Briar & the Dreamers of Midnight

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I wear a peasant dress with colorful ribbons in my hair. The roar of the tavern washes over me as I weave my way through the throng. I serve a tankard of ale to a man who is a hunter in his waking life.

The hunter is a brute of a man. He looks like he hasn’t bathed in months, and I’m sure that if it wasn’t his dream, he’d reek to high heaven. It’s interesting that most dreamers see themselves as the way they are in the Waking.

I tilt my head to get a better look at him. He’s missing a few teeth. I suppose he could be worse in real life, but I doubt it.

I smile brightly at him. Sure enough, he smiles back. Men are so easy to distract.

All around us, sounds from the outside begin to penetrate through the windows of the tavern. The door begins to shake from the noise. It’s the sound of howling, not just from a single animal, but a whole pack of them.

It’s enough to wake the dead.

But I’m determined to not let it wake this dreamer. He looks up at the ceiling with a curiosity and alertness that I don’t like.

I brighten my smile and whistle to get his attention. He looks back at me. I wink suggestively at him, and I know that my tavern wench’s body is hard to resist.

The men at the table laugh and clap him on the shoulder. They’re specters—people conjured by the dreamer to populate their dreams. They’re often people the dreamer knows in their waking life, but they’re just as likely to be strangers like me.

When I first fumbled my way into the Dreaming, I tried to talk to the specters. If I was a conscious, living being, wouldn’t it be possible that they were too?

No matter how much I tried, though, none of them ever responded to me in any meaningful way. If the specters have a life, it isn’t in any way that I understand. The dreamers who create them, on the other hand, are easy to interact with.

I turn from my target dreamer and swish my way back toward the bar.

The howling outside grows louder. I look back at the dreamer with an arched brow. The filthy hunter looks over his shoulder again, but looks back at me with longing.

“That’s right, big boy,” I say. “You know you’d rather stay.” I glance up the stairs suggestively.

If my father the king ever knew what I did in my spare time, he’d roll over in his grave.

I mentally kick myself. I hate that saying. Do you know what I’d give to be able to roll over in my bed?

I crook my finger at the dreamer in a come-hither gesture. No one ever said I had to be subtle.

I’m not wearing my face, and it’s all too easy to behave however you want when you’re wearing someone else’s. I’m pretty sure I’m in the body of someone the dreamer knows in his waking life, but that’s the kind of thing I never know for sure.

The dreamer looks at the front door one last time before getting up to follow me. I give him my best smile and swish my way up the stairs with a giggle.

I’m doing my best to get him to ignore the howling outside. What are they doing out there, singing a chorus to wake up the entire castle?

Halfway up the stairs, I step out of my dream body and stand aside. The serving woman that I just stepped out of and the dreamer continue up the stairs without me. That’s the great thing about specters—they don’t ask questions and they don’t get confused.

The dreamer and his pretty specter disappear into one of the upstairs rooms.

I don’t like to brag, but I have a good sense of when a dreamer can take over his dream on his own. I just have to nudge the dream in the direction I need it to go. In this case, that’s any direction that will keep him asleep and ignoring the holy racket that’s going on in the Waking.

I admit that I hungrily listen, even though it’s just noise. It’s noise coming from the Waking. I listen carefully to refresh my memory of what a real howl sounds like.

Every chance I get, I like to listen to whatever sounds a dreamer might hear. It’s one of the few tenuous connections I have to the Waking. Usually, it’s hard to tell if it’s a sound from the Dreaming or the real thing. This time, though, I’m working a rescue mission for my friends and howling was expected. So I know it’s coming from outside.

I enjoy being on a mission, but this one is pretty tough. I’m supposed to be in several dreams at the same time and keep the dreamers asleep for as long as I can. The way I do that is to keep them completely engaged in their dreams.

Learning how to do that took some practice. But when the alternative is to lie around in a body that can’t move, counting sheep in your head, you get pretty good at nudging dreamers.

I let out a long breath before leaving the tavern.