Dreamslinger, page 22
The anti-slingers wanted to use the ultimate destructive power of the Bleeding Bloom to kill all dreamslingers. They wanted to wipe dreamslingers from this world.
As voices started growing from the courtyard outside the Hall, Aria turned to see the intruders using their devices to construct metal walls as thick as bank safes over each door. There was no way, not even with seasonbilities or nightjoys, that anyone could penetrate that—not fast enough, anyway.
“I’m sorry,” Aria whispered to no one in particular, as the soldiers reached the outer edge of the Bloom, its heady energy glowing powerfully from the exposed marble of Gardener Igong’s mutilated body. “This is all my fault. I should never have come to the League. I should never have entered the Trials.”
With a grunt of triumph, one of the soldiers reached in to pull out the white heart-shaped flower floating inside the statue. But as soon as they did, their eyes began to bleed. The blood flowed and flowed, filling their mask. They screamed and pulled their mask off, but the blood continue to pour out of their eyes, until there was no blood left in their body. They crumpled to the floor, crimson pooling around them, drained of their very life source.
Aria gasped with horror. She could see now why it was referred to as the Touch of Death.
“They don’t know how to transport it,” her dad whispered, wincing from the pain in his arm. “They don’t realize it’s too powerful and too lethal for human hands to touch.”
Just then, there was a resounding explosion that blew Aria’s ears out and sent debris flying through the hall. Rio leapt over her protectively. When Aria’s ears stopped ringing and she peeked out from Rio’s shelter, she saw the barricaded doors had fallen like sheets of paper.
And through the opening entered a woman. Tall, elegant, and striking in a fierce, intimidating way. She had no norigae or dreampanion, but she opened her hand and conjured an orb directly in her palm. It wasn’t violet and sparking with golden electricity like the nightjoy orbs. Hers was icy white, with a dense fog swirling inside.
She slung the orb at the air above the soldiers, releasing a sheet of rain, and immediately, the masked intruders fell to the ground like dolls. She conjured another two orbs, slinging them simultaneously at the laser cages, releasing Aria and her friends from their prisons.
“I detest cages,” she mused.
Finally, she slung a fourth one at the dreampanions, releasing them from their frozen state.
Aria’s dad moaned from the ground, and the mudang snarled as the king and the four Head Scholars rushed into the Devotion Hall, surrounded by a troop of palace guards.
But Aria couldn’t take her eyes off the woman. Because as the woman walked toward her with a commanding grace, Aria knew exactly who she was.
“Hello, my darling daughter. It has been much too long.”
Aria felt the world tremble underneath her as the light scent of citrus and white musk enveloped her.
She swallowed.
“Mom?”
“I—I SAW YOU DIE.” Aria whispered, remembering the eyewitness testimony she’d seen in the water lily. “How are you alive?”
The woman smiled, and it was an intense, staggering thing. “Impossible things are made possible every day.”
Her dad, the king, and the mudang all stared at her mom, and the tension was so palpable that Aria could almost reach out and touch it. To Aria’s surprise, it didn’t seem to be her aliveness that marred their faces with shock, but rather the fact that she’d had the gall to show her face here.
But none of that registered for the woman. Ko Iseul, Ersa Loveridge, whoever she was, only had eyes for Aria as she took another step toward her daughter.
“But I don’t understand… How are you here?” Aria pointed at her mother’s hands, with which she’d summoned mysterious powers without a dreampanion. “How are you doing any of this?”
“There are many wondrous, impossible things beyond your realm of understanding, little one,” her mother said. “And I want to share it all with you.”
“Don’t fill her head with sweet nothings, Ersa. I’m warning you,” spat Aria’s dad, still clutching his bleeding arm.
Rio whined, and Aria held her seedling close. She couldn’t understand what was happening. Was her mother really here right now? Or was this some kind of cruel joke?
The mudang began shouting curses at her mom as the king called for the guards, and it felt like a replay of the gruesome scene from the water lily. Aria tensed, fearing the worst. But this time, things played out differently.
Her mom conjured a ghostly orb in her palm and hurled it at the guards, the king, and her sister. A fog misted over their shoulders, and they stilled as if suspended in jelly. They were still breathing and blinking, but it was so slow, they might as well have been frozen in time.
The rest of the cohort gasped, and Aria stumbled back, scared.
“Don’t worry, they will be fine.” Her mother gazed over the cohort of pre-inductees. “And I won’t harm any of you if you don’t give me reason to. I merely don’t like it when people talk over me.”
Aria glanced at the Bleeding Bloom, pulsating from inside the statue, half dug out as if it was about to be scraped from its chest cavity. “You had my entire life to come find me. To be my mom. And yet you come now, just when the relic you so desperately want is ripe for the taking.” She steeled herself. “You’re not here for me. You’re here to steal the Bleeding Bloom.”
“It is one and the same, my daughter. You will see.”
Aria narrowed her eyes. “So you are an anti-slinger, is that it? You’re so brainwashed that you want the Bloom to destroy all of dreamslingerkind?”
The woman laughed, a spellbinding sound, like wind chimes tinkling in the breeze. “Oh, you could not be farther from the truth. I am not an anti-slinger, my little one. I am a freedom slinger.”
“A what?”
Her mom began singing, and her dulcet tones burrowed into every crevice of Aria’s heart, note by note.
“Fly, free bird, fly
Fly, free bird, fly
Don’t let them clip your wings
When you were born to soar
Fly, free bird, fly
Fly, free bird, fly...”
Before Aria knew it, she was singing with her, finishing the lullaby on her own.
“…For there, beyond the gray
You’ll find a new door
My wings will guide you home.”
Her mother’s eyes softened. “After all these years, you remember the song.”
She bent down to stroke Aria’s cheek, and Aria whimpered, leaning into her touch. “You were four when it happened. And I knew in that moment that I couldn’t bring you up in a world so full of ignorance and hate and fear and weakness. You had as much probability of having the gene as not, and I knew then that I couldn’t take any chances. Not if I wanted to give you the world.”
She hooked a loose lock of hair behind Aria’s ear, and the citrusy musk scent washed over Aria. “But I couldn’t raise you in Royal Hanguk, either—not in this gilded cage that clips our wings. I had to find another option.”
Aria pulled away from her mom’s intoxicating touch. “Then why did you leave me behind?” she demanded. “Why not take me with you?”
Her mom grimaced and faced her dad for the first time since entering the Devotion Hall. “Because we had an arrangement. One I agreed to, and despite what you may have heard, I always keep my word.”
Aria’s dad used his cane to stand up, wincing with the pain. “I couldn’t bear Ersa taking you away into a world of danger and uncertainty. You were just a baby. It wasn’t right! You deserved stability. Safety. A home. So we agreed that I would raise you as a normal child in Texas until you turned thirteen. And if you ended up being a dreamslinger, your mom could come for you then. If not, you would stay with me.”
“It gave me the time to dream up a world that was good enough for a daughter of mine,” her mother conceded. “I didn’t want you to merely survive, like your father would have you believe. I want you to truly spread your wings and fly. To thrive.”
Aria turned to her dad. “So that’s why you’ve always been so obsessed with your work on dreamslinger welfare. Even before I was confirmed as a carrier. Because you wanted me to have options.”
He nodded as a tear streamed down his cheek. “I’d hoped that even as a dreamslinger, you might decide to stay. To choose to be safe and out of harm’s way.” He lowered his voice. “To stay with me.”
He looked at his wife then with a wistful expression in his eye. “I lost the love of my life. I couldn’t bear to lose you, too, Sparkler.”
A surprising anger surged in Aria, and Rio bristled in solidarity beside her. “Don’t you dare put this back on me. As if I had a choice in the matter. I am not some consolation prize. And I’m not a reward for all the work either of you have put in. I am a person. I am my own person!”
Her mother gazed down at Aria and beamed, a look of pride on her face. “You are every bit as fierce and strong as I knew you’d be. You have outgrown the prison walls of Resthaven—you know this already. And you’ve had a taste of power through the League. But do not be fooled. This place is no better than Resthaven. They will stifle your ideas, lock you in boxes, and punish any attempt to to stretch the League’s boundaries.”
She opened her palm and summoned an ivory orb. “I can offer you something more. Something revolutionary. Freedom slingers are and will always be free agents, not bound by the rules of a king or a society. Freedom slingers will rebuild the world with us at the helm.”
“But what about non-dreamslingers?” Aria demanded. “Dreamslingers are just a minority. What about the rest of the world?”
Her mother blinked. “What of them? Why should we bend to fit a world we have already outgrown? Why should we compromise when all they want to do is control and oppress us?”
She pointed to the soldiers still discarded like dolls across the floor, as if to illustrate her point.
“But anti-slingers are not the rest of the world. They are a minority, too,” Aria argued.
Her mother shrugged. “The point still stands. Why must we bend and fold when we are the stronger species—when we could rule?”
She offered Aria her hand. “I promised to give you the world, little one. A world in which we could truly be free. And I’m here now. So come with me and know true freedom.”
The cherubic face of the Knotmaster appeared in Aria’s mind, and she remembered what he’d said.
You will have to make a big dethishun thoon. Jutht remember there ith alwayth another opshun.
Aria looked at her dad and her mom, and her mind swam with conflicting emotions. Her dad had always taught her to value the most vulnerable in society—to value peace above all else. But at the same time, her mom wasn’t wrong.
It was her dad who said the world was a cruel place. And if there was no room for people like her to live in peace and with pride, then could she really blame her mom for her lofty aspirations? Would it be such a bad world for dreamslingers—the more powerful species—to rule over the world? Maybe they could re-create the world to be one of peace and compassion between dreamslingers and wider society. They could start afresh.
She faltered.
Rio buried her head in Aria’s side and purred so loudly, it vibrated into Aria’s bones. The seedling looked at her—really looked into her—and in that moment, Aria found her way back to Rio. Back to herself.
There were lots of questions, lots of unknowns, and there were no perfect solutions. But for now, what was true in Aria’s very soul was that she couldn’t give up on Rio. And she couldn’t give up on her friends. They were what was real. The ones she chose. And they were worth more than an empty promise from a mother who was never there.
“No,” she said, with her heart in her throat. “I don’t want what you’re offering. I refuse to be part of it. It would spell the end of the world as we know it.”
Her mother was thoughtful, as if considering Aria’s words. “And would that be such a bad thing?”
She leaned down and placed a kiss on Aria’s forehead. “I am not an unreasonable person, little one. And after how long I have made you wait for my arrival, it is only right that I return the favor. I will give you the time you need to consider my offer.” She conjured an orb in her palm, but this one was empty. “And when the time is right, I will come find you again. It is my deepest desire that you will be ready to join me then.”
The woman slung the empty orb toward the dismembered statue of Gardener Igong, only for the globe to envelop the Bleeding Bloom. It flew back into her hands with the Bloom trapped in its center.
“I will see you soon, little one.”
And with one final look at Aria, her mother turned and disappeared.
THE MOOD IN THE KINGDOM was solemn after the double attack. If it wasn’t enough of a blow to the League’s pride that anti-slingers had ambushed their borders, the fact that one of their own had stolen the Bleeding Bloom was enough for the League to hang its head in shame. Then there was the fact that no one knew why the Bloom had been stolen, or what exactly Aria’s mom intended to do with it.
Aria had assumed that once the king found out it was her fault the anti-slingers knew about the underground tunnels and the Bloom’s hidden location, her pre-inductee status would be revoked. But despite his predilection for rules and order, he’d given her a free pass. Perhaps his guilt toward Aria’s mother had something to do with it. Or maybe his son’s quest for openness had rubbed off on him a little.
“It is water under the bridge now,” he’d said to Aria when she confessed. “And in times of crisis, as we are facing now, we need to come together, not tear ourselves further apart.”
So great was his mercy that he even extended an invitation for Aria’s dad to stay a guest of the kingdom for a while longer, albeit with a palace guard watching his every move, twenty-four/seven. Having failed their Bloom-retrieving mission, there was no knowing what the anti-slingers—and therefore, what the Commissioner of Dreamslinger Relations—might do next. It wasn’t safe for Jack Loveridge to return home. Not yet.
Aria’s anger and disappointment toward her dad was still so fresh that their interactions were awkward and stilted. Still, when Aria spotted him in the audience the following week at the cohort’s induction ceremony, looking uncomfortable and out of place, something shifted just a little in her chest.
He was here. For her. And while it didn’t make up for all the years of lies and secrecy, it was a start.
The ceremony was being held on a floating stage set up on the lagoon, next to the Pavilion. Aria and her cohort sat up front with their soon-to-be saplings, while family members sat in the audience behind them, the sky full of celebratory floating lanterns. Saemi waved excitedly from her seat next to Nam Samchon, Librarian Yong, and Aria’s dad, along with his palace guard escort.
The king, the mudang, and the four Head Scholars took the stage, and Aria put on a brave face. Her mind was a muddle of thoughts and feelings she couldn’t quite wade through, but for tonight, she was going to focus on the ceremony. After all, she and her friends had earned this. They’d worked hard, and they were finally going to become Novices.
“Annyeong-haseyo, and welcome all to this year’s induction ceremony,” the king announced as he took center stage. “This has been an exceptionally unique year, in that we have received a cohort of trialeers who have traveled from near and far, and from all corners of the world, for a chance at becoming a Fellow of the Royal League of Dreamslingers.” He paused. “We have also experienced exceptional pain this past week, having had our bleeding heart stolen from our kingdom’s chest.”
A heavy blanket of silence draped over the ceremony as the king braced himself, as if being this open and vulnerable was something he had to physically fight to achieve.
“I had to keep some knowledge restricted during the Trials, in order to protect this kingdom. But now that you are all about to be welcomed into the fold, I feel it my duty to share the legend with you all.”
As the audience shuffled anxiously on their seats, the king continued.
“As many of you will by now know, the first of the three Gifts the Holy Trine left for humanity was the Touch of Death. It was embodied in the form of the Bleeding Bloom, gifted by Gardener Igong, the God of Death himself. But the second Gift was the Breath of Life, gifted by Grandma Samshin, the Goddess of Birth. And the third, the Path of Eternity, gifted by Princess Bari, the Goddess of Dead Souls.”
He took a deep breath. “The Bleeding Bloom was the only relic we held here in the kingdom. And that relic has now been taken from us by the freedom slingers.” He paused, as if to gather himself. “Regrettably, we don’t know what form the other two Gifts take, or where in the world they might be hiding. After all, the Holy Trine’s three Gifts were for all of humanity, not just for Royal Hanguk. But it is our duty, as the carriers of the legend, to ensure the Gifts do not fall into the wrong hands.”
As a nervous murmur spread through the crowd, the king went on.
“Which is why it is in times like these that we must step up to the plate and come together as a League to find a way forward, as we have always done. We will retrieve our Bleeding Bloom, and we will ensure the other two Gifts remain out of evil’s way.
“It is precisely why the names I am about to call carry extra weight tonight. Because they belong to those who have given blood, sweat, and tears to earn a place as a Novice in our coveted ranks, and who will continue to pledge their service to our kingdom. It brings me the utmost honor and pride to now formally induct them into our Royal League of Dreamslingers.”
As the crowd cheered with emotion, the king invited every trialeer forward, gajok by gajok, one by one. He started with Winter Palace, and Aria warmed as her friends’ names were called out.
“Niko Horvat, Canada, Winter Palace, Season of the Wise…
“Mason Hewett, United Kingdom, Winter Palace, Season of the Wise…
