Eight
One foot in front of the other, her footsteps soundless on a floor of black-and-white marble, Vivian walked. Nothing else to do, that she could think of. No way to go home. One direction looked the same as the other. Eeney, meeney, miney, moe—
She knew this place, this feeling of suspended motion in the middle of endless possibilities. So many nights she had lain suspended, caught between Dreamworld and Wakeworld.
The Between. Ever shifting, ever leading somewhere and nowhere. She had traversed so many corridors over the years, made of marble, concrete, stone. Some were tunnels, some were hallways, some were open to the stars. Mazes there had been as well, winding pathways through forests or well-tended gardens. Some nights she had floated the current of winding rivers or meandering streams on a raft, in a boat.
All that remained constant was the sensation of suspension between one reality and another and the ever-present doors. Odd how reality felt less solid here than in Dreamworld, and yet this was where the danger lay.
Here the dragons lurked. Even as a child she had sensed them, always hungry, always seeking. But in the past she had been able to slip over the boundary into one world or the other, waking or dreaming. Now she was trapped.
Mindless panic seized her. She broke into a mad run down the corridor, careening into doors, tugging at the knobs. Locked, all locked. Fear ran behind her, driving away all rational thought, pushing her to the point of utter exhaustion. At last, drenched in cold sweat, her breath coming in sobbing gasps, heart laboring in her breast, she stopped running.
As her breathing eased, a strange calm came over her. This was not some random fate. She was a Dreamshifter, sent here by design. She had already faced a dragon, and it had done her no harm. In her hand she held a dreamsphere, hers, taken from the mouth of the Guardian. Holding it carefully between thumb and forefinger, she lifted it to the light. Suspended at the center was a nearly empty room, holding a tiny table. When she looked up, she stood in the doorway of a room that was an exact but larger image of the scene within the dreamsphere.
Her first impression was of dust. Inches of it, softly blanketing everything in sight. She sneezed, once, twice, thrice. A fly buzzed on the sill of a window so dirty nothing was visible through it and only a dim and dreary light was able to filter through. Inside the small room stood one small, round table. On it, an envelope, furred, like all things else, with the dust of years.
An odd dream for her grandfather to leave her, she thought at first. With all that was at stake, surely he could have given her more than a dusty and nearly empty room. She stepped across the threshold, careful to leave the door wide open. Her feet sank into the dust, sending it swirling around her. When her hand groped for the pendant, it was gone, but she had expected this. Six steps brought her to the table. She picked up the envelope and brushed it off. Her name, Vivian Maylor, was written on the front in George’s spiky black hand. It was sealed, and too heavy to hold only paper. She tore it open and a crystal sphere fell into her hand, chiming against the one she already held.
The note said only: Beyond the living rainbow the dragons guard Forever.
A flare of anger at the old man ignited inside her. Riddles. Secrets. All of the courage it had taken for her to come this far, and this was what she had to show for it. No way forward, no way back, just a dusty dream and a meaningless message.
And another globe. Maybe this dreamsphere would take her home, or at least away somewhere safe. She looked into it and snorted in disbelief at what she saw.
A penguin. Of what use, in any world, could a penguin possibly be to her? Maybe Jehenna was right and the old man was insane.
Or maybe this was a trap.
The thought came to her unwanted. What if everything was an elaborate setup by the woman who had come to her apartment, claiming to be a friend, claiming so many things? Vivian realized that she hadn’t even verified her grandfather’s death.
As if on cue, she felt a low rumble, heard a heavy dragging sound in the distance. The fine hair on the back of her neck quivered and lifted, her flesh puckered into goose bumps. Whatever made that sound would have to be big. Clumsy, maybe, unless it had wings and could take to the air.
Dragon.
If the dragons were coming, she must not be trapped in this room with no way out. At least in the hallway she could run. She sprinted for the door, stirring up a cloud of dust that clogged her nostrils, coated her throat, made it difficult to breathe. The sound continued, echoing from down the hallway, still out of sight, approaching at a speed that was indecent for something that sounded so big and heavy.
A new cadence had been added to it, a rhythm she didn’t recognize: faster, a counterpoint in two. Slap slap, slap slap. Vivian had no idea what it meant and had no desire to wait around and find out.
She pushed for speed, racing down the hallway, knowing that whatever was behind her would be faster, that there was nowhere to run, nowhere to go. Blindly, legs pumping, feet sliding a little on the marble floor, she fled the unseen menace.
A glance back over her shoulder to look for her pursuer stopped her legs in their frantic churning, momentum throwing her sideways so that she had to stumble a few steps to catch her balance.
Webbed feet awkward and slapping on the tile, wings spread for balance, beak stretched forward, agape, as though drinking in oxygen, came a small black-and-white creature. It slowed as it approached her, changed its trajectory, and came to a halt no more than a foot in front of her.
A penguin. Three-dimensional and in the flesh, the reality of a tiny image suspended in the center of a crystal globe clutched in her fist. The bird fixed her with an unblinking gaze out of black obsidian eyes, then gave a sad little squawk and pressed itself against her legs, trembling.
In the distance, the dragging sound came again, and with it a cry that chilled her blood.
Vivian tried to take a step forward, but the penguin moved with her, one flipper hugging her leg.
Another cry rent the air, and with it a clear sound of claws scrabbling and scratching on marble, the dragging scrape of a heavy body. Far away in the distance but growing ever closer, she saw an ungainly body, sinuous and lizardlike, an angular head on the end of a serpentine neck.
Beside her the penguin panted, beak open, trembling.
Damn it.
Vivian bent and grasped the feathery body around the middle, hoisting the penguin into her arms. It was an awkward shape to carry, heavier than expected. Feet and beak scratched against her bare skin.
Down the corridor came the dragon, faster now, wings unfurled. There wasn’t space for them to fully extend and allow the creature to fly, but they seemed to provide balance, the ability to move with greater ease.
Vivian ran. Stumbled. The dragon was gaining.
I am the Dreamshifter, she reminded herself. I need a door. Staggering with fear and exhaustion and the weight of the penguin, she approached the nearest door, put her hand on the knob.
It was locked.
“Open,” she murmured, “please open.”
Flame burst from the dragon’s open mouth, rushed down the hallway in a fireball that was going to incinerate her. She was going to die in the Between, naked, carrying a penguin.
“Open!” she said, a command now, a necessity.
A small click. The knob turned, and Vivian dove through the door and slammed and bolted it behind her.