I wondered if something in Morgana’s collection of Dreamwalker art could help me. But no, I would never beg for that woman’s aid again. Better to die at a reaper’s hands—or whatever alien appendages it had in the place of hands. With a sigh I headed back up to the apartment, bracing myself to resume the fruitless search. Until we thought of a better way to approach the problem, it was a choice between more searching and giving up, and I wasn’t ready to give up.
But as soon as I walked in the door I knew that something had happened. Mom’s reddened eyes were sparkling and Tommy grinned as he announced, “I found it!” He was veritably glowing
with smugness, which I guess one should expect from a kid who had just proven himself more useful than the all the adults in his family. He turned his laptop toward me and waved me over to have a look at it.
What he’d found wasn’t a new design, but an article on sand painting. Apparently the technique that the avatar had used for drawing her mystical map was traditional in several cultures. That was interesting, but I wasn’t sure why Tommy believed it would help decipher the avatar’s message. I scrolled down the page to skim the main details of the article—
And then I saw the picture at the bottom. I stopped scrolling.
“See?” Tommy grinned. “I told you.”
It was a 19th century photo, grainy and faded, that showed a Native American man in traditional dress. He was kneeling on the ground with one hand held out in front of him. A thin stream of sand trickled from between his fingers, and though the sand itself looked blurry, the way he positioned his hand to control the flow of sand mirrored the avatar’s performance exactly. Beneath the photo was a caption that explained sand painting was practiced in the American southwest, in Australia, and among the Buddhists in Tibet—which just happened to be three locations where I’d found the closest matches to the avatar’s design.
There are places where the wall between the worlds grows thin, Sebastian had told me. Where dreams, and sometimes people, can cross from one world to another. Seers will seek insight there. . . . Had seers from those three locations experienced the same visions? Had they been inspired by the same alien source, or perhaps inspired each other? If so, then the avatar’s choice of artistic method was itself a message. She had told me where I must go to find the tower, not in spoken language, but in the language of dreams.
The only problem was, she was directing me to a place no sane person would choose to visit.
“Jesse?”
Without speaking, I headed toward the bedroom. I retrieved the map of Terra Prime that Sebastian had given me and brought it back to the living room, where I unfolded it on the coffee table. And there was the area marked Badlands, exactly in the part of the Southwestern U.S. that Tommy’s article said was associated with sand painting.
“Shit,” Tommy muttered.
“Badlands?” my mother asked. “What are those?”
“It’s a no-man’s land.” I tried to keep my voice steady as I described it. “People who go there are never seen again. At least not sane.” If that was where the tower was, it might fill in a piece of the Dreamwalker puzzle, albeit in a terrifying way. Supposedly my Gift drove its users insane, and their madness then infected everyone surrounding them. So if enough insane Dreamwalkers gathered in one place, might their state of mind impact the entire region? Could they taint the very land with their madness, so that long after they were dead and buried, those who came to the area were still affected, driven insane if they tried to enter it? My fingers trembled on the map as I considered the implications of that.
Calm, Jesse. Stay calm. Focus on what you know. When I had told Sebastian about what happened at the Weaver’s camp when the reaper appeared, he said he’d heard stories of similar events at the edge of the Badlands. Bloody rain. Insects gone mad. Trees that cycled between life and death in the blink of an eye. They were the kinds of things that could easily drive you mad if you weren’t mad to start with. But they didn’t necessarily have anything to do with my Gift.
The path to the Dreamwalker tower was in the Badlands. I’d only suspected it before, but now I was certain. Which meant that if I wanted to learn how to fight the reapers, I would have to go there. I would have to walk into the heart of that region’s insanity and embrace it. And I would have to do that alone, because no one on this world or any other would be crazy enough to go with me.
Mom reached out to take my hand. I jumped at the touch. “We’ll find another way,” she assured me.
There is no other way, I thought. The avatar girl would have shown it to me if there was.
I had a choice between two roads, and both ended in darkness. If I stayed at home the reapers would continue to attack my family, and eventually devour us all. If I went to the Badlands I would have to confront the source of the madness that had consumed so many, and perhaps succumb to it myself. Or maybe I would go crazy anyway, since that was supposed to be the final stage of my Gift. Where was the safe path between those obstacles? How was I supposed to choose my way, with so little information to go on?
That night the reaper came to Tommy. My little brother knew the warning signs and was able to wake himself up before it fully manifested, but he was badly shaken. So was I. There was an atmosphere of fear in the house now, and for as long as I stayed there, I knew it was going to keep getting worse. It was a special kind of madness to watch your loved ones suffer, knowing that you were responsible. Surely it was better to brave the unknown and take one’s chances than to live like that.
At least once I left Terra Colonna my family would be safe. That would be a kind of victory, wouldn’t it?
We drove to the Gate in Front Royal, the closest one to Luray. That was after a shopping trip where Mom spent the last of her paycheck buying me every supply that she or Tommy or I could think of, including some specialty cosmetic items I thought might help Isaac. I felt guilty as I saw all that precious money draining away like sand between her fingers, but she said she was investing in her daughter’s survival and nothing mattered more than that. How could I argue with her? She gave me a few pieces of jewelry she had, mostly semi-precious, to pawn once I crossed over, so I could have local currency. I told her I still had a little money left from the last trip, but it was a token protest. I didn’t know what a cross-country trip would cost on Terra Prime, but it probably wasn’t cheap.
And then we drove to Front Royal. It was about an hour’s trip, and we didn’t talk much in the car. If things went south this might be the last time we ever saw each other, and on the one hand that made you want to cry your eyes out and hug everyone and try to say profoundly meaningful things that would be remembered, while on the other it stopped up your throat so no words would come out. The latter seemed to win out for all three of us.
The Gate in Front Royal was in the basement of a movie theater that was closed for renovations. Mom parked outside the building, and for a long while the three of us just stared at it.
“You have your tickets?” she said at last.
I pulled them halfway out of my purse to show her. “Check.”
“Passport?”
“Check.”
“Tablet?”
I peeked into my bag. “Check. Check.”
“Money? Pawn supplies?”
I took her hand. “It’s all there, Mom.”
She squeezed my hand so hard it almost hurt. “I shouldn’t let you go,” she whispered.
“But you’ve seen the reaper, and you know why I have to.” My eyes were getting wet now; I reached up to wipe my face with my free hand. “Thank you for believing in me.” I turned back to Tommy. “And you . . . you are the best little brother any girl ever had. Even if you do drive me crazy sometimes.”
He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You’d better come back. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”
“I will,” I whispered. “I promise.”
“I’ll never forgive you either,” my mother said softly.
It’s hard to hug people in a compact car, especially from the front to the back seat, but the Grey I had spoken to on the phone to arrange this trip had told me that no “departure behavior” should take place in public view, so we managed somehow. Then I reached for the car door, but Mom put a hand on my arm to stop me. “One more thing.”
I turned back to her. She was holding out a small box. “What is it?”
“Look inside.”
I took the box and opened it. Inside were two gold rings, one with a diamond in it. I hadn’t seen them in so many years th
at it took me a minute to realize what they were. “Oh, Mom, I can’t.”
“In case you need real money. I don’t know what the gold is worth, but the stone is a good one. Don’t let them cheat you.”
“I can’t take your wedding ring—”
She took my hand in hers, folding it over the box. “It’s not something I’m ever going to wear again,” she said firmly. “And you mean more to me than a piece of jewelry.”
Now there were real tears in my eyes. “Oh Mom, I love you.”
“Shhhh.” She took a tissue from the console and wiped my eyes. “No departure behavior, remember? Now put them where they won’t get lost and go to your Gate before they leave without you.”
I turned back to look at Tommy. He quickly held up a hand to fend off anything maudlin I might say. “Just bring me back a cool souvenir. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
And that was it. My last words to my family. I got out of the car and said goodbye to them from the street in a casual way, like they were just dropping me off to see a movie or something, because the Grey had asked me to do that. Then I shouldered my bag and headed to the door that I’d been told to use, a windowless steel one off to one side of the theater. Jessica Drake, interworld traveler.
As the steel door closed behind me I heard my mom drive away.
7
VICTORIA FOREST
VIRGINIA PRIME
SEBASTIAN HAYES
SEBASTIAN WAS CLEANING his musket when the call came. Not that the gun needed cleaning, but the familiar ritual was soothing. At times like this it helped ground him. The little pterodactyl, perched on his shoulder as he worked, periodically tried to nip at the stock, and he swatted it away so often that eventually it flew off to find some other amusement.
Another exile, like himself. In some ways he had more in common with the small creature than he did with the humans on this world.
Running his fingers along the thick steel barrel transported him back to a time when life had been simpler. He could smell the sweetness of baking bread as if it were real, and if he shut his eyes he could hear the laughter of his daughter as she chased butterflies in the yard, his wife singing as she cooked. The echoes of past happiness filled his heart for a short time, and Terra Prime faded from his awareness. But then the peaceful images gave way to memories of war, and once more he was surrounded by the chaos of battle. The stink of blood and death and sulfur filled his nostrils, while chokingly thick clouds of gunpowder smoke hid both friend and enemy from view. He remembered the madness that had driven them all to keep fighting even when the tide of the war turned against them, frozen mud slogging their march to a crawl in winter, dwindling supplies turning them into ghosts of their former selves. Because they had to win. There was no other choice. They would never have picked up their guns in the first place if they had believed there was any other option.