Page 59 of Bonds of Magic
“It still feels like I’m invading someone’s privacy,” I said.
“They won’t know. And if it’s someone who’s not attracted to you, it will just be a regular dream to them. You’ll still need the other kind of dream later, but I think I can trust you to take care of that yourself, once you’re back in your room tonight. For this lesson, pick someone you know well enough to sense their essence.”
Ash, I thought immediately. Not only was I sure he wasn’t interested in me, but of all my friends, he was the one who’d be least bothered knowing I’d spied on him. At least, I hoped so.
“Okay,” I said, hoping I knew Ash’sessenceenough to do this. “I’ll try, anyway.”
I let Noah talk me into sleep, though I didn’t really need it anymore. His voice was comforting, though I’d never tell him that. The slip into sleep was seamless, and when I was in the starry sea, I remembered the words he’d said right before I went under.
Don’t try to find the dream. Let it come to you. Remember that youaredreamstuff, so you’re simply finding part of yourself.
A part of myself, but also Ash’s essence. Hmm. I closed my non-existent eyes so I could concentrate. WhatwasAsh’s essence?
That was simple. Ash was all motion, all mirth, all mischief. He was a laugh you couldn’t stifle during a sermon, a wink in the middle of an interrogation, a flower blooming through a crack in the sidewalk. He was loyal and curious and my friend, no matter how many times I tried to tell him not to be. Warmth rushedthrough me as I realized how grateful I was for Ash—he was the first person I’d met at Vesperwood, and the first one to offer me friendship.
When I opened my eyes, I was in a different spot. Had I moved? Or did the sea floor shift beneath me. I didn’t know, but floating in front of me was a star made or swirling music. Not music notation, not musical sounds, but theessenceof music.
It was a little muted, compared to some of the brighter stars nearby, but I realized with a flash of recognition that this was Ash’s dream. I smiled, remembering him teasing me about getting sex lessons from Noah. Not tonight, as it turned out. I leaned forward and touched Ash’s dream with a fingertip, letting it swallow me up.
When the world stabilized, I was in the woods behind Vesperwood. It was spring—no, summer. Warmer than I’d felt in ages. The sun was setting to the west, casting long, low shadows through the trees. Tiny specks of pollen danced in the air, except they weren’t pollen, they were little specks of gold, and I had the sense that they were actually alive.
I was standing at the base of a massive cedar. Small blue flowers clustered at my feet and spread forward into a glade with the lushest, greenest grass I’d ever seen. The whole clearing hummed with a vibrant energy. It felt almost conscious.
Ash stood in the center of the glade, which was ringed by other cedars. Pink and blue flowers mixed with the soft blades of grass at his feet. He spun in a slow circle, scanning the treeline until his eyes fell on me.
“Cory!” He sounded happy to see me, which was a relief. “Thank God, I need your help. It won’t turn on.”
“What won’t turn on?” I asked, crossing the grass to join him.
As I walked, I saw a boulder in the center of the glade. It looked like an ordinary lump of gray rock to me, but Ash knelt and ran his hands over its surface like it contained the answer to a riddle.
“I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong,” he said, rolling the bolder left and right. “It should be working.”
The grass underneath the rock was a darker green, matted down from its weight, but nothing looked out of the ordinary.
“Can I… help?” I knelt next to him. I had no idea what was going on, but I didn’t like seeing my friend upset.
“I don’t know. I tried everything the book said, but I can’t make it work like it’s supposed to.” His voice climbed higher as he talked.
“What bo—” I began, but suddenly a book appeared a few feet away, lying open in the grass. Its aged pages gleamed in the evening light, and more of those dancing golden specks of light hovered above it. The book definitely hadn’t been there a second ago, but Ash didn’t seem to notice.
I nodded. “Okay, tell me what you did, and maybe we can figure it out.”
“I aligned the stone’s matrix. I invoked the glade’s power. I chanted its name, and I canfeelit, it’s so close to opening, but itwon’t.”
“What won’t open?”
“The door.” Ash’s voice was close to a wail now.
My heart thudded. He was trying to open a door? Like the one Erika had opened? Had Ash been enchanted too?
“A door?” I said cautiously, fear filling my gut. “A door to where?”
“Home.” His voice was so plaintive it broke my heart. His fingers twisted together, his whole body shaking. I’d never seen him this visibly upset. “I don’t understand why I can’t go home.”
Something in the way he said it made me sure he wasn’t just talking about going back to wherever he’d lived before coming to Vesperwood. Not that he’d ever been clear on where that was. All I knew was that at one point, he’d spent some time in Ohio. But I was pretty sure he was longing for something deeper than the Midwest.
“It should be right there.” He stabbed a finger at a cedar on the far side of the clearing. “The book promised. I finally found it, and I did everything right, and I still can’t go home.”
