A cheer went up as Luke scored and won the game for his team.
Cal stood gingerly. He felt light-headed. The koboloi snickered as they left the field, even though one of them had been on his team.
“Daydreaming again, Cal?” Mr Jenkins said as he approached.
Cal didn’t reply. The coach had no sympathy for those who didn’t keep their eye on the ball. After a quick look at his eye, the P.E. teacher sent him off to see the school nurse who sent him home.
“Walk into another door?” his mum asked when Cal got home.
Cal never said anything. He’d received more bruises from the koboloi than he could remember, and he’d long given up trying to find new explanations for the contusions. Besides, he suspected his mum had guessed the real cause of his injuries long ago. And she probably thought it was his own fault.
She grabbed his chin and looked at the black eye. “They need to do something about the doors at your school.”
Cal slunk off into his bedroom and dropped the makeshift icepack his mum had given him—a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a teatowel—onto his chair. He sat on his bed and winced as he tentatively prodded his injured eye. The pain brought back the image of Luke and his sidekicks laughing at him. Mocking him. He clutched the edge of his bed with his other hand, tightening his hold to the point where his arm began to shake with exertion. Where he was going tonight there would be no one laughing at him. There would be no pain. It was his world, and he intended to tame it.
* * *
Cal sat on the floor of a long hall, his back against one of the many bookcases that lined the walls. Although close to the centre of the city, the library never appeared to have any patrons. Cal wasn’t surprised. Empty pages filled the books, a fact Cal had discovered on his first visit not many nights after finding the city. Nevertheless, the wordless tomes helped him to think. And he needed to think, now more than ever.
His worlds had collided. The dream world he’d held to be his own for so long was no longer private, no longer a refuge from the real world. He wanted to believe this was his own creation, but he reluctantly admitted that Ash’s uncomfortable words made sense. Usually he had some control over a lucid dream. The city, however, seemed fixed, unchanging. It was as if it were independent of his own mind. Like Ash had said, he had some control over the way he related to it, but not the city itself.
Cal pushed himself up and headed for the nearest window. The library, located on the second floor, afforded a good view of the streets below. He pulled back from the bare window as two watchmen made their way past, mancatchers resting against their padded shoulders. The street led from the market to the main piazza, so Cal wasn’t surprised to see the patrol. What did surprise him was the young lady making her way briskly down a side street, directly into the path of the two watchmen.
Cal groaned. What was Ash doing? Why didn’t she have the sense to keep off the streets, or at least mingle with the crowd? Still, maybe the watchmen would pay her no heed. She was, after all, not in her pyjamas.
Ash reached the end of the side street, turned and came face to face with the two watchmen. They parted for her, inclined their visored heads, and let her proceed. However, she hadn’t gone ten paces before they called for her to halt, hefting their mancatchers from their shoulders.
She ran then, but not fast enough. The watchmen quickly closed the gap and a mancatcher thrust out toward her. It never reached its target though, for Cal descended from above and knocked the watchman to the ground heavily.
“Cal!” Ash shouted as Cal clambered off the unmoving man. The other watchman, surprised by Cal’s sudden appearance, had frozen but now he came to his senses and leapt toward them.
Cal positioned himself between the attacker and Ash as the mancatcher thrust out to ensnare him. He dodged it, and grabbed hold of the device. After a moment of struggling, the watchman pushed Cal back and Cal’s legs, already weak from his jump, folded. The watchman drew a baton from his belt and struck at Cal’s head. Cal barely had time to raise his arm to fend off the blow.
Pain filled Cal’s forearm and he lost his grip on the mancatcher. He almost lost his grip on the Dreamframe too. It blurred for a short moment but then Ash’s warning shout brought him back.
The baton flew toward his skull, only narrowly missing him as Cal ducked beneath its arc. He thrust out his foot. It connected with the watchman’s knee and something crunched as the watchman went down screaming in pain.
Cal stood and looked around nervously. The man’s cries would bring every patrol in the area down on them in minutes. “Come on!” Cal grabbed Ash’s arm. “Down here.” They fled down the side street and took the first alleyway they came across.
What was he doing? Behind him Ash’s boots echoed in the narrow alley. Why had he been foolish enough to tackle two watchmen? He was lucky to have escaped. They both were. But why had he intervened? Surely Ash would’ve just woken up if they’d grabbed her?
“What were you doing?” Cal asked a couple of minutes later between two stone-grey buildings near the edge of the city.
Although Cal was only a little out of breath, Ash took some time to catch her own. “Looking for some answers.”
“Don’t you know better than to stay away from the patrols?”
“Why so concerned? After all, I’m just a facet of your own mind, right?”
Cal turned away from her inquiring gaze. “Let’s get off the street.” He led her across the street to a narrow set of steps that led up to a room they were both familiar with.
“I’ve been here before,” Ash said as she stepped into the chamber and looked up at the peacocks on the domed roof.
Cal took up a position by the window. “I know.”
“You’ve been spying on me?”
“No. You just appeared.” Cal stole a wary look down the street. Ash always just appeared. “I don’t think anyone followed us.”
Ash let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”
Cal leant back against the whitened wall. “It’s dangerous. I don’t trust those watchmen. I’ve seen them at work. Their prisoners don’t exactly fit the description of hardened criminals.”
“I have to know what’s going on, Cal.”
Cal folded his arms. “No, you don’t. You want to know. There’s a difference.”
“And you don’t?”
“No.”
The word came out of his mouth with less conviction than he’d expected, and he suspected Ash caught it. He didn’t have Ash’s curiosity, but a part of him wanted the Dreamframe back for himself. Finding out more might lead him to work out how he could reclaim his solitary refuge from the waking world.
“Then I want to know.” Ash blinked three times and her form faded until Cal was alone in the chamber.
* * *
“Nice shiner,” Ash said as she walked out into the playground behind Cal at the start of lunch.
She hadn’t spoken to him all morning during English. Perhaps she’d been annoyed with him for interfering. Her voice now seemed light, as if the events of the night and day before had never happened. Perhaps they hadn’t, he thought, but he knew that was a lie.
“Not the result of a fight, I hope?”
“No, not a fight. I had a run-in with Luke during football yesterday.”
Ash nodded and looked away. “Thank you for your help last night.”
Cal glanced around to make sure no one was within hearing distance. “No problem.”
“How long have you been able to know when you’re dreaming?” Ash asked as they walked toward the aviary.
Cal shoved his hands in his pockets. “Since I was six or seven.”
“I was eight. It was the year my parents divorced. I think it affected me a lot. I had terrible nightmares just about every night. The bad dreams wouldn’t go away, so in the end I decided to chase them, and it was then I realised I was in control, not my fears.”
“Like Alice.”
“Exactly.”
Cal p
ulled his sandwiches from his bag as they made their way into the small wooded area next to the cages. “Some kids had been mean to me in junior school. When I got home my mum told me off for having paint on my clothes or something like that. I can’t remember the details, but I know when I went to sleep that night I was determined to create my own world, one where I wouldn’t be bullied or shouted at. I guess it was a bit like an imaginary friend, except it was a whole world filled with my imagination. That was the beginning of the Dreamframe.”
Ash sat down and rested her back against a small tree. Cal sat a few feet away in his usual place. “You said the city came into your dreams about a month ago?”
“About then, yes. Perhaps a little longer. I always end up there now, it’s as if—”
“As if the city wants you to be there.”
Cal shifted awkwardly. Her words brought home the truth of the matter. It had been at the back of his mind for weeks. He should’ve been able to enter a different Dreamframe, but he hadn’t. He’d put it down to his desire to stay in the city. Yet he knew that wasn’t the entire reason. Something was pulling him toward the city each night. This thought decided the matter, for good or ill.
“Well, if we’re going to do this, you’ll need to learn how to run faster and not get out of breath so easily.”
Ash smiled, but Cal could only hope that he’d made the right decision.
Chapter Four
Cal focused his concentration on the denim jacket again. Slowly one cuff turned into something resembling purple velvet. He smiled, but before he could open his mouth to speak of his small accomplishment, the material reverted to denim again.
Cal dropped his arm. “I’m just no good with clothes. I told you already, I wear this all the time in the Dreamframe. It’s kind of part of me now. Maybe it would be easier to just search the wardrobes?”
“I already did. They’re all empty.”
The Peacock Chamber, as they had come to call the room with the peacock paintings, was a perfect place to meet. Its location on the outer environs of the city meant few ever passed by, let alone entered. It also gave a good view of the street in case any patrols decided to search the area.
“You have to concentrate,” Ash said as her full blue silken dress flickered and became once again the black one she preferred. “Perhaps it’s not possible for men,” she added as an afterthought. “Their instinct in the waking world is to wear something until it’s threadbare. Perhaps that mindset blocks the ability to change clothes here too.”
“Then I’m lucky it’ll never wear out in this place,” Cal said, flashing a wicked grin in her direction before turning to lean on the windowsill.
They’d been meeting here for some weeks now. Cal had grown to know Ash more than he’d ever known anyone, though that wasn’t saying much as he’d never been one to make friends. At school Cal still kept a little distance from her, but not as much as he once had. Unlike the other students, Ash was intelligent, imaginative and—though he only admitted it with reluctance—fun to be around. Somehow he felt different when he was with her, as if part of his childhood had returned; a part he’d somehow missed out on.
On their first visit to the Dreamframe together, Cal had scaled the building while Ash had run up the stairs. They both got to the window at the same time. It wasn’t to show off his skill. He’d wanted her to know he’d been at the Peacock Chamber for his own reasons all those weeks ago when he’d seen her staring in wide-eyed wonder beneath its dome. He wasn’t spying. She’d laughed when he’d explained the reason for the race, but said no more on the matter.
That was how it all started—the sharing of dream powers, as Ash called it. Although Cal hadn’t been able to master the power of changing his attire, he’d improved his own skills considerably. For some reason he pushed himself more with Ash around. They used the adjoining hall to practise running and jumping. Ash had even adapted her dress to give her more flexibility. She’d grown a little better with the running and jumping, but they weren’t abilities in which she excelled.
Cal had also learned more about Ash and the rift between her and her father. Her mother seemed to have no interest in either of them and had remained in London. Ash seemed unfazed by her mother’s estrangement, but Cal could tell the unease between her and her father disturbed her more than she let on.
Ash had come to stand beside him. She looked across the rooftops toward the centre of the city. “There’s still time today.”
Cal fidgeted at her closeness. “Sorry?”
Ash didn’t move. “Our search has to start some time. Why not now?”
Cal’s last two experiences with the patrols had only served to increase his caution. He’d told Ash of the two watchmen who had pursued him all those weeks ago after he’d left her in the market. Ash willingly accepted the risk, but Cal couldn’t shake it off so easily. It was one of his motives for spending so much time in the Peacock Chamber of late. He didn’t want to be trapped by watchmen like that again: to fall and wake up, to lose control. He despised waking up involuntarily. It was, to him, a sign of weakness, a lack of mastery.
“We’re not ready.”
“You said that last time. I can’t leap or scale walls like you. I think I’m as good as I’m ever going to get. And if we wait until you can change your jacket permanently into a velvet doublet we’re going to be here for another year.” Ash turned to face him. “It’s time to find out whose dream this is.”
Cal had put it off, and not just because of his own inadequacies. He knew Ash wasn’t skilled enough. She couldn’t leap any further than she could in waking life, and although she could now clear a six-foot horizontal jump in the hall, it might be an entirely different story when she had to do it with a forty-foot drop beneath her. If they came across another patrol, Cal would have to delay them somehow in order to give Ash a headstart.
That nagged at him too. Why had the patrol near the library tried to capture her? She wasn’t dressed in nightwear and she seemed to have been left alone in the market. Perhaps the area was restricted. But no, they would’ve tried to stop her straight away if that was the case.
Yet he and Ash couldn’t hide forever. He needed to get out into the city to improve his skills further, and to find out more. There was only so much he could do up here in the Peacock Chamber.
“OK, OK! Next time then,” Cal said.
“I’ll hold you to that! Pleasant training. I need to finish some art homework before school!” Ash said before blinking three times.
She faded from view. It was a neat technique—one of her powers—she’d developed for waking quickly from the Dreamframe. Like the transformation of the clothing, Cal was unable to reproduce it.
He stared out of the window. The street, as always, was empty. These last few weeks his whole world had changed. He had once been master here, or thought himself so. Now he had to deal with the possibility that this was someone else’s dream, and that he wasn’t in control at all.
Ash was determined to find out what was going on. Cal, however, wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Of course, eventually he’d have no choice.
* * *
Cal pushed his bowl toward the middle of the small kitchen table.
“No seconds?” Cal’s mum, sitting across from him, didn’t take her eyes off the TV. A reporter was explaining about the increasing cases of the HF1 sleeping sickness in the country as images of sufferers broke from their unnatural slumber for a few hours of vacant-eyed torpor—their only reprieve, albeit one of which they seemed unaware.
“I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed early tonight,” Cal answered as he stood.
His mum shook her head. “I had two jobs at your age.”
Cal clamped his teeth shut and walked silently to his bedroom. He’d tried to get work at the weekends and during the holidays, but no one had been willing to employ him. No one liked a loner. Why did they always ask if you enjoyed meeting new people in interviews? Besides, a part of him was glad he had failed them. Th
e jobs were menial and boring. Couldn’t employers create more interesting work? Something more creative than stacking shelves or moving boxes.
He shut the door, breathed out heavily, and closed his eyes. Perhaps he might feel better if he had a job. It would certainly get his mum off his back.
He opened his eyes and saw his bookcase. The sight of it brought a smile to his face. Shelves warped by the weight of too many books were laden with fantasy novels and works on mythology. Inside their covers lay a goldmine of imagination and wonder. They brought him a pleasure that no job ever could.
He grimaced. Some of the books had been put back in the wrong place. His mum had been in his room again, cleaning up. Cal plucked out a book on Norse myths from between two novels and inserted it into a small gap in the shelf above. As he did so he saw his worn copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland lying across the top of the books. He picked it up and looked at the picture of Alice on the faded cover. It brought to mind Ash’s impersonation of the character in the Dreamframe all those weeks ago.
This was the reason for his early retirement to bed. He’d promised to go looking for some ‘dream master’ with Ash, and he wanted some time to think about it, maybe scout around a bit. He’d been confined to the Peacock Chamber since he started training Ash and was eager to see if anything had changed in the city centre. The city had a habit of changing so that if you didn’t keep a constant eye on it, it might take you by surprise one day. And Cal didn’t want any more surprises, even if his mum thought he was lazy.
* * *
The dried flowers spun from one side of the vase to the other and then back again.
“That’s a neat trick!” Ash said from behind him, causing Cal to start.
“Oh.” Cal dropped his hand back down to his side. “I didn’t see you enter.”
“How’s it done?” Ash moved toward the table upon which the vase rested.
“I don’t really know. I discovered it a few years ago. I was bored, I guess, and somehow made an ear of corn move.” His mind went back to that dream. He’d been twelve at the time. He was sitting in a cornfield, lying down and looking up at a lazy, yellow sun. There was no breeze, there seldom was in dreams, so he decided to create his own. Within a year he’d had a dozen ears of corn moving rhythmically to his command, first one way and then the other. Although it wasn’t anything to do with the air, it was more a warping of the ears’ placement in the Dreamframe, as if they’d been shoved aside to make room for something that never appeared.