The Darkness of Dreamland Read online

  Lorelai stood over him, arms crossed over her shoulders, her long hair hanging down nearly to her knees as she glared at another faerie standing a few feet away. The other faerie was shorter and had an up-turned nose and straight brown hair. Her wings were small and cream-colored, rounded like those of the small fluttering white butterflies he used to see in his backyard, the ones that looked like flying primrose blossoms.

  She was dressed like a stereotypical barmaid, but the outfit didn’t quite suit her figure, and she held herself in a slightly hunched way that suggested she was self-conscious in it. She was beautiful, but Adrian suspected she might be considered extremely unattractive by faerie standards; Lorelai was looking at her with open disdain, as though the insinuation that she might possibly try to buy a human was ludicrous and insulting.

  The white-winged faerie looked down at him with an expression of open desire. Her wings fluttered and winked. Lorelai held a small glass vial in her hand, filled with lilac-colored dreamstuff. Adrian thought he saw a minute flicker of something cat-shaped in the swirling smoke, but it was gone immediately. She looked down at it and then, with a shrug, tossed it to the other faerie, who nearly dropped it. “Here. Take that as a consolation prize. A little something to keep you warm at night.” The derision in her voice burned, and even though Adrian suspected the faerie who wanted to buy him would not be doing it with pure intentions, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

  “You drugged me,” Adrian said, finally, once he had found his voice. He struggled to sit up, rubbing his sore shoulder as he did so. “So you could…steal my dream.”

  “And the rest of you,” Lorelai replied, without looking at him. “That’s the plan, yes. Now, I’m no thief. I had every intention of buying you outright. But if Sonia is too much of a fool to see the value of her possessions, then that’s her folly. I, for one, can’t let a golden opportunity go to waste.”

  He was in a store room. As he sat up, he noticed the rows of casks lined up against the wall. A stack of empty lanterns stood beside these, and, just beyond, something shimmered. Adrian tried to get a clearer look. Something, now long dead, had been chained to the wall. At one time, it might have been man-shaped, but now it was impossible to tell precisely what it had been. The body was disfigured, as though large slices had been taken from it over time while it was alive: missing legs, hands, eyes. Its head lolled, its throat torn open, and its blood pooled around it, shimmering in rainbow colors like an oil slick. The corpse still glowed, faintly, like the last sunlight that clings to the horizon after the sun sets.

  Adrian’s stomach churned.

  “Do you like it?” Lorelai asked, conversationally, following his gaze. “He was, before your arrival, the most interesting purchase I’d made in some time. A dream, you know. Wild-caught from the mountains. He had the sweetest little horns.” She raised her hands to her forehead, extending the forefingers and waggling them. “I chopped those off and sold them as an aphrodisiac. You can sell just about anything to anyone, if you know how to market it right.”

  Adrian struggled to his feet, looking around for the door.

  “Don’t even try it,” Lorelai said, extending a hand. She didn’t touch him, but something like a rush of solid air shoved into his chest and crumpled him to the floor.

  She turned a steely gaze back to the white-winged faerie, who had been inching closer as though if she just moved slowly enough she could sneak in a touch without anyone noticing. She froze on the spot and turned nervous eyes on Lorelai. She clutched the dream vial to her chest as though it were both fragile and extremely precious.

  “Rosalie,” Lorelai said, slowly, with the saccharine sweetness of someone asking for a very unpleasant and possibly illegal favor. She bent to dig among a pile of boxes in the corner of the room, ignoring the oozing blood of the dead dream, and rose with a length of dirty white rope. She tossed this to Rosalie. “Truss him up good and tight and get him out to the carriage. And, please try to hurry, won’t you? I’d rather like to be out on the road before dark.”

  * * *

  Sonia knew, the moment the cat’s paw touched the gravel at the foot of the walk, that they were too late. It wasn’t the fresh trail of pockmarks left behind by the carriage, or the “closed” sign posted on the door that tipped her off. She hardly noticed any of this. Instead, she felt Adrian’s absence in her gut, the place of intuition. He had been here. He had dreamed. And now he was gone.

  She slid off the cat’s back, ignoring the call of the others who followed her, and walked up the path. The outer courtyard of The Swaggering Spider was in disarray, messy from the night before. Bottles lay broken in the grass, and dream-lanterns hung in sad, deflated tatters from the walls. “She must have left right away,” she said, mostly to herself. She heard footsteps behind her, and knew the others were catching up, but she was already pressing through the door and into the tavern.

  The bar was nearly empty. A handful of creatures sat at one table, heads bowed deep in discussion. An old, wrinkled faerie man with enormous drooping wings pushed a shop broom over the sticky floor, shoving dirt and debris into an already-swollen pile of broken glass, discarded bottles, and other trash.

  “Where’s Lorelai?” Sonia asked.

  No one looked up. Someone muttered, “We’re closed.”

  Behind her, Sonia heard the door open as the others entered. Evangeline broke away from the others and made her way to the bar, where rows and rows of dream-infused liquor lined the shelves. Sonia’s heart hammered painfully in her chest, but she forced herself to stay calm.

  “It’s important,” she said. “Do you know when she’ll be back, or where she’s gone?”

  The wrinkled bar-man snorted. “As if she tells us anythin,” he said, pausing to shake out the sticky bristles of his broom. “It’s always ‘Do this, do that,’ with her, innit?” He grumbled, giving his broom an angry shove. “An’ then she takes that maid with ‘er, dumber’n a dead dog she is. They ‘ead out to gods-know-where to do gods-know-what an’ leave me ‘ere to clean up this place an’ put up with you lot.”

  “Yes, yes, it’s all very sad,” Laurel said. “But where is she? She stole something valuable from us, and we need to get it back.”

  “Valuable?” He glanced up again, brows raising. His eyes were large and watery brown, and they were filled with immeasurable sadness. “What kind of valuable?”

  “The kind that’s none of your damn business.”

  He shrugged. “Well. If she’s in trouble wi’ the law, I’d suggest lettin’ the law handle it.”

  “Funny enough,” Evangeline said, “We are the law.” She parted her short gold-chain skirt over her thigh, flashing the branded mark of the Crossroads law enforcement that sat just below the bone of her hip.

  Laurel did the same. “So I suggest, if you know more than you’re letting on, that you start talking.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about no dreams!” he said, and then his eyes widened with an ‘I shouldn’t have said that’ look. He cleared his throat and averted his eyes and went back to sweeping.

  “…Dreams?” Sonia ached to get away and start finding Adrian, but his words caught her off-guard. “What about dreams?”

  “I told you, I don’t know nothin’,” he said, careful to keep his eyes trained on the floor. “What Lorelai does wi’ the queen is her own business an’ I got nothin’ to do with it.”

  Laurel closed in on the man, gripping his shirt in her fist and tugging him upright. “What about the queen?”

  “N-nothing,” he stammered. “Just…I didn’ have nothin’ to do wi’ it, alright? I don’t watch what it is she’s sellin’ no more’n I go snoopin’ ‘round the back room for things don’t belong to me, see?”

  Evangeline’s brows raised. “And what might you be snooping for, friend?”

  He went stonily silent, pressing his lips together in a tight, thin line. Laurel shook him a little, but he refused to say any more.

  “Well now,” Laurel said,
without releasing her grip on his shirt. “Things are starting to get interesting. What do you make of all this, Sonia? …Sonia?”

  But Sonia was gone, the door to the tavern left open to throw a patch of sunlight across the dirty tavern floor.

  UNDER A WATCHFUL EYE

  Lorelai leaned back on the well-worn bench of her carriage, watching the trees along the path whip by at an impressive rate. Wind swept her hair back and tore at her face. Her eyes burned, but she didn’t decrease her speed. She was carrying valuable cargo, and the longer it was in her possession, the greater chance of something going wrong with its delivery.

  The mountains rose before her, forming an impenetrable wall, the barrier that divided Dreamland down its center. She rarely ventured into the mountains for trade. The folk that dwelt there had no use for dreamcraft, and no wealth to spend on any if they did. No, her destination was to the east, where the foothills cradled the great Center Kingdom and buyers practically begged to be divested of their prosperity. They had plenty of dreamstuff, certainly, but Lorelai didn’t have any run-of-the-mill human in her grasp: she had a grown-up, one fully in possession of all of his faculties, and male to boot. Lorelai had never seen such a thing for sale in her life, and she had lived a long time. She did know exactly who would want him, though, had known since she saw him.

  She has an appetite for dreams, she thought, imagining the pleased expression of her buyer once the goods had been delivered. Just think what she’ll do with this.

  As she thought this the carriage made minute adjustments, shifting to the right and scurrying forward with ever-increasing velocity down the road which would lead Lorelai to, among other things, the grandest market in all of Dreamland.

  The carriage, like her tavern and much of the rest of Dreamland, obeyed her thoughts. This was not a normal power of faerie-folk, and she did not make a habit of announcing it. Wealth was best kept under a watchful eye, guarded and used with sense and discretion, or else it quickly found its way into the hands of thieves. This power didn’t come to her for free, however, and its maintenance cost her more each day. Even now, the simple act of steering a carriage caused a dull ache to start in her heart, the echoing pain one feels in a rotting tooth, and she grimaced and clutched her chest.

  With her other hand she felt around in the folds of the satchel next to her on the bench, and withdrew a small vial of dream-energy the precise texture and color of cotton candy. This she uncorked with her thumb and raised with a shaking hand it to her lips, draining its contents. It unfurled in her mouth, first blossoming and swelling, then melting down her throat and up her sinuses, burning and tingling as it dissipated into her blood stream. Her heart sped up, as though eager to pump the augmented blood through her veins, and her senses sharpened, skin tingling with sensitivity, mind buzzing with sudden clarity.

  The pain evaporated. The world around her disappeared, and for a moment she felt as though she was flying, soaring among the clouds, bodiless and utterly free. The image disappeared as soon as it had come, the landscape re-materializing around her. It left the lingering taste of strawberries in the back of her throat.

  She fell back against the bench, licking her lips. The dreams were getting weaker.

  Well, never mind. Soon enough, you’ll have more than enough, embargo be damned.

  Cheered considerably by this thought, she replaced the now-empty vial into her satchel and allowed her eyes to flutter closed. No point worrying about anything more until she had arrived, she decided. The goods weren’t going anywhere. Rosalie would make sure of that.

  * * *

  Inside the carriage compartment, Adrian tried very carefully to look anywhere but at Rosalie. It didn’t make much difference: Her gaze was so intense that he could feel it no matter what he did. He didn’t dare go to sleep, although the acid in his stomach kept rolling and bubbling like lava. He was desperately hungry, but also grateful he had not eaten anything. His throat burned from thirst and acid reflux, and his head and shoulder both ached terribly. His arms, tightly bound together, had begun to go numb. He flexed his fingers intermittently, making sure that they still worked, but any other movement was impossible.

  Rosalie had not spoken to him since tying him up and frog-marching him out of the tavern and into the carriage. She kept opening her mouth, but all that came out was a sort of half-intelligible squeak. Then she would blush deeply and resume staring at him with an expression of open infatuation. Adrian had never been looked at that way by anyone, not even Jessica. Especially not by Jessica.

  He kept the curtains drawn, which seemed to suit Rosalie just fine. In the semi-dark of the carriage it was impossible to tell exactly how much time had elapsed, but it seemed like it had worn on for hours already with no sign of stopping. He wondered what Sonia had thought, when she awoke to find him missing, and a terrible pang of loss stabbed through him. He pretended for a little while that she could find him, somehow, track his journey, and that once the carriage stopped Lorelai would find herself face-to-face with a small army of angry pixies who would fight valiantly for his independence. He noticed after a few minutes of fantasizing that pale, smoky tendrils had begun to rise like mist from his pores, and desisted immediately.

  He glanced at Rosalie. She was staring at him with a glazed look that suggested she, too, was fabricating a daydream. “So, um. Where do you think we’re headed?” he asked, finally, taking a stab at conversation.

  “Huh?” Her eyes slid back into focus. She still held the vial of his stolen cat-car dream in her hand, and she rolled it around absently between her fingers. “Oh. Well. I don’t know, exactly. The Center Kingdom market, I guess. Everybody trades there, if what they’re trading is any good.”

  Silence settled between them, and Adrian decided he had asked the wrong question. He tried again. “I can give you my dreams,” he offered, glancing down at the vial in her hand. “I mean, that’s what she wants, right? I don’t mind.”

  “That’s so sweet of you!” Rosalie exclaimed, her eyes bulging and her face contorting into an expression of complete rapture, the way a young girl might fawn over a particularly adorable puppy when it yawns. “But it’ll never do. You’re far more valuable than any dreams you could give us. I wish you weren’t! I’d buy you in a heartbeat if I could afford, but Lorelai doesn’t really pay me enough, and…” she trailed off, here, a deep flush coloring her cheeks.

  “Somebody told me that the inn was more like a brothel,” he ventured, hoping to steer the conversation back on course.

  Rosalie wrinkled her pug-like nose. “If you want to put it that way, I guess. I mean, that…that sort of stuff does happen, especially when the men come down from Center Kingdom, folk say they prefer our kind, but…” she trailed off, her blush deepening to scarlet. She didn’t start up again.

  When she didn’t elaborate, Adrian decided not to pursue the topic further. “…Right.” He thought about how to phrase his next question, although he was fairly certain he didn’t want to know the answer. “Do you, um, know…who she’s planning to sell me to?”

  Rosalie shook her head. “No. Someone rich, I suppose.” The bitterness in her voice was almost tangible. “Lorelai doesn’t exactly share her plans with me. I was pretty surprised she’s even letting me come along. I don’t think she meant to, actually, but I got lucky I guess because I was there.”

  Silence fell between them again. Rosalie made no move to start up again. The slightly glazed look was returning to her eyes. The carriage creaked and groaned and shuddered and ambled on at a great rollicking speed.

  “Hey, so,” Adrian started, after a while, hoping to sound nonchalant rather than desperate. “Don’t suppose you could untie me, could you? I promise I won’t go anywhere. It’s just that my arms are starting to hurt.”

  She jumped, as though startled from a dream. She looked down at his arms, as though noticing for the first time that they were tied together despite having done it herself, then looked back up at him. “You promise you won’t try a
nything?”

  “Cross my heart,” he said, and smiled what he hoped was a trustworthy smile.

  She glanced around the confines of the carriage, as though making sure no one was watching. She leaned across the carriage, reaching out a hand, her fingertips brushing the skin where the dreams had begun to creep from his pores. She jerked back as though electrocuted, eyes growing wide, and gave a small shudder. “No,” she said, then, decisively as she sat back into her chair, rubbing her fingertips against the pad of her thumb as though feeling for residue. “No…I’d better not. She’ll know.”

  “You can tie me back up when we slow down. She’ll never have to find out.”

  She shook her head emphatically, her eyes wide and frightened. “She’ll know. She always knows. She’s…she know things,” she finished, lamely. “Sorry.”

  Adrian sighed, resting his head against the curtained window, and started trying to formulate his plan B.

  * * *

  Sonia had lost the trail ages ago. The pock-marked earth, torn by the stabbing feet of Lorelai’s carriage, had been blown smooth by the wind, or else covered up by wagon-wheels, pawprints, and hoof prints. Worse, she was lost. Sonia had never ventured this far north in her life, and it frightened her. She knew that there were none of the wild folk until the plains gave way to the foothills, but she kept expecting to see one slip out of the undergrowth anyway. She was also half certain that Lorelai would appear behind them, taking her by surprise. So far, at least, she had been fortunate. No one had crossed her path since she had broken away onto the side road, and she had been able to make good time.

  Sonia had not visited the city since she was a child. Her mother had brought her here, once, when she was still too young to inherit the family trade. Sonia had never wanted to guard the doorway at the edge of the world. She wanted to tend to the children and, even more, the dreams. She’d heard stories about the dreams of children, and she ached to see them. Not because she wanted the power, but because she knew they were beautiful — more beautiful than anything she had ever seen in her life.