Ombric was putting the finishing touches on the new library. All his knowledge, all his wisdom, he was now passing on to this most amazing young man, one whose start had seemed most dubious. The thought made Ombric feel both satisfied and perhaps a little sad. His pupil was now the master. But that’s how it should be. He put his hand on North’s shoulder.
“The Moon,” he said quietly. “After we save Katherine, we’ll go meet the Man in the Moon together.”
They looked up into the sky. The Moon was just over the horizon. From where they stood, the possibilities were endless.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A Few Rich Ticks of the Clock
SANDERSON MANSNOOZIE WAS A luminous being. He was infused with shards of starlight, which made him glow rather brightly. This would be a problem if he was to sneak into the dark of Pitch’s cave. The bats that clung to the bony tree limbs around the cave’s opening noticed him the moment Mother Nature’s clouds had left. He was dangerously exposed, and he knew it. The bats fluttered their wings and were about to sing out in alarm, but Sandy was quick. With the flick of one wrist, he sent a fog of Dreamsand that put every bat into a deep and instantaneous sleep. The creatures dropped from the trees by the hundreds, thumping lightly on the ground. There was a quiet hum of snoring bats as Sandy crept into the cave. The strange curling rocks at the mouth of the cave gave way to a long tunnel-like chute.
Sandy spotted something in the shadows, something wispy and dark. He whipped his right hand at it. A bullet of Dreamsand shot toward the thing. There was a light pff as the sand hit its mark. Sandy flew down to inspect the target. It looked like a Dream Pirate, only a bit smaller and somehow more vaporous. One of Pitch’s Nightmare Men, thought Sandy. It was fully asleep and exactly what Sandy needed. He cloaked himself with the nasty, dark creature, completely covering his glow. Now he could proceed unseen.
The inky dark of the cave was nearly total, but Sanderson Mansnoozie could make out the faintest light emanating from the floor below. He slipped past dozens of Nightmare Men without notice, leaving just enough Dreamsand in his wake to make sure they were put to sleep. This rescue would be difficult, and he needed every advantage in order to succeed.
As he came to the cave’s bottom, the light grew only slightly brighter. Mansnoozie was very comfortable with darkness. He’d spent eons in the black of space, and he dwelled most of his time in the land of dreams with his eyes shut. In fact, the only real weakness he had was in staying awake. He could fall asleep with such ease and quickness that on occasion it was a problem. As he peered around the edge of the cave’s tunnel and into its main cavern, he felt the telltale twinges of sleepiness starting to lull him. He shook himself awake, not realizing that in just a few more steps he would see something that would jar him awake completely.
He found the source of the cave’s only light. It came from a girl, a brown-haired girl who lay sleeping on a coal-colored slab of marble that had been carved into a coffinlike shape. Katherine! It had to be! And he could see that she was breathing—she was alive! But what was that around her? He crept closer. She was surrounded by an unearthly glow.
This glow fascinated him. It twisted and spiraled around Katherine like a living thing, and within it, he could see the shifting shapes of tiny Nightmare Men, dozens and dozens of them.
It must be some sort of shield, Sandy thought, feeling a deep unease. Was it to keep her dreams from getting out or to keep nightmares in? Perhaps it was both. Or perhaps it tripped some sort of alarm? He stepped back. He’d thought he knew everything there was to know about dreams, good or bad, but this “shield” had him stumped. He scanned the room. There was no sign of any other Nightmare Men or of Pitch. He was certain the room was empty except for Katherine. So he cautiously lowered his Dream Pirate cloak.
If it’s an alarm or a trap, so be it, he decided. If I act quickly, I can get out of this cave before anyone can nab me.
And so he crept forward once more.
Looking down at the sleeping girl, he saw that she had a lovely face, but her brow was furrowed, her expression almost tortured.
She’s having a nightmare!
Then he looked closer. Small, glowing Nightmare Men were being sucked into her nose and mouth with each breath. His heart began to pound. She has no way of waking! Pitch has doomed her to an eternity of nightmares! Sandy fumed. The fiend!
Heedless of potential dangers, he tried to reach through the glowing dome of nightmare light that surrounded Katherine, but his hand was deflected by a painful burst of energy. He snatched his arm back and cradled his blistered hand. He forced himself to keep his mind clear, to not lose his temper. To him, dreams were precious, noble things. Seeing them twisted into something evil was an abomination.
If Sanderson had grown more powerful during his centuries-long sleep, then evidently, so had Pitch. Sandy knew he’d have to be clever and quick to get Katherine from this place. He was certain he’d be discovered at any moment. But how to remove her? Any effort to break through this formidable shield of nightmares would take time and draw attention. Ideas bombarded him, but none were correct, and he was stymied.
He noticed a slight brightening of light behind him. Pitch has caught me, he thought, his heart sinking. Still, he spun around and shot streams of Dreamsand from each hand at whatever was sneaking up on him.
The darts of sand were deflected easily. And in the scattered dust Sandy saw not Pitch but Nightlight! Nightlight with his diamond-tipped staff in one hand and a fistful of just-caught Dreamsand in the other. The boy smiled at Sanderson Mansnoozie. Sandy was torn between feeling relief at not being caught and being a little perturbed. He felt he had been quite specific when he’d told the Guardians not to follow him. Still, he couldn’t deny he was glad to see this strange, glowing boy. He also was very curious as to why the boy had not been affected by the Dreamsand. Why had it not put him to sleep?
Nightlight had had an intuition that Mansnoozie might lead him to his Katherine and also that the little fellow might need a bit of help. He’d slipped away from the other Guardians at the North Pole and had been tracking the Dream Captain from a discreet distance, but he knew it was time to take action. Without saying a word, Nightlight leaped forward with his staff and slashed at the base of the coffin-shaped rock upon which Katherine lay. With a single stroke, the diamond-tipped staff cut through the stone completely.
Amazing, Sandy thought, looking on with surprise.
Nightlight enjoyed the little man’s astonishment. As did the moonbeam in his staff. But the moonbeam suddenly sense danger. It flashed a warning to Nightlight. The moonbeam remembered this place well; didn’t his boy? The moonbeam had found Pitch here, pinned through his black heart to the very same rock upon which Katherine was now entombed. Pinned by the diamond dagger in which the moonbeam now lived. Nightlight’s dagger.
Sanderson turned to the moonbeam, hearing its thoughts. He could see all the details of the memories that flooded through this brave little flash of lunar light.
And as Sanderson Mansnoozie listened, he became sleepy, then sleepier. And in one more blink he was dreaming the moonbeam’s memories, about how the moonbeam came to be the light of Nightlight’s staff and the amazing story of Nightlight himself.
It all happened in an instant, as thoughts and dreams often do, but what a rich few ticks of the clock this proved to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Of Nightlight and Moonbeam and the Power of a Good-Night Kiss
SANDY HEARD THE MEMORIES of the moonbeam exactly as the young light remembered them:
“I was tumbling down like,” the moonbeam began. “Into this dark place. I sees things that first time, in the Cave Dark, all Shadowy and nightmare-like. The Cave Dark looks like now, ’cept the Pitch was there. On this same rock. The Nightmare Rock where he was trapped for all that time. That rock must have dust and darkness of the Pitch’s hate living ins it still. Trapping Nightlight’s Katherine. Making Nightlight’s Katherine dream the nightmares te
rrible over and over, on and on.
“The thinking of it is a cold horror. I’m remembering the last time. I felt that same cold. When I wents into the diamond dagger. The one that speared through the Pitch, through the Pitch’s cold heart and into the stone and held the Pitch prisoner. Kept him so he wasn’t alive or dead, just . . . There. All the while, inside the dagger was my boy Nightlight. Surrounded by the coldness awful. For almost longer than ever. It froze my boy. It made him still. And made his memories separate from him. But my light warmed him and wakened him and made my Nightlight boy free. He broke out of the diamond ’cause of me. He needed a bit of the Moon’s light to make him strong again.
“But the diamond traps me as it does any magical light that comes into it. But I’m not minding. ’Cause I know I helps the Nightlight be free. And he should be free. He’s the hero of us all. But none really knows the all of his story. Only me. ’Cause his memories stayed here in the diamond. And I can feels them.
“Some knows he was a friend of the Man in the Moon. Some knows about his battling with the Pitch. But only I knows what came before: that Nightlight was the guard of the baby Prince of the Moon. The Nightlight was a special being. The only one there ever was. A boy of light who would live forever and never grow old. And he would always protect the royal young of the Golden Age, especially from nightmares. He would never sleep. And be always watchful.
“But he was doomed to a heartbreak. For though he cherished and cared for the prince, there would be a sadness time when the prince would become grown and need him no more. And so sorrow would be his life until another child was born to rule, and then the joy and heartbreak would begin again.
“But Nightlight knows this and takes the burden, and every night he stayed and protected the sleep of the prince baby. Every night the Nightlight waited for the Mother Queen and the Father King to come give the kiss good night to their prince. The Magic Kiss of the Good Night. So powerful is this kiss. Takes away all the hurts. Makes the scare and sad go to nothing. My Nightlight has that power too. But he don’t know of it. He can’t ever give it and stay a nightlight. But his magic is like the parents’. And when they leaves after the kiss, my Nightlight boy says his song:
“ ‘Nightlight, bright light,
Sweet dreams I bestow.
Sleep tight, all night.
Forever I will glow.’
“Then he sprinkles Dreamsand over the prince and watches all the night. Every night. Never to sleep, my Nightlight boy. And he kills any nightmare from the Pitch that could do the princeling harm.
“But then the Pitch so terrible comes, and the Father King and Mother Queen, they know the Pitch will take their boy. To end the Golden Time, the Pitch must do away with the baby prince. So they give Nightlight an oath:
‘ “Watch over our child,
Guide him safely from the ways of harm. . . .
For he is all that we have, all that we are,
And all that we will ever be.’
“And all around the Pitch is battling terrible, and he captures the Mother Queen and the Father King. And Nightlight hides the prince, but the baby is fearful. The prince baby cries, and this hurts my Nightlight’s soul. My Nightlight, he takes the prince baby’s tears—he holds ’em tight like treasure next to his heart thumping, and he says the oath, and that makes a magic thing. My Nightlight’s hand—the tears burn it, they burn till my boy can’t stand it, but he does.
“And then the tears they change; the tears they become strong, the tears they become the diamond dagger. And my Nightlight knows that only he can use this dagger to end the Pitch. My Nightlight knows he will likely die and never see his prince again, so he whispers nice, so nice, to the prince baby, ‘Remember me in dreams.’ And he flies off to face the terrible, the Pitch.
“And stop him he finally does. And crash here they finally did. And Nightlight felt cold for longer than any should inside that cold heart of the Pitch. He still will never grow up or old, and all the ones he loves will grow past him and leave him, but he must always stay the same. But he ’members almost none of this. Which is my doing. I held on to his memories. So he wouldn’t know all his hurts. So he won’t be made sorrowful. So me and now you knows of how grand he is in the history of the brave and the good.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Nightlight Has a Memory and the Dreamsand Does Its Stuff
KNOWING THEY NEEDED TO make their escape, Nightlight leaned down to the fresh cut in the stone and opened his fist full of Dreamsand. He held it palm up and blew the sand with one gentle breath. The sand settled quickly into the slice, and once the last little grain had slipped in, the entire block of stone magically lifted a foot or so into the air.
But of course, thought Mansnoozie, having snapped awake as soon as the moonbeam’s story had ended, making an instant connection. Nightlight remembers the powers of Dreamsand, if nothing else. Sandy instantly added his own stream of Dreamsand, and soon a sparkling cloud formed under Katherine’s stone bed, lifting it even higher. It was time to leave. They were certain to be seen now. Nightlight peered in at Katherine and felt an awful ache. She looked so sad. His beautiful friend was imprisoned in almost the exact same place where he had been. He hated the feelings this brought into his heart.
Sandy let the sand continue to stream forth, its glow brightening the room like sunlight. As Sandy had anticipated, alarms began to sound. The rumble of approaching armies of Nightmare Men and Fearlings rang out from every part of the cave.
Mansnoozie himself wasn’t alarmed. He knew that the magic of the Dreamsand cloud was potent. And sure enough, in an instant the three of them flew up and out of the cave and into the evening sky. They could already see traces of the northern lights of North’s faraway tower, showing them the way to safety.
The Nightmare Men tried to follow, but a trail of Dreamsand put all of them to sleep.
Our heroes had made their escape. It had been fairly easy, really.
Pitch was nowhere in sight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A Sea of Nightmares and a Helping Hand
KATHERINE WAS ASLEEP AND silent within the energy of the nightmare stone that was now being sped toward the North Pole. She could nonetheless tell that something was happening outside the nightmare world she’d inhabited for . . . days? Weeks? She had no way of knowing. Night, day, twilight—she was oblivious to the real world, for from where she now dwelt, it was always half past terrifying.
At least now she believed she’d been dreaming—that the terrors that hunted her were only nightmares. But they seemed so real. As sharp and true as life. And their fearfulness was just as strong. But something had changed.
In the dream she was now dreaming, she was on an endless and stormy sea. The water was as black as tar and the sky heavy and dim with clouds. She was floating in North’s sleigh, but it was rotting in the water and slowly falling to pieces. The waves, huge and coming to mountaintop-like peaks, weren’t cresting, but rather each one rose and fell at a continuous roll that was dizzying.
Floating past her were all the people and things she knew and loved: North’s horse, Petrov; the giant bear of Santoff Claussen; all her young friends—Petter, Fog, Sascha, and all the Williams—but they were as stiff and lifeless as driftwood. They could not help her, nor she them.
More friends bobbed by: the Spirit of the Forest, the Warrior Eggs, the owls, the reindeer, then Ombric, North, Bunnymund, Toothiana, and even her beloved Kailash. But not Nightlight. That was her only relief. At least Nightlight had been spared.
Then the dark, murky sky above her flashed and brightened, like an exploding star. She glimpsed a hand, a huge hand. It was visible for only a moment, but she was able to see it distinctly.
Golden colored, it glistened like sand. It was the first bright and hopeful thing she’d seen in all her nightmare journeys. She reached up toward it. It was so close. She lunged and just grazed the tip of one gigantic finger.
Then the hand vanished.
&nb
sp; The sky darkened again, and the waves grew even more violent. But now there were dozens of small figures in the water around her. They were quite active, not frozen like the earlier wooden totems of her friends. These were unfamiliar, and they amused her. There were three mice wearing dark-lensed glasses, a dish and a spoon, a leaping cow. All of them happy whimsies, compliments of a friend and ally who knew just what might be needed in this dark place.
So Katherine wasn’t fearful as a huge whirlpool began to form, drawing her crumbling sleigh into its swirling vortex. She would be sucked down, surely! The inky spray of the tumultuous sea soaked her and made her cold. So cold. It was Pitch! He was under this awful sea, waiting for her.
But through the dread that now flooded her, something gave her courage. Her hand tingled. The tips of her fingers seemed to glow, as if covered in something barely there. She looked closely. Is it sand? she wondered. There were just a few grains—three, four at the most. Then, in a blink, she thought she saw a funny little man who glittered like gold, and she could feel something else . . . Nightlight! Nightlight was near.
As the sea closed around, spiraling her down into its wake, she felt less alone. She knew that somehow, her friends were trying to rescue her. But, oh, the coldness! She could feel that Pitch was so close. She knew that murderous things were afoot.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Meanwhile, Back in Santoff Claussen
EVERYONE IN SANTOFF CLAUSSEN had been a little homesick. Oddly enough they were already home, but half the village was now at the North Pole. So the home half missed the gone half. Petrov, for example, missed his best friend, Bear. They had patrolled the edges of the village together for a very long time. Thankfully, there were others to keep the gallant horse company. Many of the children now rode him on his daily rounds. They had formed their own militia to guard the village. Sascha and Petter were the generals of this young troop. They had enlisted the other children and many of the remaining forest creatures as their captains and lieutenants. No one had a rank below captain, which was one of the fun parts of inventing your own army. The squirrels, chipmunks, beetles, ants, and butterflies all had new military-like uniforms with SC (for “Santoff Claussen”) embroidered on their jackets. They had been sent by North himself and had arrived by the train tunnel that now linked Santoff Claussen to his city.