For the second time in thirty years, the entire world has fallen asleep...
Thirty years after the Greymen caused the decimation of her people, high school drop out Rain Collins spends her days learning to pickpocket and hold her booze. Yet she long...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The streets glittered as the evening sunset reflected off of a million tiny crystals, hanging on delicate chains of precious metal. It seemed the festival organizers had raided the jewelry stores and boxes of yesteryear, discovering more beautiful stones than our people could ever use, even if we had a use for them. Now the iridescent symbols of wealth hung from every rooftop, between every street lamp.
As dictated by tradition, the streetlights had been turned off--not that we ever really used them. Dr. Farrah and Miss Becky and the other business owners whose buildings faced the square had turned off all of their electric lights, as well.
Candles set behind nearly every crystal basked the city square in a dancing light that brightened as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. The festival-goers carried candles, too, and braziers full of flaming coals were positioned every ten or twenty feet.
The square filled slowly as the sun set, but once it dipped behind the distant hills, the people came in droves. From miles around, people made the trek to our city, our square. It was, afterall, the home of heroes. Heroes like my father.
I scoffed quietly to myself and pulled my hood over my head. So many people had seen me in the dream world, dressed in my green ballet outfit and using my Dreamcaller powers. I didn't need any ignorant fans thanking me for the victory over the Greymen.
That's what the festival was for: our victory. According to the festival makers--and a surprising number of other people, including my father--the Masters were just another nightmare projected by the Greymen. And, apparently, we had overcome that fantasy, beat them, and now were free of their tyranny.
I wondered how many spent time in the dream world and with their Greymen, as I had with Sir, yet still persisted in such a contradictory belief.
They couldn't help it, I supposed. They believed the Greymen had killed their parents, their grandparents. They had killed them. I couldn't fault them for their fear. But I could disagree with it.
I pushed my way through the bodies in the square, which felt nearly as full as the Green City had in the dream world. Our entire city's population had to be there, plus hundreds more. So many. Fools, all.
The crowd parted, as if they had been choreographed, moving to the edges of the square and clearing a space in their center. Fifteen well-dressed men and women, each carrying a polished instrument, stepped out of the crowd and into the space. They turned to face the crowd, forming a small square of their own, and lifted their instruments. The woodwind and horn players held their shining instruments still, just in front of their lips, which they licked. Then the drummers began to play.
Slow and steady, they beat out a heavy, thumping rhythm that skipped like an adrenalized heartbeat. As the drummers played, the crowd stomped their feet and bashed their fists into their palms to the same beat. Their voices joined, chanting wordlessly to the rhythm, a tumult of barbarous sound.
