What did she dream?
She does not know.
The fragments fly like chaff.
Yet strange her mind was tickled so,
To do anything but laugh.
Wren instinctively reached for Jack’s hand. What were they going to do? There was nowhere for them to run. If they went back down the stairs, they’d be in the midst of Auspex’s fight. Wren was surprised when one of the guards lowered his lance.
“What are you two doing up here?” he asked, frowning at Jack. “Apprentices are supposed to stay on the lower levels.”
“Right,” said Jack, giving his trademark smirk and looking for all the world like he wasn’t worried in the least. “But give a guy a break. I wanted to show her the rooftop at dawn. Even apprentices have to bend the rules every once in a while.”
The younger of the two guards laughed at them. “Sure, I guess so,” he said, but the older officer didn’t look so persuaded.
“Rule breaking leads to disorder. This should be reported.”
“Aw, come on,” the friendlier one said. “They’re just kids. Don’t you remember what it was like to be a kid?”
“I remember what it’s like to be caught and disciplined, Titus,” the older guard said in a harsh voice. “Escort them back to their quarters. Avoid Level Nine. Butcher’s patrolling there, and he’s not happy.” He looked at Wren and Jack. “Next time, you won’t be so lucky.”
“Oh, we’ll make sure there isn’t a next time,” Wren said, and meant every word.
Titus saluted his commanding officer and then led them over to an entrance that they would never have discovered on their own, concealed under a shiny copper rooftop. He waved his wrist over a sensor of some sort that unlocked the door, letting them into a steep stairwell that wound around and down. Titus didn’t say much as they descended, so Wren examined the glowing lance that bobbed in front of her. It seemed to be strapped to a pack of some kind. She hesitated. Was it full of the tainted stardust?
“Hurry up,” Titus said. “You can be back in your rooms and get some sleep before morning duties begin if you don’t dawdle.” He grinned up at Jack. “You remind me of myself. I always had night escapades. Keep things lively. Otherwise apprentice ops never get any fun.”
Jack laughed as though he knew what Titus was talking about, and Wren hoped that his bluffing would keep them going long enough to figure out a way out of the House of Never. She stumbled and caught herself on the handrail. The exhaustion of the past days was catching up with her. She hadn’t exactly been sleeping well before leaving the Crooked House, and the adrenaline of their close call was evaporating, leaving her with the mind-numbing debilitation of too many sleepless nights. And for what? They hadn’t helped Cole and Mary escape. Who knew if Auspex had broken free, and even if he had, he wasn’t likely to wait around for them. He’d be off to wherever the Outsiders lived, and Wren wouldn’t even have a chance to figure out how to help him. And now she and Jack were stuck here, having to rely on their wits to get them out and back to Simon. Was he still somewhere out there waiting for them? What if he had been taken prisoner? She panicked at the thought. What had happened to Simon?
Titus stopped to wave his wrist in front of another panel. “That way your reentry isn’t recorded on your chip,” he said, winking at Jack. “For old times’ sake.” Wren could see that his wrist was marked with some sort of glimmering tattoo. She gathered that it was somehow connected to stardust, since it shimmered with magic.
“Thanks,” Wren said.
“Stay out of trouble, you two,” Titus said as he opened the door and ushered them through before letting it shut behind them. Wren could hear his footsteps echoing in the stairwell and waited, back pressed up to the door next to Jack, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. As soon as Titus left, they could return to the stairway and get out of this place for good.
“I think we might have a problem,” Jack whispered.
“You think?” Wren snapped back as the shapes in the room took form. They were standing at the edge of a huge room that must be a dormitory of sorts. Hammocks were strung across at all heights, each occupied by a sleeping figure. It reminded Wren of the Nest, except this time they had no Vulcan to guide them through.
“Titus is probably gone now,” she whispered. “Let’s go back out before we wake someone up.” The apprentice nearest them shifted, sending Wren’s heart racing, but then the movement turned into the deep, even breathing of sleep.
“And that would be the problem,” Jack whispered. “There’s no handle on this door. Just one of those panel thingies that Titus swiped.”
“No!” Wren hissed, feeling the thick, cool surface of the door for herself. But Jack was right. They were trapped. “Come on,” she whispered.
Very carefully, very silently, Wren led the way around the room. It was long and narrow, so it took them some time to traverse the length of it. While the hammocks were like the Nest’s, the floor was swept clean and empty.
“Oof,” Wren said, as her knees met something hard, and she discovered wooden shelves, piled high with blankets and cushions. Past that was another door, equally smooth and handleless, and then more shelves. The whole room was like that. Hammocks of sleeping students, shelves with soft blankets or clothes, and more completely unopenable doors.
“Do they just lock them in all night?” Wren said in exasperation when they’d made it back around to the front. “What if there’s a fire?”
“Well, they can get out with their sensor thingies,” Jack said. “Though if every movement is recorded, I bet they stay right where they’re supposed to be. Which works out well for us. We just need to wait for morning, and then we can slip out with one of the apprentices. Or apprentice ops. Or whatever they’re called. Simple.”
He plopped something soft into her arms, which turned out to be a set of the blankets and cushions they had passed.
“Sure,” she said with a silent laugh. “Simple.” Nothing about Nod was simple.
“No big deal,” Jack said, and she could hear the cocky grin in his voice. “If we got past those guards, don’t you think we can fool a couple of apprentices?” He yawned. “Besides, there’s no use worrying about it now. Not when we can finally get some sleep.”
Wren woke up to find herself alone in an empty room. Where were the others? Where was Jack?
Wren got to her feet and padded over to the single window, which took up an entire wall. A wind must have come up and blown Nod’s typical rainy cloud cover aside, leaving a clear night with a bright round moon twin to Earth’s shining in the velvety sky. Clouds scuttled across it, sending strange shadows playing over the cityscape below. But as Wren watched, an eerie feeling grew inside her. It wasn’t only the clouds but the buildings themselves that appeared to be moving. Spires twisted and curled upward. Structures creaked and groaned, sprouting turrets and extra floors like trees growing buds. Bridges poked out where bridges hadn’t been before. The wind seemed to call them, as every passing gust brought more stonework alive and whispered low, crooning music through the air.
Wren flung open the casement and leaned outside to get a closer look. The city streets were empty. No Magicians were about. No people as far as the eye could see. Only the strange organic buildings, creaking mysteriously upward and outward under the moon’s watchful eye. The music began to change, the low notes climbing higher and closer together. The buildings cracked open and burst with shattered glass and splintering wood, erupting in explosions of crushed brickwork.
“Beware the stardust,” a voice boomed, coming from all directions at once. “Beware the magic.”
Wren reached for the windowsill as the ground below her began to move, as though a huge earthquake was picking up the building and shaking it all around. She grabbed for the pouch of stardust around her neck, forgetting for the moment that she might not be able to do anything with it, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The little pouch was gone, and with it, the last of Wren’s calm.
“Help!” she screamed, but her mouth felt like it was full of cotton. “Help!” She tried to cry louder, but all that came out was a strangled yelp. The sound of the wind was changing, the low moaning rising higher, pulsing with the rushing rhythm of waves on the ocean.
Wren stumbled back from the window and the rising tide. A high wall of water was crashing toward them, and she could feel the jolt of the moment it struck the boundary wall around Nod. The wave crested and foamed, rushing over the sides like a massive waterfall, flooding the tormented streets. The falling buildings were caught up in the rush as the tempest tossed and turned, heading directly toward Wren.
Her feet felt stuck fast, as though someone hadn’t only taken Wren’s voice, but her movement as well. A silent scream bottled up inside her, until she felt like she, too, might self-destruct, like all the buildings of Nod. She shut her eyes, waiting for the end, wondering where the others were and if they had somehow escaped. But nothing happened. The water never hit her. And when Wren opened her eyes, she was out on a barren hilltop, the smell of her dreams of Nod sharp in her nostrils. She cried out in pain as the back of her neck cramped tight.
“I know you are here, Weather Changer.”
Wren froze. This wasn’t the voice that had warned her about the magic. This was a different voice, a voice she recognized. This was Boggen’s voice. A little weaker, perhaps, but his. And he knew her.
“You are mine, Apprentice. And I will find you.”
Wren tried the trick she had learned before, shutting her eyes tight and willing herself somewhere else. The landscape around her shifted. An abandoned city street. A wide-open plain. The side of a clouded pink lake. Boggen’s voice didn’t come again, and Wren took that as a good sign. She kept shifting locations until she finally found herself really awake.
She was lying in the cramped corner where she and Jack had piled their blankets the night before, but this time she wasn’t alone. The pearly gray light of dawn was shining weakly through a many-paned round window at the top of one of the walls. She could now make out clearly what they had only been able to guess at the night before. Neat rows of hammocks were strung four deep and five across, like regimented bunks.
As she lay there she could feel the memory of her horrible dream creep back, the lingering clench of fear on her neck. Boggen had found her in her dreams. And what had happened before that? Why did she feel as though if she turned around quickly enough, she would catch sight of that ominous wall of water? And why did the music still thrum inside her, as if her blood pounded with the rhythm? Beware the stardust. Beware the magic, the voice had said. What did it mean?
On Earth, she had dreamed strange things, and it turned out they were visions of Nod. So what did it mean if she had a strange dream about Nod on Nod?
The rope ladder that hung from one of the hammocks twisted in the air, shifting under the weight of awakening apprentices.
“Jack,” Wren whispered, punching the lump under the blankets next to her. “Get up.”
Jack gave a muffled moan and sat up.
“Shh,” she said. “The others are waking.” They didn’t have much time. They were going to have to come up with a plan, or at least some excuse for why they had suddenly appeared in the middle of the night. Maybe they could say Titus sent them. Maybe—
“We can hide under there,” Jack said, looking wide awake now and delighted at the challenge in front of them. He pointed to one of the shelves Wren had stumbled into the night before. In the light of day she could see it was a low bench that ran along the length of one wall. Sets of boots were tucked neatly under it, but the benches were deep enough that they might be able to squeeze beneath them.
“Let’s go,” Wren said, not wanting to waste any time. They scooted over. “I’ll take this one,” Wren said, clearing aside the boots and then sliding back as far against the wall as possible as Jack did the same with the bench next to it. From underneath, Wren reached out and tried to rearrange the boots, wiggling them back into place so that they would provide some measure of concealment. And she finished just in the nick of time. As she wedged the final boot in place, a buzzer, which must have been an alarm clock, sounded. She couldn’t see much, but she could hear the sounds of people waking. Bare feet hit the floor in front of her as an apprentice clambered down the nearest rope ladder. She could see the end of it swinging as more kids awoke. There was the sound of hurried chatter, the opening and shutting of cupboards and closets. The sound of buckles and jangling metal. What were the apprentices doing in the House of Never? Were they guards in training?
Then one of them started to head her way, his bare feet coming closer and closer until Wren realized in one horrible moment the flaw in their plan. The boots! The apprentices would need to put on their boots. A hand snatched up one pair of boots, and then someone dropped down on the bench above her. She could see the buckles and laces and the hands working to put the boots on. The glimmering blue of the tattoo on the apprentice’s wrist shimmered at her in the shadows. Others joined him. Boys’ voices mostly.
“I wonder what the summoning is for,” one of them said.
“A special op?” another answered. “Think you can handle that?”
“I don’t think,” one joked back. “I know I’m ready.”
Another loud buzzer drowned out the rest of their chatter, and then there was a mad final rush for boots as the rest of the boys grabbed theirs. Wren shut her eyes tight, as if not being able to see them would keep them from noticing her, but she needn’t have worried. Soon, the boots were gone, and the whole herd of apprentices was forming a line near the door panel on the opposite side of the room.
“Wren, now!” Jack hissed at her, and Wren realized he was right. If they didn’t move fast, they’d be stuck in the room alone. She slithered out from under the bench, keeping close to the wall. Peering out from behind a cupboard, she could see that the boys were all individually scanning out of the room. A dozen were left, exiting one by one, and taking with them any chance of escape.
“Let’s go!” Jack was next to her now, and they slipped across the room, making their way from cupboard to cupboard in case anyone turned around. There were only five boys left.
“Wait,” Wren said, pausing at one of the open cupboards and grabbing two garments from inside. “Put this on.” She shoved one at Jack, who hurriedly flung it over his shoulders as they crept toward the final closet, the one closest to the exit. There were only two boys left now. The jackets she had grabbed were identical to the ones the boys wore—made of leather, fitted with straps and buckles down the front, and stopping near their knees. Wren wondered if it was some kind of apprentice cloak for the House of Never. And then it was time. They had to make a break for it. She slinked forward, creeping up behind the last boy as he scanned his wrist tattoo. Right before the door shut behind him, she wedged her booted foot in the gap.
Got it. Now they just needed to wait a few seconds for the boys to get wherever they were going, and they’d be home free. She listened for the sound of the boys’ footsteps on the stairs to fade, but they weren’t fading. Instead, it sounded as if there were more of them. Wren peeked out the crack. Another troop of apprentices were coming from the floor above. This one was a group of girls, and Wren was relieved to see they all wore the same buckled cloak that the boys did. She just might blend in. Each girl’s hair was pulled back in a tight knot at the nape of her neck. Wren wondered how many apprentices there actually were and how long she and Jack would have to wait. Seconds later the panel on the door started beeping at her, increasing in loudness.
“It must be a sensor of some kind,” Jack said from over her shoulder. “To keep the door from being propped open.” Wren ducked back, panicking, as one of the girls drew near to investigate the door.
Jack pushed past her. “Oops!” he said, winking at the girl. “Moving a little slow this morning.”
The girl gave him a stony look, but his bluff must have worked, because she kept moving, joining the seemingly never-ending line of boys and girls headed down the stairs. Jack waved to Wren and they fell in with the others, Wren hastily smoothing down her hair and trying to work it into a knot like the other girls’.
The stairwell had plenty of doors, but none that seemed to lead outside. Down they went, plodding after the other apprentices, looking for a chance to escape that never seemed to come.