In the City of Dreams Page 2

  “Great! Let’s go get it,” said Neal.

  “It’s already here!” said Pasha. He tugged at the air next to him and — floop! — a carpet suddenly appeared.

  “The crew is set!” said Galen. “Keeah —”

  “Not yet!” said a sudden voice.

  All eyes turned to the corner.

  Lord Sparr raised his head to Keeah. His cheeks — nearly as pale as Eric’s — were glistening with tears. “Keeah, know one thing. While you seek the cure my little Isha has found, I will not leave Eric’s side, no matter where he goes.”

  “Where he goes?” Keeah said. “But —”

  “Remember!” he said. Then, patting Isha’s head, he lowered his own until his aged face could not be seen. He resumed rocking back and forth on the stool.

  “Thank you, Lord Sparr,” Keeah said.

  Galen had watched his brother silently. “We all thank you. Now, Keeah, take this.”

  He handed her a mirror that looked like a perfect miniature of the larger one. “It will help us keep in touch. In the meantime, Max and I will consult the ancient books for other possible cures.”

  “Khan, Shago, and I will sail to the faraway island of Mikos,” said Zello, “in hopes a cure may lie hidden in Bazra’s treasure fortress. Ortha, Batamogi, and the others, please search the distant reaches of the Saladian Plains.”

  “We will,” said Batamogi, bowing.

  Queen Relna took her daughter’s hand. “Sparr and I will look after Eric. While he is in danger, we’re all in danger.”

  Keeah nodded, wiping away a tear. She took one last look at Eric, paler than ever, then turned and joined her friends at the window.

  Moments later, she, Julie, and Neal, with Pasha as pilot, flew the carpet — visible for the moment — out of the room and across the rooftops of Jaffa City. There was a chorus of cheers from the townspeople below as they swept by.

  After conversing quietly with Isha, the carpet weaver set a course southeast, toward the Dark Lands.

  Though the air over Jaffa City was sunny, the sky grew increasingly overcast and chilly the farther they flew into enemy territory.

  “I’ll never forget when I first heard of Samarindo,” said Neal.

  Everyone knew what he meant.

  Samarindo was home to two princesses the children had met once before. Their names were Looma and Sarla, and they were violently attracted to Neal’s wavy blond hair.

  “I’ve decided to keep my turban pulled safely low,” he said. “Of course, it’s hard to blame the girls. I do have awesome hair —”

  All at once, Isha fluttered up and began to tweet noisily.

  “We are?” said the little weaver. He peered over the edge of the rug. “So we are! Look, everyone. There it is!”

  And there it was.

  A walled city of domes and bridges and streets and towers appeared amid a vast desert of purple sand dunes stretching all the way to the Dark Lands in the east.

  “It actually looks beautiful,” said Julie.

  “The next dream will change it, no doubt,” said Keeah. “Pasha, let’s land just inside the wall.”

  “Aye-aye,” the little pilot said. He gently landed the rug in a narrow alley beneath the city wall, folded the carpet to the size of a handkerchief, and stowed it under his cap.

  The sounds of a busy city bubbled around them. Voices called, pilka hooves clopped on the cobblestones, and the melodic strains of strange instruments filled the air.

  “Cool,” said Neal. “Now where?”

  “Isha will tell us,” said Pasha, listening closely to the bird’s tweets and whistles. “She says the cure can be found at … the Silver Dome. Isha, where is the Silver Dome?”

  Twittering once, the bird dipped to the end of the alley, looked both ways, and flew left.

  “Left it is!” said Keeah. “Let’s follow!”

  The four friends hurried after the little bird and entered a street where dozens of shops bustled with life and the air sang with voices. Creatures of every sort milled about the streets. Some were small and scaly, others plump and furry. The children decided not to attract attention but to simply follow Isha as she swooped from street to street.

  Entering one narrow alley, they spied a low-roofed shop piled high with brass urns, lamps, and pots, while another featured scarves of every hue and size.

  “Samarindo is lovely,” Keeah said as she breathed in the warm morning air. It was scented with the fragrance of summer flowers. “But Isha is flying so quickly, we can’t pause.”

  Neal stopped in his tracks. “Except to eat!”

  He pointed to a tiny pie shop squeezed between a bucket stand and a shop filled with curly-tipped shoes. Neal spied a little creature in the window of the pie shop. It had knobby blue skin, wild whiskers, and one eye in the center of its forehead that brightened when it saw Neal.

  “Yes?” said the creature.

  “Blueberry, please —” Neal began.

  All of a sudden, the ground quivered as if a giant wave were washing over the street.

  “Brace yourselves. It’s a dream!” said Julie.

  Pasha grabbed Neal and pulled him back, while the shopkeepers quickly grabbed their wares and held them steady.

  “Here’s my card!” said the pie maker, stuffing a card into Neal’s hand even as the shop began to fade. “But the address … is … wrong!”

  In less time than it takes to say it, the street buckled and sank and changed. When the dream finally passed, Neal was flat on the ground without his turban, Julie and Keeah were twisted in a knot, and Pasha was on his knees, gently cradling Isha in his hands.

  Instead of a lively cobblestone street, they found themselves in a bare, open square paved with ashes.

  The air had darkened.

  Clouds had drifted overhead.

  And the place where the pie shop had been was now occupied by two orange-haired young princesses, one dressed all in pink, the other in green.

  They spied Neal and screamed.

  “My goodness, it’s him!” cried the one named Sarla.

  “And he brought his hair with him!” yelled the one named Looma.

  Neal shrieked, “The instant I’m not wearing my turban, you show up!”

  “Get him!” the girls cried together.

  “Girls, halt!” snapped Keeah, shooting violet sparks from her fingertips. “Now!”

  The two princesses froze.

  “Don’t hurt us,” pleaded Looma.

  “I won’t,” said Keeah. “But please don’t bother Neal or his hair. We’ve come to Samarindo seeking a cure for our sick friend. We can’t waste time running away from you.”

  The sisters looked at each other, at Neal’s hair, and at Keeah’s sparking fingers, then sighed.

  “Fine,” said Sarla, the one dressed in pink. “It hardly matters, anyway. Nothing’s fun anymore. Not since … Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday?” said Pasha, counting on his fingers. “Tuesday is exactly when Isha flew from Jaffa City to find a cure. She found it here.”

  Looma, the one in the green gown, nodded. “It’s also the day the Dream Crown was stolen and the city became strange and frightening.”

  “Galen told us about the crown,” said Julie.

  “It belongs to our father, Boola, duke of Samarindo,” said Sarla. “The dreams from his Dream Crown are why people have come here for years. Father would dream of wonderful things, and they would happen! He’s always used the crown for good.”

  “And for fun,” added Looma. “Food appeared when we were hungry. Rain came to help flowers grow. On the first day of summer, my father dreamed up a beach right in the center of town. It was lovely.”

  “Only now it’s a terrible place,” said Looma. “Since that thing stole his crown.”

  “What thing?” said Keeah.

  “Like a big wolf,” said Sarla. “With wings.”

  The children looked at one another.

  Julie’s eyes widened. “You mean … a wingwolf ?”


  “That’s it!” both princesses said together.

  Wingwolves were beasts from the ancient past. The kids had encountered them before, when the wingwolves were working for Ko. A wingwolf’s scratch had given Julie the ability to fly and to change shape.

  “Not to mention the flock of hideous fire dragons!” said Looma. “But they’re all just working for someone else who’s taken over our father’s palace and his crown.”

  “Wingwolves and fire dragons and stolen crowns,” said Neal. “Samarindo is in trouble.”

  Keeah paced back and forth, then stopped. “We’d like to help your father get his crown back and stop your city’s bad dreams. But first we have to find a place called the Silver Dome. That’s where the cure can be found.”

  “And I fear Isha, our guide, is getting confused by all the dreams,” said Pasha.

  “Well, here comes another one!” said Looma. “The palace is shaking again. Everyone hold on to something —”

  “Not my hair!” said Neal, jumping away from the princesses.

  As the friends huddled close together, the sun dimmed. The sky turned gray. The ash-paved square vanished into a downward-curving street with torches along the walls.

  The giggle twins were nowhere in sight.

  And neither was Isha!

  “Isha?” said Pasha. “Where is Isha? Isha! Oh, dear, now we’re really lost!”

  “Lost? You’re not lost,” growled a deep voice. “Because I found you!”

  The four friends looked up.

  Crouched on a nearby rooftop was a tall, wolflike creature with purple-red fur. From his back arched a pair of dark wings.

  Julie gasped. “A wingwolf!”

  “Captain Talon, to be exact,” said the wolf. “But you got it wrong, miss. Not a wingwolf, ten wingwolves! I say, boys, that’s your cue.”

  There came a loud fluttering of wings, and the roof crowded with nearly a dozen wolfish beasts. They slashed the air with their claws.

  “Guys,” said Keeah, “we should run —”

  But before the friends could move, Captain Talon shouted, “Attack!”

  Eric Hinkle saw his own pale figure sit up and shout, “Samarindo!” then fall back again. But he was more interested in the magic mirror’s vision of the city.

  He watched the air ripple down one cobblestone street after another, reach right through the mirror, and wash over him.

  “It tingles!” he said. “Cool!”

  He felt an urge to touch the mirror. He did. His fingers slid right into the image as if into water. He felt another urge — to step into the mirror. He did that, too.

  He slipped right into the mirror. Instantly, the royal bedchamber and the crowd of people around him disappeared. He stepped down and felt a cobblestone beneath his foot. All around him, the air jangled with the sound of bells and the babble of many voices.

  “This is so unbelievably cool!” he said. “I’m in Samarindo! I love it!”

  Then he saw a pie shop and felt hungry. But when he approached, he realized he couldn’t see his reflection in the shop window.

  “Weird window,” he said, knocking on it. But his knock sounded more like a light tap. Eric looked at his fist and frowned.

  “Hello?” said a voice from the shop. A creature with bumpy blue skin looked out the door with one big eye.

  “Hello,” said Eric. “I don’t know how I came here, but I’m really hungry and —”

  “No one!” said the blue creature. “If only that blond boy had bought a pie!”

  Eric frowned. “But excuse me —”

  The little creature disappeared into the shop and slammed the door behind it.

  “Fine. Be that way,” Eric grumbled. “I don’t want your pie, anyway!”

  Stepping down the street once more, Eric saw an odd, wing-shaped shadow move across the cobblestones ahead of him. But when he looked up, there was nothing there.

  “Weird and a half,” he said to himself. “But so is everything else here.”

  At first, he simply wandered down the streets of Samarindo, enjoying the strange and wondrous sights of the city. But soon he found that he was actually following the wing-shaped shadow. From street to street, from alley to bridge to square, he felt drawn by the shadow. No matter how quickly or slowly he walked, the shadow floated at the same pace.

  At last he heard the sound of flowing water. “A river?” he said. He closed his eyes, and the image of a boat popped into his mind.

  “Of course! The shadow’s leading me to the water to find a boat. I need a boat!”

  Eric walked faster until he turned down a street that dipped to a low wall.

  The shadow slipped past the wall to the other side. Eric leaned over and saw a small wooden boat moored to the riverbank. Resting on its seat was a single oar.

  “And there’s my boat!” he exclaimed.

  The shadow moved down the river.

  “Wait for me!” said Eric. He climbed into the boat. It barely made a splash when he sat down. He tried to loosen the rope that held the boat to the bank, but he found he couldn’t. In fact, Eric realized, he could barely see his hands.

  “I have to follow the shadow! Come on!” he said, frustrated.

  Finally, he managed to untie the rope. The boat began to drift down the river.

  After several tries, Eric was able to slide the oar from the seat and lower it into the water. He managed to row once, then twice, and the boat glided more swiftly down the canal.

  Rounding a bend in the river, Eric heard a tweeting noise. He saw a green bird fly overhead. It sped away.

  Turning around another bend, Eric spied some winged creatures with wolf heads chasing a bunch of children and a little man with a long striped cap.

  Eric didn’t stop rowing. “I can’t get involved. I don’t even know them.”

  Strangely, as soon as he left the children behind, he found that every stroke of the oar became easier, and the boat glided along swiftly.

  As he drifted around a third bend in the river, he saw what looked like the face of a boy his age floating in midair.

  When the boy saw Eric, his eyes bugged out, his mouth opened, and he screamed at the top of his lungs. “A ghost!”

  “Same to you,” murmured Eric.

  And he rowed on.

  * * *

  Blam! Blam!

  Keeah blasted violet sparks as she, Julie, Neal, and Pasha tried desperately to escape Captain Talon and his band of flying creatures. But the wingwolves dodged her sparks and took up the chase, driving them deep into the streets.

  The friends raced down long alleys and shot around corner after corner until they spied a ramshackle old pilka stable.

  They dived inside and hid.

  For minutes, they listened, unmoving.

  “Maybe they didn’t see us,” whispered Pasha. “Perhaps they flew on.”

  “They’re out there,” said Neal. “They’ll pick us off the second we try to leave.”

  “I don’t get what wingwolves are doing here in the first place,” said Julie. “They’re ancient beings with ties to Ko and Gethwing. But Ko fell down a bottomless pit, and Gethwing’s still trapped in the Underworld.”

  “These are not standard wingwolves,” said Pasha. “I knew there was something strange about Captain Talon’s way of talking. Their purple-red fur convinced me. They’re eastern wingwolves! Eastern!”

  Everyone stared at Pasha.

  “And …” said Keeah.

  “And,” said Pasha, “eastern wingwolves are frightened of water, never go near it! We saw a river in Galen’s mirror. If dreams haven’t changed it yet, we can escape to the river and continue our search for the Silver Dome.”

  “Okay,” said Julie. “But we don’t want to wander the streets if the wingwolves are still out there.”

  The carpet weaver smiled. “Perhaps one of us could hide under my invisible carpet, find the river, and return to help us escape.”

  The friends looked at one another.


  “If we don’t hurry,” said Keeah, “a new dream may throw us out in the open even farther from the river. I’ll go.”

  “No,” said Neal. “I’ll go. You check the mirror and see if anything’s happened since we left Jaffa City. I’ll be back soon.”

  He threw the carpet over his shoulders and tugged on the fringes. Blink!

  The rug — with Neal under it — vanished.

  “I like you better this way,” said Julie.

  “Really?” said Neal.

  “I’m kidding!” she said. “Hurry before another dream changes everything.”

  Creeping outside, Neal saw Captain Talon ordering his wolves all around the stable. They didn’t see him. Sniffing deeply, he sensed the river close by.

  “And I go!” he said to himself. He scrambled invisibly, street after street, until he saw water glinting in the torchlight.

  “And I find it!” he said.

  As he paused to catch his breath, he saw something drift upriver into view.

  It was a small, empty boat.

  “Hey, I wonder if we can use that,” he said. Lowering the carpet from his face, he peered closely at the boat.

  And his eyes bugged out.

  The boat was clearly empty, but Neal saw its oar splash in and out of the water as if it were being rowed by … by …

  “A ghost!” he screamed.

  * * *

  The floating face screamed at Eric as he passed, but he didn’t stop.

  “I have to follow the shadow,” he said to himself, “even if I don’t know where it’s leading me.”

  With each stroke he seemed to gather strength. He kept the shadow always in sight.

  At last, the shadow moved up the bank to a large stone building.

  The building was the colorful one he had seen before, but now it was the color of slate.

  Eric was soon at the bank and out of the boat. Back on foot, he followed the shadow to a set of giant doors.

  Eric set his hands on two giant doorknobs, but the knobs did not move. He tried again until air rippled out of the building over him, and the knobs began to turn.

  “Holy cow!” a voice shouted behind him. “Eric? Eric Hinkle? Hey, Eric —”