The Sandman and the War of Dreams (4 page)

“It can’t. It just needs to tickle your funny bone,” North said, smiling.

The rabbit, however, was panting with frustration. “What are you talking about?! There is no such bone in any known creature. Humor is a mental activity, and it has nothing to do with the skeletal system. To claim so is complete nonsense!”

“EXACTLY!!!” bellowed North.

Ombric had been deliberately ignoring his two comrades. He was buried deep in one of Bunnymund’s egg-shaped books.

Ombric was astounded: The rabbit had vast records of all the natural occurrences of the Earth. This wasn’t unexpected. He was a creature attuned to nature, more so than any human. But it was how his books were written that was so surprising—in the highly technical phrasing that was typical to Pookan literature. The Earth was usually described as “the planetoidal orb.” Earthquakes were referred to as “high-volume terra firma displacement events,” and so on.

Midway through the chapter titled “Peculiar Interstellar Phenomena from the Dawn of Time till Last Tuesday,” Ombric found something described as an “extraterrestrial solid matter of some interest
hurtled through the atmosphere and into a large body of oceanic fluids in the southern Pan-Pacific region in the two millionth equinox cycle.” In other words, a meteor or a shooting star had crashed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, sometime near the end of the Golden Age. Ombric was startled to discover that soon after this event, the weather on Earth changed profoundly. Before, there had been almost no storms of any kind, but since this meteor had arrived, nature had become far more dramatic. Unpredictable.
Is this the beginning of Mother Nature? Has Pitch’s daughter come to be here on a shooting star?
wondered Ombric.

At that instant Nightlight flew through one of Big Root’s knothole windows. As the Guardian who was most deeply connected to Katherine, Nightlight always knew before any of them if she was in trouble
or not. Now the poor boy looked stricken.

A sudden, terrible dread came to them all. They felt certain that Katherine was in grave peril. The owls began to hoot. Toothiana’s feathers stood on end.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

Grab a Tear, Save a Story

T
HE NIGHT WAS OPPRESSIVELY
dark. The stars themselves seemed to shrink. Nestled into the upper branches of Big Root was Katherine’s tree house. Though it was empty of Katherine, it was not exactly empty. Kailash, now fully grown, sat dejectedly in an impressively large nest, which also served as the tree house’s roof. Being full grown meant Kailash was considerably larger than other species of geese. She was quite large even for her own breed. Her wingspan was roughly forty-five feet, and even while sitting in her nest, she was taller than any man.

But her nature was gentle and her emotions still childlike. She was heartbroken over Katherine’s disappearance and could barely raise her long neck to respond to the kind attention of the village children who had snuck away from their own beds to comfort her. Petter and his sister, Sascha; the brothers William; and even Fog, who was usually too sleepy for such late-night adventures, were there. They petted Kailash, smoothed her feathers, and tried to convince her to eat. But the giant goose would only make a sad peeping sound.

Petter, who had a fine sense of how to cheer everyone up, suggested that Mr. Qwerty tell one of Katherine’s stories.

He opened himself to read one of Katherine’s earlier tales, but his voice cracked and faltered. Tears filled his eyes and spread slowly down the
handsome leather binding of his book spine.

None of the children had ever seen a book actually cry, which was not surprising, as there had never before been a book that was able to. But the tears that fell from the page to the soft leaves around Kailash’s nest surprised them further. Each tear had inside it a letter or a question mark or some other form of punctuation.

It was Sascha who understood the ramifications of this.

“That’s Katherine’s handwriting!” She gasped. “Please don’t cry, Mr. Qwerty. You’re crying out Katherine’s stories!”

But this caused the poor book to sob even harder. Tears and letters began to spill out at an alarming rate. If this continued, all of Katherine’s stories would be drained away.

The children became desperate, and Kailash also began to weep. They reached out to comfort the goose, then turned at the sound of something landing on the far side of the nest. Nightlight was back! He had been with them earlier and had not seemed like himself at all. He was moody, dark, and almost afraid. Then he had left hurriedly. But now he was like the Nightlight of old. He flashed and flickered and grabbed at every fallen tear. Nightlight had amazing abilities with tears. The children had seen this before. He’d once taken their tears and used them to repair his broken diamond dagger that could cut through any armor. But these tears were different. He cradled them in his hands with extraordinary tenderness, as though he held a most delicate treasure. These were Katherine’s words and
thoughts. This was a treasure that must never be lost. He tucked the wordy tears into his pocket.

Then he looked from the children to Kailash to poor Mr. Qwerty, who thankfully had stopped his sobs. What hope could he offer them? He knew Katherine was in terrifying peril, and he had no idea how to help her. How could he possibly comfort his friends—Katherine’s friends?

He felt himself dimming again. Now they’d see for themselves his own desperation.

But Nightlight was a creature of light, and he could shine or feel more in a shadow than any other being. So of course he was the first to see, in the evening shade of Big Root, a light in the sky coming toward them. A sort of lustrous, radiant cloud.

He could feel his hope returning, and he
brightened, leaning toward the light. The others turned to see what he was looking at. One by one, they cried out as they began to see the cloud, a cloud unlike any they’d ever seen—one that left them feeling that hope can sometimes travel in the darkest night.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

The Sandman Cometh

M
OMENTS EARLIER
N
ORTH HAD
been in midsentence when Nightlight had flown suddenly out the window. The boy was frantic to help Katherine, and North had been trying to calm him. For all his bravery and powers, Nightlight was not used to controlling his feelings. Especially feelings like hurt and worry. He wanted to do something. He wanted to help Katherine right then!

North was the closest to understanding what Nightlight was going through, for he had been almost as wild and carefree when he was a lad. Why, he’d
lived as a wild child of the Russian forest, raised by Cossack bandits, which is almost the same as being raised by bears. But his attempts to ease Nightlight’s anxiousness had lasted about six words before the boy vanished.

Bunnymund sensed North’s concern. “In my observations, beings between childhood and adulthood are even more prone to confusing behavior than during any other of the confusing times that inflict most species,” the Pooka said.

“He wants to think he can figure everything out for himself,” said North, eyeing the rabbit. “A characteristic common in many species, no matter their age.” He poked one of Bunnymund’s ears.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to infer, North,” said Bunnymund. “I do not
like
to figure everything out. I simply always do!”

Before North could make a snappy response, they became keenly aware of an intense sensation of lightness around them. Not only was there an otherworldly glow to the air inside the tree, but gravity itself seemed to have less pull. They literally felt light on their feet.

“Is someone casting spells?” asked Ombric, glancing around at the others.

A soothing sound enveloped them. Ombric hazarded a guess as to its origin. “It’s like the falling sand from a thousand hourglasses.”

Under normal circumstances, the orb at the tip of North’s sword would have sent out some sort of alarm, but evidently, it found nothing to be alarmed about. Even when the three Guardians began to float from the floor—first a few inches, then higher and higher—the orb stayed silent. Graceful twists
of golden glowing sand ebbed up through the floorboards, pushing them gently but firmly out the giant knothole window and up toward Big Root’s upper branches.

As they floated ever higher, none of them, oddly, sensed they were in any danger. Rather, they felt incredibly calm, as though this unprecedented occurrence was simply the way things were somehow supposed to be, which was equally odd. Were they all being drugged? Was this some new magic? If so, they sensed it wasn’t a dark sort.

As they approached the treetop, the whorls of sand seemed to be settling more at their feet. To their amazement, they could see that every other creature of Santoff Claussen, human or otherwise, was also floating through the evening sky. Bear, Petrov
the horse, even the Spirit of the Forest and Queen Toothiana—they were all rising up and rotating around Big Root.

When they all reached the top and were level with Katherine’s tree house, they saw Kailash surrounded by the children. Those in the nest were transfixed by something else. Just above them floated a rotund little man. He had wild swirling golden hair, and he seemed to be glowing from within.

Nightlight stood just below the little man, and as the villagers watched, he began to kneel, as though the man were a king of some kind. The man seemed very friendly; his smile was radiant. It was a smile of total reassurance and gave all who saw it a feeling of intense well-being. Not joy, but something akin to a sleepy peace. A sort of not-a-worry-in-the-world
sensation. None of them, not even the Guardians, were able to do anything more than gaze at this gentle fellow. And though he did not speak, they felt as though they heard him say a single whispered phrase:
Time now for a dream.
Then, with a wave of his little hands, the sand began to spin around them. It did not sting, nor did it get in their eyes. It felt rather like the tickling of a soft bed sheet. Then everyone, right down to Bear, fell into a deep, restful sleep.

But this was no ordinary sleep: They began to share an experience that seemed like a dream, for it was dreamlike, but every moment of it was amazing, and somehow, they knew it was absolutely true. They felt they were being given a history in the very best way this friendly little man knew how. And they were certain to remember every detail, for Mr. Qwerty, who was the only one not asleep, was recording the
story of this dream experience on his pages. He knew Katherine would not mind. She loved a good story.

This one might also help save her life. And here was how it began. . . .

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

A Dream Pause

M
y name is Sanderson Mansnoozie, and I have no age.

My story is the story of many dreams. Dreams do not exist within the realm of hours or minutes or any measure of the day. They live in the space between the tick and the tock. Before the tolling of the bell, past the dawn, and beyond the velvet night. I am from a place that was a dream, a place called the Golden Age. And though it may be a place of the past, it is not gone. The dream of it lives still.