The Way

On the seventh day Amara didn't wake.  She had warned James it would be difficult to wake her and that in the event he couldn't,  they should begin their journey regardless.  It would have been more practical for the two to fly to Further and once Amara was awake that was just what they would do.  As there was an increasing sense of urgency between them, neither wished to delay the start of their journey while Amara paid the price of the sleeping spells.

James  decided he needed something to transport Amara, that could be easily abandoned when they were both ready and able to fly.  And so, with that in mind, he unceremoniously loaded her small frame into a wheelbarrow filled with blankets and the two small bags containing some supplies and remaining food for the journey.

For the first time since he'd arrived, James pushed the wheelbarrow onto the streets of Nether and took in his surroundings in detail.  It was a crisp autumn morning and a golden sun was rising over the thatched rooftops.  The only betrayal to indicate the desertion of the village was a lack of smoke rising from the chimneys of the tiny cobbled homes.  Flowers and shrubs covered the paths leading to each front door and lined the main road through the village.  So much love and care had been grown here by the spell makers.  James felt a deep sadness wondering who would take care of the village if its residents never returned.

Shaking away this thought, he felt a new determination.  James must find Maryn Asha.  He must.  It occurred to him that Maryn may be the only person in the dreamworld who could help him find a way back home.  James tightened his grip on the handles of the wheelbarrow and pushed past the abandoned flowers, and homes feeling uncertain about the future as Amara gently snored under blankets, soundly asleep.

Past the outskirts of the village fields, south of Nether was the Forrest of Caldore.  The three day journey would take them past this forrest and through the Green Mountains.  Then just outside the mountains was the town of Further, situated 10 miles inland of the Green Sea.    It wasn't the first time James had made this journey.  But so much had changed in such a short span of time that the security he'd previously felt here was long gone.  As he pushed Amara into the dark forrest, devoid of the soft glowing light the sun spilled over the village behind him, his unease increased.

********************************************************************************

After a few hours of walking, birdsong and fresh air had uplifted James' mood.  He decided to stop by a stream and have his breakfast.  Positioning the wheelbarrow carefully so as not to allow it to slide or roll off the embankment, he pulled the covers away from Amara's sleeping face.  Her breathing was still the deep rhythm of a sound sleep and her features looked peaceful.  He decided he wouldn't try to wake her again so soon.  Re-covering her head, he removed the bag containing their rations for the journey.

Finding a comfortable nook in the base of a tree, James ate his breakfast of bread and cheese while listening to the sounds of the stream.

"You seek the spell makers, but they are gone," said a high pitched faraway voice.  It reminded James of what cartoon chipmunks sounded like back home.  He looked all around for who or what had spoken, but saw nothing and no one.  A small shell, the kind snails use for their homes, hit his shoe.  "Put the shell in your ear," said the voice.

James shrugged his shoulders and obeyed, stranger things had happened to him in the dreamworld and his instincts told him there was no danger here.  "Down here,"said the voice.  And with the snail shell placed gently in his ear the voice sounded normal, it was a female voice.  James' eyes followed the sound to a leaf that had fallen from the tree where he sat.  Standing on top of the leaf was a beautiful fairy.  And like all fairies,  her appearance mirrored the current season for the time of year.  The fairy's skin was golden-autumn brown, she had long black hair, bright orange eyes, a silk gown that seemed to be made up of all the colours of fall and from her back sprouted an enormous pair of intricately laced dragonfly wings.

"You seek the spell makers," she said, "You've come from their village.  But they are gone."

James was so excited to see another person that he barely knew where to begin and couldn't get his words out fast enough.  "Yes, we're looking for Maryn Asha and the others.  Amara Asha is with me, she's asleep in the wheelbarrow.  Everyone in Nether, they disappeared.  We're afraid something terrible has happened to them.  And I'm James.  I'm not from this world.  I'm stuck and I can't get back home. Maryn can help me.  But we can't find her. Do you know what happened to them?"

The fairy waited patiently while James rambled and when he'd finished she began to tell her story.

"James, I am Larken, senior advisor to the fae Queen Rienna.  By her decree, I'm here to offer you and the great granddaughter of Maryn Asha, safe  passage through Caldore.

"Nine days ago a great darkness descended upon the village of Nether.  No creature of the forrest dared go near it, so foreboding was its presence.  The silence of the forrest was such, that it was as if an unquenchable predator stalked every living thing that lie on the outskirts of that all-consuming darkness.  When this evil finally lifted no one remained in Nether and no clue was left to tell what happened.

"But this forrest of Caldore is old.  These ancient trees remember things and the wind in the leaves whispered to the great Queen Rienna what they knew.  Do you know what the trees whispered? They told us that The Balance has been disturbed, with the arrival of the newcomer to Abra."

At this point in Larkin's account, Amara sat straight up in the wheelbarrow.  Her eyes still closed, still trapped in the magically induced sleep.  Her facial expression was pained as if in a nightmare.  James jumped up and tried to ease her back down into the wheelbarrow.  He gently stroked her hair and whispered comfort, trying to calm her.  But Larkin confirmed what James had been thinking.

"She can hear us, she knows everything I've told you.

"She won't wake till she's slept off the spells.  Two more days, I would guess."  James stared from Larkin to Amara in shock.  He hadn't realised the spells Amara had used would take such a large toll, and by Amara's crinkled eyebrows he didn't think she'd realised this either.

"You said The Balance has been disturbed? What did you mean?" he asked, but in his heart, he already knew the answer.

"The balance of Good & Evil.  The scales have been tipped.  You'd better start walking again.  Something is coming.  Something wrong," and with that Larkin flew off towards the direction he and Amara had come from.  James took her advice, grabbing the wheelbarrow he began running through the forrest, towards the Green Mountains and he hoped all was not lost.

Stuck

James was stuck in his dream world unable to wake.  Nearly a week had passed in which he and Amara waited to see if anyone from the village of Nether came back after their unusual disappearance.  All the while James felt Amara knew more than she was saying.

He recalled the events she had shared of the day he arrived, which was also the same day of the disappearances.  Amara had been in the next village, the Further, trading the spells her family has been making for generations.

The  Asha's had been Master Spellmakers for the last five hundred years, proficient in all six essential elements, one or some of which were required for the basis of every known spell.  These elements were:

• Terranium
• Aerium
• Aquadum
• Incendium
• Malum
• Castimonium

Or roughly Land, Air, Water, Fire, Evil, and Purity.

James had learned this from Amara's grandmother, Maryn Asha, the most powerful Spellmaker Nether had seen in 250 years and the current Matriarch.  

Amara was in Further trading for ingredients, and goods that were unavailable in Nether.  She did this every first moon lunar cycle.  The other moons were less reliable. 

During this visit to Further, the entire town was discussing the latest news from the North.  The Rulers of the dreamworld were based in the Northern City of Abra.  Unrest and an abuse of power were common there as two governing factions tried their best to bring balance to the rule of the Dreamworld.  Nether and Further were so far away from the Northern Villages that it hardly ever seemed to touch the lives of the people here.  And in the village of Nether, Maryn Asha led a committee of Matriarchs who upheld the law.

Amara explained to James that this visit to Further felt different.  There was a sharp edge of fear to the Furtherling's descriptions of a new comer to the city of Abra who was trying to unite the government.  The new comer was said to be firmly immersed in an ancient form of magic called Creperum, of which little was known.  The new comer was said to have strange ideas that would radically change Dreamworld and not necessarily for the better. Similar things had happened before and the two governing factions usually put a stop to it.  This time, however and against all odds, the new comer seemed to have obtained support from both sides.

Amara had planned to tell her grandmother and the rest of the village matriarchs what she'd learned about the newcomer but when she had completed her three day journey back from Further the streets of Nether were deserted and the houses empty.  Nothing appeared to have been taken, there were no signs of struggle.  It was as if in an instant the residents of Nether ceased to exist.

James didn't understand what was happening.  Amara busied herself in her grandmother's books, searching for answers, and together they grew increasingly frustrated at the lack of information available.  When James asked what she was hoping to learn from Maryn Asha's books, Amara merely shook her head.

"I don't know enough James.  Anything that I tell you would be conjecture and speculation. It will only add to our worry and I need us both to focus on the task at hand."

Amara had been pouring over the histories and spell books of her family with very few breaks.  For five days she used spells to stay awake.  These would take their toll the longer she went without sleep.

James found it difficult to sleep but for different reasons.  He was worried about his inability to return to reality and when he managed to fall asleep in Nether, he thought he could hear his mother pleading for him to wake up.  This resulted in an avoidance of sleep and James busied himself with scrounging around for clues that might explain what was happening and the disappearance.  

When nothing could be found to enlighten him, he searched instead for bread, cheese, eggs and milk.   Mentally noting what he took from whom so he could make reparations if anyone from the village reappeared.  Amara refused most of the food until her belly rumbles became louder than James' insistence she eat something.

Finally on the sixth day Amara seemed to come to some conclusion.

"We have to return to Further.  It's been a week.  Maryn Asha, and mother would not have left it this long to contact me.  I'm afraid they're in danger."

And so the two agreed to make their way to Further the following morning.  Amara slept through the sixth day entirely.  The sleeping spell finally taking what was owed.

The Nether

Since he was a boy James knew there was something different about his dreams.  Every night when he'd fall asleep James would enter the same dream world, with more or less the same dream people, at a future point in time from when he'd left the dream.  It was as if time had moved on in the dream world during his waking hours, and at a much faster rate than in normal time.

As early as he could remember, James talked openly to his parents about the phenomenon.  At first they believed he was a child with an incredibly vivid imagination.  However, as he grew older, there was an increase of concerned looks on their faces,  whispered conversations, sideways glances and eventually enough doctors visits that James soon learned to keep his night-time adventures to himself.

James didn't mind entering the dream world each evening when he went to bed.  He always enjoyed himself and he always woke up feeling refreshed.  The dream world was filled with magical things that didn't exist in the normal world.  In his sleep, roaming the dreamworld, with enough concentration James could even fly.  It was a focus of his mind that allowed him to levitate high in the air, over rooftops and country sides.  He had tried to apply the same focus in his waking hours to test the ability, but there was always something missing, hidden in his mind, like a secret ingredient he couldn't retrieve, until he re-entered the dream world and suddenly remembered.

In the beginning James found it difficult to distinguish between the reality of the world and the fantasy of the dream.  Until his young mind learned to recognise the different people, surroundings and magic contained within, he could only tell the difference through his inability to experience physical pain there.  James usually achieved this by pinching himself, knowing that pain was inescapable in reality and non-existent in his dreams.

Then on the night of his 13th birthday everything changed.  James climbed into bed as normal, his mother tucking him in.  This was something he'd argued against, being practically an adult.  But she insisted on pulling the covers up under his chin and planting a kiss on his forehead.  It would be a long time before James opened his eyes again.

"James, wake up.  Wake up James.  JAMES! WAKE UP!" Screaming interrupted the gentle transition he usually experienced when entering the dream world.

He was in Amara's cottage but the peaceful tranquility the house normally possessed had vanished with Amara's frightened pleas.  He didn't always awaken here, with Amara and her family.  Sometimes he woke nearby in the forrest or fields that surrounded the village, or in a neighbours home.  Now and again he would even find himself waking up alone some where new and strange or unwelcoming.  Since it was always close to Amara's village he would always find his way back to the familiar.  Since he couldn't feel pain here, it had never frightened him too much.

Not until now.  Amara's demeanour was frightening him.  Even more so that she'd grabbed his arm, squeezing so hard he let out a yelp.

"You felt pain?" she asked, surprise and concern registering on her face.  Unlike with his parents, James could always be honest here and so Amara and her family knew of his other life and the other world he lived in.  They accepted his explanations, knowing first hand that there were many things in life that are inexplicable.

"Amara, what's happening?" he asked.

"I don't know, but I have a bad feeling about this.  I came from the Further to find the house empty and the others gone.  Then you appeared here and I couldn't wake you.  All the houses in the village, they're empty.  James, I need you to try to wake up.  Wake up in your other world.  I need to know.  Are you still able to leave this place?"

James felt confused and scared.  But her suggestion to try and leave was a welcome one and so he did what he normally did when he wanted to leave the dream world.  Just as when he flew through the night sky, it was a case of focusing within his mind.   He willed himself to wake up, concentrating harder and longer than ever before, he envisioned lying in his bed, he heard his own rhythmic breathing and with a mental jerk he called out to the other world, the real world.  But nothing happened.

"I can't." he admitted after ten minutes of silence. Then, because he'd heard it worked for others, he pinched himself.  Only the new sensation of dream world pain, but no waking.

Amara studied him for a moment and said grimly, "Then it's just as I thought James.  You're stuck here in Nether."

*********************************************************************************