Sunshine speckled the forest floor as if marking a path for the Dreamer and her escorts, but though his feet followed dutifully, Gyfree's eyes and mind were far from the helpful light. The darkness of a scowl shadowed his face as he brooded over the events that had already marked this day and set it aside from all of the days that had gone before. First and most importantly there was the Dreamer, whose vivid presence unsettled him in ways he'd rather not admit. At first he had been unwilling to even acknowledge that she was no ordinary Dreamer, for he had been shaken by everything her presence might mean, especially to himself. But now he had no choice but to accept her for what she was, what he had both hoped and feared she was from the moment she had first locked her luminous eyes on his face, and he had felt that spark of recognition, and something even deeper. Involuntarily he glanced back over his shoulder, and there she was, clear eyes canvassing the forest like an artist storing details for a future painting. No, not an ordinary Dreamer by any stretch of the imagination, not even by the distortions of his own wildest dreams.
Walking directly behind the Dreamer was Timi, whose presence marked yet another unforeseen circumstance that caused him as much unease as the Dreamer's arrival, but this time untouched by the secret twinges of excitement and the hidden thrill he felt with Drew. As First Sentry for this world, it was his job to occasionally assist in the training of new recruits, and his job to oust anyone he deemed unfit. For several weeks he and Mischa had been busy preparing the most recent batch of would-be Barrier guards, teaching them the easiest and swiftest methods for finding and removing Dreamers. They had even had several opportunities to expose the recruits to real Dreamers, since for some unknown reason, the frequency of Dreamers slipping through the Barrier had been steadily increasing, especially in the general region surrounding the point where Drew had broken through. Overall the group had progressed well, and had successfully handled the Dreamers when awarded the chance; that is with the exception of Timi. For some inexplicable reason, Timi seemed incapable of dealing with the Dreamers, recoiling from them with a fear that left her almost completely paralyzed. The more bemused and distant the Dreamer, the greater and the more debilitating her fear. Even when training exercises were conducted without the presence of a Dreamer, she was timid and indecisive, incapable of remembering from day to day the skills her instructors had already covered. Initiative was as foreign to her nature as aggression, and it was clear to both himself and Mischa that she was totally unsuited for the position. Just that morning he and Mischa had wandered away from the Sentries' encampment to discuss whether to grant Timi any more chances, or whether it was time to send her on her way. They had finally decided to expel her when he had felt the jolt of Drew's arrival, and the last thing he had expected when he had carried a truly unnerving Dreamer into camp was that Timi would volunteer to accompany them to the Source, and that his father would be there to foist her upon them. Given a choice, Timi would have been the last person he would have permitted on such a potentially perilous venture.
Then of course there was Mischa. They had worked together before this time, and effectively. There was no questioning Mischa's competence, or her devotion to duty, no matter how irreverent she might sometimes be. Yet something in her attitude had changed recently, either toward him or toward the office they performed. Before she had been brisk and businesslike, sometimes sardonic, but always professional. Now she was playful, teasing, baiting him constantly with an impish gleam in her eyes, like a child who believes she deserves to be spoiled and is just waiting for the adults to catch on. She too made him uneasy, but it was an uneasiness devoid of any other emotions and so simple to shrug off.
Some distance behind him he could sense the novice Sentries treading the same path he and his companions had already traversed, and he understood that his father had sent them along this trail, and why. In some ways this fact concerned him more than anything else that had transpired during this pivotal day. The Sentries were there to obscure the Dreamer's presence, but he knew, just as his father knew, that it would take far more to divert the beasts who stalked her, and he knew this was why his father had taken the Dreamer's clothes. The Figments most successful at following a Dreamer often had a keen sense of smell, although there were always those rare few who simply had an uncannily accurate sense of their Dreamer's whereabouts without the need to resort to any tracking skills at all. If the Figments trailing Drew were relying on the usual skills, the clothes would provide a decoy that would hopefully divert the Figments from the true trail, at least for a while. The farther the Figments might track the scent of the clothes, the more time Gyfree and the three women would have to escape. Gyfree's father would carry those clothes into the farthest recesses of the forest, would carry them until he could feel the Figments directly behind him, their proximity like the stench of decay filling his nose. Then, and only then, would he drop the clothes and hide. He would take this risk, stake everything on the hope that the Figments would follow him, rather than wait in the clearing to confront the creatures, because he knew, just as his son knew, that this was his best chance to buy time for those who fled. There had been a time when he would never have needed to rely on such subterfuge, but that time was long past, as only he and Gyfree truly realized. So to save the others, he would not stay to fight, but instead would run, and would hide. To increase the chance of success, he would also rouse the land shielding the traveling companions to release as much scent as possible to further confuse the Figments, but this was the only power he possessed as Keeper that he would be able to employ. It was really the only power he had left to employ.
Gyfree knew all of this, but he knew his father as well, and what concerned him, what gripped him by the lungs until his chest burned with trapped air, what squeezed his heart until the blood was forced upward into his eyes and ears to darken the world and drum inside his head, what terrified him more than the reality of the Dreamer, was the possibility that, even if the ruse worked and those fleeing had been bought valuable time, his father would not be content with accomplishing nothing more, would not be content to merely hide. Yes, he knew his father well; understood too well this man who had taken him in when his true son had died and had treated Gyfree as if he had never been a substitute for what had been lost. Long had the man he called father been a dynamic force, for he was Keeper of this world. But age had accomplished what no Figment could, and in the past years he had felt his father's powers waning, had felt his connection to the land fading, just as his own sense of the land had grown. And now he, not his father, could sense the entire land as if he carried it both on and beneath his skin, as if the ridges of his spine were hills and mountains and the hair sprouting from his head was a forest of disheveled rusty trees. At the back of his mind he felt the tickling trace of the land's whispering voice, and although this voice never competed with those of the people around him, it was still always there, ready to snatch his attention if a pressing need arose.
Today the whisper had risen to a moan, as if the land was in pain or in mourning for itself, and this was the final thing that had contributed to his gnawing unease, for there was something terribly wrong, and there had been something terribly wrong from the moment he had walked into the clearing with the Dreamer in his arms. He could feel the nagging ache of the land like a toothache stabbing away at his jaw, an ache that had been throbbing with increasing intensity until he was forced to clench his teeth to stop himself from groaning. And still the pain grew, reaching up fingers to scrape at his skull, piercing the thick bone and scratching his brain, growing more insistent and demanding until suddenly the whispering moan of the land dissolved into a shriek, shrill with the crackle and bursts of fire bombarding grass and detonating trees.
Wheeling around he grabbed the hands of the Dreamer, his eyes filling with something intangible, something that pulled her eyes far away, and immediately the trees around them vanished; they stood alone inside the vast gray field of an unsettling dream, nothing beneath or above them, until out of this emptiness a shimmering landscape emerged, populated by skeletal grass and the wavering ghosts of barren trees. With the jerkiness of time-lapse photography, the phantom landscape burst into ethereal flames, gray shadows licking and consuming gray shadows in absolute silence. As the shadow fire fitfully toppled the translucent trees, tears leaked from Gyfree's eyes, and in a voice that demanded instant response, he shouted, "Cry! You must cry if we are to stop the fire!"
With Gyfree's shout of fire, Drew could suddenly smell acrid smoke as it reached out to burn her nose and sear her eyes, its nettling touch drawing the tears Gyfree required. Scalding tears spilled down her cheeks just as they spilled down his, a torrent of tears tumbling from their jaws to vanish into the gray vapor that was slowly climbing up their legs. Where the tears fell somewhere unseen far below there was a thunderous hiss, while before Drew's eyes streaks of gray angled across the phantom trees like a driving rain. Slowly the shadowy flames receded, as if caught in a film rolling backward in stilted motion, and then the skeletal grass and branches stood alone once more, starkly black against the background of gray, and Drew could actually hear the murmur of raindrops as they splattered somewhere far away on ground untouched by her and Gyfree's feet. As the last whiff of smoke dissipated, and the shadowy trees dissolved, Gyfree dropped her hands, and Drew blinked to see trees that were no longer ghosts, but green and vibrant with life, leap into view around her, and she understood that the land springing beneath her feet was the same land visited by the rain, although an unknown distance stretched between the scorched earth and where she and Gyfree faced each other, their faces unmarked by the paths of recent tears.
"What happened?" Mischa demanded before Drew could draw breath and finally give name to the expression she recognized in Gyfree's eyes, the expression that had shaken her from the moment she had first looked up and met his gaze. He too was a Dreamer, she thought to herself. A Dreamer no more asleep than she felt herself.
"There was a fire back in the clearing," Gyfree answered tersely. "The Figments caused it, and we put it out."
Mischa nodded curtly, eyes expressionless as they swept from Gyfree's face to Drew's and back again. Timi, however, stared unblinking at Drew, then stepped forward and tentatively touched the other's arm. Not recoiling from the Dreamer as both Gyfree and Mischa would have expected, Timi smiled tremulously and said, "You're really here, aren't you?"
"Let's move," Gyfree interrupted brusquely. "The Figments might already be on our trail."
The four rushed onward, Timi walking as close as she possibly could to Drew without stepping on the other woman's feet or bumping her off the path. Yet the group had only covered a short distance when Gyfree suddenly collapsed, his knees buckling as if some immense foot had kicked his legs out from under him. Sprawled on the ground his body convulsed and his hands grasped at the grass as if there was a sturdy rope hidden there that would save him from falling into an invisible chasm that had opened beneath his feet. Drew rushed forward, her eyes suddenly distant, and with the strength she knew only in dreams, yanked his fists from the grass and pulled him to his feet, then held him there as the tremors haltingly abated. When the nightmare in his eyes cleared, she released him despite the continued trembling in his limbs, and the new trembling in her own.
"What in the dreamworld was that?" Mischa demanded, her face pale and rigid.
All traces of gold had been swallowed by the black center of Gyfree's eyes. "The Keeper is dead," he announced hoarsely. "The Figments killed him."
As impossible as it seemed, even more color drained from Mischa's face. "Figments do not possess enough power to kill a Keeper," she protested.
"These do," Gyfree rebutted shortly.
"I'm sorry," Mischa whispered. "I can only guess how you must feel."
"What happens now?" asked Timi in a small, shaking voice.
"The land will choose a new Keeper to guard it," Mischa responded, turning away so she could avoid the black anguish that had swallowed Gyfree's eyes.
"It already has," rasped Gyfree as if the words would scrape his throat raw. "Me."
Whirling around in surprise so intense she forgot to dodge his eyes, Mischa blurted, "You? How is that possible?"
"I don't know, but I could feel the land even before this happened. I felt the fire in the clearing as if it had been ignited inside me. Now my feelings are even stronger than before." He fell silent, but there were unspoken words pouring through his eyes. "I feel as if the heart of the land has lodged in my heart," he thought, but the thought wasn't his alone, for he could feel the land slipping through his conscious to shape the words he would not say, "and that the blood pumping in my veins flows through each river and stream. I feel as if my breath is the air that encloses us all, and without my lungs there would be no breath for anyone. I can feel the land inside me and surrounding me, and I know its pain and the darkness that trespasses here leaving that pain in its tracks." He cleared his throat as if to break away the rawness, but his voice was more raw, not less, as he spoke aloud again. "I can feel the Figments just as the land feels their footsteps, and I even know where they now range. They are on their way back toward the clearing. And as Keeper my first task is still to remove the Dreamer from their grasp, so let's go."
The new Keeper did not wait for them to acquiesce; spinning on his heel, he plunged back through the trees, his own pain and sorrow blinding him to the look of anguish and guilt that had finally clouded the Dreamer's clear eyes.
Watching from the isolation of his own private nightmare theater, he stretched out a hand to once again direct the course of events unfolding like a scene from some low-budget horror movie in which the leads romped around foolishly as the film flickered in and out of focus and certain death lurked just out of the camera's range. It was certain death that he was trying to bring to the screen, but so far his characters had bungled their parts, and death had only struck behind the real action scenes. In growing frustration he watched and listened, the image before him flat and the sound filling his ears tinny, as if he was trapped at a neighborhood drive-in, but when the villains he had cast stumbled back into the clearing that was thus far at the center of the movie, he leaned forward in anticipation, willing them toward the film's bloody climax.
Hund orbited the clearing, snout flaring only inches from the ground, his usual whine swelling like badly composed background music. As the whining melody reached its crescendo, Auge, trailing behind as impatiently as an ambitious supporting actor, sank his claws into Hund's snarled mane and yanked his head away from the sodden ground.
"So?" snarled Auge.
"Her scent is gone," Hund whimpered. "Rain must have washed it away, for it is wet here now."
Auge howled, as did the distant director. She had slipped through his grasp, as she always slipped through his grasp. Not since that first night, when she had dreamed him into existence, had he been able to zoom in close enough for the kill. New to his own creation, not yet knowing what part he had been cast to play, he had stood at the edge of her bed and watched her sleep, watched in awe the tossing and turning of her childish form, watched and waited for her eyes to open so he could meet his producer face to face. When finally her eyelids had been raised like the curtain on the stage of her face, and the light in her eyes had spilled across the room, and she had seen him where he stood patiently awaiting her notice, she had frozen in bed, as if she was trying to convince both him and herself that he wasn't really part of the picture. So he had just stood there, watching her with his slitted demon eyes, seeing himself as she envisioned him, reflected indelibly in the lens of her eyes, a hideous horned, fanged, and clawed creature with fiery skin that writhed in an ongoing, grotesque dance of death across the protruding bones of his face. He had stood there so close, unable to move just as she seemed unable to move, frozen with her in some classic frame of time. Then finally her lips had parted, and her voice rang out through the darkened setting, "Mommy!" A spotlight blazed down the hall, and suddenly he realized what his part had been, and that he had missed all his cues. He should have made her burn, made her burn as he burned because that was the role she had dreamt for him, and he would never be all she had expected him to be until he fulfilled his part. Yet it had been too late by then, for he had heard the approach of the player she had chosen to delete him from the scene, and he had fled because that was all he could do.
It was only later, when he had encountered others of his kind, others whose lives had sprouted from the mind of a Dreamer, that he fully understood just what his own Dreamer had done. Dreams were tenuous things, fluid things, and the Figments whose lives were conceived in dreams were as fluid as the nightmare landscape that had been unable to completely hold them. Powerful Dreamers could give life to the beasts they created to haunt them, but once these Figments had broken free, Dreamers no longer had complete control. The newly born Figments could assume whatever shape they chose, including human, although few possessed the strength to maintain any single shape for long, and almost none could avoid slipping back frequently into the form chosen by their Dreamer. Watching a Figment stalk through the shady world between dreams and waking that most of them inhabited was like watching a kaleidoscope of wispy shapes. It was this incorporeality that limited most Figments to either the void or the dreamworld, but it was also what granted them the freedom to continually recreate themselves. A few Figments even had the strength to enter a waking world and to hold the shape they wore there, at least for a while. Yet all Figments, weak or strong, still held in common that versatility of shape, all except him. He was the only Figment without the power to change, the only Figment whose Dreamer had dreamt him so irrevocably that he could not alter a single detail of his hideous appearance. In the realm of dreams, in the realm of the void, he was the one and only thing of permanence. He was also the strongest, a Figment that almost all others soon called master, a Figment created with a swelling size and presence that subjugated all others, but for all his ominous strength, all his towering might, he could not shed the face and form of a child's nightmare, could not free himself from the horror he had seen in his Dreamer's eyes.
It was within his power to change others, to grant them the appearance of permanence if it suited his own purposes, to give them a lethal substance they could not otherwise possess, but he could not transfer their malleability to himself. His Dreamer had unwittingly dreamt him far too inescapably within her control, and his best hope for breaking free, for transforming the shape of his face, for becoming even more than she had dreamt him to be, was to kill her. Perhaps when the uncompromising vision that had brought him into the picture had been eliminated, and the Dreamer lay dead at his feet, then the repulsiveness that costumed him could be left like unwanted footage on the editing floor. And the power he longed for, the power to be completely free, the power to recreate himself, would finally be his.
Yet disconcertingly, his Dreamer proved most difficult to kill. Not long after that first night, but long enough for him to learn and truly understand just what she had done, he had returned to her house and had stood once more at the foot of her bed, willing her to awaken so he could see her with her own death in her eyes. Then her eyes had slid open, but before he could lunge forward for the kill, those eyes had ensnared him. He could see himself once more reflected in her eyes, but for the first time since he had sprung to life, he was changed. Her eyes had accomplished the one thing impossible; with a single glance she had transformed him, but the new shape she had wrapped him in was like a straitjacket slipped over his head to render him harmless. Held in her eyes he could not move as wavering Figments echoing his new shape sprang to life all around him. When the newborn Figments began to dance, so did he, his limbs pulled up and down without his volition as he and the other pirates capered about her bed. Around and around they cavorted, her slowly swelling eyes following every graceless jerk, until her mouth gaped open and she screamed just as she had the time before, "Mommy!" When he fled back into the night, the pirate facade had fallen away and he was again his inescapable self.
That had been the last time she had permitted him to approach near enough for the kill. The next time he seeped through the walls of her house he could feel her immediately rouse, could sense her sitting up abruptly in her bed, and he knew his presence was as palpable to her as her presence was to him. Even without her eyes to ensnare him, he could feel the transformation seize him, could feel himself swelling to immensity, could feel his arms stretch and his legs thicken until he was standing on four limbs as heavy as tree trunks. He moved awkwardly as the walls of the house seemed to press down on him, and a giant tail moved with him. Trying to turn his head and look behind him, he discovered that his neck had grown unbelievably long, and although the ceiling would not permit him to elevate this extended neck, he could still swing it around to parallel his equally enormous tail. His breath rumbled up the stairway to her room, but his dinosaur body was too immense to budge within the confines of the house. Once more she had immobilized him, and it wasn't until the first spears of morning light had sliced through his amazing bulk that her hold on him had been relinquished and he could return to himself and slip away, back into the welcome void where nothing and no one held the power to oppose him.
After that he was never even permitted to enter her home; of all the places in her world, it was the only one with walls suddenly impenetrable to him. The next time he had drawn near she had awakened before he could even reach her house, and he had found himself not inside as he had expected, but stranded directly beneath her bedroom window. This time when she seized him with the power of her waking dream, he felt the blood evaporate from his body, felt his skin chill and dampen, felt himself die and return to life all in a single second. He was empty, shockingly empty, and he needed to find blood, preferably a woman's blood, to fill the aching hole he now carried within. With the realization that she had transformed him into a vampire, he finally knew fear, for if she held him until dawn cracked the sky, he might actually die. With a wrench of will that left him shaking, he fled back into the void, back to himself.
From that night on he was completely barred from the waking world that harbored her; however he tried, he could not hold himself there for more than a gasp, and so he was reduced to trying to reach her in the realm of dreams. His power was diminished there, for in dreams the Dreamers held sway, even though they themselves seemed to have no concept of their strength. Yet it was not unheard of, however rare, for vengeful Figments to actually catch and kill a Dreamer during a nightmare. When this happened, and the Dreamer actually met death in a dream, there was no waking up. So he waited and watched from his height in the void, and when a promising nightmare filled her sleep, he slipped into the dream world to chase her. The walls of a house rose up around him, blocking him at every turn, but still he sped through the shifting corridors and misleading rooms, knowing she was just ahead, exulting because she was mindlessly fleeing him as he had hoped she might, recognizing that he must catch her before she woke up. Then suddenly he found himself in a deserted room without windows or doors, and howling with fury, he hurled himself against the nearest wall, slamming into the impossibly solid barrier over and over to no avail. He could feel her too, feel her in the very next room as she slipped behind a door to hide from him, and he understood that even if he could break free from the walls that restrained him, he would never be able to open the door she had closed because she would never allow it. His howls shook the walls, shook the entire house of her dream, and then suddenly the walls around him dissolved like smoke in the wind, and he was back in the void, far away from where she had bounded awake.
Every nightmare she breathed life into after that might as well have been off limits to him. Try as he might to slip in unnoticed, the moment she felt his slightest touch, she would slip into another nightmare, then another, always keeping a dream ahead of him until the moment she once again jolted awake. Nor could he send his minions to accomplish what he could not, for if she felt even the slightest trace of his touch upon them, she slipped away just as surely as if he himself had intruded upon her dreams. He could not even send them into the waking world to kill her as she slept, for only those completely transformed by his touch had the strength to enter and stay, and they throbbed with his taint so completely that they were barred from her presence as surely as he would have been. Finally he had no choice but to yield to the inevitable, and to hope that as she grew older she would leave her childhood dreams behind, and that her forgotten nightmares would fade away completely until her hold on him had vanished.
So he watched and waited while the years passed by, and although her nightmares came far less often, she still slipped away every time he disturbed them. Day and night he watched, night and day he waited, and through empty days and dream-filled nights she moved from adolescence to adulthood, transforming from child to woman with a grace that he resented since he could still not change at all. And still he watched and still he waited as she moved through dreams and through waking. Her life in the waking world was one of restless shifting, for she never stayed anywhere or with anyone for long, and he knew as she did not the reason: her dreamworld was still the real and powerful one, the world where she truly lived and belonged. And because of this he knew at last that his waiting had been for nothing, that her grip on him would never weaken and really could only be loosened with death. And he also knew that waiting was no longer an option, for she was young, with a lengthy life stretching before her, and he had already waited long enough.
Unapproachable in the waking world, inaccessible in the dreamworld, she had eluded him for long, but no more, for at last he knew what he must do. She was strongest in her world, strongest in her dreams, but he was strongest in the void, in that space that was neither waking nor dreaming, and somehow he must either transport her there or bring the void to her for the kill. At last he had a purpose, and slowly at first, he began to give that purpose the substance and force that infused his own being. He began watching for strong nightmares, it no longer mattered whose, as long as they were created by Dreamers powerful enough to bestow the slightest touch of reality to the places they dreamt. The moment he detected such a nightmare, he would rush to the source and slip undetected into the dream. Once there he would latch onto a piece of the nightmare—an endless stairway, a locked and unbreakable door, a towering fence, a hazy street in a maze of hazy streets—and holding the nightmare feature in hands that could grant permanence at will, he snatched it away into the void. There he assembled the bits and pieces, the wisps and tatters of stolen dreams, until he had created a full nightmare landscape of his own, a landscape he could manipulate and control, a landscape that was now just one more part of the void, but which he could send into the waking world whenever he chose. Then he selected two of his minions, the most lethal and vicious, two minions who also bore the mark of her creation but whom she had completely forgotten, and he taught them the pathways of the nightmare's streets, shielding their presence, and his touch upon them, with the very essence of the void itself.
At last the trap was ready, and he thrilled with the knowledge that soon she would be his, that it was almost time. Yet he would not be hasty because there would only be one chance; he knew she would only allow one chance, so he could not afford to fail. Her world was full of Dreamers, so first he would test his nightmare trap on some of them. Moving his nightmare directly outside the house of a Dreamer, he waited and watched from afar just as he had instructed his minions to wait and watch from quite near. Just as he had hoped, the proximity of such a substantial nightmare was too tantalizing for a true Dreamer to ignore. It made this one restless, like an almost inaudible scratch at the door that demanded immediate attention, although the hapless hearer could not explain why. Out into the night the Dreamer rushed, straight into the waiting arms of the nightmare, and directly behind followed the minions, giving chase through the twisted streets until, just as they reached out for the kill, their master pulled the nightmare out from under them, yanking them fully back into the void, and although they knew not to question, they soon came to understand that this game they played night after night was no more than a chase, and that there would be no killing until he told them so. Held back from the kill, they even chased several of the snared Dreamers through the Barrier between worlds, forcing them up against weak spots in the dividing wall, pushing their practice victims farther than most nightmares. These Dreamers had been too feeble to exist beyond the Barrier, and had soon returned as if their bodies and minds had actually been divided between two different realities, despite the fact that something entirely different had happened to them. But this was no concern of his minions, and certainly no concern of his. Each Dreamer was forgotten as soon as the next one was ambushed.
Over and over again he set his baited trap and his minions played their stalking game, and then one night, finally convinced he could not fail, he informed them that it was time to catch and kill. His only fear had been that she would avoid the nightmare because his touch was upon everything there; he knew she would feel the familiarity of his presence, but he had been fairly certain that the trace left by so many different nightmares would diffuse his taint, and he had been right. She had plunged into the nightmare as quickly and thoughtlessly as all the other Dreamers who had felt it before, and in that moment, he had tasted triumph, for even if she felt him with the approach of his minions, she would have no strength to resist him here. He would use his entire being to control the nightmare that held her, use all his vast power to wrap it around her, and she would finally be his. But then somehow, despite all the patient planning and painstaking care, despite what should have been her powerlessness, he had still failed; she had eluded him again, and this time she had transformed the very nightmare he had created, transformed it as if she alone had dreamt it into existence, and then she had used its potency to propel her beyond the void and through the Barrier that few Figments dared now pass, into a new world that confused even his senses. And she had been strong enough, more than strong enough, to accept her strange surroundings as more than just another dream, strong enough to grasp hold of this new world and stay. This Dreamer, unlike the others who had gone before, did not slip back.
Eyes enthralled with the distant spectacle of his minions floundering through the lifeless clearing, he was still unsurprised to feel a chill hand on his shoulder and icy breath on his neck. He didn't bother to turn, but simply shrugged the hand away. "What do you want?" he snarled.
"My, my. Temper, temper," a cool voice chided. "I just wanted to check in and see how well your minions were doing. Not very well, it appears. Have they done anything yet other than run around in circles?"
Whirling around to face her, he growled, "They have killed the Barrier's Keeper."
For a moment the surface of her expression fractured, and he thought he could almost detect turbulent depths churning underneath, but then her cool mockery rose and he wondered if he had been mistaken. "Who would have thought that possible, especially considering the number of Figments he has defeated in the years since the Barrier was first breached? So who is the new Keeper?" she asked nonchalantly.
His expression darkened, the turmoil in his depths unmasked by the writhing skin of his face. "From what I could sense, his son, who is accompanying my Dreamer."
"His son?" she repeated, and despite her habitual cold drawl, he thought he detected a flicker of shock, perhaps even anticipation, in her ice-chip eyes. Then her lids fell with the swift violence of an avalanche, and if possible a mantle of ice even more cold and treacherous slid down her face. "If you send me I could easily destroy both him and your precious Dreamer," she offered with a smile of frosty indifference.
"My minions will still find them and take care of them," he growled.
"Perhaps," she sighed, her eyelashes tinkling against her frigid cheeks. "Perhaps not. Nothing is certain except that I will succeed if they fail."
"You will not be given the chance," he snarled. "I don't trust you, for you are as deceptive as your beauty."
Reaching up a slender hand with long, frosty blue nails, she stroked his restless face. Then placing her wintry blue lips to his, she kissed him briefly, exhaling ice-laden air down into the furnace of his lungs. "Yes," she breathed, "yet you still need me, just as you have always needed me, however reluctantly." With a chilling laugh she stepped back, to be swallowed by a sudden flurry of sparkling snow. For a moment he watched a few, swirling silvery flecks as they slowly winked out, and then he turned back toward the monotonous scene of his minions circling and recircling the clearing. Reaching his hand across the darkened theater of space, he once more provided direction to his aspiring players, casting all his formidable skills into the picture in the hope that he could salvage the entire production without needing to meet the price of an equally talented, unpredictable, and ambitious leading lady.