The Changeling (Book One of The Síofra Chronicles) (3 page)

Chapter Four

“Where are we going?” I asked, trying to keep up with his brisk pace.  His legs were much longer than mine, so I had to practically jog behind him or risk my arm being tugged off.

Aleksander walked toward the trees I had seen from the beach, saying something about what kind they were, but
I was distracted by the beauty of our surroundings.  The grass underfoot was lush and soft, and it tickled my feet as we walked through it and into the trees. There was no path, but he seemed to know exactly where he was going, and seeing that I was no longer keeping pace with him, he slowed down and let me take my time drinking the view in.  The trees were taller here than any I had seen before, and they grew strong and thick.  I felt insignificant in comparison. I glanced up at the sky, amazed to find that the canopy of branches was so dense it blocked out most of the sky, but even here the moonlight filtered through the leaves and lit the way.  The way the moonbeams danced through the trees gave it a magical feeling.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he asked, his lips turning up at the corners.

"I've never seen any place like this," I replied softly, stunned at how dense the woods were, how thick the bushes grew, how bright the wildflowers that littered the ground were.  “Beautiful doesn’t begin to cover it.”

The forest floor was covered with dark green grass, and tiny blue and white flowers were growing in clusters.  It smelled crisp and heady with flowery perfume, and the tang of the sea still lingered in the air over it to create a scent that left my head spinning. Overhead, I could hear the trill of birds as they called to one another and flitted through the branches.  The forest was alive and I could feel it calling to me.

"There is no place like this. Come on. You haven't seen anything yet." He tugged on my hand excitedly and led me farther into trees.

His excitement was infectious, and I found myself anticipating what he might be leading me toward. I tried to focus my thoughts more on where we might be going than in the beauty that surrounded us, but it was difficult. My eyes kept drifting to the sides of the path, feeling a sense of peace and belonging that I didn’t want to leave.

Aleksander grinned at me, his eyes dancing with eagerness as he pulled me through a large cluster of bushes. When we broke through the flora to the other side, I stopped short and gaped at what lay before me.

It was a small pond, the edges rimmed with white pebbles and water so still I could see the reflection of the trees as they moved in the breeze above us. A large smooth stone jutted out over the water, and I dropped Aleksander's hand, desperate to climb onto the rock and look into the water below. He smiled at my eagerness as I scrambled up and stretched out on my stomach, peering over the edge
.

  The water itself was still as glass and unlike anything I had ever seen. It flashed and lit from within, projecting different images like a giant television with some invisible spectator idly flipping through the channels. The water glowed crimson color, and a young boy appeared in the reflection of the water. He couldn’t have been older than five or six years. Dressed as a knight, he wore a set of gleaming armor and held a sword aloft in one
hand, his face serious as he scrambled onto a horse and charged at a shadow lurking in the distance before the image slowly faded and disappeared.

Without warning, the reflection shifted again. This time, pale yellow like sunlight lit the waters, giving it a sunny, cheerful glow. An old woman sat in a white wicker rocker on a wide country porch. In her lap, a giggling baby
girl was patting the woman’s cheek and making her smile. Her mouth moved as if she were speaking to the baby, but I couldn't hear anything before the image faded, the colors altering as scene after scene played out before me.

"What is this?" I asked, unable to tear my gaze away from the shifting images before me. 

"I thought you might like this," Aleksander said, climbing onto the rock next to me. He stretched out his lanky frame so that he too could peer over its edge, his side pressing against mine in the small space. "This is what we call The Pool of Dreams. What you see before you are the dreams of humans on earth.”

“These are people’s dreams?" I asked, turning to look at him. "How does it work?"

"You know how I said that this place ran parallel to the mortal world? There is a small space between their world and ours where the power that created their world and ours exists.  We call it the Dreaming. This is where human souls like to wander while their bodies are relaxed enough to allow their spirits to roam, like extra slack in their mortal tether. This is the thinnest place between our world and the Dreaming. It allows us to see their dreams, to keep watch over them, and make sure that all is well."

I chewed my bottom lip as I considered what he was saying.

"So you use this to spy on people while they dream? That's kind of creepy, don't you think? Like a cosmic Peeping Tom? I'm not sure I'm comfortable knowing that you guys have been treating my dreams like some reality TV program to occupy yourselves." I immediately turned red and felt my stomach drop when I considered some of the dreams I had had in the past. I wondered if Aleksander had seen any of my dreams and felt preemptive mortification flood me like he had walked in on me in the shower.

He erupted with laughter. "A cosmic Peeping Tom? I don't think I've ever heard that one before. Has anybody ever told you that you have a unique gift for description, Cassie? "

"I've been told I've got a smart mouth, if that's what you're asking," I mumbled, pretending to be preoccupied with the images in front of me.  I felt simultaneously intrigued and repulsed by the reflections dancing on the surface of the water.

"It’s not like that, Cassie," he chuckled. "It is our duty to watch over their dreams. The Dreaming still holds a huge amount of power. It’s full of energy and possibility, both for good and for ill. With their unconscious minds, the sleeping humans shape their own realities, even if only for the moment. There is a tremendous amount of power in that, and as such, there is the possibility for misuse. It’s our job as guardians of the Pool to watch and make sure that all is well. As of yet no mortal soul has learned how to maintain anything they have created, and they don’t seem to have any conscious knowledge that the Dreaming actually exists, but then,
human souls are not the only ones out there.”

"Of course not," I said, dripping sarcasm.  "Because faeries and magic pools of water and alternate dimensions aren't weird enough, there are other things out there.  What else is out there? Vampires? Werewolves? Should I be on the lookout for leprechauns too?" A strand of hair fell into my eyes, and I glared at it and tried to blow it off my face without much success.

"Don't be silly," he scoffed, brushing the errant hair off my face and tucking it behind my ear.  "There is no such thing as vampires or werewolves."

I snorted. “Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? The Faerie is telling me that vampires aren’t real?”   It was ridiculous enough to send me into peals of laughter.

He frowned at me, not amused.

"What about the leprechauns?" I chortled. "Should I start chasing rainbows and trying to steal his lucky charms?"

"Absolutely not!  They are sprites, not leprechauns. They hate being called leprechauns and they’re horribly vindictive about it. They have no sense of right or wrong, and they're capricious and devious. They keep mainly to the Unseelie Court, so we have few interactions with them, but all the same. Avoid them."

"I'm not concerned about running into sprites, Aleksander. It's not like any of this is real anyway, so the need to avoid morally ambiguous sprites doesn't seem all that important." I rolled my eyes at him and turned back to the water, absorbing myself again in the flashing colors and shifting scenes playing out in its depths.

"Okay, obviously you're going to need more than just my word for it,” he said. “Look into the water and tell me what you see." He leaned over the edge of the rock and stretched out a single finger until he gently touched the surface of the water. Immediately, the entire pond flashed the same shade of green as my eyes—as his eyes—and an image rose like a bubble rising from the depths, exploding onto the surface.

It was Miguel.  He was at the club we had left earlier tonight, a wide grin on his face as he spun on his heel, the metallic sheen of his tie spinning out around him.  He was dancing with the blond guy I had seen him with, and they were both smiling.  He placed his hands on Miguel's shoulders, drawing him in closer and resting his head on them.  My friend’s eyes flashed happily, and he wrapped his arms around the man and laughed. 

I was uncomfortable watching it.  I wasn't sure if this was something that I had seen earlier this evening and hadn't yet processed, occupied as I’d been by Dom, or if this was my imagination trying to give my friend a happy ending.  Guys were hard for Miguel to meet, and he deserved happiness. 

"Can we not watch this?" I asked, swinging my eyes to Aleksander, who thankfully had his eyes on me and not on Miguel's romantic moment.  As much as I didn’t want to see Miguel’s dream, I most certainly didn’t want this stranger seeing it either.  “This kind of feels like spying even though I'm sure this is my mind is just regurgitating memories.  But it’s all the same if you don't mind?"

It was Aleksander's turn to roll his eyes at me, frustrated with my attempts to argue with his version of reality.  Or fantasy. Or whatever it was he was trying to insist this was. 

"Fine then.  Let's try another."  He reached down, and the image flashed green again.  I peered down into the still water as the murky image took shape.

It was Becca. She was young again, maybe ten years old, and she was sitting on the wooden staircase that had been in the house she’d grown up in, watching through balusters.  She cried pitifully, her face blotchy and red with sorrow. She continued sobbing as her father stood in their foyer, a blue suitcase in his hand, angrily saying something to the crying woman in front of him.

He turned to Becca and walked to the staircase so that his face was even with hers as she clutched the railing. He whispered something to her and kissed her forehead. Becca cried harder, but her father wasn't listening. He only clutched his suitcase tighter and walked away from her without a backwards glance before I shut my eyes and refused to look anymore.

My heart tightened in my chest. I knew that scene. That was the day Becca's father had walked out on them for a woman he worked with. Becca had chased him out the door, following behind him and begging him to take her with him. When he kept going, she turned and ran all the way to my house and I had held her with my too skinny arms as she sobbed until she fell asleep. Angry tears came unbidden to my eyes, and I had had enough.

"What was that?" I demanded, wiping the
m away from my cheeks as I scrambled to my feet. "What kind of game are you freaking playing?"

Aleksander slid down the stone until his feet hit the pebbly shore and reached up to offer me a steadying hand. I pretended I didn't see it and climbed off the rock.

"That was your friend's dream," he said, his face patient and understanding. "This was the reality she created this time."

"How did you even know that she was my friend? Or Miguel? Have you been stalking me or something?"

"I have seen her in your dreams many times, Cassie. We create those who mean much to us more often than anything else."

I gasped, indignation flooding me.

"You've been watching my dreams?"

"We watch the dreams of all Síofra," he said. "We take special interest in our own as they grow. Their safety is our primary concern."

"How long have you been watching me?" Indignation was being quickly replaced by mortification and anger. I was going to be sick.  This was far worse than someone walking in on me in the shower, such a deeper violation of privacy than anything I could even think to compare it to.

"Only for about four of your years," he said defensively, holding his hands out in front of him.

"Only?" I exclaimed shrilly.

"Well, I have known that I was going to be your guardian for a couple of your years now. And to be honest, I liked watching you."

I sputtered, so angry that I was unable to form words—only incoherent vowels—and I almost choked on them. I had never in my life wanted to slap somebody until that moment, and only my mother’s strict rules about raising hands in anger stopped me. 

“Stalker much?" I finally managed to choke out. My cheeks flushed with warmth, this time from anger rather than nerves, and pinned him with a hostile glare.

"No, not a stalker!" he denied, his cheeks turning as crimson as mine. "Not like that. You always seem so fragile, and your dreams are uncommonly pleasant. Most people, they dream of sex, or money, power, revenge. There are some dreams so dark you think they will burn a hole in your soul if you watch them too long, but not yours. Your dreams are all sunshine and light and laughter. I have never seen dreams so pure and happy. Our kind are drawn to that. We are drawn to love and happiness and good feelings like it’s our lifeblood. I meant no harm by it. I only wanted to know you."

Obviously he hadn’t been watching my dreams lately.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had had a good dream because I certainly wasn’t counting this one.  I felt my anger deflate a bit and glared at him, annoyed at the way he was complimenting me when I clearly wanted to hate him.