Page 18 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
“Why did you do this, Caer?”
Mother’s voice. Mother’s and not hers. Mother couldn’t scream or shriek like that—
The winds howled. The sun vanished. The air roared with emptiness. There was nothing in the world, no floors or walls, no sky or earth—nothing but Caer and the bed where his mother’s corpse wailed.
He woke in the dark of the dwarves’ cottage, heart pounding, almost hurting, his bed soaked with sweat.
Aislinn was hovering over him, pointy ears slicing through her unbound hair, shining like daggers in the shafts of moonlight. A cloud of something gold hovered around her, bright as flame—
He wanted to run from it.
A second later, it was gone, and his heart finally settled in his chest, quieter in her presence.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Caer breathed carefully, in and out, counting like Minerva had taught him during his first few nights. She was the only one of the dwarves who didn’t always sleep soundly.
“Think of something good,” she’d told him.“Something small. Concentrate on the details. Think of nothing else.”
He’d had a wooden horse as a child—a tiny one he could carry in his pocket, made with real horse hair, its saddle painted apple-red. He concentrated on the slope of its neck, the softness of its mane, how black its eyes had once been.
The hold of the dream ebbed away.
“Fine, fine,” he said. “Just a nightmare—”
“You look hot—”
Her hand reached out to touch him, but he jerked back, heart thudding. Close. She was too close.
Aislinn pulled back her hand. “I can get one of the others, if you prefer?” she said, after a pause. “Flora, maybe?”
“I’m fine,” he insisted, despite the sweat clinging to his skin. “Don’t waste your time trying to rouse the dwarves; they’re heavy sleepers.”
The first few times he’d woken in the night, he had been certain he would wake them with his screaming, but no one had come until that night with Minerva when she’d already been up. He’d been tempted more than once to go to them since then. Most of them wouldn’t have minded. Minerva certainly wouldn’t, although her softness held a prickly quality. Luna, maybe, would want him to. She never seemed annoyed by pain, never made anyone feel like they were inconveniencing her with their troubles.
But he wouldn’t try. He could not wake them. They would not come.
“Go back to bed,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”
Aislinn did not move. She hovered by his side, and for one horrible moment, Caer thought she was going to reach out and touch him again.
She didn’t, thankfully. She leaned back against the table, half-sitting.
Only when the distance grew did Caer realise that, foolish as it was, he’d wanted her to sit beside him. Her—anyone. Anyone warm and real.
“My brother and I would share our nightmares when we were children,” she said. The soft quality of her voice startled him. He had not thought that there was any softness about Aislinn at all—she was dagger sharp, as tart as a gooseberry. But she looked and sounded softer in the moonlight, her skin silver in the dewy glow of the moon.
It was possibly just the lack of light, or his sleep-deprived mind playing tricks on him.
He cleared his throat. “Not anymore?”
“They got too real, the older we grew.”
He understood that, and found himself wondering what shediddream of, the childish fantasies turned into grown-up nightmares.
“I once had a dream that I was a bee. I flew all over the castle, but then I got chased by the cat and Beau tried to swat me.”
Despite the nightmare still scratching at the corner of his mind, Caer found himself smiling. “Beau is your brother?”
