After mussing his flop of wavy brown hair, he continued on. And on. Kara thought he was going to bypass all the stores until finally, he disappeared into The Creamery. Why not? Kara thought. It’s plenty hot enough for ice cream. She approached cautiously, and that saved her from immediate detection when Rigby emerged from the shop a lot quicker than she’d anticipated he would. She stumbled through the picket fence gate of Lacey’s Smoothies and found a seat at a little table behind a potted juniper tree.
She watched Rigby carry a colossal hot fudge sundae to his table. He was still on that phone call, but managed to take heaping spoonfuls of his ice cream.
“Look,” Rigby said, jamming his spoon into the sundae, “I didn’t invent the Cerebral Countdown, but I did perfect it. No, not like that at all.” He paused, ate some ice cream, and said, “That was a part of the original theory. That never worked, and it was bloody dangerous.”
Kara couldn’t believe her good fortune. It wasn’t hard to piece together the subject of Rigby’s conversation, and it was precisely what Kara wanted to hear.
Rigby’s voice grew tight with agitation, quieter but somehow still very easy to hear. “If you think I’ll just tell you—over the phone—you’re more of a nutter than my uncle. Right, and that goes for Anchor Theory too. That’s why we call this a negotiation, mate. Now, call me back when you’re serious.”
Rigby exhaled loudly, set the phone down on the table, and took another bite of ice cream. Then, he said, “What’s this, then, Kara? Are you stalking me?”
“I . . . What?” Kara blurted. “Rigby, oh, hey . . . what are you doing here?”
Rigby didn’t turn or look up. He ran his index finger side to side across his phone screen. “You’ve been following me since the bus,” he said.
“Following you?” Kara scoffed. “As if. I just came here for . . . a smoothie.”
“A bit of advice, Kara Windchil,” he said. “If you’re going to sneak around, try not to be so beautiful.”
Kara felt the blush burn in her cheeks. She willed it away. Rigby’s charm was disarming, but she wouldn’t let it go to her head. Not much, anyway. “So maybe I was following you a bit,” she said. “What now?”
“I was thinking you’d join me for some ice cream,” he said. “We ’ave a few things to discuss.”
Kara’s embarrassment fought a losing battle with curiosity for a moment, but she found herself getting up, skirting the picket fence, and sitting at Rigby’s little table. She looked at him expectantly, projecting as much self-assurance as she could muster. Sure, he’d caught her stalking him, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of watching her squirm.
He held up his index finger. “Where are my manners?” he asked. “One minute.”
He was gone and back in less than a minute. “That’s for you,” he said, sliding a tall cup toward Kara.
“I didn’t ask you for a shake.”
“Well, no,” he said. “But it seemed rather rude to wolf down a hot fudge sundae in front of you. Besides, what ’ave you got against chocolate?”
Kara relented and drank a sip of the milkshake. The Creamery was, in fact, her favorite ice cream shop on the planet. And chocolate was her favorite. Lucky guess.
Rigby rubbed the back of his hand down his long sideburn and asked, “So, why does an intelligent young lady like yourself follow the new kid? I suspect it’s not because I dated the president’s daughter and I’m ruggedly handsome.”
“You’re right,” she said, her voice bright with laughter. “Your time at GIFT, while entertaining, isn’t of interest to me. And I’m not looking for a boyfriend. Not really.”
“Why then?” Rigby asked.
Kara sipped at her shake. “I wanted to find out if you’re legit.”
Rigby’s eyes became amber slits. He tapped the edge of his spoon on the tabletop. Then he sighed. “Yes, I really did go to GIFT. Yes, I really am quite smart. I do have quite a bit of money, and I do live in a very big house.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I want to know if you really are Dr. Ebeneezer Scoville’s nephew.”
“Well, barring a genetic test,” he said, “you’ll just ’ave to take my word for it. The Scovilles are on my mother’s side of the family.”
“Did he really go insane?”
“That’s kind of personal, isn’t it?”
“Well, did he?”
Rigby pushed his unfinished sundae to the side and folded his hands. His expression was an odd combination of grief and fury. He teared up just a bit, but his brow lowered fiercely. “Was he really insane?” Rigby asked. “Well, I suppose it all depends on your definition. Would you call chasing family members with an axe insane?”
“Absolutely,” Kara said. “But, uh, he wasn’t always insane. He did brilliant scientific work . . . in some fields, right?”
“That’s right,” Rigby said. He sat back in his chair and nodded once. “Oh, so that’s what you wanted. Funny, that. Not too many know about Uncle Scovy’s particular niche. Dream science is quite obscure, really.”
“I love dreams,” she said, lowering her guard but not caring. “I want to know everything there is to know about them. I thought you might, well, that is, I hoped you might, y’know, have learned something from your uncle.”
Rigby smiled and leaned forward with an almost predatory gleam in his eyes. “Kara Windchil, what would you say if I told you that I could make your wildest dreams come true?”
SIX
UNLEASHED
“TOKENS OF DOOM,” ARCHER WHISPERED. HE THOUGHT of Master Gabriel’s stern warnings from the night before. They bear an ancient and ominous significance, warning of deadly peril, especially for the Dreamtreaders. “They don’t seem so scary.” He picked up one of the dead leaves. It was shaped like a roughly hewn teardrop and looked like it might have come from a redbud tree or an ivy bush. Whatever it had been, it was completely dried out now. It felt brittle to the touch and its edges looked singed. Archer let it fall back to the tabletop and picked up the second leaf. He’d never seen a tree or shrub with foliage like this one. Though long dead and somewhat singed like the other, this leaf’s shape was like that of a bat’s wing. Its ribbed stem formed a kind of L, and a thin, scalloped membrane stretched between its two ends. It was weightless but gave off a faint odor, something Archer couldn’t quite place, but it was not a good smell.
He put down the leaf and let his eyes wander over the feather and then to the short length of chain. These were no hardware-store-bought links. These were old metal, rigid and severe like something you might find in an ancient dungeon. Archer picked up the chain, and it clinked dully. It was still cold to the touch, but there was something different. It was lighter, maybe. Or the texture of the metal was grainier . . . perhaps due to advancing corrosion.
He dropped the chain links and looked again at the clock. It showed 11:55, and still, sleep would not come. He turned on his side again. But before his next breath, there came an anguished, wailing scream. It was his father.
Archer bounded out of bed. He’d only heard his father scream like that once before: the night Archer’s mom at last succumbed to her cancer. Archer charged around the doorjamb, took three pounding steps, and pushed through his father’s bedroom door. He flicked on the light, raced to his father’s bedside, and froze. Archer’s father lay there on the bed. His eyes were wide open. His mouth was open too, locked now in a desperate scream . . . but there was no voice. His arms were raised, bent as if trying to fend off some unseen thing. His whole body trembled.
“Dad, Dad, wake up!” Archer exclaimed. “Dad, please! You’re having a nightmare!”
But Archer wasn’t certain that it was a nightmare. His father turned his head slightly in Archer’s direction but seemed to look right through him. His mouth worked, but there were still no words.
Archer heard movement in the hallway. He was terrified that Kaylie and Buster might see their father in this state, but he didn’t know what to do.
“Dad, you’re having a dream!” he said. “A bad dream! That’s all. It’s not real!” He took hold of his father’s hand.
That did something. His father let out a groan. “I tried, Em, I really tried!” His voice was a wet whisper, but Archer heard each word. “No! No, don’t say that, Em! You don’t mean it! Please, Em!”
Archer’s father was sobbing now, the tears pouring over his cheeks and dripping from his chin. Archer embraced his father. “It’s okay, Dad,” he said. “We’re at home. We’re in the house. You’re safe now. You’ve got to wake up.”
“Daddy?” Kaylie said from the door.
“Dad, what’s goin’ on?” Buster asked. He stood just behind his sister.
Mr. Keaton blinked, pulled away from Archer, and said, “Archer . . . you’re here.”
“Yeah, Dad,” he said. “We all are.”
He pulled away from Archer and craned his neck. “Kaylie, Buster . . . but where’s Emily?”
“Dad,” Archer whispered gently. “Mom’s gone. She’s been gone for years now.”
Archer lay in his bed now and fumed. First Kara, now Dad, he thought bitterly. The Nightmare Lord needed to pay for these attacks. “I’ll take you down,” Archer whispered. “You’ll see. If I have to pick apart Shadowkeep brick by brick, I’m going to take you down.” He tossed and turned, trying to simply will himself to sleep. He wanted to charge right into the Dream, wanted to destroy each and every one of the enemy’s plans, wanted to make him pay.
“Trying to destroy my anchor too, aren’t you,” Archer whispered. “Not going to happen. I remember the well because my mom loved it. And she loved me.”
He sighed and focused on his breathing . . . and his thinking. “It all begins with the mind,” Archer whispered, quoting the Creeds. “That is the real battlefield you must master. The stronger the mind, the longer and stronger you Tread.”
He closed his eyes and began with forms. These were mental projections of his physical self, his breathing, his heartbeat, his movements. He felt the elongation and contraction of his muscles, choreographing their rippling through a series of mental exercises. He was very still in his bed, but mentally, a version of himself ran through an arduous chain of martial arts movements: lunges, sweeps, thrusts, kicks, blocks, throws, turns, and holds. After enough time, Archer switched to patterns. Spinning stars slid and wove themselves into place on a tapestry of ever-shifting shapes and colors. Seams unzipped and symbols danced, but Archer managed to lasso them all. One by one, he assigned them places until a brilliant mosaic was born.
Archer was about to move into verse when he felt the telltale heaviness on his eyelids, like feather-soft fingers were lightly pressing upon his brow. Each new breath was a release of tension and an infusion of relaxation. He felt weightless, weightless and drifting. Sleep had finally come.
Falling. That’s exactly what it feels like, Archer thought. Falling though the deepest, darkest, windless night until you hit the canopy, a dense layer of dream fabric. Archer had never thought to ask Gabriel if that was its name, but canopy sure seemed right.
Oof! Floof! Archer plowed into a cushion of air. Fuzzy, swirling air. At last there was a dim gray light. Archer felt the rotation begin to take him in. He’d broken through the canopy, and a sleeve of dream fabric began to whirl around him. Tornado slide! Archer thought as he reclined, arms behind his head. This was his favorite part. Booyaaaah!
The light increased, bathing him in a constantly spiraling swirl of turbulent indigo, electrically charged amethyst, and dark steel gray. Through the translucent funnel, Archer saw a dark, mountainous landscape. In the distance, more funnels dropped down. Many more, dragging slowly across the panorama like the tentacles of a giant deep-sea jellyfish.
A bell clanged. The low, echoing tone lingered a moment and then faded. Another chime, and another. Archer twisted in the funnel and saw it. Obscured by scarlet and lavender clouds rose the steeple and face of Old Jack, the great timekeeper of the Dream. Sometimes a looming giant, other times just a faint watermark near the horizon, Old Jack was almost always visible from any location within the Dream. Its measure of moments was absolute, and Archer knew to pay close attention to its chimes. Six o’clock and the next twelve—those were the ones to beware of. For now, he thought. Time to begin.
At last, the vortex released Archer. He fell to the ground, dropping to one knee. When he rose again, he was more than Archer.
Dark shades, cooler than Gabriel’s. Black vest and combat pants with armor plates sewn in. Black leather Australian bush hat and duster. Commando, cowboy, ninja, knight, warrior: 100 percent US Grade-A, absolute Dreamtreader.
Archer reached over his shoulder for his sword and anchor. He pulled the hat down tightly on his scalp and sprang away toward a Y-shaped tree. Anchor first. Anchor deep.
There, between the dark tree’s gnarled roots, Archer pounded his anchor. Once more, the well appeared. Archer ran his fingers over its stone. We all need anchors, Archer, Master Gabriel had said, in every area of our lives. If not, we drift far from the truths that matter . . . and the meaning of it all.
“Right,” Archer said aloud. “The anchor’s good. Time to Dreamweave some breaches!”
Archer looked out over the vast landscape. If Gabriel was correct, and he usually was, there were far more breaches than normal out there. It was difficult to tell with the Dreamscape in its rudimentary state, like an endless misty moor at twilight, a writhing sea of fog stretching to infinity. Here and there, craggy mountains poked up out of the gloom. There were structures too, indefinite castle-like buildings, begging to be explored. And, of course, there was Old Jack. Yet no breaches showed themselves, not at this level of detail, and time was ticking.
Archer took a deep breath. This was going to take a lot out of him, he knew. But it was unavoidable. He stomped his booted foot, and it sent a shock wave through the mists. The ripple surged forward through the Intrusions and began to change everything.
From the tip of his boot, patches of wind-waving grass rolled forth. Rich forests sprouted up. Meadows bloomed and spread. Mountains became mantled with snow. The sparse castle structures became grand fortresses, each one with a walled-in township to guard, and all vastly different from one another.
Archer wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow. “Much better.” It had taxed him dearly, but not as dearly as it might have to reveal this world for the first time. This was the world of the Dream, uncloaked. Archer’s Dreamtreading experience and a fair supply of sheer might had washed away the interfering Intrusions to reveal, once again, the realm he’d been chosen to protect. He’d been Dreamtreading for years, and had completed the revealing process many times. Still, any exertion of will this large left Archer winded.
Winded. Archer barked out a laugh. It was all mental, really. Dreamtreading was an ability locked away in the areas of the brain that most people never got to use, except for tiny spurts while asleep. Taxed was definitely a better word, Archer thought. But he knew his limits. As a Dreamtreader, he had to know. To overwork the mind in a dream could mean any number of unpleasant outcomes in the real world: coma and death chief among those.
Archer shrugged away those dark thoughts. Besides, he had plenty left in the tank. He lifted the dampening he’d just spread over the landscape and felt the ripples of Intrusions surge in. More than ripples. Waves.
“Sweet,” Archer said. He stomped his foot. The air shimmered, and a nine-foot surfboard, a longboard, materialized at his side. Archer released his concentration somewhat, allowing the Intrusions to have much greater impact. He grabbed the board, raced about ten yards, and leaped. He came down flat on the board and felt the current beneath him. It was rising fast; Archer rose to a knee, did the split-step to get to his feet, and then steered into the curl. “Man, if Buster could see me now!” he yelled. “Wooo!”
With a quick shift of his weight, Archer leaned down the length of the wave. Whole kingdoms raced by in a blur. The wing of dark red hair that usually half covered
his eyes blew back.
“Yaaa!” Archer shouted, pumping his fist and exulting in the new speed.
Intrusions weren’t made of water. Like everything else in the Dream, they were made of dreams . . . the dreams of hundreds of millions of people within Archer’s Dreamscape district. In contrast to the coherent features of the Dream like Old Jack, castles, and mountains, the Intrusions were built of chaos. Every dreamer knew them, if not by name, by experience. Sudden, relentlessly changing random ideas and images blend seamlessly into one another. One minute, you’re in a classroom but your teacher has a watermelon in place of his head. The next minute, a Ferrari crashes through the chalkboard bringing a forest in its wake, and then you’re somehow camping with your cousin from Nebraska. Waking up from a flood of Intrusions was enough to make anyone give up eating spicy food before bed.
Not for Archer. For him, Intrusions were things of beauty, rising up in magnificent swells that propelled him anywhere he wished to go.
“Bavanda first,” he muttered, leaning back and to his right. His board dropped off the dying ebb of one wave and onto the curl of a monster jammer, as he called them, shifting his heading forty-five degrees. The wave was a violent thing, surging beneath the board as if it had a mind to throw Archer up into the sky. The Dreamtreader let the wave roll itself out right at the boundary of the kingdom of Bavanda.
Archer hopped off his board and let it vanish behind him. “Razz?” he called out. “You coming on this one?”
“Right away, boss!” a high-pitched voice answered from, well, nowhere. There was a purple puff of smoke, and suddenly, a flying squirrel hovered just in front of Archer’s nose: Razz. Razzlestia Celeste Moonsonnet was her full name, but Archer had given that one up long ago.
“Good to see you, Razz,” Archer said. “Ready for some breaches?”