Awa and the Dreamrealm Read online

  “The fragments like the one on the throne that insisted I was special?” I asked.

  “That sort of thing, yes, and to keep the Shadow at bay.”

  “The Shadow?” I felt a shiver run down my spine.

  “The Shadow grows in denial, the more you humans cannot face your uncomfortable aspects, and project them outside yourselves, the greater the Shadow grows.”

  “What does all that have to do with the fragments?” I asked.

  “The fragments are aspects of the Shadow, whether they know it or not… like small shards of a broken mirror. They are disconnects in our world, reflecting the greater disconnect of the Shadow itself.”

  It was all too much to think about. The words swirled around in my mind… fragments, shards… disconnect… Shadow.

  I shivered again – it was a similar feeling to just before when Honu had emerged from the lake – so enormous that it triggered awe and shock and terror. The lake around me swirled with my own confusion, and I saw that Honu had also started to slowly glide away.

  “It is good to meet you, Dreamweaver. You have much to learn and much work to do – so I will not keep you, but you may return to visit me,” and with that, Honu dropped down into the water again.

  I swam back to the shore, feeling terrified.

  “What’s wrong?” Veila asked me as we walked back up.

  “I’m – well, it’s all quite a lot to take in… also, my parents are worried about my mind. They’re making me talk to a psychiatrist.”

  “A sci-kia-what?” Veila asked.

  “A brain doctor,” I looked down, only to see I had no feet again.

  “Oh – you’re fine,” Veila assured me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I was holding the note to Evan, but I didn’t know how to give it to him.

  I could pass it to him right before class started, so I don’t have to talk to him, but then he might feel bad in class.

  I decided to wait until just before lunchtime, but I was still holding the note in my hand as I walked into the classroom.

  Just as I was about to sit down at my desk, I felt the note being pulled out from between my fingers.

  “What?!” I looked up to see Felicity.

  “What do we have here?” she asked.

  “Give that back!” I yelled and reached up for it. Felicity skipped across to the other side of the room.

  “Oooh,” she called out. “Awa and Evan, up a tree!” I looked around to see Ella walk in.

  Felicity lowered her voice. “I guess it makes sense since you’re both Asians.”

  I glared at her.

  “Just wait until the whole school finds out!” she shrieked and ran out of the classroom.

  “No!” I chased Felicity out into the hallway, grateful that Mr Jasper wasn’t there yet, because he would probably have yelled at me to sit down. Then again, Felicity wouldn’t have been so loud if a teacher was watching.

  “Give that back!” I called out to her, but she disappeared into the girls’ bathrooms. I gave up following her. What’s the point? That’s probably just what she’s wanting.

  I went back to class and sat awkwardly, while Mr Jasper called the role, trying to get Ella to look at me so I could mouth. “Sorry.”

  Ella seemed to be avoiding me. Great… just great.

  Things only got worse at morning break. I went to the bathrooms, and my gut sank to the floor. It was everywhere: “Awa and Evan” in love hearts scrawled on the mirror and walls in pink lipstick.

  I felt sick.

  I grabbed a paper towel and began wiping it off. The paper towels looked like they were covered in blood. The rubbish bin was like a murder had been committed by the time I finished.

  The mirror and walls were smudged, but at least there was nothing with our names anymore. No one else would see what Felicity had written, but I knew a bunch of people would have seen it before I had even got there.

  As I stepped out of the bathroom, trying to rub the last of the lipstick off my hands, Felicity snapped a picture of me. Probably just to show all her friends how upset I am. At least that’s what I thought at the time.

  This day is turning into hell!

  I didn’t manage to find Ella alone until after the bell rang for the end of the day. I saw her waiting to be picked up by the school gate

  “I’m so sorry!” I said. “I was trying to make it better, but I only made it worse. Ella was crying again.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “I think you like him back, and you were just being nice to me.”

  “No,” I said, “honestly.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You two can’t help the way you feel. Why don’t you just admit it, and you can go out with Evan and leave me alone!”

  “Ella,” I said. “I know you don’t believe me, but I have to tell you something.” I looked down.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me…” I said. “I’ve never told anyone this.”

  She looked up at me, curious.

  “I’ve never liked anyone that way – ever. I’ve never had a crush at all.”

  Ella was quiet for a while.

  “Never?” she asked

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. We stood there, awkwardly, watching cars drive past.

  “Maybe one day you will,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I replied. “But you can guarantee I don’t like Evan!”

  I might have said that too loud. Ella’s eyes widened. She was looking behind me. I turned to see…

  “Evan!”

  His face looked pale, upset, he turned and ran away.

  “Oh damn,” I said, smacking my face with my hands, now I’ve hurt two friends in the same day! What is wrong with me!

  I walked home feeling way too many emotions all at once.

  I was guilty and sad about Evan being upset, but it actually felt quite good to tell Ella one of my secrets.

  I didn’t know if she believed me, and I knew I couldn’t tell her about my dreams.

  As I walked, I felt worse and worse. The anxiety started building in my chest; everything went grey, and the thoughts circled in my head.

  Ella won’t believe me. She’ll think I’m a liar, and so will Evan. They will both hate me. I will have no friends. Felicity will start rumours about me, and everyone will tease me and laugh at me. There’s something seriously wrong with me, and I don’t even know how bad it is yet.

  I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket, but I didn’t want to answer it. It was probably just Mum anyway.

  By the time I got home, I was crying and breathing too fast, and I couldn’t seem to stop.

  “Awa!” someone called out, just as I was about to go into our building. I turned around.

  “Ella?”

  Ella was there, holding a tub of ice-cream and a bottle of hot sauce.

  “I saw the look on your face, when you left,” Ella said. “I wanted to cheer you up. I got my dad to take me to the shop, and he said he can pick me up in an hour.”

  “What about Evan?” I asked.

  “It’s okay,” Ella said. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Thanks,” I said, letting her into the building. “How did you even know where I live?”

  “You told me which building you were in. I was hoping you would answer your phone eventually.”

  I remembered my phone buzzing earlier. “Oh yeah, sorry for not answering.”

  “You don’t have to apologise,” Ella said. “I’m the one who should be sorry. You were really caught in the middle of all this, and it wasn’t your fault.”

  We made big bowls of ice cream, and I put hot sauce on mine again, just for fun, and because it’s actually quite good.

  “I hope Evan is okay,” I said. “Felicity can be such a nasty piece of work!”

  “Yeah, at least everyone knows that.” Ella said. “I’ll call Evan later.”

  “And maybe this time, you ca
n tell him how you really feel,” I suggested.

  “Maybe,” Ella said, “…or maybe I’ll wait a while, until he’s feeling better.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I hate that I hurt his feelings.”

  “You didn’t mean to,” Ella said. “You’re a good person… actually, I have something for you. Give me your hand.”

  I held my hand out, and Ella dropped something into my palm. It was small and silver – a chain with a single star charm.

  “It’s a friendship bracelet,” Ella said, holding out her hand to reveal a glint of silver next to her teddy-bear watch. “I have a matching one, see. I was going to give it to you before when we had the sleepover, but I forgot.”

  I smiled. “Thank you,” I said. “I love it.”

  “The thing is,” Ella continued, “…it’s like I said before – I didn’t really have any friends, before you came along, apart from Evan. And I’m glad you’re strong enough to stand up to Felicity. I’m sorry I doubted you – you really are a good person.”

  I smiled and hugged my friend… even after such a terrible day, things didn’t seem so bad now.

  I arrived in the Dreamrealm that night to find Veila relaxing on a bounder by the stream. Just being there instantly made me relax, and all my worries seemed to drift away in a cloud of colourful butterflies. I sighed.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’ve meant to ask you… what is a splinter, or a fragment or whatever they are called?”

  I sat on a rock dangling my feet into the water of the stream. Veila floated in the air next to me.

  “A splinter, or a fragment?”

  “How can you not know these things?” I asked Veila. “Isn’t it your job to know?”

  “My job?” Veila asked. “Then what is your job?”

  I shrugged. “To go to school I guess, although I wish it was to play video games and watch videos and read.”

  “What’s a video game?” Veila asked.

  I tried to explain it to her – how it was this thing on a screen that you tried to influence and that they usually got harder and harder…

  “But why would you want it to get harder?” Veila said. “Why would you like it, if it was hard?”

  “Because easy is boring,” I said.

  Veila smiled and spun around in the air. “The thing with me is that I can only know the things I need to know right now... in any particular now. This is how it is with dreamcharmers, we can only contain what we need, so when we are working with the dreaming humans, all we know is what we need to say. We don’t know why, or how.”

  “So if that’s your job – helping people to evolve through giving them dream suggestions, or whatever it is you do…” I said. “Why are you here with me?”

  Veila looked at me, curiously “because I’ve never met a Dreamweaver before and because it’s nice.”

  “What’s nice?” I asked.

  “Spending time with you,” Veila said.

  “Like a friend?”

  “I’ve never had a friend.”

  “Well, now you do,” I said and smiled at her.

  Veila floated down and sat on the boulder, beside me. We looked out at the big friendly trees around the Grove; they seemed to breathe with us.

  “So, what is it you wanted to know about?” she asked. “I will see if I can help you.”

  “I want to understand all this better,” I said, gesturing around me. “I get all these ideas – see all these connections, and sometimes I’m wrong.”

  I told Veila about the snake dreams and about thinking Evan’s uncle was evil when, really, he was nice.

  “Fear distorts things,” Veila said, sounding very wise. “And you know snakes… snakes are a symbol of power, and not all power is bad.”

  “I interesting…” I said. “You know, fragments, remember… like the one we saw in that room?”

  “What room?” Veila asked.

  “The room in the domed building, the Rooms of Mind.”

  “Hmm, it could have been anything in there.”

  “Yes, but you said… there was this little figure sitting on a throne on top of a pile of mattresses saying they were special, and you said that was a splinter – like a part of something bigger that had splintered off, a fragment.”

  “Oh, yes… of course!” Veila said. “Why?”

  “Well,” I looked at Veila’s small peachy-glowing figure, as she floated next to me. “Are they all like that?”

  “No,” Veila replied simply.

  “What did they splinter off from? And why? And what do they have to do with me and with being a Dreamweaver?”

  “Those are all very good questions,” Veila said.

  I sighed. “Really?”

  “Yes,” Veila said, beaming at me.

  “Can’t you… isn’t there a way I can find out more, now?”

  “Of course there is,” Veila said. “Let’s go!”

  “She pulled me by the hand, and I felt a tingle as if a thousand tiny bells were ringing through my skin.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To find some fragments for you to see,” Veila said.

  I followed Veila out of the Grove and into the meadow. She moved so fast that it took me a while to notice I wasn’t walking. I was gliding. It felt like a kind of video game. Veila seemed to go faster and faster; my stomach lurched as I accelerated behind her, trying to keep up. I felt fear creeping in, but I wasn’t sure if it was to do with moving so fast or whether I was scared of meeting other fragments. The one I had met before was very strange, but it didn’t seem dangerous. I had a gut feeling that some of the others might be.

  We went past the Priestess Tree and the Rooms of Mind, and then we turned and went further back into the meadow.

  “What are we doing?” I called to Veila.

  “Looking for fragments,” she replied.

  “There, look!”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Look down.”

  Below us, against the bright green of the meadow was a little man, all red and smoking in rage as if he was a hot element on the stove.

  “Who is that?”

  “It’s the Angry Man, of course,” Veila said, veering away from him and out towards the desert. I could see a funny shape against the barren landscape. At first, I thought it was a statue, but as we neared, I could tell it was a girl dressed in pink on top of a plastic-looking golden throne wearing a matching crown.

  “Ummm,” I said.

  “Don’t get too close to that one, either,” Veila said. “It never ends well.”

  “What is she, some kind of doll?” I asked.

  “She’s the Drama Queen,” said Veila. I giggled, thinking of Melody, and feeling relieved that I didn’t have to deal with all her stressful dramas anymore.

  “And look over there, toward the mountains,” said Veila.

  I could make out a swirling dark blue cloud at their base; as we got closer, I saw a sad-looking woman in the middle of the cloud, sitting with a broken umbrella.

  “The Sad Woman,” I said. I didn’t know how I knew… I just did.

  Veila nodded. Then she grabbed my hand, sending little tingles up my arm, and pulled me back towards the meadow.

  Veila pointed out to the left. I could see a shape in the distance. It looked like a bundle of rags.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Another fragment,” she said.

  As we got closer, I realised that what looked like a pile of old rags and rubbish was moving, slowly, swaying side to side as it if was trying to walk. We stopped a few meters away.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  “Shhhhhh,” said Veila. “It might be dangerous.”

  “It looks like a pile of junk,” I said.

  “Hrrrrrmmmm…” the sound came from the bundle. It slowly turned around, although it looked like turning took a lot of effort.

  “Hrrrmhrrm,”

  The noise was coming from a small wrinkly face somewhere near the centre of the pi
le, with beady eyes, and a tuft of white hair. There was a pungent smell in the air – like too much old-fashioned perfume.

  “Riffraff,” it said. “I have no business talking to you.” It started to turn back around again. And then stopped and looked at me.

  “You…” it said, looking at me more closely. “We’ve been expecting you…”

  I felt a shiver run down my spine, as the creature continued to turn away.

  “Wait…” I said. “Who are you?”

  “Me?” it said. “Can’t you tell, from all my finery?”

  “What… finery?” I took a step closer. I could see the rags were made up of velvet, furs, and embroidered silk. On closer inspection, they glistened with gemstones.

  “What is it?” I whispered to Veila.

  “I think this is a hoarder,” Veila said. “It clings to things, it collects shiny things and can’t bear to let go.”

  “Don’t look too closely, you… you beggar,” it said, backing away slowly. “It’s all mine!”

  I frowned. “But I don’t want any of it. It’s just junk,” I said.

  “Junk!” the hoarder said. “What kind of tomfoolery is this?” it scowled at us. “You’re just trying to trick me out of my riches.”

  “No,” I said. “Your riches are not really my style.”

  “Style!” it said. “I always have everything in style… everything. Look at my emeralds, this season’s colour!”

  I raised my eyebrows and looked at Veila. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with this… thing.”

  “Thing!?” the creature bellowed.

  “What do you mean?” Veila asked me.

  “You said Dreamweavers are supposed to alchemize the fragments… I don’t know what that means or how I’m supposed to do it.”

  “I don’t know either,” Veila admitted. “what do you notice about this one?”

  “It’s just obsessed with stuff,” I said, “…and it’s trying to carry everything around on its back, which means it can hardly walk.”

  “What would you know?” the fragment said.

  “Actually, it reminds me of how I used to be with toys when I was little. I would carry them around with me, everywhere I went. It used to drive Mum and Dad crazy!”