Dreamstrider

DREAM STRIDER

Also by Lindsay Smith

Sekret

Skandal

Copyright © 2015 by Lindsay Smith

Published by Roaring Brook Press

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First edition 2015

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For Dahlia, Ellen, and Leah,

who always push me to chase my dreams

(and add more kissing scenes)

Prologue

I always dreamed too big, too bright, too much. Every night, in the dank corners of the tunnels, the knobby spines of other tunnelers digging into my own, the Dreamer filled my head with promises of a better life. A life of sunlight and beauty—a place where I’d have purpose, and I could serve the Dreamer and his faithful people in the Barstadt Empire. He filled my head with hope.

But hope might as well be poison to a tunneler like me. We’re not meant to become anything more than what we are: the unseen, unheard hands that carry out the menial tasks for Barstadt’s dazzling daytime world. Hope seeped into my bones and weighed them down. For who wants to scrub at grime, sink her hands into painful limewater, and pocket away crumbs, day after day? Not when her nightly dreams hint at a life of real beds and warm stews as she defends Barstadt from nightmares and the enemies at its borders. I was poisoned with such dreams, and I had no way to flush them out.

Then Professor Albrecht Hesse offered me the antidote.

My tunnel’s ganglord rented me to the university for cleaning duties, but in Professor Hesse, I found a friend. He knew so much about the Dreamer, and Hesse was more than happy to teach me, chatting with me throughout the night while he monitored his experiments and I tidied his lecture rooms. I was bursting with questions about the Dreamer and the meaning of my dreams, but the more Hesse taught me of the sleeping world, the more I realized I knew nothing of the waking one. Soon I begged him to teach me to read and to write, to explain the history and politics not only of our home, the Barstadt Empire, but also its colonies and other neighbors in the Central Realms. But dreams—it always came back to my dreams, where I earned glory and fortune protecting Barstadt from pirates, enemy armies, gang leaders, monsters, and any other evil my young mind conjured up.

“You dream so vividly—far more than my jaded students,” Hesse told me one evening, while he read over my meager attempts at recording my dreams and I rushed to finish my cleaning tasks. “A gift like this should not be wasted.” He offered me a chair. “How would you like to learn to make your dreams come true?”

As if there were any answer I could give but a desperate yes.

Hesse pulled a red leather journal from his desk drawer and sketched a girl sleeping in a city. “Every night when you sleep, you dream in the world of shallow dreams.” He drew a trail like a tether from her down into a forested land. “But there is a shared dreamworld, as well, for the Dreamer’s most faithful. That world is called Oneiros. It exists in perpetuity, watched over by the Dreamer. The souls of the Dreamer’s most devout can enter Oneiros, bound to their bodies by a slender cord.”

I was bound by a thousand ropes in those days. Paying tithes to the tunnel enforcers and turning over most of my earnings to the gangs. Hunting for crumbs to feed myself and my half-brothers and sisters. Enduring the cruel scrape of my mother’s nails as she stared through me and begged me to bring her another wad of Lullaby resin to let her sink into dreamless sleep.

“I can take you to Oneiros, if you like.” Hesse pulled two vials from his laboratory stand and held one out to me. “The world of your dreams.”

I considered all the ropes that bound me to this world, but it was my dreams that decided for me. Perhaps Oneiros could make them feel more real. Perhaps in Oneiros, I could find a way to make them so.

I took the vial.

One minute I was sitting in Hesse’s study, and the next, I was tugged away, like the lurch of sudden sleep. Sunlight surrounded me, golden, liquid sunlight dripping down my skin. To a girl from the tunnels, that sunlight I’d rarely glimpsed in the real world convinced me I’d do whatever it took to make this my life.

I ran first, sprinting across the vivid jade grass, over flowers that twinkled as though their petals were made of jewels. But my feet were weightless—I stretched my legs and leaped in great bounds until I was flying, arms wide, soaring into the fresh, clean air. A vast quilted land unfolded beneath me—fields and forests and whitewashed stone cottages. Mountains loomed in the distance, and in a valley to my right, a city with a central spire. Trailing behind me, more felt than seen, was that golden tether from Hesse’s sketch. But this rope didn’t try to restrain me—it only kept me whole.

As I flew toward the spire in the sparkling city, I recognized the two golden posts at its crown, thrust skyward: they represented the Dreamer’s Embrace, guiding his faithful toward their dreams. I landed atop the crown and, as I scanned the beautiful world around me, tears stung my eyes. For the first time in my life, my dreams seemed within reach.

In a soft gust of air, Professor Hesse landed beside me. “What do you think, Livia?” he asked.

I blinked away the tears I turned to answer him. “I think I like it better than the real world.”

Hesse smiled, but it looked forced. “So do I.”

We entered Oneiros rarely, at first. Hesse taught me how to navigate it only after all my work was done and we were sure my gang masters wouldn’t find out. But I hungered for the dreamworld with an ache that deadened everything around me, and Hesse was only too happy to indulge my pleading for another journey, while the dust thickened along the university’s baseboards and the floors dulled with grime. At the end of each trip to Oneiros, I hurried back to the tunnel entrance, too many chores left undone.

But one night, I lingered in Oneiros after Hesse departed to tend to his work, and I returned to the waking world much later than usual; thin tendrils of sunlight were already stretching across his office windows. In a panic I grabbed my cleaning rags—I’d be punished by the gang lieutenant if I wasn’t at the tunnel entrance before sunrise. Just as I was about to hurdle out of Hesse’s office, though, I was stopped short by the sharp sounds of an argument in the next room.

“—but you said yourself she isn’t ready. I don’t think it’s worth upsetting the gangs over one little tunneler.”

“She’s clumsy and careless, I admit. Stunted by life in the tunnels. But she’s learning. She’s not ready yet, but she’s the best prospect I have,” I heard Professor Hesse say. “I can’t keep her from her duties to the gangs much longer. Someone’s bound to complain. We have to choose now.”

My breath ached in my lungs. Clumsy, careless, stunted—Hesse had always showed me nothing but kindness.

“I don’t suppose you could hire her directly from them? Give you more time to see whether she’s really suited to our work?” the other voice asked. “We can’t give her this kind of power over the sleeping if there’s a chance we could lose her back to the gangs.”

“No, if we ascribe too much value to her, it’ll attract the gang leader’s interest. I prefer we give her temporary papers—purchase her outright, and if she demonstrates her worth, then maybe when she’s older we can grant her her freedom,” Hesse said.

“
If
she demonstrates her worth,” the other man echoed.

I spun away from the door, squeezing my eyes shut. I’d never heard Hesse speak this way before—so callously, with none of the patience and kindness I was used to from him. I knew my life was worth less as a tunneler, but to hear him, of all people, speak of me like a belonging—the way the gang lieutenants spoke of me—

“Hey, it’s all right. You can’t take them too seriously.”

I nearly leaped out of my skin at the sound of the voice. A boy perched on top of Hesse’s desk, chin propped in his fist. He was only a few years older than me, dressed in the impeccable suit of a young aristocrat, but with a wry smile that belied his formal clothes.

“I’m Brandt,” he said, looking me right in the eye. Dark blond hair thatched his tawny face, hanging into his eyes without diminishing their intensity.

I forced myself to look away. “I’m—I’m not supposed to be talking to you.” I shrank back from him, pressing against the wooden door.

Brandt hopped off of the table and stepped toward me. He moved with an ease I could only dream of—confident and unhurried. “It’s okay. I know all about you—your secret’s safe. Hesse says you’re an incredible dreamer.” He held out one hand to help me stand. “That he can barely keep up with you in the dreamworld.”

I started to reach for Brandt’s hand, then thought better of it and pulled myself to my feet. “You’ve been to Oneiros, too?”

“Are you kidding? I’m no good at dreams. My skills lie elsewhere.” Brandt plucked a piece of parchment off Hesse’s desk and began folding it as he talked. “I can lift the mustache right off of a constable, though, and persuade a banker to give away all his coins.”

“You can’t either,” I said, crossing my arms.

Brandt smiled at me, lopsided. “Well, maybe not yet, but it’s good to have dreams.”

He finished folding the blank sheet into a paper sculpture of a lily. I scowled at him as he held it out to me. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re going to work together. Hasn’t Hesse told you? He’s got big plans for you.”

I stared, something tightening in my gut. “For me? But … why?”

“Because you’re special.” Brandt tilted his head. “There’s no one else who can do what you do.”

“I—I’m afraid you’re mistaken.” I backed toward the door, twisting the cleaning rag in my hands. “I’m just a tunneler. And I have to get back underground.”

Brandt took another step toward me. “But what about your dreams?”

I froze. My dreams stirred inside me, restless, unable to stretch their wings.

“I heard you have dreams of doing great deeds for the Dreamer and Barstadt,” Brandt said. I turned around to face him. “Is it true?” His expression softened, open and warm. “Because I can’t dream like that, but I’d love to hear about them.”

For all his ease, the tunneler in me was suspicious. I didn’t survive in the tunnels without suspicion in my bones. “Why? What can you give me in exchange?”

He tilted his head. “Well, I can show you what you need to know about the Ministry.”

“The Ministry?” I asked.

But then the door swung open, and Professor Hesse and another gentleman stormed into the office. Brandt tensed, snapping to attention like a soldier, but Hesse went straight toward me and clutched me by both shoulders.

“Livia. You told me once that you wished you could be free of the gangs.” Hesse’s face tightened as he studied me. “Is that still what you want?”

I stared back, trying to reconcile the callous man I’d just overheard with the kindly Hesse I’d always known. Which one was the truth? “Of course it is.”

“You’ll have to work hard,” he said. “Not for the gangs, but for Barstadt. For the Dreamer himself. Are you willing to do that?”

My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. Barstadt was a land of growth, of achievement, of expansion. How could a malnourished little girl possibly embody those things? Yet the Dreamer hinted at greatness for me. For all of Barstadt. “I am.”

Hesse nodded, glancing over his shoulder toward the other man. “Good, good. Livia, this is Minister Durst from the Ministry of Affairs. He’s going to purchase citizenship papers for you.”

I swayed backward. “My papers? But I—” My head spun; I felt my knees buckling beneath me. “You mean I’m going to be free? I don’t have to live in the tunnels any longer?”

Minister Durst pursed his lips. “Not quite. The Ministry of Affairs will retain the papers for safekeeping until you’re old enough to determine your own fate. But you’ll be free of your masters in the tunnels, and we’ll take charge of your training along with Hesse.” He tugged at his coat lapels. “It’s quite an honor to work for the Ministry. And we are honored to have someone with your potential.”

“But what
is
the Ministry?” I asked.

The Minister turned toward Hesse. “I thought you’d taught her the most basic of—”

“We’re the Emperor’s secret police,” Brandt said, words spilling from him eagerly. “We keep tabs on the aristocrats and the gangs, disrupt criminal activities, conduct spy work abroad … I mean, I haven’t done any of that
yet
, but I will.” He grinned at me again, that wide gas-lit smile. “We can learn together.”

“Spy work?” But if Hesse thought I was clumsy, slow-witted, daft … “I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a spy.”