Excerpt
Mice are delicious. But even more delicious are monsters, ghosts, and things that go bump in the night. Your mother or father might tell you that they are all in your head and that you're just imagining things. In a way, they're right. Monsters are all in your head.
But you're not just imagining things.
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I was inside Jaela's head with a tasty monster called an Aranea, dribbling slime and trying to skitter out of the way on its spider claws, when the entire world of dreams shook, as though being shifted around by an earthquake.
The Aranea crawled up the wall of Jaela's bedroom, clinging to the ceiling, too scared even to spit acid at me, as I tried to keep Jaela from waking. It is bad when a dreamer wakes before you have eaten the monster, because the monster is able to escape the dreamer's head, sometimes for a short time, sometimes for a long time, and cause mischief.
When I was a wee kitten, I let one of her monsters get out, and it threw a tantrum in her room, only disappearing when her parents appeared to find out what was the matter. Jaela hid in a corner and screamed, and wouldn't stop screaming even when her parents asked her what was the matter.
She was punished for breaking toys and writing in crayon strange words in letters and languages that none but those who walk dreams could ever read.
But, even as a kitten, I could read them: Stupid cat.
It was the first time I had been called a cat instead of a kitten, and I found that it filled me with anger, to have my profession insulted by having a newborn baby dream-walker compared to my fine teachers.
And ashamed that I had let the dream escape.
Inside Jaela's dream, I purred, trying to soothe her. Sometimes she woke suddenly, looked around for a few seconds, and then went back to sleep as she shifted to a more comfortable position.
Not this time.
As the dream world shook, it changed, becoming less like Jaela's closet, bedroom, house, and city, and more like a forest full of long trees with even longer shadows.
The shaking turned from a constant rumble into footsteps. Some gigantic thing was coming toward us through Jaela's dream, toward her dream-self. She whimpered, squatted down on the moldy leaves of the forest floor, and wrapped her arms around her knees.
"Shh," I told her. "I will defend you. No monster will hurt you while I am here, my princess."
It was not often that I spoke her in dreams.
"Ferntail?" she said. "Where are we?"
"I do not know," I said.
"We are in the Great Forest," hissed a voice.
I quickly looked up and saw the Arenea above us, on one of the trees. I growled at it, and it backed up the trunk.
It laughed through its long teeth at me. "You'll never catch me here, dream-walker. There are too many ways for me to escape, not like the corner of some bedroom, where you can trap me and eat me."
"Run away, little nightmare," I said. "Lest something bigger come along and snap off your many legs so you can't run away anymore."
"Please," Jaela said. The ground was shaking even harder than before.
I shifted form, until I walked like a man on my hind legs, and picked up Jaela in my arms. I ran quickly through the forest, ignoring the branches that whipped across my fur, protecting Jaela in my arms. She put her arms around my neck and clutched me hard, but not so hard that she couldn't breathe.
We ran, the footsteps growing louder, until I came upon a little house in a clearing of the forest. I hadn't noticed that the forest was dark (we cats can see well in dark places) until we reached the clearing, and bright moonlight shone down, making the long blades of grass shine white. The windows of the little house were covered with wooden shutters that let only tiny cracks of light through, but the chimney was puffing smoke. Jaela shivered in my arms, and I realized she must be cold, a human outside at night in only her nightgown.
I stepped toward the house when the hissing voice laughed at me again. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
I looked up; the spiderlike Aranea hung above us, as though we hadn't moved a step. The tree even looked the same, for all I could tell.
"Get back!" I swiped at it with one paw, cutting across one leg, which dripped clear fluid onto the forest floor.
"Sssss...no need to be rude," the Aranea said. "But I would avoid the house if I were you. Witches live in houses in the middle of the wood. A word to the wise."
