The Sandman and the War of Dreams (13 page)

Then he looked closer. Small, glowing Nightmare Men were being sucked into her nose and mouth with each breath. His heart began to pound.
She has no way of waking! Pitch has doomed her to an eternity of nightmares!
Sandy fumed.
The fiend!

Heedless of potential dangers, he tried to reach through the glowing dome of nightmare light that surrounded Katherine, but his hand was deflected by a painful burst of energy. He snatched his arm back and cradled his blistered hand. He forced himself to keep his mind clear, to not lose his temper. To him, dreams were precious, noble things. Seeing them twisted into something evil was an abomination.

If Sanderson had grown more powerful during his centuries-long sleep, then evidently, so had Pitch. Sandy knew he’d have to be clever and quick to get Katherine from this place. He was certain he’d be discovered at any moment. But how to remove her? Any effort to break through this formidable shield of nightmares would take time and draw attention. Ideas bombarded
him, but none were correct, and he was stymied.

He noticed a slight brightening of light behind him.
Pitch has caught me,
he thought, his heart sinking. Still, he spun around and shot streams of Dreamsand from each hand at whatever was sneaking up on him.

The darts of sand were deflected easily. And in the scattered dust Sandy saw not Pitch but Nightlight! Nightlight with his diamond-tipped staff in one hand and a fistful of just-caught Dreamsand in the other. The boy smiled at Sanderson Mansnoozie. Sandy was torn between feeling relief at not being caught and being a little perturbed. He felt he had been quite specific when he’d told the Guardians not to follow him. Still, he couldn’t deny he was glad to see this strange, glowing boy. He also was very curious as to why the boy had not been affected by the
Dreamsand. Why had it not put him to sleep?

Nightlight had had an intuition that Mansnoozie might lead him to his Katherine and also that the little fellow might need a bit of help. He’d slipped away from the other Guardians at the North Pole and had been tracking the Dream Captain from a discreet distance, but he knew it was time to take action. Without saying a word, Nightlight leaped forward with his staff and slashed at the base of the coffin-shaped rock upon which Katherine lay. With a single stroke, the diamond-tipped staff cut through the stone completely.

Amazing,
Sandy thought, looking on with surprise.

Nightlight enjoyed the little man’s astonishment. As did the moonbeam in his staff. But the moonbeam suddenly sense danger. It flashed a warning to
Nightlight. The moonbeam remembered this place well; didn’t his boy? The moonbeam had found Pitch here, pinned through his black heart to the very same rock upon which Katherine was now entombed. Pinned by the diamond dagger in which the moonbeam now lived. Nightlight’s dagger.

Sanderson turned to the moonbeam, hearing its thoughts. He could see all the details of the memories that flooded through this brave little flash of lunar light.

And as Sanderson Mansnoozie listened, he became sleepy, then sleepier. And in one more blink he was dreaming the moonbeam’s memories, about how the moonbeam came to be the light of Nightlight’s staff and the amazing story of Nightlight himself.

It all happened in an instant, as thoughts and dreams often do, but what a rich few ticks of the clock this proved to be.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-S
EVEN

Of Nightlight and Moonbeam and the Power of a Good-Night Kiss

S
ANDY HEARD THE MEMORIES
of the moonbeam exactly as the young light remembered them:

“I was tumbling down like,” the moonbeam began. “Into this dark place. I sees things that first time, in the Cave Dark, all Shadowy and nightmare-like. The Cave Dark looks like now, ’cept the Pitch was there. On this same rock. The Nightmare Rock where he was trapped for all that time. That rock must have dust and darkness of the Pitch’s hate living ins it still. Trapping Nightlight’s Katherine. Making Nightlight’s
Katherine dream the nightmares terrible over and over, on and on.

“The thinking of it is a cold horror. I’m remembering the last time. I felt that same cold. When I wents into the diamond dagger. The one that speared through the Pitch, through the Pitch’s cold heart and into the stone and held the Pitch prisoner. Kept him so he wasn’t alive or dead, just . . . There. All the while, inside the dagger was my boy Nightlight. Surrounded by the coldness awful. For almost longer than ever. It froze my boy. It made him still. And made his memories separate from him. But my light warmed him and wakened him and made my Nightlight boy free. He broke out of the diamond ’cause of me. He needed a bit of the Moon’s light to make him strong again.

“But the diamond traps me as it does any
magical light that comes into it. But I’m not minding. ’Cause I know I helps the Nightlight be free. And he should be free. He’s the hero of us all. But none really knows the all of his story. Only me. ’Cause his memories stayed here in the diamond. And I can feels them.

“Some knows he was a friend of the Man in the Moon. Some knows about his battling with the Pitch. But only I knows what came before: that Nightlight was the guard of the baby Prince of the Moon. The Nightlight was a special being. The only one there ever was. A boy of light who would live forever and never grow old. And he would always protect the royal young of the Golden Age, especially from nightmares. He would never sleep. And be always watchful.

“But he was doomed to a heartbreak. For though
he cherished and cared for the prince, there would be a sadness time when the prince would become grown and need him no more. And so sorrow would be his life until another child was born to rule, and then the joy and heartbreak would begin again.

“But Nightlight knows this and takes the burden, and every night he stayed and protected the sleep of the prince baby. Every night the Nightlight waited for the Mother Queen and the Father King to come give the kiss good night to their prince. The Magic Kiss of the Good Night. So powerful is this kiss. Takes away all the hurts. Makes the scare and sad go to nothing. My Nightlight has that power too. But he don’t know of it. He can’t ever give it and stay a nightlight. But his magic is like the parents’. And when they leaves after the kiss, my Nightlight boy says his song:

“ ‘Nightlight, bright light,

Sweet dreams I bestow.

Sleep tight, all night.

Forever I will glow.’

“Then he sprinkles Dreamsand over the prince and watches all the night. Every night. Never to sleep, my Nightlight boy. And he kills any nightmare from the Pitch that could do the princeling harm.

“But then the Pitch so terrible comes, and the Father King and Mother Queen, they know the Pitch will take their boy. To end the Golden Time, the Pitch must do away with the baby prince. So they give Nightlight an oath:

‘ “Watch over our child,

Guide him safely from the ways of harm. . . .

For he is all that we have, all that we are,

And all that we will ever be.’

“And all around the Pitch is battling terrible, and he captures the Mother Queen and the Father King. And Nightlight hides the prince, but the baby is fearful. The prince baby cries, and this hurts my Nightlight’s soul. My Nightlight, he takes the prince baby’s tears—he holds ’em tight like treasure next to his heart thumping, and he says the oath, and that makes a magic thing. My Nightlight’s hand—the tears burn it, they burn till my boy can’t stand it, but he does.

“And then the tears they change; the tears they become strong, the tears they become the diamond dagger. And my Nightlight knows that only he can use this dagger to end the Pitch. My Nightlight knows
he will likely die and never see his prince again, so he whispers nice, so nice, to the prince baby, ‘Remember me in dreams.’ And he flies off to face the terrible, the Pitch.

“And stop him he finally does. And crash here they finally did. And Nightlight felt cold for longer than any should inside that cold heart of the Pitch. He still will never grow up or old, and all the ones he loves will grow past him and leave him, but he must always stay the same. But he ’members almost none of this. Which is my doing. I held on to his memories. So he wouldn’t know all his hurts. So he won’t be made sorrowful. So me and now you knows of how grand he is in the history of the brave and the good.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

Nightlight Has a Memory and the Dreamsand Does Its Stuff

K
NOWING THEY NEEDED TO
make their escape, Nightlight leaned down to the fresh cut in the stone and opened his fist full of Dreamsand. He held it palm up and blew the sand with one gentle breath. The sand settled quickly into the slice, and once the last little grain had slipped in, the entire block of stone magically lifted a foot or so into the air.

But of course,
thought Mansnoozie, having snapped awake as soon as the moonbeam’s story had ended, making an instant connection.
Nightlight remembers the powers of Dreamsand, if nothing else.
Sandy instantly added his own stream of Dreamsand, and soon a sparkling cloud formed under Katherine’s stone bed, lifting it even higher. It was time to leave. They were certain to be seen now. Nightlight peered in at Katherine and felt an awful ache. She looked so sad. His beautiful friend was imprisoned in almost the exact same place where he had been. He hated the feelings this brought into his heart.

Sandy let the sand continue to stream forth, its glow brightening the room like sunlight. As Sandy had anticipated, alarms began to sound. The rumble of approaching armies of Nightmare Men and Fearlings rang out from every part of the cave.

Mansnoozie himself wasn’t alarmed. He knew that the magic of the Dreamsand cloud was potent. And sure enough, in an instant the three of them flew up and out of the cave and into the evening sky.
They could already see traces of the northern lights of North’s faraway tower, showing them the way to safety.

The Nightmare Men tried to follow, but a trail of Dreamsand put all of them to sleep.

Our heroes had made their escape. It had been fairly easy, really.

Pitch was nowhere in sight.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-N
INE

A Sea of Nightmares and a Helping Hand

K
ATHERINE WAS ASLEEP AND
silent within the energy of the nightmare stone that was now being sped toward the North Pole. She could nonetheless tell that something was happening outside the nightmare world she’d inhabited for . . . days? Weeks? She had no way of knowing. Night, day, twilight—she was oblivious to the real world, for from where she now dwelt, it was always half past terrifying.