CHAPTER II

CY FELL INTO Time and Space. A racing swirl of tumbled thoughts and emotions engulfed him. Concentrations of silent dark streaming energy raced past him as he accelerated through dimensions of Hope, Joy, Grief . . . and Fear. Cy trembled as Fear reached out to him. He gasped as an icy shiver of terror tried to pin itself to his mind. He twisted away and began to fall further and faster.

‘This is all wrong!’ cried the Dream Master.

Cy felt fear again. The Dream Master was right. Things weren’t happening as they should. It was all wrong, but Cy did not know why. In previous dreams, Time and Space would move in a more ordered way. This was a scary jumbled chaos.

From far away Cy heard the Dream Master yell, ‘Concentrate! Cy, concentrate!’

Everything was going too fast. Cy gripped his piece of dreamsilk. What had he been thinking back there in his bedroom? He would have to focus quickly or . . .

A gap of light appeared in the darkness. There was a loud bang; Cy and the Dream Master collided, and then nose-dived through a gap in TimeSpace, landing in a heap together.

‘Where are we?’ asked Cy, struggling to his feet.

‘That is such a cliché,’ said the Dream Master.

Cy ignored him. The little man was always more crabby than usual when things happened unexpectedly. Cy looked around him. He was standing among boulders and stones. ‘I think we’re on a hill of some kind,’ said Cy. Mist and fog-like vapour were preventing him from seeing very far. ‘It could be a mountain slope.’

‘You think?’ The Dream Master was having difficulty standing up on the rocky terrain. ‘You think? You are supposed to know.’ He pointed to the piece of dreamsilk still clutched in Cy’s hand. ‘It is your dream. Therefore you know.’ He peered through the fog. ‘Does this mountain have a name?’

‘I’m not very good at remembering names,’ said Cy.

The Dream Master turned a piercing gaze on Cy. ‘It shouldn’t be a case of you remembering,’ he said. ‘You should know the name of the mountain we are standing on. We can’t arrive anywhere in a dream without the dream’s Dream Master dreaming it up first.’

Cy was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm and it wasn’t just because the Dream Master was asking him questions that he couldn’t answer. ‘Well,’ he said, pushing his sleeves up, ‘it’s a warm mountain. I know that at least.’

‘Warm,’ said the Dream Master, whose own face was turning red, ‘is an understatement. It’s blistering hot, and yet –’ he gazed up at the sky – ‘there’s no sun, so where is the heat coming from?’

Cy glanced at his feet. ‘There seems to be steam coming out of the ground.’

The Dream Master looked down. A few metres from where they stood a trickle of orange fluid was oozing towards them. ‘Lava!’ he shrieked. ‘Red hot lava! You promised me that you would only want to see extinct volcanoes!’

‘Actually,’ said Cy, ‘I haven’t thought of any volcanoes.’

‘Well, what have you been thinking of?’ demanded the Dream Master. ‘You were holding your piece of dreamcloak when this happened. There must have been something in your mind that brought us here.’

Cy thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Er, nothing.’

‘That’s impossible,’ snorted the Dream Master. ‘You can’t just think of nothing!’ He rolled his eyes in his head. ‘Why is it,’ he fumed, ‘that when trying to organize a dream, I always get the Idiotic Imbecilic Ignoramus whose Imagination is—’

‘Hold on a minute,’ said Cy. ‘You’re the one who has been teaching me mind-control so that I can guide my dreams more carefully. How to take pauses, how to be slow to rise to anger, how to quieten anxiety.’ In fact, Cy thought, it was very like the advice that his grampa gave him to ward off the panic attacks which swamped him if too many things happened too quickly. ‘Try taking your own advice.’ Cy stood in front of the Dream Master and spoke to him firmly. ‘Calm down.’

‘I am doing my best,’ said the Dream Master. ‘It is not easy.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You are a particularly . . . challenging . . . pupil.’

‘Perhaps,’ Cy persisted, ‘but example is the best teacher. You should show me how to behave. I don’t ever notice you being very patient.’

‘When you are an expert, as I am,’ said the Dream Master, ‘you don’t need so much patience.’

‘If you are such an expert,’ said Cy, ‘then you get us out of here.’

The Dream Master swung his arm round behind him to scoop up the great folds of his own dreamcloak . . . and grasped empty air.

‘What is it?’ Cy asked. His voice faltered as he saw the look of stunned disbelief on his Dream Master’s face.

‘I don’t have it.’ The Dream Master began to bite his beard in fury. ‘You Blithering Bumbling Bungling Boy!’ he roared. ‘My dreamcloak! My precious dreamcloak! It’s still lying on your bed!’

‘Omigosh,’ said Cy.

The Dream Master stamped his foot in fury and then grabbed his toes and began hopping around on one foot. ‘Ouch! Ouch! I’ve burned myself!’

‘Try not to get stressed,’ said Cy, with more confidence than he actually felt. ‘I’m sure we can move on from this place—’

There was an almighty crash. Cy and the Dream Master were scooped up in an explosion of energy. TimeSpace expanded and contracted like a gigantic rubber band. They catapulted forwards and stopped abruptly, teetering on the edge of a giant crater.

‘This looks better.’ Cy pulled out his notebook and began to scribble. ‘It’s definitely extinct, and it’s a lot cooler.’

‘Cooler!’ repeated the Dream Master irritably. ‘It’s freezing! Hurry up and take your notes and let’s get out of here.’ He peered into the vast empty hole. ‘Where is “here” exactly?’

Cy didn’t answer.

‘You still don’t know! Look, Cy,’ the Dream Master said seriously, ‘it’s unsafe to travel through TimeSpace in this way. You do understand that it is a bit like a story? We must have some order to where we are going.’

‘Order,’ repeated Cy. He glanced at his notebook. And then he saw the names of the volcanoes that the Dream Master had told him earlier. ‘I get it now!’

The Dream Master understood almost at the same moment Cy did. ‘We are visiting the volcanoes in the order you wrote them down! The first, with the lava flow, was Etna in Sicily. It is still active. Now we are at Olympus Mons on Mars. That’s why it is so cold!’

‘And the next one is Krakatoa.’

Cy had barely finished his sentence when he and his Dream Master tumbled with a great felump! onto the bottom of a tiny boat.

‘Not the South China Sea!’ moaned the Dream Master.

‘Is that near Krakatoa?’ asked Cy.

‘We don’t want to be near Krakatoa,’ said the Dream Master. ‘The tidal wave? Remember?’

Cy looked again at his notebook and began to read aloud: ‘Etna, Olympus Mons, Krakatoa, Mount St He—’

The Dream Master grabbed the notebook from Cy’s hand. ‘Don’t say it!’ he screamed. ‘DON’T EVEN THINK IT! That last one on your list is the most dangerous of all. If you’d studied your subject at all over the summer holidays you’d know that the force which blew the top off that mountain was equal to over a thousand nuclear bombs. The pyroclastic surge which followed scorched the whole area for miles and miles. If we go anywhere near that one we’re both goners.’