Chapter 41

Adversary

The sun was just cresting the horizon when Aliya felt Luca slip into the back of her mind and look out through her eyes. Her apprentice had returned just in time for the final chapter.

‘This is it,’ she said softly.

‘It is?’ Quantum asked. It didn’t look like the home of an evil sorcerer.

But Aliya was sure. It had all led to this. The dreams, the journey, this last desperate ride.

After the demon attack, they had sat and watched the sunrise paint hopeful pathways across the surface of the sea. Aliya had been exhausted, as if she hadn’t slept at all. And she didn’t dare sleep, not until she had found Caleb, not until this was over. Not if the sorcerer could use her as a gateway to let that demon escape into the world.

She had dragged herself to her feet. ‘We need to ride.’

Before the sun had fully risen, they were galloping along the beach, wet sand flying up beneath the horses’ hooves. They pushed the horses as hard as they could throughout the day, and, by nightfall, there was still no sign of an end to their journey. So they carried on into the night, Vali dozing on Filo’s back and Aliya determined not to sleep at all.

She had to find the boy and end this before she exploded, or forgot how to breathe. But, end it how? All she knew was that she was heading towards a terrified child who only wanted to be free from pain. She didn’t know what she would find—she half expected to discover him being tortured in an underwater lair, and who knew how she would reach him there…She didn’t expect the trail to end at a simple seaside cottage, a single room built of weathered planks and a wood-shingled roof.

‘So, what’s the plan?’ Quantum asked. ‘Is the sorcerer inside too? Can he bring the monster back?’

‘Are there any fierce elemental spirits around who could come and squash the place flat?’ Vali asked.

‘I don’t know what to expect,’ she admitted. ‘I’m going to knock on the door.’

‘That’s not a plan!’ Quantum said, but Aliya was already dismounting, wincing at the wound in her shoulder from the demon’s claw. The house stood right at the edge of the beach, isolated from its neighbours, so the only sound was the constant hiss of the sea against the pebbly shore. She knocked, and it made a very ordinary noise.

A woman of around thirty answered the door. She had pale skin and light-coloured hair; she looked tired and sad. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

‘I’m a shaman—’ Aliya began.

The woman interrupted with, ‘Oh! Have you come to help my son?’

She opened the door wide and Aliya went in, Quantum and Vali creeping cautiously in behind her. It was a simple but homely space, with driftwood furniture and a large copper cooking pot hanging over the hearth. The woman led Aliya straight to a curtained alcove and pulled back the hanging to reveal a bed, and a small boy lying on it. She knew his face well. But he looked a lot worse than he ever had in her dreams. His already pale skin was as white as milk, except for the bruised circles around his eyes, and he was terribly thin.

‘This is Caleb,’ the woman told her, ‘and I’m his mother, Maya. Please say you can help… He’s getting weaker and weaker. I manage to feed him a little broth each day, but…he has to wake up soon, or he won’t wake at all.’ A silent tear slipped down her cheek.

‘Can you tell me what happened?’ Aliya asked.

‘He had an accident,’ she explained, ‘out with his friends in their little boat. A strong gust of wind blew the boom into the side of his head and pushed him overboard. They managed to pull him back into the boat, but his head swelled up terribly, and he hasn’t woken since. I was sure that, when the swelling went down… But, the cut on his head is healed now, and still, nothing.’

‘This accident—it took place nearly four months ago, is that right?’ Aliya asked, and Maya gave a startled nod. The poor boy: his last waking memory was of sinking into the sea, and he had been lost in the ocean ever since.

‘Don’t worry,’ she told Maya, ‘I’ll help him find his way home.’

Asking the others to give her some space and some silence, Aliya settled herself beside the bed and took one of Caleb’s pale hands. Here, with this physical connection, she would be able to dreamwalk into his bubble and finally get some answers. She let her attention draw inwards and sank into the trance-state, drifting down like an autumn leaf. Not to the forest this time—there was no need—but directly into Caleb’s unconscious mind.

The ocean was waiting for her, greedy fingers reaching out to drag her away.

She emerged and spat saltwater onto the cottage floor. This little boy was very lost. She tightened her hold on his hand, bruises forming on the bleached flesh, and lowered her consciousness slowly into the dream ocean. The everyday and the in-between merged, her hand in Caleb’s an anchor guiding her down through the water. The lights of different worlds flickered across her senses; the taste of honey, the smell of burning leaves, gone in an instant as the anchor pulled, seeking its home.

The world formed around her. This time she was inside the bubble, materialising before the dreaming boy’s astonished eyes, only inches from her own. Luca appeared beside her and said, ‘Ouch.’ It was very squashed with three of them in here.

‘I’ve seen you both before,’ Caleb gasped, ‘but you were always outside. You noticed me when no one else did. I’ve been trying to find you for so long.’

‘I’m sorry it’s taken us so long to get in,’ Aliya told him. She kept her gaze focused just on the child. Outside the glass sphere, there were seaweed chains, crushing water and a raging beast made of shadows and fear. Inside, there was safety of a sort. A safety that denied freedom.

‘Can you help me find a way out?’ Caleb asked. ‘I’ve been so scared. I made this bubble to keep out the water, but now I’m stuck inside it. I keep going to these places where people are being killed, and I think I’m going to die too.’

She looked at him with pity. His haunted eyes were ringed with dark circles, like someone who had not slept for far too long, rather than someone who had slept too much.

‘I’m afraid it’s the other way round,’ she told him. ‘It’s because you are so scared of dying that other people keep dying around you. Your fear is directing their dreams.’

It was so clear now. There was no one else. No evil sorcerer driving Caleb’s actions: just a young boy who was lost and alone on the ocean of dreams. Trapped himself, and not even knowing he had the power to trap others. The monster was his own fears, nothing more. But fear could twist reality out of shape.

After all this time looking for someone to blame, she had found only someone needing her help.

‘This is all dreams?’ he asked. ‘It feels so real. Are they my dreams or other peoples?’

‘Both,’ Aliya told him. ‘You are a dreamwalker, like me; a very powerful one, to be able to shape people’s minds as you have. You need to learn how to control it, how not to hurt people down here. But first, you need to wake up.’

‘I’ve been trying to,’ he said. ‘All I want to do is go home, but I can’t find the way.’

‘It’s okay,’ she reassured him. ‘I’ll guide you. First, we have to go to the forest-in-between—have you ever been there, to the tree of your mind?’

Caleb shook his head. ‘No. In between all the scary places is only the ocean. Always the ocean.’

Aliya shuddered. Yes, that endless ocean. No wonder he was scared, with no safe forest to ground him. She said, ‘I’ll take you there. Here, take my hands and close your eyes.’

The three dreamwalkers made a circle of their clasped hands, and Aliya began to construct the tree in her mind’s eye, describing it aloud and drawing Caleb along with her. The surface of the bubble resisted the pressure of her thoughts. It might look insubstantial, but Caleb had reinforced it with all of his misguided hopes, and it didn’t want to let them through. Luca joined their strength to hers and the sphere burst, they were tumbling free, both of them guiding the boy as they emerged into the forest-in-between.

‘Wow,’ Caleb said, gazing around at the towering pillars of living wood rearing up all around them. There was complete peace and silence here beneath the trees, and he visibly relaxed.

Luca, however, looked more on edge than she had ever seen them. ‘I’m cursed with terrible timing,’ they said. ‘Lily’s lost. Right now.’

‘Right now, so are we,’ said Aliya. They had not appeared anywhere near her tree, which was unexpected and worrying. Caleb’s displacement was infectious, as well as his nightmares. ‘Let’s find ourselves first, okay?’

She had to find her way home. Caleb’s tree would be right beside her own since their physical bodies were so close…but she had never before wandered so far from herself. Azak had strayed like this, hunting for the lost boy, and had been unable to find his way back.

Aliya scrabbled for the invisible rope that tied her to her tree of consciousness. Forced herself to breathe slowly, evenly. It was only because she was grasping so frantically that it wasn’t appearing. She prayed that she had not strayed too far.

‘Where do we go now?’ Caleb asked.

He needed her, so she would be strong. Thinking more of Caleb and less of herself, her own self appeared more clearly, no longer obscured by fear. The trail was weak, but enough to lead her home.

She took both their hands. ‘We go this way.’ Then, they were flying through the trees, trunks blurring past, until the place felt right. She was back in her centre.

‘This is me,’ Aliya told Caleb, giving the trunk of her tree a relieved pat and looking up into its sweeping branches, the rustle of leaves high above a distant reminder of the press of her busy, waking thoughts. ‘Now, your tree will be close by,’ she instructed him. ‘Can you tell which one it is?’

Yes,’ he said, racing over to touch the bark of another tree. Now, all they needed to do was go up…Aliya raised her head and looked up, high up the looming trunk to the spreading branches. Which were bare, only a few withered leaves clinging to the ends of tattered twigs. A slow sadness filled her chest. There was nothing up there for Caleb to return to. He was trapped inside the deeper levels of his mind because the uppermost level had already died.

He had followed her gaze, and now his smaller hand made its way into hers. ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ he asked.

She nodded, fearing that if she spoke she would be overwhelmed by tears. The last thing Caleb needed right now was her pain. She took a steadying breath and squeezed his hand.

‘I’m afraid so,’ she said. ‘There is no pathway for you to take to get you home again…The part of you that lived there, the waking part, isn’t working anymore.’

‘Do I have to stay here, then?’ he asked, panic threading through his voice. ‘I can’t carry on as I have been… It’s too terrible.’

‘No, of course not,’ Aliya reassured him. ‘Caleb, there is a different path you can take to wake up. You can’t go back to the home you knew, but you can find a new home instead.’

‘Are you telling me I have to die?’ he asked in a small voice.

‘Yes,’ she told him gently. ‘Only when your dream-self dies will you be able to wake up somewhere else.’

His face crumpled like an autumn leaf. ‘I can’t. I want to see my parents again. You can’t make me.’

‘No,’ Aliya agreed, squatting down so she was on his level, ‘I won’t force you.’

‘Aliya…’ Luca said, then stopped.

‘I know,’ she said to them, ‘but we can’t kill him, can we?’

Luca looked as conflicted as she felt, but they shook their head. ‘Caleb,’ they said, ‘we have to ask you to do something really hard. Your nightmares are killing people. I’m sorry, but you have to know. It’s like you’re so close to death that you’re sucking everyone else down with you. There’s only one way to stop that happening.’

‘It’s not f-f-fair,’ Caleb said with a sniffle. ‘I don’t want to hurt people, but I don’t want to never be able to go home again.’

‘I get it,’ Luca said. ‘Choices are scary. But, by not letting things change, you’re stuck here with all this fear anyway. Change can be a good thing. Going through the fear always makes it better.’

‘Will it hurt?’ Caleb asked. His tears had stopped, and there was a spark of something that might be hope in his eyes.

‘No,’ Aliya assured him. ‘You’ll be going down below the level of pain.’

And she had to discover a way to take him there. This was what being a shaman was really about, not talking to elementals or performing magic tricks. This was the heart of it: being there at the boundaries, the in-between places where other people couldn’t go. Finding a way out, or finding a way deeper in.

Aliya placed both her palms on Caleb’s dying tree. He couldn’t go up, so the only way forward was down into the roots. Deeper into the mind, below the level of dreams, and—somehow—out the other side. A way that led not to life, but to death. But how?

‘I know where Caleb needs to go,’ Luca said with a hitch in their voice. ‘I’ve just come from there.’

Luca knelt and reached in among the roots. Grasping a handle, they pulled, and a door in the base of the tree opened, leading downwards into the ground. A soft light shone from the doorway, like the clear light just before dawn. It called to Aliya, but she couldn’t go through it. Not yet. From there, she wouldn’t be able to find her way back. This was Caleb’s door, not hers: for him, it led to a new home.

Caleb said, ‘Tell my mum I love her,’ and let go of Aliya’s hand.

‘Wait,’ said Luca. ‘I’m going with you.’

Aliya stared at him in consternation. ‘You can’t.’

‘I have to,’ Luca said. ‘I left Lily there—near this doorway She was too deep for me to bring her out.’

‘So, if you go back now…’

Luca’s mouth set in a grim line. They knew. In the forest dimness, their eyes shone through a glaze of tears.

‘I’ll help you,’ said Caleb.

They both stared at him. He who had been an adversary had changed into an object of compassion. It was hard to think of this emaciated, dying boy as a useful ally.

‘I’ve hurt people, haven’t I?’ Caleb said. ‘Now, I want to help your sister. If I can find her.’ He looked less frightened now than at any other time she had seen him.

‘She’s in a whole other world,’ Luca said.

At the same time, Aliya said, ‘You have no control—’

They both stopped talking at the same time.

‘I could find her,’ Luca said, ‘if I went through with you.’

‘That door…’ Aliya said. ‘It’s death.’

‘I know,’ said Luca, his face even paler than usual, ‘but we’ve been defeating death together for months, now.’

She shook her head. ‘We’ve been defeating the fear of death. No one can defeat death.’

‘I know,’ Luca said again, ‘but you can get someone to look away from death rather than walk towards it. It’s not Lily’s time to die yet; she just needs us to show her the way home. Please, Aliya; you know I can’t do it without you.’

Step beyond the threshold of death to save someone she’d never even met? Someone who might not even be real?

She gave a single sharp nod. ‘That’s what shamans do. We stand between people and the darkness.’

She held out her hands. Caleb latched onto one, and Luca took the other. They were vibrating with either determination or fear. Maybe both were the same.

It was time to see just how deep she could dream.