Dreameater, Part Two

A voice penetrated the blackness of my dreams, pulling me out of unconsciousness. "Isaac…"

Coming out of the dream was like moving through molasses. My mind did not want to let go of the hospital bed with the torn sheets and the clawed headboard.

"I'm sorry," my voice echoed again. My dream-self was anchored to that spot on the cold floor.

"Isaac, wake up," said the voice, soft and urgent, which was accompanied by a prodding on my shoulder, "don't make me hit you."

The hospital bed faded, slipping once more into my subconscious. I was awake, but realized I had been muttering in my sleep. I schooled my voice into silence, but I didn't want to open my eyes.

The voice could only have been Naomi, the only person besides Master Rhodes the lion-head doorknocker would let into the house.

"Come on, you—"

I caught her wrist as she bent to prod me again. Her skin was warm beneath my fingers.

"They say that if you wake a wizard while he dreams, his dreams pop out of his head and into reality," I said in a cracked voice.

"Good thing you're not a real wizard, then," Naomi's voice said, pulling her wrist out of my hand.

I grinned and opened my eyes. I was lying on the old, orange couch beneath the giant circular window of the Sanctum's second floor. I frowned. I didn't remember falling asleep on the couch last night. Naomi stood over me, hands on hips.

She was dressed for the DC summer in a sky blue sundress that cut off just at the knees and left her freckled shoulders bare. Her raven-black hair was pulled into her customary loose braid that spilled down to the small of her back. Her bright blue eyes stared right into me. I frowned again at the dress and the noontime sunlight streaming through the window.

"What time is it?" I asked, sitting up on the musty old cushions. My foot hit an old book on the floor still open to magical diagrams and formulae.

"Almost twelve."

I groaned and slumped back onto the cushions. It felt like I had barely gotten two hours sleep. I was tired and aching as if I had spent all of yesterday running a marathon.

"What were you dreaming about?" Naomi asked, her dark eyebrows drawn together.

"Why?" I replied, my voice defensive.

"You talk in your sleep," she said, "you kept saying you were sorry."

I grimaced, embarrassed, and snapped, "Worried about me?"

She looked surprised and turned away from me, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and frowning.

"No," she said haughtily, "just curious."

Naomi moved off toward the tiny kitchen that shared the space with the old couch.

I scowled and reproved myself furiously. I had barely been awake for two minutes and I'd already said the wrong thing.

"Look," I said, getting up and moving toward her, "I'm sorry. It was just… bad dreams, you know?"

She gave me a sidelong look and examined the coffee pot with some day-old coffee still sitting in it.

"Does Rhodes still make you run that magic obstacle course?" she asked, determined to change the subject. She dumped the old coffee down the drain.

I sat down heavily on one of the kitchen stools and rested my forehead in the crook of my arm. "He's got me running it every day and I still can't beat it."

"But not today?"

"He's off somewhere down south," I said, "Zombies or ghouls or something."

"I never thought I would find that sentence normal," Naomi said with a half-grin.

I gave her a smile, but I don't think it reached my eyes. The dream still lingered in my mind.

Naomi swished back to the old couch and peered out the big circle window expectantly.

"It's just as well Rhodes is out," she said, "I invited Sam and Johanna over to swim in the pond."

"The wolf twins?"

"Yes," she said, a smile touching her lips, "but I don't think you'd like it if Sam heard you call him that."

"Death by furry tidal wave." I laughed.

I heard the crunch of gravel in the driveway outside. Car doors slammed and Naomi waved to the people coming up the path to the door.

"Go change," she said without looking at me, "you're still wearing clothes from yesterday."

I groaned and made my way down the hallway to my tiny bedroom. My muscles ached and protested as I made them carry me the short distance. Naomi was already halfway down the twisting iron staircase by the time I shut the door behind me.

I let out a sigh and leaned against the closed door. I just wanted to go back and sleep for the next week. I could feel a headache gathering steam behind my eyes and I rubbed the bridge of my nose with the heel of my palm.

The bedroom I had in the top floor of the bookshop was small, with barely enough room to fit the single bed, dresser, and desk. The bed was a simple iron frame with a mattress on it, the sheets unmade. The dresser was old and solidly made of heavy wood, intricately carved with scenes from classic fairy tales. Books of all types and descriptions littered the rickety IKEA desk along with several notebooks filled with writing in my small hand. Noontime sunlight filtered through a small window above the bed that had a magnificent view of the aluminum siding of the house next door.

I opened the top drawer of the dresser and pulled out the bottle of aspirin I kept there. As a sufferer of chronic headaches, I was adept at taking these without water and promptly downed two. I sat down heavily on the foot of the bed, sending some paperbacks bouncing to the floor.

This was the third night in a row I had been plagued with bad dreams, dreams that dredged up my darkest moments and shoved them in my face. Every day after waking up sweating from these dreams, I felt drained and weak. I began to wonder if there was anything wrong with me. Maybe I needed a psychiatrist. I grimaced at these thoughts and shoved them into the back of my mind.

Still frowning, I set to rummaging through the ornate dresser for my swimming trunks, which I found in the bottom drawer, shoved into the back. I changed quickly and started for the door. After a second's hesitation, I grabbed the ebony wizards staff leaning in the corner behind the door and headed downstairs. With two werewolves around, a wizard could never be too careful and it always paid to be prepared.

With the aspirin finally beginning to take effect, I wound my way down the twisted iron staircase to the bookstore on the first floor. Motes of dust danced in the shafts of sunlight as they filtered through the big windows, casting light on the haphazard displays of occult wares that made up the storefront portion of the old house. I passed through all these knick-knacks, intent on the door in the back that led to a sprawling porch.
When I opened the back door and stepped outside, the heat of the Washington DC summer hit me like a heavy, wet blanket. The humidity was torturous even in the shade of the porch's overhanging roof.

Squinting out into the bright noontide sun, I surveyed the absolutely huge field that made up the back yard of the Sanctum. Tall grass grew over rolling hills that seemed to go on for a mile or more, broken by small stands of trees that swayed in the sultry breeze. I had once asked Master Rhodes how large his back yard was, but he had claimed it kept growing every year, fed by the powerful intersection of ley lines that the Sanctum was built over. He had last measured it in the 70s and claimed it had been over six acres of Midwestern plains, a grassland oasis in the middle of Washington D.C.

Off in the distance, a pond glinted in the summer sun. The water was clear as glass straight through to the sandy bottom and as cool as you could wish. A small, worn out dock jutted from the bank, but there was no boat. Where the water came from was a mystery, but I suspected it had something to do with exact intersection of the two ley lines converging directly under the pond.

Weeping willow and ash trees stretched out over the pond and part of the old dock, their leaves and branches like a girl's hair coming out of the water. Naomi and one of the wolf twins, Johanna Noble, were dipping their feet in the crystal water at the edge of the dock and in the shade of the trees. Naomi and Johanna were talking animatedly and gesturing at the grassy bank immediately around where the dock touched dry land.

The Noble twins were two of a kind. Both short and lean with manes of shaggy chocolate brown hair that spilled off their heads in waves. Johanna barely broke five feet tall, but she was lithe and slim, built for speed and thin as a rail. She wore a straw sun hat over her shaggy mane of chocolate brown hair, an orange bikini top over her slight chest, and a pair of cut off tan shorts. Her face was warm and prone to smiling like a person who was just happy to be happy.

I sighed wearily and made to move off the porch, but I caught sight of a figure sprawled on the porch swing. Sam, Johanna's twin brother, lay with his hands behind his head and his eyes closed, gently rocking the bench swing with one foot. Where his sister was quick and agile, Sam looked solid and powerful. He looked like he was chiseled from stone by the hand of a master. He was almost ridiculously muscled and seemed to not notice. Shirtless, he wore a floral-print pair of boarding shorts and a pair of leather sandals.

Sam had cracked one of his eyes at the sound of the porch door swinging shut.

"Hey man," he said, getting up with a grin and clapping me on the shoulder, "you look like crap."

"Late night," I said with a weary sigh.

Sam gave me a wicked grin, "With your fine lady over there?"

"What?" I asked, taken aback. I quickly schooled my face back to neutral, but I felt my face heat and hated myself for it, "No, nothing like that. I was studying a great grimoire I found in the basement of the house."

"Sure, buddy. Whatever you say." Sam said with a devil grin.

I frowned almost the whole way to the shore of the pond and the shaky old dock where the girls waited.

"Good, you're here," Naomi said, seeing Sam and me coming up to the edge of the dock, "took your sweet time."

Johanna stood up with a big smile on her face and a voice full of excitement, "Isaac, will you make a beach for us? Naomi says you could do it no problem."

I shot a glance at Naomi, eyebrow raised, "Really…"

All she did was smile, the picture of innocence. "It would be better than this long grass and you know it. Come on, Isaac."

"We just thought you could, you know, magic some up." Johanna said, making waggling her fingers 'magically.'

"I can get you some shovels from the shed," I said, crossing my arms, "I bet you could get some sand from the bottom of the pond."

Both of the girls gave me a level look and I withered under their gaze. I turned to Sam for help, but he just shrugged, not getting involved. Very helpful.

"Look," I said, resignedly, "magic isn't something to--"

I stopped short. I sounded like Master Rhodes prattling on about how magic was a toy. Did I want to be like that crotchety old wizard locked up in a tower of his own making?

Everyone was looking at me expectantly.

"You know what?" I said with a smirk, "I'll do it."

Smiles broke out all around. Taking my wizard's staff, I strode to the bank of the pond determinedly. I looked down at the bank around the dock and ran through spells in my head. Conjuring sand was an option, but it took a lot of energy to make something out of thin air and I didn't feel like I had it in me. On top of that, the conjured sand wouldn't last more than an hour without a constant source of energy to keep it from disappearing.

Another option was to move already existing sand onto the bank of the pond. It was much less energy intensive and it had the benefit of permanence. With a quick nod to myself, I stripped off my t-shirt and waded into the glassy-clear pond to Sam's sarcastic wolf-whistle and the giggles of his sister. When the water was just reaching past my knees, I turned back toward the dock and planted my wizard's staff into the sandy floor of the pond.

Magic, in and of itself, is not difficult to do. It flows from all around and inside the body and spirit. Every person has some reserve of magical energy, but the best almost anyone can do with it is access it unconsciously. Usually, this unconscious magic manifests in times of great stress and usually can be explained away. Star athletes put on a burst of unbelievable speed to score the winning touchdown or a doctor's patient pulls through a dangerous surgery against all odds. No magic can be accomplished without investing at least a portion of this internal energy.

It takes knowledge, determination, and more than a little talent to control the ambient magic of the world around you consciously. Magic is a task which is performed in the mind of the practitioner. All the fancy words, gestures, and wand-waving everyone associates with magic are just aides to keep your mind and your will focused on the spells. My wizard's staff is one such focus. Through the staff, I control energies, such as light or electricity, and my mind knows that that's the staff's purpose. With that purpose so ingrained in my mind, it becomes that much easier to believe that I can move energy with it. In the case of moving the sand onto the beach, I was going to use kinetic force, in a kind of telekinesis, which was suited perfectly for the staff.

But first, I was going to have some fun.

With a concentrated effort, I brought up my Witchsight. The Witchsight is one of the first things an apprentice learns to channel. It lets the wizard see the flows of magic around him in the natural world. With the Witchsight open, it was possible to see magic as it manifests, which is extremely useful when engaged in spellwork. The whole field glowed faintly with the strangely vibrating colors of life and the ambient magic that suffused the enchanted grassland. The ley line beneath the earth pulsed like a huge vein of living silver. Even the people on the dock gave off strong auras of innate Power. Naomi's aura glowed bright azure blue, much like my own, but centered over an intricate pentacle seal over her heart. The wolf twins' auras were the shape of snarling beasts in dizzying colors which seemed to be straining against unseen bonds.

The water I stood in hummed with its own cool magic. Nature's magic is passive for the most part. It's just there, readily usable for anyone who knows how. I began to murmur an incantation in Latin, painstakingly learned after long hours of late night studying, that would bind my will to the water in the pond. My staff and my words helped me focus my will, galvanizing it into reality. The sigils in my staff began to shine with a blue light as I used it to channel the spell into the water around me. The familiar burn of spellwork roared to life in my chest as the magic began to take effect.

All around me, the water trembled like Godzilla was right around the corner. I could feel the water as a cool presence against my mind, bound to me with the threads of magic coursing out of me. I allowed myself to smirk as the water roiled around me, lifting up into a massive wave. I thrust my hand out, fingers splayed, palm out and the water rushed forward toward the shore. My onlookers realized only too late what was happening and were soaked by the deluge of water speeding toward them in a tidal wave. I let my power drain away from me and dissipate before I began to shake with laughter.

Spluttering and cursing, the three on the bank shouted indignantly, but I didn't hear them. I laughed until my sides hurt and the only warning I got before Sam dunked my head under was his shadow leaping over the water and the yell of triumph as he sailed towards me. As I surfaced, it was my turn to splutter and curse, but I soon began laughing again at the sight of everyone dripping wet.

"Not funny, Isaac!" Naomi yelled, but she was grinning even while wringing water out of her long braid.

"You promised us a beach," called Johanna, "Now hop to it, wizard boy!"

I sighed, messaging my neck. "Okay, for real this time."

"Isaac, you don't look so good. You sure?" Sam's voice was low and his eyes were critical.

"Yeah. Just one more. I'll be fine," I said stubbornly, but I could feel my muscles complain with fatigue.

I waded out to my staff, which had floated to the middle of the pond in my dunking, and once again set myself in waist-deep water.

I took a deep breath and focused my mind. As I inhaled, I drew on my own inner magic, which seemed to flutter and jump like a guttering fire and as I exhaled, I bound that magic to my will with an effort of concentration. My staff began to glow once more as I drew a square, an alchemical symbol for the element Earth, around myself in the sand of the pond bottom.

Having decided on something less dramatic, I raised my staff up in two hands until it was horizontal against my chest. I began to recite my spell incantation, similar to the one I had used for the water, which would help me connect my own energy with that of the earth beneath my feet. The ley line beneath the ground pulsed against my mind like a heartbeat, but I kept my magic carefully away from the vein of powerful natural Power. Only the most prepared and alert wizards could harness the power of a ley line without overloading and burning themselves to cinders. And I was neither alert nor prepared to enough to try.

My toes dug into the sand on the bottom of the pond, feeling the magic flowing out of them into the ground around me. The fire of spellcasting spread through my chest, but it burned hotter and fiercer, more painful than it had ever been. For a second, I thought of stopping, but I had been casting spells in all-day channeling sessions for weeks. I was sure I could handle a second spell. I finished the incantation and spoke a word of command in a shuddering exhalation. At the same time, I pushed my staff away from my chest, like a slow push-up.

Once again, the water around my legs roiled with energy and grew cloudy as sand began to move. Like a living carpet, sand slithered out of the water and onto the bank of the pond. I began to sink as the ground under me slowly moved up onto dry land. The sand formed a smooth beach with a continual hiss and the smell of disturbed earth. When my arms finally reached full extension, I had sunk up to my chest and thirty feet of river bank lay covered in wet sand. As the spell finished, the energy seemed to drain away rather than dissipate in an ordered way.

I looked up to see awed expressions on the faces of the girls on the dock, quickly replaced with grins of pleasure.

"Isaac, that was so cool!" Johanna exclaimed, eyes glinting.

"No problem," I said, panting with exertion.

I felt like I had just finished a marathon. My chest felt like it had been lit on fire and I planted my staff into the ground for support.

Naomi's dark brows furrowed in a frown, "Isaac, you okay?"

"I never said magic was easy," I replied, hoping I sounded better than I felt. Maybe I just needed to close my eyes for a minute. "I just woke up, cut me a break."

She looked at me searchingly, but didn't say anything further.

I started toward the beach, leaning on the staff and moving on sheer willpower. Every muscle screamed with the exertion and my head pounded. By the time I made it to the new beach, my breathing was easier, but I still wanted to stretch out and sleep forever.

I sat down heavily on the sand, not caring that I was still wet from the pond. It no longer felt like I was on the verge of hyperventilation and the burning pain in my chest had lessened. I closed my eyes, arms folded on my knees, head bent to rest in the crook of my elbows. I was troubled by the toll my magic had taken on me. Two spells had exhausted me. Only two. Something was wrong. Master Rhodes regularly had me spell-slinging all day, why was it suddenly so tiring to draw on my own power? I felt like I did when I had just started learning magic. Granted, moving that much water and earth was no mean feat, but it wasn't overly difficult. So why was I so drained?

I flopped onto my back, hoping the sun's warm rays would beam some answers right into my head. Or maybe just put me to sleep. I was sure that if I could just get a quick nap, I'd be fine. In the midst of these thoughts, I almost didn't hear Naomi's voice. It took a sandy foot shaking my shoulder to snap me out of it.

"You coming in the water?"

I cracked my eye open and sunlight lanced into my vision. Naomi stood over me, eyes worried as they looked down at me.

"I just thought I'd work on my tan," I said with a weary smirk.

"Right," she said, sitting down next to me.

She just sat their silently, her hands idly pulling at the raven-black hair in her loose braid. The sounds of the Noble twins enjoying the pond and some tree crickets chirping doggedly were the only sounds to break the silence. I closed my eyes again, but her presence next to me kept me from slipping away into sleep.

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong with you?" she asked.

"Nothing," I replied, "I'm just tired. I was planning to take a nice nap out here in the sun."

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" Naomi asked, her voice quiet, but heating with growing frustration, "You may think you have us fooled, but we can see that there's something wrong. You look like you've barely slept in a week! And you almost pass out after doing two spells? I've seen you do bigger workings than those and still be up for a fight."

What could I say? That my dreams were haunted by the fact we had ever met and I had dragged her into a world of darkness and danger? How, whenever I used magic in these dreams, I felt my power leaking from me like a sieve? No, I couldn't tell her. I would figure what was going on by myself.

"It's noth--"

"Bullshit, Isaac." Naomi hissed, "Don't say it's nothing. Even your aura looks like crap."

I opened my eyes again and saw Naomi looking down at me, her irises glowing a faint blue. Naomi had brought up her own Witchsight.

"Don't throw up on me, please." I said, knowing that the Witchsight made Naomi nauseous.

"Shut up," she said, hitting my arm with the back of her hand, "You don't always have to keep everything to yourself. We're worried about you."

"I just haven't been sleeping well," I said, stubbornly.

"Why not?"

I turned over, my back to her and aggravation seeping into my words, "Bad dreams, I guess."

I hoped Naomi would take the hint and leave me alone. I needed to think about this by myself without any distractions. Seconds dragged by and I could feel her eyes bearing down on my back. With a sniff, I heard Naomi get up and move away back toward the Noble twins in the pond. I tried furiously to think of why I was so weak, but it was only moments before I fell into a fitful sleep.