The War for the Waking World Read Free Page A

the Rift occurred, it would have been against the rules to tell people about Dreamtreading, to reveal age-old secrets, and to expose the hidden world. But now? Archer wondered. The Rift had changed things. The hidden world had been exposed. Everybody was a part of this now. Master Gabriel may not like this, he thought, but my family and friends’ sanity—maybe their survival—depends on their understanding. Survival . . .
    Archer knew just how he’d do it. He gave a glance to Kaylie. She nodded back. “Okay,” Archer said. “I’ll show you what I know—what Kaylie and I know. But to do it, we need to go downstairs.”
    â€œTo the basement?” his father asked. “I don’t see—”
    â€œTo your workshop, Dad,” Archer said. He didn’t give them time to argue, but instead strode away and bounded down the steps. He heard them following behind but waited until his family and friends were all inside the basement workshop. Archer shut the door . . . and locked it. This wasn’t going to be easy.
    Archer stood by his father’s workbench and gestured to an intricately built, ornamental wishing well his father had been working on lately. It was one of many such pieces in the room. Archer’s mother had so loved the family wishing well in the backyard that Archer’s father began building beautiful models of it to buoy her spirits as she battled the cancer that eventually took her life.
    â€œYou’ve been crafting again, Dad,” Archer said.
    His father swallowed deeply and set his jaw. “She wouldn’t want me to give up,” he whispered.
    â€œNo, Mom would never want you to give up,” Archer said. “These wells are incredible. I think maybe Kaylie and I got the creative ability from you.”
    â€œYou got the brains from your mom,” Mr. Keaton said with a quiet laugh.
    â€œCould be,” Archer said. “It’s the creativity and the brains together, I think, that make Kaylie and me Dreamtreaders.”
    His father echoed, “Dreamtreaders?”
    Archer explained the basics of Dreamtreading as best as he could. The Nine Laws, the moral and physical rules that governed life in the Dream; the Creeds, a kind of anthology of Dreamtreader wisdom and lore; the Three Realms of the Dream, Forms, Pattern, and Verse; Breaches, the small tears in the Dream fabric; and the Rift, the cataclysmic collapse of the barrier between the Dream and the Waking Worlds—everything from Master Gabriel’s summoning to the Nightmare Lord’s downfall to the present day. More than that, Archer showed them what Dreamtreaders could do. Calling up just a small measure of his mental will, Archer went to work.
    The well’s original cinder blocks and mortar melted away by Archer’s command, revealing the wall of half-frozen earth behind it. A glob of silver-gray appeared. It spun in the air like metallic taffy and began to form long cylinders. An interlocking grid of carbon-steel struts formed next, and then something like molten granite flowed over it all . . . and hardened. Before the astonished audience could take three breaths, Archer replaced the basement walls, floor, and ceiling with ten-foot-thick, carbon steel, blast-proof shields.
    Amy and her mother gasped. Archer’s father made no sound but gaped. Only Buster said anything, and that was a whispered “Whoa.”
    â€œPretty impressive, Archer,” Kaylie said.
    â€œYou feel it, don’t you?” Archer asked. “Since the Rift? We’re—”
    â€œStronger,” she said. “Much stronger. And we can do it in this world.”
    â€œI don’t understand,” Amy said. “What’s with the bomb shelter?”
    â€œHe’s keeping us safe,” Mrs. Pitsitakas said.
    â€œSafe? What?” Amy exclaimed, her owlish eyes wide with confusion. “But, Archer, we can help you.”
    â€œMaybe,” Archer