Page 37 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“Believe we’re real yet, Just-Wren?” Ferrin grinned at me as Orla opened the door into the next passenger cart.
“Unfortunately.” I had to yell over the wind to hear myself, but Ferrin’s grin widened beneath his fluttering cockatoo hair.
“Excellent. Then do try not to stare.”
With his hand on my shoulder, he steered me through the open door into the bright light of the passenger cart, and I immediately found myself disobeying his directive.
Some of the passengers’ cloaks looked like those of Tiernan and Fana, ranging from brown and torn to ornate and embroidered. Others dressed more like Ferrin, Galahad, and Orla, with vests, leather, and unnecessarily complex belts and garters. Long tailcoats and longer skirts dominated the scene, though plenty of women wore leather pants and tunics. A couple sat together in traditional kimonos. Everyone had goggles pushed up into their hair.
One old woman wore her goggles over her eyes as she heated a metal mug of steaming liquid with a fistful of magenta skalflames. A ticket-taker in a red uniform and leather baldric reminded her this was a Skalflame-Free cart, and she let her fire flicker out as she mumbled about the good old days when she could light a flame wherever she liked.
“You’re staring.” Ferrin leaned in to murmur in my ear. “Remember, lucid Nightmares aren’t exactly legal, so try to look less like you just woke up in an alternate reality.”
I blushed and snapped my eyes to the back of Orla’s pixie cut. She turned around to give me a smile.
“Told you,” she whispered. “Steamcarts! Very cool, right?”
“Orla,” Ferrin warned in a low voice, and she spun back around.
“It is very cool,” I assured her, and Ferrin patted my shoulder with a heavy hand.
“Don’t worry,” Ferrin continued as we entered the next cart. The lights were dimmer in this one, and most of the passengers slumped in their seats, trying to sleep. “You’ll have plenty of time to stare and meet our people once we reach the Second Sentinel. For now, let’s focus on pastries.”
The dining cart was easy to identify by its smell alone when we arrived, and I relished the scent of freshly baked dough and something savory that I couldn’t name. Orla led the way through the door to reveal a cart lined with wooden tables that overlooked the windows. Pipes of steamed Skal ran across the ceiling and spilled shifting, dull light over the booths and the far counter where a man stood in a vest like Ferrin’s.
“What sort of sweet pastries do you have available?” Orla pressed against the counter, and the man stared past us with an unfocused look.
“Sweet cream, peach, cinnamon apple—”
“Oh, peach!” Orla cut off his droning voice. “We’ll have a half-dozen of peach!”
“And a pint of whatever is strongest,” Ferrin added. He pushed forward to place a few large coins on the counter.
“I can pay for myself,” Orla said, but Ferrin shook his head.
“Your mother would haunt me from this life into the next if I let you do that.”
The man took the money without looking at Ferrin, and an uncomfortable prickle worked its way down my spine.
“He’s a Nightmare,” I realized out loud. “I thought we just fought your battles.”
Ferrin put a finger to his lips and cast an anxious glance at a nearby table of cloaked men.
“And serving pastries to travelers is worse than fighting on a battlefield?” He motioned to a nearby wooden table. I took a reluctant seat across from Ferrin while Orla waited at the counter for her pastries.
“No,” I admitted, watching the Nightmare disappear through a sliding door behind the counter. “But it’s wrong. We don’t have a say. We don’t get paid. It’s free labor.”
Ferrin sighed and looked out the window. I followed his gaze, but the lights of the dining cart made it impossible to see outside. Instead, our reflections were thrown back at us, and I startled at the sight of the young woman sitting across from Ferrin in the window.
A sleek jawline accentuated her delicate chin and slender neck. Her cheeks were smooth, though that might’ve been courtesy of the dark night behind the window washing out her reflection. And her hair…
I ran a hand through the blue tresses, half-convinced my reflection wouldn’t follow suit because the woman in the window couldn’t be me. But her hand tracked mine, and her eyes widened in surprise just as I felt mine do the same.
They’d told me Nightmares took on their own idealized versions of themselves, but I hadn’t realized until now that it had affected me beyond my hair and eyelashes.
“It’s not really labor,” Ferrin said, bringing me back to our conversation about the Nightmare behind the counter. “Not for normal Nightmares, anyway. The Skal and the will of the nocturmancer in charge of it do most of the work. The sleeping consciousnesses inside are just unwitting pilots.”
“It’s still wrong.” I tore my gaze away from the window.
