In his dream, he was standing on a mountain road, without any recollection of how he’d got there.
It was daytime, but the sky was gray and the wind fresh. Ahead was a view down a steep slope to a valley divided up into neat fields. Behind him, the road rose up to a solitary house — a château of some kind. In all directions the horizon towered with snowy mountain peaks that brought to mind every picture David had ever seen of the mighty Swiss Alps.
“When you’ve quite finished gawping …” said a precise voice. Glancing back, David was mildly surprised to see Dishita looking at him. Petra was standing at her side.
“I’m dreaming!” said David, and Petra laughed. Dishita looked unimpressed.
“Let’s not waste any time, shall we?” she said. “David, the reason the professor is not here to explain further is because he can’t follow us now. In fact, to the best of our knowledge there are only a few hundred people in the world with the ability to communicate like this, though not all of them have been activated.”
“Activated?” said David. “What does that mean?”
“It means made aware,” said Petra. “The first step in making a controlled dreamwalk is becoming aware that you are dreaming. The machines in the Somnarium help you do that. Now you are in control of your dream. Soon you will learn to do it on your own.”
“That’s right,” snapped Dishita, who clearly didn’t like being interrupted. “Most of the people we activate are then offered a place on the Dreamwalker Project. At present our youngest dreamwalker is ten years old, and the oldest is eighteen. The ability to project consciousness diminishes at the end of adolescence.”
“Science-guy speak,” whispered Petra. “Dishita wants to be one of them one day.”
David looked around. The wind chilled his cheek and moved the branches of the trees. Overhead, where the clouds gathered, a large bird was circling. It all seemed so real. Could it really be just a dream? After a moment he became aware of the two girls waiting for him.
“So, where is this?” he asked. “And what do we do now?”
“Well, we could have a picnic,” said Dishita sarcastically. “That château over there is Unsleep House. The places you have already been shown, the Map Room and everything, are in the rock beneath it. But this mountainside is just a neutral point, somewhere for us to meet in dreamspace. We haven’t come here to admire the Swiss countryside. As it sounds like this will be the only training run you’re going to get, we should go somewhere — we should dreamwalk.” And when David didn’t answer she narrowed her eyes and added with a nod, “Perhaps through that door?”
David turned and was surprised to see a blue door standing in the middle of the road. There was nothing to hold up the frame, and he had the eerie feeling that he could walk all around it if he wished.
“Oh. Did I make that?” he asked.
“No,” said Dishita, “this is my dream, not yours. We can’t wait all day for you. Now, what would you like to see? Where in time would you like to go?”
David’s mind went blank. What a question! Petra came to his rescue.
“I know something you might like,” she said, and the door swung open. David looked through, his eyes growing wide in wonder.
Beyond the doorway he saw the light of a different day, where the sands of some far-off place shimmered in the heat of a desert sun. He caught a sudden rush of hot rocky air and sensed a mixture of smells that clearly didn’t belong to a Swiss mountainside. It was like staring into another world.
“Is that … the past?” he said.
Dishita ignored this question. She walked briskly to the door and stepped through, beckoning to the others to follow. The light reflecting from her hair altered immediately and she already seemed to be an unimaginable distance away. David looked at Petra.
“What will I see?” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Petra, her ready smile twitching with amusement. “It’s going to be amazing, David. It’s always amazing.” And with that she took his hand and pulled him through the door.
David was standing with the two girls in the shadow of a broken stone wall. Beside him, between outcrops of rock, were the remains of some rough stone buildings, tumbled down and decaying in the sandy earth and casting long shadows with the sun low in the sky. They were on the slopes above another valley, only this time it was broad and arid, studded with shrubs and strange grasses. He stared in disbelief, shocked to find himself somewhere else entirely.
He moved his feet on the gravel experimentally, but didn’t hear the crunch of small stones he was expecting.
“Try and pick one up,” said Dishita.
David stooped and scrabbled for a stone, but he couldn’t even move one, let alone take hold of it. He stood bolt upright again.
David’s mind fought with the situation. However, even as he struggled with the reality of sudden relocation, he also couldn’t help wondering why he had been brought here. He looked over at his two companions, standing beside him in the shadow of the broken wall. Then he looked down at himself and saw that he was still holding Petra’s hand. He let go and patted himself down.
“But … but this is my body. I’m really here!”
“No, David,” said Dishita. “That is your dreamself, your specter. It’s the form your mind takes now that it has left your body. The only form it knows.”
“You mean, my spirit? My soul?”
“We don’t like to use the word soul,” said Dishita, and something in her voice suggested she was uncomfortable using it even now. “We usually just refer to our dreamselves as ghosts. As you are about to find out, in this state you have some very ghostly properties.”
“What do you mean?”
“Watch closely,” said Dishita, and she stepped out of the shadow of the wall and into the direct sunlight. Her whole form grew instantly faint, and she was suffused with a smoky glow.
“Come into the light,” she called.
David did so. He raised his hands and looked at them closely, fascinated, but still shocked, by the strange bluish light that seemed to boil inside them with the sun’s touch. And he could see right through them to Petra, who hadn’t left the shade. She smiled back at him but appeared entirely normal.
“The first thing you must learn about your dreamself is to keep its ghostly nature hidden,” Dishita explained. “Keep to the shadows, David — don’t go into the light. We can only risk being outdoors in overcast weather. In direct sunlight … well, you can see for yourself. You must never let anyone see you like this.”
David stepped back into the shade and became normal-looking again.
“Okay,” he said, “okay. To keep dreamwalking a secret, you mean?”
“To stop people from freaking out,” said Petra. “How would you feel if you saw a ghost?”
“Right. Got it. But … but there’s no one here now.”
“No, but there soon will be,” said Petra, pointing off to the horizon.
David looked into the distance and saw a long line of movement along the valley floor, shimmering in the heat. Sunlight flashed from a thousand faraway reflections.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s an army,” said Petra. “And look, there’s the other one,” she added, pointing in the opposite direction. Sure enough, a similar line of moving figures could be seen rippling in the sweltering air. It looked as though they would meet just below the point where the three companions were standing.
“This is amazing!” said David, still struggling to accept what his senses were showing him. “It all seems so real.”
“It is real,” said Dishita. “Or rather, it was. This is no longer a dream, David; this is the year 1028 BC, and we are in the ancient Middle East. Don’t ask me why — this was Petra’s idea. For some reason she thinks you want to see an act of mindless violence.”
“He’s a boy, isn’t he?” snapped Petra. “I thought he’d like a battle. Besides, he has a personal connection with this one, actually.”
David wondered what that could possibly mean. Was Petra teasing him? The three of them stood for a while in silence as the warriors of the two armies drew closer.
“But what will they think?” David said eventually, pointing at the approaching men. “They’re about to see three ghosts standing in the desert.”
“They won’t see any ghosts because we are going to be very careful,” said Dishita, sounding more and more like a teacher. “We mustn’t do anything to draw attention to ourselves or risk altering the course of history. If someone in this time caught sight of you fading away or drifting through a wall — oh, yes, we can do that too — they would probably be terrified. Who knows how they might react? What if they changed their behavior entirely? What if someone who was supposed to live to be a hundred saw your ghost and ran and tripped and broke their neck? Something like that could cause incalculable changes to the time line, resulting in an entirely different present. We must do everything we can to blend in, to avoid …”
Petra gave an enormous and exaggerated yawn. Dishita stopped speaking and glared at her.
When David looked at Petra again, she was no longer dressed in the featureless black jumpsuit, but instead wore a loose white tunic, tied around the waist, and a pair of golden sandals. There were almond-shaped leaves in her hair.
“Wow!” said David with wide eyes. “A disguise?”
“We do that if we think we might be seen,” said Dishita. “But right now Petra is just showing off. We are going to hide, so there’s no need to dream up a costume.”
Petra gave Dishita a bored look. She kicked out with her feet and rose gracefully into the air, sailing across the ruins and coming to rest on a small broken wall, slightly higher up the rocky outcrop but still in the shade.
“The view’s better from up here,” she called.
David stared, his mouth wide open. He felt as if he’d just seen an angel fly. And since he found it hard to take his eyes off Petra, he didn’t notice that Dishita had grabbed him until he was high off the ground himself. She carried him through the air at the end of her arm and set him down behind Petra’s wall.
David was speechless.
“Petra, we should get back,” Dishita said. “I think David’s had enough surprises for one day.”
“Wait a bit,” said Petra. “He needs to see this first.”
The two armies were now close enough for details of their armor to be seen — bronze helmets, breastplates, and bands of metal around ankles and wrists. Most of the warriors carried spears and shields, although many had bows. Fluttering above both armies were long pennants and painted figures on poles.
The strange sound of ancient horns filled the air and the two great bodies of men came to a sudden halt, one to the dreamwalkers’ left and the other to their right. Even at a distance, David felt both sides radiating animosity at each other. Looking again at the weapons, David suddenly needed to ask another question. It was the kind of thing Eddie would ask if he were here, and David was proud to have thought of it himself.
“What … what would happen if someone fired an arrow in my direction? I mean, if I’m a ghost, would it just go straight through me?”
“Yes,” said Dishita. “It would move through the air as if you were not there, and you would suffer no physical harm. Your mind might not like it, though, if it’s not prepared. It might even be enough to break your dreamwalk. You don’t want to wake up suddenly, believe me. The headaches can be terrible.”
David said nothing, but he remembered his dream about trying to save Eddie from the fire and how he felt when he woke up.
There came another great blast of horns and trumpets from the army on David’s right, and the warriors gave a thunderous cheer and began beating their shields with their spears. The noise was tremendous, but the warriors of the opposing army remained still and silent. David looked back at the cheering men and saw something moving head and shoulders above the rest. The front rank split apart, and a warrior stepped forward.
He was enormous. David had never seen anyone so massive in his life — he must have been nearly nine feet tall. He had a great shaggy black beard and carried a shield and a giant spear that appeared to be solid bronze. The huge warrior strode right up the opposing army, let out a booming shout of defiance, and bashed the spear against his shield with a sound like a cathedral bell. He towered over his enemies, who shrank back. David found room in his overloaded mind to feel sorry for them. How could they ever hope to fight a monster like that?
The giant man then turned his back on his enemies and strode with arrogant slowness back to stand before his own men. His army was jeering, and although David couldn’t understand a word they shouted, he knew they were mocking their enemies. He turned to Petra.
“So who are they?” he said. “And who is that huge man?”
“Can’t you guess?” said Petra. “This is a famous historical event, though some believe it’s just a myth. That is the army of the Philistines, and that huge man is their champion. He has just challenged the other army to send out a champion of their own so that the battle can be decided in single combat.”
“So who are they?” asked David, pointing at the silent men on the other side. “And who could possibly fight that giant man?”
“Those are the Israelites, David,” said Petra. “And you know who will step forward to fight, even if you haven’t yet remembered.”
David looked over at the Israelites and felt his memory stirring. Then he looked back at the giant man facing them. A giant.
“Is that … is that Goliath?” said David, feeling foolish even as he asked. Petra smiled.
“Then that must mean …” But David was too amazed to finish his sentence. Instead he turned back to the Israelites. There came an answering fanfare from somewhere behind them, and their front rank parted. A young boy stepped out.
“Yes, David, that is your namesake,” said Dishita. “The boy David, future king of Israel. The boy who slew a giant.” And she glanced at Petra with the first smile David had seen on her face.
Petra looked very pleased with herself.