Jeopardized Future

Chapter 9

Last night, pleasant dreams were my companions. Tonight, wretched nightmares assailed me. I dreamt that I was at the Great Snow Plain back on Millcou. All of a sudden, the abominable snowman came out of nowhere and it was roaring angrily at me and chasing me. (Yes, the abominable snowman is very real. Heroes and knights hunt his kind for sport. Father has the head of one mounted in his weapons chamber.) I was running through the woods when I tripped. The snowman swallowed me whole. But even nightmares can have events that turn out rather odd. Although I knew I had been eaten, I was not in the belly of a monster. I was in the woods of another island, (I think it was Malas) and there were these vampire penguins attacking me from all sides. I started crying in fear and trying to bat them away from me. There were at least 3,264! Then I felt a slap on my mouth and woke up trying to scream but found that Clair was standing above me with one hand over my mouth and a finger to her mouth making a shushing symbol. I removed her hand so that I could whisper to my sister. "Did I wake you?"

"Yes. Thanks a lot, you little royal twerp." She whispered groggily to me kneeling down beside my bed. "You're lucky I heard you crying when I did else you might have woken up everyone else."

"But it was awful, Clair! There were these vampire penguins and the abominable snowman ate me-"

"Okay, okay. C'mon, get up."

"Are you seriously going to walk me to the other side of the room?"

Growing up, when my sisters and I would be assaulted with particularly disturbing nightmares, like the one I had just had, we were to go into Father's bedchamber. No matter how groggy or grumpy he was about being woken up, he would wrap us in blanket, give us a cup of water (for a while he had blue raspberry juice on hand because Gina and I visited him almost every night when we first came to the islands), have us tell him the whole nightmare, then put us in his lap and then sing a certain song that would ease our minds and put us back to sleep in no time. I assumed Clair was going to walk me over to Father now.

"No, Ana. Father has enough to worry about right now. I'm taking you outside. Lieydan will be there, and he will give you greater comfort than Father ever could."

As soon as she said that, I felt a warm, honey-like feeling all the way down to my toes. What could be better than having Lieydan comfort me after a nightmare? We got up and donned our shoes and capes. We looked outside and to our great surprise, there was Lieydan leaving the camp!

"Come." Clair whispered. "Let's follow him. There are no doubt strange doings afoot."

I grabbed the bow and quiver of arrows that had been left for me. Clair, having never learned to use a bow (her choice although Father wishes she would learn), left hers where it was. The curiosity of what his actions could mean made me forget my recent nightmare.

And so we followed him, but we remained in the shadows lest he should see us. Just by following him, we could tell something was wrong. He flew ever so slowly and with what looked like a great effort. He hung his head as if he were a prisoner instead of a great guardian of a Republic. He flew so close to the ground that it looked like his feet were dragging. If Clair had not been holding my hand, I would have most likely run to him and offer him any comfort I could give. He was my only sense of security left. I needed to hang on to that for the rest of my life.

When he came to the coast of Millween, we assumed he would turn and go back to the camp, but he didn't. He made an action to the sea as if he bade it come to him. A block of ice that looked like it had a railing around it came up. He began to fly slowly over the sea.