The Hidden Fire (Book 2) by James R. Sanford

Author:James R. Sanford [Sanford, James R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11: Dreamlands

They passed through the opening in the dream tree and stepped into an underground cavern. “There are many ways leading from these caves,” said Rolirra. “Most of the ways are known. I’m looking for a narrow tunnel.”

A hole in the roof of the cavern was open to the sky and sunlight shone through. Rolirra found her tunnel and led them along a dark passage that ended in the soft light of dawn. They went out to find themselves standing on the banks of an enormous river. It was miles across, so wide that it flowed with dozens of currents and counter-currents.

“This is the world river,” Rolirra said. “The bending forest lies on the other side. I think that would be the easiest way to go.”

“It’s a far swim.”

“Oh, we must not attempt to swim it — to swim in it is to be lost in it. We must find another way to cross.”

Kyric turned to her. “This isn’t the first time you’ve spoken of needing to find things. Do you mean that there are things already there to find, or is this your way of saying that we need to create them, to dream them up?”

She shook her head at him. “You still think of this side as the dream and the other as real. It is all real, Kyric. And the answer to your question is somewhere in-between. We cannot truly create anything, but we can find it, we can make it so, if the potential for it exists. The wings I found in the desert of light, you could never find here.”

He smiled helplessly. “So what are we looking for?”

“Sometimes it is not so much a thing as it is a being.” She waded into the river. It was brown and muddy and completely opaque. She waded in up to her waist and cocked her head low to the water, listening. She slapped the surface with the flat of her hand, then again, and again, beating out a rhythm on the river.

A pair of creatures broke the surface a hundred yards out, twin waterspouts rising from their blowholes. They dove and leapt, swimming quickly into shore. They were very much like dolphins, but wider and more flattened, with oversized flippers, rather like wings, and a very broad tail.

Kyric waded in with Rolirra and the creatures circled them slowly. They didn’t have the bottle snout of a dolphin — a lump for a nose and a mouth with teeth made their faces look all too human. Their dark eyes shone with intelligence and for a moment it seemed that they were smiling at him. Rolirra lay alongside one of them, holding on to it by the flipper and the dorsal fin. Kyric mimicked her, and soon as he took hold, off they went.

The power of these beings was overwhelming. They plunged along relentlessly, and Kyric held on for all he could. Suddenly the cross-currents ran in every direction. It felt like the creatures were swimming in a wide arc.

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