The Wishing Tree - Book Two [Completed]

Dreaming - Part 26

When I open my eyes, we're lying in a soft, blue field in the Third Realm, but there are bolter bombs going off everywhere. I'm still holding Mason's hand and I turn my head to look at him.

"What's going on?" On the edge of my consciousness panic lurks. The two moons aren't in the sky; there are no stars. When there is a pause in the bombing, the night is so dark that I feel as though I am back in the Woods of Alarum.

"Ryan's nightmare." Mason sighs, releases my hand and stands up. "We need to find him and create a safe space. When you invade someone else's dream, when you do it well, this is what happens."

"You end up in a war?"

"No, you just end up in whatever they were dreaming about: war, dinner, a tunnel, having sex." He gives me a wry look. "It's unpredictable. If I like a person, I usually try to ask before I do this. Ryan has this nightmare a lot. It's the one where everything's gone to shit. I know where we'll find him; I've navigated this before."

"Can anything happen to us here?" Another bolter bomb goes off, but when it flashes I don't feel the blinding pain in my eyes. They're actually sort of pretty when you don't have to worry about crippling blindness.

"No, not here. We can be eaten, killed or kidnapped on the other realm while we're here, but it's better not to think about that."

"Great. Thanks for putting that thought in my head." My heart is pounding with the anticipation of seeing Ryan. But, there's something in Mason's resignation about this nightmare that makes me feel a little nervous, too.

Every time a bomb goes off, I can see that all around us, trees are down on the ground or splintered, the sky is so gray it feels like a layer of fog or dust covers everything. If I didn't recognize some of the landmarks, I'd think we landed in some alternate universe, not the Third Realm. There is nothing clean, crisp or advanced about the apocalypse unfolding in this dream.

Mason's walking ahead of me and my mind wanders to my corporeal body on the First Realm. I hope we're safe; I feel safe right now, with him, here.

We've walked for a while when he calls over this shoulder. "I should warn you that dream Ryan is crazy." He pauses a beat, like he's weighing his next words, but he throws them back to me flippantly, like they aren't brutal to hear. "Also, in this dream, you're dead."

"What?!" I jog and catch up with him, grabbing his arm. "What?"

"This is the worst one. We'll find him at the family crypt; you'll be on a slab, dead and he's going to be stark, raving mad."

I stop walking. "This was a bad idea."

Mason slows and then turns around. "Queenie. It's going to be fine. I've done this before; I just have to find a door out of here and then we can chat with him. He's normal Ryan as soon as we get through the door. I promise." He sighs. "None of this is real; this, all of his, is his worst case scenario." He gestures around him and I look at our surroundings again. In the distance, I see dead bodies, crevices where bombs dropped, decay on a scale foreign to the Third Realm.

"Oh," I whisper. "Is it – is any of this possible?"

"I have no idea. My time on the Third Realm – it was short lived." He starts walking again and I pick up my pace to catch up with him again.

I need to focus on Ryan right now, but I file that comment away as another question I have for the ever elusive Mason.

"He has this dream all the time?" I ask.