The Sandman and the War of Dreams (9 page)

Oh, What a Mysterious Morning!

A
ND AS
S
ANDY REACHED
the end of his story, everyone awoke from the dream. They blinked their eyes and roused, surprised to find that it was morning. Those who had fallen asleep while floating in the air around Big Root awoke in their usual beds and under the covers. North was in his customary Cossack bed shirt and sleeping cap. His trusty elfin men were on the floor in a row at the foot of his bed. They snorted awake like a litter of young piglets. Bunnymund was all comfy in his egg-shaped bed, which he always traveled with,
his head propped up by half a dozen egg-shaped pillows. He was wearing satin pajamas with matching ear warmers that had small egg-shaped pom-poms dangling from the tips. Bunnymund lifted the egg-shaped patches that covered his eyes and gave his ears a wake-up shake.

Ombric was, of course, roosting in his huge globe, surrounded by his owls. They woke in unison, as always, though Ombric did not hoot as he usually did. Toothiana found herself perched in a marvelous twig structure that hung like a bell from one of the limbs that formed the top of Big Root’s canopy. It was the perch she had back in Punjam Hy Loo.
How has it arrived in Santoff Claussen?
she wondered.

The children were in the same place they had started the evening, at the top of Big Root, nestled
next to Kailash in her gigantic nest. They looked around, utterly perplexed. The Dream had seemed so real. Yet here they were, feeling rested and ready, but for what, exactly? The host of their dream was nowhere to be seen. Nightlight stood up and looked at the spot where Sandman had hovered. There was nothing. Not even a grain of sand.

Mr. Qwerty peered at his pages. They were filled—the entire dream had been written down, and at the very end was a tiny drawing of Sandman.

Nightlight gazed at the illustrated page. He was unsure what to think about what he saw. But he reached out and touched the sparkling sketch. The drawing was made from a sort of sticky sand. It had been left by Sandman himself!

Golden grains clung to Nightlight’s fingertips. He looked at them closely. He could feel the magic
in them. Then he had a sort of flash of memory, of a song from so long ago:
Nightlight, bright light, sweet dreams I bestow. . . .

“Is there a message there, Nightlight?” Petter asked.

Nightlight closed his eyes and held his sand-covered fingertips to his forehead. The sand told him many, many things.

Nightlight rarely, if ever, spoke—only the direst of circumstances could compel him to use his mesmerizing, otherworldly voice. So it was all the more alarming when he quietly replied: “Only that he’s gone to help Katherine. And that none of us should follow.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

Nightlight Dawns

T
HE FIVE
G
UARDIANS WERE
in a full frenzy for the rest of the day. Or more accurately, Ombric, North, Bunnymund, and Toothiana debated all morning while Nightlight remained still and quiet. He watched his friends study grain after grain of Mansnoozie’s sand under a never-ending array of magnifying glasses, microscopes, spyglasses, cosmic ray detectors, and even a crystal-clear egg that Bunnymund assured them could pinpoint the precise origin of the sand and its exact age. It did neither.

After hours of testing and studying, the only
conclusion they came to was that this sand was . . . well . . . sand. It obviously had magical properties, but what exactly were those properties, and how were they triggered?

No one knew. And so they argued on, about everything. Whether to try to follow Sandman. How to follow him if they ever could agree to follow him. Where he might have gone and what to do if they found him. Should they split up and try to find Katherine? Should they call the Lunar Lamas? Should they try to contact the Man in the Moon?

And, most irritatingly, why hadn’t Sandman asked them to join him? They studied charts, they consulted clouds, they looked into the past, they tried to see the future, they grumbled and worried and fussed.

Though Nightlight remained silent, it was not
without purpose. He had not yet told his friends that he could “read” the sand. Which was not unusual. He spoke only if he thought it necessary. He was always curious about the ways of the “Tall Ones,” as he called adults. He did not think of them as smart or intelligent. He thought of them in terms of other qualities, those things that made a Tall One “good”: kindness, bravery, trust, fun. But if they were cruel, lied maliciously, or were mean? Then Nightlight viewed them as “bad.”

North, Ombric, Bunnymund, and Toothiana were Nightlight’s favorite Tall Ones. He understood that they were the “most good.” And he understood that they had “knowing,” which was his way of calling them wise. Then he thought about Sandman’s dream story and the new Tall One—Mother Nature. Was Mother Nature good or bad?

Now that he knew her story, he was not sure. As a child, she had been kind and wild and brave, like Katherine. And like himself. But so much hurt had come to her. So much loss.

It had changed her. And it had changed Pitch.

Nightlight stared at his friends. They seemed changed too. Like they’d lost their knowing and bravery and tallness. Now all they did was “talk the loud,” as he referred to arguments, and “do the nothing.” This scared Nightlight.

He put his sandy fingertips to his forehead again.

The sand.

Just having it touch his brow made him feel calm and clear. Suddenly, he felt himself understand his friends’ behavior. The sand had given him a bit of the “knowing.” His friends—they were hurting too. Katherine being gone was hurting them so much that
they were scared. Just like he was. And he hated feeling scared. And hated all this hurt. He hated it so much, he couldn’t stand it any longer. He thought of the words of Katherine; stories that had washed away when Mr. Qwerty had cried. He could almost hear them from his pocket. It was as if Katherine herself was calling out to him. He had to do something.

He leaped up and slammed his staff on the floor as hard as he could, over and over till the room began to shake. The other Guardians stopped in midargument and looked at him with bewildered awe.

Now that he had their attention, he began to dart about the room in his faster-than-light way, herding them toward the center of the room.

“Hey, squirt,” North harrumphed. “Who do you think you are? You can’t shove—” Nightlight kicked the Cossack firmly in the rear, moving him along.

“He’s gone mad!” said Bunnymund just before Nightlight grabbed him by both ears and yanked him into place.

“Or he’s playing some sort of game,” mused Ombric as Nightlight jerked his beard firmly and pulled the old wizard along with it.

Toothiana began to see what the boy was up to. She moved to the room’s center without any coaxing.

There they stood as Nightlight had insisted, in a sort of circle looking at one another, perplexed and curious about what the boy was up to.

Nightlight now sat cross-legged on the floor in the center of them. He held up Mr. Qwerty and turned the magical book’s pages slowly. Then, when he found the right spot, he stood and thrust the book close to each of their faces.

Those four—those magnificent four, the bravest
and most wise of all the Tall Ones who had ever lived, these guardians of the worlds of children—stood sheepishly as a boy (admittedly a magical boy, but still, a mere boy) showed them what Sandman’s sand was capable of doing and how to unlock its magic.

Nightlight held his sandy fingertips to his lips and blew. The sand drifted toward them, and as it sprinkled around their eyes and faces, for the second time in twenty-four hours, the four instantly fell asleep. In perfect unison, they teetered, teetered some more, then fell backward onto the floor. They were snoring before they’d landed.

Nightlight again pointed to Mr. Qwerty and said to his napping friends, “Katherine’s story! Her life! Her hurts! HER! That’s what we save. Remember your knowing. Be stronger than the scared and the hurt, and
dream
a way to save our Katherine!”

Then Nightlight spoke to Mr. Qwerty: “Be writing what just happened on your pages, Mr. Q. That today Nightlight, the boy Guardian, had the knowing of a Tall One.”

That’s the most Mr. Qwerty, or anyone, had ever heard Nightlight say.

And though Ombric, North, Bunnymund, and Toothiana were away in the land of dreams, they could still hear him. And in their sleepy minds they each were in agreement that what Nightlight had told them was exactly what they needed to hear.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Do Be Afraid of the Dark

K
ATHERINE WAS SURROUNDED BY
total darkness. She could see nothing. She couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or shut. She tried to blink but wasn’t even sure if she’d succeeded—in such darkness, it was impossible to tell. She then attempted to flash her hands back and forth in front of her eyes, but she realized she couldn’t move. Her brain was telling them to move, but they didn’t budge. And then she realized that nothing would move—not her legs, not her toes, not her smile. She tried to cry out, but nothing happened.

Strangely enough, she didn’t feel afraid . . . yet.

Then she began to hear voices . . . low murmurs of speech . . . a little louder than whispers . . . She couldn’t make out any of the words. . . . It was just an unnerving babble . . . of wordlike sounds. The voices were deep and menacing . . . mocking . . . as if amused by her being trapped—

It hit her. She was
trapped
. But where? By what?

The voices came closer. She still couldn’t grasp what they were saying. But then she recognized a different sound. Crying. It was a girl crying. The other voices were becoming quieter, and she could hear the crying more clearly. . . .

Then Katherine became afraid.

That was her voice crying. But it was the strangest sensation—the crying was somehow separate from herself, as if behind a wall. Then she heard an actual
door opening. Light, white with brightness, began to shine in front of her. It was coming from the opening doorway, and she could see the room inside. It was so bright. Almost blinding. Then she began to make out a shape sitting on the floor. It was a girl.

It was her!

But she looked older.
How can this be?
This older Katherine’s crying continued. It sounded like a young woman’s.

Her clothes were faded and nearly rags.
Why?!

And in her hands was . . .
Mr. Qwerty! Good!!

She saw herself start to turn the pages, one by one by one, from the beginning. This Katherine was reading the book very intently, but as she finished a page, a dark hand reached out and tore the pages from the book. She glimpsed her entire history as it was taken away. There was one set of drawings that she could
clearly make out. The images she had made for North for his city of the future. She watched her older self close the book and close her eyes. She was going to sleep. She looked unspeakably sad. Tears escaped from her closed eyes.