Chapter 23

Hall of Mirrors

Aliya was surprised to find that she was looking forward to Luca’s appearance. Spending every night alone in the forest-in-between was dull. Better than the fear and broken sleep she’d endured before finding this refuge, but…The trees whispered to her, hinting at secrets and discoveries. It was so tempting to find Juna, and her family, to check if they were safe…but what if she led the nightmares to them? Her very presence near their dreams would put them in danger.

It was easier to ignore the lure of the trees when she had company, even if that company was probably a sign of mental instability. She’d heard stories about people who listened to voices in their heads, and it never ended well. Luca seemed harmless, though.

‘Hi, Aliya! I’m already desperate for chocolate, so let’s get on with finding this cure.’

Annoying, and probably harmless.

‘What’s chocolate,’ she asked, ‘some kind of medicine?’

‘I wish. Medicine is what I’m trying to find by coming to your world.’

‘Luca, I told you—’

‘Yeah, yeah, that you’re not a shaman and you don’t know how to cure anything,’ he said. ‘So, tell me what a shaman would do, and we can work out how to do it.’

‘Well, there are all sorts of herbal remedies,’ Aliya said, ‘but you live in a completely separate reality—who’s to say there will be any similarity?’

‘My mum’s already dosing Lily with about a hundred different herbs, smoothies, and weird teas,’ Luca said. ‘What else?’

‘In the old stories, sometimes elementals can help heal people,’ she said. ‘There’s one tale where an air elemental blows life back into the hero’s lungs, and one where a chieftain’s daughter gets put in an enchanted sleep at the bottom of the sea for a hundred years and comes back cured.’

‘Great,’ said Luca. ‘How does that work, then?’

‘I don’t know, do I? They’re just stories,’ she snapped. Shoving her hands into her pockets, she brushed against the acorn gifted to her by the earth elemental. ‘Why don’t you find an elemental to ask instead of pestering me?’

‘Yeah, maybe I will!’ they said, standing up. Luca’s shadow loomed over her, but they couldn’t look threatening if they tried. They paced around and then settled into a defeated slump. ‘I’m trying to storm off in a huff, but I don’t know how to wake myself up.’

As Luca glared at her, Aliya snorted in amusement.

‘You’ve felt how I do it, right?’ she said. ‘Just push upwards.’

‘You don’t think I’ve tried that?’ they said.

‘Maybe you need to find your tree,’ Aliya said. ‘Try to feel for it…Start with a strong sense of who you are.’

‘I wish I knew,’ they said. ‘I feel a very long way from anything I understand right now.’

‘You must have a clear grounding in yourself in order to dreamwalk,’ Aliya told them. ‘You have to be comfortable with who you are to truly empathise with others.’

They squinted at her. ‘Is that what dreamwalking is—empathy?’

She shrugged. ‘We are literally stepping into other people’s shoes.’

‘Okay,’ Luca said, head tilted as they considered this, ‘so, I’m in someone else’s shoes and I need to sniff out my own footwear. Oh, gross metaphor.’

‘I hope you have smelly feet,’ she said with a laugh. ‘That will make this easier.’

At least that got a smile out of Luca. She couldn’t help feeling some responsibility for her unwanted apprentice, even if they had invaded her mind.

Luca was focusing hard. ‘I think I’ve got it,’ they said. ‘Everything is easier here in your world.’ They started walking, eyes half-closed as they focused inwards on the elusive trail of self. ‘Should it look so much like…a hall of mirrors?’

As usual, Aliya had no idea what Luca was talking about…but she did know that she was looking at something strange, even by the standards of this imaginary place. There was a hole in the fabric of reality, like something had sliced its way out of her forest. When she observed the trees directly, everything looked normal: the pale silver-grey boles marching into the hazy distance, the unbroken carpet of short grass. But when she shifted her vision just slightly, the scene before her might have been composed of perfectly aligned reflections that, through a trick of perspective, appeared to make a single landscape. Seen from another angle, there were spaces in-between…Aliya grabbed Luca’s hand and pulled them sideways through one of the slices in reality, into a place that felt the same, but entirely different.

The forest still towered around her, and she knew that each of the trees was still a representation of a single consciousness. But here, the ground was hard and grey, the trunks of the trees silver and completely smooth, topped not with leaves and branches but with a glowing light, diffused by a low fog that hid the endless distance.

‘Lampposts,’ Luca said with faint disgust. ‘You get a beautiful forest, and I get urban decay. I worry about my subconscious sometimes. And about my world.’

‘I’m worried, too,’ Aliya said. ‘There shouldn’t be holes in my subtle mind. I guess that would explain how you ended up in my head…But what created that rip in the first place?’

They frowned. ‘What pulled me in was some kid in a glass sphere. I might have made him up…but you’ve dreamt about him, too.’

Aliya groaned. ‘Why do I bother asking questions? I never know what the answers mean.’

‘Yeah.’ Luca looked up at the closest light. ‘Well, this is me. Thanks for walking me home.’

They placed their palm on the polished metal and sank into it.

‘Hey!’ Aliya called, but it was too late. Luca still had hold of her hand. She had no choice but to follow.

I wake up refreshed. I love the forest-in-between. I even love my own forest-of-lampposts-in-between (although I don’t love that name). I love Aliya. She’s an incredible shaman, whatever she thinks.

Aliya’s embarrassment brought her back to herself, to that little core of awareness tucked away in a corner of Luca’s mind. Another reason Aliya hated dreamwalking: it was better not to know what other people really thought of you, even if they were thinking nice things. Wrong, but nice.

However complimentary her apprentice was being, it was time to get out of their head. Just a little sideways shift back to the forest…Nothing happened. It wasn’t like the plague-dreams, which felt like tentacles pulling her down. It was just…nothing. Like the feeling when she’d slept badly and couldn’t muster the energy to get out of bed in the morning. Inertia.

She tried once more, prying her consciousness away from Luca’s bit by bit, like a sloth ponderously lifting one limb after another away from the branch of a tree. No wonder her apprentice found it so hard to apply the lessons she taught them. This reality lacked the energy and vitality of hers. How could a world be so dead?

Well, there was one way to find out. Her mind was almost free, ready to float back home…She let go of the tightly gathered energy, and stayed.

Luca opened their eyes, and she was assaulted by strangeness.