I couldn’t believe it; I didn’t want to believe it—my mother, a villain. Then I remembered the horrible sound of Mr. Ankil’s screams as he burned to death. Only someone truly evil could’ve done something like that.
People are capable of anything, I heard Paul say. I glanced at him now, standing a few feet from the tomb and watching me with anxious eyes, waiting for me to play the hero and save the day. But I couldn’t do it. Not me. Not against her.
In the end, it was the gruesome sight of Bethany’s severed finger that swayed me. Here was physical proof of the lengths my mother would go to. Gritting my teeth, I climbed into the tomb and positioned my body around Nimue’s legs. Then I glanced at my friends, watching me from below.
“Go get help,” I said. I wanted to say something brave, like Don’t worry or I’ll be fine, but lying didn’t seem like a good idea at the moment. I closed my eyes, pressed my hands against Nimue’s leg, and entered the dream.
It was unlike any I’d been in before. The scene was as solid and realistic as any of Eli’s, but everything was washed out, like a photograph faded over time. I was standing in the middle of a vast field of tall grass. The stalks around me were wilted as if from a rainless summer under a hot sun. They brushed against my legs and arms, stirred by a faint breeze. I winced as welts rose on my skin where they touched me despite my clothes. I tried to jump up and fly above the grass, but something held me in place.
Yes, this was definitely unlike any dream I’d been in before. No bending the laws of physics, it seemed. I wasn’t a god in here. I was just me. A teenage girl as scared and helpless as a rat in a maze.
Go back, Dusty, a voice whispered in my mind. Don’t do this. You’re too weak. The worst part was I knew I could go back. Slipping out would be as easy as taking a breath. All my instincts were screaming at me to leave.
Ignoring the urge, I stayed put and looked around, wondering what to do next. There was no sign of Nimue. The sword could be anywhere. As far as I knew this dream world could go on forever, as endless as outer space.
A few feet in front of me, I saw a patch of crumpled grass and guessed it was the place where my mother had arrived. A clear trail extended out from it, heading toward the sun sinking behind a forest in the distance. Bracing myself for pain, I leaped toward the crumpled grass. Now instead of leaving welts, the stalks sliced into me like razors. I screamed, then immediately wished I hadn’t as something else screamed back in answer. Something not human.
A flock of birds alighted into the sky from the forest and soared toward me. The screams became screeches as they drew closer. Only they weren’t birds, but bats. Ones with fat-cheeked human faces like babies. I wanted to run away as I saw their needle-like teeth, but fear of the grass held me in place. I ducked, covering my head with my arms as the bats swooped down at me. Claws clutched at my clothes and yanked my hair. I swatted at them blindly, knocking one aside only to have another sink its teeth into my hand. Pain lit up my arm, making me woozy.
Desperate, I tried to think of some way out of this. The easiest thing would be to leave the dream completely. But what would I tell my friends if I came back without even trying? No, I had to think, had to fight.
I couldn’t bend reality here like in a normal dream, no imagining a giant paddle to swat them with, but I didn’t know about using magic. Magic was my reality. Quickly deciding that fire was the best weapon, I grabbed a handful of the tall grass and yanked it out, ignoring the sting as it sliced my hand. Then I muttered the fire incantation, feeling no hope that it would work.
The tips of the grass burst into flames. I didn’t question it, but stood up and started waving my makeshift torch in the air. The bats shrieked away from the fire, only to swerve and try again. Over and over they came down at me, but I drove them off, feeling a perverse pleasure whenever one of them let out a shriek as the fire singed them.
When the last of the bats gave up, I watched them disappear into the sky. I threw what remained of the grass to the ground, shaky with exhaustion. The fire spell had drained my energy. There was something wrong with the fictus in this dream. As if there weren’t any here at all.
At least I wasn’t as afraid as before. Surviving a bat attack had a way of bolstering bravery. I took off at a slow jog, following my mother’s path through the grass. I couldn’t imagine how much it must’ve hurt her to come through here first, but I appreciated how much easier she’d made it for me.
After a while, I entered the forest filled with trees the width of houses. My fear began to grow again with every step as I heard the sound of things moving through the brush and rustling the branches overhead, but after walking for what felt like an hour nothing attacked me.
When I came around a bend in the trail, I realized why. A dead animal that looked like a combination of a wolf and a scorpion was lying across the path. I carefully stepped around it, making sure not to disturb the brush for fear of alerting other beasts to my presence the way I had the bats. I passed another half dozen of those dead wolf things with their curved tails like a scorpion’s stinger and pincers on their front feet instead of paws and was again thoroughly glad my mother had come in before me.
Eventually, the path began to slope downward, and I caught glimpses of water through the massive trees. Distracted, I didn’t notice when the trail abruptly ended in a drop-off to a rocky beach below. I slid over the side, yelping in surprise and renewed pain as dirt coated the cuts on my legs and arms.
I stood up, brushed myself off, and approached the water’s edge. The lake was small enough that I could see the shore on the other side, but the water in between was murky and eerily still. I knew I had to go in that water. It was the only way to go other than out of the dream or back up the bank into the forest. The idea of jumping in filled me with terror. Anything could be in there. Slimy, slithering things that might grab hold of me and pull me down.