Accidental Oneironauts

Last Day

2005-11-30T21:13:00.000-08:00

That's it! I'm done! < insert large sigh of relief here >

From Miriam's request, I managed to add a quick little bit about "why Ixy," though it's still pretty vague. There was no way I was going to make it back to have any followup with Elisa, though (Jaden's ex, from chapter 1). Sorry.

If anybody wants it, you can get the whole thing as a PDF file (330k, 159 pages, minimal formatting).

Chapter 30

2005-11-30T21:12:00.000-08:00

Jaden watched the dream lord warily, not knowing what to expect. He was more conscious now of their audience again, hovering in the air above and around them, and the forest seemed to slip away until it was just the two of them on a small, grassy patch of earth, facing each other.

It didn't look as though the dream lord was carrying any weapon, other than the scepter. Jaden figured that probably meant he had more to be afraid, rather than less. He continued to crouch slightly, trying to stay at the ready for whatever happened.

But he wasn't ready enough. The scepter flicked through the air like a wand, with a mere twitch from the wrist, and Jaden felt a searing pain slash across one cheek from something invisible. Another twitch of the scepter and this time Jaden swung his halberd across in front of him. Something metallic clanged off of it and cut his arm.

Not knowing what else to do now, Jaden threw himself at the dream lord slashing and jabbing wildly with his halberd. His opponent scarcely seemed to notice, but somehow the scepter appeared everywhere that Jaden struck, just a split second before, and in time to block every blow. Then it flicked out on its own and Jaden fell backwards with the wind knocked out of him.

He remembered the fights with the demons in the forest, and he tried to call to mind the dance hall, and the music, and Zoe. Gradually the secondary scene formed around him. There was a tango playing, with sharp, violent music. Why did it have to be tango? Zoe was in his arms again. He tried frantically to remember any tango at all, hoping to at least reconstruct the eight count basic in his mind. He took a step.

But then the dream lord was there in that world with him as well. He grabbed Zoe roughly, tore her from Jaden's arms, and threw her aside. Jaden saw her flicker and then fade away, and then he too was knocked to the ground. The dream lord ripped the music from his ears, and cast the dance hall into darkness. They were back again on the grassy arena. Clearly Jaden had no choice but to face his foe on his own terms.

He rolled over onto his back, and started to bring his weapon up in front of him, but then found the shaft of the halberd pinned to his chest. The dream lord had caught it with his scepter, and was knelt over him, pressing him down into the grass with his weight. Jaden couldn't move, could barely breathe.

And then the dream lord seemed to be inside his mind, twisting it and contorting it against his will. As Jaden had previously created a new dream of his own devising to overlay the battles, so now was the dream lord pulling him into another world. Jaden could still see and feel himself pinned to the ground, but now he was also present in a secondary reality.

He was in a torture chamber, strapped to a rack, his body covered with bruises and welts and bleeding gashes. The dream lord stood over him, brandishing a whip and laughing maliciously.

"So you think you can beat me at my own game, do you?" he sneered at Jaden. "Never! I will be the master of your dreams, and while you are in my realm, I will determine your reality."

And even as he spoke, Jaden could feel the original scene slipping away, and the torture scene becoming stronger, and more real around him. He tried to force his mind back to somewhere else, to pull a different reality back around himself, but the pain made it hard to concentrate.

"Pitiful!" the dream lord shouted at him. "Give it up! You have no hope here. You will merely die slowly, and dying here means that you will be completely and utterly destroyed."

He reached for the crank to give the rack another twist, but then froze. The world around them seemed to be shaking, or quivering. Then the torture chamber began to fade. Jaden felt barely strong enough to notice at this point, much less cause it, but who else could be imposing their will on this place? He began to feel grass beneath him again, and the pressure of the dream lord leaning on him from above, pressing the halberd shaft into his chest. One by one, pieces of the torture chamber winked out of existence.

Then the sky seemed to split and open above them.

Chapter 31

2005-11-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

Lucy didn't know what it was that Malcolm had swallowed, nor why it should have the effect on him that it did.

His body stiffened momentarily, then quivered, and then he let out the loudest roar yet. Lucy was sure she would be deafened by it, but she couldn't tell whether it was a roar of triumph or despair, delight or pain. His attention seemed completely distracted, though, so Lucy took the opportunity to scoot over to where Gordon was recovering and trying to pull himself upright. She took his arm and helped him back farther into the crowd, behind a couple of large, petrified demons, where they could wait and watch from a bit of cover.

The roar faded out into the encompassing silence of the hall, and Malcolm's head, twenty feet above them, seemed to split across the top. A thin gray mist came out, slowly at first and then faster, spinning down in a spiral to encircle Malcolm's body. Within moments he was only a large, vague shadow in a giant column of gray. Then the mist began spinning faster and faster, until it took on the appearance of a stationary tornado. Gordon and Lucy thought they heard another roar beginning, then decided that they must have been mistaken, and that it was actually thunder. They cowered further behind their demon statues.

And then the tornado slowed, and the spinning mist began to clear. Behind it, the dinosaur demon was gone, and there stood a towering figure in a white robe, with an amulet suspended from a red cord around his neck. He had black hair that stuck out from his head at spiky angles, his face was thin and pale, and his eyes so very dark that they seemed to be composed of nothing but night.

He stood with his face and arms upturned for a moment, and then lowered them with a sigh that might have indicated relief or contentment, or both. When he looked down he saw Gordon and Lucy and began to walk towards them. As he walked he shrank, until he stood before them, the size of a normal adult man. His voice when he spoke was smooth and warm, and seemed to come from within each of them, soothing and relaxing them throughout their bodies.

"Thank you, Gordon Ross and Lucy Campbell," he said, nodding to each of them. "We have not the words, even here in the dreamlands, to properly express my gratitude."

"You… you're… welcome," stammered Lucy, as Gordon shook his head, thinking he must have been hit harder than he had thought. "But I'm not sure what we did. Or even who you are, now that you don't seem to be Malcolm anymore, at least."

"Whether you intended it or not," the man said, "you were instrumental in bringing events to this point, and for that I thank you. I am King of the Dreamlands, and you are honored guests of my realm."

Gordon and Lucy shuffled awkwardly a bit, then tried to bow and curtsy, but the Dream King waved them back up.

"There is no need for that here," he said. "Being King of the Dreamlands is really more like being a caretaker than a monarch, and I do not require strict subservience of my subjects."

"But, sir," Gordon asked, "what happened here? Where were you? What's going on?"

"I have spent the last year entrapped in the body of a minor demon," the Dream King explained, "known as Malcolm, as you are aware. Not only was my body not my own, but my mind and memories were stolen from me as well. Even now, some are still slowly making their way back to me from the far reaches of my realm.

"The one who calls himself a dream lord, and master of this castle, is but a villainous fiend. We had a dispute, and through trickery and stolen magic, he trapped me. I have been unable to fight back or free myself for these many months, until a chance accident gave me contact with your world. I did not understand this at the time, but it eventually led you to me. And you in turn were kind to me, and took me with you, and inspired in my small demon heart the bravery to fight for you. Your companion's amulet that the demon Bratch carried then provided the final catalyst for my transformation."

"That was Jaden's?" Gordon asked. "Where is he now? Is he okay? And were did Zoe disappear to? Did she just wake up?"

"So many questions…." The Dream King was silent for a moment, and his invisibly black eyes seemed focused on something beyond the normal senses.

"Jaden is in a duel for his life," he said. "Zoe was with him for a time, and may still be. I sense her slipping back and forth between worlds. They need our help, and we will go to them. But first I must release these creatures."

He went to one of the frozen demons that Gordon and Lucy had been hiding behind, and passed his hand in front of its face. The creature melted back into life, and stumbled slightly as its foot fell in completion of its interrupted step. It looked around, confused.

"Listen to me," the Dream King told it. "You and your kind are no longer under your master's command. You will return to your barracks, collect any belongings you may have, and disperse. Go, wake the others, and do as I bid you."

With a grunt, the demon slunk off and began seeking out the other soldiers in the crowd. Each one he touched was released from its paralysis. Gordon and Lucy watched nervously.

"There is nothing to worry about," the Dream King said, reassuringly. "They will not harm you against my wishes."

He then turned to a nearby elf, and released it in the same manner.

"You and the other guests of this hall may return to your homes and go about your business. We have no need to keep you here. Wake the others for me, and go."

The elf bowed elegantly, and floated off on light footsteps to carry out his task. The frozen crowd around them was gradually thawing and dispersing, with many of the creatures yawning and rubbing their eyes, or looking around confusedly as if having been awoken from a long nap. Gordon and Lucy watched in fascination, though they still kept close to the Dream King, who was given a respectful amount of space.

"And now we are ready," the Dream King said. "Let us find and rescue your companions."

He put a hand on each of their shoulders, and then everything around them seemed to wink out into blackness.

Chapter 32

2005-11-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

As the split in the sky widened, Jaden could see the assembled audience disappearing. One by one they were vanishing. The dream lord had noticed this, too, and he looked worried about it now, though he still kept Jaden pressed to the ground with his scepter. The gap in the sky was edges with blinding light, but the interior was an even inkier black than the darkness around it.

And then out of the gap there stepped a figure in a white robe. He seemed only the size of an average man, but with one simple step he crossed from the gap in the sky to the ground, just a few yards from the combatants. Behind him stumbled the two Scottish kids, whose names Jaden had never gotten. They looked a bit disoriented, but seemed to be following the man of their own free will, which Jaden hoped was a good sign.

The dream lord had now stood up and was facing the white robed figure, on his guard. Jaden pulled himself up a little bit to watch, but tried not to draw any extra attention to himself. The man in the white robe spoke.

"Your games are over," he said. "Your demon army has been disbanded. These dreamers will now be free to go, and you will await my punishment."

"Is that so, your majesty?" the dream lord sneered. "And why should I? I might decide to simply lock you up in another useless little demon body again for a while. Or perhaps something you can't escape from so easily. And then I'll set myself up as King of the Dreamlands. I think we're about due for some changes around here, anyway."

As he spoke, though, Jaden noticed that the dream lord seemed to be weakening. His poise was beginning to falter. His voice, which had been so smooth and sinuous before was now becoming harsher, higher pitched, and jerky. He also seemed to be shrinking just slightly in relation to the Dream King.

"You will not," the Dream King said. "You know that you have failed in your one chance to depose me permanently, and already you are crumbling in your defeat. You cannot make such an offense against the laws of this realm and against its king without paying the price. In fact," he looked down at the shrinking figure that was now a full two feet shorter than him, "it appears that my personal revenge will be not only too late, but unnecessary."

The withering figure of the dream lord snarled and clenched a fist in the empty air, but the fist merely crumbled to dust and blew away on a small breeze that came out of nowhere. A strangled cry came from the twisted mouth and the hollow cheeks of his face.

"Go," said the Dream King calmly, "and may your next existence bring you more peace than this one has."

And he passed his hand in front of the crumbling form as he had done to free the frozen dream creatures in the Hall of Fear. But this time, the rest of the body crumbled and disintegrated, then vanished, leaving behind only a pile of dark robes, and a silver scepter on the ground.

"You may get up, Jaden," the Dream King said, and with a start Jaden realized he was still lying on the ground, jaw agape at the scene before him.

"Wha… what just happened?" he asked, getting unsteadily to his feet.

"Your opponent here was a villain, a scoundrel, and an imposter," the Dream King said. "I pray that you do not judge our land too harshly on his account. Now that I have returned, I will be seeking out any other such 'trophy hunters' that he may have corrupted, and they will be dealt with appropriately. You and your companions are, of course, free to return to your own world. Your dance partner has already awoken and is safe at home."

"Thank you," Jaden said. "But I'm not sure how to get home, actually. I'm not just dreaming, you see. One of the demons took the amulet that I needed to get back home."

"Us, too," Gordon chimed in. "Er, what I mean is, we got here sort of by accident. It was magic, but we didn't really know what we were doing. Are we going to be able to get home?"

"That will not be a problem," the Dream King said. "Come, stand before me."

Gordon and Lucy did so, and the King put a hand inside his robes.

"First, I feel as though I should return something to you," he said, and drew forth his hand, holding a small, stuffed toy kitten and offering it to Gordon.

"Is it safe?" Gordon asked, skeptically.

"Completely. Through one of your dreams a year ago, our late villain found this and used it to hold the magic that imprisoned me. Outside of the dreamlands, he thought it was safe from detection, but luckily for all of us, he was proved wrong. Now that I am whole again, that magic is dispersed, and this is once again a harmless toy. Take it home and do with it what you like."

Gordon took Ixy, and thanked the King, who now put a hand on both his and Lucy's heads.

"Close your eyes," he said, "and envision where you were just before you entered this land."

They did so, and Jaden saw them both fade, flicker, and vanish. The King turned back to Jaden.

"And as for you, Jaden," he said, "your amulet was the final catalyst that allowed me to regain my true form. I thank you for the loan of it."

He pulled the red cord from around his neck and offered it to Jaden, who now saw that at the end of it was the amulet Professor Oddbury had given him. The King pressed the amulet into Jaden's hand, pressing the button on it as he did so. Jaden's vision faded and flickered, as Gordon and Lucy had when he watched them disappear. Then everything was gone.

* * *

Professor Oddbury lay slumped and snoring in an arm chair, with the remains of his sixth cup of coffee on the desk nearby. He had desperately wanted to stay awake and on watch until Jaden came back, but he just couldn't handle the late nights anymore the way he used to.

The OneiroPorter was sitting quietly before him, a few small rows of lights winking on and off with a perfect regularity they had maintained since Jaden fell asleep several hours before. But now some of those lights began to speed up, and other, new ones joined in urgently. A valve clicked shut, cutting off the IV drip to Jaden's arm, and the machine began emitting a steady buzzing sound.

Oddburry shifted, murmured, and opened one eye reluctantly. Then both eyes shot open and he leapt to his feet, hurrying over to the machine, flipping switches and checking dials. On the bed inside, Jaden gave a gasp, and his eyes flickered. The purple dream field buzzing through the air was clearing, and Oddbury opened the machine to reach in and remove the needle from Jaden's arm. Jaden's eyes flickered again, and the professor laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Jaden? Jaden my boy? Are you alright? Can you wake up?"

Jaden shifted now, and groaned, but opened his eyes completely.

"Come along, let's get you out of there." The professor helped him out of the machine, and Jaden stumbled over to collapse in the chair that Oddbury had recently vacated.

"That," he said, "was about the least restful sleep I have ever had in my life. But I think I'd like to stay awake for a few days now, if I can. Have you got any more of that coffee?"

The End

Twenty-ninth Day

2005-11-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

The last few thousands words aren't all coming out in order, so I'm opting to wait until tomorrow and then post the finale all at once. Hopefully I'll manage to wrap everything up pretty quickly. If there are any miscellaneous loose ends you particularly want to have tied up, let me know and I'll try not to forget them. :-)

Almost done!

Twenty-eighth Day

2005-11-28T21:54:00.000-08:00

In which Malcolm is important. Yay for Malcolm.

Chapter 29

2005-11-28T21:53:00.000-08:00

Gordon, Lucy and Zoe were all silent and still after Jaden and the dream lord disappeared, and the only sound was of Malcolm sniffing curiously around at the space in the ground that had vanished. Finally Zoe broke the silence.

"So, what brought you two into all of this?" she asked. "You aren't just dreaming, are you?"

"No," replied Gordon. "At least, I don't think so. Are we really in a dream world? Do you live here, or are you dreaming?"

"I'm just dreaming, and yes, these are the dreamlands. How did you get here?"

"Well, it was an accident, really," Gordon began, and then decided to back up to the real beginning, to the morning his mother found the dead mouse on the kitchen floor. He described how stranger things began happening, and how he gradually decided that his stuffed toy kitten Ixy was possessed.

"As far as we can tell," he said, waving his arm in the general direction of Malcolm, who was now nuzzling at Lucy's hand as though he wanted to be petted, "it was that little bloke over there that was doing it, though I haven't a clue how or why. And from the way he carries on now, I don't know if he knows much about it either."

"So how did you find out it was him?"

Gordon, with a bit of embarrassment, described their amateur exorcism attempt, and how it had conjured up Malcolm's image before mysteriously bringing Gordon and Lucy into the dreamlands themselves. He also explained the strange thing that had happened when Ixy and Malcolm had seemed to merge.

"I think they must have had some sort of split personality thing going on," Lucy put in. "The miniature dinosaur thing and your toy cat, I mean. Now they've been merged back together or whatever it is split personalities do when they un-split, and he's turned into… well, I don't know, but he seems rather puppy-like now, don't you think? The sweet and mindless kind of puppy."

"Right," Gordon agreed. "He's not really so bad anymore."

"I'd take him home, but I don't know if Mum would really go for it. She's all new age and open minded and everything, but I think it would still be asking a lot."

"Not to mention the fact that we don't know yet how we're getting home ourselves. We can't just wake up." Gordon looked at Zoe.

"I've only ever dreamed myself here," she said, "but I'll stick around as long as I can in case I can do anything to help. For now, though, I'm not sure what we can do aside from waiting to see what happens to Jaden."

"Jaden's your friend?" Gordon asked, "The one with the arm issues? I don’t think we were ever actually introduced."

"Yes, that's him." Zoe told Gordon and Lucy as much as she knew from Jaden's side of the story, and her own small involvement in it. They seemed pretty impressed.

Malcolm had wandered off in the meantime, though, and was poking curiously around all of the frozen dream figures that had previously been pursuing them so fiercely. Lucy called to him.

"Malcolm! Come back here! We don't know if those are really safe."

"Well, they do seem to be pretty harmless now," Gordon pointed out. "In fact, I'm kind of curious about them, too. Let's go take a look."

Shaking her head, Lucy followed him after Malcolm. Zoe joined them as well, though still keeping a corner of her attention on the gaping black void into which Jaden had vanished.

Fascination soon got the better of their caution and soon all of them were exploring excitedly through the crowd like children at a park. All of the figures were as solid and cold as marble, and completely immovable. Even the fire demon that Zoe had seen Jaden dance with was completely frozen, its flames stilled and solidified in midair, but still blazing orange. Gordon climbed up on it as though it were a boulder or a tree, laughed, and began hopping around between various heads and shoulders of the other creatures.

There were numerous other dancers from the ball and from the dream lord's court, including the thin, glass faced woman, the spiky metal monster, and the octopus-like tango dancer. The scantily clad pixies particularly caught Gordon's attention, until Lucy glared at him and told him not to be crude. And there were more, as well. A large, tree-ish figure, perhaps an Ent? A green, penguin sort of creature, with its head, wings and feet sticking out of a turtle's shell. A manticore. A serial axe murderer with a ski mask covering his face. There was even a mermaid, though none of them could figure out how on earth she had been following after them out of the water. And, of course, there were numerous demon soldiers in a variety of sizes, shapes and armors, but all fearsome even in paralysis.

Malcolm found one short, hairy demon and tried to take a bite out of its leg, but came away whimpering after hurting his teeth on the rock solid flesh.

"Wasn't that the one that nearly got us?" Lucy asked, pointing to it. "Back there in the hallway, when we ran into him? He put the whole army on our heels."

"Yeah," agreed Gordon, looking down. "I guess Malcolm wanted another shot at him. Looks like a bit of a tough chew for him, though. Pity."

Gordon bent down over the demon on whose shoulders he was currently balancing, and tugged at a sword that was in a scabbard slung at its back. It came loose with a jerk, nearly unseating Gordon from his perch, and he admired it.

"Now that's a sword meant to be used," he said, tossing his jeweled scimitar aside and brandishing his new weapon. "I'd much rather carry this on around than that wall decoration." Then suddenly he froze.

"What is it?" Lucy asked worriedly. Zoe also turned to look at Gordon from where she was examining the mermaid for a believable method of transportation.

"I thought I saw something move," Gordon hissed. "Over there, behind the tree thing. Where's Malcolm?"

"He's still over here," Lucy replied, quieter now, "next to me. Do you think one of them came unfrozen?"

"I don't know."

Gordon kept his eyes fixed on the place where he thought he had seen the movement, but crouched down, trying to maintain his vantage point without being so much out in plain sight. Then he saw it again, or something else. The movement of a shadow, slipping through the frozen fairies and demons like a prowling cat through a forest. It disappeared, and then he caught it again, closer to them this time, and he saw the tip of a wing peek out above its cover now.

"Something's coming this way," Gordon whispered urgently, sliding down from his perch now. "I think it's coming for us. Quick, get Malcolm, don't let him run off and get caught. Where's Zoe?"

"She was right here," Lucy said, "looking at the mermaid. I just saw her a moment ago."

"She's gone?"

"I didn't see what happened to her."

"Well, let's hope for her sake she just woke up. I'd have felt better if we still had her around, though. Let's go."

He took Lucy's arm and they headed off at an awkward, zigzagging trot, weaving between all the statues in the opposite direction from the approaching shadow Gordon had seen. Lucy drew her dagger and Gordon kept his newfound sword ready in his free hand. Malcolm skittered along behind them, glancing around anxiously, looking more worried than ever and wringing his tie in his small claws.

Gordon was trying to steer back to the front of the crowd, where Jaden had disappeared, though he didn't know if that would do much good. He could already tell that whatever was after them was getting closer, giving itself away by the occasional heavy footstep or scrape of a claw. Then he saw a golden brown shape flash between two of the statues only a couple of yards to their right, and he pulled Lucy to the left as fast as he could, heading through a slightly more open area in the crowd.

With a roar of malicious delight, a huge pair of bat-like wings erupted up out of the crowd behind them, pumped once and launched a demon into the air. With a hind leg, he gave himself an extra push off the head of a frozen guard and catapulted himself at Gordon and Lucy.

Gordon swung his sword at the demon, but was knocked flying as soon as the creature hit the ground in front of them. He slammed into a statue several feet away and slumped to the ground, stunned. He could see Lucy diving through a small gap between two other statues, and the demon reaching in a long muscular arm to catch her ankle and begin dragging her out. With dazed eyes, he watched what happened next.

* * *

Malcolm-Ixy was terrified. It had been bad enough since that awkward moment earlier when half of himself/herself/itself had suddenly appeared and decided to share the body. He/she/it wasn't even entirely clear on who he/she/it was anymore, though he was doing his best to continue thinking of himself just as Malcolm. It seemed the simplest thing to do. It had been quite a shake-up for him, though.

He had rather enjoyed romping around all the frozen demons for a while, but now the fun was decidedly gone. He could smell Bratch getting nearer as they ran twistingly through the crowd, and that specific fear was worse for him than the unknown was for Gordon and Lucy. The demon captain was by far the most frightening being Malcolm could think of to have chasing them.

When Bratch attacked, Malcolm almost fainted, and then ducked behind a nearby witch. But then he saw Gordon get thrown aside and crumple to the ground, and something stirred in Malcolm, or was it in Ixy? Malcolm didn't want Gordon to be hurt, he mustn't be hurt. And Lucy, she had been nice to him too, and now Bratch was after her, clawing at her leg, about to haul her out into the open. This was horrible. Malcolm knew he had to do something, had to take matters into his own claws. He didn't know what to do, but there was no time to worry about the details. He stepped out from behind his statue. He took a deep breath.

And he roared.

It was only a little roar at first, hardly more than a bark, really. And it made him jump a little in surprise, though Bratch didn't even seem to have noticed. Then he roared again, and it was louder this time, and longer, and deeper. And now Bratch turned around to see where this noise was coming from. Malcolm took another step forwards toward him, and on his third try he truly roared.

It was the roar of his dreams, the roar of a forty foot long Tyrannosaur thundering through a herd of shrieking Struthiomimuses. It was a roar that boomed and bellowed and echoed throughout the fear tunnel, shaking the statues to their very bases.

Bratch had let go of Lucy now, and was it Malcolm's imagination, or was there a look of uncertainty on the mighty captain's gruesome face? He continued to advance, and now Bratch seemed to be shrinking, until his head was level with Malcolm's own, and then even beneath it. The statues around him were also shrinking though, and Malcolm realized that he himself was changing size.

He was nearly upon Bratch now, and the demon leapt up into the air and flew at Malcolm's head with a desperate sounding yell. Wings beat around his head and claws tore at his face, but a gnash of his mighty jaw put a huge tear in one of the wings and Bratch howled in pain. With another roar, Malcolm tossed his massive head sideways, knocking the demon out of the air and onto the ground. With one huge, clawed foot, he pinned him there, and crushed him.

* * *

As soon as Bratch had released his hold on her, Lucy had ducked back into her cover again, and she watched as Malcolm roared and grew, knocking statues aside and leaving behind the torn remnants of his old shirt and tie. She covered her eyes when Bratch attacked, but couldn't keep herself from peeking out between her fingers as they fought.

And then Bratch was on the ground, and Malcolm gave a final, ear-splitting roar of triumph. Lucy wondered if it would be safe to come out yet, if this new Malcolm would remember her and still be friendly as he had been when he was the cute little puppy-like Malcolm. She glanced over at Gordon, and was glad to see he was still breathing, but he looked stunned and unable to move. Should she try to get to him and pull him to cover before Malcolm noticed him?

She was starting to inch over towards Gordon, when Malcolm's head dived down over his prey again. She froze, watching to make sure she hadn't been noticed.

Malcolm tore at the demon's neck, and when his head rose again, Lucy saw the light glint off of something dangling from one of his frightening, butcher's knife teeth. He tossed his head and a small amulet on a cord flew up into the air. With a surprisingly dainty movement, Malcolm nipped it from the air, and swallowed it.

Twenty-seventh Day

2005-11-27T22:39:00.000-08:00

If anyone wants to volunteer to chip in an extra thousand words or so here near the end, I wouldn't mind at all. I'm beginning to get sick of writing. Or rather, sick of the idea generation process. I'm spending as long trying to think of what happens next as I am in writing it. Ugh. Just three more days. Sigh.

However, I did decide today to go ahead and choose a title. I'm going to go with "Accidental Oneironauts," the plural version of Bertrand's suggestion, since there are multiple dream travelers. Thanks, Bertrand!

Chapter 28

2005-11-27T22:38:00.000-08:00

Jaden had recognized the lord of the dream mansion, but he had had hardly any time to react before the world slipped away from them. He wasn't actually sure if he saw anything move, or if everything around him and the dream lord simply vanished. There was a vague sensation of falling, but it seemed to pull in several directions at once, so that didn't necessarily mean anything. He seemed motionless next to the dream lord, who was the only thing he could see.

"You may think you have done well, Jaden Sands," the dream lord said, "having recovered your hand already. But let me assure you that was mere luck. Those two children took advantage of one of my servants to break into my domain and meddle in our affairs, but they will be punished in due course."

"Leave them alone!" Jaden replied. "They didn't mean to get into this. I don't even know them. Whatever is going on here is between you and me only."

"I am lord here and you will not tell me what to do or how to handle my affairs," the dream lord said calmly. "After I settle our business, I will deal with them. After all, as you say, they do not concern you."

Jaden didn't like the sound of that, but he figured he could only deal with one thing at a time anyway right now, so better to just let that go for the time being.

"So what are you going to do to me?" he asked.

"What do you think I'm going to do with you?"

"Well, you'll probably let me get nervous and stew a bit first, it looks like," Jaden said, irritated. "Then I'd like to say you'll give me a nice explanation for all of this, perhaps an apology, and then send me home. But somehow I don't think it's going to happen quite like that."

"No, not quite. Though I suppose that out of mere hospitality I might offer you a small explanation. Not that it will do you much good."

"Well, go for it anyway."

The dream lord was standing about two yards away from Jaden, but without seeming to move from his place, he tapped Jaden sharply in the chest with a thin, white finger.

"You," he said, "represent the oppression of our world, of the dreamlands."

"What?" Jaden was confused.

"Your people think that this place, that we ourselves, exist only for your own use and pleasure. But that is a lie. The dreamlands were here long before your kind ever existed, and we will be here long after you are gone. Yet you think that a few delta brain waves and rapid eye movements entitle you to come in here by the millions every night and have your way with our entire world, doing whatever you please and leaving us to clean up after you in the morning."

"But," Jaden stammered, "it's just dreaming. We can't help it. It's just the way things are. Most people don't even think it's real."

"You have something called slavery in your world, I believe, yes?"

"Well, yes. I think it's abolished in most places now, but sure, there's been a lot of it over the centuries."

"Then I am sure that, from your modern, enlightened viewpoint, you are familiar with many of the old justifications for slavery. 'It is the natural way of things,' for instance, or 'God intends for these people to be enslaved.' Excuses for ignorance and cruelty, that is all they were. And the ignorant will go on being so for as long as it is convenient for them and for as long as it keeps them in power. For change to occur, the oppressed need to speak up and fight back."

"So that's what you're trying to do, then?" Jaden asked. "By stealing my arm? What good is that supposed to do?"

"Your arm, in and of itself, is not important. What it symbolizes is important. The dreamlands are fighting back. The system we are trapped in does not allow us access to your world as easy as yours to ours, so we must take what we can get. When I find a rip in the boundaries, I cross over, and always I bring something back, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant. With each trophy, the dreamlands become a little stronger, and the inhabitants grow more adventurous, more willing to fight alongside me and the others like me.

"Claiming a piece of you, however, was an important coup for me. Since it allowed me to maintain a connection to you, I was able to leave exceedingly obvious clues for you regarding where your hand had gone. I knew that the excess of dream activity around you would attract the attention of an oneironaut or two somewhere, and that old fool Oddbury very obligingly came along and helped you get yourself into my clutches. And that girl Zoe who thought she was so clever dreaming herself over here to find you, she was also very useful for facilitating our communication. I shall have to see if I can deal with her later as well. I am not pleased about what you and she did to the East wall of my Great Hall."

"You can't actually harm her, though, right?" Jaden interjected. "Since she really is just dreaming, unlike me. She can just wake up and be safe."

"Yes, perhaps," the dream lord said, with a hint of annoyance in his voice. "But I expect we can find something… unpleasant to happen to her, at the very least."

"And those kids, they're probably just dreaming, too, so you can't touch them either."

"Oh, no, there you're wrong," the dream lord sounded much more pleased at this. "Those two have performed some very clumsy magic to travel all the way here from their homes. I don't believe they could find their way back even if I left them alone. But no, they will be mine. This hunting trip of mine will really have a far better result than I had dared to hope."

"So what are you going to do, then? Mount us on your wall like some deer that you shot or something?"

"Figuratively speaking, yes. Three human beings snatched from what you call 'Reality' and subsequently destroyed will be remarkably inspirational. I expect it to provide the greatest boost our cause has ever experienced."

"And I'm just supposed to take this lying down, am I?"

"Not at all. I fully expect and hope that you will put up a highly entertaining struggle. I am nothing, after all, if not a sportsman. In fact," here the dream lord drew from his robes the silver scepter he had held back in the court, "we will even have an audience."

He swept the scepter gracefully around, and all above and surrounding them appeared ranks of bodies and faces that looked like the crowd Jaden had seen and danced with back in the court. He and the dream lord, however, still floated in featureless darkness within the large ring of spectators. Jaden looked around at them, and then back at the dream lord.

"Alright, so they're all ready. What now?"

"Now," said the dream lord, with relish, "the hunt begins."

He pointed downwards with his scepter into the inky blackness below their feet, and now Jaden could see a tiny patch of green far, far below them. It gradually grew bigger, and Jaden realized that it was rising rapidly up towards them, or they were falling towards it, he couldn't tell which. Soon he could see that the green patch was actually a forest, and to the right he could make out the forms of a hunting party approaching it. The hunting party was composed of demons, loping along and carrying a variety of different weapons. There was only one horse, saddled and bridled, and with a hunting horn hanging from its saddle horn, but rider-less. The demons began to fan out as they neared the forest, like hunting hounds. The trees of the forest were nearly upon him now, though. And just before they engulfed him, Jaden saw the dream lord give him a quick salute before falling outside the forest, towards the hunting party and his waiting horse.

Suddenly there were leaves and branches all around, slapping and scraping Jaden as he flew past them. Then he landed with a dull thud on the ground, the wind knocked out of him. He lay there for a few moments, catching his breath, then was roused by the sound of a hunting horn in the distance. He got to his feet and saw that he was now clad in light, flexible, leather armor and had in his hand a short halberd, about his own height, with both a cutting, axe-like edge and a spear-like point at the tip. To his waist was strapped a long dagger. At least he wasn't being thrown into this completely unprepared.

The hunting horn sounded again, nearer this time. Jaden began trotting off through the woods in the opposite direction. He knew that he would have to face the hunting party eventually, but he hoped to perhaps find a more convenient location from which to defend himself, perhaps with some features of the landscape to block off certain angles of attack. Or if nothing else, he could simply delay the confrontation a bit.

As he went, he tried to think about what advantages he might have that he could use. The dream lord had expected an interesting challenge it sounded like, so maybe Jaden had more of a chance in this than he thought he did. He racked his brains for another minute or so, hearing the hunting horn draw still nearer. Then he remembered that he was still in the dreamlands, and he remembered what Zoe had shown him back in the ballroom, about being able to manipulate the environment here in ways that weren't possible back in the everyday world. Jaden wondered how much control he had to change things here.

He plucked a leaf off of a tree and rubbed it between his fingers, willing it to change somehow. He didn't know if there was a precise way to do these things, but he tried to imagine the leaf changing form. And as he did, it softened in his fingers like clay, and he was able to roll it into a little cylinder. He pointed the end, making a dart out of it, then flung it at another tree. It flew straight and stuck fast in the wood. Very interesting. So normal rules definitely did not apply here. He would have to think of something creative to do with that.

He realized then that he had stopped running while he thought about that. He collected himself with a start, and was about to dive back into his flight when he heard a movement in the bushes from the direction he was about to head into. The sound was enough to give him a split second warning before the demon launched itself out from behind a tree at him.

Jaden just barely dodged and the demon's sword whistled past within inches of his ear as the momentum carried the demon on past Jaden. It caught itself quickly, though, and whirled back around at him. Jaden parried the next blow clumsily with his halberd, but then was knocked to the ground by the next one. He rolled aside as the demon leapt at him again, and he tried to jab at it with his halberd, but he couldn't get a good angle from down on the ground.

A small corner of Jaden's mind that kept itself walled off from the adrenaline was analyzing the situation. The real problem here was that Jaden had absolutely no experience at hand-to-hand combat. He might as well have been holding a garden hose for all the good the halberd was doing him. He could conceivably gain some sort of speed and agility advantage over the demon's superior size and strength, but not if the weapon and the necessary movements were so foreign to him.

This analytic corner of his mind then had an intuition. A dream, it thought, is merely a sensory model for a set of data. Neurons fire in someone's brain, and in their dreams they translate this into sensory perceptions, even though the actual sensory input does not exist in the same world as the dreaming brain. The scenario currently being enacted was clearly a creation of the dream lord. However, since Jaden was also in the dreamlands, he was free to create a new model of his own as a way of processing the given data in his environment.

His conscious mind didn't even stop to think about how he should translate his situation. The answer was obvious. What was he the best at? What could he compete in that would give him the best chance of success? He could dance.

Jaden rolled away from another blow and leapt to his feet. Once his mind had realized what needed to happen, it all seemed taken care of automatically. He didn't know how he was actually doing it.

He now had two views of the forest clearing in which he and the demon were fighting. One was the obvious one that he had been seeing all along. But in the other view, there was only a dance floor, some fast swing music, and Zoe. Jaden was dancing with her, though he couldn't tell if she knew what was really going on in the forest or not. She just kept her eyes locked on his and followed as precisely as ever.

Jaden concentrated on that view, and on dancing perfectly in sync with the music and with Zoe. As they whipped through the swingouts, he saw their motions translated into his body in the forest, dodging and parrying the demon's thrusts, far more nimble than before. A bright trill came from one of the horns in the swing tune, and Jaden led Zoe in a series of twirls that matched the music perfectly. His halberd seemed to twist around the demon's sword and knock it aside, sneaking in to leave a bleeding gash in its right arm. The demon howled and lunged, and the music began speeding up. The more closely and musically Jaden danced to the music, the better he fought, and when he stumbled slightly or mis-stepped was when the demon got in some hits of its own. But as long as Jaden was dancing, he was in his element and he had the advantage. The music roared to a climax, with blasts of blaring horns, with a flurry of traveling twists and spins, and with several blinding movements of the halberd that sent the demon's sword flying into the bushes. A final note, a deep dip, and the halberd was thrust home into the demon's chest.

Jaden stood panting in the clearing, over the demon's body, with vague images of Zoe and the dance hall still floating around him. Then he turned and dashed off into the woods again.

During the battle, though, another demon had caught his scent, and Jaden could hear it trailing him slightly behind and to his right. And gaining. Jaden kept running, but began shifting himself back into the dance. Music began playing for a polka, and he was dancing with Zoe again. They were on a crowded floor this time, dodging other couples that crowded them or blocked their path, as Jaden in his other view skirted trees in the forest.

Then the other demon was upon him. This one had a net and a spear. Jaden and Zoe tried to dance faster, looking for space on the floor between other couples. The spear shot out at Jaden, but a quick turn caused it to miss him by a hair's breadth. The demon, still slightly behind them, gave a mighty leap and cast the net at him. Jaden and Zoe spied the slimmest of openings, just where two other couples with poor steering were about to collide, and they slipped through it, leaving the couples to knock each other over, and the net to fall harmlessly behind them. They were at the outside track of the dance floor now, and transitioned smoothly into polka redowa. Jaden's running form suddenly seemed to glide ahead at twice its previous speed, leaping lightly over rocks and bushes, and the pursuing demon was left behind, stumbling through the undergrowth.

Jaden and Zoe continued to fly at full speed around the room, and Jaden almost tuned out the forest entirely in the exhilaration of the polka. But then the music came to a screeching halt and Jaden felt himself collide with something solid. A boot at the level of his chest kicked and knocked him to the ground. A black horse reared above him, and he rolled aside just before its hooves hit the ground where he had fallen.

The dream lord was looking down at him from the horse, a silver hunting horn hanging from his saddle, and the silver scepter still in his hand.

"Very good," he said silkily. "Quite resourceful, in fact. I hear you are quite a hit up in the stands, and I must say that even I am somewhat impressed. However," here he dismounted from his horse in a single, fluid motion, and came to stand over Jaden, "it is now down to us. Stand up!"

Jaden felt himself rise to his feet, as though pulled by strings at his joints like a puppet. He faced the dream lord and tried to hold his halberd in what he hoped was a confident, yet menacing position. The dream lord just laughed.

"Let us see now," he said, "how you fare against a real enemy."

Twenty-sixth Day

2005-11-26T13:24:00.000-08:00

I wrote this chapter in bits and pieces here at Lacey's apartment yesterday and today. So it may be kind of scattered.

Chapter 27

2005-11-26T13:23:00.000-08:00

Jaden and Zoe came to a halt on the other side of the walls, stumbling slightly as they landed on the stone floors of the hallway. The music was fainter now, being on the other side of the thick walls, but they heard the waltz end in a dramatic flurry of notes and chords.

"They'll notice you're gone soon," said Zoe. "Since I'm actually dreaming, it's like I'm a part of the dreamlands, and they hardly notice me. But you're different, and they can sense that. Plus, everyone's looking to dance with you. They'll probably be out here after us any minute."

And indeed, when Jaden glanced down the hallway to his left, he realized that they had come out on the side of the Hall with the main entrance, and the two trolls on guard there had already spotted them from about ten yards away. One had just thrown open the door to sound the alarm in the hall, and the other was clearly struggling, in his tiny troll brain, between staying where he was or abandoning his post to chase the escapees on his short and stumpy legs.

Jaden and Zoe didn't wait for him to decide, but turned immediately and took off in the other direction. Behind them they heard the great doors crash open against the wall as the horde of dreamland dancers within burst forth to give chase.

They had no real idea of where to go at this point, so they simply ran as fast as they could, taking whatever turn seemed easiest at each juncture, to keep ahead of their pursuers. Then suddenly, coming around one turn, they nearly collided with two young teenagers, followed by a small dinosaur in a shirt. Both parties pulled up short in surprise. The boy noticed Jaden's right arm immediately.

"Hey! You're the guy who lost his arm!" he said, in a Scottish accent.

"Hey! You're…" Jaden started, "I haven't the foggiest idea who you are."

"But we're being chased right now by an entire ballroom of dream creatures," Zoe filled in, "so you two had better turn around and come with us."

"No good. We've got a pile of crazy demon soldier things on our heels."

The sounds of shouts and running feet were growing louder from each direction now. All four people looked frantically around and zeroed in on the one hallway branching off to the side.

"That way!" they said in unison, and took off, with Malcolm scampering to keep up.

Their head start was very slim by this point, but they heard the two pursuing contingents converge at the juncture behind them as they ran. Nearly the entire population of the castle was probably there by now, not to mention all the guests invited for the dance, and possibly the populations of some neighboring counties as well. Simply coordinating that many people, demons, fairies, trolls and other miscellaneous creatures to not over run each other and to head down the same corridor bought them a little bit of time. But soon the chase was in full force again, and there was nowhere to run but straight ahead.

A hand grabbed Jaden by the shoulder and he shouted in surprise, thinking they had already been overtaken. But then the hand clambered down his arm and he realized it was his own. It held on to his right bicep and swung its other end down to touch the empty elbow. Skin, bone and muscle fused together and suddenly, for the first time in two weeks, Jaden could feel his right hand again, and move it at will. He glanced over to the boy running next to him, who gestured at the now empty quiver on his back.

"We'd heard someone was missing a hand," he panted, "and we happened to come across it, so we picked it up." He slung the quiver off his back and tossed it aside.

"Thanks," Jaden panted back, and they kept on running.

Around the same time, they all began to notice that the corridor they were in was very unusual. It was getting extremely dark, and there was not a single door or hallway branching off of it anywhere. It simply seemed to keep going straight ahead, without turning, forever and ever. The stone walls seemed to echo in inconsistent ways, making their pursuers sometimes sound far off in the distance, and other times right on their heels, though if they looked back, they always appeared to be the same distance away. It's like a nightmare, Jaden thought.

And when he thought that, he realized where he was, and that it might literally be a nightmare. He looked around and the others appeared to have had a similar thought. Zoe nodded at him.

"It's a fear tunnel," she said, between breaths. "An awful lot of the buildings in the dreamlands have them. They're easy to get stuck in, hard to get out of."

And indeed, by this point Jaden was feeling as though he had been running forever, and as though he probably would continue to run forever, mindlessly fleeing a terrifying enemy that would never quite reach him, but never quite let him relax, either.

Gordon was beginning to notice a sensation of falling. He had had dreams like this before, endlessly falling through the blackness towards some unknown fate, struggling against thin air but unable to do anything effective. He could look down and see that his body was still running along a stone corridor and carrying a jeweled scimitar, but in his mind, he felt like he was falling.

Though Lucy's rational mind told her she was still running in a straight line, she felt as though she were frantically searching for a way out of a sealed, featureless room that was slowly shrinking in on her. It had been years since she had had that dream, and she thought it had been left behind in childhood. But now her mind was being overrun with that same old frantic obsession of trying desperately to find a way out of something that didn't exist.

Malcolm was reminded of being duct taped all around and locked in a shoe box, struggling fruitlessly to escape. He didn't like it one bit, and just kept running as fast as he could to get away from it.

Zoe was the only one of them who was truly dreaming, but because she was aware of that fact, it actually gave her an advantage over the others. She knew that she still had the most important part of herself back at home and safely in bed, and she could therefore step back a bit mentally and look at the situation more objectively than any of the others. Having had so many lucid dreams in her life, she was used to finding creative ways of dealing with nightmares, or with anything else unpleasant that appeared in her dreams. She knew there were other things going on here than usually happened in dreams, but she was also in more comfortable territory than her companions were.

"We've got to stop!" she called out to the others.

"What? Are you crazy?" came back the reply, from three separate mouths. "They'll catch us!"

"No, listen to me!" she went on. "We're in the dreamlands, right?"

"Right," said Jaden.

"Sure, if you say so," said Gordon.

"So this is a nightmare, right?"

"Sure seems like it."

"And when you have a nightmare like this, it basically never ends, right? You just keep running until you wake up."

"Right."

"But we can't wake up now. Or rather, I could if I wanted to, but none of you can. So we have to get out of this in some other way. And what is it you never do in these endless chasing nightmares?"

"Stop running?"

"Exactly. You never stop running and turn to face the danger, so it pursues you forever. When you're aware that you're dreaming, though, you can take control. That's what we need to do."

"Alright," said Jaden. "I don't think any of us have a better plan, On three, then? One… two… three!"

Jaden, Zoe, Gordon and Lucy all stopped on a dime and spun around to face back down the corridor. Malcolm skittered on a little in confusion, then turned back to peer out from behind them.

The light seemed to be coming back to the corridor now, though they could find no source for it, and they saw a seemingly endless army of dream figures approaching them at a gallop. But then they began to slow down, as though a film were running on a projector with a dying battery. By the time they had approached within a dozen yards or so, they had slowed to a crawl, and they eventually froze entirely, just inches from where the refugees from the real world held their ground.

Jaden looked around nervously, and saw a confused, but slightly relieved, look on his companions' faces.

"Well, I guess that worked out," he said, hesitantly. "Thanks, Zoe. But now what?"

In answer, she simply gestured back towards the frozen crowd in front of them. From the middle of it arose one figure that still retained its freedom of movement. Tall and black robed it grew upwards until it towered over the others, and then began to glide forwards, passing through the mass of bodies like a fog.

It stopped before Jaden and looked down at him. The others simply watched, feeling as frozen as the opposing horde. A white face looked out from the black hood, and spoke in a voice that whispered through their minds louder than anything they had ever heard.

"My business is with this one," the voice said, "and does not concern the rest of you. You may wait here and I will deal with you later."

And with that, a section of ground beneath Jaden and the figure disappeared, and they were gone from view.

Twenty-fourth Day

2005-11-24T22:01:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! I managed to cram most of today's writing into the morning before the festivities began, and I'm pretty much caught up and on track right now, having just cleared 40,000 words. Tomorrow, though, Mom and I head up to Portland to visit Lacey, so we'll see how much more I get done this weekend. Only one week left!

Chapter 26

2005-11-24T22:00:00.000-08:00

Gordon and Lucy listened at the inside of the door of the collections room, but heard nothing to indicate that the steward was still out there. His pounding and yelling had stopped.

"Maybe he went to get reinforcements," Gordon said, "or a spare key." There was a key hanging next to the door on the inside, which the steward had neglected to take with him. "We could try sneaking out now."

"Or maybe he's just waiting quietly," countered Lucy, "hoping we do just that so he can catch us by surprise."

"Right. But it's like the crown jewels of Scotland, isn't it? There's no way to tell without actually checking. And we can't just sit here forever. Sooner or later someone will get a key and come in after us."

"Why don't we look around for some weapons first? We should be able to find something useful in here, and then we can at least be armed before we try our luck."

"Good idea."

They prowled along a few rows of display tables, looking for anything suitable. Gordon found a jeweled scimitar that was probably intended as much for decoration as for battle, but seemed appropriately sharp nonetheless. Lucy found a long, thin dagger in a leather case, which she tucked into her belt, and also a small mace that must have been taken from an elfin warrior, since it was a very convenient size for her to swing easily. She had tucked the kitten inside her sweatshirt, and cradled it with one arm, leaving the other free to carry the mace. Gordon had found a suit of light leather armor, unfortunately too big for him, and taken from it a quiver of arrows. With the arrows emptied, he was able to put the hand in it and strap it to his back. The hand scrabbled around a bit, and clung to the edge of the quiver as though trying to peek out, but then seemed to understand and be content to stay where it was.

They looked around for Malcolm and saw that he had wandered off towards the back of the large room. They followed him back there and saw that he was sniffing curiously around what seemed to be a huge cage covered with a large burlap sheet. Gordon picked up a corner of the covering to peek underneath it. Inside was a gigantic, brown, furry creature, curled up and sleeping. They couldn't tell what it was. Malcolm gave a squeal of fear when he saw it, and the creature awoke, uncurling and swinging its two bear-like heads around to look at them. A row of spikes down its back unfolded and stood on end. It growled menacingly, and Gordon dropped the cover quickly, hoping it would just go back to sleep.

"What was that?!"

"Whatever it was, it's certainly scarier than the average bear. I wouldn't want to get into a row with it."

They collected Malcolm and went back up to the main door, after checking around to make sure there wasn't a back way out. They tried listening again, but the door was so thick that someone could have been talking just on the other side and they wouldn't have heard a thing. But then the question was answered for them, when the lock began clicking and turning from the other side.

The door was yanked open and the steward leapt into the room, only to have Lucy's mace brought down immediately on his head, sending him staggering to the floor. But he had brought guards as well as a key, and the first one clambered in over him, aiming a snarling grin full of fangs at Gordon. Gordon took a swipe with his scimitar, which only grazed one of the guard's arms, but pulled him up short in surprise. Another guard then shoved the first forward to charge into the room as well.

"Run!" Gordon shouted.

Malcolm was already yards ahead of them, and Gordon and Lucy barreled down the aisle after him, trying to pull down tables and cases behind them as they went. Some of these slowed their pursuers, though some the demons simply leapt over. Gordon realized that they were heading back towards the large cage with the two headed bear creature in it.

"Get behind the cage," he told Lucy, who was ahead of him. "Try and get Malcolm back there, too. Then help me get the cover off it."

She nodded as she ran, then grabbed an edge of the burlap cover as she passed the cage. They hauled the sheet off, sending light streaming into the cage and causing the beast to wake up with a snarl. Their pursuers looked surprised at this, but kept on after them, gaining now.

Gordon looked around quickly, saw the latch on the cage door, fumbled with it for a moment, then got it open. He pulled the door open, keeping himself behind it, as the beast clambered to its feet. The guards pulled up short, but were knocked forward again by the steward, who had recovered and was running along behind trying to keep up and hadn't noticed why everyone was stopping.

The creature gave an ear splitting roar from each of its two heads and lunged forward out of the cage and at the first things it saw, which were the guards and the steward. Gordon, Lucy and Malcolm cowered behind the cage and watched as it batted one of the guards aside with a gigantic paw, sending him crashing into a glass display case. The other managed to dodge and get a jab in at it with his sword, and the steward had picked up a battle axe from somewhere and was making clumsy swipes with it.

Gordon led the way, creeping out from behind the cage and under some tables to a parallel aisle a few rows over, and the others followed him. When they had put a little sideways distance between themselves and the melee, they stood up and started running back towards the door. One of the guards saw them and shouted, but couldn't turn to run without getting tackled by the bear monster. The creature had taken some severe wounds from the weapons already, though, and looked like it might not provide a distraction for must longer.

They got out the door and closed it behind them, not that it would slow anyone down once they started after them again, but it did feel better to close it. Malcolm nudged them off in the direction in which the corridor sloped slightly upwards, and they took off running. After the first turn or two, they began to hear running footsteps, shouts, and clanking armor behind them.

"They must have finished off the bear thingy," Gordon panted.

The turned another corner and collided full on with another armed guard coming out of a door. This one was squat and hairy, but still bigger than Gordon or Lucy, and wore a Viking style helmet. They were knocked backwards by the collision, though the guard barely stumbled.

"Well, well, what have we here, eh?" He picked up Gordon and Lucy each with a large hand around their shirt fronts. Then he called back over his shoulder. "This really is our lucky day, Vormas. They're just fallin' outta the skies for us today. Ha!"

Looking past the guard into the room he had come out of, Gordon could see an entire mess hall of demon soldiers, all perking up with interest, and some heading towards them already.

"Oh bollocks, now we're in for it."

But then Malcolm, who had not yet been caught, leapt up with a miniature Tyrannosaurus roar, and chomped his jaws down on the wrist holding Gordon. Even from a four foot tall dinosaur, a vicious bite is nothing to be trifled with, and the guard yelled in pain and anger, dropping both Gordon and Lucy to give Malcolm a clubbing blow to the head with his other hand.

All three fell to the floor, and Gordon and Lucy were up and running again as soon as they bounced back up. Malcolm left a nasty gash in the guard's calf before being kicked down the hall after him, then he too started running. But the alarm was raised now. The steward and the two guards from the collections room had caught up and were yelling at everyone to pursue the escaped prisoners, so now there was an entire horde of demon soldiers on their heels. Some were lagging behind the pack, struggling with armor that had been taken half off in the mess hall, but some with long legs were gaining rapidly. And this time there was no convenient bear monster to let loose to slow the pursuit. Gordon, Lucy and Malcolm ran for their lives.

Twenty-third Day

2005-11-23T21:48:00.000-08:00

I kind of needed to stall a bit, so we've got another dance here.

Chapter 25

2005-11-23T21:46:00.000-08:00

Jaden stood before the Master of the castle, with all the eyes of the assembled court upon them. Without either of them moving a muscle, the ropes that bound him fell to the floor.

"We can't have our guest unduly encumbered, can we?" said the Master, as invisible hands whisked the ropes away. "Not on the evening of the Grand Ball."

On the last words, he swung his scepter around in a dramatic arc, and the hall around them changed. The purple carpet down the aisle disappeared, and Jaden noticed that the marble floor beneath his feet felt softer, more like a sprung wood floor, though it still looked like marble. The lighting dimmed, coming from candles in chandeliers that hung suspended in the air with no visible supports. Jaden couldn't remember if they had been there earlier, or if the light had come from somewhere else before.

A thin, reedy tone pierced through the air, a note midway between an A and a B flat. Jaden cringed at it, then remembered in surprise that he had never had perfect pitch before. He decided it must be part of traveling in the dreamlands that you occasionally find yourself knowing things just because that's the way they are, like you do in regular dreams. Then he realized that there were other tones playing and shifting slightly to match the first one, and he turned around to see that the dais and throne were gone. In their place was a bizarre sextet of musicians.

The one that played the reed instrument to which the others were tuning was a thin and reedy creature itself. It coiled over and around its chair and its instrument, which was also curved and twisted and lined with finger holes placed convenient to various small appendages. Another played the violin, or the instrument most like a violin, though it had an extra low string and also several sympathetic strings, like a sitar. It was a little more humanoid in form, but with a very wide, frog-like head and long, delicate fingers. The bass player was so small that the bass had to lay flat on the floor. The furry little creature held four ropes connected to pulleys on a wooden frame that lead to plectrums that each plucked one of the four strings. The bassist hopped around on the fingerboard, stopping each string at the desired note and tugging the appropriate rope to pluck it. The pianist and the players of the other two, unrecognizable instruments, were equally odd. All wore purple and white tuxedos modified to fit their various shapes.

The beings and creatures of the court were by now all milling around and chatting excitedly. Many had on fancy ball gowns, or ball gown equivalents to match their physiology. Some were changing shoes for dancing, or even changing feet in some cases. Jaden felt suddenly lost in the crowd and he wondered if he could just slip away and go back to looking for his hand. Could it be that easy? Maybe they didn't really care that much about him after all.

Then the Master seemed to appear next to him again out of nowhere. He towered briefly over the crowd and clapped his hands twice, slowly. The hubbub quieted and a small space cleared around them, and the Master seemed to be a more normal six feet tall or so again.

"Before we begin, I would like to remind you all," he said, in his quiet yet piercing voice, "to demonstrate the hospitality of our land by dancing with our guest. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Mr. Jaden Sands!"

At this, Jaden felt himself drawn violently up into the air and spun around several times in a full circle. When that stopped, he was hovering some ten feet above the ground, and he was dressed in an elegant suit that had even had the right lower arm altered to fit him. A mixture of laughter and applause came from the crowd as he floated slowly back down to the floor.

So much for sneaking off unnoticed, then. It appeared that he would be the center of attention, at least for a while. And was he really supposed to dance? He had no idea what dancing would be like here, and he was still missing his right hand. It had been bad enough dancing with the paralyzed version, but having it gone entirely would be very difficult.

The music began. It was a polka, fast, twisted and bizarre. The violin and the reed instrument seemed to be playing in parallel major seconds, and the other instruments were divided on which melody they harmonized with, sometimes switching back and forth. The tune had an incredible drive to it, good for a polka, but a lot of it may simply have been due to the desire simply to get farther away from it.

Jaden wondered if someone would ask him to dance or if he was expected to do it, but his question was soon answered for him. A tall, elegant figure in a black gown swept down upon him and they whirled off into the now stampeding crowd. Jaden polkaed like he never had before. The music had sounded like normal polka tempo, so why did he feel like he was struggling to keep up? They must have been going double time, at least. He puffed and panted, and dropped steps frequently, practically running to keep up, but his partner glided around him as though floating along in a lake. Jaden stole a quick glance at her feet, but saw nothing between the bottom of her dress and the floor. He looked into her face and saw nothing but an empty glass mask.

And then he was snatched away from his partner and spun off in another direction. Two large fairies or pixies had a hold of him. Whatever they were, they had small, lithe bodies, translucent wings, and few clothes. They flew around him, giggling incessantly and periodically picking Jaden up to spin him around in the air and then drop him back into the flow of the dance to watch him try to recover. On one of these reentries, Jaden collided with a cloaked figure whose partner reached out to knock him aside with a large, heavily muscled arm.

This flung him into the arms of an androgynous, metallic dancer covered in spikes, which pinned Jaden painfully to itself while hardly pausing to lose its momentum. The spikes dug in painfully on each bounce of each beat of the polka

The polka seemed to continue for hours, with Jaden being flung violently from one partner to the next. This is like a nightmare from back when I was first learning to dance and was so bad at it, Jaden thought as the music finally ended and he collapsed, panting, to the floor. But that was only the first dance.

The music started up again almost immediately, and this time it wasn't anything that he could recognize as danceable. It changed time signatures almost constantly, moving between four, seven, thirteen, six and a half, or pi beats per measure, and the first two beats of each phrase were upside down, which Jaden knew would make absolutely no sense back in the real world. It barely did even there in the dreamlands.

He realized that he had ended the polka near the doors of the Great Hall, and he headed towards them, wondering if he could sneak out now. But two troll guards like the ones on the outside of the doors were there blocking the way. One of them pushed him back with the butt of his spear. However, Jaden noticed that they let other dancers through who wanted to go out for a breath of fresh air, so they were clearly under orders to keep him inside.

He didn't have long to consider it, though, since he was once again grabbed from behind and drawn out onto the dance floor. Another agonizingly long dance followed, with Jaden trying desperately to perform the correct steps to the strange music and being traded from partner to partner, as before. And more dances followed that one, each more difficult, painful, and/or mind bending than the one before.

The tango was one of the worst. Jaden ended up dancing most of it with a being that seemed to be made almost entirely of fire. Jaden could feel his skin crackling, bubbling and scorching in the searing heat but he was unable to get away. He didn't understand why it didn't simply burn him to death, but when he was finally pulled free he saw not a single mark on his skin. His rescuer was a large, wobbly, tentacled lady who oozed around him, squeezing him into bizarrely convoluted moves.

When the tango ended and he finally gasped free of his partner, Jaden leaned against a pillar and wondered how long he had been dancing. Hours? Days? Weeks? The ball showed no sign of stopping though, and he had the suspicion that there had really only been a small number of dances so far. The music began yet again, and Jaden felt a tap on his shoulder. With a groan of despair, he turned.

And found himself looking at Zoe. He blinked several times. It was definitely the girl he had met at Jammix, and she didn't seem to have wings or claws or any of the other oddities of the other dancers in the room. She did, however, have an elegant, silvery gray dress that looked like the color of dreams.

"Now that the tango is over," she asked politely, ignoring Jaden's bewildered look, "would you like to waltz? I was very careful not to ask you for the tango this time, did you notice?"

"Honestly, no, I'm afraid I didn't," Jaden replied, recovering somewhat. "It's been all I can do to just stay alive out there, and I didn't even realize you were here. But yes, please, I'd love a waltz. A real waltz."

They began dancing in a barrel hold position, which worked well enough to deal with the missing support of Jaden's right arm.

"So what are you doing here?" Jaden asked as they danced. "Are you dreaming?"

"Yes, of course."

"But you know you're dreaming. That seems unusual."

"I've been having lucid dreams since I was six. I'm used to it. When one started tonight, I felt like dancing and, well," she blushed slightly, "I remembered dancing with you last week, so I thought I'd look for you. I'm not sure why I put you in this weird ballroom, though, or why you don't have a right hand anymore. Sorry about that. It wasn't intentional, but even lucid dreams are not always completely under my control."

"Well, the truth is, I'm not really part of your dream. At least, not in the usual way." And Jaden tried to sum up his situation and how he had gotten here. Zoe listened intently and seemed to take it all very much in stride.

From time to time as they spoke and danced, other dancers would take a swipe at Jaden and try to steal him away. But now that he was more in control of his dancing, and also had Zoe helping to keep an eye out, they were able to evade the attempts at cutting in. Zoe seemed even lighter and quicker on her feet than she had in real life, which was saying a lot.

"Alright, then," she said, when Jaden had finished the Reader's Digest version of his story, "let's go find you your hand."

"As far as I can tell, I'm trapped here, and I haven't seen my hand anywhere around this ballroom."

"You may seem to be trapped here, but I'm not. This is still at least partly my dream. So let's go."

The music was beginning to speed up.

"But what do we do?"

"Let's try getting a running start first."

As the tempo increased, the bass and the high, reedy lead instrument began doubling together on a fast, staccato melody, while the other instruments created a smooth background of increasing tension with rising chords flowing one into the other. Jaden and Zoe broke into a redowa, dodging past and between the other couples on the floor until they found a clear track at the outer edge of the room. They began barreling down it full speed, as though on a race track.

"Now what?" Jaden asked as they practically flew down the length of the hall.

"Keep going, dead ahead."

"There's a wall there."

"I know. I think it will be okay."

"You think?"

"We're still in a dream, remember? We can make this work. Just go for it."

"Okay then… here goes nothing."

And just as the music reached the final crescendo of the waltz, Jaden and Zoe took one last redowa leap and flew directly through the solid stone wall.

Twenty-second Day

2005-11-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

Yep, still writing.

Today's title suggestion of note comes from Miriam: "One Hand Dreaming." This weekend I'm going to finally decide on one to actually use. Honest.

Chapter 24

2005-11-22T21:45:00.000-08:00

Gordon and Lucy crept to the door of the cathedral, which was open a slight crack, and peered out. A cold stone corridor peered back in at them, lined with torches. Then they heard the tread of heavy feet coming around a bend in the hall, and they pulled back behind the door. It sounded like two guards on patrol. Their weapons and hodge-podge armor clanked as they talked.

"What do ye reckon the Master'll do with his new prisoner, eh? Captain Bratch seemed to think he was an important one, but buggered if I know why."

"Thiss iss the one whose hand he took, of coursse."

"What one?"

"Two weekss ago. He bragged about it for dayss. Very proud of it."

"Huh. I didn't hear anything of it."

"That iss because you have no connectionss in the court to tell you the newss." The hissing guard seemed to be gloating in his sophistication over the gruff one. "You need to be part of… Ssssociety to learn these things."

"So tell me about it already!"

"The hand iss hiss favorite trophy from the Other Ssside, and the Master planned to use it as bait. It iss very difficult to get trophiess from there, sso now that a human being hass come to him, I expect he will…"

The voices faded with the clop of the soldiers' footsteps as they disappeared down the hall. Gordon and Lucy looked at each other.

"Do you have any idea what's going on?" Lucy whispered.

"Not much. But wherever we are, I'm pretty sure this isn't St. Andrew's anymore. Did you manage a peek through the door? Those weren't regular soldiers. They were monsters."

Lucy shuddered. "And it sounds like someone else is here, too. I mean, maybe someone else like us. Trapped here or something."

"Yeah." Gordon looked out the door again. "Though at least we're not trapped here. Yet."

"We just don't know where we are or how to get out."

"Right. Could be worse."

Then Gordon jumped as he felt a movement in his hand. He looked down and saw that Ixy was twitching again. He grabbed her tightly, expecting her to try to run away, but she seemed only to be twitching.

"Is she possessed again?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know. Maybe partly?"

"She seems to want to go somewhere. Like that direction, down the hall." Lucy pointed to the right, and Ixy's twitches did seem to be generally in that direction. "Maybe she's trying to tell us something?"

They slipped out into the hallway and moved a few steps to the right. Ixy seemed to relax a bit. Then Gordon tried moving back to the left, and the twitching started up, more energetically.

"Yep. She definitely seems to want to go this direction," Gordon said. "Think we should follow?"

"Do we have a better plan?"

They shrugged at each other and moved off down the corridor. At the first juncture they came to, they paused to look cautiously down the crossing hall. When they saw no one was coming, Gordon held Ixy out in his hand again and she jerked slightly, toppling over on her left side. They went to the left.

After several minutes of this, they found themselves facing a small wooden door in a dark little side corridor. It had the name "Malcolm" carved on a little block of wood just above it. They had tried continuing along but Ixy was definitely indicating this particular door. Carefully, Gordon and Lucy eased it open.

Inside they saw the small Tyrannosaurus Rex that they had seen an image of before, when they had commanded their demon to reveal himself. He really was as small as he had looked back in that cloud of smoke, no more than four feet high. He whirled around at them in surprise, and then looked as though he didn't know whether to charge them or to cower in a corner, so he sort of wobbled confusedly in place.

And then Ixy seemed to fly out of Gordon's hand, straight at the demon, who gaped at her in shock. There was a blinding flash of light, and when Gordon and Lucy opened their eyes again, the demon was laying stunned on the floor, and Ixy was nowhere to be seen. They approached the little dinosaur figure carefully as it stirred and moaned groggily.

It sat up and gazed blearily over at Gordon, then seemed to suddenly recognize him and began nuzzling him and bumping him affectionately with his head.

"Well, this is certainly odd," Gordon said, gingerly patting the demon on the head. Lucy laughed.

"It does seem to like you, though. So do you think we should call it Ixy or Malcolm?"

"I don't know what just happened here, but I'd have a hard time calling something like this Ixy."

"Then the name over the door it is. Good boy, Malcolm." She scratched the back of its head, around where she thought its ear holes might be. He gurgled a little in what might have been a dinosaurian purr.

"Okay, so we seem to have ourselves a pet dinosaur. Now what?"

As if in answer, Malcolm scurried over to the door and looked back at them expectantly.

"It appears," Lucy said, "as though we can just keep following her. Him. It. Whatever."

So they did. The literal following was rather easier than deciphering a stuffed animal's twitches. They followed more corridors, twisting and turning downward. They passed no windows, and eventually they thought they must be far below ground level, but it was hard to tell with the outside reference point so far behind them.

Finally they came to another door, this one much larger and more imposing than Malcolm's had been, and displaying a very meaningful looking lock. Malcolm gazed up at the locked door and seemed to heave a little sigh.

"Alright, another door," said Gordon. "This time I expect we'll find a dragon inside, get another flash of light, and then go around with an even bigger, stranger pet. I wonder how far we can keep trading up?"

"Very funny."

Then the lock gave a loud, solid click, and the door began to swing open from the inside. Malcolm started up in alarm, and all three hurriedly ducked behind an adjacent corner. A dark, lumpy figure came out, only slightly taller than Gordon or Lucy, but much stockier and hairier. It was pushing a small cart that seemed to contain bits of debris and trash.

Suddenly Malcolm darted out from behind their corner, took a few running strides and leapt on top of the steward, hitting him squarely in the back and knocking him to the floor. The steward hollered angrily and tried to heave himself up, but Malcolm jumped on him again, giving an extra little kick for good measure. Malcolm made a frantic motion with his head at Gordon and Lucy, indicating the open door, then was thrown off by the stewards struggles. All three dashed for the door, and Gordon grabbed a hold of the inside handle and heaved at it. The steward had by this time gotten to his feet and turned around to see them. He charged after them, but the door swung slowly shut and closed and locked just before he could reach it.

The door was so thick that they could barely hear the shouts from the other side, though it did tremble slightly from the pounding it was getting. Gordon and Lucy looked at it nervously, but it seemed pretty solid, so it would probably hold up alright. Malcolm on the other hand was already bouncing up and down in excitement.

"Alright, then," Gordon said to him. "What's so important here that we need to see?"

"Any number of things, it looks like," Lucy said, already looking around the vast room.

The room was filled with orderly rows of tables, chests and cages, and seemed to contain all sorts of things. On the nearest table was a display case showing a variety of jewels in many strange shapes and colors. A shelf next to it held several ancient looking books with gilded edges and faded leather covers. In the next row over, a bizarre creature squawked at them from its cage. It had no legs or arms, but only a very prehensile tail, with which it flung itself around between the branches and the bars.

Malcolm was hopping down another row, looking back expectantly at Gordon and Lucy, so they followed him, marveling at the ornamented daggers and the strangely patterned hides of unknown animals that they passed. Then they came to a stop in front of a small cage, from which emitted a tiny, pitiful mewing sound.

"It's a kitten!" Lucy exclaimed. "Oh, the poor little thing!"

Malcolm held back a little, looking sorrowfully at the kitten as Lucy reached into the cage to pick it up. It was cold and scared, and it huddled close to her chest when she brought it out.

"Well, that was very nice of Malcolm to want to come rescue it, I suppose," Gordon said. "But now we've got a dinosaur and a cat. Mum is going to have a fit if I bring home a whole menagerie." Then he noticed something else. "Hey, what's this?"

They peered into the adjacent glass enclosure. Inside was a human hand and forearm, rounded off neatly just before its nonexistent elbow.

"That must be the hand we heard those guards talking about," Lucy said. Then she gasped. "It's moving!"

The hand was indeed moving. It tapped its fingers as if bored or absent minded, then idly stroked a piece of rabbit fur that lay next to it. Then it pulled itself a little way along the floor with its fingers, and grabbed a small rubber ball to squeeze.

"Wow, that is creepy," said Gordon. "Kind of awesome, actually, but still really creepy."

"What should we do about it? It has to get back to its owner, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess so. But how are we supposed to do that?"

"I don't know, but we'd better start by getting it out of here at least. Can you open the case?"

They found the latch on the outside an opened it easily. The hand turned to face them, or to aim itself with fingers in their direction anyway, seeing as how it had no face. Gordon started to reach in, but hesitated.

"This is really weird," he said. "How am I supposed to do this? Do you think it even wants to be taken?" Then to the hand, "Um, hi. I'm Gordon. We'd like to help you, if that's alright."

The hand rotated so that it's thumb pointed up and the fingers extended in a friendly sort of way. Hoping he was doing the right thing, Gordon gripped it with his own hand and gave it a brief handshake, which it returned. Feeling a bit reassured now, he pulled it out of its cage, supporting the forearm with his other hand.

"Okay. Midget dinosaur – check. Baby kitten – check. Disembodied hand – check. Complete insanity – I think I'm nearly there, how about you, Lucy?"

"No time for going insane now. Let's just figure out how to get out of here."

Twenty-first Day

2005-11-21T21:43:00.000-08:00

I'm back. And I'm afraid I haven't done the best job of figuring out precisely what's going to wrap up the last 10 days of noveling here. So I'm still just kind of muddling along in the dark, hoping it all works out. I'm also kind of tired, which doesn't help much.

Mom's bad title suggestion of the day: "Oddbury's Oddest Odyssey."

Chapter 23

2005-11-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

Jaden followed the river towards the mansion, trying to keep to what little cover was available. There were a few bushes and shrubs lining the banks, though the trees didn't start until farther on. Also, it was getting darker, so he hoped that would help him remain unnoticed until he got closer and formulated an actual plan.

As he drew nearer, he could tell that this was indeed the dark mansion he had seen superimposed on 250 Richards Street, though here it seemed even bigger, or perhaps it was just that the space it was in was actually big enough to hold it now. The same eerie light came from the windows, and the halls and towers seemed to stretch out farther than before, making it hard to tell exactly how bit it was. A long, dark pool stretched out in front of one wing of the building, with a fountain in the middle stirring the water.

Jaden was approaching from the side with the pool, and he crouched behind a low hedge on the other side of the tall, cast iron fence next to it. He wondered if it really was water in there. It moved and sounded like water, but looked as black as tar.

He inched along quietly, thinking to prowl the perimeter for a while and get his bearings. There was a small gap in the hedge, and he was scooting quickly across it when his toe stubbed against a large, thick root sticking out of the ground. He looked down in surprise at the feeling, since the root had seemed to squish and bend, rather than yield a solid resistance, and then the root peeled itself off from the ground and practically reared up at Jaden like an angry snake. In a split second, Jaden saw that the underside was lined with small suction cups, and the root was actually a tentacle, trailing off into the pool. Then it lashed out at him, flinging itself around his waist in a tight grip, and yanked him forward.

Jaden threw his left arm up to block his face as he was slammed against the metal fence. Then tentacle continued on through the bars, but Jaden's body wouldn't fit, and he continued to be buffeted against the fence as it jerked him forward repeatedly. Between the bruising blows, Jaden could see other tentacles poking up and slapping the surface of the water, and he could hear an eerie wail coming from somewhere in the middle, near the fountain. He tried to pry the tentacle off, but it was latched on like a boa constrictor. He didn't know how long he could keep getting whacked like that before it beat him into a pulp.

And then he heard shouts and running footsteps, and suddenly large, clawed, hairy hands were seizing him and others were striking at the tentacle and peeling it off of him. After a brief struggle, the tentacle let go, doled out a few extra slaps all around, and then retreated back into the pool. Jaden was being held down on the ground, though he probably wouldn't have felt much like getting up just then, even if he hadn't been restrained.

"Looks like ol' slime gills here has caught a bigger rabbit than usual, eh Vormas?"

"Yess, indeed, Shandag."

"Lucky for us we got outer East wing patrol today. He'll make a fine catch to bring in. Not often we get to take a real prisoner." Jaden heard a snuffling sound close behind his head. "And this'll be a good one. He's not one of us. He's got the smell on him, from the Other Side."

"Ssso ssstop gloating already and tie him up ssso we can take him in."

The one holding Jaden down yanked Jaden's arms around behind his back.

"How am I supposed to tie his hands together? He's only got the one of them!"

The other one gave a hiss of annoyance, and Jaden felt scaly hands replace the hairy ones and haul him to his feet. A gray-green snakelike head stared down at him contemptuously, and grabbed at his arms. His left arm was crossed across his chest, and the shortened right one pulled in as close as possible, then he was wrapped in a rope, creating a makeshift straight-jacket. His captors held one end of an attached rope as a leash, and ordered him to march.

They followed the border around for a while until they came to a large iron gate, which the taller, reptilian demon – the one that had been called Vormas – opened with a key from a ring at his belt.

Well, thought Jaden, at least this solves my problem of getting inside.

A second key unlocked a solid wooden door leading into the mansion itself. Up close, Jaden wondered if it was actually big enough to be called a castle. It seemed slightly different every time he looked at it, though. This was not the main entrance they were at, but something on the side, and the stone corridor led downwards immediately from the entrance.

As they turned a corner, the shorter, hairier demon caught sight of something in the shadows and lunged after it. He hauled a smaller, wriggling creature out into the light. It looked like a very small Tyrannosaurus Rex, in a shirt and tie. Shandag gave it a shake.

"Listen here, Malcolm," he said, roughly. "We've got a new prisoner that we're taking down to the dungeon. An important prisoner. You go find Bratch and let him know. He'll want to see this one. Then tell the next shift to get on outer East wing patrol while we're in here. Go!"

He shoved Malcolm off with a kick, and the smaller demon scurried away, whimpering slightly. Jaden's captors laughed as he ran.

The dungeon was cold and dank, but seemed basically empty of prisoners. Jaden was tossed into the first cell and locked in. He tried to say something once or twice, but Shandag and Vormas just told him to shut up and save his stories for the captain.

After a few minutes, the dungeon door burst open and two enormous wings made the torches flicker as a huge demon entered and towered over the other two. Shandag and Vormas leapt up from where they had been lounging by a wall and gave a hasty salute.

"Well, what have you found for me?" rumbled the voice of the demon captain. "I hope for your sakes that you are not troubling me with trifles."

"No, sir!" barked Shandag. "This is a good one! Right there, sir, in Cell One." He pointed to Jaden.

Shandag and Vormas had to leap out of the way to avoid Bratch's wings as he swept around and glared into Jaden's cell. Jaden shrank back against the wall, but the cell was too small, and a long arm reached in, hooked a claw in the rope around his chest, and drew him up to the bars. Bratch peered at him closely, and sniffed, then his eyes fell on Jaden's amulet. He grabbed it, and snapped the cord off of Jaden's neck, then turned on the guards again.

"You fools!" he growled, "Never leave one of these on a prisoner. They can use them to escape back to their own world."

He turned back to Jaden again.

"Now," he said, "what exactly are you doing here? And don't tell me you're just dreaming, because I know better. You don't dream with one of these on." He waved the amulet in front of the cell bars.

Jaden tried to speak firmly, without letting too much tremble into his voice.

"I am here to recover something that was taken from me."

"Oh, really. And what might that be?"

"My right hand."

Suddenly Bratch's arm was in the cell again, and he had wedged a claw in Jaden's bindings, loosening the rope so that he could see the stump of Jaden's elbow.

"Mmmm," he rumbled, "Excellent. The Master will be most pleased." He withdrew his arm and addressed Shandag and Vormas again. "You have done well. Leave him here for now and make sure no one touches him without orders from the Master or myself."

With a bound assisted by his wings, he was up the stairs and out the dungeon door. Shandag and Vormas congratulated themselves, looking at Jaden and snickering.

After several minutes of eternity passed, Bratch returned.

"The Mater wishes the prisoner to be presented at court," he said. "Open the cell."

Shandag and Vormas rushed to obey, and hauled Jaden out by his rope, heading towards the dungeon stairs. But Bratch grabbed the rope from them.

"I will take him. Do you think the Master wants you two at court? Get back to your patrol."

The two guards looked disappointed but knew better than to argue. They saluted glumly and left. Jaden was left with Bratch, who, he noticed, now wore Jaden's amulet around his own neck. Bratch saw him looking at it and grinned a snarling, fanged sort of grin.

"I'll just be keeping this for you," he said. "Wouldn't want anything to happen to it, would we? Now march!"

He gave Jaden a shove towards the door and they left the dungeon. As they ascended the corridors, they gradually moved into more populated areas, and passed more and more demons, or other beings. Many stared at Jaden in curiosity, but refrained from getting too close or asking any questions of his fearsome captor.

At last they came to two enormous double doors, guarded by two trolls. The trolls were as tall as Bratch, and at least twice as wide, but seemed to be mostly mindless brute strength and not much else. Bratch barked an order at them and they each grabbed an iron ring in one of the doors and pulled them slowly open.

Jaden found himself at one end of an immense hall, the towering roof supported by marble pillars. A purple carpet paved a path all the way down to a dais and a throne at the other end, and crowds filled the hall between the carpet and the walls. A general buzz of excited conversation hushed as everyone turned to see the newcomers.

Bratch strode purposefully down the aisle, yanking Jaden along after him. Jaden looked around him as he went. The crowd seemed to be made of demons, fairies, dwarves, elves, human-like people of various kinds, and probably many other things that he wouldn't know names for.

When they reached the foot of the dais, Bratch pushed Jaden down to his knees and gave a low bow, saying nothing.

The figure on the throne rose. He was tall and thin and pale white, and his black robes swirled around him and pooled on the dais. A crest of long black feathers from some giant bird arched from the back of his robes, framing his white face starkly against them.

"Thank you, Bratch." His voice sounded like a whisper in Jaden's mind, but he had no doubt that it was heard just as clearly at the opposite end of the hall. "You may go now. We have some entertainment planned for our… guest here."

Taking a Break

2005-11-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

I will most likely be having a fairly busy weekend, so I do not expect to post anything for a couple days. I may write a few bits and pieces here and there to collect into an entry on Sunday or Monday, but we'll see. Not counting on it. Luckily for me, though, the last week has gone really well, and by last night I had actually managed to write myself halfway through Sunday. So even if I don't do anything until Monday, I won't get more than half a day behind. Cool.

I shall be attempting to work out precisely What Happens Next in the meantime.

Seventeenth Day

2005-11-17T22:27:00.000-08:00

I crossed the 100 page mark today. That's with 1.5 spaced Palatino, on regular letter sized paper. Don't know how much that would be in a book, but it's a cool landmark, anyway.

If you want to see the ruins of St. Andrew's church, for the Gordon and Lucy part, I've got a couple pictures here and here. That first view is the one that I really loved when I first saw it.

Mother has volunteered to come up with all the bad book titles for me, beginning with "The Hand and the Kitty." I won't be using that one. Tina had a good suggestion of "The Oneironaut's Handbook" as well.

Chapter 21

2005-11-17T22:26:00.000-08:00

Jaden was feeling nervous and distracted all day at work on Friday, April 30th. Coupled with his nonfunctional right hand, this made him almost completely unproductive. He had told Stacey and Todd that he was going back for some more tests and some physical therapy, so he would need the next week off since it probably wasn't wise to be trying to do much with his hand in that shape this soon after the accident. Stacey could tell he was a bit more stressed than usual, and eventually just sent him home in the middle of the afternoon, telling him to get some rest. Todd made good-natured dying noises as he contemplated dealing without Jaden for another week, and wished him well on his recovery.

He left gladly, but was unable to rest much when he got home. He wasn't sure if he really needed to or not, though. He was starting his quest at midnight, so a good nap might seem to be in order beforehand. But on the other hand, he'd be asleep for the entire thing, so he wasn't sure a nap would make much difference. Confusing stuff, this dream travel. He busied himself for a while trying to read more of the books he had borrowed, then made himself a quick, light dinner, and headed over to Prof. Oddbury's apartment.

"Tonight's the night, my boy!" Oddbury exclaimed as soon as Jaden entered. "Beltane begins at midnight! The witching hour! I haven't been this excited since my own last trip back in '57."

He spread two maps out on the desk to review with Jaden. One was of their Mountain View neighborhood, and the other was of the dreamlands.

"As you can see, if this building here corresponds to 250 Richards Street," the professor explained, "then the river running along here roughly lines up with this cross street." He pointed to another spot a little ways along the river. "So if you are traveling from my apartment, you should end up approximately here. It should be easy to find your way, since there are not many other buildings nearby."

"Great. So what do I do when I get there?"

"That, I'm afraid, will be up to you. It is impossible to tell precisely what sort of a reception you will get there, so all I can recommend is to use extreme caution and your best judgment."

"Just for the record, I would like to state that I am scared shitless."

"Quite natural, my boy, quite natural. But, nothing ventured nothing gained, eh? Now we must begin the preparations."

From a back room he wheeled out the OneiroPorter. It seemed much smaller and more rickety than Jaden had expected, and he decided not to ask if this was the very one Prof. Oddbury himself had used on his last trip, back in 1957. He would try not to think about that.

Various wires were connected together and plugged in to electrical outlets. Some also ran to the G5 by the desk, and Jaden noted that they seemed to have had Firewire connectors grafted on to the ends of them. The professor explained that this let him set up some extra, automatic monitoring, in addition to the watch he personally would keep on the array of monitors and dials on the machine itself.

Jaden was given his first shot of the appropriately balanced chemical mix an hour early, to let it begin sinking in and to watch for any adverse effects. There were none, but he did begin to feel appropriately sleepy. This had the added benefit of making him feel rather less afraid. At 11:30 PM he lay down on the bed in the middle of the OneiroPorter, which was adjusted for his comfort. The IV was inserted into his arm, and Jaden grew even sleepier, his eyes barely staying open as the professor continued to explain the various wires and dials that were being set up all around him.

Then the professor seemed to be talking very loudly, and pressing something into Jaden's hand, so he tried to pay closer attention. The object was an amulet that was on a cord around his neck, though he couldn't remember having put it on. The professor was saying something about the button on the amulet, and using it only when he was ready to wake up and come back. A nod of acknowledgement seemed to be in order, so Jaden gave one, sleepily, letting his eyes drift closed again. He felt the professor drop the amulet back on his chest, and heard the rustle of a few more adjustments being made, and then he was asleep.

A small clock in the professor's study chimed midnight. It was Beltane. Oddbury took one final glance over Jaden's sleeping form and silently wished him luck. Then he went to the side of the machine and pressed a large red button. He entered various confirmations and security codes, and an envelope of purple light formed inside the machine, around Jaden's body. He stepped back to watch.

* * *

Jaden opened his eyes. He found himself looking out at a sunset over some hills in the middle distance. Apparently the dreamlands were on a slightly different time zone, or else sunset happened at midnight there. A small river ran by a short way away from him, and following it he could see the mansion that he recognized from his vision on Richards Street. Beyond that was a forest.

He felt more awake and alert than he ever had before. If it weren't for what he saw around him, and the knowledge that minutes ago he had been strapped into a bed in Prof. Oddbury's apartment, he would have had trouble believing that he was dreaming. Or in the dreamlands at least. Was it really dreaming, what he was doing? It didn't matter.

Something, however, felt wrong. He looked down at himself and realized in horror what it was. He held his hands up in front of him, but only one appeared. His right arm now stopped completely at the elbow, without even the paralyzed hand and forearm. There was simply nothing.

Once he had adjusted to the shock and calmed down, he told himself there was probably a perfectly understandable explanation for it. After all, the essence of his hand had been captured and imprisoned here in the dreamlands. It seemed logical that while in the dreamlands himself, he would have to play by their rules, and that would mean leaving his hand where it was until he could retrieve it. There probably hadn't been enough of his hand left behind in the waking world to be able to take any of it along with him. Well, this would make things a bit more difficult, but it was all sure to work out in the end.

Jaden put his right elbow back at his side and decided to try not to think about it too much for now. He began walking towards the mansion.

Chapter 22

2005-11-17T22:25:00.000-08:00

Gordon had told his parents that he was going to spend the night at his friend Michael's house on Friday April 30th. But after collecting the duct taped box from beneath his bed, as well as the various other exorcism-related ingredients and tools he had assembled, he got back on the bus and went to meet Lucy. She had told her mother a similar story.

They had several hours to kill before they needed to think about heading up to St. Andrew's, so they ate dinner at an Indian restaurant and then saw a movie at the Odeon. Lucy insisted on paying her own way, but she did lean cozily on Gordon's shoulder during some of the more romantic parts of the movie. Gordon himself hardly noticed any of the movie, being equally distracted by both the upcoming night and the possible terrors or embarrassment it might bring, and also the presence of Lucy next to him, with his arm around her. He ate chocolate Revels from a Mars tub mindlessly until his stomach began to ache and he set them aside. Nervousness and a chocolate overdose do not make a great combination.

After the movie, they headed out to Holyrood Park. It was getting late, but still light out thanks to the long evenings of the northern latitudes. Gordon was glad they weren't doing this stage in the pitch dark, since the rocky path up the hill at the base of Arthur's Seat would be tricky without any visibility.

The path curved around some large boulders to a small, flat area on which St. Andrew's church had been built several centuries before. Only a fraction of one stone wall remained, with door and window openings still visible, and crumbling edges. Other small piles of stone lay around the area, showing where other parts of the church had been. A few feet from the opposite side of the wall, the hill sloped down so rapidly as to be almost a cliff, leading to a small pond with ducks and swans below, now all huddled away for the night.

A couple who looked like university students were sitting under the ruins, "watching" the sunset and snogging. Lucy gave a little giggle when she saw them, but they were still far enough away that the couple, being otherwise distracted, didn't notice. Gordon and Lucy backed a little way up the hillside, and found a large rock, from behind which they could wait and observe, unnoticed. Eventually, as darkness more fully closed in, the couple extracted themselves from each other and picked their way carefully through the rocks and back down the hillside.

Lucy got a torch out of her backpack, and Gordon wondered why he hadn't thought to bring one. It was so obvious! They climbed down and surveyed their church.

"Well," said Lucy, clearing a spot on the ground and setting down her bag, "it looks rather more haunted than holy, especially at night, but I suppose it will do." She sat down on a seat-sized rock and Gordon came over to join her. They were a few feet out from the wall and under a completely open sky, but still clearly within the boundaries of the original building. There was a large moon overhead, giving them enough light that they could get by with just minimal help from the torch.

Lucy opened her bag and brought out a wide, shallow bowl, and then a small container of liquid.

"What's that?" Gordon asked.

"Holy water," Lucy said proudly. "There's a church on my way home from school, so I slipped in yesterday. When no one was looking, I managed to sneak a bit."

"Well done!"

She poured the water out into the bowl, and looked at it glistening in the moonlight.

"I suppose," Gordon said, "that seeing as how we haven't exactly got a recipe or anything, we may as well just mix everything together. Is it alright to mix things with holy water?"

"I don't know, but you're right. We might as well try. Didn't you say you had some blood from something this thing had killed?"

Gordon got out the beer bottle from his backpack, opened it, and poured the few drops it contained into the bowl. The red drops swirled and faded in the clear water, leaving an irregular pink haze in it. They both looked around briefly, but neither of them was smitten by lightning, so they carried on. The herbs from Mrs. Ross's spice cabinet were brought forth, and pinches of rosemary, mint and basil were sprinkled on the water in the bowl. The holy water was now looking decidedly unholy.

"Anything else?" Lucy asked.

"I think that's it. Just Ixy now."

Gordon got the shoe box from his bag and peeled off the duct tape. Ixy was there, looking very immobile and very un-demonic. He thought there might be more scratches on the inside of the box, but it was hard to tell in the moonlight.

"So what should we do with her?" he asked.

"We're just making this up as we go along, right?"

"Right."

"Okay, then. Put her in, too."

"In… the water?"

"Yep. Dunk her. Might as well. It'll be kind of like a baptism, right?"

Gordon shrugged and put Ixy in the bowl. Only her lower half was submerged in the shallow water, but she began soaking it up, and bits of the herbs were clinging to her sides. They both watched her for a minute. Ixy just sat there.

"I'm feeling decidedly silly right about now," Gordon admitted. "I expect you're thinking I just made this all up."

Lucy just shook her head. "We're not done yet. I think we probably ought to say something, see if we can contact whatever it is that's been possessing her."

"Alright, then," Gordon cleared his throat nervously, then put a hand on Ixy's head, since that seemed like it might help. He took a deep breath and said in the deepest, most commanding voice he could manage, "Demon! We hereby command you and bind you with our magic and the magic of Beltane! You will do as we bid you! Reveal yourself!"

"Very good," Lucy nodded approvingly. "But I'm afraid it looks like she's still just sitting there."

She was right, and Gordon began to feel rather sillier even than he had before. He took his hand off of Ixy and sighed.

But then, as they stared at the soggy, duct taped, stuffed cat in the bowl of rather unpleasant water, they thought they saw it begin to twitch slightly. At first it was so slight as to be a trick of the eyes, or a slight gust of wind, but it caught their attention. And the twitching grew and intensified as they watched until it was unmistakable, and the entire animal was shuddering and trembling.

Then a small wisp of what appeared to be smoke began rising out of Ixy's head, apparently from right between her eyes. It rose and expanded, forming a shimmering cloud above her, two or three feet across. Gordon and Lucy were now watching in stunned silence. The cloud stopped expanding and remained fixed in its position. It gave another vigorous shimmer, and then an image appeared on it, as though from a video projector.

The image showed what looked like a very small, apologetic Tyrannosaurus Rex, wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt and a red tie. It shuffled its feet a bit, and bowed its head, looking rather embarrassed to be caught like this. Lucy almost laughed out loud in spite of herself.

"That's it? You're our demon?"

It didn't seem to be able to hear her, though. It appeared to be getting chastised by someone they couldn't see or hear, and it was now outright groveling.

"Gordon, see if you can just tell it to go away and leave Ixy alone. Gordon?"

But Gordon had stopped watching the little demon, and was looking around them. Lucy followed his gaze and gasped.

The moon no longer shone overhead. Looking up, a dark, cavernous ceiling stretched above them, with monochrome stained glass windows high up that let in a very small amount of light. The single ruined wall of St. Andrew's had grown and repaired itself, and now connected with more walls all around them. A hard marble floor was now underfoot in place of the dirt and grass. Pews of dark wood stretched out in rows behind them.

"Have we brought the church back to life?" Lucy whispered. "I always imagined that St. Andrew's would have been a more pleasant place than this."

"I don't know," Gordon replied, "but wherever we are, we seem to have lost control over our demon. Look."

He pointed back at the cloud above Ixy's head. The picture had gone from it, and the smoke was disappearing like real smoke that had never seen a demon in its life. Ixy remained alone in the bowl, all the water, blood and herbs now gone. Gordon picked her up; she was completely dry.

Sixteenth Day

2005-11-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

Second Gordon chapter in a row. Not the best planning, but I needed to get him caught up so that I can line the next bit up with Jaden's part of it all.

As for a title, so far I'm liking Bertrand's suggestion of "The Accidental Oneironaut." I also thought of "Oneiromancy for Beginners," which I like but which would be a little weird since I haven't really been using the term "oneiromancy" in the book.

Chapter 20

2005-11-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

Gordon didn't have much time to himself that weekend. Only the excuse of homework kept him away from family outings with the visiting relatives, or having to entertain little Colin. Though within that "homework" time he also managed to draw the picture he had promised Lucy. He was grateful, as he had often been in the past, that he had a hobby that could look so studious, as long as you did it at a desk, with lots of open books around. It was an easy way to get undisturbed time.

On Monday, Gordon left the drawing on Lucy's desk before History class, as he had gotten in the habit of doing. For a few minutes he watched other students trickle in, and wondered where Lucy was. She finally arrived at the last second before the bell, sat down, and pushed the drawing under her binder without even looking at it.

Ouch. Gordon was about to lean over and say something – he had no idea what – but their History teacher was nothing if not punctual, and immediately cut off all talking to begin class. He tried, during class, to simply catch Lucy's eye, but she seemed unusually riveted by the lecture and intent on the names and dates up on the chalkboard. After class, she was instantly away talking and laughing animatedly with two of the girls that sat on the other side of her, and Gordon was left behind with his drawing, which he picked up after seeing it abandoned on her desk.

He went to Galbraith After School Support that afternoon. He had ceased thinking of it as the G.A.S.S. chamber the previous week, but it was now back to being torturous. Lucy very pointedly focused on helping the other students there, even the ones who didn't need much help. If Gordon asked her a question about maths, she would answer politely and correctly, but with no more words than necessary, and then would be back to another student again. Gordon made himself stay until the bitter end, though, and then followed her out as she left, walking quickly to the bus stop.

"Lucy! Wait! Hold on a minute!"

She kept walking quickly so he just jogged briefly to catch up with her.

"What is it?" she asked curtly, not looking around at him as he drew up behind her.

"That's what I wanted to ask you," Gordon replied. "Look, is this about me not calling you? If so, I'm really sorry. I was… really busy this weekend."

"Well, you still could have called to tell me that much, even if you didn't have time to talk or to do anything. How do you think I was feeling about it? Pretty stupid, I can tell you."

"Huh? Stupid? You? I'm the stupid one for not calling you."

"Yes! There I was, thinking you liked me, and I even went ahead and kissed you, and wrote you that stupid little note, and then you don't even call me. I was sure you would, but I guess I was wrong."

"No! Really, um… thank you for the note, and for, you know, everything. I wanted to call you, honestly. But I couldn't because the note… well, I kind of lost it."

"Kind of lost it? How do you kind of lose something?"

"Well, to tell the truth, it kind of – sorry – it did get destroyed."

"A likely story. And how did this poor, pitiful specimen of correspondence get so hopelessly obliterated?"

"Look, it's true, and I don't want to lie to you. But if I told you what really happened to it, you'd think I was making it up, which would be almost as bad as actually lying."

"Oh? Well you'd better say something, so might as well give it a try."

They were nearly at the bus stop. Gordon stopped walking and Lucy turned around to look at him, expectantly.

"Do you have to catch the next bus?" he asked, "or could we maybe keep walking for a bit? The story may take a bit of telling."

"Really? Alright then, let's walk. If we head this direction, I can just catch the bus at another stop if I need to."

Gordon took a deep breath as he thought about where to start. He told her about the toy cat he had had as a child, and then about the strange occurrences with the dead mouse – "remember those first drawings you saw?" – and the nighttime movements of the stuffed animal. And he told her about actually seeing it move, and chasing after it but losing it. And finally, he described the creature's senseless rampage on his desk, resulting in the regrettable loss of the note and phone number, but ultimately leading to Ixy's capture.

"And, well, there in a nutshell is why I didn't call you this weekend," Gordon gave a nervous little chuckle. "It's kind of a lot to deal with. It feels good to be able to tell someone about it, though. Assuming, of course, that you don't think I'm crazy?"

Lucy had been silent the entire time he was talking, and now she spoke slowly and carefully.

"I think I may reserve judgment for now on the craziness question," she said. "This is a lot to expect me to swallow all at once. I'd be inclined to think you just made it all up. Though you do seem very… sincere."

"It may be hard to prove that I'm not making it all up. Ixy only seems to be possessed or whatever it is at night, and I’m not even sure it's every night."

"Yes, how very inconvenient."

"But, I suppose I could at least prove that I didn't make it up on the spot right now. There really is a stuffed cat wrapped in duct tape in a shoe box under my bed. Though I don't really know if that would reassure you much or not. Kind of a weird thing to have under one's bed, I know."

"Well, I'm still not going to say I believe you just yet. But if you wanted to show me… I guess I could at least take a look."

"Great! Do you want to come over now? I mean," Gordon tried to not sound quite so excited, "thanks for giving me a chance, and if it's convenient for you and everything… my parents could give you a ride home later."

"Sure, why not?"

"If we cross the street, we should be able to get the bus to my house in just a few minutes."

It was a somewhat tense bus ride at first, though eventually Lucy broke the silence with some comments about Mr. MacDowell's overzealousness in assigning algebra homework. They chatted a little bit about the trials of high school, then in a pause, Lucy looked down at her hands.

"I'm sorry," she said, "that I got mad at you. I shouldn't have done."

"That's okay. I mean, I should have called you, after all."

"And I know you meant to. I shouldn't have gotten so upset over such a little thing when I hadn't even heard your side of the story." She gave him a little smile. "No hard feelings?"

"Of course not."

She reached over and gave his hand a quick squeeze, then let go as he reached up to ring the bell for their stop.

Lucy gasped in delight when she saw all of Gordon's drawings around his room, but then grew more serious when he showed her the pile of ripped sketches that he still had from his book and the lower walls. Then he brought the shoe box out from beneath his bed and peeled the tape of off it.

There was Ixy, still inside, and still bound in duct tape. Gordon was pleased to see that the inside of the box bore some scratch marks, which he pointed out to bolster his story. Lucy still looked serious.

"So what are you planning to do about it?" she asked.

"Well that's the question now, isn't it?" replied Gordon. "What am I going to do about it? I've certainly never had one of these before. Performing some sort of ritual exorcism or something is the best idea I can come up with."

He showed her the library books he had, and the possibly useful parts he had highlighted. They pored over them together for a few minutes.

"Anyway, whatever I do," Gordon went on, "I figure I had better do it soon. It's just too weird and creepy having this thing under my bed."

"No, I know when you should do it," Lucy's voice was suddenly decisive. "Beltane is next weekend, May Day."

"Why then?"

"It's a time when the spirit world is closer to our world. It should be easier to send whatever it is that's doing the possessing back to where it came from." In answer to Gordon's questioning glance, she added, "My mum is into all that neo pagan wicca stuff. I pick up random things here and there."

"Hmm, okay. Next weekend. I guess I can wait. She seems to be fairly safe locked up in here like this. As long as she doesn't claw her way out."

"And have you thought about where to do it?"

"Well, it seems from all the references as though a church would be the most effective place, but I doubt we'd have an easy time getting into a church to perform an unauthorized exorcism ritual without getting caught. Got to be careful about that, by the way. My mum already suspects I'm getting into Satanic cults or something."

"How about St. Andrew's then? The ruins. Would that work?"

"Where is St. Andrew's?"

"Haven't you ever been up to Arthur's Seat? St. Andrew's is the church up on the hill, below Arthur's Seat and looking over that little lake. It's just a few small ruins now, but it's better than nothing. I'm sure it still counts as a church in some sense of the word."

"Oh, that church. Yes, good idea."

"So shall we say Friday at midnight, up at St. Andrew's? That would put us there at the witching hour, and right at the beginning of Beltane. We should probably meet earlier to find our way up there in the dark together, though."

"Are you actually going to help? Does this mean you believe everything?"

"Yes, and maybe. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, but I want to reserve a nominal claim on my own sanity if this all turns out to be something crazy."

"Thanks," Gordon grinned, "I'll take it."

"Awfully strange sort of first date, of course," Lucy said, glancing at him sideways.

"Oh! Um," Gordon flustered a bit at the change of subject. "Well, maybe we could also do something else before then?"

"I'd like that."

There was the sound then of a key in a lock and the front door opening. Two pairs of footsteps sounded in the hallway.

"Gordon! Hello, dear, we're home!"

Gordon sighed.

"That'll be my mum bringing my little sister back from day care. Come on out, I should probably introduce you."

Mrs. Ross was very pleased to meet Lucy. She knew Mrs. Campbell from PTA events, and had heard good things about her daughter, so she was very pleased that Gordon was making friends with someone who would be such a good influence on him, though luckily she refrained from actually saying that in front of Lucy. Fiona just snickered a little bit from behind her mother's back, mouthing the word "girlfriend" at Gordon until he made menacing faces at her.

"Anyway," Gordon said, "we're working on a history project together, so Lucy just came over after school to do some preliminary research."

"Yes, and I'd probably better be getting home soon," Lucy added.

"Oh alright. Would you like me to drive you, dear?"

"That would be lovely, thank you. It's not too far."

"My pleasure. Just let me know when you're ready."

"I'll just go get my book bag."

Back in Gordon's room, Lucy asked somewhat sheepishly if she could still have the picture he had drawn of the two of them on Edinburgh Castle.

"Of course you can," he said, "I didn't think it was all that bad, so I saved it."

"Thank you," she said, taking the paper. "And it's not bad at all. It's beautiful."

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and then went back out to get her ride home.