“I don’t understand.” Plum’s voice was breathless. “Who is coming for us? Why? Where are you?”
“Promise me,” was all Artem said.
And then the dream disappeared.
CHAPTER 8
Plum awoke, feeling groggy and strange. The persistent aching in her left arm followed her back into the waking world, and her eyes shifted to the IV that was being extracted now by Nurse Penny’s gentle hands.
“That was quite a long sleep,” Nurse Penny said. “I understand you needed it. How are you feeling now?”
Plum was grateful that the pinks weren’t here to monitor her pulse, because she was sure that it would betray her lie. Her heart had been betraying her a lot lately. “Much better,” she said.
Smiling, Nurse Penny opened the drawer of the nightstand beside the divan where Plum lay. She extracted a yellow notepad and a black pen. “Here,” she said. “It’s not quite as pretty as your dream journal, but it will do in a pinch.”
Plum sat up. Her head felt light, but she didn’t let on. Rather, she smiled and took the notepad and said, “Thank you.”
Nurse Penny patted her cheek. “I’ll let Dr. Abarrane know that you’re awake. Take a little time to reorient yourself.”
Nurse Penny left the room, and the moment she closed the door behind her, Plum squeezed her eyes shut. A wave of fear rose up in her, so heavy and fast that it stole her breath. Her breaths came in quick bursts.
Stay calm, she told herself. She thought of the mountain made of rocks in the training center, and the first time she climbed it without wires. She hadn’t let herself be frightened because she had convinced herself that falling was not an option. Climb—she had told herself—or die.
This was like that. She just had to keep going until she found Artem. He was okay. He had to be, because she would not accept that anything bad had happened to him. At the very least, she knew that he was alive—wherever he was—and that he had given her a warning.
Once she had steadied herself, she began to write. She had never been especially good at fiction—she’d been taught to always write the truth—but as it happened, she felt quite satisfied with her ability to spin a convincing lie. A girl who dreamed of such wild things night after night was bound to store some of it away should the need for a tale arise.
She wrote a dream of fanged antelope with dragon wings trying to tear her apart. She wrote about the crystal sword at her hip, how she had slain all of them and then spent the remainder of her dream luxuriating in a meadow of gold flowers that smelled of Nurse Penny’s perfume, listening to the gentle babble of a nearby meadow. She wrote that it was just the rest she had needed.
An hour later, she sat in Dr. Abarrane’s office as he read her notes. She studied his face, looking for any sign that he knew the dream was a lie. But he only chuckled as he read, and raised his brows, and occasionally looked pensive. When he was done reading, he said, “It sounds like you had a restful sleep.”
“Yes,” Plum said.
Dr. Abarrane set the pad on the table and folded his hands. “Plum,” he said. “I like to think of all the students at Brassmere as my children, you know that. But your class—your generation—is especially dear to my heart. You’re the ones who have made this school successful.”
His face was so kind, Plum thought. She had always trusted him. Had always considered him a mentor, and the closest thing she had to a parent. But now when she looked at Dr. Abarrane, all she saw was Artem’s pale and worried face, begging her not to trust this man she had trusted all her life.
Well, not all her life. There had been a few days in which Plum did not know Dr. Abarrane. A few days in which she had a mother and a father, or so she assumed. She was not born at Brassmere. No one was born at Brassmere. No one came here by choice.
He’s going to come for you.
“You’re here because you’re exceptional, and Brassmere is the only place in the world that can challenge you,” Dr. Abarrane went on. “You understand.”
It wasn’t a question, but Plum knew well enough to nod and say, “Yes. Of course.”
“And it’s imperative that you—that all of you—exercise complete honesty when you report those talents to us.”
Plum sat with her back straight. She kept track of her breathing, the way she always did with the pinks. She thought of Artem all alone with the pinks on their last report day, frightened and hiding such a big secret, and she wished she had known so she could have helped him. Plum was good at being composed. She was good at lying—not that she ever had a reason to. It was all in the body language. Plum found that if she appeared confident in what she was saying, it was rarely brought to question.
She could see, also, that Dr. Abarrane was not going to be so easy to fool. He opened a drawer of his desk, and then he placed a book on the table before Plum. Her dream journal.
She felt a chill in her blood at that, and even before he spoke, she knew what he was going to say.
He opened the journal, to the spot where Plum had torn away the other night’s page.
Stay calm. It was Plum’s mantra today. She weighed her options. She could deny that she had torn a page from the journal, but that would be easy to disprove. Despite her best efforts when she had torn it away, she could now see a tiny ribbon of shredded paper indicating her handiwork.
She could tell Dr. Abarrane the truth about the disturbing dream she’d had, but that would go against Artem’s warning.
Or, she could lie.
She didn’t have to work hard to give Dr. Abarrane a look of worry. “I had a nightmare the other night,” she said. “That’s why I’ve been unable to sleep ever since.”
“Is that so?” Dr. Abarrane closed the journal. His voice was patient, but Plum no longer trusted him. In the span of a single dream on a single rainy morning, everything had changed. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“I had a dream that Brassmere burned to the ground,” Plum said. “Everyone was trapped inside, including me. We all died.” She did her best to appear saddened. “I never told my friends about it. I didn’t tell anyone. I thought— Well. I thought it would be bad luck to talk about it. Dragons and monsters are one thing, but a fire could really happen. It’s the first time I dreamed about something that felt real.”
Dr. Abarrane’s expression softened, and Plum realized that he believed her. She wished that she could be excited about this, but all she could think about was Artem, trapped somewhere in the churning realms of dreams, and of Vien and Gwendle, who were probably wondering at this very moment what to do with their incomplete foursome.
“Have your dreams been especially strange lately?” Dr. Abarrane asked.
“My dreams are always strange,” Plum answered.
“Yes, well, I do need you to write everything down.” He tapped the journal pointedly. “There is a reason we monitor your abilities. We need to be sure that all is well.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Plum said, and knew that this was another lie. She wasn’t sorry, and she was through divulging anything about her abilities to Dr. Abarrane or anyone at Brassmere. She no longer knew who she could trust, except for her three best friends, one of whom was missing.
Dr. Abarrane glanced at the clock above the door. “You were asleep for several hours,” he said. “I’d like you to rest some more. Nurse Penny will escort you to your dormitory.” He smiled. “Get some rest, Plum. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“What about Artem?” Plum said. Her voice was calm, but she wanted to shout at him. She wanted to ask what he knew, what he had done. “Has anyone found him?”
Dr. Abarrane swiveled in his leather desk chair and glanced at the window behind him, with nothing to be seen but their own reflections in the glass. The wind and rain were embattled outside.
“There’s a search party out looking for him,” he said. “He will turn up. He can’t have gotten far. Even if he’d wanted to, there’s no way over the fence.”
That was exactly
what Plum was afraid of.
When Gwendle returned to the dormitory after dinner and found Plum sitting up in bed, she burst into tears and hugged her.
It was rare of Gwendle to cry. She used to do it all the time when they were small, so much so that the professors would punish her for it. After enough hours holding up pails of water outside the classroom door until her arms wobbled and ached, Gwendle learned to be very selective with whom she displayed her emotions.
Plum was so glad to see her that she almost could have cried, too. She wrapped her arms around her.
“I was so worried.” Gwendle finally drew back, rubbing tears from her cheeks. “First Artem and then nobody would tell us where you’d gone. Vien wanted to pound down Dr. Abarrane’s door, and I had to plead for him not to.”
“He wanted to do that for me?” Plum’s voice came out soft and startled. A strange warmth stirred in her stomach at the thought of Vien willing to fight for her. But she forced the thought away. It wasn’t practical, not when they had something much bigger to contend with. “Listen,” Plum whispered, and Gwendle leaned in, her blue eyes wide. “I have something important to tell you and Vien, but not here.”
Gwendle sat up straight and nodded, understanding. Plum didn’t have to explain. There was only one place in which their secrets would be safe, and that was in their dreams.
CHAPTER 9
The dream began with the sound of wind. At first, Plum would have believed she was still awake, if not for the fact that she had wings. She was sitting in the grand foyer, on a gigantic tufted leather chair. It was bright pink—another sign that this was a dream.
Gwendle was the first to join her. She had been eager to get to sleep that night, even turning out the lights an hour early. She floated down from the chandelier, using it like a brass parachute held above her head. She landed soundlessly.
“Why are we at Brassmere?” she asked.
Plum looked around the room. “I don’t think it’s real,” she said. “All the doors in that hallway are painted on.”
“You’re right.” Gwendle’s voice trailed as she considered this. “That’s new.”
Vien arrived next. He managed to use the front door, but struggled with the wind and rain as he tried to close it. “There’s something out there,” he said. “I didn’t get a good look, but I heard it growling, and through the smog I thought I saw horns.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Plum said.
Because this was a dream, the events of the day were further from all their minds. It was a constant struggle to remember what was real and what truly mattered.
“There you are,” Vien said. The pink chair was gone, and Plum was standing now. Vien took her hands and held them tightly. “Where were you all evening? Dr. Abarrane said—”
“We can’t trust him.” Plum spoke hastily, because she knew there was a monster outside and she knew that dreams were fickle and ever changing, and what she had to tell them was important.
Gwendle stood beside her now, too. “Can you tell us what happened now?”
“He gave me medicine that forced me to stay asleep,” Plum said. “I couldn’t wake up when I should have. I thought I had died in my dream, but instead it stayed black for a very long time, and then I saw something.”
“What did you see?” Vien asked. He looked very worried, and Plum thought about what Gwendle had said about Vien wanting to pound down Dr. Abarrane’s door.
“I was in a strange city,” Plum said. “There were people, but they couldn’t see or hear me. And then Artem was there.”
“Was Artem a ghost or was he dreaming, too?” Vien’s voice took on a new urgency. “Did he say where he is?”
“He was dreaming, too,” Plum said. “It was really him. I’m positive. He was trying to warn us. He said that he’d had the same dream of that strange city, and he tried to keep it a secret, but Dr. Abarrane found out.” The dream world fought with the waking world in Plum’s mind. The dream tried to tell her to be calm, that nothing could hurt her here, that everything was all right. But everything was not all right, and Plum knew it. “I think Dr. Abarrane has done something with Artem. I think he’s in danger. He told me that none of us are safe, but I woke up before he could explain.”
“Are you sure it was really Artem?” Gwendle pressed. “Why would he say those things? Dr. Abarrane is our mentor. He—”
Before Gwendle could say another word, the doors to the grand foyer swung open with a burst of wind. It felt like a hurricane. Branches and bright autumn leaves and hunks of shrapnel filled the room.
“Hold on!” Plum clung to Vien’s and Gwendle’s hands. She sensed the monster before it appeared, gigantic and lumbering.
“Should we run?” Vien was shouting, his voice nearly lost to the wind.
“Won’t matter,” Plum said. “It’s going to eat us, anyway.”
“What?” Gwendle shrieked.
“Whatever you do, don’t wake up,” Plum yelled, and then the monster opened its great dark mouth and devoured them whole.
It was quieter once the monster had swallowed them; all the wind and the storm and the aggressive thunder gave way to the damp silence of a cave. They fell helplessly, but Plum managed to keep hold of Gwendle’s and Vien’s hands.
The fall was not as long this time, but the landing was harder. The three of them toppled to the ground with a series of grunts and groans.
“Is everyone okay?” Plum asked.
Gwendle sat up, a thin line of blood streaming from her forehead and down her nose. Vien grunted and pushed himself up by his arms. Plum could see that he had injured his arm, but he was inspecting her for injuries rather than complain about it.
“I’m all right,” Plum said, using her sleeve to dab at Gwendle’s forehead.
“I’m okay, too,” Gwendle said. “I think it’s already healing itself. What is this place?”
They were on the same cobblestoned street that Plum had dreamed that evening. It was still nighttime, and Plum wondered if the sun ever rose here. The clock tower shone bright, its face full of nonsense numbers.
Vien’s dark eyes were still on Plum. “You’re dreaming us here.” It wasn’t a question. “What is this place?”
“This is where I saw Artem,” she said.
Gwendle got to her feet and ran to the nearest alley. “Artem?” she said. “Are you here? Please come out. We’re so worried.”
A crash was the only answer, and then one of the houses burst into flames.
Gwendle jumped back, away from the blast of sudden heat. “Did this happen in your dream?” she asked.
“No.” Plum rose to her feet, Vien at her side. “I didn’t notice that house at all.” She charged forward.
“What are you doing?” Vien ran to keep up with her.
“Whatever is in that fire, we’re meant to see it, or else it wouldn’t be here.” Plum knew with certainty that she was not in control of this dream. She had no weapons. She had no sense of what would come next.
It was a small house, with a brick face and tiny windows on either side of a bright green door. The flowers in the window boxes were the first to be eaten by the flames. Plum watched them disintegrate to ash, and a strange sense of longing and grief threatened to overwhelm her. Something about those flowers—something about this house—felt familiar.
Walking right through a wall of roiling flames, she kicked the door open and stepped inside.
Vien and Gwendle stumbled after her, all three of them coughing. Vien said something about dreaming up a mask to protect their mouths, but Plum couldn’t hear him, and, anyway, no such masks appeared.
The house was lit bright by the flames, filled with black clouds of smoke. Plum saw the body clearly, as though a spotlight shone over that section of the floor.
“Wait,” she said. Her voice was suddenly clear and loud. The flames and smoke carried on, but they had gone silent.
Blood rushed in Plum’s ears.
She took one step closer
to the body, then another, until she was close enough to make out all the details. It was the same woman she’d dreamed of that evening, in the same elegant clothes. Her dark hair spilled over one shoulder. Plum knelt before her and peeled the hair from the woman’s face to have a better look. Her eyes were open and dark and dead.
“No,” Plum whispered. “You can’t be dead. You can’t be.”
She tried to shake the woman awake, tried to will the dream to bend to her wishes. But her efforts were in vain.
“Plum.” Vien’s voice was soft as he and Gwendle knelt at either side of her. “She isn’t real. She’s just a ghost.”
“She’s not a ghost,” Plum cried, and she saw Vien’s startled expression at that. She sounded as though she was about to cry. She never cried. “She’s real. If she were a ghost, we could make her come back to life. This entire place is real. Look at it. When have any of us ever dreamed of anything like this?”
“She’s right,” Gwendle agreed sympathetically. She touched the woman’s forehead. “This place is all wrong. There are no weapons. No escape routes. The flames are all silent, and none of us silenced them.”
As if on cue, the roar of the flames returned. There was a crash as the staircase collapsed in on itself. And then they all heard it. The distinct, unmistakable sound of a baby crying.
“That wasn’t coming from in here,” Gwendle said. She nodded to a window on the far wall. The heat from the flames had shattered the glass. “It’s outside.”
There was no time for Plum to have a good look. The house collapsed in the ruin of the flames, and the dream came to an end.
Plum came awake first, gasping. Across the room, Gwendle popped upright in her bed several seconds later. She was coughing, as though she still believed she was surrounded by flames.
She met Plum’s gaze. They wore the same worried and serious expression.
“What was that?” Gwendle whispered.
“I don’t know,” Plum whispered back. She tried to look at it logically. Logic would help, while worry would not. “But Artem has been seeing it for a while, and when Dr. Abarrane found out about it, Artem disappeared.”