The Dream Gatherer Read online

  “Karigan,” Alton whispered.

  Estral brought the song down to a soft final note and let the air currents carry the last of it away. The spell held for but a moment before the party guests started moving and chatting as if awakening from a long nap.

  Estral and Alton, followed by the Berry sisters, approached Karigan’s sleeping form on tip-toes. They did not wish to disturb her. Her dream presence was one of serenity and deep sleep, very much in contrast to what she must have experienced during the nightmare.

  “Are you going to bring her all the way here like you did me?” Alton asked. “She does not look . . . well.”

  Estral gazed at her friend’s pale face, still much too thin from all she’d endured in the north. Ragged, shorn hair brushed across hollow cheeks. She lay on her stomach, which meant her back still pained her too much to sleep on it.

  “No,” she replied.

  Alton nodded. Estral could not guess what was going through his mind—Karigan looked so unguarded, so vulnerable. The two had been almost-lovers, a relationship that had been complicated by their busy lives as Green Riders and a reluctance on Karigan’s part. He’d been aghast and horrified as Estral had told him about the torture as they walked around the pond earlier. Perhaps now, seeing Karigan like this, so transformed from when last he’d seen her, made her story truly sink in. His expression was tender as he gazed down at Karigan.

  “I wonder if I ever really knew her,” he murmured. “All that she has done, all that she has been through . . . ”

  “It is wise to let her rest undisturbed,” Miss Bay said. “It is a rare gift for one who has been so troubled.”

  “Sing her away,” Miss Bunch told Estral, “to ensure her peaceful sleep continues.”

  This time when Estral sang, it was not the soaring vocals of before, but a gentle softer tune, a lullaby of sorts. The dream image of Karigan wavered and then faded away.

  “Well done,” Miss Bunch said. “You’ve undoubtedly helped your friend more than you know. Your singing will not keep the nightmares away permanently, but what you did tonight cannot be underestimated for the relief the peace will bring.” She squeezed Estral’s shoulder, and then she and Miss Bay walked away to attend to their other guests.

  Estral closed her eyes and exhaled, wishing to retain the sense of serenity she’d conjured with the singing. Her guilt over what had been done to Karigan, and the part she believed she played in her father’s death, would always be there, but now she felt some sense of atonement. She’d been able to help her friend this time, and after seeing the manifestation of Karigan’s nightmare, she knew it would make a difference. Providing help was a gift for Estral as much as for its recipient.

  Alton placed his arm around her shoulders and she came back to herself.

  “You all right?” he asked. “You must be exhausted.”

  “I’m fine,” she replied. “In fact, better than fine. But maybe a little hungry. Shall we see if any food survived the rampage of the shadow?”

  Alton smiled and was about to respond when Stickles ran back into the tower and almost barreled right into Estral.

  “You’ve gotta come!” He grabbed her arm and shook it.

  “I’ve got to come where?” Estral asked, observing that his eye was almost swollen shut from Alton’s punch.

  “Follow me—you gotta help!”

  She and Alton exchanged glances and followed when Stickles sprinted from the tower. She could not imagine what had excited the fellow so.

  The Ocean on the Other Side of the Pond

  Drawn by Stickles’s sense of urgency, Estral and Alton ran after him all the way from the tower to the front of the house where the bow of the ship loomed. When they stumbled to a halt, they fought to catch their breath. Stickles was quick.

  “This is going to be the most exhausting dream ever,” Alton said when he finally could breathe again. Then he gazed up at the silhouette of the bow against the stars in awe. “You told me about this, but seeing it?”

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Estral said.

  “Aye, it’s a ship in a house.” Stickles gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “And we need the lady’s help.”

  “We?” Estral asked.

  Stickles pointed up at the figurehead. “Ceylene.”

  “It has a name?”

  “She. She has a name. She’s one of the merfolk and she needs your help.”

  “One of the mer . . . ” Alton began in disbelief.

  “We sailors know them deep in the southern seas,” Stickles said. “They are tricksters that lure unwary crews off course with their beauty and song to break ships upon a rocky ledge, or they’ll cause a storm and rough seas, or . . . ”

  “Or lure you overboard to drown you,” Alton interrupted. “I’ve heard those stories before.”

  So had Estral. In fact, she knew quite a few sea chanteys and legends about merfolk.

  “Not stories, and they don’t always drown us.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “No, not always. If they take a liking to a man, he’ll be spared as a mate. Become a merman.”

  “She’s made of wood,” Estral broke in. “Very beautifully rendered, but still wood.”

  “Aye, she’s wood, but she wasn’t always. The first captain who sailed this ship, many years before I came aboard, bound her to it with dark magic as a warning to the merfolk of what could happen to them if they caused his crew any mischief. Plus, he was pleased by his catch and wanted to show her off for all to see. It is said he believed her to be good luck.”

  “You are saying she was once a living being?”

  “Still is, and long has she been trapped in this form. Y’see, I can sometimes hear her. Hear her sing, hear her weep, hear her speak to me.”

  It occurred to Estral that if Deckhand Stickles were hearing things, he might very well be mad. The whole situation was mad—the Berry sisters, the draugmkelder, dreams become real and nightmares going on rampages. After all this, how outrageous was it that there might be more to a figurehead than finely carved wood?

  She gazed once more at the figurehead though it was hard to see in the night. Ship owners often placed figureheads on the prows of ships for luck, just as Stickles had said, but they were also an easy way for illiterate seamen to identify various ships. Some of the ship owners commissioned sculptures of immense beauty and artistic merit to show off their wealth, which was not, coincidentally, the best way to avoid pirates.

  Figureheads did have an uncanny aspect, she thought, the way they perpetually gazed out to sea unflinching whether in the midst of stormy conditions or calm, no matter if the figurehead was a lady in a fine gown, a warrior with sword drawn, or some mythical creature. They could be bawdy, romantic, or courageous, but always the resolute face of the ship. They did seem alive, in a way, dancing above the waves and always looking forward, so it was no surprise sailors projected superstitions on them, like luck.

  “Your singing,” Stickles said, “it started to wake her up—I know it did.”

  “How—?” She stopped herself. She’d been about to ask how her singing could possibly do such a thing, but this was Seven Chimneys and just this night she’d destroyed a nightmare with her voice.

  Stickles visibly struggled with his patience. “I can hear her. You must sing more—it will free her. I know it will.”

  “Are you believing this?” Alton asked her.

  “Do I believe any of this?” She spread her hands wide to indicate all of Seven Chimneys. “It can’t hurt to try. Besides, you are one to ask, you with your gryphons.”

  He conceded the point with a nod.

  Stickles was practically jumping up and down in agitation. “Place your hands on the hull—that’ll help, and she’ll feel your song even more.”

  “All right, all right,” Estral muttered. She stepped up to the hull and fo
und a space free of sharp barnacles. The wood was rough under her hands. She traced long narrow cavities where worms had chewed on it. Even outside, the scent of brine was strong, and when she closed her eyes, she could easily imagine herself by the sea, hear the calls of gulls, feel the undulation of waves. She considered singing a chantey, but discarded the idea not knowing if merfolk appreciated the songs of sailors. She decided to let the sea itself be her guide, thinking merfolk would be receptive to something more natural, more primal.

  Her song conjured images of blue-green water breaking on the shore, of guillemots and cormorants floating with the currents. She visited seals sunning themselves on a rock ledge and followed them as they plunged into the depths in search of fish, into kelp forests, into the watery dark.

  Soon her song was answered by another who knew the sea intimately and Estral shivered with the cold of the water and the alien quality of the voice. She flowed with the song’s currents and found threads of sorrow and loneliness. Estral tried to extend comfort and friendship in her descant.

  Of a sudden, the answering song grew dominant, turned into a scream in Estral’s mind that made all the images shatter.

  * * *

  Someone shook her. “Estral?”

  She opened her eyes to find Alton hovering over her, and dew-laden grass soaking into her back.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She put her hand to her temple. “What happened?” She must have fainted.

  “Look!” He helped her to her feet and took her to where Stickles stood with his arms wide open.

  “I’ll catch you,” he told the figurehead.

  To Estral’s astonishment, the figurehead’s tail glistened in the starlight as though wet, and her hair blew free of her shoulders. Where once there was wood grain, there was now flesh. Her body rippled with life.

  “I can’t believe it,” she whispered.

  Ceylene the mermaid tried to push herself off the hull, but she was stuck. Then she paused, took a deep breath, and sounded such a note of distress that it was pitched nearly above the range of hearing and caused windows to crack. Then came a splintering like boards being torn apart and Ceylene fell free. Alton leaped to help Stickles catch her. This accomplished, Stickles, who supported her upper body, leaned close to her face as if to catch whispered words.

  “What did you say?” he asked her.

  “Water,” the mermaid said. “I need to be in water.”

  Stickles adjusted her in his arms. “To the pond!” he cried.

  Alton and Estral helped support her tail as they ran once again, but this time to the back side of the house and down the lawn. The mermaid’s tail was heavy with muscle, and smelled of fish and seaweed and . . . sawdust. Her scales felt like that of any fish—slippery and rough at the same time. The brown and greenish scales covered her all the way to just below her breasts, but under closer inspection, her breasts appeared to be covered in clear iridescent scales, only giving that part of her the illusion of human flesh.

  By the time they reached the pond, Estral thought her arms would fall out of their sockets. Stickles waded right in up to his waist, she and Alton splashing behind with the tail. Cold water seeped through Estral’s trousers up to her knees. Her feet sank into the soft bottom.

  “Gently,” Stickles said.

  They lowered Ceylene into the water where she floated like a dead fish, her hair splayed on the pond’s surface. The little boat lights turned the scales, which Estral had seen as brown and green, into a dazzle of gold and emerald.

  “Shouldn’t she be in ocean water?” Alton asked. “I mean, merfolk aren’t freshwater folk, are they?”

  Stickles supported Ceylene’s upper body in the water, his face shadowed as he gazed down at her. “They prefer salt water,” he replied, “but will swim up freshwater estuaries to spawn.”

  “Is she going to be all right?” Estral asked.

  “I dunno.” A boat light drifted close enough to unmask his concerned expression. “Maybe if you sang?”

  Before Estral could open her mouth, however, gill slits opened on Ceylene’s neck and she lifted her tail and slapped it on the water, splashing all three of them. Estral pushed wet hair out of her eyes just in time to see Ceylene slip out of Stickles’s arms and disappear beneath the surface of the pond. Boat lights rocked in her wake.

  “I guess that’s that,” Alton said.

  Estral placed her hand on his arm. In the distance they saw a large form briefly break the surface, then dive again. Ceylene continued porpoising in a widening pattern until finally she paused before Stickles, her head and shoulders bobbing above the surface.

  “I am free!” she cried in an elated voice. It had a breathy quality that may have had something to do with her gills. She swam closer to Estral. “You are a sister in song and blessed with a special voice, a voice of power—use it well.” Ceylene smiled. Her needle-sharp teeth were those of a deep-sea carnivore’s, which, given her otherwise pleasant features, was a little off-putting.

  To Alton she said, “It is not often we merfolk find reason to thank terrestrial males. During my imprisonment, for all those years, I could only feel anger and the desire for vengeance against your kind. And yet, you helped save me. I will, perhaps, not be so quick to judge in the future. I thank you.”

  Alton bowed in return.

  Ceylene drifted to where Stickles remained hip-deep in water.

  “Will you come home with me?” she asked him. “Become one among the merfolk and be part of our song?”

  “Home? The southern sea is far away. This is just a little pond. How will you get there?”

  “Home is not as far away as you may think.”

  The pond then transformed. It brightened, and as Estral gazed into it, she experienced the sensation of being submerged on the ocean floor and looking upward toward the surface where shafts of sunlight burst through blue-green water. Colorful corals grew on a reef, and the water was dense with different kinds of fish darting here and there or swimming in schools. Others skulked in the rocks and crannies of the reef. A sea turtle paddled near the surface, a silhouette with the sun bearing down on it.

  “Will you come, Stickles?” Ceylene asked. “It is not far.”

  Stickles scratched his chin. Something tiny plopped into the water—the barnacle. He looked at Estral and Alton, and liquid light of a far distant ocean reflected on his face.

  “What—what do I do?” he asked them.

  “What do you want to do?” Estral said. “What does your heart tell you?”

  He looked down, not at Ceylene, not at anything.

  “You were kind to me, Stickles,” Ceylene said, “when no others were. You were the only one who could hear me. For all those years, it was your presence, your caring, that kept me sane. You listened to me and talked to me. I would have given up but for you and turned entirely to wood. But it is your decision. Know that you’d be welcome among the merfolk.”

  He gazed now at the mermaid. “I won’t drown if I go with you?”

  “I would not let that happen.”

  A smile crossed his face. “I’ve never been a fish before.”

  She held her hand out to him. Light glistened on the webbing between her fingers. He waded in deeper to meet her and took her hand. They gazed at one another as if they were the only two beings in the world, and then without warning or farewell, they submerged into the colorful world of coral and reef and out of Estral’s ken.

  Abruptly a great cacophony of gulls started crying from the direction of the house. They flew over to the pond and one by one dove into the water, arrowing to the other side where the ocean lay. They were followed by a few shearwaters and terns and other seabirds, and then finally a stray gannet that threw itself at the water in the ungainly way of the species—all wing and splash—and dove and dove and dove until it reached the sun.

&n
bsp; With a suddenness that made Estral sit hard on the muddy bank, the ocean vanished and once more was a dark, serene pond.

  The Seven Chimneys Rose

  “Well,” Alton said, “that was something.” He offered Estral a hand up.

  “It certainly was.”

  When she gazed upon the pond, all was as it had been before, no hint of the ocean, no mermaid, no Stickles. Ordinary frogs chorused their spring song, and the little boats bearing their lanterns drifted upon the water’s silken surface undisturbed.

  “I’m a bit chilly,” Alton said. “Shall we return to the tower?”

  They were both soaked through, and Alton, after all, had only his nightshirt.

  “Let’s go.”

  The Berry sisters met them halfway there.

  “My, but it is not warm enough for a swim,” Miss Bunch said, taking in their soggy condition.

  Estral and Alton took turns explaining.

  “Well,” Miss Bay said when they finished, “there goes our new handyman.”

  “Just when I was growing rather fond of him.” Miss Bunch dabbed her eyes with a lacy handkerchief.

  “I for one am glad the mermaid is gone,” Miss Bay said. “I didn’t like the way she stared at me.”

  “She wasn’t staring at you.”

  “Indeed she was, ogling me with those baleful eyes of hers.”

  Estral cleared her throat. “We are wet and cold.”

  “Dear me,” Miss Bunch said, “but we’d be terrible hostesses if we did not provide comfort for our guests.”

  “Come, we’ll take you to the cottage,” Miss Bay said, setting off in a new direction.

  “Cottage?” Alton asked.

  “Yes, where you may dry yourselves off and relax in one another’s company. Unless you’d prefer to spend the rest of the night shivering while you play a long and involved game of Intrigue with us.”

  “The cottage sounds fine.” His answer may have been a touch quick. Miss Bay smirked.

  The cottage was situated away from everything else on the estate, in a clearing in the woods. Moonlight puddled on its whitewashed walls where trellises supported climbing roses. Clusters of ferns, still furled so early in the season, crowded against the foundation. Smoke drifted from a single chimney and gold lamplight shone in the window.