Dreamslinger, page 5
“Oh, hello, little one,” Aria murmured. “Maybe you can tell me where we are.”
She reached down and patted it, and a golden warmth washed over Aria’s body. Her ears began to itch, then stretch, and suddenly, she could not only hear the nearby stream, she could hear the fish swimming inside it, too.
Astonished, she reached out to touch a winged hamster who fluttered past her face. A similar golden aura spread over her body, and a terrible itch grew in her shoulder blades before spreading to her skin. Before she knew it, she was covered in fur and had sprouted wings. She managed to get them to flap by squeezing her shoulder blades tight. But she only lifted off the ground for a fraction of a second before she fell back onto the grass.
Aria looked around, gaping. And she couldn’t help but think that she’d somehow found herself in spring. Spring on steroids.
Something brushed her arm, and she turned to see a dandelion puff the size of a bowling ball blowing past, its fuzzy furs exploding from its head like fireworks. She reached out to touch it, only for it to titter and float away.
She followed it through a cornfield of singing cobs, where she witnessed a newborn fawn testing its legs, which created sparks with every step. She stroked it, and Aria’s feet turned into hooves, making the ground underneath her fizzle with electricity.
It struck her then that this was how Tae had grown his spider arms at the signing. His bloom dragon had slung a violet orb at its human, which had enveloped the royal slinger in a golden aura. Whatever was inside must’ve been like the creatures from here, allowing Tae to tap into its magical essence.
Aria was so captivated by these strange creatures that she didn’t notice how much time had passed. It was only when her fingers and toes started tingling that she realized she’d completely forgotten why she was there.
“Enter the archway. Find your seed,” she reminded herself.
She frowned. Tingling extremities meant that she only had about ten minutes before she’d wake up from her dream. That meant she only had as many minutes to find her seed. But where was she going to find one of those?!
A fruit tree came into view, and she raced toward it, ripping one of the star-shaped fruits off the branch. Fruit had seeds. Maybe she could take one of those. She tore the soft flesh with her fingers, digging into it for a pip of any sort. But there was only sweet fleshy pulp that glowed like the stars. She huffed.
The dandelion puff was back, and it jittered mischievously around her as if amused by Aria’s inability to find a seed.
“If you’re not gonna help, then buzz off!” she yelled at it.
The tingling had now spread to her upper limbs, and she anxiously raced to a gourd patch, hoping one of the waxy blue pumpkins might be housing a seed. She cracked one open using a nearby rock, but that, too, was all cerulean flesh and no seed. Aria grunted. She was running out of time.
The same dandelion puff peeked out from behind a tree and repeated the motion several times as if wanting to play a game of hide-and-seek. Aria, in her frustration, turned and yelled at it again.
“Just leave me alone, you annoying fuzzy seed head!”
Aria froze, realizing what she’d just said. Then she dropped her head in her hands and groaned. How stupid could she have been? No wonder the puff had been trying to get her attention. A dandelion puff was literally a head of seeds!
“Hey, come here, you! Maybe I do want to play, after all.”
As if now sulking, it swam away. But Aria chased after it, newly pumped with adrenaline. The puff flew down a ravine and eventually drifted into the mouth of a dense grove of shrubbery shaped like a cave. Aria tailed it inside.
“Got you!” she exclaimed as she caught the puff and clutched it to her chest.
Feeling triumphant, Aria turned to leave the dark thicket, when she noticed the heavy vines drooping from the ceiling. At first glance, she thought there were fruits hanging from the stems. But on second glance, she noticed they were, in fact, skulls. There was a great quantity of them, each as big as her hand, growing like cherry tomatoes on the vine.
One of the skulls—the one glowing ever so slightly—called to her.
I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.
Aria shuddered and hugged the dandelion puff closer to her chest. But the voice called louder now. More insistent.
I’m here! I’m here! I’m here!
Feeling bewitched, Aria gazed into the sunken hollows of the skull’s eyes. And suddenly, a deep sense of hiraeth assaulted her like a blow to the stomach.
HIRAETH (Noun) (Welsh origin): (1) Homesickness for a home to which you cannot return; or (2) A longing for a home that never existed.
She staggered back. The tingling was now rapidly spreading down her head and in toward the chest. She knew from experience that once it hit the heart, her time would be out. She guessed she had less than a minute left.
Panicked, she looked down at the dandelion puff and then at the skull. Back at the puff and at the skull again. She reminded herself why she was here. The task was to find your seed. The choice was clear.
But I’m here! I’m here! I’M RIGHT HERE!
As tears stung her eyes for a reason she couldn’t fathom, the tingling reached Aria’s heart.
And although she knew she shouldn’t—despite knowing she’d fail this test—she dropped the dandelion puff.
With mere seconds to spare, Aria wrapped her hands around the delicate glowing skull and wrenched it from the vine.
“BRAVO, TRIALEER LOVE. CONGRATULATIONS! YOU are now officially in the running to become a Fellow of the Royal League of Dreamslingers.”
Aria groaned as she came to, still sitting in the back seat of Driver Nam’s car, which had come to a stop. Out of habit, she quickly pulled on her metal-fiber gloves, and noticed her skin was scratched and bloody and raw. The dreamslinger armband was gone. Something was weighing down her legs, and when she looked down, there was a skull on her lap.
She gasped and quickly covered it with her hands.
“I’ve never seen a trialeer bring back a snapdragon seed before,” the voice said approvingly. “How very refreshing. We normally get lots of dandelions. Sometimes devil heads, among others. But snapdragon is a first.”
A tall, wiry man stood outside her open passenger door, wearing a long hooded cloak with the symbol of a sweetgum leaf. He wore tiny square glasses on his pointy nose, and his mustache was a living entity unto itself—it twirled up on both ends like a pig’s tail, and had little gems threaded on it. A tasseled knot charm hung from the waist of his traditional Korean garb.
Aria tentatively removed her hands from her lap and stared at the delicate skull. “So this is a seed?”
“Oh yes. The species from the Asleep are much larger than the ones we have in the Awake. But I assure you these delightfully macabre pods, indeed, contain the seeds of the snapdragon flower.” He swatted the air in front of him. “But where are my manners! My name is Fredrik Tak, and I am one of the four Head Scholars of the Royal League. You may call me Head Scholar Tak.”
He twisted one of the gems on his mustache. “As I was saying, it brings me great joy that you successfully entered the archway to a Season and found your seed. It means your actions embodied one of the League’s four core values—the wise, the kind, the rule, and the just. It also means that you have now made it through the preliminary round of the Annual Royal Slinger Trials, which is why you are now eligible to enter this year’s Trials proper.”
Aria blinked. “So that entire dream was the pretrial? I knew it was some kind of test!”
“I am happy to answer any questions you may have at this juncture,” he continued. “Otherwise, you may now proceed with your driver to the kingdom for the welcome festivities.”
Head Scholar Tak nodded toward Driver Nam, who was still sitting in the driver’s seat, looking at Aria with a mixture of sheepishness and awe.
“Well, since you’re offering.” Aria pointed at her lap, adjusting her legs underneath the surprising weight of the skull pod. “What is this for?”
“For planting, of course!”
“To grow… larger-than-average snapdragon flowers?”
He chortled. “How amusing, Trialeer Love. All things going in your favor, the seed in your possession will sprout your dreampanion.”
“What’s a dreampanion?” she asked suspiciously.
Head Scholar Tak took his knot charm in his hand and chanted, “Suri suri masuri,” which Aria recognized as the same words Tae had chanted to summon his bloom dragon. Except unlike Tae’s bloom dragon, it was a Tiger Beast that materialized beside the scholar.
“This is my dreampanion, Kit. He’s a harvest tiger.”
So Beasts from the Nightmare Circle were called dreampanions here.
The scholar gave the stallion-size tiger an affectionate rub on its head, making its pelt of autumn foliage crinkle and crunch. A pile of leaf debris gathered at the man’s feet like shed fur.
“A dreampanion is your dream guide. They guide you between the Awake—the world we’re in now—and the Asleep—the place we go when we dream. You were permitted briefly into a Season of the Asleep during the preliminary round to retrieve your seed. But it will never happen again unless you can endear yourself to your dreampanion.”
That place that looked like spring on steroids must’ve been one of the Seasons. If she was understanding the scholar properly, Aria would have to “sprout” a dreampanion from her seed if she ever wanted to return there.
“Riiight. So you’re saying that these seeds are how everyone in the League gets a Beast?” She’d always wondered how royal slingers pulled the Beasts from the Nightmare Circle into the real world.
The tiger’s nostrils flared as the scholar corrected her. “No one gets anything around here, Trialeer Love, least of all a dreampanion. And we do not use that derogatory B word in the League. By passing all three Trials, one earns the honor and lifelong privilege of a dreampanion endearment.”
Inwardly, Aria scoffed. They could call them whatever they wanted—it didn’t change the fact that these vicious creatures had done nothing but torment Aria in her nightmares. But outwardly, she merely cleared her throat.
“I wasn’t aware that Beas—I mean, the B word was derogatory. I didn’t mean to offend.”
The scholar gave a nod. “Unless you have further questions, I suggest you make your way to the kingdom.” He leaned into the car to take the skull from her lap, and she found herself instinctively reaching out to snatch it back.
“Hey, that’s mine!” A feeling of protectiveness washed over her, and she realized she didn’t want to let her dreampanion seed out of her sight. Her actions reminded her of a word she’d seen in her mom’s journal:
AGNOSTHESIA (Noun) (Greek origin): The state of not knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your own behavior, as if you were some other person.
“You will be reunited with your seed soon,” Head Scholar Tak assured her, as he cajoled the skull out of her hands again.
“Are you sure?” she asked nervously.
“I swear it on my harvest tiger.”
He nodded to Driver Nam. “Now please do make haste to the Official Royal Welcome Ceremony. I would hate for you to miss the lantern rite.”
Before she could ask what that was, Head Scholar Tak closed her door.
“Safe travels, Trialeer Love,” he said through the open window. “And may you enjoy the ride.”
“You will have to excuse my excitement,” Driver Nam gushed as they drove through the busy cityscape of Seoul and up to an immigration border with tall, impenetrable walls. “This is all just so exciting for me. Oh, my daughter is going to be over the moon when I tell her you passed the pretrial!”
There seemed to be at least five different security checks, each administered by a different officer, before border control finally waved them through the checkpoint. They drove over a bridge overlooking the small river.
“And here we are. Welcome to the Kingdom of Royal Hanguk!”
On the other side of the bridge stood the towering gates of a walled-off island (involving yet another security check), and suddenly it felt like they’d arrived in a completely different world—and a completely different time. A minute ago, on the other side of the river, Seoul had been full of high-rises covered with flashing screens advertising the latest face cream and instant coffee mixes. There’d been cars honking everywhere, and people swarming the streets wearing the latest fashion trends.
But here inside Royal Hanguk, there was not a high-rise in sight. The buildings were traditional, in the same style as the archway from her pretrial. They all had the distinctive tiled roofs and sloped eaves, wooden beams, and paper doors reminiscent of Korea from hundreds of years ago. Except the winding roads and alleyways looked like they came straight out of London, with quaint cobblestones, beautiful Victorian streetlamps, and rustic stone walls covered in moss and vines. As Driver Nam had mentioned, the place had a lost-in-time, Korea-meets-England vibe that was uniquely charming.
“Wow,” she breathed, unable to hide her amazement. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Driver Nam parked inside the gates and came around to open her door, his cheeks plumping under his smiling eyes. “Wait until you ride a gama.”
“A gama?”
Instead of answering, Driver Nam whistled a short tune—just five notes that sounded like part of a wider melody. The next thing she knew, a wooden carriage had appeared in front of them.
It looked like a tall box, with a door, two open windows, and a spacious interior that could fit three adults. Its exterior panels were adorned with white swan feathers, while a delicate pink tulle encircled its middle, as if the box were wearing a tutu. The thing that stood out most about this carriage, though, was that it was suspended… four feet above the ground.
Aria took a step back. “Uh, what is that?”
“Some call them palanquins or litters, but we call them gama. Traditionally, they were carried by servants. But our gama are crafted from the wood of the soarfree tree—a common species found in the Asleep. As you can see, it’s known for its exceptionally buoyant properties.”
Aria’s brows almost hiked right off her face. It was mind-boggling to her that trees from the dream world could be brought back to the Awake. And even more so that this was the first she’d ever heard of it. If soarfree trees could make things fly, what could other dream species be capable of?!
Driver Nam hoisted Aria’s green suitcase onto the gama’s roof before helping her up. She was relieved to find that the seat had a soft plush cushion, and surprised that the main melody from Swan Lake filled the carriage. It matched the swan-feathered decor and tutu, as if this gama harbored secret aspirations to become a ballerina.
“Well, Trialeer Love, I must leave you here.” He bowed and gave one of his hearty belly-jiggling laughs. “Thanks to you I’ve had one of the most exciting workdays I’ve had in a long time. Saemi will be beside herself when I tell her!”
Before she could thank him for the ride, he turned to address the carriage. “To Central Palace, please, dear gama. I appreciate your service.”
As the setting sun painted a warm glow over the kingdom, the gama glided forward, weaving through the bustling cobbled alleyways. Aria poked her head out, immediately startled by the sheer number of Bea—no, dreampanions roaming openly on the streets.
She passed an open-air market where children were lining up to have their marshmallows toasted by a fire-tailed bird. Beside them was what Aria could only describe as a shoeshine stand—except instead of shoes, turtle dreampanions were having their ice-shells polished and carved with trendy patterns. There even seemed to be people with brooms whose sole job was to clean the streets of molted dragon petals and shed tiger leaf-fur.
She was so struck by the sights that she almost missed the girl racing past on the back of a harvest tiger, moving at the speed of the wind. And she almost didn’t see the snowflake-cloaked rider poking out from the lake, the icy shell of his turtle glinting beneath him.
In fact, Aria was so taken aback by her surroundings that she almost mistook the group of bloom dragons flying over the gama for a mere figment of her imagination. Since they were wingless, she’d assumed dragons couldn’t fly. But the snakelike creatures with their long bodies and sweeping whiskers rippled through the sky like eels in water, their daisy-cloaked riders mounted on their backs.
Feeling an intense sensation of being out of place, Aria retreated back inside the safety of her floating box and took a few deep breaths. Her mind was glitching, unable to compute what it was seeing. Emotions stormed inside her, competing for attention.
A part of her was jealous that these dreamslingers lived in freedom, away from anti-slingers and others who wished them ill. And a part of her felt pity that these people were closed off from the world, ignorant and trapped here. Yet another part was resentful that she had never been offered the choice to be part of this strange, impossible world. And as soon as that last thought entered her mind, she felt genuine disgust that she’d even consider wanting to be part of this exclusive hermit kingdom when they were the ones that killed her mom.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, Aria vowed that she would keep her head screwed on straight as she embarked on these Trials. She only needed to stay in the running long enough to find proof of the League’s malicious intentions. And the last thing she needed was to be distracted by the League’s flashy party tricks. Superpowers were cool, but not worth the price of being turned into a human weapon.
The gama finally approached the shimmering golden gates of Central Palace, where teenagers with suitcases were making their way through the main gates. As Aria stepped down from her floating carriage, she steeled herself.
I won’t let you down, Dad. And I won’t lose sight of why I’m here. I swear I’ll make you proud.
ARIA FOLLOWED THE OTHER TEENAGERS through the gates of Central Palace, lugging her suitcase behind her. As its wheels rumbled over the granite pavers of a large, sparse courtyard, she thought of the word rubatosis from her mom’s journal. The unsettling awareness of one’s own heartbeat. She had no idea what she was walking into, and she felt like a boot strapped too tight. Contained but at risk of exploding at any moment.
She reached down and patted it, and a golden warmth washed over Aria’s body. Her ears began to itch, then stretch, and suddenly, she could not only hear the nearby stream, she could hear the fish swimming inside it, too.
Astonished, she reached out to touch a winged hamster who fluttered past her face. A similar golden aura spread over her body, and a terrible itch grew in her shoulder blades before spreading to her skin. Before she knew it, she was covered in fur and had sprouted wings. She managed to get them to flap by squeezing her shoulder blades tight. But she only lifted off the ground for a fraction of a second before she fell back onto the grass.
Aria looked around, gaping. And she couldn’t help but think that she’d somehow found herself in spring. Spring on steroids.
Something brushed her arm, and she turned to see a dandelion puff the size of a bowling ball blowing past, its fuzzy furs exploding from its head like fireworks. She reached out to touch it, only for it to titter and float away.
She followed it through a cornfield of singing cobs, where she witnessed a newborn fawn testing its legs, which created sparks with every step. She stroked it, and Aria’s feet turned into hooves, making the ground underneath her fizzle with electricity.
It struck her then that this was how Tae had grown his spider arms at the signing. His bloom dragon had slung a violet orb at its human, which had enveloped the royal slinger in a golden aura. Whatever was inside must’ve been like the creatures from here, allowing Tae to tap into its magical essence.
Aria was so captivated by these strange creatures that she didn’t notice how much time had passed. It was only when her fingers and toes started tingling that she realized she’d completely forgotten why she was there.
“Enter the archway. Find your seed,” she reminded herself.
She frowned. Tingling extremities meant that she only had about ten minutes before she’d wake up from her dream. That meant she only had as many minutes to find her seed. But where was she going to find one of those?!
A fruit tree came into view, and she raced toward it, ripping one of the star-shaped fruits off the branch. Fruit had seeds. Maybe she could take one of those. She tore the soft flesh with her fingers, digging into it for a pip of any sort. But there was only sweet fleshy pulp that glowed like the stars. She huffed.
The dandelion puff was back, and it jittered mischievously around her as if amused by Aria’s inability to find a seed.
“If you’re not gonna help, then buzz off!” she yelled at it.
The tingling had now spread to her upper limbs, and she anxiously raced to a gourd patch, hoping one of the waxy blue pumpkins might be housing a seed. She cracked one open using a nearby rock, but that, too, was all cerulean flesh and no seed. Aria grunted. She was running out of time.
The same dandelion puff peeked out from behind a tree and repeated the motion several times as if wanting to play a game of hide-and-seek. Aria, in her frustration, turned and yelled at it again.
“Just leave me alone, you annoying fuzzy seed head!”
Aria froze, realizing what she’d just said. Then she dropped her head in her hands and groaned. How stupid could she have been? No wonder the puff had been trying to get her attention. A dandelion puff was literally a head of seeds!
“Hey, come here, you! Maybe I do want to play, after all.”
As if now sulking, it swam away. But Aria chased after it, newly pumped with adrenaline. The puff flew down a ravine and eventually drifted into the mouth of a dense grove of shrubbery shaped like a cave. Aria tailed it inside.
“Got you!” she exclaimed as she caught the puff and clutched it to her chest.
Feeling triumphant, Aria turned to leave the dark thicket, when she noticed the heavy vines drooping from the ceiling. At first glance, she thought there were fruits hanging from the stems. But on second glance, she noticed they were, in fact, skulls. There was a great quantity of them, each as big as her hand, growing like cherry tomatoes on the vine.
One of the skulls—the one glowing ever so slightly—called to her.
I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.
Aria shuddered and hugged the dandelion puff closer to her chest. But the voice called louder now. More insistent.
I’m here! I’m here! I’m here!
Feeling bewitched, Aria gazed into the sunken hollows of the skull’s eyes. And suddenly, a deep sense of hiraeth assaulted her like a blow to the stomach.
HIRAETH (Noun) (Welsh origin): (1) Homesickness for a home to which you cannot return; or (2) A longing for a home that never existed.
She staggered back. The tingling was now rapidly spreading down her head and in toward the chest. She knew from experience that once it hit the heart, her time would be out. She guessed she had less than a minute left.
Panicked, she looked down at the dandelion puff and then at the skull. Back at the puff and at the skull again. She reminded herself why she was here. The task was to find your seed. The choice was clear.
But I’m here! I’m here! I’M RIGHT HERE!
As tears stung her eyes for a reason she couldn’t fathom, the tingling reached Aria’s heart.
And although she knew she shouldn’t—despite knowing she’d fail this test—she dropped the dandelion puff.
With mere seconds to spare, Aria wrapped her hands around the delicate glowing skull and wrenched it from the vine.
“BRAVO, TRIALEER LOVE. CONGRATULATIONS! YOU are now officially in the running to become a Fellow of the Royal League of Dreamslingers.”
Aria groaned as she came to, still sitting in the back seat of Driver Nam’s car, which had come to a stop. Out of habit, she quickly pulled on her metal-fiber gloves, and noticed her skin was scratched and bloody and raw. The dreamslinger armband was gone. Something was weighing down her legs, and when she looked down, there was a skull on her lap.
She gasped and quickly covered it with her hands.
“I’ve never seen a trialeer bring back a snapdragon seed before,” the voice said approvingly. “How very refreshing. We normally get lots of dandelions. Sometimes devil heads, among others. But snapdragon is a first.”
A tall, wiry man stood outside her open passenger door, wearing a long hooded cloak with the symbol of a sweetgum leaf. He wore tiny square glasses on his pointy nose, and his mustache was a living entity unto itself—it twirled up on both ends like a pig’s tail, and had little gems threaded on it. A tasseled knot charm hung from the waist of his traditional Korean garb.
Aria tentatively removed her hands from her lap and stared at the delicate skull. “So this is a seed?”
“Oh yes. The species from the Asleep are much larger than the ones we have in the Awake. But I assure you these delightfully macabre pods, indeed, contain the seeds of the snapdragon flower.” He swatted the air in front of him. “But where are my manners! My name is Fredrik Tak, and I am one of the four Head Scholars of the Royal League. You may call me Head Scholar Tak.”
He twisted one of the gems on his mustache. “As I was saying, it brings me great joy that you successfully entered the archway to a Season and found your seed. It means your actions embodied one of the League’s four core values—the wise, the kind, the rule, and the just. It also means that you have now made it through the preliminary round of the Annual Royal Slinger Trials, which is why you are now eligible to enter this year’s Trials proper.”
Aria blinked. “So that entire dream was the pretrial? I knew it was some kind of test!”
“I am happy to answer any questions you may have at this juncture,” he continued. “Otherwise, you may now proceed with your driver to the kingdom for the welcome festivities.”
Head Scholar Tak nodded toward Driver Nam, who was still sitting in the driver’s seat, looking at Aria with a mixture of sheepishness and awe.
“Well, since you’re offering.” Aria pointed at her lap, adjusting her legs underneath the surprising weight of the skull pod. “What is this for?”
“For planting, of course!”
“To grow… larger-than-average snapdragon flowers?”
He chortled. “How amusing, Trialeer Love. All things going in your favor, the seed in your possession will sprout your dreampanion.”
“What’s a dreampanion?” she asked suspiciously.
Head Scholar Tak took his knot charm in his hand and chanted, “Suri suri masuri,” which Aria recognized as the same words Tae had chanted to summon his bloom dragon. Except unlike Tae’s bloom dragon, it was a Tiger Beast that materialized beside the scholar.
“This is my dreampanion, Kit. He’s a harvest tiger.”
So Beasts from the Nightmare Circle were called dreampanions here.
The scholar gave the stallion-size tiger an affectionate rub on its head, making its pelt of autumn foliage crinkle and crunch. A pile of leaf debris gathered at the man’s feet like shed fur.
“A dreampanion is your dream guide. They guide you between the Awake—the world we’re in now—and the Asleep—the place we go when we dream. You were permitted briefly into a Season of the Asleep during the preliminary round to retrieve your seed. But it will never happen again unless you can endear yourself to your dreampanion.”
That place that looked like spring on steroids must’ve been one of the Seasons. If she was understanding the scholar properly, Aria would have to “sprout” a dreampanion from her seed if she ever wanted to return there.
“Riiight. So you’re saying that these seeds are how everyone in the League gets a Beast?” She’d always wondered how royal slingers pulled the Beasts from the Nightmare Circle into the real world.
The tiger’s nostrils flared as the scholar corrected her. “No one gets anything around here, Trialeer Love, least of all a dreampanion. And we do not use that derogatory B word in the League. By passing all three Trials, one earns the honor and lifelong privilege of a dreampanion endearment.”
Inwardly, Aria scoffed. They could call them whatever they wanted—it didn’t change the fact that these vicious creatures had done nothing but torment Aria in her nightmares. But outwardly, she merely cleared her throat.
“I wasn’t aware that Beas—I mean, the B word was derogatory. I didn’t mean to offend.”
The scholar gave a nod. “Unless you have further questions, I suggest you make your way to the kingdom.” He leaned into the car to take the skull from her lap, and she found herself instinctively reaching out to snatch it back.
“Hey, that’s mine!” A feeling of protectiveness washed over her, and she realized she didn’t want to let her dreampanion seed out of her sight. Her actions reminded her of a word she’d seen in her mom’s journal:
AGNOSTHESIA (Noun) (Greek origin): The state of not knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your own behavior, as if you were some other person.
“You will be reunited with your seed soon,” Head Scholar Tak assured her, as he cajoled the skull out of her hands again.
“Are you sure?” she asked nervously.
“I swear it on my harvest tiger.”
He nodded to Driver Nam. “Now please do make haste to the Official Royal Welcome Ceremony. I would hate for you to miss the lantern rite.”
Before she could ask what that was, Head Scholar Tak closed her door.
“Safe travels, Trialeer Love,” he said through the open window. “And may you enjoy the ride.”
“You will have to excuse my excitement,” Driver Nam gushed as they drove through the busy cityscape of Seoul and up to an immigration border with tall, impenetrable walls. “This is all just so exciting for me. Oh, my daughter is going to be over the moon when I tell her you passed the pretrial!”
There seemed to be at least five different security checks, each administered by a different officer, before border control finally waved them through the checkpoint. They drove over a bridge overlooking the small river.
“And here we are. Welcome to the Kingdom of Royal Hanguk!”
On the other side of the bridge stood the towering gates of a walled-off island (involving yet another security check), and suddenly it felt like they’d arrived in a completely different world—and a completely different time. A minute ago, on the other side of the river, Seoul had been full of high-rises covered with flashing screens advertising the latest face cream and instant coffee mixes. There’d been cars honking everywhere, and people swarming the streets wearing the latest fashion trends.
But here inside Royal Hanguk, there was not a high-rise in sight. The buildings were traditional, in the same style as the archway from her pretrial. They all had the distinctive tiled roofs and sloped eaves, wooden beams, and paper doors reminiscent of Korea from hundreds of years ago. Except the winding roads and alleyways looked like they came straight out of London, with quaint cobblestones, beautiful Victorian streetlamps, and rustic stone walls covered in moss and vines. As Driver Nam had mentioned, the place had a lost-in-time, Korea-meets-England vibe that was uniquely charming.
“Wow,” she breathed, unable to hide her amazement. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Driver Nam parked inside the gates and came around to open her door, his cheeks plumping under his smiling eyes. “Wait until you ride a gama.”
“A gama?”
Instead of answering, Driver Nam whistled a short tune—just five notes that sounded like part of a wider melody. The next thing she knew, a wooden carriage had appeared in front of them.
It looked like a tall box, with a door, two open windows, and a spacious interior that could fit three adults. Its exterior panels were adorned with white swan feathers, while a delicate pink tulle encircled its middle, as if the box were wearing a tutu. The thing that stood out most about this carriage, though, was that it was suspended… four feet above the ground.
Aria took a step back. “Uh, what is that?”
“Some call them palanquins or litters, but we call them gama. Traditionally, they were carried by servants. But our gama are crafted from the wood of the soarfree tree—a common species found in the Asleep. As you can see, it’s known for its exceptionally buoyant properties.”
Aria’s brows almost hiked right off her face. It was mind-boggling to her that trees from the dream world could be brought back to the Awake. And even more so that this was the first she’d ever heard of it. If soarfree trees could make things fly, what could other dream species be capable of?!
Driver Nam hoisted Aria’s green suitcase onto the gama’s roof before helping her up. She was relieved to find that the seat had a soft plush cushion, and surprised that the main melody from Swan Lake filled the carriage. It matched the swan-feathered decor and tutu, as if this gama harbored secret aspirations to become a ballerina.
“Well, Trialeer Love, I must leave you here.” He bowed and gave one of his hearty belly-jiggling laughs. “Thanks to you I’ve had one of the most exciting workdays I’ve had in a long time. Saemi will be beside herself when I tell her!”
Before she could thank him for the ride, he turned to address the carriage. “To Central Palace, please, dear gama. I appreciate your service.”
As the setting sun painted a warm glow over the kingdom, the gama glided forward, weaving through the bustling cobbled alleyways. Aria poked her head out, immediately startled by the sheer number of Bea—no, dreampanions roaming openly on the streets.
She passed an open-air market where children were lining up to have their marshmallows toasted by a fire-tailed bird. Beside them was what Aria could only describe as a shoeshine stand—except instead of shoes, turtle dreampanions were having their ice-shells polished and carved with trendy patterns. There even seemed to be people with brooms whose sole job was to clean the streets of molted dragon petals and shed tiger leaf-fur.
She was so struck by the sights that she almost missed the girl racing past on the back of a harvest tiger, moving at the speed of the wind. And she almost didn’t see the snowflake-cloaked rider poking out from the lake, the icy shell of his turtle glinting beneath him.
In fact, Aria was so taken aback by her surroundings that she almost mistook the group of bloom dragons flying over the gama for a mere figment of her imagination. Since they were wingless, she’d assumed dragons couldn’t fly. But the snakelike creatures with their long bodies and sweeping whiskers rippled through the sky like eels in water, their daisy-cloaked riders mounted on their backs.
Feeling an intense sensation of being out of place, Aria retreated back inside the safety of her floating box and took a few deep breaths. Her mind was glitching, unable to compute what it was seeing. Emotions stormed inside her, competing for attention.
A part of her was jealous that these dreamslingers lived in freedom, away from anti-slingers and others who wished them ill. And a part of her felt pity that these people were closed off from the world, ignorant and trapped here. Yet another part was resentful that she had never been offered the choice to be part of this strange, impossible world. And as soon as that last thought entered her mind, she felt genuine disgust that she’d even consider wanting to be part of this exclusive hermit kingdom when they were the ones that killed her mom.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, Aria vowed that she would keep her head screwed on straight as she embarked on these Trials. She only needed to stay in the running long enough to find proof of the League’s malicious intentions. And the last thing she needed was to be distracted by the League’s flashy party tricks. Superpowers were cool, but not worth the price of being turned into a human weapon.
The gama finally approached the shimmering golden gates of Central Palace, where teenagers with suitcases were making their way through the main gates. As Aria stepped down from her floating carriage, she steeled herself.
I won’t let you down, Dad. And I won’t lose sight of why I’m here. I swear I’ll make you proud.
ARIA FOLLOWED THE OTHER TEENAGERS through the gates of Central Palace, lugging her suitcase behind her. As its wheels rumbled over the granite pavers of a large, sparse courtyard, she thought of the word rubatosis from her mom’s journal. The unsettling awareness of one’s own heartbeat. She had no idea what she was walking into, and she felt like a boot strapped too tight. Contained but at risk of exploding at any moment.
