The Sandman and the War of Dreams (10 page)

Then the sounds of the murmuring voices grew louder. . . . They came closer to Katherine, and closer, till it seemed as if they were inches from her . . . just next to her ears . . . They mumbled on and on . . . then began to laugh . . . She could feel breath against her ears and cheeks . . . but she couldn’t see . . . Who was it?! What was this awful language? The door—the door allowing the light in—began to slowly close. The bright glow of that other room, the only light, began to vanish. But then she realized it wasn’t a door closing, but Pitch himself blocking out the light. He held the pages of her book in his one good hand. He
looked at them gleefully and began to laugh.

This is like a nightmare,
Katherine thought. And her fear deepened.
This
is
a nightmare,
she realized. Her fear swelled then because she knew—she could
feel
it: She was caught in a nightmare from which she could not awaken.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

A Dream within a Dream . . .

N
ICHOLAS
S
T.
N
ORTH DIDN’T
realize he was asleep on the floor of Ombric’s library in Big Root. The Dreamsand had felled him in midthought, and it was such an odd thought. He was thinking of Nightlight and what in the world the boy was doing. But at the same time he had been briefly distracted by Bunnymund’s ears. One of them was definitely longer than the other—by about three-quarters of an inch—then BAM! He was asleep, and while he could still hear Nightlight talking, it was as if the boy were a thousand miles
away . . . Something about Katherine . . . about saving her.

And so that’s where his mind began to wander as he dreamed—to Katherine. He saw bits and pieces of his time with her. How she had tended his wounds when he was so near death after his fight with Pitch and Bear. How she had brought him out of his bitter, lonely shell. How the two of them had saved each other time and again. Then he dreamed of Nightlight. Of the enchanted friendship between Katherine and the spectral boy.

He was worried, though. Katherine was growing up, but could the same be said of Nightlight? He was an otherworldly creature who never changed; he never grew taller or thinner or fatter—even his hair didn’t grow. He’d been a young boy for who knows how long. This was troubling, and then more so as
North’s dream began to darken. He saw Katherine becoming older, and growing. Then Nightlight seemed to vanish, to fade away into nothing, and as he did, Katherine’s eyes closed. Darkness folded around her like a shroud, a shroud that became Pitch’s cape. Then Pitch’s face appeared atop the cloak and began to spin faster and faster, making a dreadful sound, a most awful sound, a squealing, screeching, laughing sound. North felt terrified. He felt far away. He felt helpless.

Then, like a bright bolt, everything changed.

Now Katherine was standing over him. Her face was huge. This seemed familiar. . . . It was! It was when North had been turned into a toy by Pitch during the battle at the Himalayas: Katherine had picked him up, held and protected his tiny paralyzed body, and dreamed a dream that had saved him: the
dream of his future. The dream had been so glorious. So beautiful. He would build a great city of snow and ice, and it would be filled with magic and good works. It would be like Santoff Claussen, but on a grand, magnificent scale. In bright, brief flashes, he saw Katherine’s dreams for him more clearly than he ever had before; he saw it as a reality, of what
could
be: There was a great tower—a polelike spire that rose up from the center of this city—and from this pole, lights would shine out into the world. . . .

And now—now he could clearly hear Katherine’s voice urging him to “build this place. . . . It will destroy Pitch. . . . It will save me.” Then she said the words they all used, the most powerful words in all of magic: “I believe. I believe I believe.”

Believe, indeed!
North thought in the wakeful part of his sleeping mind. Katherine was sending him a
message from wherever she was being held—he just knew it! It was as strong as any feeling he had ever had. Nightlight had told him to find a way to save Katherine. But he hadn’t had to find it. It was being sent to him. By the bond of their friendship, Katherine was telling him how to save her!

He fought now to awaken. But that dratted Dreamsand was so very powerful.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

Of Dreams and Relics and Powers Unsuspected

D
REAMSAND WAS INDEED POWERFUL
, but when the Guardians share an identical dream, the power of their struggle to wake up was even stronger. They had all felt as if Katherine was reaching out to them by sending this dream. So they roused themselves, shaking the sleep from their minds and rising with a cry—a unanimous call to action.

“This dream must be made real! For Katherine’s sake and for the good of all,” proclaimed Ombric. He felt reenergized. He felt like the Ombric of old. He quickly thought through all the possibilities and
circumstances. He nodded to himself as he pondered.

First, this Sandman fellow had gone to help Katherine and insisted they not follow. Now they had their first message from her since she’d been abducted. Ombric nodded once more. Sandman must be making progress. And so the choice was obvious: The city of North’s future must be built. Ombric wasn’t yet sure why or how, but he knew it would somehow be Katherine’s salvation.

He looked up to see his fellow Guardians all nodding along with him, agreeing with the very same thoughts they themselves were having. They all knew what had to be done. It was bold. It was ambitious. It was unlike anything they had ever attempted. A new city had to be built. And an old one changed.

Toothiana flew to the knothole window of Big
Root. “No time can be lost,” she called down to the whole village, then she sent out her bright, musical call, singing all the way to Punjam Hy Loo. “The magic elephant must come and help,” she added. She called out once more, cocked her head as if listening to the wind, and then, with one flap of her wings, she filled the air around the village with legions of her tiny flying warrior helpers.

Bunnymund tilted one ear appraisingly, then tapped his foot four times on the floor. Within seconds, hundreds of Warrior Eggs popped forth from fresh tunnels surrounding the outer edge of the thick forest around Big Root. They scurried toward Ombric’s home on sticklike legs. “The creatures of the air will need help from those of the earth,” the Rabbit Man explained wryly.

Ombric took this all in approvingly. He held his
staff aloft. “Guardians!” he boomed out. “Place your relics together, my friends. This mission will require all of our powers!” His owls began to hoot madly, as if they could sense that something unprecedented was about to occur. Bunnymund held his staff against Ombric’s, and the jeweled egg on its tip began to glow. Toothiana took out her ruby box and joined it to the staffs. The glow shifted from pale to red, growing ever brighter, glistening. Then they all looked to Nightlight and North. Nightlight motioned for North to go next.

The valiant buccaneer kept his head down; he seemed almost . . . bashful. His voice was barely a whisper when he said, “You are indeed the truest of friends.” He paused for a moment, overcome. At last he added, “That you would help make true this dream given to me—”

“My dear North,” Bunnymund interrupted. “It is, I believe, a dream we share.”

The Pooka’s words were true. It was by now a dream that belonged to them all.

North grabbed his sword and swept its crescent-moon tip up to the other relics. The light of North’s blade was almost too bright to look into. There was a moment’s hesitation.

Ombric said what each of them had suddenly realized. “Will this work without the final relics?” There were five relics from the Golden Age that Tsar Lunar had told them were necessary to defeat Pitch, and they had only three.

Bunnymund’s ears suddenly began twitching wildly in opposite directions. Then, just as suddenly, they stopped. “Nightlight!” he yelled. “Your staff! Its powers, combined with the power of Ombric’s staff,
might be enough . . . if my calculations are correct!”

The others agreed and urged Nightlight closer. But Nightlight resisted—he knew they were wrong. Yet they needed convincing, so he walked up to them and raised his staff up to the other relics. Its diamond tip did indeed begin to glow. The moonbeam that lived inside—his moonbeam, sent by the Man in the Moon himself—flickered and shined brighter than ever. But it was not what was needed. Nightlight could feel the worry and disappointment of his friends as their collective light failed to grow brighter, despite the addition of Nightlight’s staff.

“It’s still not powerful enough!” Ombric said in a strained voice.

Nightlight felt frustrated. His fellow Guardians were all so knowing, but sometimes they failed to see the most obvious things. Or forgot to look.

Again only Nightlight’s childish mind could understand the truth, but if Sandman had been brought to them by Tsar Lunar, then surely he had brought with him something invaluable to the Guardians.
If Sandman was from the Golden Age, then so was his sand.
Nightlight took up a few grains of Sandman’s sand and blew it into the light of the relics.

A flash as bright as a dozen suns filled the room instantaneously. At that moment Katherine’s dream for North began its journey from the dimension of dreams to the realm of the real.

In the same moment, every other tree in the forest began to uproot itself. Every other creature from Santoff Claussen began to be affected by the magic that was washing through the village. They began to feel that something amazing was about to happen to them.

Half of this wondrous place would make the journey; the other half would stay and hold.

Friends old and new would be separated. But for the good of all.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE

Another Nightmare

K
ATHERINE WAS RUNNING.
S
HE
was in a forest. It was night. There was a bright moon, which made seeing easier, but it also made the shadows even denser and darker in contrast. There was no wind at all; the air lay thick and heavy all around her. There were no insects singing or the usual low commotion of a forest at night. Just an unnerving quiet. The only sound was her footsteps on the grass.

And the sound of the Thing that was pursuing her.

It seemed as though she’d been running for days. Even though she was going as fast as she could, her
feet were as heavy as lead. She could barely raise them. She heard the Thing coming behind her. Its movements were smooth and agile. It was coming closer, and quickly.

She had to hurry! Why were her feet so leaden? She seemed to be slower with each step.

She’d glimpsed the Thing, but only for a few fractured instants as it moved from leafy shadows into the moonlight, then back into shadow. Light. Shadow. Light. Shadow. A horrible flickering. Never long enough to see the Thing clearly. It was a squirming, lumpy mass, as big as Bear, but not like a bear at all. Not like anything she could name. It was coiled and knotted, like a tangle of giant snakes, but there was an arm too; a man’s arm, Pitch’s arm, coming from the Thing’s center, clawing at the ground and pulling it forward. Large snaky tails, each as thick as a small
tree trunk, twisted out from the main mass, helping the arm move its bulk over rocks and roots with a disturbing ease.