ALSO BY L. D. LAPINSKI

THE STRANGEWORLDS TRAVEL AGENCY

Book 1: The Strangeworlds Travel Agency

Book 2: Edge of the Ocean

Book 3: The Secrets of the Stormforest

A Very Strangeworlds Christmas (ebook only)

Adventure in the Floating Mountains (World Book Day Title)

OTHER TITLES

Jamie

Stepfather Christmas

www.hachettechildrens.co.uk

This book is for Isobel

named for a witch
and just as powerful

Author’s Note

In Edward and Elodie’s world, people who can use magic are called Artezans. This comes from the combining of two existing words: artisan and artesian, and the introduction of the letter Z.

Artisan

One who is a skilled craftsperson

Artesian

A spring or well that flows upwards

Z

From the Phoenician zayin, meaning weapon

Artezan

One who can wield the magic that flows through them

When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.

The Scottish Play

Macbeth, Act One, Scene One

William Shakespeare

Contents

Also by L. D. Lapinski

Title Page

Dedication

Author’s Note

1: Rocks and Bones

2: Cats and Campfires

3: Flags and Futures

4: Potions and Powers

5: Hidden and Unseen

6: Masters and Magic

7: Lessons and Artists

8: Trials and Errors

9: Impossible and Incredible

10: Dreams and Stories

11: Rain and Bridges

12: Truth and Tribulations

13: Ruins and Nightmares

14: Shudder and Ruin

15: Angst and Arguments

16: Fears and Frights

17: Bullies and Bruises

18: Needles and Never

19: Belief and Beneath

20: Moonlight and Waves

21: Past and Present

22: Iron and Ice

23: Scarecrows and Spiders

24: Successors and Skies

25: Laird and Master

26: Twins and Gifts

27: Scripts and Scars

28: Water and Might

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Copyright

The further into the wilds you go, the more magic you find.

This has been the case since the dawn of time, or at least since the dawn of magic. Unlike human beings, magic has no desire whatsoever to live in a comfortable warm house, safe from the grasping cold and the devouring night. Where humans need shelter, safety and love, magic feeds on the untamed wilderness. Magic lives and lurks at the edge of things – in the moments before a child wakes up, in the twist of your stomach before hunger takes hold, in the heavy feeling on the air just before a thunderstorm. And on the coast, where land surrenders to sea.

It has always been here.

Magic clings to the north; the place where land both ends and begins. It splits our night sky open with coloured beams that human beings call the Aurora. It surrounds itself with twice-made objects, seasonal changes and shifts from one state to another.

Once, magic was a force as undeniable and strong as gravity, albeit a force that could be controlled. Even in non-magical communities, there are ancient tales of Artezans – magic users – though they are known by other names. There are legends of them parting the seas, raising mountains, stopping the march of the sun and the moon across the sky and causing rains of frogs to fall upon their enemies. Paintings of their great deeds hang in galleries around the globe; the Artezans are pictured casting great magical spells, or else standing regally, holding their tuil – an object which enables an Artezan to use their magic. A tuil can be anything from a broomstick to a cauldron to an animal; only an Artezan can tell you why their tuil enables their powers, and even then the link is not always crystal-clear.

But the days of astonishing magical deeds are, sadly, over. Much like broth that has had water poured into it over and over again, magic has been diluted. Its power has been spread and shared out as families have grown and multiplied, and Artezans are now about as common as people with the ‘rarest’ blood group – hardly widespread, but certainly not impossible to find. Magic these days, although kept secret, does not have the power of legend. It is merely an abstract talent that serves little to no purpose in daily life. Some Artezans have an especially sharp sense of smell. Others can heal a broken fingernail with a wink.

One Artezan could likely pick another out from a crowd, but to non-magical people, enchantments are indistinguishable from talents and skills, and so they are ignored. The days of fire falling from the skies and fields of crops being desolated are long gone. Artezans are no longer powerful, they are ordinary.

But, of course, there have always been exceptions . . .

1

Rocks and Bones

The sea let out a seething breath of icy wind that cut through the summer air like a knife.

Edward and Elodie Crane were used to sudden changes in the world around them – it came part and parcel of living on the coast in the Scottish Highlands. You could never be certain as you set out on a clear morning that ten minutes later you wouldn’t be squinting through the dreich morning heer – the thick fog that rolled in off the sea and huddled inland like a shipwrecked ghost. But this sort of wind had an unnatural feel to it – a magical feel, and with good reason.

It had been the last day of primary school for the twins, and the atmosphere was dense with potential. Every summer holiday is magical, that goes without saying, but this one was going to be particularly interesting for Edward and Elodie. Not that either of the children were aware, at that moment, just how remarkable things were going to be . . .

‘It’s finally happening!’ Elodie said, her smile brighter than the sun. The two of them were stomping through the thick grass that draped over the roadside verge. Covensea, the wee village where they lived, hadn’t yet discovered the wonder of pavements. If a car came flying down the single-track road, you simply threw yourself into the bracken. ‘It feels a bit like Christmas, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so,’ Edward replied. He didn’t like arguments, and preferred to agree where possible. ‘There’s no promise of a present for either of us, mind.’

Elodie nudged her brother to try and coax a grin out of him. Although they were twins, Ed and his sister had very few things in common. They both had dark tangly hair, pale skin and burnt amber eyes, that was true . . . but that was where the similarities ended. Where Ed was tall for his eleven years, and scrawny in a way that made dorbie old ladies threaten to feed him up, Elodie was average height, fat and beautiful. They also had different personalities – Ed was somewhat of a social outcast, who had acquaintances instead of friends and not even many of those. He struggled in school with everything that wasn’t reading or making up stories, but not enough to get any extra attention from his teacher. Elodie, meanwhile, was top of the class and had about a hundred close friends. She had been voted Head Girl, Class Councillor, even Best French Plaits at their leavers’ assembly. Ed hadn’t even been nominated for anything. When people met the two children, they often had trouble believing they were twins at all.

The road split in two, and Elodie made to cross to the right, but Ed kept on the left.

‘Are you no coming home?’ Elodie asked, eyebrows going up. ‘You might miss the start of it all!’

‘I hate the summer camp set-up,’ Ed said, pointing in the direction of their home. ‘There’s always so much pressure to be the sort of person they expect. And this year feels even worse than usual. Don’t you think?’

‘Worse? No! It’s finally our year! We’ve been waiting for this our entire lives, you should be excited!’ Elodie beamed.

Ed highly disliked it when other people told him how he ought to feel, especially his sister who got excited about everything from dentist appointments to cleaning out the cat’s litter tray. He wanted to be excited for this summer, he really did, but where his stomach should have been filled with butterflies of anticipation, there was actually a writhing mass of Anxiety Snakes instead.

‘I just want a wee bit of space before a whole summer of having to be with other people,’ he said. ‘I’m away to the Caves. Are you coming or no?’

‘I don’t know . . .’ Elodie stood dithering at the crossroads, so Ed left her to it. He didn’t mind his sister being excited, because actually most people in their situation would have been buzzing with expectation. But Ed’s nervousness was extremely loud. So loud, in fact, that it drowned out his excitement until he wasn’t even sure if it was there.

Taking big steps over the long damp grass, Ed navigated the ferns that clustered together at the treeline before getting into the woodland properly. Covensea was a glorious Scottish mixture of forest and seaside; the green of the landscape pressed hard against the grey-blue of the ocean, and Ed often thought it was liking living in two worlds at once.

Later, he would laugh at himself for thinking something like that.

Unpredictable weather aside, there were braw joys to living in Covensea. It was a mere quarter of an hour’s walk from school to the sea, so long as you took the shortcut through the farmers’ fields, of course. These stretched out in chest-high carpets of gold, until they stopped suddenly, the land turning from field to cliff almost without warning. The distillery-bound barley became long blades of grass that reached out over the beach, metres below. Ed walked towards the edge carefully, the thump thump thump of hares running for cover the only sound other than the swish and crunch of his footsteps in the wind-blown grass.

From where Ed stood, you could see the iron grey sea and the persistent gathered cloud that rested above it (except on clear days when the cloud dispersed and you could see across to Wilkhaven). The water was part of the tringle of ocean that jabbed into north-east Scotland and was called the Moray Firth. At the top of the triangle was John O’Groats, then you had Inverness and Fraserburgh at the other two points. It was a view that Ed cherished, and one of the few things in life he felt was truly his own. Anyone could stand here, that was true, but they would never see the boundaries of the land and sea in the same way he did. He put a hand to his forehead to keep his tangle of dark hair out of his eyes as his heart soared. This was his favourite place. It was here that he understood what his parents really meant when they went on about the beauty of Scotland.

Ed had been told in school that Scotland used to be attached to Scandinavia, but there was no pointy triangle sticking out of Norway as far as he could see. Which meant that some pieces must have been lost during the break-up. Ed often wondered what had happened to them, whether they ended up as islands too small and secret for maps, or perhaps had drifted to the bottom of the North Sea.

He could head back to the house now, and not be noticeably late, but he didn’t feel like it a jot. School might be over for a few weeks, but unlike the other kids, Ed and his sister had an entire summer dedicated to another sort of school altogether . . .

Keen to delay for as long as he could, Ed edged along the cliff to where he knew there was a scoop out of the land, and a skiddy wee path that led down to the beach below. Over the years, people had nailed up old bits of wood, rope and tubing to help anyone with a mild sense of adventure get down to the sea. There were plenty of beaches close to Covensea, though this wasn’t one of the most popular – in addition to the risks of the path, the beach was covered in large rocks from past landslides, and the sand was streaked through with black seaweed.

But what the beach did have was the Sculptor’s Cave.

Ed knew from experience that you had to be careful with your timing to get down to it, as the cave was a fair walk along the beach itself, and if you didn’t know what you were doing you could be caught by the tide. The tide came sort of sideways into Covensea Bay, and the first sign that you’d overstayed your safety was when the sand started bubbling and rippling under your shoes. The water came up, not long after that, from beneath you. But despite his fear of being caught down there, Ed’s desire to find the cave won out, and he found it quickly and easily, as he always did.

The Sculptor’s Cave had a large mouth, oval-shaped like a whale-shark’s, and just as speckled about the outside with barnacles and pit-holes. When the light was at the right angle – around mid-morning – you had a good view inside, but now it was afternoon and the cave was gloomy and cold. Just right for keeping people away.

Ed grinned, and took out his phone, turning on the torch.

The local historians said that the cave used to belong to Bronze Age people, who had lived along the coast and sheltered or even slept within it. Sculpted artefacts had been found inside; bone carvings of fish and waves. Artezan history said the cave was once where a powerful tide-turner had lived. Sure, it was still during the Bronze Age, but there was a notable difference between the artefacts that once belonged to ancient fishers and those left behind by Artezans. If you knew what you were looking for. And Ed had been brought up knowing what to look for.

Edward and Elodie Crane lived in two worlds at once. The ordinary one, with school and bus timetables and supermarkets, and a much more extraordinary one. They belonged to a family of Artezans who had wielded magic for centuries, either with a tuil, or with their bare hands. Edward and Elodie had grown up knowing magic was real, and part of what made their family so special.

The skills each Artezan possessed were as unique as their fingerprints, but there were often some similarities in families, and that included the strength of the magic the person had in their control. Where most modern Artezans were only capable of doing small things, like turning a single page in a book by snapping their fingers, the Crane family remained powerful. They were not about to flatten Ben Nevis, but the magic in the family had always been strong, passed through generations of admirable Artezans, until . . .

. . . until Edward and Elodie.

They were the youngest Cranes, and unfortunately also the least likely to have any magic at all. Unlike generations of their ancestors, Ed and his twin were adopted. That meant there was no guarantee they’d have as much as a single drop of magical blood. And the thought of being ordinary, in a family where one dad commanded the weather and the other could manipulate the mood of anyone in a room . . . it made Ed want to curl up and hide. He couldn’t stand it.

And he would find out whether he was magical or not in only a few days’ time. Because this summer – in the year of Ed and Elodie’s eleventh birthday – was to be the summer of their Reveal. The moment they’d discover what their Artezan skills might be – or if they had any at all. The Reveal Ceremony would be taking place at their home, with a crowd of people watching. There would be no escape from everyone knowing, should the Reveal show that Ed wasn’t magical. The thought of all those expectant eyes on him turning to pity made him want to sink under the sand and fossilise. No Crane had ever had to worry about not being magical before.

Of course, there was always a chance he was magical . . . but what if the ceremony revealed a truly pathetic power, like being able to clip your toenails with a single thought? What if (and this was the what if that had Ed lying awake, staring at the ceiling) his twin sister was magical, but he wasn’t? Ed wasn’t sure he’d be able to live it down. All their lives, Elodie had been the one who came first in everything – who was top of the class, who won the all the Sports Day medals, who got interviewed on TV one random Saturday when they were in Inverness . . . while Ed lingered in her shadow. If the pattern continued into their Reveal, Ed seriously thought he might just get on a boat and row out into the firth in search of a new life.

But right then, down in the Sculptor’s Cave, all those worries seemed to melt away. It might have been damp and brackish-smelling from the decaying seaweed on the cave floor, but nowhere in Covensea made Edward Crane feel more magical. Not in his house, even when he was watching Baba craft a crackling lightning storm, or when Dad would instantly lift the mood of an entire room at a boring party. Not on his granny’s houseboat either, and she made being an Artezan most of her personality. This was where magic lay, in his opinion. This was a place of old magic, where Artezans would have commanded the seas, raised the dead, or done other awe-inspiring and frightening things. The great deeds of the magical past were etched into the rock, carved into every grain of sand and carried out on to the waves.

That was the sort of magic that Ed wanted, more than anything. Maybe, since he’d never been good at anything else, he was going to be amazing at magic. His heart ached to think of it.

He turned and looked out at the distant waves, the grey of the horizon. There was no sign of Wilkhaven today, it was too cloudy. Distant thunderstorms rolled silently over the sea, their noise drowned out by the wash of the surf on the beach. Ed shut his eyes for a moment, listening to the water. The Sculptor’s Cave amplified the sound of the sea like a conch shell, making it seem closer, filling the space as though the sound was something physical, touchable. The noise of the water felt like a comfort – and a warning.

The cave did flood when the tide was high, and the thought of that gave Ed the shivers, making him open his eyes. It was frightening enough to be on the beach when the tide started coming in, but being stuck in the cave would be so much worse. There would be nowhere to run, nowhere to climb to . . . and the slope of the cave meant that swimming out would be difficult, if not impossible. Ed had a very healthy respect for the water.

What would those Artezans of old have felt, living and casting their spells here? Was that ancient tide-turner glad to live so close to the sea, carving on bones to command the waters? Or had it been frightening? Had they been alone? Or had there been a whole family of Artezans here, long before Ed’s trainers stood on these rocks? A family like his?

A lot of Artezans were superstitious, and Ed prided himself on not being one of them. But there was something about this place . . . it just felt magical. In winter, if you were lucky, you could see the Northern Lights from the beach; green and pink dancing streams high amongst the stars. Scientists called them a natural phenomenon, but Artezan stories said they were the leftover magic from the great Artezans of Scandinavia, who had blasted the fjords of Norway into existence during their civil wars over the far north lands. Even now, the waterways of the North were deeply magical and special places, much like the Highlands of Scotland. Being northerly was one factor in this, but more important was the fact that they were twice-made. Once by nature, and again by magic.

The ocean crashed in the distance. Edward pulled himself together and shone his torch at the cave floor, starting his search before the sea had the chance to catch him unawares. He didn’t always come away with something when he visited the cave, but he had a good feeling about today. He needed a lucky charm right now.

Just then, the torchlight glinted off something translucent, snuggled into a bed of mouldering seaweed. Ed swallowed down his revulsion (he’d never quite got over touching seaweed), and kicked at the thick ropes of green-brown slime until the treasure he was after dislodged and tap-danced over the rock in freedom.

Ed scooped it up into his hand. It was a chunk of smooth, teal-coloured sea-glass. Covensea didn’t get a lot of sea-glass washing up on the beach, it was something to do with the tide, but when it did . . . it was always beautiful. Ed collected it. He had a big jar full of pieces he’d found over the years; jagged broken shards of glass licked soft by the salt water and handed back like gifts. He turned this one over in his hand. A few grains of wet sand clung to it, and he rubbed them away with his thumb, feeling the microscopic bite as they moved against his skin.

This was a good sign. It had to be.

‘Ed?’

He turned back to see Elodie looking into the cave. She never went inside; she said the whole place gave her the creeps.

Ed couldn’t help being pleased to see her. ‘I knew you’d come.’

‘No you never. What’ve you found?’ She was genuinely interested. That was the thing about Elodie, she might have been showered in success but she was the least big-headed person on Earth. She was always kind and interested in other people, Ed especially. Ed sometimes wondered if she even noticed how much everyone liked her more than him.

He went over and showed her the nugget of glass. ‘I’ve found a wee good-luck charm.’

‘Oh, nice.’ Elodie took it from him and blew on it, removing the final obstinate bits of sand. ‘Pretty colour. I wonder what it used to be.’

‘One of those fancy cocktail glasses, maybe?’ Ed accepted the fragment back, and pocketed it. ‘Makes me feel better, anyway.’

Elodie gave him a smile. ‘You don’t need to worry about anything, Ed. We’re finally getting our magic!’

Ed forced a smile back. How could she be so confident? Maybe she could teach him.

‘Anyways,’ she said, ‘the tide’s coming in.’

Ed sighed. ‘Time to go face the music.’

‘And the tents.’

‘And the singalongs.’ The twins groaned in unison. Though their opinions of the summer camp were polar opposites, one thing they did have in common was their dislike of the Artezan songs. But while Elodie would happily participate in every other aspect of camp, Ed longed for the sort of summer that the ordinary kids in his class talked about; the sort spent having non-educational fun with their parents. Whilst other families went on holidays or days out together, Ed had to share his parents every summer with an Artezan summer camp.

The two of them walked briskly back towards the wee path, keeping an eye on the sea. Their shoes weren’t quite sinking into the beach yet, so they were safe. Ed had once lost a pair of gutties in the quicksand, and he wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.

‘I think I’d feel better about it,’ Ed started, as they traipsed back up the cliff, ‘if it wasnae being held right next tae our house.’ The summer camps took place pretty much in the Crane family’s garden, so there was really no getting away from it. They had been running every summer for close to twenty years – the brainchild of the Crane family in response to the scattered communities in the Highlands and Islands. Every year, Artezan families descended on Covensea for ceremonies, games, socialising and learning together. Jack and Harrison Crane, the twins’ dads, organised and ran the camp.

Elodie shrugged. ‘Maybe. But at least you don’t haftae travel to it. Or sleep in a tent. I think it’s sort of nice, having it right outside the back door.’ She always saw the positive side.

‘Let’s see if you still feel that way after six weeks of magical summer camp,’ Ed said darkly.

2

Cats and Campfires

Whilst Edward and Elodie trudged home through the bracken and undergrowth, others were heading towards Covensea in drier and faster ways. There were smiling faces, packed cars and enough camping equipment to start a festival, all headed for the village.

The Crane family home was called The Nest, and the main building was a bungalow that squatted amongst the pine trees and heather as though it had been forgotten about. A dirt track led from the main road to the house, but it was easy to miss and was sometimes hidden behind one of the herds of wild roe deer that roamed the area. The front of the bungalow faced the forest that curved through the tiny village like a green river, with only a few clearings and grassy areas feebly holding the trees at bay. There were several old outbuildings in the family’s grounds, some used as storage and some in disrepair, including one dedicated solely to a colony of bats that came and went with the seasons. However, to the rear of the house was an open grassy field that stretched all the way back up to the main road and was flanked on three sides by trees. For most of the year, the field was home to nothing other than the roe deer, hares, the occasional lost cow wandering through the woodland and old tattie-bogles that stood in the field corners, failing to scare the crows.

But every summer, this peace was disrupted by magic.

Ed and his sister arrived at home to find the dirt track to their house full of cars, camper vans, and trailers. The vehicles were nose-to-tail as they crept forward, hirpling down the road, and were easily outpaced by the twins, who picked their way along the verge, getting into their garden via a long-broken fence panel. From the garden, they could see the snake of vehicles winding its way slowly into the field, each visitor attempting to choose a camping space away from any neighbours. But given the size of the queue, it was clear the empty spaces wouldn’t remain vacant for long.

Ed briefly considered sneaking into the house through the kitchen windows, but Elodie grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him round to the front door. She was just reaching for the knob when the door opened, their dad appearing with a look of resigned disappointment.

‘And what do yous have to say for yourselves?’ he asked, folding his arms over his apron, which was embroidered with a cat wearing a tam-o’-shanter.

‘Say about what?’ Ed asked, aiming for innocent and landing on rude. It was amazing how often his voice betrayed him like that.

Dad went red in the face. ‘Of all the days, the pair of you. For Bel’s sake, we’ve got Artezans coming from all over the Highlands and Islands, and you choose today to disappear without even—’

‘Mr Biscuits!’ Elodie cried joyfully, interrupting their dad before he could start lecturing. It was wise to cut him off before he really got going. Ed peered around to see a large ginger cat with enough fur to stuff a mattress, and a face that looked as though he’d run into a brick wall, stalking into the hallway. The cat allowed Elodie to pick him up, while giving Ed a reproachful glare.

Elodie loved cats. She would have had a herd of them if she’d been allowed, but had so far only convinced their dads to get Mr Biscuits. He was a rescue mog who hung around like a bad smell and brought home dead frogs. Elodie said he was the cleverest cat in the world, and Ed was forced to agree – he didn’t think every cat out there was capable of working out how to get praised for amphibian murder. Ed highly disliked Mr Biscuits who glared haughtily at everyone except Elodie and was lacking only a monocle and top hat to complete his disdainful look.

Dad threw his hands into the air. ‘I’ll deal with you both later. Right now I’ve got sixty cars about tae park up in my garden.’ He grabbed a whistle and a pair of binoculars before heading out of the door and over to the queue of cars. He was still wearing his apron.

Ed exhaled noisily, both in relief at avoiding a scaulding and embarrassment over his dad’s unintended fashion choice.

Elodie nudged him with the cat. ‘We got off lightly, I think.’

‘Nah, he’ll just stew on it and come back later,’ Ed said. He went through to the kitchen and looked out of the window at the busily parking vehicles. ‘By Bel, the state of it all.’

Elodie let the cat drop to the floor and came over to see. Outside on the bird feeders, a bunch of angry sparrows were shouting abuse at a red squirrel who was hogging the peanuts. ‘That feeder is meant to be squirrel-proof,’ Elodie said, but without any malice as she loved red squirrels. One of the visitors’ cars suddenly backfired and the sparrows were spooked, taking off in a gang, beeping and chattering loudly as they swarmed into the sky. ‘Lucky things,’ Elodie sighed.

‘Having their dinner stolen?’ Ed asked, confused. The squirrel’s cheeks were so stuffed it looked like he’d tried to swallow a set of golf balls.

‘Not that,’ she snorted. ‘Flying. I’ve always wanted to fly. But I’ve never even had dreams about it though it’s meant to be the most common dream you can have.’

‘Maybe that’ll be your Artezan power,’ Ed teased. ‘Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it’s Elodie, the new superhero.’

‘Har har.’ She leaned on the edge of the counter, and looked at him. ‘How are you feeling about tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘Really, I mean. Are you no just a wee bit excited?’

‘I wish I could be, but it gives me the boak if I think about it.’ Ed’s stomach churned even as he said it.

Elodie picked at the peeling paint above the countertop tiles. ‘At least we’re at home, though? We can always hide in our bedrooms when we’ve had enough.’

Ed was tempted to make a joke about staying in his room all summer, but the tiny wobble in his twin’s voice made him reconsider. He’d made no secret about his terrible fears about not being magical, but had never asked Elodie if she felt the same way. He’d always assumed she was happy and looking forward to her Reveal, the same way she was about most things. But by the look of her grasping on to the edge of the stone sink, anxiety clearly had a grip on her, too. Her fingernails drummed on the ceramic, her cheerful demeanour slipping, just a bit.

‘We’ve got to be realistic,’ she said. ‘Sometimes there’s no magic in a person. Some kids just . . . don’t have the gift. Baba says that magic is so diluted now that in a few generations it’ll be gone from the world altogether.’ Her mouth turned down in misery.

‘But not for the Cranes,’ Ed said firmly, wishing he could believe it. ‘Think about it. What’s the most magical thing the average Artezan can do? Getting rid of loose threads on their clothes by doing this?’ He made a snipping motion with his fingers. ‘Or being able to find other people’s lost house keys? That’s hardly even magic if you ask me. If you’re a Crane . . . you do real magic. Or you’re supposed to.’ It was true. Whilst most Artezans had inconsequential powers these days, Jack and Harrison Crane were members of a tiny elite whose magic was truly remarkable. But it was nothing to brag about or lord over others, because magic always commanded a price.

‘I just keep thinking . . .’ Ed said, finally voicing his biggest fear of all. ‘What if . . . with us being adopted . . .’

‘Yeah. What if . . .’ Elodie echoed, and Ed could tell she had the same worry. Even kids who were related to their Artezan parents by blood sometimes didn’t have any powers. What sort of magic could the twins, who were adopted as babies, hope to have?

Ed had no desire to ask about their birth parents. Elodie occasionally expressed an interest, but not enough to request specific details. The twins didn’t have any contact with their birth family, and didn’t even know any of their names. The two of them had a whole bunch of books on being adopted, and it was a regular topic of conversation at the dinner table, but it was never about the particulars. They certainly had no idea if the family had been Artezans.

Even if Ed and Elodie’s dreams came true, and they were Artezans with magic in their blood, there would always be a question mark over where it came from.

In Ed’s mind, two ideas existed at once: that the Crane family was his real family, but also that he owed his existence to his birth family. Whatever ancestry that was, it remained, for the moment, out of reach. He didn’t want to have to search for it, but he also wanted to know what it might have been. As a Crane, Ed knew he was part of a famously magical family, whether he had power or not. But because he hadn’t been born into it, Ed sometimes felt like he was wearing someone else’s clothes. All of this made Ed squirm if he thought about it too much, like he was silently saying he wasn’t satisfied with his life with Dad and Baba, which wasn’t true at all. He loved his family. But his family had layers. And he wasn’t sure how comfortable he would ever be with uncovering the deeper parts.

Blood is thicker than water, was a saying that haunted Ed. His blood was a stranger to him.

Ed was steadfast, though – he didn’t want to know the reasons behind his adoption, and he and Elodie had a promise that if and when she found out, she wouldn’t tell him unless he asked.

He looked out the window. Outside, Jack Crane – the twins’ dad – was now directing the camping traffic with great aplomb. Every disgruntled driver who came up to him went away beaming and laughing with happiness that they couldn’t explain. Jack Crane was a joy bringer – he could positively affect the mood of anyone around him. It was a truly remarkable power, and one that gave him terrible migraines if he overdid it. But to try and hold his magic inside would be even worse. Without regular exercise, magic tended to burst out of Artezans, leaving them very sick, as if with the flu.

Ed began to gnaw on his lower lip. As much as he disliked seeing his dad having to lie with an iced flannel over his eyes after making people feel happy, Ed longed to be just like him, to have that sort of powerful command over magic. What Ed wanted was the powers he had read about – for his magic to give him the same feeling the Sculptor’s Cave did. He wanted it so much he could burst.

Imagine what good he could do in the world, with a truly strong power. Imagine how people would finally see him.

Mr Biscuits broke the spell of reverie with a croaking miaow.

‘Are you hungry, mister?’ Elodie cooed, leaning down to stroke her cat, who rubbed his face into her hand, reminding Ed of a toddler who shoves their face into a cushion to wipe off their bogeys. ‘Let’s go find you some yummy dinner.’

Ed glanced back out the window. He could see the first of the large tents being set up in the middle of the field. Only a few hours left of not knowing . . .

Only a few hours left of hoping.

The first night of the summer camp meant socialising, and celebrations that went on late into the evening. A campfire was burning in the fire pit, and kids were toasting marshmallows or bread (or, in the case of one kid, a huge corn on the cob). Ed and Elodie tried to make those American campfire snacks, s’mores, but the chocolate went all weird and separated in the heat, and Ed preferred his digestive biscuits plain anyway.

When the sun had almost set, and the deep blue of the sky was scattered with the first glitter of the distant stars and planets, Baba came out of the house carrying a canvas as big as he was.

Baba’s magic involved the use of a tuil, which in his case was paint and paintbrushes. His powers were huge – a command of the skies and weather – but he had to paint his thoughts on to canvas to make them come true. He would often be painting enormous images for days on end, living off tea and toast, before he was satisfied with his work. Hurricanes, tornadoes, monsoons, heatwaves and simple spring breezes were all things he could conjure up. He even summoned a double rainbow on every one of the twins’ birthdays. But like his husband’s post-magic headaches, there was a cost to this power too. To keep the balance of nature, Baba’s weather was sometimes dangerous, and deadly. The storms he created would level buildings, sweep helpless people away and ruin livelihoods. The guilt and heartache of that was something he had to live with. Whilst he was far from responsible for all the weather events in the world, he could no more hold his magic at bay than he could permanently hold his breath. The price was not negotiable, and the paintings Baba finished were constant reminders of what he was capable of.

‘I finished this last week,’ he said, struggling with the canvas through the field.

Mr Shah, one of the Artezan campers, ran over to help him carry it. ‘I’ve got it, Harrison,’ he said, catching hold of the opposite edge. Mr Shah had a breeze power – he could make the wind blow gently in a certain direction by aiming his hands. Although it was nothing compared to Baba’s hurricanes, the two of them got on very well because of their similarities. The two men leaned the canvas carefully up against a table near the campfire. Baba had white paint streaked down his dark brown arms and chin, though at least his long locs had been tied back out of the way of the paint.

The canvas was painted the exact same deep blue-black as the sky above them. Not similar – it was the exact same colour, as though Baba had wiped the canvas across the sky. And on that wash of spectacular night-time darkness was painted a festival of shooting stars.

Ed’s breath caught. Baba’s power lay in the act of painting, and he never failed to make the artwork itself look magical. The meteorites looked three-dimensional on the canvas, their battered round bodies crackling with energy as they burned against the atmosphere, their tails glowing. The shimmering campfire lit up the canvas and brought it to life.

No, not quite. Yet.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Dad said softly, touching Baba on his paint-splattered arm. ‘I did wonder what this one was going to be when you started, it looked so dark. But this is perfect.’

‘Well, I thought the first night needed something special. And since fireworks disturb the wildlife, this seemed like a better solution.’ Baba smiled at his husband before kneeling down next to the painting.

Everyone, including Ed, held their breath. This was what the summer camp was all about. The real magic. The strong magic. This was the reason the Artezans gathered here and not on some hillside in thunder, lightning or in rain. It was to see a reminder of what magic used to be.

Baba glanced up at the sky, as if checking something. Then, a wry smile on his face, he swept a hand across the canvas and beyond it, upwards, causing a rush of wind and a crackle of electricity that seemed to shoot into the sky.

There was a pause.

And then, a shower of meteorites began to rain down along the curve of the atmosphere. The shooting stars lit up the eyes of the watching Artezans, glowing like gold specks in the night of their pupils, putting smiles on to their faces. They began to cheer.

Ed gave a small laugh that was more breath than noise as the meteors shot, one by one, across the sky. Maybe it was the time of year, or maybe it was just Baba’s magic, but they looked closer than meteors usually did, their tails longer, their journeys slower as they each carved a streak of fire behind them. Perfect copies of the images on the canvas.

This was the sort of powerful magic he wanted.

Ed flinched slightly as his baba came up behind him and put his hands on Ed’s shoulders. ‘What do you think?’ he asked, genuinely concerned about Ed’s opinion. Unlike everyone else in the family, Baba had an English accent. It reminded Ed of a heavy ball falling down the stairs, where a Scottish accent felt more like a smoothly descending Slinky.

‘It’s amazing,’ Ed said honestly. ‘Thank you.’

‘You don’t have to thank me.’

‘No, but I want to. It’s . . . because it’s what I . . .’ Ed couldn’t finish. The words of deep longing lodged in his throat.

His baba gave his shoulders a squeeze. ‘I know you’re worried, kiddo, I’ve noticed how quiet you’ve been every time we’ve talked about this summer. But you don’t need to be afraid. You’re you, Edward,’ he said, so softly no one else could hear it. ‘No one else can ever be you. No matter what your talents might – or might not – be, being yourself . . . unapologetically yourself . . . that’s the most magical thing of all.’

Ed nodded, wishing he could believe it.

3

Flags and Futures

The makeshift campsite fluttered with flags in the morning sunshine.

Ed and Elodie had escaped out of the house to avoid their parents who were making dozens of bacon rolls for the campers, trying to keep the vegan versions clearly separated from the meat. The morning air was fresh, but not cold – the wind from the day before had calmed down, but still blew enough to lift the flags that were flapping from every high point on the campsite. Flags were tied in long strings from the tops of tents, others on the raggedy tattie-bogles and car aerials, and still more staked into the ground on long wire poles. As well as the dominant Scottish saltire flying from almost every angle, there were the yellow and white colours of Skye, the primary colours of Orkney, and even one guilty-looking Union Jack that was the size of a book. And then there were the Artezan flags, in celebration of the different branches of magical art.

There were three branches of Artezan magic, and whatever a person’s power was, it was linked to one of these. Each branch had a corresponding colour: green, for the magic of Growth and Regeneration; orange for the powers of Stories and Journeys; and, finally, purple for the magic of the Hidden and Unseen. The branch an Artezan’s powers fell under was discovered at their Reveal Ceremony, when their magical aura would become visible for the first time.

Some Artezans could be very cliquey about the magical branch they belonged to, and there was a definite feeling that those with the power of the Hidden and Unseen were particularly enigmatic. Ed couldn’t help noticing that there were fewer darker flags and drapes about than there were pale pastel shades.

‘And some of the purples are almost black,’ he said to Elodie.

‘That doesn’t mean anything bad,’ she replied, diplomatic as ever. ‘Auras come in all shades. Darker ones can just indicate more power, and paler ones less. That’s what Granny M told me anyway.’

But as they walked past a lavender flag, Ed had a bad feeling. And Ed’s bad feelings tended to be spot-on. The atmosphere didn’t feel like a regular campsite – it was buzzing with anticipation and worry. Ed looked around at the chatting families, the kids running about, and the casual magic being done before their eyes.There was a woman who could turn toast back into uncooked bread being watched by a group of giggling kids who’d brought her their breakfasts. Further along the rows of tents was a person with the power to seal an envelope without moistening the glue strip, and another who could change one of your socks to make it not match the other, just by snapping their fingers. Ed spotted a woman who was folding all her clothes into perfectly rigid squares, but it was so small a power that no one else seemed to have noticed her.

Ed felt a twist in his chest. Alongside his fear of not being magical at all, he was almost as afraid of having such a measly power that it would barely matter. Ed had a great desire to be important. He’d never been the cleverest, or the fastest, or the one who could make witty comebacks, so he’d settled for being the one who just avoided confrontation and stayed quiet. It was a position not exactly competed for at the tiny Covensea Primary School. Ed sometimes had the feeling that if the school didn’t take a register, people would forget he even existed. Magic might change all that for him. Or it might not.

Elodie tugged on his sleeve. ‘Let’s go help give the rolls out before Dad poisons someone.’ She had gone a bit pale and was picking at her thumbnails.

Ed just nodded. He suddenly didn’t feel well either.

It was traditional for the Reveal Ceremony to take place on the first full day of the summer camp. Every child who was leaving primary school had to attend, along with their parents. Everyone else just came to gawk. This would be the only day without a full timetable of activities; the rest of the summer camp was a carefully planned-out grid of crafts, cooking, magical demonstrations, rehearsals for a traditional Artezan play that would be held on the last day of camp, and games – both casual and competitive. Amongst other things.

The morning cool had burnt away and it was bright beaming sunshine outside, which didn’t sit well with Ed as he stood still in the living room and let his dad fuss over his kilt – in grey McPherson clan hunting tartan. Ed thought the sunshine was highly suspicious. He was fairly certain that magical ceremonies should have a good thunderstorm as the backdrop; everyone knew magic thrived in wild weather.

‘Nonsense. If you cannae be magical in the middle of summer, or the middle of Tesco, there’s no point in being magical at all,’ Dad said, finally stepping back. He brushed his long blond ponytail back over his shoulder; it was held in place with a polished golden-orange clasp, the colour of his aura in the branch of Stories and Journeys. ‘You look smashing.’

Ed forced a smile. He was worried that if he spoke, he might be sick. His socks felt too hot, the kilt was high on his middle and he could feel himself starting to sweat. At least Dad had agreed that it was too warm for a jacket.

Baba suddenly appeared in the open doorway, yellow paint in his locs and still wearing his tatty T-shirt and painting apron. Harrison Crane often forgot what day it was when he was absorbed in his paintings, so it was a minor miracle he’d made it out of his studio two days in a row. He did a double-take at the sight of his son. ‘Is it that time already?’ he asked.

‘Are you no dressed yet?’ Dad squawked.

‘Relax, it’s not like I’m in my kecks. Give me ten. Edward, you look very smart,’ Baba added before shooting off towards the bedrooms. He had been putting the finishing touches to his painting of the annual monsoon over Bangkok since last night, and Ed wondered if he’d been to bed at all. When Baba worked his magic he was seized by a fierce energy that kept his mind lively and awake no matter how tired his body was. When he was finished, he would often be found asleep in his studio, exhausted beyond measure.

Dad closed his eyes for a moment before sighing and putting on a smile. ‘He’s right, you do look very smart,’ he said to Ed, trying to smooth his hair into place. ‘Let’s see where—’

The doorbell CLANGed.

Dad flinched, then rolled his eyes. ‘Well, we knew she’d be here before long. When Elodie comes down, ask her not to pick up that bloomin’ cat, will you? The last thing we need is for her to be covered in cat hair.’ He went to get the door.

Ed didn’t want to sit down, he was too tense, so he went to the doorway and peeped through the gap. A small purple tornado blasted into the hallway as soon as Dad opened the door. ‘Hello, Mother,’ he said, wearily.

‘Coo-eee!’ the woman wailed like a foghorn. Granny Morgana had turned up half an hour earlier than she’d been asked to, which was typical of her. She entered the house in a whirlwind of handbags and beads, jangling like one of Santa’s reindeer.

She dropped her most enormous handbag and it crashed down loudly enough to wake the dead. Granny Morgana, or Granny M as she liked to be called, was the sort of trendy older lady who dyed her hair purple and wore lipstick to match, along with ankle-length velvet skirts she found in charity shops and heavy Doc Martens. She almost always carried a bag so big you could hide a toddler in it, full of strange objects and a lot of boiled sweets. Ed and Elodie loved her, but there was no denying that she was hard work.

‘Mother, we said half past ten,’ Dad said through gritted teeth as he took her coat. It smelled strongly of Parma violets. Purple sweets, Ed couldn’t help realising. Granny M was one of those Artezans who really leaned into their magical branch as part of their identity. Even the outside of her narrowboat, which was permanently moored in the Caledonian Canal, was painted purple, and was called The Pleasing Plum. Purple, for the magic of the Hidden and Unseen.

‘It’s the twins’ Reveal!’ Granny M said, as if Dad had offended her great ancestors. ‘This is the last time I’ll get to spend with them before they come into their magic. It’s only minutes until they become butterflies!’

Right now Ed felt more like one of the squashed-looking toads that squatted around the pond on damp days than a butterfly. He hadn’t looked in the mirror, but he was pretty sure he’d gone green with nerves. He wished Elodie would hurry up and get ready.

Dad ushered Granny M into the house properly, taking her into the kitchen and making her one of the stinking powerful black coffees she drank. ‘Strong enough to stand a spoon up in, please,’ she always said.

‘She seems happy.’ Elodie made Ed jump as she appeared from her room, Mr Biscuits in her arms.

‘Dad says don’t pick the cat up,’ Ed said with a sigh. Telling Elodie to leave her cat alone was asking for the impossible.

Elodie snorted, dropping the animal but leaving her black blouse and tartan skirt covered in ginger hairs. ‘Shall we go through to say hello?’

‘Might as well. Though I feel like I should stay within dashing distance of the lavvie, between you and me.’

‘That’s ginging,’ Elodie said primly, leading the way across the hall and into the kitchen where the smell of coffee was so thick you could have taken a bite out of it.

Granny M beamed as the twins went in. ‘How’s the cat, Elly?’ she asked wickedly, eyeing the ginger leftovers on Elodie’s clothes as Dad silently seethed behind her.

‘Nae bad, thank you,’ Elodie blushed. She hated anyone shortening her name. Ed was the opposite. He was only Edward when he’d done something wrong and his dad was bellowing at him. If he’d really done something terrible he became Edward Percival Crane and that’s when he knew the blocked toilet was about to hit the windmill.

‘Ready for the Reveal, Edward?’ Granny M asked loudly.

Ed gave a weak smile. Elodie was having her clothes lint-rollered and couldn’t save him from this conversation. ‘I guess.’

‘You’ll be grand. Give it laldy and try not tae worry.’

Ed had no idea how he could give it his all when the Reveal results were out of his hands, but he gave a brave smile. ‘I suppose things might be different . . . after the Reveal,’ he said.

‘Oh, aye, often they are.’ Granny M pulled a bright red family-size tin of Walker’s shortbread out of her bag and opened it on the table. ‘But a Reveal is just showing what’s always been there. A boot under a rug is still a boot, after all.’

Ed sat down on one of the breakfast-bar stools. ‘So . . . you mean you can guess what someone’s power might be? If they have one,’ he added, with a poisonous jolt of nerves.

‘Not exactly.’ She dunked a biscuit into her mug. ‘It’s sort of hindsight. Someone like your baba gets weather powers tied to his artwork and you find yourself saying oh aye, he was always painting storms. Or with your dad . . . he loved to make people laugh and smile, even when he was wee.’

Ed considered this. ‘I don’t know what I like doing,’ he said. And then realised how miserable that sounded.

Granny M gave him a sympathetic look. ‘Escaping from moments like these, maybe?’

Ed’s surprise was interrupted by Elodie coming over, de-cat-haired and ready at last. Baba turned up in the kitchen shortly afterwards in a smart suit, and the five of them trooped outdoors and over to the Reveal tent, which had been pitched in the centre of the field for all to see.

Ed looked back at the bungalow, the sunlight catching in his bedroom window and shining on the jar full of sea-glass he kept on the sill. He suddenly wished he had put a piece in his sporran for good luck. He was going to need it.

The Reveal had come at last.

4

Potions and Powers

The tent was full to bursting. There were families from all over northern Scotland crammed into the space, with a lot of them having to stand. Dad and Baba were on the front row, looking extremely proud. Whilst Dad was in his kilt, Baba was wearing the deep green velvet suit he saved for Artezan occasions – the colour a homage to his own aura. At the back of the circular tent was a raised dais, or platform, which had a table on it draped in heavy multicoloured cloth. Around the inside of the tent were flags and drapes depicting the three Artezan branches: Growth and Regeneration, Stories and Journeys, and the Hidden and Unseen. The different shades of green and orange and purple made the place feel as though it was surrounded by stained glass, and Ed’s legs were threatening to go wobbly.

Taking her place behind the table on the dais, Granny pulled what looked like a thick purple dressing gown out of her huge handbag and put it on. As the most senior Artezan in attendance – and, she stressed, this was more to do with family status than it was her age – she had an important role to play in the Reveal. Granny M’s own power was the ability to find space wherever and whenever it was required. It was a subtle one, but very useful if you lived on a tiny houseboat. Her power was part of the branch of the Hidden and Unseen, hence her obsession with the colour purple.

Ed, Elodie and the other three eleven-year-olds from magical families assembled themselves at the foot of the dais. Ed recognised the others as Lexi McEwan, Greg Poppley and Rhea Shah – kids he’d spent every summer camp with. He wasn’t really friends with any of them, though. Elodie, on the other hand, was close friends with both of the girls, and the three of them stood chattering together.

Ed couldn’t stop staring as Granny M fished around, shoulder-deep in her handbag for a moment, then drew out a corked bottle of deep blue liquid, one large silver bowl, five small silver bowls, a wad of cotton wool, a slim tray of what looked like Baba’s powder-paints, and five silver knives.

‘Water, please.’ She held the largest silver bowl out for someone to take, and an adult snatched it, scurrying away to fill it.

Granny M faced the audience, giving the crowd a smile. ‘Fàilte,’ she said in Gaelic. ‘Welcome to this Reveal, where the young Artezans before us shall discover their powers, and which branch of magic they belong to.

‘There is an old tale,’ she said, her voice lowering and rumbling through her chest. ‘A tale of three siblings, born together and bound by the blood of their covenant. Even as weans, it was clear their magic would be strong, though it took a very different form in each child. And as the siblings grew and their powers grew with them, Artezans from around the world with similar powers came to each of them to learn. As their abilities, and those of their students, became more refined, the Artezans were split and defined into three separate branches of magic.’

Ed saw her subtly pick up a pinch of powder.

‘The power of Growth and Regeneration!’ Granny M said, and the green powder shot into the air and burst like a dry firework. The audience gasped in delight. ‘The power of Stories and Journeys!’ Another pinch of powder and an orange explosion. ‘And the power of the Hidden and Unseen!’ A deep dark purple, almost black, burst overhead and vanished.

The anticipation began to rise. Ed’s heart was thumping hard in his chest. He knew this story, had seen a Reveal every summer of his life, but now it felt so much more real, so much closer, like he was part of the tale itself, tangled up in the words. He was part of this history, whatever happened to him.

‘The three siblings were declared to be the Master Artezans,’ Granny M continued, her voice gravelly as if she was pulling the story up from some well deep inside herself. ‘But despite the prosperity of their powers, they lived in a time of great turmoil, a time when having magic was not entirely safe. Artezans were viewed with suspicion, fear, and malice by those without a command of magic. Before their leaders came into being, Artezans were forced to fend for themselves, often living lonely lives in hiding and in secret. But the Artezan Masters rallied our people, and brought us all together – some say this was why they had been blessed with such powers to begin with. They held dominion over magic and protected their fellow Artezans from those who would seek to destroy them.’

Ed glanced at Elodie, who gave him a quick smile. The next part of the story was always difficult to hear.

Granny M’s expression darkened. ‘And then came the Trials.’ More powder exploded into the air, black at first, then fading to blood red as it dispersed. A reminder of the pains of the past. ‘Those who had long distrusted magic grew in strength. They tried to destroy us and almost won. Even non-magical people know of what they called the witch trials, where innocent people became victims simply for being born with magical gifts. A great many Artezans were lost, and more still were permanently wounded – in body and mind – by what they went through and witnessed. Others turned their back on the purity of their powers, becoming Droch Mancers – those who preyed on the magic of others in the way that leeches suck blood. The witch trials were terrible times for all.’

There was a moment of silence, of reflection. The terrors of the Artezan Trials, now little more than painful scars of memory, always felt much closer during the Reveal Ceremony. Ever since the Trials, the ceremonies had been done in secret. Ed couldn’t imagine a time when they wouldn’t be.

Granny M brightened. ‘But eventually the Trials dwindled, the fires were extinguished, and the war on magic came to an end. In time, the world became a better place,’ she said. ‘And as peace reigned, there was no need for the Master Artezans to continue their rule. Their task – to guide us through that period of turmoil – was over. In their final act of duty, the Masters decided to share their magic out amongst Artezan families, who, no longer being hunted, had multiplied and settled all over the world. The Artezan Masters gave up their magical supremacy so our whole community might benefit. Magic is part of who we are; it is our past and it is our present.’

What about our future? Ed wondered. He caught Elodie’s eye again, and he could tell she was thinking the same thing. That was one part of being an Artezan that all adults seemed reluctant to discuss, but the truth of the matter was: their old way of life was fading. And there seemed to be nothing anyone could do about it. There had once been Masters, and might, and great feats of enchantment . . . but in modern times, magic had become unnoticeable, unimportant and barely believed in by non-Artezans.

Eventually, magic would be nothing but history and rumour, the truth lost to the ages and even the smallest talents gone for ever.

Granny M spoke again. ‘The Master Artezans are gone, but their branches of magic remain. Today, we shall discover to which branch these young people belong. We shall unlock their powers, and together teach them to become their own master. But the Reveal asks a price, as all magic does.’ She raised a finger in warning. ‘The price must be paid – a sacrifice of blood, of dead flesh and of the tongue.’ She clapped her hands together and a bright line of flame shot across the table in a shocking effect that made the audience gasp. The fire died out as quickly as it had ignited, and Ed saw a match disappear into a damp tissue before it was pocketed. He had to hand it to her – Granny M knew how to put on a show. But the mention of sacrifice made him shudder. He looked uneasily at the knives laid out on the table in front of him.

There was a smattering of applause, and Granny M cleared her throat to make it die down. She addressed the five children now. ‘You all know the routine, you’ve been coming here for years: I make the potion base using Skye-water, heather of the Aurora, and full-moon blaeberry.’ She lifted the bottle of blue liquid in explanation. ‘You then make a unique Revealer potion using your three sacrifices. When you taste it, your aura will be unlocked for the first time. Then, whilst your aura is still glowing, use the water to scry for yourself. Easy as one of those microwaveable pies.’

‘You really shouldn’t eat those, mother,’ Dad sighed under his breath from the front row.

The large silver bowl of water was returned to the table, and some of the liquid decanted into the five smaller bowls. Beside each of these was a knife, glinting in the streaming morning light. A sacrifice, Ed’s mind whispered. Magic always commands a price.

A cold breeze, one with the bite of the sea, ruffled the flaps of the tent suddenly, making Ed shiver. The wind had ice in it, despite the summer air – then was gone in an instant.

‘Now, all of you.’ Granny M, unbothered by the weather, pulled the cork from the bottle and poured a bit of the potion into each of the smaller bowls. The deep blue liquid swirled thickly against the water, like oil. ‘Ready to rock and roll?’

Rhea Shah was the oldest, so she went first. Her thick black hair had been braided into a long plait, and she was wearing a beautiful pink saree with tartan accents as a homage both to her parents’ home, Pakistan, and to the country of her birth, Scotland.

Trembling a wee bit, Rhea took the first knife and quickly jabbed the point into the pad of her index finger. ‘Ow,’ she said, flinching but remembering to dip the blood-smeared knife into the small bowl in front of her, before accepting a blob of cotton wool for her wound. Next, swinging her thick plait of hair around to her front, she used the now-damp knife blade to cut a single strand of hair before dropping it into the same bowl. Then, lastly, she spat into the purple liquid. Three sacrifices – one of blood, one of dead flesh, one of the tongue.

Ed silently thanked whoever in history had discovered that hair counted as something dead and that a bit of spit worked just as well as slicing part of your tongue off.

In Rhea’s wee silver bowl, the liquid mixture suddenly swirled as though being stirred by an invisible spoon. It whirled quickly, but never threatened to spill. There was a moment when the spinning liquid looked like a galaxy, the light bouncing off its surface like stars, and Ed felt a thrill – the same thrill he got from the Sculptor’s Cave . . . this was real magic.

Suddenly, the liquid fizzed, then stilled so completely that it looked solid. It was time.

‘You only need a drop,’ Granny M said gently as Rhea reached for the bowl’s contents.

The girl nodded as she dipped a finger into her bowl and transferred a single drop of the substance to her tongue. She shuddered. ‘Tastes absolutely rank.’ There was a soft undercurrent of amusement. But she swallowed, and then . . . paused.

Ed realised he was trembling. Every year, this part made him more afraid than he could put into words. To see someone’s aura with his own eyes felt like looking into the brightest sun, or the darkest abyss. A moment later, Rhea gasped, and then lit up like she had swallowed a green light bulb. Even the whites of her eyes went green as she glowed the colour of the lushest rainforest, the brightest spring shoots, the dustiest green of the Scottish glens. She looked like a woodland spirit, glowing with magic, with potential, with joy as she beamed in delight.

Ed glanced at the colourful flags decorating the inside of the tent. Green aura for Growth and Regeneration. The audience were clapping their hands delightedly, and Rhea’s parents – both wearing green brooches – shouted in happiness to see that their daughter’s powers took after their own.

Granny M pushed the large silver bowl, still half-filled with water, in front of Rhea next. ‘It’s not over yet,’ she said quickly. ‘You power is unlocked, Rhea, now you need to discover what your magical gift is. Look inside yourself,’ she said firmly. ‘What sort of Growth and Regeneration magic do you have?’

This bit was imprecise, and not everyone got it exactly right. Though the Reveal showed which Artezan branch your powers belonged to, there were endless possibilities as to what your specific magic may involve. That was one reason behind the summer camp – whilst the ceremony showed the new Artezans what their powers were, the summer camp gave them a safe space and time to discover exactly how to use them. Some of the young people would need to find a tuil that worked for them in order to command their magic, while others would need to learn to stop doing whatever their magic was at inappropriate moments. So whilst their families were taking part in crafts, plays and cooking demonstrations, the new Artezans would spend much of their time in a makeshift summer school, learning about this new side of themselves. But they could give themselves a head-start by scrying into the water during the Reveal, which was what Rhea was about to do.

Rhea stirred the potion with a finger, three times anticlockwise, and said her name before looking down into the silver bowl. This bit was for her eyes only – only the newly unlocked Artezan could See in the water. The silver of the bowl, forged centuries ago under starlight, shone the future into the eyes of the newly Revealed, though the visions were brief and often didn’t make sense until later. After a few moments of staring in hard concentration, Rhea smiled. ‘Something to do with plants,’ she said. ‘Leaves. Lots of leaves, of all colours. Greens, reds and oranges . . . like the changing seasons . . .’ She looked up and shook her head. ‘It’s gone.’

Granny M clapped her hands together loudly. ‘Well, I think we can all agree that Rhea has been born with the power of growth, most likely plant-life of some sort. Let’s give her the congratulations she deserves!’

There was a roar of assent from the Artezans filling the tent, the crowd celebrating the first of their new magic users. As Rhea was embraced by her family and friends, Ed felt the pressure mounting on him and his twin.

5

Hidden and Unseen

As the youngest, Ed and Elodie had to wait until last.

Lexi McEwan went after Rhea Shah, cutting her finger a bit too deep so the Reveal had to wait whilst someone sourced a bandage. Her power was Revealed to be part of the Stories and Journeys branch, and when she looked to See what her power was, she saw herself surrounded by words, floating around herself, but with no way to organise them. Granny thought that meant she was going to have to search for a tuil to help her use her magic.

Greg Poppley went third. He was a tall, handsome boy who had the sort of smile you’d see on a toothpaste advert. His parents doted on him, but Ed knew him to have more faces than the town hall clock. Poppley was a devious wee so and so when no adults were about to see him. Ed had very clear memories of the boy tormenting one of Rhea’s younger siblings about their glasses, and another time Ed saw him sitting on the patio and dropping fruit to lure ants, and then cruelly squashing them one by one. Poppley started his Reveal with a lot of flourish and pointless twirling of the knife.

Granny M saw right through him. ‘You are going tae have someone’s eye out,’ she said menacingly. ‘Just get on with it, some of us have places to be.’

Poppley gave a scowl, but covered it quickly and started the Reveal process. The green light of his aura revealed that Poppley, like Rhea, had Growth magic, though his vision in the bowl showed him only stone and rocks. Ed privately enjoyed the thought that Poppley might have to bang rocks together like a caveman to make magic.

And then, it was the twins’ turn.

Granny M gave them a wink. ‘Ready, my lovelies?’

Ed wondered how bad it would be if he turned and ran from the tent. ‘Not really,’ he said. Elodie glared at him. There was muttering from the crowd behind. Edward Crane, that shy wee lad, drawing attention to himself? Ed’s face began to prickle.

But to his surprise, Granny M shrugged. ‘No? Well, we’ll wait then.’

Ed blinked in surprise. ‘What – you’re not going to make me do it?’

‘I’m no going to force you tae do nothing,’ she said, with the air of someone who knows something she isn’t sharing. ‘It’s your power, you don’t have to unlock it.’

Now, there was a thought. Maybe he could just leave it and see how he went. Maybe do this again in a few years when he felt a bit more confident . . .

‘Of course, the longer you leave it, the more chance you’ve got of exploding,’ she said, checking her nail varnish.

‘Yeah but . . . you mean getting a wee bit ill, not actually exploding, right?’ Ed said, looking at her with alarm.

‘Oh, aye,’ Granny M said casually. ‘Leave it all locked up inside yous and it just builds up like you’re a water-balloon, and then . . .’ She blew a raspberry. ‘Splat!’

‘What?’ Ed yelped in horror as everyone laughed. He felt himself burning scarlet, and Elodie covered her mouth as she grinned.

‘I’d keep a mop handy, if I was you,’ Granny M added to Ed’s parents, who were trying not to laugh. ‘Terrible business when boys explode. I know someone who had to completely redecorate the—’

‘Fine, I’ll do it.’ Ed stood up and held his hand out.

Granny M smirked. ‘Oh good, I am glad.’ She picked up the closest knife and twisted it around so the handle was aimed at Ed. ‘Both of you together?’

His hand was shaking, he could hear nothing but white noise rushing in his ears, but this was the moment of truth. There was no going back. He was about to find out, once and for all, what his power was.

If he even had one.

Ed took the knife and quickly jabbed the point into the pad of his index finger, wincing. A smear of red blood was on the tip of the knife, and Ed placed it into one of the last two small blue liquid-filled bowls before taking some cotton wool for his finger. Elodie did the same, before cutting a single hair with the silver knife and dropping it into her bowl as well. Ed copied her, almost forgetting he had to do that bit. Then, both of them spat into the liquid at the same time.

In the wee bowls, it began to swirl.

Ed wanted to punch the air in relief because this proved it – he was magical! For a moment, he didn’t even care what his power might be. He was magical, he was a true Crane, adoption hadn’t changed a thing! Your family really was your family whether you were born into it or had been chosen to join it. Ed was grinning so much the sides of his head ached.

Beside him, Elodie was trying not to cry with happiness as her own bowl swirled with magical stars, and Ed felt a rush of love for his twin. Every ounce of jealousy evaporated clean out of his pores. They’d proved who they were meant to be. He reached out and took her hand, her left in his right, which was what they’d always done since they were small. Dad said that was why Ed was left-handed and Elodie right. She looked at him and beamed.

Suddenly, the liquid fizzed, then went still like chilled jelly in a dish. It was time.

‘I’ll go first,’ Elodie said. Keeping hold of Ed’s hand, she dipped her right index-finger into her bowl, and transferred a single drop of the substance to her tongue. She shuddered. ‘Urgh. That’s foul.’

Ed realised he was holding his breath.

A moment later, Elodie gasped as a light seemed to illuminate her from the inside. A purple light. For the magic of the Hidden and Unseen. Dad was clapping his hands delightedly as Granny M pushed the water-filled bowl in front of Elodie.

‘Look inside yourself, Elodie,’ she said firmly. ‘What sort of Unseen Magic do you have?’

Elodie, her body still glowing in an indigo light, her hand still clutching Ed’s, stirred the water three times anticlockwise, and whispered her own name. ‘Elodie Isobel Crane.’

Everyone waited in silence. No one would see what Elodie saw, but there was no point in lying about it because your magic could never be truly hidden. After a solid minute, Elodie looked up, and let go of Ed’s hand. The purple glow had faded from around her, and she looked somewhat bemused.

Everyone stared at her.

‘Well?’ Baba blurted, unable to keep quiet.

‘Erm,’ Elodie blushed. ‘Well, it’s . . . at least I think it’s . . .’

At that moment, Mr Biscuits chose to wander into the tent, clearly wondering where his usual supplier of chin-scratches had gone to. With all the lumbering grace of a miniature Highland cow, he plodded down the middle of the tent, chirruping loudly when he saw Elodie, whose ordinarily pale face went as white as a sheet.

‘Elodie?’ Dad asked, looked from her to the cat.

She laughed. ‘I, er . . . know what he just said. I can understand him. I can talk to cats? My Artezan power is talking to cats!’ She covered her face, embarrassed but not displeased, as the tent erupted in cheers. Dad and Baba threw themselves at her to hug her tight. Being able to talk to an animal was an anciently revered Artezan power. In old Artezan stories and paintings there were always formidable people who learned the hidden secrets of animals, could talk to them and understand them and get them to do their bidding. The animals were, in a way, a tuil . . . but no one ever thought of them like that. It was as though Elodie had pulled a myth into the present day. She was phenomenally powerful.

Once again, she had stolen the show without even trying. Once again, she was the best – the stuff of legend. Ed knew his power wouldn’t be able to compete.

Disappointment draped itself over him like a cloak.

Mr Biscuits just turned and licked himself, apparently unaware of the fuss his entrance had inadvertently caused.

It took several minutes to calm everyone down.

‘Alright, alright!’ Granny M ended up bellowing. ‘We need to do Edward or we’ll be here all day. Come on, whisht, the lot of you.’

Ed looked at his own bowl, bits of himself in it somewhere. The pressure of Elodie hitting the magical jackpot seemed to crush down on him. Alright, he was magical, but what were the chances of them both getting a truly astonishing power? Unless . . . they were twins, after all. Of course, not identical, which meant they were just people born at the same time, really. But still, there was a chance . . .

Granny M nudged him. ‘Edward, it’s your turn.’

He realised he was just staring at the bowl.

Elodie was still beside him. She tapped him on the arm. ‘Come on, Ed. I want to find out more than you do, I think!’ She took his hand again, her left in his right, and squeezed. ‘You can do it,’ she whispered.

What else could he do? He blobbed a finger into the liquid and dropped a bit on to his tongue. Surprisingly, it tasted almost nice, like burnt sugar, and he wondered what everyone else had been complaining about. ‘Not so bad,’ he commented, for the want of something to say.

He gritted his teeth, gripped his twin’s hand tight and waited for the colour to shine out of him, permanently labelling him with magic powers over plants, or water, or healing . . .

But nothing shone out of Edward Crane.

The water in the bowl went suddenly black. Then a rich purple, as deep as an ocean trench, started swirling through the black liquid. Ed gripped the edge of the table, moving quickly from elated to terrified, but then the fear was gone as soon as it arrived . . . and it left behind a sick, pulling sense of dread. This feeling too, quickly vanished, and the water in the bowl was black once more, now crested through with jagged violet lines, like surreal lightning.

And still, no bright light came. Instead of lighting up with a glowing aura, Ed’s body remained as it always was . . . but his shadow seemed to lengthen and rise, like smoke from a blown-out candle wisping in the air. The dark, shadowy tendrils condensed into purple, and black tentacle-like arms of smoke reached from within Ed out into the air, before dissolving into a pulsing dark purple shadow that hovered behind him.

Ed swallowed.

His aura was purple, but such a deep and dark purple that it appeared black. The magic of the Hidden and Unseen, yes, but the colour was so dark . . . Elodie had said that Granny M had a theory about dark auras meaning more power, but Elodie’s aura had been violet.

Ed couldn’t think straight. He needed to scry for the next bit, to try to find out what this darkness meant for him, good or bad, powerful or weak, the stuff of legend or the stuff of jokes.

He dipped a finger in the water and stirred it three times anticlockwise. ‘Um. Edward Percival Crane?’ he said, feeling very stupid even with the deep shadow at his back. He knew who he was, obviously, but he needed to see the hidden part of himself that was now unleashed and free.

The water in the bowl rippled. Then it shone, flickering like someone scrolling too fast on a phone. Images of his life so far flitted before Ed’s eyes. Him as a baby, being dressed as Santa by Baba who thought it was adorable. Him in his uniform on his first day at school, Elodie ruining the photo by giving him bunny-ears behind his head. Ed at school, Ed at home, Ed on that awful trip to Loch Ness where he fell into the water . . .

‘Here it comes . . .’ Granny M squeezed his arm in reassurance.

Ed steeled himself.

Then, Ed saw. Ed saw a tall shadowy figure behind a group of strangers. The figure looked a wee bit like himself, except there were images and ghost-like projections flowing out of his skinny and overly long arms. There was a sense of being trapped, and a thick blanketing darkness that rushed at him from behind, making him want to hunch over, make himself smaller somehow. An icy fog swirled through the dark; it had a face, and it was shouting soundlessly at him, as if begging for help. There was the sound of the SMASH of glass, a rush of air, and he saw a torrent of sand, pouring from nowhere to crash down on to the land, endlessly spilling, covering the place so Ed was in danger of drowning in the dark grit . . . And then the sand suddenly melted away to reveal the softest beds, with hundreds of sleepers snuggled into them. They were dreaming, Ed knew but he couldn’t say how he knew. They were dreaming so very deeply, and Ed felt as if he could somehow reach out to those dreams and—

Ed blinked, and he was back in the tent, staring at his sister, who was gazing back at him with wide, wondering eyes. The dark aura around him had faded and gone, and the air inside the tent felt still. ‘I . . .’ His voice sounded very loud, and he tried to make sense of the vision. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Think, Edward,’ Granny M urged him. ‘What did you see?’

‘Erm, a lot of fog. Sand – lots of sand, coming in from nowhere, into the dark. Fog, but . . . it was talking to me? And I saw people sleeping. They were dreaming. I don’t know how I know that, but . . . they were.’

Granny M brightened. ‘Oh!’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Of course, the magic of the Hidden and Unseen . . . Ed, you must have the magic of dreams!’

Ed blinked in puzzlement. ‘Dreams? Really?’

‘Well, some aspect of dreaming, anyway,’ she added, encouragingly. ‘The Hidden and Unseen aspect of sleep, you see? Most of these visions are metaphors – not to be taken literally. You know the old folk tale about the Sandman? He sprinkles magical sand in your eyes to make you sleep? Well, that has a pretty strong connection to dreams, doesn’t it?’

Dreams? They weren’t even real. Ed’s heart sank like a stone. He finally had magic and wasn’t even something he could use in the real world, not like Elodie’s power. The darkness of his aura must have been for night-time, not for his magic strength at all.

Noticing Ed’s falling face, his parents started applauding and the rest of the tent soon joined in. Elodie hugged him, but Ed just stood there with his arms by his sides, feeling bitter and disappointed.

Why wasn’t his power like hers? Weren’t they twins? Weren’t they two halves of the same person? Hadn’t they been raised the same? Sadness sank into his bones and he wanted to push Elodie away. Why weren’t they ever the same?

He stepped out of her arms and went to stand by himself as the tent full of people surged forward to congratulate the new Artezans. He watched people shake Elodie’s hand, stroke Mr Biscuits, laugh and rejoice at the powerful new magic in their midst.

No, Ed thought as he watched his sister, they had never been the same person, they barely even looked alike. It wasn’t enough that Elodie was more popular than he was, more beautiful, better at making friends and top of the class . . . she had to best him with her magic, as well.

Ed’s heart was hammering. He felt completely lost.

6

Masters and Magic

The celebrations went on for most of the day. Ed had never liked parties, so he planted himself at a corner of the field with a drink and a bag of crisps and watched everyone else having fun as he thought over his newly Revealed power.

Dreams. Compared with Elodie’s power, his felt like a joke.

‘Congratulations, Edward.’

He looked up to see Rhea’s mum standing over him, holding a plastic serving tray. Rhea’s mum had a very subtle magical gift – she could make flower petals open or close. Since flowers tended to do that by themselves, it wasn’t a gift there was much call for. ‘Oh . . . thanks. And to Rhea,’ he mumbled. ‘Nice one.’

‘Are you not joining in? You don’t need to be shy, this party is for you too.’

Ed shrugged. ‘Just taking it all in, Mrs Shah.’ This didn’t feel like a party for him, he felt like an intruder.

Mrs Shah looked over her shoulder at the mingling crowds. In the middle of the field, Granny M was showing how she could fit an entire table into a single envelope, which was her party trick. Dad was cringing in embarrassment, but Baba and Elodie were laughing. ‘Your granny is a good master of ceremonies,’ Mrs Shah said, turning back to Ed. ‘But the story she tells is not quite the same one we tell in Pakistan.’

‘No?’ Ed perked up, interested despite his mood.

‘One of the differences is the name we give to the old Artezan Masters. We don’t call them Masters at all, we call them Pillars.’

‘Pillows?’ Ed said, getting the wrong end of the stick.

‘No, hen, Pillars . . . like to hold a roof up.’ She shifted the weight of the tray in her hands. ‘And our story goes that the three Pillars did not give up their magic, or share it amongst Artezan families. The Pillars simply disappeared. As a result there was nothing left to support magic in the world. And that’s why magic began to fall, and fail, and fade. It wasn’t the multiplying Artezan families that diluted magic, it was the lack of supporting Pillars.’

Ed stared at her. ‘They disappeared? They didn’t just distribute their magic?’ This new version of the story he had been told since he was a baby had thrown him for six. ‘Why don’t we tell it that way here in Scotland?’

‘I suspect it’s too depressing.’ She shrugged. ‘With your Scottish story, there is an element of hope. The Masters chose to distribute their powers. But with our version . . . something supportive vanished, and is still missing.’ She gave a sad sort of smile.

‘But . . .’ Ed frowned. ‘What d’you think happened to them? The Pillars, or the Masters, or whoever they were?’

‘I suppose in some ways both stories are the same, just told from two different points of view. In truth, we will never know for sure which story’s true; we just have to make the best of it with the magical gifts we have been blessed with,’ Mrs Shah said, giving him a smile, before turning back to the party.

Ed mulled her words over for a while, wondering why her version wasn’t told in Scotland. Maybe she was right – it was just too depressing. The knowledge that magic was slowly vanishing from the world was bad enough.

By the time evening fell, and the collection of barbecues had been fired up, one of the new Artezans had already started to get the hang of her powers.

Rhea had discovered she could make the green summer leaves on the trees turn to autumnal oranges, red and browns by touching them. Sometimes, the leaves shrivelled up and died. As powers went, it was one of the more pointless ones, but Rhea managed to make it entertaining and pretty by writing her name (and eventually, everyone else’s names) on to the thick hedge that grew over the fence. Each leaf coloured under the touch of her finger as she painstakingly spelled out Rhea, her sister’s name, Ava, and her two friends’ names; Lexi and Elodie. Unfortunately, Rhea hadn’t mastered accuracy yet, and several of the surrounding hedges were now entirely orange.

Elodie had been carrying Mr Biscuits around in her arms all day, chattering away to him as he miaowed back, clearly enjoying having his owner understand every sound he made. The cat had been handsomely rewarded for his part in the Reveal, and Ed was sure the animal was now at least forty per cent ham.

Ed forced himself to join in again as the sun went down – not even he was immune to the smell of sausages. He saw Rhea colouring the leaves, felt the perfect sunset his baba had painted scorching the back of his neck as it started to die, watched as Artezans everywhere did their tricks: folding napkins perfectly, catching anything thrown to them (even if it was a chair), refilling drinks from no visible source (so long as it was orange juice, nothing else seemed to work).

Where did dreams fit into the Artezan world?

Ed suspected he, like Baba with his paintbox, would need a tuil to access his magic. He didn’t feel especially magical sitting in an old deckchair, watching his twin sister miaow at a moth-eaten carpet bag of a cat. But what sort of tuil would connect to dreams? A pillow, maybe? Or a soft blanket? Maybe a blindfold to keep his eyes shut, or maybe he’d have to be asleep . . . His mind started to wander as he sorted through the possibilities, and he didn’t notice his dad approaching until he sat down on the empty chair beside him and made him jump.

‘Are you alright, hen?’

‘Oh.’ Ed shook himself. ‘Not so bad.’

Dad gave him a knowing look. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You’ll soon have the hang of it, whatever it is.’

‘How did you find your magic?’ Ed asked, putting his half-finished plate on the grass. The damp was already creeping up the stalks, looking for socks to soak.

‘It took me a while,’ Dad said. ‘I had my Reveal, and everyone saw my orange aura, but then . . . it felt like everything was the same. I didn’t know what I supposed to be able to do.’

‘But you figured it out eventually.’ Ed looked at his dad, who was smiling slightly.

‘Aye, but it took me months. You have to remember, there were no summer camps in those days, you had the ceremony and then you just went home and tried to figure things out by yourself. And I didn’t have a clue. My . . . my parents thought I was doing it on purpose. Holding it in, like.’ Dad cracked one of the knuckles on his right hand, clearly remembering a time he’d rather not talk about.

‘What sort of things did you try?’ Ed asked softly, keeping the conversation moving.

Dad brightened a little. ‘Actually, it was meeting Harrison that made me figure it out.’

‘Baba helped you find your power?’ Ed gawped.

‘Not on purpose. He’d had a rough time of it too, not knowing what his power was, or that he needed a tuil, until he was in an art class at school and then suddenly he felt everything just fall into place. He came up to Scotland with your Bibi and Babu Omari to paint the landscapes that autumn. We met at an art gallery your grandpa, my dad, had dragged me along to. I liked him instantly, and wanted to make him happy.’

‘Oh.’ Ed blushed, slightly embarrassed by the story of his parents’ childhood romance. ‘So, because you wanted him to be happy . . . he was?’

‘Sort of.’ He shrugged. ‘It will come to you, Edward. When and where you least expect it. Elodie just got lucky having a cat around on the day. D’you want to talk about your Reveal vision? Sometimes there’s clues in there to help you.’

Ed shrugged. ‘It was mainly sleeping people and sand and . . .’ He frowned. ‘There was a man, or something that looked like a man.’

‘How’d you mean?’

‘Well, he was very tall and thin, and sort of grey, like a shadow. He didn’t do anything much though.’ Ed thought it sounded daft.

And clearly so did Dad, who snorted a laugh. ‘Sounds like the Big Grey Man.’

‘Wha’s the Big Grey Man? Have you just made that up?’

Dad laughed again. ‘No! He’s an auld Scottish creature who’s supposed to haunt Ben Macdui in the Cairngorms. He creeps up behind you but when you turn around . . . he’s not there.’ Dad waggled his fingers in a spooky motion.

Ed wasn’t impressed. ‘The Big Grey Man is a rubbish name for a monster,’ he said.

‘Well, I never said anyone creative was involved, it’s just a folk tale.’

‘Like the Sandman story?’ Ed asked, remembering Granny M’s words.

‘Aye, I suppose. I don’t think the Sandman’s meant to be scary, though, just a sort of fairy who helps you sleep. I think he’s in one of my auld story books, from when I was a kid. You could dig it out.’

Ed considered. ‘Mrs Shah said our Masters story isn’t the one they tell in Pakistan,’ he said.

Dad nodded. ‘It’s not the version your Babu and Bibi tell, either. They have a different story in Tanzania. Ask your baba about it.’

‘Is it depressing? In Mrs Shah’s story, the Masters disappeared, and never came back.’

‘It’s like that, I seem to remember.’

Ed considered this, frowning. ‘How come there’s not just one story? We’re all Artezans, aren’t we?’

Dad smiled. ‘The thing about history is it depends who’s telling it. Stories like ours, they got passed from mouth to ear over hundreds of years, and a story like that changes each time in the telling. Who knows what the true version of events was. Which one do you prefer?’

‘The disappearing version,’ Ed said, without even thinking about it. ‘It feels more dramatic.’

‘Yes, I suppose it does . . . Now, what do you think your granny’s going to secrete into a wee bag next?’

Ed felt a wee bit better as he chatted away to his dad, and he decided to stop being such a misery-guts. He’d got what he wanted; he was magical, just like his parents and sister . . . there was no point moping about the details.

Was there?

The party carried on until after dark, when the temperature suddenly dropped and the damp seized control of the grass for the night. Ed, Elodie and their parents went back to their bungalow, all of them grateful for soft beds and the log-burning stove. Summer in Covensea was a concept, not a guarantee. Mr Biscuits curled up in front of the log burner as soon as they got inside, his part in the excitement of the day now over with. Ed might usually have wheedled to stay up, but he suddenly felt exhausted, and when Baba suggested bed he didn’t argue.

Elodie followed him through the bungalow to the side of the house where their bedrooms were. ‘Feels like a relief, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘Finally over!’

An ugly wee knot of jealousy prodded Ed in the ribs. ‘Aye, I guess it does. No more wondering if we’re magic or no.’ Ed stopped in front of his door. He had to get over himself. Elodie hadn’t done any of this on purpose, and he knew what it was like to be ignored and alone. ‘I didn’t say before . . . well done. It’s a great power, Elodie.’

She beamed in response. ‘Thanks, Ed!’

‘Though I can’t imagine that flea-bag has anything interesting to say,’ Ed added.

Elodie snorted. ‘I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that it’s mostly about frogs and food,’ she said. She put her hand to her door handle. ‘You know . . . I think I’d have liked your power. I’ve always been fascinated with dreams.’

‘Really?’ Ed frowned.

‘Aye, like . . . the stories you make up in your head. Where do they come from? Who decides what we dream about? Why do some of them seem important and others make no sense at all?’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose you’ll be finding that out.’

‘Hopefully. See you in the morning.’ Ed gave her a smile before letting himself into his bedroom. He shut the door, clicked the lamp on, and then froze.

There was glass. Broken glass, scattered over his carpet.

Ed stepped carefully forward, aware of his thin socks on the floor, peering around the bed to assess the damage. Chunks of broken jar and nuggets of sea-glass all mingled together, glittering in the lamp-light. On the windowsill, where his jar full of sea-glass ought to have been, was a jar-shaped empty space.

‘How . . .?’ Ed looked from the window to the smashed glass. Ordinarily, if something broke, he blamed Mr Biscuits. But the animal had been outside all day.

What could have done this?

Ed didn’t want to touch the shards of broken jar for fear of cutting himself, but he could reach some of the sea-glass lumps without injury. He picked up a startling teal piece that was shaped like a fat almond, turning it over in his fingers. He raised it up to look at it.

And, as he looked, the beautiful pill of smooth glass disintegrated in his palm, turning to sand and falling through the gaps between his fingers, before disappearing amongst the broken daggers on the carpet.

7

Lessons and Artists

The day after the Reveal usually felt sluggish and slow as people recovered from the late night before and tried to get to grips with the new powers in their groups. But Ed was completely wired.

He had asked Dad to hoover up all the glass in his room, and had piled the sea-glass into an old plastic sand bucket for the time being. Dad had suggested, doubtfully, that maybe the sun on the jar had heated it up too much and made it explode. It made about as much sense as anything else, so Ed clung to that explanation rather than look for any other reasons. He also did not tell his parents about the dissolving piece of sea-glass he had held. He might have imagined it, anyway. Maybe he’d been so sleepy he’d started seeing things.

Hopefully.

Because if he thought too much about it, a horrible sick chill crawled up his spine and settled frozen at the back of his neck. He couldn’t have seen that happen. He absolutely could not. That was magic, and no one had been controlling it.

He forced himself out of his room as Elodie called his name, not looking at the sand bucket as he passed it. There was nothing creepy about a castle-shaped sand bucket. Definitely not.

‘Come on,’ Elodie said, hand on the front door, Mr Biscuits threading himself around her legs. ‘We’re going to be late.’

‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ Ed muttered, shoving his shoes on. ‘It’s only down the lane.’ They exited the house together and set off along the dirt track road, Elodie calling to Mr Biscuits to follow, as he was required to come with them.

Although the field behind the Cranes’ house was the focal point for most of the summer camp’s activities and gatherings, the Artezans also made use of a local art studio in Covensea, a fifteen-minute walk away. It gave the newly Revealed Artezans somewhere warm and dry to be during the day, and a place to practise their skills without any outside distractions.

Ed and his sister had been to the Oneiros Art Studio once before, for a Paint A Pot activity for a classmate’s sixth birthday. He remembered it as being a Portakabin sunken into tarmac and decorated with drawings and bits of things people had sewn.

It hadn’t changed much.

The twins rounded the corner at the bottom of the winding pot-holed driveway and found the kabin, even more sunken into the surface than before, with a lot of dried-up plants in tubs outside it. Like all properties in Covensea, it had pine trees ganging up around it, and rabbit poops all over the path. There was a ramp up into the structure itself, and a couple of rusting metal chairs and a table outside, though these too were covered in decaying plant material. A slug was happily munching on something that might once have been a geranium. Ed gave a sigh. Of all the places around, this looked like somewhere hopes and dreams came to die.

Mr Biscuits gave a rawr from down around Elodie’s ankles.

‘Don’t be rude, it’s not that bad,’ she said, doubtfully.

By the looks of things, the Cranes were the last ones to arrive. The other new Artezans were each sitting at a table in the kabin, all looking somewhere between nervous and bored.

The kabin was covered floor to ceiling in arts and crafts. There were weans’ drawings tacked to the walls, and the tables were exactly the same as the ones in Covensea Primary – there were even some hand-knitted teddies piled on a wicker chair in the corner. Ed felt like he’d been put into Magical Pre-School. He looked around at the cross-stitch hangings, the knitted cardigans and the blobby clay sculptures that were strewn around the workbenches that ran around the edge of the room. There was a desk at the front, covered in balls of knitting-wool, and to the side of that, one corner of the kabin was curtained off. Ed hoped it wasn’t concealing the toilet.

The kids gave each other tight-lipped smiles, and Elodie broke the icy feel of the place by loudly saying hi to Rhea and Lexi, and sitting down beside them to complain about the sudden cold wind outside. Mr Biscuits trotted over to the teddy-chair and leapt up to sit on top of them like they were cushions. Everyone watched him, the whole situation feeling very awkward. Ed took a chair at the last empty table, at the back, wondering where the teacher was.

His thoughts were soon answered by the door banging open, and an adult walking in. Though really, Ed thought to himself, it was more a sort of lunging stagger than a walk, the person all-but rolling into the kabin, stumbling over their own boots. They were dressed all in black, wearing sunglasses, and carrying a huge carpet bag and an enormous reusable coffee cup.

‘Oh, God,’ the figure groaned upon spotting their audience, putting a hand to their forehead. ‘It’s that cursed* day already.’ They muttered something dark under their breath before clomping through the kabin and crashing a massive bundle of keys and a carpet bag down on to the desk at the front. Keeping their sunglasses on, they took an almighty glug of coffee, then finally removed the specs to reveal a youngish face with grey eyes and sleep-deprived circles beneath them. They leaned on the desk to frown out at the waiting students.

‘Nyx Oneiros,’ they said, which was apparently their name. ‘Dream crafter. Don’t waste time telling me your names, I’m not in the mood to hear them and I can’t be bothered** to try to remember. Anyone here not magical?’ The new Artezans all shook their heads quickly. ‘Good. Fine.’ They took another swig from the reusable coffee cup, which seemed to fortify them a wee bit, and they stood straighter. ‘No raised voices either, I’m delicate today.’

Ed didn’t know what to think. He had always associated practising Artezans as being people like Granny M, or Dad – slightly floaty and otherworldly and head in the clouds. Nyx Oneiros looked as though they should have their head over a sick bowl. They were tall and seemed to be about the same age as Dad and Baba, with scraggly white and grey hair (that was growing through pitch black at the roots) pulled back into a messy bun. They were wearing an artfully ripped long black skirt over a pair of faded black jeans, heavy-looking black boots, a grey shirt with poofy sleeves and a dusty-looking waistcoat that didn’t have any buttons left on it. There was what looked like egg on the waistcoat, toothpaste on the shirt sleeves and the smell of their strong coffee was making Ed’s stomach turn over. If Granny M’s coffee could make a spoon stand up, this stuff would probably make it tap-dance.

But none of that had Ed’s attention like the mention of Nyx’s power. Nyx was a dream crafter. The same as him, maybe? His interest was piqued.

Nyx took one more swig of coffee and gave themselves a shake. ‘Right,’ they said. ‘Lessons. Learning stuff. Day one. OK. Let’s do this.’ They stretched, and their back cricked and cracked like a glow-stick. ‘Does anyone know anything about what it means to be an Artezan?’ They leaned further over the desk and stared.

Lexi McEwan put a hand up. ‘It’s about being magic, miss. About using magic.’

‘Not “miss”,’ Nyx sighed through their teeth, massaging their temples. ‘Not “sir”, either. Nyx will do. And aye, magic, obviously. But . . .’ they cast about, as if help might arrive from somewhere, before soldiering on. ‘OK, where does the word Artezan come from?’

Ed decided to have a go, trying to remember what Baba had told him, years ago. ‘Isn’t it from the word artisan? With an “is”. People who craft or make things.’

Nyx nodded. ‘Yes. You’re half right, anyway. But it’s not just the same word misspelled. “Artezan” is from made up of several linguistic components put together . . .’ Nyx got up and staggered over to the back wall, where there was a tapestry nailed up. They pulled the tapestry down with a RRRRIP, to reveal words painted on to the kabin wall. ‘Artisan,’ they pointed, ‘and artesian. Two very similar but different words. Artisan means someone who crafts something, which in this case is magic. But artesian means . . . like, a spring, or an upwards torrent of water. And then, just to make the word even more interesting, there’s a Z. Now, the Z is my favourite part, because it has several interpretations. But the most common translation is that the letter itself is a symbol. It’s a symbol for the word “weapon”, or something you wield. Put all of that together, and you get Artezan – someone who can wield the flow of magic that’s rushing up from within them.’ Nyx collapsed down on to a chair, as if the explanation had exhausted them.

Greg Poppley was doing huge fake yawns, but Ed had to admit that he had found the explanation interesting. He liked words. When he was a wee boy, he used to play a game with Dad where they’d take a long word like congratulations and try to break it down into smaller words and work out where the word had come from in the first place. Etymology, that was called.

‘So,’ Nyx carried on, picking their coffee up again, ‘being an Artezan is not just about having magic, it’s about being able to wield it. And knowing how to wield it in ways that will be useful to you, and help you avoid showing the nature of your powers to the non-Artezan world.

‘Some of you will need to discover your tuil, others of you will be more hands-on, as it were. We’re all Artezans here, but the scope of magic is pretty vast, OK? I don’t care what your magic is, you can use this space to try and find it. And if you already know, this is where you hone it, or polish it. And, most importantly, you need to figure out how to craft your magic safely and responsibly.’ They sniffed the cup, then put it down to rub their eyes. ‘Chances are, if you didn’t start using magic last night, you need a tuil of some sort. Tuils are often objects we associate with creativity, like pencils, paintbrushes or – in my case – knitting needles.’

Ed realised that all the knitted pieces around the walls must be part of how this strange teacher did their magic. It was the same as Baba’s collection of paintings.

‘There’s pretty much every sort of craft material you can think of in here somewhere,’ Nyx said, waving a hand at the cabin. ‘So try anything, be my guest. Just wash and tidy things away when you’re done. Oh, and don’t bother Finevan.’

‘Who’s Finevan?’ Poppley asked.

Nyx reached to one side and pulled a long cord that was hanging from the curtain Ed had spotted in the corner. The curtain parted to reveal a man in his thirties hunched over a laptop, typing away with his nose inches away from the screen. He had sandy blond hair and a lot of freckles, and was wearing an Argyle sweater. Ed wondered if Nyx had knitted it. ‘This is Jack Finevan, who prefers surname-only,’ Nyx said. ‘Say hello, Finevan.’

‘Hello, Finevan,’ the man said, without looking around. He carried on typing steadily as if nothing about the newcomers could have interested him less. It made Ed feel rather weird to know that he’d been hiding back there all this time.

‘Finevan’s tuil is writing,’ Nyx explained, letting go of the cord so the curtain swung back into place. ‘He’s a scriever. That’s an auld word for writer, or scribbler. He can write on a laptop, or with pen and paper, but he is writing pretty much all the time. I’m sure you’ll all be aware of the old saying that magic demands a price. And it certainly does. In Finevan’s case, he rarely looks up from his work, only to eat and sleep. In my case, going too long without knitting a dream causes me not to be able to sleep at all, which can be dangerous for anyone in the long term. You’ll need to discover what your own limits are during this summer.’

Ed wanted to ask what happened when Finevan got to the end of the story he was writing, and what he did with his magic, but Nyx had picked their coffee cup up again and this time they drained it, before walking over to the sink near the painting things and starting to wash up.

Their teaching for the morning was apparently over.

*  They actually said something else, but one of the Artezan powers of children’s books is that all swear words automagically become alternatives as soon as you print them.

**  See?

8

Trials and Errors

Ed got slowly out of his seat and, feeling like a bit of an idiot, went over to where neat stacks of boxes full of coloured pencils were waiting. He grabbed a box and some paper and took them back to the table where he was joined, to his disgust, by Greg Poppley.

Ignoring him, Ed opened the box of pencils. They were all as blunt as sausages. ‘Oh for Bel’s sake,’ he said, grabbing a sharpener and inserting the first pencil, taking his time to get it to a not-quite-sharp point before moving to the next. Baba didn’t often use pencils, but when he did he treated them as if they were spun sugar. Ed had been brought up to do the same.

‘Bel’s sake? Who’s Bel?’ Poppley pulled a stupid face.

‘Isobel Gowdie,’ Ed sighed, checking the point of the pencil. ‘Famous Scottish Artezan. She was called The Artezan Queen at one point.’ He had a book of Artezan tales that he’d read so much the cover was falling off.

‘Oh, aye? What happened to her, then, if she was so famous?’

‘She had a Trial,’ Ed said shortly. Isobel was a figurehead in the Nairn and Covensea area, and there was a plaque commemorating her in Covensea village square, though non-Artezans assumed she had been one of them, falsely accused in what they called witch trials. She had been executed for being an Artezan three hundred and sixty years ago when the Trials were raging through Scotland. It was annoying that Poppley didn’t know about her.

But Ed’s mention of the Trials did shut Poppley up. For six whole seconds. ‘God, I cannae believe they’ve stuck us in here,’ Poppley blurted out, possibly aiming for camaraderie but just managing to get under Ed’s skin. ‘I always wondered where they sent the new Artezans during the summer camps, but I figured it was a secret society or maybe a tree house in the forest, not some dive of a kabin down a road. This is the worst.’

‘I guess it’s what you make of it.’ Ed tried to think of something to draw. He settled for a cloud, and decided he could spend all day colouring the whole sheet of paper into a blue-black night sky with wisps of grey cloud floating across it . . . If it went well, he could wash over the drawing with ink or watercolour, give it some depth and really bring the colours to life. Ed settled down, and got the rocking rhythm into his wrist as his pencil skimmed over the paper, to and fro in perfect lines that blurred together to become an unbroken sky. He was transforming one thing into another. It was like . . .

Hey, Ed thought, is this it? Is this what magic feels like? Am I actually going to turn this into a dream? Excitement prickled through him at the idea.

Then his elbow slipped violently, and a big black line lanced sharply through the cloud he’d been drawing.

‘Hey! What’s your problem?’ He glared at a chuckling Poppley, who had nudged him deliberately.

‘Calm down,’ Poppley grinned, making Ed’s blood boil. ‘I’m only messing with you.’

‘Maybe you don’t see the point in being here, but I actually want to find my tuil,’ Ed snapped. ‘So leave me alone.’

Poppley’s expression darkened like a thundercloud had passed over a particularly entitled sun. ‘You’re a stuck-up wean, aren’t you? Who d’you think you are? Just because your two dads run this summer camp doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do.’

Ed ignored him, vibrating with irritation. He picked up another piece of paper. But the mood had gone. Anything he drew now would be shaky and bad and terrible. He wanted to push everything away and go outside, but if he did that, Poppley would think he’d won. Instead, he started to draw a new scene anyway, trying to ignore Poppley but simmering inside at how he sniggered every time Ed made a mark on the paper.

‘If you’re just here to warm a chair, you can pack your bag and clear off,’ a voice drawled from above. ‘I don’t give a flying monkey’s whether you work out what your tuil is or no, it’s no my problem if you go home as clueless as when you arrived.’

Ed looked up to see Nyx, another gigantic coffee in hand, curling their lip down at Poppley, who had gone red.

‘Sorry.’ Poppley shuffled his chair away from Ed and started drawing something that looked an awful lot like a stick man.

Nyx sniffed, then glanced down at Ed’s ruined work. ‘You’ve got talent. Who taught you to draw?’

‘My baba,’ Ed said, blushing slightly. No one had ever told him he had talent before.

‘That’ll be Harrison Crane?’ Nyx raised an eyebrow as they put two and two together. ‘Good grief. No wonder you can draw.’ They picked up the drawing and scrutinised it. ‘You’ve a real grasp for art, but there’s nothing magical happening. I don’t think this is your tuil, is it?’

Ed looked at his clouds. ‘I thought it might be. Before . . .’ Before Poppley ruined it.

‘You’re good at it, and you like it,’ Nyx said firmly, ‘but it’s not magical. Not to you.’ They tapped their chin as they considered, stray bits of leftover wool from their knitting clinging to their sleeve.

‘Can I ask,’ Ed blurted, ‘you said you’re a dream crafter? When I had my Reveal . . . I think I saw something to do with dreams. Does that mean we’re the same?’

‘It’s possible,’ Nyx said, nodding. ‘Dream crafters provide threads for dream-scripts – we come up with stories and ideas for dreams, and send them off into the world.’

‘You control dreams?’ Ed asked.

‘No,’ Nyx clarified. ‘Dream crafters don’t control them. Dreams follow scripts made up of many different threads, like a tapestry where all the tiny pieces come together to make one huge picture. Some of those threads come from a sleeper’s memory – that’s why you see people you know in your dreams – and some of them come from Artezans like me.’ Nyx tapped the knitting needles they had tucked into their belt. ‘I knit a story, and when the pattern is done, my part in the story is complete.’

‘But – how do you know what to do next?’ Ed asked, mystified. ‘How did you learn it?’

‘I didn’t have to.’ Nyx gave a wry smile. ‘And that’s how I know that drawing isn’t your tuil. The rush of magic when you connect to it . . . there’s nothing it can be mistaken for. You feel it, in your bones, exactly what you have to do, without being taught.’

Ed nodded. He didn’t quite understand yet, but he knew what he wasn’t feeling.

Nyx patted the new piece of paper he’d been working on. ‘Carry on, though,’ they said. ‘It would be a shame to leave that half-finished.’ They leaned over and picked up the drawing Poppley had trashed. ‘May I keep this?’

‘I guess so,’ Ed said, mystified as to why they would want it. ‘It’s no good though.’

‘We’ll have to disagree there.’ Nyx walked away, holding the drawing like they were carrying a Rembrandt. They pinned it on to one of the corkboards behind the desk. The thick line where Ed had slipped seemed even darker, somehow, now it was on the wall.

Ed went back to his clouds, and by midday, when it was time to go home, he had coloured in a beautiful night sky shot through with deepest blacks and blues and purples.

And he hadn’t felt a single magical spark as he did it.

Ed carefully avoided the subject of magic as he and his sister walked back to the house, Mr Biscuits draped around Elodie’s neck like a scarf. The other kids had gone ahead, eager to be back on the site with their families (that evening there was going to be a lesson on campfire pizza-making), but Ed felt as if his legs had turned to lead.

‘I hope there’s pineapple pizza,’ Elodie said brightly, avoiding a fox poo on the road. ‘I’m pretty tired though, I don’t want to be up late again tonight. And Mr Biscuits talks all night about where he’s been during the day.’ She glanced at her brother. ‘D’you have any plans for the rest of the day?’

‘I need to find a new jar,’ Ed said, morosely. He wasn’t sure he wanted his twin or her positivity around, right now. He didn’t want to have to hear about her impressive power and how well it was all going when so far he had nothing.

‘A new jar? What for?’

Ed jolted himself back to reality, Elodie’s innocent question reminding him of the weirdness of the night before. ‘Oh, I forgot to say . . . last night, after we got back, I found my sea-glass jar all smashed on the carpet. Glass everywhere.’

‘Oh no, that was such a nice display as well.’ She genuinely meant it. ‘That explains why the hoover was going. Is it all OK?’

‘Well, the jar was a write-off but I still have the sea-glass,’ Ed said. He hesitated. ‘And . . . there was something else.’

‘What?’ She smiled, then it dropped. ‘Unless it’s a secret, you don’t have to tell me.’

Ed immediately felt bad about his low mood. ‘Look, don’t say anything to Dad and Baba, but last night, when I picked up a piece of the sea-glass . . .’

‘What?’

Ed bit his bottom lip. There was no point trying to deny it to himself, he knew what he’d seen. ‘It turned to sand.’

Elodie’s eyes went wide, and worried. ‘That’s serious magic, that is,’ she said softly. ‘Turning something into something else. But . . . Ed . . . how did you do it?’

‘That’s the thing,’ Ed said, ‘I didn’t do it. Whatever caused it to happen . . . it wasn’t me. It just happened.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I wish I could say it was me,’ Ed snapped. ‘I’d love a power like that. Something proper, that I could be proud of. But it wasn’t me. OK?’ Nyx had said you could feel the rush of magic, and Ed was more certain now that he hadn’t felt a thing.

Elodie blushed and they walked in silence until a question came to Ed.

‘Say, why’s Nyx in charge of the teaching, do you know?’ he asked, still thinking about their self-proclaimed title of dream crafter.

Elodie shrugged. ‘I heard Baba say something about how Nyx tried to be a regular schoolteacher but couldn’t give up the knitting long enough to apply themselves. So now they do craft classes in the Portakabin, and the summer camp. They must like teaching, despite how they come across . . .’

Ed and Elodie arrived back at The Nest to find Dad sitting in the private garden, lain back in a deckchair with a damp flannel over his eyes, whilst Baba sat beside him on a stool, painting what looked like the world’s dreariest rainstorm on a canvas as tall as Elodie. He looked up as he heard them crunch up the driveway.

‘Hey,’ he said softly, raising a hand. ‘Don’t bother your dad, yeah? He overdid it yesterday.’ He gave his husband a what am I going to do with you look. ‘I’ll talk to you in a little while, just let me finish this crucial bit,’ he added to the twins.

They waved to say they got the message, before going into the house.

‘Will you show me the sea-glass?’ Elodie asked as soon as her shoes were off. Mr Biscuits jumped down from her shoulders with a mrowp before wandering into the kitchen. ‘I want to see where it happened.’

‘Fine,’ Ed sighed. ‘But don’t expect anything.’

They went into Ed’s bedroom, Elodie turning her nose up at the smell of unwashed socks. ‘Why are you the way that you are?’ she sighed as Ed kicked his laundry into a corner.

‘I take after you,’ he snorted, referencing the fact she was seven minutes older than him. ‘Did you come here just to criticise?’

‘A wee bit. But show me the sea-glass anyway. Is it in that bucket?’ She went over and peered into it. ‘Doesn’t look as fancy as when it was in the jar, does it?’

‘No,’ Ed agreed. He sat down on his bed. ‘An’ I don’t know how I feel about keeping the pieces in my room at all, after last night.’

Elodie stuck her hand in the bucket and withdrew four pieces of the smooth pebbles of glass. ‘There you are,’ she told them, ‘you’re free!’ She brought the pieces over and sat beside Ed. ‘They feel so nice in your hand, don’t they?’

‘Usually.’ Ed gave the pieces a suspicious look. He wished he could be somewhere else, away from the bits of glass that had gone from being good-luck charms to colourful doubts.

‘Come on,’ Elodie nudged him. ‘They’ve always been special to you, they won’t hurt you.’ She tipped one of the pebbles of glass into Ed’s outstretched hand.

And the world changed.

The moment one of the pebbles touched Ed’s palm, it shone as bright as a star. Violet streaks shot out of the glass, branching into the air like a Revealed aura, gleaming so brilliantly that the spaces between each beam looked dark and deep, like they might swallow you up. The pebble of glass had become a gleaming ball of light, and Ed closed his fist tight over it to stop himself being blinded.

Then, he felt himself fall.

9

Impossible and Incredible

Ed landed with a FLUMP on to something pliable and soft. It felt like a slightly deflated bouncy castle. He rolled over a few times before catching himself. Then he lay there, eyes squeezed shut, heart hammering, fist still tight around the piece of sea-glass.

Slowly, he opened his eyes, but quickly closed them again. What he was looking at couldn’t possibly be real.

The sky above him was the bright blue of a September morning, but it was streaked with coils and swirls of pink, yellow, white and purple clouds. There were birds as large as cars flapping steadily through them, being chased by butterflies so big you could have ridden on their backs. Their wingbeats blew a cookie-dough smell right into Ed’s face.

Ed got carefully his feet. The ground beneath his socks wasn’t stable, and it certainly wasn’t the laundry-covered carpet he had been standing on a moment ago. It was creamy-coloured and squishy. Ed poked a toe into it to see if it had any give, and the whole ground began to shake. A rumbling noise filled Ed’s ears – a loud roar that seemed to be coming from . . .

He turned around to see a face – a head – complete with antennae and eyes on stalks and a gaping mouth big enough to swallow a bus . . . and realised he wasn’t standing on ground at all. He was standing on a soft neck part of a gigantic SNAIL.

And it was LAUGHING.

Ed gawped in horror as the snail laughed HO HO HO! It actually seemed to be . . . smiling?

‘THAT TICKLES!’ the snail boomed. One of its eyes on stalks peered down at Ed. ‘DO IT AGAIN?’

Ed screamed. There was no way he could ever have held it in. The scream unbalanced him and he slipped down the soft (though not at all slimy) body of the giant snail to the ground. He landed on luminous green grass with a thud, skidding on all fours before scrambling upright and running for his life.

Where in the name of Bel was he?

He tried to make sense of it all as he ran. He’d been sat on his bed at home, Elodie had passed him the sea-glass, and then . . . he was here. Wherever here was. Ed’s socks slipped on the grass and he looked around himself in a panic.

This place was . . . weird.

He had been too busy running away from the snail to notice at first, but as he slowed down, he realised he wasn’t alone. There was a slow procession of teddy-bears walking lopsidedly down a path that seemed to be made out of squares of chocolate. That was definitely a river of strawberry milkshake not too far away, and why did that tree seem to be growing bunches of money instead of apples?

Ed stopped running, and stared. A party of brightly coloured robots to his right randomly started break-dancing, as a team of mice dressed like ninjas rolled a huge wheel of cheese away in the opposite direction. Ed could see multicoloured inflatable rings floating down the lazy milkshake river, each one carrying a bunny rabbit, one of which was reading a newspaper. There was a fairy painting a rainbow in the sky using a drippy tin of paint, as a space-rocket with gleaming white and red paintwork shot past it, the crew waving out of the portholes.

This . . . was impossible.

He realised his mouth was open and he could taste Irn Bru, his favourite pop. He accepted this last oddness with a vague nod. Things couldn’t get any weirder.

Or, maybe they could.

‘Are you alright?’

Ed spun around and found himself face to face with a red-haired girl about his own age wearing waders, a yellow raincoat and what looked like a sealskin scarf wrapped around her neck. ‘Who are you?’ he blurted.

‘I’m Estha,’ she said. She took a step back, as if to look at him properly. Her blue eyes started to widen. ‘Who . . . who are you?’

‘I’m . . . Ed,’ he said, cautiously. He felt like a bug in a glass case.

Estha was staring at him now, mouth open, eyes popping. ‘Are – are you an Artezan?’ she asked, her Scottish accent the most comforting thing Ed had experienced in the last ten minutes. ‘How did you get here?’ Her eyes were flitting about all over Ed from his socks to the top of his head as if she couldn’t quite believe he was real.

‘I am an Artezan, and – and I don’t know, I just held this and . . .’ Ed held the sea-glass out in his hand. ‘Where is here?’ he asked helplessly.

Estha looked carefully at the bead of glass in his hand but didn’t answer his question. Her freckly face was scrunched up in the same expression Ed wore in maths lessons. ‘Are you . . .’ She reached out, and prodded Ed in the chest. ‘Oh, wow.’ Her eyes went wide as she walked around him, as if checking he was three-dimensional. ‘Oh wow.’

Ed swayed a bit from the poke and the inspection, feeling light-headed. ‘What is all this?’ he asked. ‘Where am I? What’s going on?’

Estha’s frown softened a bit, but her eyes were still wide. ‘But you’re real. You’re a real Artezan, right here. We thought . . . we’d given up hope of there ever being . . .’ Her eyes suddenly shone as if she wanted to cry.

‘We?’ Ed was too worried to ask what the girl had been hoping for. Nothing here was making any sense at all. He touched at his own chest. He felt real to himself. And her poke had felt real too. ‘Where am I?’ he asked again.

‘You’re in Tìr Aislingean,’ Esther said. She cast a hand around as if to indicate everything from the bunnies to the space-rockets. ‘We live here, me and all the others.’

Ed’s mind stretched back through time to try and remember the games he and his dad played about words. Scottish Gaelic was one language they played in, and the word sounded so familiar . . .

‘Tìr is “country”,’ he remembered. ‘Or “land”? The land of—’

‘Of dreams,’ Esther finished.

Ed blinked. ‘The land . . . of dreams.’

‘Aye.’ Estha cocked her head to one side. The sealskin scarf dropped to one side, the tail flapping down. ‘Did you really not mean to come here?’ She sounded as amazed and bewildered as he felt.

‘No, I just . . . I only got my Reveal yesterday, so . . .’ Ed looked at the pearl of glass he held, and realisation ignited inside him. ‘Oh, wait, I get it – this must be my tuil! I don’t just create threads of dreams like Nyx, I can come here, to the land of them!’

He suddenly felt so filled up with excitement he could have floated off into the strange multicoloured sky. He had a power! And not just any power – he had travelled to a whole different world. That was the greatest power he had ever heard of! He was going to be celebrated, congratulated, as much as Elodie was, maybe even more! He laughed out loud, and punched the air, whooping for joy.

‘I knew it couldn’t be something ordinary!’ he shouted. ‘I knew it!’ He thought of that deep, dark purple aura and felt utterly vindicated. He was powerful, just like his twin.

Estha watched him with a delighted expression. ‘You didnae expect this?’ she laughed.

‘I didn’t even know what my power was.’ Ed danced over, grinning so hard his face ached. ‘My vision was something dream-like, I guess, but I never thought of something like this! I’ve never heard of this sort of magic, before! I didn’t even know there were other worlds!’

Another bubble of laughter escaped Estha’s mouth. ‘Aye, well, it has been a long time since we had a Dream Laird!’ she said. Her look of amazement had changed to one of admiration, mirroring Ed’s grin back at him.

‘Dream . . . Laird?’ Ed stopped in his celebration, taken aback. He hadn’t expected his magic to come with a title. ‘What does that mean?’

Estha nodded. ‘There are dream-crafting Artezans of course, but they only help provide the threads of dreams, don’t walk amongst us the way you are now. I’ve only ever heard of Dream Lairds doing that, and . . . it must be more than four hundred of your years since we last had one of those.’ She stared at him in wonder. ‘We thought we’d never have one again.’

Ed felt his head swim. He wished there was someone with him who would understand what a big deal this was, or Elodie who would have been just as lost as he was but always managed to make things feel less intimidating. This was something huge. There was magic, and then there was this. It felt enormous – too big to look at, like the sun gleaming over the Firth.

‘So . . . what does a Dream Laird do?’ he asked. ‘I’ve come here, but . . . why? And how do I get back?’ he added, suddenly realising the sea-glass was no longer glowing and didn’t look any different than when he had first picked it off the beach.

Estha smiled. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘You need to meet the dreams.’

10

Dreams and Stories

Ed was completely surrounded.

Everywhere about him were all manner of gnomes, pixies, ragdolls, talking toadstools, wizards, astronauts, puppies and kittens, adventurers, baby dragons and even a swarm of electric-blue mice (all of whom were wearing spectacles and taking notes in tiny notepads).

Ed had followed Estha through the Land of Dreams, walking in amazement past Candy-Stripe Lane, the Forest of Fairy Tales and Tree-House Heights. The world seemed to be organised a bit like a sprawling city, broken up into different neighbourhoods with colourful signposts and decorations signalling which sort of dreamy area you were about to wander into. By the time they turned left at the Not-So-Wild Woods, news of Ed’s arrival had spread throughout the land, and there were many dream-beings waiting in a clearing to meet him. Fairies, fluffy teddies, talking owls and shiny robots all craned to get a look at him as though he was a celebrity.

The whole thing was uncanny, and rather than making him feel celebrated, it made him feel quite awkward.

‘We have a new Dream Laird!’ Estha cried as she steered Ed into the centre of the woodland clearing. ‘Everyone, this is Ed!’

A cheer rose up from the assembled creatures. Two of the gnomes head-butted each other in excitement. Ed grinned nervously, not really enjoying being the centre of attention but also not wanting to appear ungrateful.

‘It has been too long a time since we last had a Laird!’ A tall elf wearing a suit of armour and a long flowing cloak did a dramatic bow before him. ‘We are proud to have you in our realm, Edward. I am sure I speak for all of us when I say you are most welcome.’

Ed blushed. ‘Thank you. So . . . all of you . . . are dreams?’

‘We are characters in dreams,’ Estha said from where she sat perched on a rock. ‘Dreams usually follow a sort of script, either one thought up by the dreaming person, or provided for them by a dream-crafting Artezan. These scripts are supposed to be placed throughout Tìr Aislingean, for us to pick from.’

‘My teacher said something like that,’ Ed said. ‘They said that they knitted threads of dream-stories, and sent them . . . well, here, I suppose.’

‘Well, that’s the idea. And then we dream-characters visit the sleepers and walk through their minds,’ Estha said, nodding. ‘Once we have a dream-script to follow, we add our own talents and magic to the story to spin the sleeper a rich tale to live through in the dark.’

‘Fresh Artezan-crafted dreams are the best ones,’ the armour-clad elf said. ‘They’re the dreams that feel real – deep in sensation, emotion and feeling. The ones that linger long after you open your eyes.’

Ed let all this new information settle into his mind like water poured on to the baked soil of a forgotten houseplant. ‘So if you get your dream-scripts from people like Nyx – the dream crafters,’ he clarified, ‘then what’s my job? What does a Dream Laird do?’

‘Brings the scripts together, and weaves them into rich dreams,’ Estha said. ‘Look around you – do you see any dream-scripts?’

‘I don’t think I’d know one if I saw one,’ Ed said, glancing about. ‘Is it a book?’ He was imagining a script-book like they used in drama class.

‘A dream-script can be anything.’ A white cat with one blue eye and one green stepped forward, and licked his front paw before continuing in a surprisingly deep English baritone. ‘It simply needs to be an accessible part of this world. In the past, dream-scripts were woven into leaves and petals of flowers that grew in fields many dozens of miles wide.’

‘Think of dream-threads like jigsaw pieces,’ Estha said. ‘Each thread, created by an Artezan, is a single piece. You need a lot of them to make a whole picture, a whole script, a whole dream. And you need somewhere to store them.’

The cat gave a chirrup in agreement. ‘But for centuries we have had no Laird . . . and as a result, the scripts are hidden from us.’

‘Hidden?’ Ed blinked.

‘They’re here somewhere,’ Estha said, waving a hand through the air. ‘We can feel that they’re close by. But as there’s no Laird, there’s nowhere for the threads or scripts to go. We could search until the end of time and never find them. They could be hidden in a breath of wind, a thought, a drop of water . . .’

‘So every dream that’s been created by an Artezan,’ Ed said slowly, ‘is just . . . waiting somewhere for you? And has been for . . .’

‘Over four hundred of your years,’ Estha said. ‘It’s difficult to be precise. Time passes differently, here. Neither faster nor slower, just differently. It cannae be measured the way yours can.’

Ed thought about all the dreams, created by Artezans like Nyx Oneiros in his world, just left to float about, hidden and unseen. ‘So . . . you can’t visit any dreamers at all?’ he asked.

‘We can step into a dream conjured by the sleepers themselves,’ the white cat said, blinking his mismatched eyes. ‘But they lack the depth and security we need. We find ourselves in somewhat of a pickle: taking part in a dream is what sustains us – we are kept alive by belief, which is what dreams are steeped in. By never visiting a sleeper, we dream-characters would disappear and die. But,’ the cat raised a paw, ‘by visiting a shallow dream, an incomplete jigsaw puzzle of a dream, we also risk vanishment. A deep dream created by an Artezan is rich, nourishing and easy to step in and out of. A natural dream comes with the risk of the sleeper waking, or dropping the threads of their dream suddenly, changing the subject and the story without warning. When that happens . . . if we the dream-character are in the dream when that happens . . . when it vanishes, we disappear with it.’

Ed shivered. He thought of all the dreams he’d had that suddenly melted away, unfinished. Had dream-characters been lost when that had happened? He couldn’t stand the thought of it.

‘Belief keeps us alive,’ Estha repeated solemnly. ‘Since we lost the Dream Laird, we have also lost many dream-characters. Some went to visit sleepers and never returned. Others simply faded away, never to be seen again.’ She gave her sealskin a stroke. ‘Some of us are lucky, we’ve become legends and folk tales and people believe in us outside of dreaming. We won’t vanish because we won’t be forgotten.’

‘Of course! You’re a selkie,’ Ed realised, remembering the story from his Artezan book. ‘You transform into a seal when you put the skin on.’

Estha beamed, pleased to have her story recognised. ‘That’s right. I have existed for a long time, and probably will continue to do so – so long as my stories are still told.’

There was an undercurrent of agreement and conversation from the assembled dream-characters. Ed felt a sudden weight of responsibility – he couldn’t let any of them fade or be forgotten. Not even the giant snail deserved that, even if an enormous gastropod wasn’t exactly his idea of a peaceful dream.

‘So . . . what do you need me to do exactly?’ Ed asked. It was all very well being here, but where should he start? ‘Do you need more dream-scripts?’

‘Some, aye, but more than that we need a way to access them. It’s up to you to keep the balance of this whole world,’ Estha said. ‘You have to make sure that all of us get the occasional starring role in a dream so we don’t disappear. You have powers to unlock here, and I suppose that will take time, and practice. But Lairds of the past could send a crafted dream to a specific sleeper, or place us into an already scripted dream. And could create spaces within this land for new dreams to live. You’re the Laird of Dreams, in charge of it all; the dreams, the sleepers and the crafters.’

Ed’s mind delighted in this new knowledge. It was as though he was hungry to learn, in a way he never had been at school. He was being given permission to create stories – his favourite thing to do. He felt dizzy with anticipation. But this business with organising the scripts themselves . . . That seemed like a lot of responsibility to Ed. He put his shoulders back and stood straight. ‘I’ll do my best.’ The dream-characters cheered again, and he felt a little bolster to his courage. He could do this; he was meant to do this.

Except . . .

‘Wait,’ he said loudly, interrupting the cheering. ‘I don’t know how I got here. I mean, I know I used this,’ he held the sea-glass out, ‘so it’s got to be a tuil of some sort, but I don’t really understand it. I sort of used it without really trying to.’

There was a sudden current of chatter, all the dream-characters having ideas at once.

‘Now, now, quiet down,’ an owl hooted from a nearby tree (which seemed to be growing bright red toffee apples). ‘Let’s take it in turns. If anyone has an explanation, please raise your wing. Or whatever appendage you have.’

One of the blue mice scrambled up the tree to a low branch, where it sat puffing for breath, paw in the air. It had a tiny notebook under its other arm and a pencil behind its ear.

‘Yes, Klaus?’ the owl hooted.

Klaus the Mouse twitched his whiskers before squeaking. ‘The method of transportation seems to be a simple energy transfer,’ he said. ‘The sea-glass is a holder of potential magical energy, no doubt because it was created twice.’

‘Created twice?’ Ed asked, trying not to worry about the fact he was talking to a blue mouse. ‘Twice made! Like, the fjords of Norway, or . . . the Moray Firth?’

‘Indeed,’ Klaus said. He took the pencil from behind his ear and began scribbling in his notebook. ‘Not all tuils are twice made, but things created twice have magical properties by themselves. In this case: first, the glass was made from sand being heated to extreme temperatures; second, it was transformed into sea-glass by the ocean. Twice made.’ The mouse twitched his whiskers. ‘Something that has undergone two extreme changes would be infused with magic, making an especially fine tuil.’

‘But how did it get me here?’ Ed said. ‘I only held it. I didn’t do anything with it. It’s not like it has a “Take-me-to-Dreamland” button.’

Klaus folded up his tiny notebook. ‘I suggest we go back to the moment you held the sea-glass tuil. What were you thinking?’

Ed tried to remember. One of the pink bunny rabbits at his feet looked up at him with adorably large eyes. ‘I . . . I was worried, and annoyed, and didn’t want to be handed glass by my sister,’ he said.

Klaus nodded. ‘Interesting. You were feeling some strong emotions, and magic often clings to those, so those feelings may have activated your tuil.’ He looked at Ed expectantly. ‘Was there anything else?’

Ed swallowed. ‘I wanted not to be there, I guess.’

‘And then, you were not there.’

‘You mean . . . I wished myself away?’ He was shocked.

‘Nothing so imprecise. Your intentions were to travel, and you did so as soon as you had the means.’ Klaus began writing in his book again. ‘I hypothesise that if you concentrate hard enough on going back to the waking world, whilst holding the sea-glass, you will be able to go back there.’

Ed looked at the nugget of sea-glass in his palm. ‘When I held some the first time after my Reveal, it didn’t take me anywhere. It just . . . dissolved into sand. And the sea-glass I’d collected . . . the whole jar it was in had smashed, somehow.’ Even saying it out loud made Ed feel out of sorts.

‘A great magical activation event,’ said Klaus. ‘A tuil is unique to the Artezan, and your magic is not ordinary, Ed. Perhaps another powerful energy transfer, in the activation of a great collection of your tuils, all stored together, damaged the jar, and caused the glass to turn to sand. Practice will make perfect. There may be other false starts ahead of you before you truly get the hang of using your tuil, and your magic here. There is a great deal to learn.’

‘Practice makes perfect,’ Ed repeated. Magic certainly was more complicated than he’d thought. He looked down at the glass in his hand. It seemed that he was going to need the time summer camp gave him, after all.

Elodie screamed as Ed, dishevelled and windswept and with his hand full of sand, reappeared on the bed. ‘What just happened to you?’ she yelled.

Ed sat up, sand getting all over his bedclothes. ‘How long was I gone?’ he asked.

‘About ten seconds,’ Elodie said, staring at him in shock. ‘What happened?’ she repeated.

Ed grinned. ‘You are never going to believe this one.’

The twins sat on the top beam of the fence that surrounded their garden, looking out to the summer camp that was gradually being illuminated with lanterns and fairy lights that hung between the tents, caravans and motor homes. The evening sky was still deep blue, but a few stars had come out and were starting to shine even before the sun had set properly. A ghost of the moon had joined in. Across the camp, the multicoloured flags were flapping in the evening wind like tethered birds. There were coils of smoke rising from barbecues, and the strong smell of camping gas from those who had brought burners with them, along with a growing scent of cooking.

Ed felt far too excited to even think about food. ‘Laird of Dreams,’ he repeated for the millionth time, just to taste the words.

Elodie gave him a soft look. ‘You wanted a big power. Doesn’t get much bigger than that. It’s what people expected from us, being Cranes.’

‘I know.’ His smile dropped a fraction as he realised they’d both got a wonderful power, that they both fit perfectly into the family that had chosen them . . . But they wouldn’t know for sure how much of their magic was from their family, and how much was from their blood. It was a bittersweet thought, that by accepting their powers were inherited through being Cranes, they could avoid acknowledging the origins of their birth.

It was one thing to accept a gift from your chosen family, and another not to know what opportunities a different path might have offered you.

The weight of responsibility suddenly seemed very heavy on Ed’s shoulders. ‘D’you think I’ll be able tae handle it all?’ he asked his sister.

‘I’m sure you will. You have the summer to get it all right, no one’s an expert at first.’ Elodie stopped as Mr Biscuits came through the long grass, miaowing grumpily. ‘Oh, be quiet, of course he’ll be able to handle it,’ she retorted. Then glanced at Ed. ‘Sorry.’

‘Good to know he’s got as much faith in me as ever,’ Ed muttered. ‘Tell him I know a blue mouse who could give him a run for his money.’

Mr Biscuits chirruped in interest.

11

Rain and Bridges

The next morning, Ed couldn’t wait to get back to Tìr Aislingean. And he didn’t plan to go alone.

‘Come with me?’ he whispered as he stirred his Weetabix around his bowl.

Elodie’s eyes went wide, but she stayed calm as Baba was busy making cups of tea on the other side of the kitchen. ‘Aren’t you going to tell them about your magic?’ Her eyes flicked over to the parent in the room.

‘In a bit. I want to hear more about dream-scripts, first, and try to work out how I can find them. So – will you come with me?’

Elodie’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘You think I can?’

‘Won’t know til we try.’

The twins bolted down the rest of their breakfast and ran to Ed’s room. He fished a piece of sea-glass out of the bucket and held his hand out for Elodie to take – his right in her left. She held on, expectantly.

‘Now what?’ she asked.

‘Shush, now I have to concentrate . . .’

Ed screwed up his eyes and concentrated hard on that magical land of stories and adventure. He thought about Estha and Klaus and those break-dancing robots.

‘It’s not working,’ Elodie said, interrupting his thoughts.

Ed sighed in annoyance, opening his eyes. ‘D’you mind?’

‘Sorry . . .’

Ed gave their clasped hands a shake, feeling the bead of glass rattle about. ‘I don’t understand. Maybe I’m doing it wrong.’

Elodie didn’t say anything, but she had a worried look on her face.

‘I just thought that if I concentrated—’ A sudden gust of sweet-smelling wind whipped out of nowhere around him, and with a rush like a passing train Ed found he was standing in what looked like an old-fashioned town, except that the buildings were changing sizes ever so slowly before his eyes, and the road turned into a sandy beach halfway down the street.

He was also alone. He looked at the Elodie-shaped empty space beside him, at his hand clutching nothing but his sea-glass.

Oh.

Apparently she wasn’t allowed to come with him. Or maybe he still wasn’t doing it right. He sighed and scuffed his shoe against the sand, letting the fresh-smelling wind buffet his hair.

It was also raining, and when Ed licked his lip he could taste bubblegum. The droplets were pooling into puddles that reflected the rainbows overhead, and each time Ed stepped in one, wee rainbow puddles jumped up and splashed with a tinkling musical sound. His disappointment over leaving his twin behind soon vanished.

Ignoring the weirdness of this world, and how the steadily growing and shrinking buildings made him feel slightly seasick, Ed went up the street away from the beach, looking for a dream-person to talk to. If he was going to organise these dream-scripts, he needed to know more about them. He couldn’t stand the thought of more dreams fading and disappearing whilst he figured out his magic – he wanted to learn fast. He was thinking about Estha, and wondering where she might be, when she suddenly appeared beside him with a ‘pop’ sound, making him jump.

‘Oh, hullo,’ she said cheerfully. Estha was wearing bright yellow wellies that matched her raincoat.

‘Hi,’ Ed said, trying to look cool, calm and collected and not like a half-drowned rat. He wished he had an umbrella; he was getting soaked. Suddenly, there was one in his hand, already open, its sparkling blue fabric protecting him from the downpour. Maybe this was part of the magic of the Land of Dreams? Anything you wished for coming true . . .

He was just feeling smug about it when a second umbrella popped into his other hand. And then a third rolled over on the ground. And another half a dozen fell out of the sky like stunned birds.

‘I don’t think I’m doing this right,’ he said helplessly, watching as another four umbrellas sprang out of the ground like daisies.

Estha started to laugh, covering her mouth and trying not to snort as even more umbrellas bounced off the two Ed held. ‘Stop thinking about them!’ she giggled.

‘That’s like telling someone not to think of a pink elephant!’ Ed cried, but shut his eyes and made himself focus on the sweet-smelling air, the taste of bubblegum, the cobbles beneath his trainers . . .

He risked opening an eye. ‘Has it stopped?’

‘Stopped,’ Estha confirmed.

Ed let out a sigh of relief.

A tiny umbrella, as tall as Mr Biscuits, popped out of the ground half-heartedly. And then, there was nothing.

Ed tried not to feel embarrassed about it. ‘Where did you come from, anyway?’ he asked Estha. ‘You just sort of . . . appeared.’

‘I was over at the fishing village.’ She pointed somewhere off in the distance. ‘They’re having a goldfish race. I felt your need for me, and I came to find you.’

Ed almost asked what a goldfish race involved, then changed his mind. ‘I wanted to ask you . . . as Dream Laird . . . how do I, like . . . find these pieces of dream-scripts? You said they could be anywhere, invisible.’

Estha nodded. ‘They’re not hidden in the way you’d hide a present from someone. They can’t be accessed, until they have a place to be. The old Dream Laird created fields of poppies, and each petal was a script. To become part of the dream, we picked a petal.’

‘So, I could do that?’ He couldn’t believe it.

‘Maybe not right now,’ Estha said, glancing at the umbrellas. ‘I think you need a wee bit of practice with your magic before you’re up to creating something like that.’

Ed felt rather put out, but it was true. ‘I need to exercise my powers, then. Can I tell a dream-person what to do?’

Estha beamed. ‘Of course! Your words, your commands, are the most nourishing kinds of dream-scripts to follow. And you can send a dream-creature out to a certain type of person. Children who’ve had a bad day at school might need a happy adventure. Someone who’s worried about a competition might benefit from a dream of winning.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘I miss those days. The scripts would point us in the direction we were most needed, and the auld Laird was so kind . . . we aways felt she would listen to us, and help us.’ She brightened a little. ‘You can send specific people dreams too, as a treat. Like your friends.’

Ed’s heart hurt slightly – Estha’s assumption that he had friends was painful. ‘Or family, maybe,’ he said.

‘Yes!’ Estha gave a wee hop of excitement. ‘D’you have someone in mind?’

Ed thought about it, looking up so he could see the candyfloss clouds, the colourful space-rockets soaring overhead and the multicoloured wings of the angels swooping between the raindrops, chasing each other as they flew happily through the air.

He remembered Elodie saying how she’d always wanted to fly. He hadn’t been able to bring her with him, so maybe this would work as a consolation prize. He turned to Estha. ‘My sister,’ he said. ‘Could I send her a dream where she gets to fly?’

‘That’s an easy one,’ Estha grinned. ‘Just call down whoever you need.’

Ed didn’t really know what she meant by call down, but he looked up at the winged beings playing their games again, and thought about how much he needed to speak with one. ‘Erm,’ he cleared his throat, ‘excuse me?’

There was a sudden rush of feathers that caused a gust of wind so strong it nearly knocked Ed backwards. He regained his balance as a group of people, all with brightly coloured wings, landed in front of him, looking expectant.

‘You called for us, Laird?’ one asked, almost shivering with excitement. The dream-folk were whispering together in glee.

‘I, er, want to send you out,’ Ed said. ‘To give someone a dream. A nice one,’ he added quickly.

‘Our dreams are always pleasant,’ the winged being said. ‘Who is this dream for?’

‘My sister, Elodie. She’s always said she’d love to be able to fly,’ he said. ‘So if she could . . . have a nice time?’ He shrugged. ‘She has this cat she’s obsessed with as well, maybe he could be involved.’

The dream-folk’s faces lit up with smiles, and a few of them took to the air as if unable to contain their feelings.

‘It is so good to be given a true purpose again!’ the tallest cried. ‘To be directed to a sleeper! Yes, Dream Laird, we shall find your sister, and we promise to give her the flight of a lifetime.’ And with that, all the dreams took to the air, flapping hard as they rose up into the rose-pink sky, and then vanished.

Ed stared after them. ‘They’re gone,’ he said, knowing how Elodie would have ribbed him for pointing out the obvious.

‘Into her sleep,’ Estha said.

‘But it’s daytime?’ Ed said, confused.

‘Time doesn’t work the same way here as it does in your world,’ she said. ‘It can bend and twist and roll. When we find a dream to walk into, the dreamer is asleep. The time taken to step between our world and their mind might be one second, or hours. But to us, it always feels instant.’

Ed tried to think about that properly but it made his head hurt. ‘Right. Well, that’s one dream,’ he said, cheerfully. A bit more practice and he could start thinking about these missing dream-scripts again. ‘What’s next?’

He looked around for inspiration, at the colourful houses, rainbow puddles, loose umbrellas and popping-candy flowers that lined the road. It was all so . . . pleasant.

If Ed had been the sort of boy whose life was problem-free and without worry, he might not have noticed how strange this was. But he frowned, as a thought nudged him in the brain. ‘Hang on . . .’ he said slowly, ‘how come everything here is so nice? I mean – not all dreams are nice, are they? Some of them are downright terrifying. Where are the nightmares?’

The mood suddenly shifted, as Estha’s face fell and her happy stomping in puddles came to a stop.

‘Did I say something wrong?’ Ed asked.

‘Not wrong,’ Estha said, starting to look uneasy. ‘Just . . . It’s not really something we . . .’

Ed stepped forward. ‘Estha, what is it? I’m not daft, this is such a wonderful place, but it can’t be all there is. Where are the bad dreams? The nightmares?’

Estha dragged the toe of her welly-boot over the cobbles as if she didn’t want to speak. Then she glanced behind Ed, as if something had drawn her attention, though she didn’t want it to.

Ed didn’t miss it. ‘What’s over there?’ he asked. ‘What are you hiding, why won’t you tell me?’

Estha looked up at last. ‘Come with me. It’s easier to show you.’

Ed remembered watching a film once where a character had to cross a really unsafe-looking rope bridge, and at the time Ed had declared that he simply wouldn’t have done it even if there was a solid gold pig on the other side.

The bridge he stood looking at now made the one in the film look like a newly-constructed steel platform by comparison. This bridge, if it could really be called that, was barely wider than his foot – just a stone splinter jutting out from where the bright green grass of Dreamland came to a cliff’s edge, like the one in Covensea. Except there was no beach below this cliff. The long splinter of rock reached out into nothingness, vanishing from sight into a thick darkness that rose from impossible depths below. The other side, if there was another side at all, was hidden in a dark shroud of fog that ate the light and erased the way ahead.

There was no way to see how far the fall would be.

Ed stared at the thick fog that hovered midway over the bone-thin bridge. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. For a moment, the fog seemed to be staring back at him, and he felt his blood rush in a response of electric anxiety. He looked away, and took a couple of deep breaths. ‘Is there anything out there?’ he asked.

‘There’s another side, alright,’ Estha said. ‘But we’ve not set eyes on it for so long. Not since the Fracture came into being.’

‘The Fracture? You mean, this . . . gap?’

‘Aye. There used to be just the one realm, you see – all the folk of dreams and nightmares living alongside each other, visiting and going back and forth between the different parts of the realm. We kept to our own zones, if you like, because there’s always going to be somewhere you feel naturally comfortable, but we came together, socialised, made friends. Until there was . . . a conflict.’ Estha’s expression turned more troubled still, and she stroked her sealskin.

‘A conflict?’ Ed asked. ‘Like, a war?’

‘It might have become a war, if things hadn’t changed. We dream-people heard that those who called themselves nightmares were planning to rise up against us – that the nightmares wanted to erase us from the worlds entirely, wipe our dream-countries away. They wanted all human belief for themselves.’

Ed swallowed, thinking of the wonderful and weird places he had seen in Tìr Aislingean so far. To imagine them erased made him feel sick.

Estha went on, ‘Fearing for our existences, we told the Laird what we knew. She went off to deal with the uprising on the nightmare side, to protect us . . . but she never came back. And the day she left, there was a terrible storm. Fog rolled across the land, the ground shook and thunder crashed overhead for hours. When the fog finally cleared, and the pounding rain stopped, the realms of dreams and nightmares were separated. The Fracture had appeared, splitting what had been one world into two. And the poppy field of dream-scripts that used to be here,’ Estha cast her hand around at the barren landscape, ‘burned and drifted away into ashes. And when more scripts came into this world, they had nowhere to grow.’

‘So your Laird disappeared, and the world split in two?’ Ed confirmed. ‘And you couldn’t access the dream-scripts any more? When did this happen?’

‘Around four hundred of your years ago. In this world, it feels both very recent, and a long time ago. Our memories stay fresh, and time cannot be measured, here.’ Estha looked out at the Fracture, with a sorrowful expression on her face.

Ed followed her stare out into the mist. He felt a curious pull; an urge to walk across that splinter of rock and into the fog to see what lay beyond. It was as if his bones itched to move, though the rest of him wanted to stay exactly where it was. It was as if a voice, without sound, was whispering to the magic in his blood. Edward.

Ed took a deliberate step back, away from the feeling. ‘So . . . now that there are two worlds, split apart, does that mean there’s a Laird of Nightmares too?’ he asked. The fog seemed to roll as he spoke, as if threatening to come closer. Ed bit his lip.

Estha shook her head, and began to walk away from the Fracture, back to Tìr Aislingean. ‘We don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’ve had no word from the land over the way for centuries. Perhaps the Fracture was given to us as a gift from the Laird, before she vanished, as a way to keep us safe. We’ve had no Laird since, and magic here has never been the same.’

Magic has never been the same . . .

Ed didn’t reply, but Estha’s mention of magic had reminded him about the ancient Master Artezans, their sudden departure, and the way magic in his waking world had never been the same, either.

That had happened four hundred years ago too.

Could it be a coincidence?

Elodie was less than pleased that she hadn’t been able to join Ed in the Land of Dreams, but she picked him up off the floor when he reappeared, damp from the bubblegum rain and bursting with things to tell her.

‘Apparently there’s a world of nightmares, too. Sort of connected to the dreams, but out of bounds,’ he said as they got out the house. The summer camp timetable that day included Artezan yoga, and the twins wanted no part of it. They slipped into the woodland around the garden instead, walking without direction through the paths that had been trodden into place by feet over decades past.

Elodie was listening to Ed without interrupting, but Mr Biscuits, who had deigned to join them, was giving a miaow of opinion every time Ed paused for breath.

‘The two realms got separated from each other ages ago, and their previous Laird disappeared.’ Ed explained what Estha had told him. ‘She said it happened more than four hundred of our years ago. And I realised – that’s the same time as the Artezan Masters “decided to give up their magical powers”, as Granny M puts it.’ He shook his head. ‘But if you listen to Mrs Shah, she says the Masters just vanished. And Dad says that’s the story Bibi and Babu tell too.’

Elodie’s face had been serious as she listened, and she bit her lip for a moment. ‘That’s one heck of a coincidence, Ed. Two massive magical events happening at the same time? Two vanishings at the same time?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t think it can be just a coincidence. I think the old Dream Laird was one of the Artezan Masters, whoever they really were. What if we’ve been told the wrong story all our lives? If the Masters didn’t decide to give up their magic, if it wasn’t a choice . . . then what if that affected everyone?’

‘You mean, what if that’s the reason magic started getting weaker for all Artezans?’

The twins exchanged concerned looks.

‘And there’s never been a new Master of any kind for close to four hundred years,’ Elodie said. She gave Ed the sort of sceptical look only a sister can deliver. ‘This might sound mad, but . . . do you think you being the Dream Laird is like being an Artezan Master?’

‘No,’ Ed said, and was surprised he felt genuinely relieved. ‘It’s pretty clear we’re not the same. The way the dream-people talk about her . . . it’s like she was a god.’ They must be disappointed they’ve got me, he added silently to himself.

Elodie considered. ‘So, what do we do?’ she asked. ‘Should we tell Dad and Baba about your power, then? And that we think these two things were connected?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Ed kicked some scattered pine cones as he walked. ‘I don’t even know enough about dreams yet. I need to learn more about the world itself, first.’

‘Then you should find out more. We both should,’ Elodie said. ‘There’s no kabin-time tomorrow, is there? Let’s go bother Nyx.’

12

Truth and Tribulations

Nyx lived in Covensea, a short walk away from the Portakabin studio, in a mid-terraced house on what might be called the ‘main road’ that ran through the village. The twins had been to a gallery on the same road before with Baba, to deliver a painting, and they remembered the way.

Pleading with their parents to be let off joining in with making the five-bean-salad lunch they were being threatened with that day, and pointing out that visiting Nyx could only be good for the development of Ed’s magic, the twins set off on the walk through the woods. Both of them were eager to see Nyx and ask the questions they had burning. Ed was particularly keen to learn more about someone with similar magic, without Poppley listening in to the conversation.

‘Did you have a good sleep?’ Ed asked his twin as they set off.

‘I did, actually,’ she said happily, smiling. ‘I had an amazing dream. Me and Mr Biscuits grew wings – these gorgeous pastel-coloured wings – and we went flying up to the islands and we saw all these cows having a tea party, and one of them was away to dig for buried treasure . . . and then Mr Biscuits and me flew down to the beach too and started . . .’ She trailed off at the grin on Ed’s face. ‘What are you cheesing it up for?’

‘No reason,’ Ed said, but unable to hide his expression.

Elodie wasn’t stupid. Her eyes went wide. ‘Ed – did you send me that dream?’

He nodded. ‘What d’you think?’

‘It was wonderful,’ she said. ‘Wow. You sent me that dream?’ She stared at him in wonder. ‘Ed . . . thank you.’

‘That’s alright!’ He beamed. ‘I’m glad it worked out. I was pretty nervous to tell you the truth.’

‘It definitely worked,’ she laughed.

They arrived at Nyx’s house, and looked up at the Victorian building with its tiny garden and rusting front gate. Someone, probably Nyx, had yarn-bombed the pillar-box just on the corner of the pavement, and on the house itself there were knitted flags and bunting trailing from windowsill to windowsill, and then out into the wee garden where it got tangled in the hedge that cut the garden off from the thin strip of pavement. The flags had been rained on, and some of them were shrunken or even had tiny mushrooms growing on them.

Ed rang the bell, which was the old-fashioned kind you had to pull on, and put a smile on his face as Nyx came to answer it.

There were some rather worrying crash noises from inside the house, and the sound of at least four locks being turned before Nyx wrenched the door open. ‘Oh,’ they said, pushing a pair of reading glasses up their nose. They were wearing several knitted rainbow scarves, the balls of wool still attached to some of them. ‘It’s yous. What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Ed said, feeling like that wasn’t quite true, ‘I just wanted to ask you about dreams.’

‘Can’t you ask me in class?’ Nyx sounded exasperated.

‘I just . . . don’t want everyone listening.’ Ed blushed.

‘Please?’ Elodie added.

Nyx sighed through their nose. ‘Alright, come in. D’your parents know you’re here?’ They shut the door as Elodie confirmed that they hadn’t come in secret. ‘Take your shoes off.’

Ed kicked his trainers off and looked around as Elodie undid her shoelaces. Nyx’s house was decorated in greys and pale colours, which might have been very calming if it hadn’t been for the balls of wool, knitting needles and hooks, granny squares and blankets covering every surface. There was an enormous knitted tapestry hanging in the hall, depicting two hands holding needles, knitting away so they seemed to be creating the very piece of artwork they were a part of. It was a strange optical illusion, the sort of thing you’d see in a dream, or perhaps a nightmare. Ed wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.

‘Coffee?’ Nyx offered, wandering into their tiny kitchen.

‘No, thanks,’ Ed said, trying not to pull a face.

‘Suit yourselves. Go through into the lounge.’

The twins went in, stepping over plastic bags filled with balls of wool piled up like there’d been an avalanche. Knitting needles stuck out of plant pots, mugs, the footstool, even the fake plastic coals in the boarded-up fireplace. There were more of the knitted bunting flags hanging from each corner of the ceiling and congregating on the overly ornate chandelier in the middle, while the television screen was obscured by a huge blanket knitted in all colours of the rainbow. On the sideboard, there were framed photographs of Nyx and their friends at festivals and concerts. Ed wasn’t overly surprised to see Finevan was in most of them, a pencil and notebook clasped in his hands, his shy face and sandy hair at the edge of each picture, looking almost exactly the same in every shot. In fact, whilst Nyx’s hairstyle and fashions changed in every photo, Finevan didn’t seem to look any different at all.

‘How many sheep d’you reckon this is?’ Elodie whispered, touching some of the blankets and interrupting Ed’s thoughts. ‘About a million, I think.’

Ed snorted, and tried to turn it into a cough as Nyx came through with a tray with a pot of coffee and two glasses of orange squash.

‘So, you wanted to know about dreams?’ they asked, putting the tray on the coffee table – the only empty space in the room.

‘Aye, so, how does your power work?’ Ed asked, avoiding talking about himself for the moment. ‘Dreams never seemed magical to me, until my Reveal.’

‘Ah, well, dreams have always been known to be intensely magical,’ Nyx said, pouring a coffee that oozed out of the pot like gravy. ‘Even non-magical people have their own myths and legends about sleep – the idea that you might see the future in your dreams, or that wishes give you good dreams. Then there are the mythical creatures associated with dreams. The Sandman, and so on.’

‘Yeah, Dad mentioned that,’ Ed said. ‘He sprinkles sand into your eyes? Sounds awful, I think.’

‘Indeed, who wants sand in their eyes? Hardly conducive to a good night’s sleep, if you ask me . . .’

‘But none of that is real?’ Ed asked.

‘I don’t think so. I’ve certainly never heard any proof of anything besides Artezan intervention. But why don’t you tell me what’s really troubling you, hm?’ Nyx stirred the tar in their mug with a know-it-all expression. ‘You’ve found your magic, haven’t you?’

Ed took a deep breath, then quickly explained how he had discovered his Artezan power, the sea-glass and Tìr Aislingean. He explained about the travelling, being the Laird and about the Fracture that had cloven the worlds of dreams and nightmares apart. As he told it, he felt an undercurrent hum under his skin, as if by simply mentioning the Land of Dreams, he was recharging his magic. Or perhaps he merely wanted to use it again.

To his surprise, despite the story being completely cracked, Nyx didn’t look like they thought it was a joke, only extremely interested. They nodded in all the right places, and when Ed came to the revelation about the Fracture at the end, they actually nearly dropped their cup.

‘Well, that was something I’ve never heard before,’ they said, sitting back in their chair when the story was over. ‘Travelling to a whole other world? The world I’ve been sending my dreams into? That’s phenomenal. That’s old magic.’

Ed tried not to squirm. Before the Reveal, he had been deeply worried about not having a special magic power, but now that he had one, it almost felt embarrassing. Being in a special group of talented people felt . . . off. Elodie was the one used to being special. Ed was so unused to being praised and held up highly that he felt as if he’d lost his balance.

He shrugged instead, not knowing how to express his mixed-up feelings. ‘So, that’s me. The Dream Laird, apparently. But this dream-girl, Estha, she said their last Laird disappeared four hundred years ago. The same time as the Artezan Masters.’

‘The Pillars, you mean,’ Nyx interrupted.

‘That’s what Mrs Shah called them!’ Ed said. ‘Pillars support things, she said. Like . . . they were supporting magic.’

‘They were.’ Nyx picked up a pair of knitting needles and examined the points. ‘I don’t like the word Masters, it makes it feel as though they were in charge with all the other Artezans doing their bidding, which wasn’t the case at all. They were a supportive presence, who used the magic to help their community.’

‘Then, why do we get told they were Masters?’ Elodie asked.

‘Look, history is a slippery thing,’ Nyx said. ‘It all depends on who is telling it, what words they use, and what lesson they want you to learn from it. So-called “facts” can be seen differently from various points of view. It doesn’t mean any version is entirely correct.’

‘Dad said the same thing,’ Ed said, with a frown. ‘But, if the Pillars, or Masters, were supporting magic, and now they’re gone . . . what’s stopping magic from, I don’t know, crashing down?’

‘Don’t take it too literally, Crane. Magic isn’t a structure that can fall,’ Nyx said. ‘But the fact there are no more Pillars, or Masters, has resulted in some changes. The greater distribution of magic, for one.’

‘But it’s not just that it’s found in more people,’ Ed pointed out. ‘Magic is getting weaker too. And – and the time when the Masters, or Pillars, went away . . . that’s when the Fracture happened in Tìr Aislingean.’ He spread his hands like he was presenting a show.

Nyx’s eyebrow twitched. ‘You think these two events are related.’ It wasn’t a question.

Elodie fidgeted. ‘They could be, couldn’t they?’

‘Or it could be a coincidence.’ Nyx tapped their needles together for a moment and then stood up swiftly and went over to the wool-draped bookcase in the corner of the room. ‘Lucky for you, some of us study Scottish history . . .’

‘The Masters were in Scotland?’ Ed asked.

‘They have always been in the north,’ Nyx said, pulling books out and checking the covers. ‘Scotland, Iceland, Alaska, Scandinavia . . . anywhere you have a chance of seeing the Aurora.’

Ed nodded. He had seen the Northern Lights plenty of times and loved them as much as any Artezan. The colourful markers of magic against the night sky were better than fireworks.

‘Here we are . . .’ Nyx brought over a book. To Ed’s surprise, it wasn’t an ancient tome bound in human skin, but instead was a slim, bendy modern book. ‘Don’t you know anything about judging books by their covers?’ Nyx retorted, seeing his expression.

‘What is it?’ Elodie asked.

‘It’s a transcript – a write-up of a collection of Artezan stories. My mother used to travel and collect them and then write them down. Someone has to guard our history . . .’ Nyx flipped through the book. ‘Before we got so squeamish, Artezans would talk about what happened to the Pillars all the time.’ They turned to a section with a bold title: The Artezan Trials. ‘This is where the Pillars stop appearing in our stories.’

Elodie breathed in sharply. ‘You think the Masters had a Trial?’ she asked.

Nyx gave her a rueful look. ‘It’s a theory I’ve had for a while. Think about it – they were the most powerful people in the world. Easy to track down, easy to find. And they vanished mysteriously. It’s something Finevan and I have been trying to research, but information is pretty scarce.’

Ed realised he was anxiously picking the skin from his thumb, and made himself sit on his hands. ‘What if they did have a Trial?’ he asked miserably. ‘What if someone killed them?’

There was a horrible silence. Many Artezan families had been lost during the Trials – it was a period of history that had changed things forever. The fear of what Artezans might do had taken hold of the non-magical world, and for years Artezans suffered under the witch trials which aimed to find out how magical an Artezan was, and how much of a threat they could be. Some were badly hurt, others suffered worse fates still. By the time the Trials ended, and the last bonfires were put out, the wounds in the collective Artezan psyche were deep.

Nyx sighed. ‘It’s never been confirmed that the Trials were to blame,’ they said softly. ‘But so-called witchfinders were operating fiercely at the time the Pillars disappeared. For the Artezan community to have lost their leaders in a Trial . . . that sort of news would have broken them. It’s taken many years for the magical and non-magical communities to begin to forgive and forget the Trials. A revelation like that . . . heck, even an accusation . . . could be very dangerous. Perhaps the truth was – and is still – being kept from us for that very reason.’

Ed felt soaked through with misery.

‘Artezan Trials don’t happen any more,’ Elodie said, trying to get rid of the cloud of sadness that had gathered in the room. But her perpetual cheeriness just didn’t seem to have the right effect. She deflated slightly. ‘Having magic is normal, isn’t it?’

Nyx shrugged. ‘Normal’s what you make of it, Elodie Crane.’

On the walk back to The Nest, Ed didn’t feel any better. The talk about the Trials had made him feel a bit sick.

‘I sort of wish we hadn’t asked,’ he said eventually.

‘Same.’ Elodie trudged beside him. ‘It isn’t as though we can turn back time. It is what it is. The Masters existed, and then they didn’t.’

‘You’re right. We can’t bring them back. Maybe in the end it doesn’t matter why they disappeared. They just did. And that Fracture between the worlds of dreams and nightmares exists, however it arrived. I need to deal with what’s in front of me for a change.’ But even saying it felt exhausting. Ed’s enormous magical power now felt like an enormous magical responsibility, and he hadn’t even been able to keep a cactus alive before.

Elodie looked at him, her normally happy face blank with worry. ‘Are you going to try and get across that bridge? To the Land of Nightmares? You might find more answers on the other side.’

Ed tried not to shudder at the memory of it. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘The bridge looked . . . not good. You know when your gut just tells you to avoid something? I don’t think I want to try it, but maybe you’re right about what’s on the other side. Maybe there’s another way across.’

She nodded. ‘Alright. You know more than me about what it’s like. You should tell Dad and Baba about your power, though. You can’t hide it from them forever. They’ll want to know. They’ll be proud of you!’

‘I know I should tell them,’ Ed said miserably. ‘I just hope it’s . . . what they want.’

Elodie scoffed. ‘What d’you mean? It’s hardly something forgettable!’

‘I mean . . . like . . . My aura was so dark, and with the nightmares . . . I wanted a big power, but not one that scares people.’ Ed almost said it, then. Said how much he was desperate to be like his twin, with all her gifts, luck and friends. She had her wonderful, celebrated power, her clever brain and her popularity. And Ed . . . had always been two steps behind her. He wanted to explain to Elodie that even though he had a great magic, he still wanted to be like her because the vacuum left inside him from the lack of, well, everything . . . it was still there. He really wanted his parents to be proud of him, to see he’d done well and to reassure him that he was finally an equal to his sister.

But he couldn’t do it. It wasn’t Elodie’s fault she was so perfect. It wasn’t a fault at all. He had lived with it for eleven years. He could go a wee while longer. He patted her arm.

‘Thanks for coming with me today,’ he said awkwardly.

‘Don’t be daft, of course I’d come with you. We’re a team.’ She smiled at him. He had to smile back.

13

Ruins and Nightmares

Dad and Baba were delighted when they heard about their son’s power. Ed had never felt quite so much the centre of attention as they asked about his tuil, the Land of Dreams, the adventure he’d had. Dad started to make him his favourite dinner, whilst Baba asked for detailed descriptions of all the dream-characters and the places in that other world, so he could imagine it all properly.

‘I’d love to illustrate that world,’ he said as they sat at the table. As usual, he was splattered with paint he’d been too absent-minded to scrub off. The summer camp barbecue outside was being ignored in honour of Ed, and the four of them together in the steamed-up kitchen felt cosy and comfortable. Baba raised a hand as if painting in thin air. ‘The unexpected colours, the animals . . . I wonder if they have weather there?’

‘It rained,’ Ed said. ‘It was bubblegum-flavoured.’

Baba gave a sigh of longing.

‘It’s wonderful, Ed.’ Dad put a steaming dish of meatballs in sauce in the middle of the table. ‘What a power!’

‘So much for the Sandman,’ Baba added. ‘Turns out it was Artezan magic all along. It often is, when you start digging at old myths and legends and miracles,’ he said, waving a hand dismissively.

‘But travelling to another world altogether!’ Dad went on enthusiastically. ‘That feels like old magic. Powerful magic. Not that we doubted it for a second,’ he added quickly, ‘you are a Crane, after all.’

‘An adopted Crane,’ Ed pointed out.

‘As if that makes any difference,’ Baba snorted. ‘Your family is your family.’

‘Isn’t blood meant to be thicker than water, according to the saying?’ Ed asked, his earlier nervous musings suddenly rushing back at him.

Dad rolled his eyes as he brought over the large spaghetti fork. ‘That’s what non-magical people say. Artezans invented that saying, and the full phrase is: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”. That means that your chosen coven, or family, means more to magic than the circumstances of your birth.’

‘Where you come from is always important,’ Baba added gently. ‘Where you’re going is even more so.’

Ed badly wanted that to be true. His magic was strong, same as his sister’s, Dad’s and Baba’s. Same as Granny M’s. And his bibi and babu, Baba’s parents, were also powerful Artezans in their own way. But belonging and fitting in felt like two different things, and Ed was quiet for a moment as he rolled over in his mind that there were things about himself, and Elodie, that they would never be able to explain without unearthing their past.

But Ed felt a warmth run through him as he looked around the table at his parents, his sister and even Mr Biscuits (who was sitting on one of the spare chairs and scowling, waiting for someone to give him some tomato sauce to lick off a plate). Elodie was sneaking him small bits of cheese, whilst cutting her meatballs into quarters. Dad and Baba were trying to be diplomatic over the last slice of garlic bread, the kitchen windows were reflecting the glow of the lights inside, and Ed felt such a rush of love and safety that he wanted to laugh.

His worries about this summer seemed softened, more pliable, easier to work with.

‘I think I’m going to try to get to the world of nightmares, next,’ he said, spearing a meatball. ‘It might not be accessible by that spindly wee bridge, but I was thinking I could be able to get there just using the sea-glass, if I concentrated on it enough . . .’ He trailed off, looking at his parents’ worried expressions. ‘What’s wrong?’

The dads exchanged a glance, before Baba spoke. ‘It concerns us,’ he said in his calm voice. ‘This . . . world of nightmares. How do we know it’s safe?’

‘They’re just dreams,’ Ed said, feeling his happy feeling starting to deflate a touch. ‘They’re not really real.’ But even as he said it, he wondered if that was true. Klaus the mouse and Estha the selkie-girl had certainly seemed real when he talked to them. It was about belief, she’d said – dreams needed to be believed in. Well, Ed certainly believed in them, but were they real?

‘They might be imaginary for others, yes,’ Baba said. ‘But you really went there, Ed. Your body was actually transported to this other place. What happens if you get hurt there? Or stuck there?’

Ed hadn’t considered this. ‘I . . . don’t know.’ His happy feeling had entirely gone now, cooled as rapidly as his spaghetti.

‘Exactly.’ Baba put his cutlery down and folded his hands together. ‘Dreams are one thing, but nightmares? I don’t know about you, but I’ve had some terrors in the past. What if a nightmare became real for you?’

Ed tried not to shiver. ‘I guess it would be scary. But . . . the Land of Nightmares used to be part of Tìr Aislingean. A long time ago. Surely that means I have to take care of it, too?’

‘If you can’t get there easily, I’d say not,’ Dad jumped in. ‘It sounds to me as though that place was separated for a reason. Your friend, Estha, mentioned a conflict. Perhaps you should listen to her.’

Ed glanced at Elodie, who was suddenly very interested in chattering softly to Mr Biscuits. The twins hadn’t mentioned their Artezan Fracture theory to their parents, and this conversation seemed to indicate that maybe they shouldn’t. Their dads were wary enough of the other realm without bringing new fears and old legends into it as well.

‘OK,’ Ed said, tasting the lie. ‘I won’t go there.’

He could feel Elodie’s eyes move to him, but kept his own eyes on his plate.

Ed dug out Dad’s old fairy tale books that evening. They were a mixture of traditionally published volumes with fancy covers, and leather-bound Artezan books which crackled as he turned the pages. Ed had read them all voraciously in the past, enjoying reading stories as much as he liked writing his own, but he hadn’t picked these books up in a while, thinking them too babyish.

He turned the pages carefully, flicking past descriptions of selkies (he smiled, thinking of Estha and her yellow raincoat and sealskin scarf), pixies, the Loch Ness Monster, and Artezan characters like Mother Nicneven and the Gyre-Carlin. It was funny to think that imaginary creatures had been an explanation for real magic and Artezan powers all along.

Later that night, when the household had settled down for sleep, and the moon outside had risen behind a thick curtain of cloud, Ed counted how many pieces of sea-glass he had left. He was worried about accidentally using one of them as a tuil, so he had shaken them all on to the carpet from the jar (his dad had replaced the sand bucket with a new tall mason jar with an airtight lid), and was moving the scattered pieces one by one into one big pile using a wooden spoon. The old utensil clunked musically against the sea-glass. He had to be quiet, as it was midnight.

There were seventy-six of them altogether. Seventy-six trips into the Land of Dreams felt like a lot. And it wasn’t as though he couldn’t get more sea-glass; the beach often had more for him to collect. As tuils went, they weren’t exactly common but as long as he planned ahead and didn’t let the jar get too empty, he would be fine.

Using the spoon again, Ed returned all but one cloudy-white piece to the jar. He examined it on the carpet. He had to admit, it didn’t look very magical. But then, tuils generally didn’t. In the old stories, tuils were depicted as household objects like brooms, walking sticks or cooking pots.

Trying very hard not to think of travelling anywhere just yet, Ed pinched the pebble of glass to pick it up. It sat in his palm looking like a weird sort of bean.

‘Alright. Nightmares,’ Ed whispered to himself. ‘Travelling to a land of nightmares.’

He attempted to empty his mind, but it felt extremely full, with guilt over what he was doing, worry about his parents discovering him, anxiety about where he might end up and lingering disappointment over Nyx’s theory about the Artezan Masters and the Trials.

‘Not now, brain,’ Ed sighed. He tried to mentally stuff all his thoughts into a drawer to deal with later, like he did with his unpaired socks.

There was a sharp screech outside the window, making Ed jump. It was just an owl, he realised, but now his nerves were on edge. Out in the garden, there was a rustle of leaves and then a high-pitched squeal that cut short.

Ed exhaled slowly. He let himself feel the familiarity of his bedroom and the dark warmth of the summer night closing in around his vision.

He squeezed the glass tight in his fist.

. . . and nothing happened.

Ed opened his hand, feeling more than a little put out at the lack of magic. His confidence gave another lurch inside him. He shut his eyes tight and squeezed the sea-glass once more, feeling the smoothness of the pebble dig into his fingers, as he focused on the darkness halfway across that bridge in Tìr Aislingean, on the idea of nightmares and travelling to the forbidden.

Then . . .

The pebble of glass dissolved into sand in his palm. Ed gasped, panic seizing him as he tried to cup the sand in his hands. The glass was gone entirely, undone. He sighed, annoyed at himself, and dusted his hands off, letting the sand settle into the carpet.

Klaus the mouse was right, he did need to practise. But it was difficult when he felt all mixed up, and now annoyed that he hadn’t been able to do it right as before. It was like the umbrellas that wouldn’t stop appearing – the more he tried not to think about it, the worse it seemed to get. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this – Estha had been frightened of the land over the bridge, his parents had told him not to travel there, and all the worry and guilt fogged inside him so it was difficult to think straight.

Ed lay back on his bed for a few moments, staring at the ceiling, letting the worries whirl around inside him. He knew they weren’t about to go away, but maybe if he just let himself feel them for a wee while, he could ignore them.

And it worked.

Taking a steady breath, Ed scooped another piece of sea-glass out with his wooden spoon, and let it drop neatly into his hand. And this time, the magic was immediate.

There was a blast of wind from nowhere, rocketing around his bedroom and sending his lost socks and old books tumbling. It tornado-ed around the bed, spiralling upwards in an invisible gust that blew up to the ceiling. Ed gasped as the bedroom rushed and blurred before his eyes, and the bed beneath him vanished. He was moving, travelling . . .

Ed staggered slightly as he landed, hand still tight on the piece of glass. A cold smell hit his nostrils before anything else, and he felt the ground firm beneath him. He was relieved to feel he hadn’t landed on a gigantic snail again. His other senses registered only that it was dark, and quiet.

He put the glass bead in the pocket of his dressing gown and looked around him carefully.

Was this the Land of Nightmares?

As his eyes adjusted, Ed could make out his surroundings a little more clearly. It was a shadowy place, half-forest and half-fields, with grey and black trees. Dusty grass crushed like shards of matchsticks beneath his slippers, and there were heaps of grey powder resting in clumps over the ground here and there, like dust neatly swept up and then forgotten about. The landscape was flatter than Covensea, and it looked as though someone had applied a harsh black and white filter over it. A squashed-looking grey toad was sitting at the base of a blackened tree. There was a pale line that snaked through the grey grass under his feet, like white ash scattered to show a path.

A flock of splintery-looking birds flew shrieking overhead, making Ed jump slightly. Heart thumping as he recovered, he squinted into the distance, and saw the silhouettes of what were perhaps hills, looking ghostly and smoke-like. The whole place looked half-dead, and it seemed to be drifting away even as Ed watched the shadowy hills. It reminded Ed of a charcoal drawing, like the ones Baba did when he was planning what to paint, how the small specks of charcoal clung to the paper before they were blown away, leaving a smoky trail as they went. The ashen sky and coal trees were blurring in a fierce wind that seemed to whip at the environment but not at Ed himself. It was as though he was standing in the eye of the storm, but when he took a step forward, the strange barrier that kept the wind and dust from touching him seemed to move with him.

It was chilling.

There were flashes of deep black across the colourless sky, like tears in a dirty cloth, and Ed noticed a stale sort of smell that made him think of empty houses, or cardboard boxes left out in the rain. One of the outbuildings in the grounds of The Nest – the leaky one that the colony of bats slept in over the winter – had that same smell of forgotten rain, and disuse.

Ed steeled himself and began to walk, the strange undergrowth crackling under his slippers. The gloom of the land seemed to part for him as he moved forward, curtains of darkness separating to reveal clumps of bushes amongst the trees, and what looked like a sundial sticking up in the middle of a small clearing. Marks of civilisation, at least. But nothing, and no one, alive.

If this was the Land of Nightmares – and Ed felt certain it must be – it appeared to be deserted, devoid of creatures or people besides the birds and that one toad he’d seen. A cold feeling crawled over Ed’s skin. What if something terrible had happened here, and it had destroyed everything – the Dream Laird, the nightmare world, everything altogether?

The memory of the Fracture made him shiver, imagining the destruction and force that must have been needed to blast two worlds apart.

As he turned to take a look behind him, he paused. To his right, now his vision was sharpening, he could just make out what looked like the ruins of a building.

A large building.

A very, very large building.

Ed began walking towards it, letting the shape of it grow against the strange blur of the distance. When he got close enough to see the ruins clearly through the grey mists, he stared up at them until his neck ached.

The ruins were hard to understand. There was the remnants of a tower at the front, topped with a conical roof that was missing most of its tiles. Some of the remaining walls around it stretched high into the sky, but in other places the same walls looked to have been only as tall as a regular house. The overall shape of the original building was difficult to make out – the rooms might have been curved or straight, the walls thick or thin, windowless or spaced out with glass, there was no way to tell. There were broken wooden posts, wrecked piles of greying bricks, and dust was blowing in great clouds in and out of the few remaining columns and doorways.

Something immense and impressive had stood there, once. Ed had no idea what it might have been. Maybe some sort of church, or castle, or—

‘Looking for something?’

Ed nearly jumped clean out of his skin.

14

Shudder and Ruin

Ed spun around to face a boy about his own age. He was wearing a threadbare and raggedy T-shirt, jeans with holes in and nothing at all on his dirty feet. The boy’s white skin was grubby with grime and dust, his eyes large and tired-looking, and his lank brown hair fell long past his collarbones. He also wasn’t blinking, which Ed found extremely unnerving.

‘Who are you?’ Ed asked. And what are you? he added mentally.

‘I’m Shudder,’ the boy replied. He looked past Ed at the wreckage, then back at Ed’s face with an expression somewhere between confusion and suspicion.

What a strange name. Still, Ed had heard stranger ones on the register at school. He tried to stand up straighter. This wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He’d been steeling himself to face nightmares and terrors of all kinds, but instead was talking to a kid who seemed a bit weird but not frightening. Shudder didn’t seem like a nightmare, but why else would he be here, if he wasn’t?

‘Are you a nightmare?’ Ed asked him straight out. ‘This is the Land of Nightmares, right?’

The boy kicked at a stray stone, his big toe carving a line in the dirt beneath his feet. Thin dust swirled into the air. ‘Yup. This is Tìr Mulad-oidhche.’ He stared hard at Ed again, his big unblinking eyes reminding Ed of the dark pool at the bottom of a well.

‘Oh . . .’ Ed glanced around. ‘Are you on your own?’

‘At the moment. Not forever.’ Shudder slowly looked Ed up and down as if deciding which bit of him would go well with ketchup, then frowned. ‘You’re no nightmare. What are you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Ed was taken aback. Wasn’t it obvious? ‘I’m a . . . human.’ A sixth sense somewhere in his gut told him that saying he was the Dream Laird probably wasn’t a wise move at this exact moment.

Shudder stared, wearing the same expression of disbelief that Ed had seen on Estha’s face when she’d found him. ‘That’s impossible.’ He reached out and poked Ed hard in the shoulder, fingernail first.

‘Hey!’ Ed rubbed his shoulder. That had hurt. He suddenly remembered what Baba had said about things being real here, and it made him feel anxious. ‘I am a human, honest. I’m an Artezan,’ he added, deciding this nugget of the truth might help Shudder trust him.

Shudder was still looking at Ed as if expecting him to vanish at any second. It was unsettling.

‘Why’s there no one else here?’ Ed asked.

‘Well, we’re close to the Fracture,’ Shudder said. Like Estha, the boy’s voice had a soft Scottish accent, but his was airy and thin, as though it had been stretched and worn out, become full of holes like an old jumper left to the mercy of moths. ‘And there’s no much worth salvaging from that heap of rubble any more. Most go further west for scrap material.’ He stepped back once, as if to see Ed properly, and pulled a face at what he saw.

‘Scrap,’ Ed said slowly, trying to make some sense out of the boy’s words without being offended by the look he was giving him. ‘Do you build things then?’

‘Not personally, but some nightmares do.’

This boy and his vagueness were extremely irritating. Ed wondered if he was related to Greg Poppley. The landscape was drifting and changing behind Shudder, who was still peering curiously at Ed like he was a specimen in a jar. ‘Look, is there someone else I can speak to?’ he asked, thinking back to the gathering of dream-characters who had helped him learn about the place. ‘Someone . . . in charge?’

Shudder hesitated. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again, his tongue darting out and moistening his lower lip before he answered. ‘Bold of you to assume anyone’s in charge here,’ he said with a sniff.

Ed was getting annoyed now. He snapped, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not exactly scary. I thought nightmares were meant to be scary.’

Shudder rolled his eyes. ‘It’s a function, not my entire personality. I’m allowed to have time off, aren’t I?’ He curled his bare toes into the dirt like a monkey gripping a tree-branch.

‘I guess,’ Ed said, feeling bewildered. ‘So when you’re not being a nightmare professionally . . . you just live here?’

‘We exist here. I don’t know if we’re technically alive.’

Now that gave Ed the creeps, even with his previous musings about whether dreams were real or not. He swallowed. It seemed like he might not meet any other nightmares, so he might as well ask Shudder his questions. ‘Do you know anything about the Fracture?’ he asked.

‘Only that it’s the only thing keeping the other lot out,’ Shudder said, jerking a thumb over his skinny shoulder. ‘There’s the bridge, of course, but they don’t have the nerve to cross through the fog. A good thing, too.’

‘Wait – the Fracture is keeping the dreams out?’ Ed blinked in confusion. ‘You don’t want them coming here?’ It was the exact same story Estha had told him, only the other way around.

‘And have them destroy us, are you mad?’ Shudder’s eyes were wider than ever.

‘Destroy you?’ Ed couldn’t imagine Estha or Klaus the Mouse destroying anyone. And they had seemed pretty scared of the nightmares, themselves. This was confusing – both dreams and nightmares each seemed to think the other was the enemy. Which one was right? ‘Are you sure that’s what would happen?’

Shudder sighed. ‘Look, Mr Artezan, you’re new here and we’ve not exactly had a lot of dealings with humans. But I’ll give you a potted history. Four hundred years ago, by your measure, there was a strife. We heard the dreams were planning to rise up against us and try to wipe us out. They didn’t want to share the realm with us any more, so we fled, and our mightiest nightmares created the Fracture to keep us safe.’ Shudder’s eyes glittered. ‘The dreams are our enemies, Mr Artezan. We’re cut off for our own safety.’

Ed wondered where these rumours had come from, but felt that saying anything at all that questioned Shudder’s story would be unwise, so instead he turned back to the rubble. ‘And this?’ He gestured at the ruins. ‘What happened here?’

‘No one knows for sure. It happened around the time of the Fracture. Probably collapsed when the ground split, or maybe the dreams broke it into pieces, who knows. There’s a lot of ruins close to the edge of the Fracture. Farther out we have the Screaming Mountains, the Endless Mazes, the Dinosaur Arena and so on. It’s the most desolate here. Well, besides the Desert of No Return, obviously.’

Ed tried to think straight. The Land of Dreams and the Land of Nightmares weren’t two worlds close together; they were one single world that had been split into two. But neither side seemed to agree on why that had happened, or who was behind it. Something strange was going on. Stranger than travelling to another world, even.

Shudder was giving Ed another curious look. ‘I’ve heard of dream-weaving Artezans, but they don’t actually come to our lands. What kind of Artezan are you?’ He squinted, as if suspecting Ed was hiding something.

‘I don’t know,’ Ed lied. ‘But every Artezan’s power is unique. I’m still discovering how mine works. It’s all new to me.’

Shudder looked rather nonplussed. ‘I see. Well, there’s a first time for everything, I suppose.’ He gave Ed a final once-over. ‘What’s your name, anyway, Mr Artezan?’

‘Edward. Edward Crane.’ For some reason, it felt necessary to give his formal name to this strange boy.

Shudder gave a wide smile. ‘Nice to meet you, Edward Crane.’ And he vanished into a wisp of smoke, leaving Ed standing quite alone besides the rubble and the dark.

Ed looked back at the ruined building behind him and wondered again what it had been like before. Perhaps some of those tall bits had been towers, and the wooden doors might have stood side by side, maybe with fancy windows next to them like a sort of dark fairy-tale castle . . .

To Ed’s shock, one of the piles of bricks suddenly stirred.

It shifted slightly, as if the bricks themselves were alive and listening to his thoughts. From within the heap of rubble there came a deep, aching creak of stone and wood as tiny scraps of stone rolled down the brick pile, disturbed from their places of rest. A thin stream of dust rose upwards, like a sleepy ghost that lingered until Ed’s breath scattered the particles into the dark.

Ed stepped backwards, suddenly fearful that the entire structure, or what was left of it, might come crashing down on top of him. His heart was picking up speed, and his parents’ warnings about the potential dangers of this place, and the danger his body was in, circled around his mind.

Suddenly, there was a sharp blast of noise, and the ground began to tremble.

Edward spun around, heart hammering loud as the blood rushed in his ears.

In the distance, the darkness that had been blurred against the horizon seemed to tense and solidify, wrapping itself into a shape. It loomed like the moon on the horizon, though rather than shining it seemed to eat up the light around it.

And then, it turned. Something in Ed’s mind registered that although the dark shape lacked a face, it was twisting as if trying to find something.

Or someone.

It paused, and was doubtless facing Ed. Looking down from nothingness, with the intensity of a stare. As if it could see him.

Something deep within the darkness flexed twisted claws of shadow, and reached out.

Ed’s body didn’t wait for his brain to issue a command. He didn’t even waste time with a scream. He just turned and ran into the woodland of skeletal trees behind him, bleakly hoping that the monster was too large to follow. The earth shook, and he could hear it pursuing him, its bulk shifting across the land with a sound quite unlike footsteps. It made Ed think of the rolling of tread on a tank, a constant rumble of menace that tore up the ground and did not pause for an instant.

The trees’ branches, looking like clawed hands with sharpened fingernails ready to catch unsuspecting creatures, parted as he charged into them so he didn’t so much as snag his trousers on the thorns. He didn’t stop to wonder why they allowed him through, or to notice how they closed up again behind him like a protective cage. Unlike the area of open prairie beside the ruins, the depths of the forest were ice-cold and Ed was chillingly reminded that he was only in his pyjamas and slippers as he ran through it.

There was a ROAR of outrage from beyond the trees as the monster found itself barred from entrance. Ed glanced back at the thing as he ran. It was a formless mountain of darkness, with no face or eyes or notable way of moving, and yet move it did – chasing along the treeline with another hideous deep rumble, like it was starving. It seemed smoke-like, though must be solid, or else it could have drifted to Ed through the gaps between the trees. Something must lurk at the centre of it. Ed had no desire to find out what.

The forest, however, was home to its own horrors. Ed skidded over a scummy puddle streaked with grey, releasing a stink that would rival any meat-filled wheelie bin left out in the summer heat. Maggots as large as hamsters writhed to the puddle’s surface, their round teeth-filled mouths biting and champing at air as Ed sprinted past. He ducked a snagging tree-branch, avoided colliding with a hideously-spongy-looking mass of dark veined pink something, and gasped with relief as he saw a clearing up ahead. And no sign of the monster!

Ed charged through the forest, his dark hair on end. Salvation seemed close at hand. His slippers beat up foul green dust from the dry earth as he approached the edge of the empty clearing. He could see it! He just knew that if he made it there he was going to be OK!

Relief flooded Ed’s veins, spurring him on to run faster, and—

He froze, grabbing frantically on to a tree trunk to catch himself and halt his momentum, his legs still trying to propel him forwards even after the top half of his body had stopped.

There was no clearing at all. It was a gigantic hole in the ground. A jagged splinter of rock reached thinly out across the great crevasse, over the trench of devouring blackness below, pointing like an arrowhead to the safety of the other side, but reaching nowhere.

With a jolt, Ed realised this was the Fracture again. Somehow, in his terror, he had run in a full circle through the forest and come out close to where he went in. His eyes flicked to the bridge – the Land of Dreams lay on the other side. Could he cross it? The strange fog rolled across the bone-thin bridge as it had when Ed was in the Land of Dreams, and once again Ed felt his blood stir as the fog seemed to entice him. To do what – step right off the edge of the world? Clearly it couldn’t be trusted. No, there had to be another way out of here.

There was another ROAR, and the forest behind him split open as the monster of darkness crashed through it, howling in triumph as it saw Ed.

Ed’s stomach dropped horribly as he turned to face the sound. There was nowhere to run. There was a monster in front of him and a crevasse of darkness behind.

It was coming for him. There was nothing he could do but . . . wait!

The sea-glass!

Ed fumbled for his pyjama pocket, hands shaking like mad as the darkness rolled towards him with incredible speed. Ed had once seen a video of a pyroclastic cloud after a volcanic eruption, and this looked just like that.

Panic took hold of him. He could barely breathe, his fingers were slipping on the bead of glass as he tried to hold it still, tried to clear his mind to focus on his magic—

It fell from his trembling hand to the ground.

Ed dived for it, snatching it up. He clutched it tight and thought fiercely of home just as the cloud of darkness fell on top of him, blocking out the light.

15

Angst and Arguments

Ed bounced off his bed with all the ceremony of a drunken fox on a trampoline, landing on the floor with a thud and an ‘OW’.

But he was, thankfully, in one piece.

He stared up at the dark ceiling of his bedroom, sand from the once-glass in his hand trickling out of his tight fist into the carpet. He was shaking. The sort of shaking you did when you were too frightened to believe that you really had survived. It was like he could still feel that mountain of darkness collapsing on to him, stealing his strength, his life maybe.

He never, ever, wanted to return there again.

Ed hauled himself into a sitting position. The clock on his bedside table showed he’d been gone just a matter of minutes, even if it had felt more like hours. Time really was different, there. And that wasn’t the worst thing about the place. He swallowed hard, thinking of the sudden terror as the darkness engulfed him.

He never should have gone to the Land of Nightmares. Why didn’t he listen to his parents? Why were they always right? It was very annoying.

He listened to the quiet of the house for a few moments, letting the calm and sleepiness of home soak into his skin. He was safe, here. They were all together.

Together . . .

Ed frowned, thinking about what the nightmare-boy, Shudder, had told him. That the dream-people had tried to destroy the nightmares. That didn’t seem likely from what Ed had experienced, and besides, Estha had told him the exact opposite – that the nightmares were the dangerous ones. Ed knew that it was often the people you least suspected who turned out to be the baddies, but after being chased by an Edward-eating monster made of darkness, he thought maybe the dreams were on to something after all.

That wasn’t a nice thought, but it settled into Ed’s mind and wouldn’t budge. But how could Shudder have seemed so . . . harmless, and that monster so . . . not?

He stood up, noticing that his pyjamas were covered in mud and dirt, and that his skin had scratches from the tree-branches. He was going to have a hard time explaining this.

Elodie listened to the story the next morning. She made for a very good audience, looking completely terrified for the entire thing, porridge dripping off her spoon back into the bowl – though she did make Ed pause now and then so she could listen to Mr Biscuit’s opinion on the situation, which Ed did not care for one bit.

Ed almost felt brave about it by the time he got to the end of the story, his escape the stuff of daring rather than the stuff of nightmares.

‘You cannae leave that place as it is,’ Elodie said, managing to bring her twin back down to Earth with unusual bumpiness. ‘Not if we think the Fracture might be linked to the Master Artezans disappearing!’

Ed spluttered. ‘What can I do? There’s monsters out there! Besides,’ he said, trying to be reasonable, ‘the dreams and nightmares seem to like it the way it is. They’re both scared of each other. It’s best just leave them be.’

Elodie didn’t argue, but she stirred her cooling porridge and wore a look that suggested she was planning on saying I told you so, later. ‘Seems a funny sort of separation, anyway,’ she said.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Well, you were scared out your wits by the giant snail when you first got to the Land of Dreams . . . But dreams aren’t meant to be scary, are they? So who decides what’s a dream and what’s a nightmare?’

He hadn’t been scared of the snail as much as the situation, but this felt like nit-picking, so Ed decided to ignore her. They were going to be heading back to the Portakabin for magic-practice that morning, and he was looking forward to telling Nyx about his powers – and he hoped Poppley, who still hadn’t figured out what his power was, would be there to overhear. He said as much to Elodie.

She just shrugged.

‘You think I’m being big-headed about all this, don’t you?’ asked Ed, annoyed because it was probably true.

‘Not exactly.’ She kept her eyes on her breakfast. ‘It’s just . . . you really wanted powerful magic, Ed, and you got it. You don’t have to brag about it.’

Ed gawped at her. ‘Are you seriously sitting there and telling me not to be proud of myself? After everything you’ve ever done?’

‘What? Where do I come into this?’ Elodie blinked rapidly at him. ‘What have I done?’

‘Oh, like you don’t know,’ Ed snapped. ‘You’ve never had to wait five minutes for someone to tell you you’re amazing!’

She stared at him for a moment. Then put her spoon down, picked up Mr Biscuits, and left the kitchen without a word.

Ed thumped the table. He didn’t often fall out with Elodie; there was no point because she was better at winning an argument, just as she was better at everything. But he didn’t need her telling him to downplay the one good thing that had ever happened to him. In Ed’s mind, he finally had the potential for people to stop seeing him as the lesser twin, the lesser Crane . . .

Why did Elodie have to spoil it?

Ed had wanted to swagger in and start bragging about his magic where Poppley could hear him as soon as he got inside the Oneiros Art Studio, but his enthusiasm for himself had withered on the journey. Elodie had walked sadly beside him the whole way, not saying anything and dragging Ed’s mood down.

When they arrived, Finevan the scriever was making a teapot full of strong tea, and Nyx was encouraging Rhea to deliberately choose a very specific shade of red to transform her leaves from an art book of paint colours. Meanwhile Lexi was holding a pair of scissors in each hand looking slightly lost as she looked down at an enormous dictionary, and Poppley was messing about with packets of plasticine.

It was all so . . . normal. Magic was just a part of who they were. It was everywhere in Ed’s life, and he’d spent years worrying he wasn’t going to get it at all. He and Elodie were beyond lucky, really they were, to both have been given such amazing gifts. They could have had nothing at all, been the end of the magical line in the family that had chosen them. Elodie was right, there was no need to rub it in for anyone – all the local Artezans knew what the Cranes were capable of, and that the twins truly belonged.

Ed looked at his sister. ‘I’m sorry.’

She didn’t ask what for. ‘Don’t worry about it. Seriously, don’t worry about it.’ She squeezed his elbow.

He nodded and carried on into the room. The Land of Nightmares seemed too big and scary to bring into this safe space – here, he could de-stress a wee bit. Finevan gave him a smile as he lifted the tea tray, his fingers tapping on the underside as if he was unable to stop typing even whilst on a break.

‘Fit like, young man?’ Finevan asked in Doric. His hair was tumbling into his eyes but he didn’t have a hand free to move it. He blew at it, ineffectually.

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Ed said. ‘D’you need a hand?’ He reached out to take the tray, and Finevan let him. With his freed hands the scriever fished a thick piece of elastic out of his pocket and used it to push his hair back out of his eyes.

‘Thank you,’ he said shyly. ‘I’m overdue a trim. I canna mine on to make time.’ Finevan seemed to be one of those Artezans whose powers really did interfere with everyday life, and Ed wondered how often he managed to get out of the kabin. The writer’s clothes looked a bit old-fashioned, and his eyes were very tired. There were people with bigger problems than himself, clearly.

‘Can you . . . stop writing for long?’ Ed asked, handing the tray back.

‘Oh aye, for short bursts. To sleep, and so on. I’m used tae it.’ He gave Ed a sad sort of smile. ‘Magic always commands a price, and I need to be canny-like with my time. Have you found the cost of your gift, yet?’

‘No,’ Ed said. ‘But I’ve figured out what it is. It’s . . .’ He paused, suddenly shy.

Finevan gave him an encouraging nod.

‘I can go to the Land of Dreams,’ he said quickly. Then blushed, suddenly embarrassed to say it out loud to someone he didn’t know very well.

Finevan’s eyes went wide. ‘Oh, michty me,’ he breathed. ‘That’s astonishing. What do your parents think?’

‘They’re happy, I think.’

‘And with guid reason. Congratulations, laddie. I’d shake your hand, but . . .’ Finevan lifted the tray apologetically. ‘You ken.’

Ed grinned, and let the scriever go, feeling lighter and heavier at the same time for having talked about his magic. He took a seat on the same table as Poppley, but on the opposite side, and decided to draw the Fracture between the two worlds. There was no way to know how vast the crack was, of course, but Ed imagined it to be as wide as the Grand Canyon, if not bigger.

Nyx came over as he started to sketch. ‘So this is the Fracture, I take it?’

‘Aye, it’s difficult to draw to scale.’ Ed added a rice-sized blob to represent himself on the page. ‘And you cannae see all the way across. It could be a million miles wide.’

‘I wonder. Your information about dream-scripts has been playing on my mind, since you mentioned it,’ Nyx said. ‘Where have all the dream-threads I’ve knitted gone to? Just floating about with no one to enjoy them? That doesn’t seem fair, to them or me.’

‘Could you knit yourself a dream?’ Ed asked.

‘Oh, I don’t dream.’

Ed blinked in surprise. ‘You don’t have dreams?’

‘No.’ Nyx cocked their head to one side as they looked at him. ‘Have you had a dream, since you had your Reveal?’

Ed thought about it. It had only been a few days since his Reveal, but he couldn’t remember dreaming since then. The thought of never having a dream again made him feel very strange, as if he’d suddenly noticed he was missing his nose. ‘Oh,’ he said, sagging slightly.

‘Sorry, Crane.’ Nyx put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Magic always commands a price.’

Ed shrugged. ‘I suppose it could be worse.’ He glanced at Finevan.

‘Of course it could. Now, I’ve got to help Lexi with this cutting-words-out power she seems to be cultivating. Let me know if I can be of assistance to you at all.’

Poppley looked up as Nyx walked away. ‘Like figuring out dreams would be difficult,’ he muttered. ‘Making up imaginary things? What use is that?’

‘Oh yeah, and what’s your power – making trees out of Blu-Tac?’ Ed snapped back, looking at the blobs on the desk in front of the other boy. ‘You’ve not even figured your magic out yet, so don’t come for me.’

‘I will come for you, in a minute.’

Ed snorted, and went back to his work.

‘Drawing again? Who’s it for, your boyfriend?’ Poppley said snidely.

A red mist dropped down over Ed’s vision, and his hands went still. There weren’t any other kids in Covensea with two dads, or even two mums, but the days of the Crane family being a novelty in the village were long over. It was only craggie old men with cotton wool hair growing out of their ears who looked offended at the sight of Dad and Baba holding hands these days, but even they never said anything. Ed wasn’t one for confrontation, but his family were off-limits.

He pointed the pencil at Poppley. ‘Think very carefully about what you say next, Gregory.’

Poppley shrugged. ‘Didn’t say nothing, anyways. Did I say it was a bad thing to have a boyfriend?’ He smirked as if he’d caught Ed in some sort of clever trap.

Ed realised he was grinding his teeth. ‘Just shut up, Poppley.’

‘Or what?’

‘You’re making my head ache, and if you don’t shut up, I’ll have to ding you one.’

‘Ooh, I’m really scared,’ Poppley said, standing up to get close to Ed. Ed was tall, but he was sitting down so Poppley had more than a couple of inches on him, and he leered down from them. ‘What you going to do – make me take a wee nap?’

‘Hang on, I’ll get you some Play-Doh so you can make some more blobs to attack me with,’ Ed snapped back.

Poppley snorted. ‘Maybe I don’t know what my power is yet. But I know it will have an actual use, unlike yours. Sounds like you’re jealous, to me.’

Fire shot under Ed’s skin. ‘Like I’d be jealous of you.’

But Poppley just laughed. ‘Ha. You are. I bet your parents can’t believe they adopted a dud kid like you when your sister is out there impressing everyone already. I bet they’re thinking about sending you back and getting a refund—’

Ed shoved him. It was instinctual, he didn’t plan to do it. In fact, he’d never done anything like it before, but his arms were doing the shoving before he had time to think about it. Ed’s push hadn’t been enough to knock him over, but Poppley staggered backwards. His wicked eyes glared. ‘Oh, you’ve done it now, Crane.’

Nyx was already coming over. ‘What in the hell is going on over here?’

‘Crane pushed me,’ Poppley said, with the lightning-fast reactions of the one who started it.

‘So I saw,’ Nyx said, giving Ed a poisonous stare. ‘Explain yourself.’

Ed opened his mouth to start doing just that, but then bitterness overwhelmed him and he found he didn’t care enough to try to defend himself. He snatched his drawing off the table, grabbed his rucksack and was out the door before Nyx could yell at him to come back.

It was unfair, unfair, unfair. It was all so horribly unfair!

So what if Ed’s power only worked when people were sleeping? He was a Crane! His family set up this summer school. And he had a dark aura, which meant he had strong magic. He could travel to another world for Bel’s sake! He hadn’t even needed to be born into his legacy to inherit it.

But Poppley’s words kept ringing in his head, and Ed felt his resolve cracking. Yes, he was the Dream Laird, but what good was that really? It sounded powerful, but Ed wasn’t even really sure what he was supposed to be doing. He’d spent years reading about great deeds, about Artezans who had toppled castles or survived being burnt at the stake or had mastered the power of flight. Ed had wished so hard to be one of them, and it had happened . . . but it was something no one except himself could ever see. No one would truly know what he could do, the places he travelled to or what he saw. It might as well be imaginary.

Ed marched home, wanting to head straight to his room, but the thought of coming across his parents made him avoid the house entirely. Instead he climbed over the fence into the field at the back. The area around the tents and camper vans was a hive of activity – an Artezan storyteller was visiting from Elgin, and Ed could see that she was regaling a rapt audience with true stories about magical adventures from the last several hundred years. From the way the adults were laughing it looked to be a good story, but Ed couldn’t bring himself to stay and listen. No one paid him any attention as he skirted around the edge of the campsite and into the woods.

Red squirrels skittered out of his way as he walked, and there was a distant thud thud that was probably one of the roe deer running for cover. Instead of quietening down for nature as he usually did, Ed stormed through the undergrowth, only pausing for breath when he got to the depths of the woodland where he and Elodie used to build dens. The difference between this forest and the woodland he had fled through in the Land of Nightmares was striking. Here, despite the density of the trees, the sunlight struck through to illuminate patches of bracken and dead leaves, there were birds singing and no cage-like branches enclosing his movements. It was a stark reminder of how safe his world was, compared to that one.

Ed paused, leaning against a moss-eaten tree in one of the patches of sunlight. There, the silence of the place finally seemed to win, punching the sound out of his movements.

He stood still, listening to his own heartbeat gradually slow and calm.

What was the point of his powers? He could send dreams to sleepers, but no one would ever know it was him. And even if they did, who would care? They were just dreams. He was the only person who knew how real they were.

Although . . .

He looked up, realising.

Perhaps dreams weren’t the only thing he could send.

16

Fears and Frights

Ed fished a chunk of sea-glass out of the jar, grabbing the first one his fingers touched. For a second, he thought about heading back to Tìr Aislingean, to speak to Estha and see if he could find out any more details about the truth behind the Fracture.

But he was still too angry to think straight.

He gripped the sea-glass tight, and wished himself away to the Land of Nightmares.

There was a blast of cold at his face, as though he had opened the door to a long shut-up house where the air was desperate to escape. It hissed, almost visible as it shot past his ears, the darkness behind him just as deep as in front. A more turbulent wind suddenly whipped around his ankles, pressing hard to mould his trousers to his legs before travelling up his body and whispering down the back of his neck. Ed reached out to get his balance, feeling the dusty surface beneath his trainers crunching, as though he was stepping on a thousand tiny beetles. A cold smell, like that of a deep cave, spiked into Ed’s nostrils, condensing into a taste that was dry and old and unwelcome.

He was back.

And he was alone.

It was very odd how there was no one (or nothing) about. In the Land of Dreams he couldn’t move for creatures, but here . . . there was nothing. Ed wondered if the realm of nightmares had always been like this, or if the place had changed after whatever happened with the Fracture.

The thought made him feel uneasy, because if this desolate landscape was the aftermath of war, it was easy to see which out of the two realms had fared the better. Even without the dream-scripts the residents needed to function to their potential, Tìr Aislingean felt welcoming with its busy landscape, warm sun and happy songs.

But this place, Tìr Mulad-oidhche, wasn’t just where nightmares lived, it seemed to be made of fear itself. The very air made Ed want to turn away

He looked around, nervously. He appeared to have landed in the exact same spot he’d come to the first time. If that shadow-monster came for him again, he planned to be out of here before it got close, and he patted his trouser pocket to feel the sea-glass for reassurance. As he cast his eyes over the charcoal landscape, the trees seemed to blow away like ash on the wind, only to regenerate over and over, their dead leaves vanishing into the sky again and again.

Fortunately, the place looked deserted when it came to monsters, at least for the time being. Taking a deep breath of cold air, Ed started walking in the direction of the ruins he’d examined the first time he visited. The ground crunched beneath his trainers and miniature clouds of dust rose up with each footstep, giving the impression that he was gliding through a low fog.

Ed found the nightmare-boy Shudder gathering sticks not too far from the ruins of the castle. He felt a ripple of surprise – he hadn’t expected to see anyone, and he supposed the boy must live somewhere close by. But where, he had no idea – there was nothing like a house anywhere to be seen.

‘Hey,’ he said, not knowing what else to say. The grey dust coiled around his ankles.

The boy looked around. ‘You came back.’ Shudder sounded astonished.

‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’

‘Aye, a bit.’ Shudder put his sticks down and tilted his head on one side. ‘You didn’t exactly seem to be taken with this place. And anyway, I’ve been puzzling over you.’ He looked Ed up and down, and gave a sniff. ‘You’re not just an Artezan. They don’t come here. No one can come here except for . . .’

Ed waited, the words Dream Laird sitting on his tongue ready to roll off and into the air.

But Shudder looked unsure of himself, and put a hand to his mouth. ‘Are y’an ordinary Artezan, or something else?’ His wide eyes shone in the gloom.

Ed almost blurted out who he really was, but Shudder’s expression made him cautious. He shrugged. ‘Like I said, every Artezan’s power’s unique. Anyway, I need you to do something for me.’

Shudder snorted. ‘Tha’s rich. We cannae be commanded, you know. We need a script tae follow. An’ there’s no scripts to be found hereabouts. Haven’t been for centuries. We drift into sleepers’ minds where we can, but it’s not as good.’

Same as the dream-people, Ed thought. They were very alike, exactly the same in fact, besides being called different things.

Ed shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less. ‘You don’t have to. I just thought you might like to get out of here for a while.’

Shudder’s eyes darkened and he straightened up. ‘You can do that? You can send me out? It’s been so long since I was given a task . . . are you really using nightmare magic? Can you weave a script for me? Is that your power?’ He looked almost frantic with need for answers, and his hands were clenching and unclenching as if trying to hold on to something.

‘I want you to give someone – someone specific that is – a nightmare,’ said Ed, sidestepping the questions. Shudder might have an idea about who he really was but it was starting to feel too late to say so.

Shudder looked as if he might cry. ‘You know we – we fade and disappear if no one believes in us. I’ve watched other nightmares vanish into nothing because they’d not visited a sleeper in so long. I was afraid that I was going to . . .’

Just like the dream-people again, Ed thought. ‘D’you want the job?’ he asked.

‘I’d be delighted.’ Shudder’s face lit up and he grinned, showing sharp teeth. He cracked his knuckles, and suddenly seemed much less carefree and a great deal more sinister. ‘Who’d you have in mind for a scare?’

‘His name’s Gregory Poppley,’ Ed said, ignoring the sudden jolt of guilt in his insides at Shudder’s expression. It was worth it – Poppley had this coming.

‘Aged eleven, currently residing in the field behind The Nest, Covensea, Inverness-shire,’ Shudder said as if reading off a list, his focus somewhat glazed before looking sharply back at Ed with ice in his eyes. ‘I know that boy. He has a presence here of his own. Other human children have had nightmares about him. That boy is a bully. And not a stupid one. Does he know your power?’

‘Yes.’ There was no point in denying it.

Shudder considered, his sharp teeth clicking together. ‘If he suspects you’ve sent me to him, he may take revenge on you in the waking world, and I cannae help you there. Do you still wish for me to scare him?’

Ed thought about it. He wavered just for a second on the point of saying no, then remembered the stabs of hurt he’d felt when Poppley had insinuated there was something to be mocked about being gay, the way Poppley had deliberately ruined his artwork, the way he’d implied Ed’s power was useless. ‘Yeah,’ Ed said at last. ‘He’s not worried about me knowing it’s him when he hurts my feelings, is he?’

‘A good point. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .’ Shudder cricked his neck and grinned, and Ed noticed for the first time that the boy seemed to have too many teeth. And . . . were his eyes a bit too big and dark? His body too angular? His shadow longer than one would have expected from a normal kid? Suddenly, for the first time, Ed completely understood that this boy was not human.

‘Erm. Be careful,’ Ed mumbled, not knowing what else to say.

‘Nothing can hurt me in that boy’s head,’ Shudder breathed. ‘It’s you who should take care.’ And he vanished into a wisp of smoke.

Ed felt lighter, like he’d got rid of something heavy he was carrying, though a small coil of worry remained in the pit of his stomach. Maybe Poppley would be after him for this, but that was something Ed could face. He rolled his shoulders, and tried to feel like a professional. This was all very strange, interacting with the beings of dreams and nightmares like they were ordinary people. But it certainly made the whole experience feel less lonely. Even if the company he did have was extremely creepy. Still, Shudder was only doing his job, Ed supposed. Just because someone had powers to do something frightening didn’t mean they were a bad person.

Did it?

The next morning brought the heer with it, the first real change in the summery weather of the holidays so far. The grey mist crept out of the firth and on to the land, where it squatted well into late morning. It reminded Ed of the Land of Nightmares, but he didn’t mention that to his family, and instead slipped out of the house before Elodie had her shoes on – if she got him alone, he knew she’d winkle out of him what he’d been up to after he stormed out of the kabin. It wasn’t that she was particularly nosey, Ed just felt compelled to tell her things because she was so good at listening and excellent at keeping secrets. Still, this one he wanted to himself.

Ed had braced himself for the consequences of sending Shudder to Poppley in the night, but he had expected to at least make it into the art studio before the other boy pounced. Unfortunately, Poppley was waiting for him at the turn-off to the dirt track, looking murderous.

Ed pretended not to see him, but the bigger boy stepped straight into his path.

‘Excuse me,’ Ed said, making to go around him.

But Poppley got him by the hood and yanked him backwards. ‘I know it was you,’ he snarled, giving Ed a bit of a shake. ‘You, sending that – that thing to me in my sleep!’

‘Well done.’ Ed slapped Poppley’s hand to make him let go. ‘You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes. How long did it take you to work it out? All night?’

Poppley looked taken aback, as if he’d expected Ed to deny it. ‘Oh,’ he said, deflating a bit. ‘So, you admit it?’ he snapped, finding some more bravado from somewhere.

Ed shrugged and straightened his clothes. ‘You had it coming, don’t you think?’

Poppley went red in the face, and raised his fist like he was going to ding Ed in the eye, then hesitated.

Ed smirked, feeling a sort of evil glee. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t want to wake up wetting the bed with fear again?’ But that was going too far. Poppley’s fist shot out and gave Ed the most rock-solid dead-arm of his life. Ed hunched over, hanging on to his arm in case it fell off.

‘There’s more where that came from,’ Poppley huffed.

‘Same here,’ Ed said through gritted teeth, looking up. ‘Summer school will stop eventually, Poppley, but I can give you nightmares for the rest of your life. How’d you like that?’

Poppley didn’t look scared, but neither did he argue back. He turned and marched down the dirt road towards the art studio, kicking stones up as he went.

Ed gave him a bit of a head-start. The last thing he wanted was for them to end up walking next to each other like they were best buddies. When he got to the studio ten minutes later, he half expected Poppley to have told everyone what he had done, but to his surprise, no one seemed to know anything. Nyx was knitting away at the front of the room, an enormous scarf winding its way from their knitting needles and piling on to the desk like a woolly python. Finevan was hidden away behind the curtain, presumably typing on his laptop. Rhea was experimenting to see if her magic worked on dead leaves as well as living ones, while next to her Lexi held a pair of scissors in each hand and was reading a book. Now and again, she snipped the air, and seemed to be deleting letters or entire words straight out of the pages. Poppley sat across from them and was aggressively thumping a wedge of clay that looked like an elephant’s foot. Just as Elodie arrived with Mr Biscuits in her arms, Ed leapt into the room to find a seat at an empty table before she could say anything to him. He didn’t want to chat just now.

Sitting by himself, he wished he had brought a piece of sea-glass with him.

Without any powers, creatures or mysteries, the waking world was starting to feel more than a wee bit boring.

17

Bullies and Bruises

Ed and Poppley entered a sort of stalemate over the next few days. Every morning, Poppley would give Ed a dead-arm (or a dead-leg if he was feeling creative), and every afternoon Ed would slip into the Land of Nightmares and arrange to send Shudder into Poppley’s sleeping mind to terrorise him.

‘Why don’t you stay longer?’ Shudder had asked, during Ed’s third visit. ‘You could see more of the world. It isn’t as though it’s packed out with visitors.’

‘The first time I was here I got chased by some sort of darkness monster,’ Ed had said, glancing about nervously, his fingers brushing the sea-glass in his pocket. ‘I don’t know what it was, but I’ve no got much of a desire to see it again.’

Shudder had nodded thoughtfully. ‘There’s all sorts in here. Most of us just keep ourselves to ourselves, since the Fracture. But there are some who like to cause trouble, even for their own kind.’ He went quiet for a moment, then brightened. ‘I doubt it would have hurt you, though. We cause fear, not physical injuries.’

Ed hadn’t been so sure. ‘What happens to me here, I take back with me. Scratches, dirty clothes, everything.’

Shudder had looked surprised. ‘Really? That’s unusual. But everything about you seems to be unusual, Edward Crane.’ Once again, he’d given Ed that look that Ed was sure meant Shudder knew exactly who and what he was, even if neither of them had spoken about it. ‘Now, shall we get back to scaring this overgrown worm of a boy?’

Ed had rubbed his bruised arm absent-mindedly. ‘I’m not sure actually. It’s been a few days now . . .’

‘He gave you that bruise only today, didn’t he?’ Shudder had said, his voice full of brittle ice that might have been concern and might have simply been a desire to get back into Poppley’s head. ‘He clearly hasn’t learned his lesson yet.’

Ed had hesitated, but Shudder did have a point . . .

As the days went by, the shadows under Poppley’s eyes had got darker, and Ed’s bruises did the same. His stash of tuils was getting smaller and he hadn’t yet been back to the Land of Dreams because of it. Both Ed and Poppley were far too pig-headed for either to be the one to back down first, and now there seemed to be no escape from this strange war.

Elodie had spotted her twin’s bruises and started to put two and two together despite Ed’s attempts to keep his ongoing feud a secret. She tried to cajole him into backing down, to find out exactly what he’d been doing, but her emphasis on keeping himself safe felt like mollycoddling.

‘Just leave me alone,’ he groaned as she let herself into his bedroom one morning. ‘You don’t even like it in here.’

‘No, but I like you,’ she said, sitting on the swivel-chair. ‘You went to the nightmare land, didn’t you?’

Ed started counting the tuils he had left in his jar to pretend he hadn’t heard.

‘Edward!’

‘Yes, alright?’ he sighed, turning back around. ‘I went there. Spoke to a nightmare. Sent it after Poppley. But can you blame me?’

Elodie shook her head, but said, ‘Ed, you really need to give this up. Poppley’s turning you black and blue. This isn’t a fight you can win.’

‘Like you’d know,’ Ed snorted, meanly. ‘This is the first fight I’ve ever had a chance in.’

‘This is the first fight you’ve ever been in,’ Elodie pointed out. ‘And Poppley’s a nasty wee scunner – he won’t stop before you do. You’re smarter than this.’

Ed didn’t reply. The thought of Poppley being the winner in this game was as irritating as an itch you can’t reach. And besides, Ed wasn’t sure he wanted Elodie’s advice on anything right then. She was spending more and more time talking to Mr Biscuits these days, which was deeply irritating for some reason Ed couldn’t quite put his finger on. Dad and Baba knew their children were half-avoiding each other, but couldn’t get out of either of them what was going on. Ed certainly wasn’t going to explain it.

Elodie sighed, and picked up a photo that was lying flat in a forgotten frame on her brother’s desk. It was a shot of them all a couple of years ago on the beach at Covensea. The Sculptor’s Cave was in the background. ‘You haven’t been back here since summer camp started,’ she said, showing him. ‘It’s been more than two weeks. And you barely show up at the campfires, storytelling or craft activities. You’re turning into a hermit.’

‘I don’t want to be in the middle of everyone,’ Ed said. ‘I feel like everyone just wants to talk about powers, and what can I say? They’ll never understand mine. And then they start on about the Crane legacy . . .’ He threw his hands up in the air. ‘I don’t know if I’m even part of it. If either of us are.’

‘What are you on about?’ Elodie blinked. ‘We’re Cranes, and we have good powers. Of course we’re part of the legacy.’

‘Are we, though?’ Ed shot her a look. ‘Where do we really come from, eh?’

Her mouth went thin. ‘You said you never wanted to find out about how we were adopted.’

‘And I don’t. But what if blood really does count for something?’ The words tasted sour, but Ed couldn’t help saying them.

Elodie stared at him for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘And I don’t really care. I would like to know my past, but not because I want to figure out where my magic came from. My magic is a gift from Dad and Baba, even if they didn’t pass it on directly. Sure, there might be things about myself I’ll never be able to explain until I’m sixteen and find out what happened. But it doesn’t matter how I came into being. What matters now is who and what I am.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘You’re my family, Ed. I miss you.’

Ed missed her, too. She was a part of him, more than a sibling – she was his other half. Her left hand in his right, two halves of the same person, opposites and yet mirrors of each other. But there were some things she could never understand.

He glanced at the jar of sea-glass. It was much emptier than it had been. He did need to get to the beach at some point. It was strange . . . since awakening his own magic he’d almost forgotten the way the cave made him feel.

That night, Ed had to admit that something about the day had caused a crack to form in his resolve. Whether it was the conversation with his twin or the realisation he was running low on sea-glass, he wasn’t sure. But even after arriving in the Land of Nightmares, he couldn’t drum up the usual enthusiasm for scaring Poppley.

Shudder, however, was as eager as ever. ‘He’ll give up before I do,’ he snarled, pacing about as Ed watched him, wearily. The boy was tidier-looking now, with shoes on his feet and less dirt under his fingernails. ‘You can’t get used to nightmares, that’s not how we work. We give form to your fears, and you never lose the ability to be afraid. He believes in me now. He expects me. And the more he believes in me, the worse I can get.’

Ed just nodded. He felt crushingly tired, but Shudder was as lively as a toddler on Christmas morning, so it was easy to just let him do what he wanted. As Shudder disappeared off to haunt Poppley’s sleep, Ed closed his eyes to return home. He could feel magic racing around inside himself, fizzing in his grip as he returned back to the waking world, the sea-glass he held dissolving back into sand.

But quite apart from planning nightmares with Shudder, there was another thing that kept calling him back to the Land of Nightmares. He knew something wasn’t right with the place. Though he daren’t spend too much time there (the memory of the shadow-monster haunted him), he had still not seen a single other nightmare. The whole place was too gloomy, too empty, too quiet. Nightmares, Ed knew from experience, didn’t all take place in charcoal-grey landscapes. Sometimes it was the bright lights and lack of hiding places that frightened you as you slept.

Ed wanted to ask Shudder more questions about the Fracture, the supposed war, about the broken-down buildings, but every time he tried Shudder would change the subject and start explaining precisely what he was going to do to Poppley next time. It was almost as though Shudder was afraid to think too much about the past.

Could dreams be afraid?

Could nightmares?

After ten solid days of bruises and nightmares, Ed decided he was going to have to be the bigger man. It was either back down now, or have Poppley actually eat him next time they met. The boy’s eye had been twitching dangerously all week, and Ed feared an explosion was imminent.

‘I’ve had enough,’ he said to Elodie that evening. They were at one of the summer camp bonding activities – a sort of miniature Highland Games where the smallest children were tossing cabers made of wrapping paper tubes.

Elodie nodded primly, her eyes on the adults who were organising a tug of war. There seemed to be more rules than there were competitors. Finevan was writing it all down, looking increasingly harassed as Mr Shah insisted all the participants have their height measured before starting. Nyx, who was easily over six foot tall in their boots, was laughing.

‘You cannae get mad at me for sending nightmares to people,’ Ed said to Elodie, defensive even though she wasn’t picking a fight. ‘That’s literally what my magic is. Well, that and dreams.’

Elodie was quiet for a moment before speaking. ‘I get that,’ she said, turning to look at him. ‘But there’s a difference between sending out nightmares and inflicting endless misery on one single person.’

‘He started it.’ Ed kept his eyes on the tug of war as Finevan made an excuse and sidled away from the overly competitive Artezans he was supposed to be battling with. He was still scribbling on his notepad as he went.

‘Oh, come on,’ she scoffed. ‘What are you – three? “He started it,” indeed. So you think you haftae finish it?’

‘Someone should.’ Ed folded his arms. Despite his decision, he felt sour that he was the one who had to back down. Why couldn’t he be the one on top, for once? He watched as one group of the competing Artezans cheered – Baba had come to take Finevan’s place, and he was much taller and broader than the scriever. He picked up the rope and the two teams got ready to pull.

‘Look, I don’t deny that Poppley deserves a comeuppance, we all know how horrible he’s been in the past,’ Elodie said. ‘But you’re better than him, Edward. Don’t lower yourself to his level.’

Ed sighed, leaning on his own knees. Across the field, the tug of war was favouring Baba’s team, as the marker in the middle of the rope moved closer and closer to the lines chalked on to the grass. ‘Magic’s not all it’s cracked up tae be, is it?’

‘No.’ Elodie stroked Mr Biscuits, who was sleeping on her lap. Her face had gone very serious. ‘No, it isnae.’

There was a sudden lurch, and the opposing team all fell over as Baba’s team pulled hard and declared victory. There was a lot of grumbling and cheering and flapping of very sore hands.

Ed blinked. ‘Wait.’ He looked at his sister. ‘Why’d you say that? What’s the matter with your magic? You can still talk to Mr Biscuits, can’t you?’

Elodie gave a breathy sort of laugh. ‘Of course I can. Don’t you worry about me, Ed. You’ve enough going on.’

He looked at her, at the mild smile on her face, the cat asleep in her lap, and wondered what on Earth could be bothering her.

‘We’re going to stop this,’ Ed declared that night, as he got settled on one of the larger loose rocks close by to the ruins. It was strange – no matter where he stood when he used his sea-glass tuil in his world, he always arrived in the exact same spot in the Land of Nightmares; a short walk away from the heaped rubble of whatever used to stand there. So different from anywhere in the waking world, and infinitely stranger than even the Land of Dreams. It was with a throb of guilt that he realised just how long it had been since he last visited the Land of Dreams. He was meant to be the Laird of Tìr Aislingean, and he was acting more like the absent landlords who owned huge swathes of the Highlands and didn’t even manage them properly.

Shudder looked affronted at Ed’s suggestion. ‘Why should we stop? Isn’t he still bullying you? Isn’t he doing you physical and emotional harm?’

‘He was, but I think . . . maybe I’m the one bullying him, now,’ Ed admitted, his stomach squirming as he said it out loud, because he knew it was true. He was bullying Poppley, and he felt terrible about it. Suddenly Ed realised that was why he’d been feeling so run-down and awful the past few days. He was being mean and acting out of character – he didn’t want to be that person at all. Greg Poppley may have been nasty, but Ed targeting him over and over like this wasn’t going to make anything better. He should have stopped after the first time, gone back to the Land of Dreams and learnt to be a good Laird there. Elodie was right.

But Shudder scoffed, as if it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. ‘What about your bruises? Your ruined artwork? Do you want him to keep doing those things to you?’

‘No,’ Ed said, standing up, ‘but you terrifying him isn’t going to make him stop, my bruises are proof of that. No more nightmares for Poppley. I’ve got to really get a grip, or else I’m going to end up being someone people are scared of. That’s the last thing I want. I can still come here, but I need to remember who I really am. I’m sorry, Shudder, it’s over.’

Shudder sighed and folded his arms. ‘One last nightmare would stop him hurting you forever, I’m certain of it. He believes in me so much now. D’you want me to just . . . let that chance float away?’ He looked genuinely miserable about it, lip out and arms drooping like wilting plants. ‘That’s fine, I suppose.’

Ed gritted his teeth. It wasn’t a secret what Shudder was getting out of this – every time he nightmared, he looked better for it. He’d gone from a dirty barefoot ragamuffin to a boy wearing smart clean clothes, with shoes on his feet and longish hair tied back in a neat ponytail. As Poppley believed more and more in Shudder, the nightmare-boy became more and more put-together and healthy. Ed didn’t want to keep scaring Poppley, but seeing how much healthier Shudder had become . . .

‘Fine,’ he sighed. ‘But tonight’s the last one, OK? That’s it. After tonight you’ll need to haunt new people. And I need to find the other nightmares, to give them jobs too. There are more nightmares than you lurking around, aren’t there?’

‘Oh, there certainly are,’ Shudder said, grimly. ‘You saw the darkness, for one.’

Ed shuddered. ‘But how come I never see anyone else?’

‘You’ve barely left the Old Haunt,’ Shudder said, ‘and this land goes on forever.’

‘Forever?’ Ed gawped. He wondered how he was ever meant to figure this place out.

But Shudder seemed to be thinking more about his final task. ‘You helped me not to fade away for lack of a task, and Poppley’s worried I’m lurking inside his wardrobe every time he goes looking for his pants. I’ve enjoyed this.’ He cricked his neck, and Ed felt unnerved as Shudder’s head bent much further than ought to have been possible. Then he gave Ed a serious look. ‘Thank you,’ he said, before vanishing.

Ed worried about what Shudder was going to do for the rest of the night and slept poorly as a result. He dragged himself through breakfast and out of the house, wondering what sort of horrors Greg Poppley had endured in the dark. But his worrying was brought to a sudden halt by the absence of Poppley at the top of the dirt road. Ed’s arms and leg throbbed in relief at the lack of punches, but he was confused. After whatever Shudder had planned as his big finish, Poppley should have been poised to beat the stuffing out of Ed, but he was nowhere to be seen.

A prickle ran down Ed’s back. He didn’t like this.

If he had won the war, this wasn’t what he had expected it to feel like. There was no thrill of success, no ‘gotcha!’ victory sensation. Just worry, and the feeling that he might finally have pushed the other boy too far.

18

Needles and Never

Edward’s stomach was in knots by the time he arrived at the art studio, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Poppley sitting at his usual table. Maybe this meant Ed had won after all! Had Shudder finally scared Poppley so deeply that he didn’t want to beat Ed up any more?

‘Morning,’ Ed said cautiously as he passed him.

Poppley grunted in reply. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was greasy. Had he avoided sleeping entirely to escape Shudder? Well, that was one way to keep your nightmares at bay.

‘Did you stay up all night?’ Ed asked, concern overwhelming his caution.

‘Nothing else I could do, was there?’ Poppley shot back thickly. ‘I didn’t know what that thing might have been waiting tae do to me.’ He glowered at Ed. ‘Your magic is messed up, Crane. You want putting away.’

‘Well, you can relax now,’ Ed said, feeling guilty and angry in equal measure. ‘Last night was meant to be the nightmare’s final go, and you’ve outsmarted him. So, enjoy a nap later, or something.’

Poppley sagged in relief. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Yeah.’ Ed blushed. ‘I was being stupid.’ Being the bigger person was hard. It should make you feel good and happy, he thought, then more people would want to do it.

Poppley thought about this. He clearly wasn’t used to people admitting fault. Then he gave a barely-there smile. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Guess I won’t ding you any more, neither.’

It wasn’t an apology on either side, but as far as conversations between them went, it was practically a breakthrough. They definitely weren’t friends, but they could at least finish summer camp without one of them getting into serious trouble. Everything felt lighter all of a sudden, as if Ed had been dragging something heavy and had finally let it go.

He smiled back and unpacked a book he’d brought to read. He was going to be OK! He’d head back to the Land of Dreams later, and send some of them out for a change. The dreams must be thinking their Laird had disappeared again.

There was a THUD from his right. Ed looked over to see that Poppley had thunked his head down on the table and promptly fallen asleep with his mouth open. He began to snore, and it sounded like a cordless drill going through the wall. The girls giggled, and Ed had to cover his mouth.

Finevan, busy at the sink, looked around and actually chuckled at the sight. He caught Ed’s eye. ‘I heard what you said tae him,’ he said, nodding at Poppley. ‘It’s nae easy to take the high road. Verra easy to try tae win something, even if there’s nae prize.’

Ed felt himself blush. ‘It was time.’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt it. But it takes a strong soul tae recognise that.’ He gave Ed a nod, and went back to dealing with his washing-up, his fingers tap-tap-tapping all the while.

Nyx came in, then, carrying a huge Bag for Life crammed full of knitting wool. They took one look at Poppley and rolled their eyes before settling at their desk and starting to organise the wool and various long needles. Ed watched Nyx for a few moments, thinking about how everything seemed to have been tied up nicely. Later, he’d go back to the Land of Dreams, find Estha, make up for being away for so long, practise sending dreams out, figure out how to make dream-scripts accessible once again. Everyone made mistakes, but at least he could start to make up for his.

Poppley grunted on the desk, wrinkling his nose in his sleep.

Ed rummaged in his bag for his phone. They might not be enemies any more, but if you fell asleep in class, you were getting your picture taken. That was the law. Ed was so distracted digging in the bottom of his bag that it wasn’t until the girls in the row behind suddenly gasped that he realised something was wrong.

He looked up, and dropped everything he was holding straight on to the floor with a crash.

Poppley was still asleep, snoring and twitching on the desk, but around him – like a cloud of smoke pouring from a vent – was a creeping dark mist. It seemed to be flowing out of Poppley’s skin as though he was on fire. As Ed watched in horror, the mist thickened and condensed, looking more and more solid.

With a jolt, Ed knew he must have done this. Whatever this was, it was the stuff of nightmares; he could feel it right into his bones. He recognised his magic in the same way you recognise your parent’s voice if they call your name.

But he was also too terrified to move.

Poppley stayed asleep, twitching more violently and groaning slightly as the mist engulfed him almost completely.

‘What in the name of Morpheus is that?’ Nyx hissed, standing up, still holding wool and knitting needles. ‘Edward, what is that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ed squeaked. ‘I – I think it might be . . .’

‘It’s like a ghost,’ Lexi McEwan said, holding tight on to the scissors she had been using.

‘A shadow creature,’ Rhea whispered.

Elodie looked at Ed. ‘A nightmare.’

Ed gulped as the mist rose up, suddenly changing shape. It twisted and coiled, coming together tightly in the recognisable shapes of a body, and arms, and a head . . .

‘Everybody get back! Get back right now,’ Nyx snapped, eyes wide and fearful as the creature’s head tried to look around with its eyeless, featureless, half-coloured-in face. ‘Don’t even think about touching it. Edward, do you know what this is? Can you stop it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Ed raised a hand and tried to imagine the thing vanishing in a puff of smoke, but it didn’t even flinch. His mind was a soup of fright. ‘I don’t know what to do. I’m not doing anything!’

He felt blank, frighteningly empty. If this was a nightmare, what on Earth was it doing here? And what was happening to Poppley? How did you stop something that was where it wasn’t meant to be?

The smoky figure moved as if it were stretching. It was hanging off Poppley like a backpack, arms clasped about his neck, leaning over him so its face was beside his ear. Even though it had no voice and no mouth, it somehow seemed to be whispering. Poppley was shaking now.

Ed had never felt so helpless in his life and he suddenly knew what that horrible shape was.

It was Shudder, or at least a shadow of him, somehow right here in the waking world, climbing right out of Poppley’s skin, getting more solid by the second.

‘Real,’ Ed breathed. ‘He’s – he’s becoming real . . . ?’

But there was no time to expand on that thought.

The Shudder-shadow reared back and raised a hand, fingers like claws, outstretched and vicious. Its body was peeling away from Poppley, ready to separate, to become a thing by itself, untethered to a sleeping mind. The girls gasped in horror, and Mr Biscuits hissed violently as Finevan tried to pull everybody backwards out of the way by their sleeves. Nyx, standing in the middle of the studio, tensed up fearfully as the shadow flexed its too-long fingers.

It looked straight at Edward with a featureless face and shrieked in awful delight.

Ed gasped. His blood stopped in his veins.

The shadow creature reached for Ed’s throat.

Nyx darted forward with a pair of long knitting needles clenched tight in their fist. Their eyes seemed to glow from the inside, and before Ed could say another word, Nyx plunged the needles right into the middle of the Shudder-shadow.

There was a scream like nails on a chalkboard. It cut through the small space, splintered every molecule in the room.

The air inside the studio rushed around like it was being sucked out of the place only to be blown back in with twice the intensity. Ed was knocked backwards, Nyx threw an arm over their face, and the shadowy shape of Shudder disappeared, leaving nothing behind except Poppley, who woke with a yell and almost fell off his chair.

Nyx caught him and held him steady. ‘Take it easy, Gregory,’ they said calmly and firmly. ‘You’ve had a fright. Catch your breath. Take it slowly, now.’

Poppley’s eyes were wild. They darted all around the room before settling on Ed and sharpening frantically. ‘You – you said you’d told him to stop!’ he shrieked. It was a shriek of absolute terror. Sweat was pouring off Poppley like he’d run a marathon.

‘I did, I – I thought because you avoided him last night that you’d won,’ Ed babbled. ‘I don’t know how he – he was almost—’

‘You’re a liar!’ Poppley lunged to grab him, but Nyx held him back. ‘You lying little wretch, I’ll have you!’

Ed shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t lie, I didn’t mean to, I promise . . . I don’t know how he—’

‘I’ll rip your arms off!’ Poppley screamed.

Nyx banged a fist on the table, silencing them both. ‘Shut up!’ they snapped. ‘No fighting in the studio. Gregory, go back to the campsite, you’re dismissed for the day.’ Nyx steered Poppley towards his bag and coat. ‘Go home and get some proper rest. It’s over, now. And you girls, go on, get your things too. You have the day off. No one’s concentrating after that.’

The children silently began gathering their things, all avoiding Ed’s eyes, apart from Elodie who was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t read.

‘All but you,’ Nyx added, pointing straight at Ed. ‘You stay right where you are.’

19

Belief and Beneath

I’ll get you, Poppley mouthed at Ed as he picked his bag up. Ed didn’t doubt it for a second. He was going to need to come to the studio in full body-armour tomorrow. How could he have messed up so badly?

Finevan helped to shoo the other young Artezans away, then hovered awkwardly in the room as Ed and Nyx stared at each other. ‘I’ll just . . .’ he said quietly, going quickly over to his partition and pulling the curtain around.

Nyx took in a deep breath that made their nostrils flare. ‘You. Need. To explain yourself,’ they said in a voice like thunder. The knitting needles they were still holding in their fist were blackened and smoking. ‘Nightmares and dreams do not belong outside their own realms, Crane. What have you done?’

Ed was tempted to stamp his foot and declare I can’t do anything right, but he knew Nyx wouldn’t stand for that. Instead, he tried to gather his thoughts together. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said first, making sure that was obvious. ‘It was like he was becoming real,’ he went on carefully. ‘Shudder. That’s the name of the nightmare-person I’ve been . . . sending after Poppley. That’s who . . . what . . . it was.’

Nyx nodded slowly, taking the time to digest these few words. ‘So, you did manage to get to the world of nightmares,’ they said. ‘For how long have you been going there?’

‘About ten days. I went there once, and got . . . scared. I wasn’t going to go back, but Poppley said . . .’ Ed stopped, screwing up his fists. ‘I just thought I could get back at him. I didn’t know this would happen.’

Nyx pinched the bridge of their nose under their glasses. ‘You’ve only used your magic to direct this one particular nightmare?’

‘I’ve sent dreams out. But he – he’s the only nightmare I’ve met, really,’ Ed said. ‘He was so excited when I asked him to scare someone. It was like . . . he’d do anything I said.’

‘And what happened to him after you ordered him to frighten Gregory?’

Ed winced. ‘He changed. When he started, he was so raggedy he didn’t even have any shoes. As time went on . . . He got more . . . put-together, I suppose.’

‘And he was visiting Gregory every night?’

‘Yeah. Shudder told me after a while that Poppley was so afraid, even just the thought of Shudder in the daytime would scare him. He said he believed in him.’

‘Oh, now it comes out.’ Nyx sat down heavily in Poppley’s chair. They still had the knitting needles in their hand. For the first time, Nyx looked rather strained, the frown lines between their eyebrows like jagged bolts of lightning. Ed wondered how much magic they’d seen, teaching all the young Artezans year after year. If Nyx had ever been more frightened than today.

What had the world been like for young Nyx, growing up without the camaraderie of the summer camps, the friends to be found there? Who did they send dreams to? They lived alone now, even if Finevan seemed to be a special friend, but where was their family? Ed realised he knew nothing about this coffee-addicted, wool-obsessed teacher, and he had been too focused on his own stuff to bother trying to find anything out.

‘Edward,’ Nyx said softly after a moment, ‘we don’t know entirely what your magic is capable of yet, but as frightening as this was for everyone, it’s probably a good thing it happened here and now before your magic reached its full potential.’ They raised their head and gave him a soft smile. ‘You see, part of the magic of dreams is belief. I’m a dream crafter, I know these things. I’ve spent years practising and learning how to use my magic. I have to really believe in the story I make up when I’m knitting a dream, otherwise it willnae work.’ They shrugged. ‘You see, if a sleeper doesn’t completely buy into a dream, it either fizzles out or ends up as one of those nonsense cheese dreams. But if you believe in it, you get an epic roller-coaster dream with five acts and an interval.’ They pursed their lips. ‘Or you should do, if dream-scripts were working as they should.’

‘Estha – one of the dream-people – said that if humans don’t believe in dream-characters, they vanish forever,’ Ed said, remembering. ‘And Shudder, he said he’d been afraid of fading and vanishing because he hadn’t visited someone in their sleep for so long.’

‘I suppose no one would find nightmares very scary if they didn’t feel real,’ Nyx said. They put the knitting needles down on the table at last and flexed their fingers. Ash clung to their skin, and they brushed it off on to their long skirt before carrying on talking. ‘The problem is, you believed in this Shudder so much, and Poppley did too, that he didn’t just feel real, he almost became real. He was in the waking world, or at least a shadow of him was. And seeing is believing, so the longer he was here, the stronger he got. You could see it happening, even in only a few seconds.’ They turned their ruined needles over with a finger. ‘Thank goodness I was here.’

‘Shudder almost became real because we believed in him?’ Ed repeated. Nothing he had ever heard before measured up to how wrong this all sounded. ‘Can that . . . happen?’

‘It can and it does,’ Nyx said. ‘Look at Father Christmas, or the Tooth Fairy. They became real because enough people believed in them.’

Ed didn’t know what to say to that. ‘But – but what did you do? When you stuck him? Did you . . . kill him?’ He dreaded the answer.

Nyx pulled a grim face. ‘I wouldn’t say so. I think I just stopped his apparition from fully entering into the human realm. I wasn’t sure it would work, but I suspected that, since my needles are the tuil I use to craft dream-magic, that they might have power against other magical dream-things. Looks like I was correct. Now, there’s something to study, and I certainly shall be doing so. Of course, the theory will be difficult to test scientifically, since we don’t often get dreams breaking through into real life. But there have always been conversations about whether it is the tuil you use, or the magic itself which is what gives an Artezan their . . .’ They stopped. ‘We can talk about that another time.’

Ed put his head in his hands. ‘I can’t believe I messed this up so badly. What if it hadn’t been Shudder who tried to come through? What if it had been something worse?’ The thought of the shadow-monster appearing in the waking world was enough to make Ed want to be sick.

Nyx patted his shoulder. ‘But it wasnae worse. It was awful, aye, but it’s over now. A lesson has been learned, and this was just a wee mistake.’ They stood up, as if everything was fine.

‘This was more than a wee mistake!’ Ed clutched at his hair.

‘Everyone messes up, Edward. It’s alright. Gregory will get over himself, and Shudder is probably back in your nightmare world, wherever that is. Maybe try and work with different nightmares from now on though.’ Nyx looked out the window at the surrounding forest, where carrion crows were shouting to one another from the pine trees. ‘Go home. You’ve had a fright, and you need some time with people who love you, but you’ll get over this. Trust me. You’ll want to be back in the lands of dreams and nightmares again before long.’

Ed nodded, but he wasn’t so sure. As he gathered his things, the memory of Shudder disappearing with that awful scream played over and over in his mind. He was determined never to have to set foot in the Land of Nightmares again.

Elodie was waiting for him at the corner. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked, brushing dried moss off her skirt from where she’d been leaning against a tree. Mr Biscuits was nowhere to be seen, apparently disappeared into the trees after his fright.

‘Not especially.’ Ed quickly told her what Nyx had said. ‘I really mucked things up.’

‘Ed, no one blames you for setting nightmares on to Poppley,’ Elodie said as they walked. ‘He’s a melt, and deserved some comeback at least.’

‘He didn’t deserve that,’ Ed said quietly.

‘Of course not. An’ you know I think it all went on for far too long. But no one knew what would happen with that shadow-creature,’ she said firmly. ‘Especially not you.’

Ed shook his head as they walked. ‘I thought this was a great power, and now look what’s happened. Everyone’s going to think I’m evil.’

‘No, they won’t.’

‘They will. Poppley will tell everyone at the campsite what happened. I’m going tae be a total outcast. The boy who makes nightmares real. Who wants that as a magic power?’ Ed kicked at the path, scattering small stones.

‘Well, maybe you could balance it out with some nice dreams?’ Elodie suggested. ‘You know, the kind where you win a million pounds, or swim with mermaids. Give everyone one of those.’

‘They’ll still worry about the nightmares,’ Ed said sullenly. ‘Even if I don’t send them. And I won’t be sending them,’ he said with a tone he hoped sounded final. ‘I am not going back there. There’s no way.’

‘But you said it used to be part of the dream land. Wouldn’t that be like . . . abandoning half your magic?’ Elodie looked very unsure.

‘Tough. I’m no going back. The place is full of monsters and demons and shadows that come to life. The worst the Land of Dreams has is a giant snail.’

‘Ew.’

‘It is actually a bit scary,’ Ed said with a shudder. ‘You ask me, that thing’s on the wrong side of the Fracture . . .’ A thought came into his mind then, as wispy and thin as the morning heer. Then he and Elodie rounded the corner and were back in their own garden and the thought vanished like mist burnt away by the sun.

‘I’m just saying, you cannae choose your magic,’ Elodie said. ‘We’re stuck with what we got. But we can make the best of it.’

Ed did a double-take. ‘Elodie . . . are you no happy with your magic?’

‘It doesnae matter.’

‘Elodie, please.’

She stopped walking. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘What is?’

She shook herself and picked up the pace again. ‘Honestly, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Tell me.’

‘You’ve got enough on your plate. What’re you gonnae tell Dad and Baba about today, anyway?’

Ed groaned. He’d almost managed to forget he’d have to face them. ‘Oh, I don’t know . . . Maybe if I’m lucky, this will turn out to be all a dream.’

20

Moonlight and Waves

But, of course, it wasn’t.

Ed rolled about in bed that night, trying to relax his mind enough to sleep. He felt exhausted, but he couldn’t turn off his worries enough to actually drift off. He kept replaying the argument with Dad and Baba in his head.

Because by the time the twins got home, their parents had already heard about the rise of the Shudder-shadow from Poppley’s parents, who were demanding that Ed apologise and somehow make up for ‘allowing’ Shudder to almost come through into the waking world. But when Ed was marched down to the campsite to say sorry, he’d denied that he’d allowed anything. Poppley accused him of targeted harassment, and the argument had continued until Nyx and Finevan arrived, told the story as they saw it, and got everyone calmed down. Poppley’s parents went away in a huff, and the Cranes headed back to the kitchen table for the second part of their rant.

Ed had never been in trouble before – not real trouble. The worst he’d done was forget his homework or knock over a vase. He’d never before felt the bone-crushing disappointment that had been radiating off both of his parents.

‘There are better ways to deal with bullying than to take matters into your own hands,’ Baba lectured on. ‘Why didn’t you come to us and say something?’

‘I didn’t want to bother you,’ Ed said to the table-top.

‘Bother us?! We’re your parents!’

Ed wished he could shrink so small he’d vanish from sight. ‘I know but . . . I don’t want to be . . . a problem.’

Baba seemed to have lost the ability to speak, and just stared at the ceiling. Dad folded his hands together and leaned across the table. ‘Edward . . . you will never be a problem to us, d’you understand that?’

Ed just looked back at him. How could he explain that he’d gone his whole life trying to be unobtrusive and undemanding so they’d see what a good kid he was? He wasn’t prize-winning and point-scoring like his sister, so he’d tried to show how independent he was, how little bother, no trouble at all. Ed couldn’t go to his parents for help – he’d spent eleven years trying to prove he didn’t need anything from them because he was strong, he was reliable, even if he wasn’t brilliant or special.

There was no way to explain all that, not without crying, anyway. So, he just nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Dad. Baba. Sorry.’

And the evening had continued in a tense atmosphere of upset and annoyance until Ed took himself to bed, chasing after sleep that wouldn’t be caught.

Ed tangled his legs in the sheets and thumped at his pillow and tried to give the insides of his eyelids a good stare, but nothing worked. His mind ached and his blood raced with the need to grab hold of a piece of sea-glass and head right back into the worlds of dreams or nightmares. Anywhere to get away from this house where everyone was disappointed in him. But he’d resolved never to head back into nightmares, and thinking about the Land of Dreams gave his insides a twist of guilt he thought might be better dealt with in the daytime.

But the urge to escape was still there. It was a pull at his heart, and an itch under his skin. It felt like trying to keep a stick of dynamite trapped inside one of those Kinder Egg capsules.

It was well past midnight when exhaustion finally won out and Ed nodded off to sleep, slipping out of the waking world into one that was both familiar and unexpected.

He was surprised to find himself dreaming. Dreaming! He hadn’t had a proper dream since finding his magic. Nyx had told him he wouldn’t be able to dream, but here he was in one anyway. Perhaps that rule didn’t apply to the Laird. A spike of unease shot through Ed as he realised that he was aware of the fact he was dreaming. That felt extremely wrong, as if he had been untethered from a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean.

And suddenly, the ocean was where he was. A dream-ocean, endless and dark. It was cold, and the waves were rising and crashing, making the wee orange dinghy he was in bob and turn on the water. It was so dark that Ed couldn’t see anything else. The only things he was certain of were that he was alone, and that this water had no end to it. The sound of the waves was unlike the soft rumble of water at the beach in Covensea. This water sounded like it had teeth.

He’d been in the sea like this before. He remembered it perfectly.

Once, when he was about four, Ed had gone on a fishing trip with his parents to Loch Ness, and had stupidly decided to jump in. He hadn’t been in real danger – he’d been wearing a life jacket, and Baba had jumped in after him less than half a minute later – but during those seconds when he had been in the ice-cold loch, with fathoms of water beneath him . . . the childish dread of serpents and sea-monsters rising up unseen had settled in Ed’s mind and refused to budge from then on. It was in his brain permanently, like a nightmarish tattoo. He’d had a low-level fear of water ever since, and he was always so careful about the tide at the beach and the Sculptor’s Cave because of it.

But this, where Ed’s dream-self was right now, was terrifying.

He was alone in the middle of the ocean, in the dark, in the cold and wet, with no life jacket on and a storm raging above his head. The rain was splattering down on him in huge icy drops that soaked him straight down to the skin. He knew, without really being able to say how he knew, that there were monsters and creatures in the depths below his flimsy inflatable boat.

His boat . . . which was now rapidly deflating even as he watched it.

The air was escaping, the water was coming in – Ed was going to have to swim!

Panic wrapping around him like a film, Ed launched himself out of the boat a moment before the ocean swallowed it up without so much as a bubble. He wasn’t a strong swimmer, having avoided anything more strenuous than wading for most of his life, but some deep instinct made him kick and pedal his legs. The rain was still coming down in sheets, and Ed just needed a moment – a second – to take a deep breath and figure out what to do. But there was no break in the waves. They kept on coming endlessly, tiringly; stealing every bit of energy he had, bit by bit.

Terror started to take root in his chest. There was something dreadful – literally, filling Ed with dread – beneath him, and there was no end to the vastness of this dream-ocean around him. The ocean floor could have been hundreds of miles below his kicking feet. He had to try to find rocks, land, a rescue of some sort . . . but his legs were already tiring, and when he opened his mouth to scream for help, no sound came out.

Ed had had this sort of dream once before, when he was younger. He had been running from something terrible, screaming for help, but no sound came out, and no one came to save him . . . he had been having a nightmare.

A nightmare!

Ed froze, and almost sank beneath the water before he caught himself in realisation. This wasn’t just a bad dream. He was in a nightmare.

His own nightmare.

But rather than being seized by more terror, Ed felt weirdly calm all of a sudden. So this was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. And he knew nightmares. It wasn’t real.

As if reading his thoughts and objecting to them, the sea suddenly thrashed especially hard, covering Ed with icy foam that stole the remaining warmth from his bones. His initial fear rushed straight back – alright, this might be just a nightmare, but it still felt very, very real. As real as Shudder clambering out of Poppley’s subconscious.

With fresh panic, Ed remembered getting back to his own world with mud and scrapes after the shadow-monster chased him. What was real and not real for him?

A gush of water slapped him in his open mouth, and Ed coughed as the salt water tried to get into his lungs.

New fear sparked inside him: was it possible for him to die in a nightmare?

That wasn’t possible for ordinary people, of course not, no one ever really got scared to death . . .

But Ed wasn’t ordinary people. He wasn’t even an ordinary Artezan. He was the Dream Laird, and this nightmare he was trapped inside felt extremely real . . . and with a dropping feeling in his stomach, Ed remembered what Nyx had said about Shudder almost breaking through into the waking world. It had happened because Ed believed in Shudder so much. Nightmares and dreams needed belief to sustain themselves. If he believed enough in this nightmare . . . could this become real, too?

The fear inside him came back one hundredfold, and Ed forced his unresponsive limbs to work, kicking through the water that seemed to have no end to it. How could he wake himself up? How could he get away from this place? Was he going to drown here?

No.

No, he refused to let that happen. This wasn’t how Edward Crane came to an end.

Ed stopped trying to swim and instead floated as best he could on the rolling waves, shivering. This was a nightmare. If belief was what kept this place going, then he had to stop believing in it. Easier said than done as the dark water pulled at his aching limbs, trying to drag him down. But perhaps if there was simply less of it . . .

That was it! Ed knew what he had to do.

The freezing rain and devouring cold still attacking his body, Ed shut his eyes tight. He needed to concentrate. His life might literally depend on it. He imagined the ocean he was in, that great inky-black mass of water, slowly shrinking down to the size of a puddle, leaving him standing on dry land. He envisioned it perfectly, as the Dream Laird should – the water draining downwards and away, the sand rising up like a cake, the peaks of the dunes coming through to meet Ed’s feet as the water vanished beneath it.

And it happened exactly as he pictured it. The wind softened, and the storm calmed, until Ed was standing, wet and shivery but very much alive and out of the terrible ocean. The relief was almost enough to make him feel warm and dry, but to be on the safe side, he imagined himself in soft dry clothes and shoes. They popped into existence instantly.

Ed almost wanted to laugh at the magic he’d done, but stopped himself. This was no laughing matter and that was for certain.

‘Watch it, Ed,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Dreams are uncanny.’ Indeed, now that the ocean was gone, remembering the nightmare felt like trying to hold on to a handful of the sand he stood upon. It kept trickling out of his grasp. It no longer felt real at all, and whilst Ed’s body accepted that as a good thing – it was safe and dry – his mind knew the ocean had vanished far too quickly to be trusted.

Trying to focus, Ed looked about him at the strange emptiness he had been left with. Grey sand reached as far as the ocean had done, dunes in place of waves, a dull warmth in place of that icy fear. It had all happened so rapidly. He was alone in the dream-space inside his own head, walking about inside his mind. That was a very surreal thought.

He knelt down and picked up some of the sand. It was rough against his skin, and when he released it, rather than trickling slowly through his fingers as sand usually does, it fell straight down, heavily on to the ground, as if even the air had been vanished along with the ocean. Ed let out a long, slow breath. He felt less frightened now, but still somewhat at sea, even if he didn’t believe in the terror of that water any more. His stomach was still churning a wee bit, but for a few more moments he stood there in the gloom, feeling out of sorts and feverish, yet in control.

Magic had saved him, this time. But that nightmare had felt just as real as anything. It had been a terrible way to experience what his own powers were capable of doing. The magnitude of what he had done to Greg Poppley suddenly smacked him in the chest. To have that same experience every single night, and not have the magic to be able to escape it? If Ed was superstitious, he’d have said it was payback of some sort. It was almost like he’d subconsciously sent himself that dream out of guilt, and he never, ever, wanted to experience it again. He did owe Poppley an apology. Nightmares were not to be trifled with. And he certainly wouldn’t be using one again.

And with that thought, he was able to open his eyes properly, into the familiarity of his bedroom. He was wet through with sweat. The taste of seawater lingered in his mouth.

21

Past and Present

Ed went to Tìr Aislingean the next morning, where he was greeted by the dream-folk with innocent joy. He apologised for being away for so long, though they didn’t seem to think he’d been absent at all. Time really was twisty, in that world.

There were, however, a lot of dream-characters that had heard of his coming and wanted to speak to him about their problems and worries. A great many of them were frightened of disappearing, so Ed spent a lot of his day coming up with dream-scripts for the dreams to follow. He asked for the smaller and weaker dreams to come forward, and suggested they go off in pairs to their dreamers, so they could get stronger without being alone and afraid. After what felt like hours of doing this, his brain felt like a wrung-out sponge, completely empty of ideas.

‘That’s why we need the dream-scripts,’ Estha said as she came over to sit with him on a chair made of marshmallows. ‘You’re doing well, but directing every single dream is too much work for one Artezan, even for a Laird.’ She adjusted her sealskin scarf, and the wee dead-looking seal feet at the end flapped with the movement, making Ed feel a bit weird – they were pretty creepy, even if they were meant to be a nice dream-thing. A bit like that snail . . . it was as if some of the dreams weren’t quite . . . dreamy enough.

‘I suppose the queue was a bit long today,’ Ed said to distract himself.

‘If we had the scripts, we could follow them ourselves, without asking you.’

Ed looked up at the bright blue sky with its candyfloss clouds. ‘I know. But I have no idea where to start with that. It’s like . . . I don’t have all the instructions, or something.’ He watched a flock of butterflies flit overhead as he thought. He needed a book telling him how his magic worked. Maybe a whole library of books. At least this world didn’t make him feel frightened.

‘It’s nice here,’ he said, stating the obvious. ‘Does . . . anything bad ever happen?’

‘Well, we don’t always all get along,’ Estha said. ‘But real fights? Not so much.’

Ed glanced at her. ‘Fights are more of a nightmare thing, right?’

‘Probably. I dread to think what they get up to now that they’re all alone. All sorts of evil deeds, probably.’

Treading carefully, Ed probed a wee bit further. ‘The old Laird, who . . . disappeared. What were they like?’

‘Oh . . .’ Estha’s eyes suddenly shone. ‘She was wonderful. Kind, brave. This was before the Fracture, of course. She used to try and get us and the nightmares to talk more, you know, make the effort to become friends. Some of us did. We were never really close friends, but we got along, most of the time. With her help. She was very diplomatic, and her magic was very strong.’

‘Strong? Like mine?’

‘Stronger,’ Estha said firmly. ‘This was in the days before magic started to dwindle, you see. The Laird had far more strength than you do now. She could work her magic effortlessly, creating anything from snowflakes to sprawling forests with little more than a thought, a flick of her fingers. Even as a girl she needed no practice to run this world with strength and compassion and power.’

Ed considered. ‘And she vanished, right before the Fracture happened?’

‘Indeed. Whether she died fighting the nightmares, or simply abandoned us, we’ll never know. But the worlds are different now – yours and ours. There’s no more Artezan Masters, which means you, our new Laird, will never have the power she once did. There’s not enough magic left.’

Ed’s stomach flipped over like a wet pancake. So, the old Dream Laird had been an Artezan Master. Which meant that maybe, if magic hadn’t started vanishing all those years ago, maybe Ed would have been . . .

No. No, that was too big to think about. It was like looking at the sun. It was one thing to dwell on where your gifts came from and quite another to wonder if they might have been even greater. ‘What else could she do, the old Laird?’ he asked.

Estha gave a small smile. ‘She could create dream-countries, organise the scripts – she made the poppy meadows where they grew. She could dream-walk! That’s where you take control of a sleeping person’s body. And she could do all sorts of other things . . .’

‘You must miss her a lot,’ Ed said, looking at the sad expression on Estha’s face. ‘Do you know what happened to the other Masters? The other two, I mean.’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t speak of the others, and we know little of what happens in the waking world, beyond what we glimpse through the memories and ideas of the sleepers.’

The three Pillars did not give up their magic. They simply disappeared . . . Mrs Shah’s words echoed in Ed’s mind.

He was suddenly buzzing with the urge to demand more answers, but couldn’t process all his thoughts at once. ‘Did any of the other Artezan Masters ever come here?’ he asked.

‘Not that I know of.’ Estha considered. ‘Whatever happened to them must have happened in the waking world. I do know it was a time of turmoil in your world. Our Laird often spoke to us of the fear she had of the Trials, and of something called the iron collars.’

Iron collars? Ed swallowed. He opened his mouth to ask, but noticed Estha’s eyes had gone all teary and her lower lip trembled. ‘I’m sorry,’ he managed to say. ‘It must have been really hard.’

Estha nodded. ‘It’s nice to have you now, Edward. You are no Artezan Master, but your magic is enough. After so long . . . it’s more than we dared to hope for.’

The fine Scottish weather made a reappearance that afternoon, and camp activities (a game of rounders and a musical statues championship) were called off for the day. The rain fell straight down in sheets, thundering against the metal tops of camper vans and caravans, soaking tents through. Only Mr Biscuits seemed immune to the downpour, lodging himself within the ferns in the garden to wait for frogs to venture out.

Elodie had barricaded herself in her bedroom, with music playing loudly in place of a Do Not Disturb sign. She still hadn’t told Ed exactly what was bothering her, but it looked like she wasn’t in any rush to either. Ed felt a jolt of guilt and worry. Something was wrong with his twin.

But, one mystery at a time. Ed shut his own bedroom door and searched on his phone. The phrase iron collar had been bugging him since he heard Estha say it. He was glad no one was going to the Oneiros studio that day, he couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Poppley. The results for his first Internet search were not great. The phrase iron collar returned a mixture of engineering tools, a dreadful photograph of a metal device being worn by a man who was enslaved, and instructions on how to get a starched and crease-free shirt collar.

Ed chewed his lip. Clearly the search engine wasn’t thinking like an Artezan. This happened a lot, like when his dads were looking for old books with Artezan connections, or when Granny M was doing research on the family tree. They got purely non-magical results. So Ed added ‘magic’ to the end of his search. It wasn’t much, but he didn’t know what else to do.

The results refreshed, and this time looked more promising. Ed clicked on an article from the University of St Andrew’s and scrolled down to an old woodcut picture of a woman wearing an iron ring around her neck. There was a chain attached to the ring and the end of it was being held by a man in a big black hat who was pointing at her. The woman was on her knees, hands together, clearly begging for forgiveness. The caption said that the woman was being accused of witchcraft, and the collar was to stop her running away.

It was a horrible image, and it made Ed’s heart ache for her. Whether she had been a real Artezan or not, being chained like that was gruesome and no one deserved to have that done to them. No wonder the old Dream Laird had feared having a Trial.

The article went on to say that the woman was eventually freed, which was a pleasant surprise for Ed, but there was no record of what happened to her afterwards and Ed had a feeling it wasn’t all that simple. He needed to know more. Clearly a historical record about witchcraft wasn’t going to be written from the Artezan point of view. He knew Nyx had books on Artezan history, but he suspected they wouldn’t be pleased to see him after the Poppley incident.

His remaining option was to ask his dad. Jack Crane had studied the Trials on a course when he was younger, before Ed and Elodie were born, and he was the one who had taught the twins about Isobel Gowdie, the Artezan Queen who had died in flames after a Trial. But he had never mentioned iron collars.

Ed clattered into the kitchen, where his parents were sitting. ‘Can I ask you about the Artezan Trials?’ he said, not even bothering with a hello.

Dad looked up in quiet amazement. ‘But you hate it when I talk about history.’

‘I’ve . . . I heard about something, but Google is being unhelpful. It’s about iron collars.’

Baba shuddered. He stood up, taking his tea with him. ‘Over to you, Jack.’ He patted Ed on the shoulder, and left.

Ed watched him go, mystified. ‘Have I said something wrong?’

‘No,’ his dad said, ‘but a lot of Artezans find these stories difficult to hear. It was a dark time for anyone with magic, and the iron collars were only an aspect of it. The worst part is, I don’t think the men doing it to us knew what they were really doing. And we’ll never know how many Artezans we lost.’

‘What do you mean “lost”?’ Ed sat in Baba’s vacated seat. Outside, the rain was lashing against the kitchen windows.

Dad took a moment to arrange his thoughts. ‘Iron collars were used to torment people into admitting they were Artezans,’ he said. ‘Just like the ducking stool, they didn’t work. At least, not in the way they were supposed to.’

‘Supposed to?’

Dad gave a grim smile. ‘Prolonged exposure to raw iron will strip an Artezan of their magic, Edward. In the short term it weakens us or causes headaches, but if you have the bare metal against your skin for hours and hours . . . your magic soaks into it like it’s a sponge. If you’re lucky – and quick – your magic can be restored to you, like when you recover your strength after a long illness. But for many of the Trials’ victims, they were chained for too long; it was too late. Their magic was erased, stolen from them. And because they had to keep their magic a secret, they wouldn’t even have been able to mourn the loss of it. If they survived the Trial, that is.’

Ed felt sick. You could literally be stripped of your magic? Some deep-rooted part of himself writhed in revulsion and fear at the very idea. ‘Why doesn’t anyone talk about this?’ he asked urgently. ‘What happens if you touch some iron by accident?’

‘The chance of you touching pure iron by accident, let alone for long enough to lose your magic, is very slim,’ Dad said reassuringly. ‘Most metals these days are combinations of lots of different materials. You’d need to go to a museum, or something.’

‘And there’d be no way to get your magic back, if it was completely gone?’

Dad shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, there are the legends of Droch Mancers,’ he said. ‘Those were Artezan leeches – the stories go that they’d rob a healthy Artezan of their magic for their own benefit, draining them like a sort of battery, but I don’t believe anyone has any evidence of such a thing.’

‘Still, it feels like something we ought to talk about,’ Ed said, trying to shake off the unease. ‘There’s so much secrecy around magic, Dad. I don’t like it. Why do we never talk properly about the Trials or the Artezan Masters or what really happened to them?’

‘Because it’s painful,’ Dad said sadly. ‘Magic is in our very souls. To revisit that time in history is to remember a time when Artezans were literally stripped of what made them them. Many died shortly after, whether through shock, injury or simply sorrow we don’t know. Those who survived tried to spread the word, told other Artezans to try and avoid the collar at all costs if they were captured. To try and get the ducking stool or the witchfinder’s pin instead. Because losing your magic? It would be like losing your life.’

Ed fiddled with one of the coasters on the table. His heart was thumping. His magic suddenly felt as precious and fragile as a crystal swan.

Dad gave him a level look that was quite unlike his usually cheerful expression. ‘Edward, is there a reason you’re asking about this?’

‘Someone mentioned it at summer school,’ Ed said, which wasn’t a total lie – he had heard it from Estha who he wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for the summer school, after all. ‘And I didn’t really know what it meant, just that it was to do with the Trials. I never thought it would be something like that . . .’

Dad reached out and took his hand. Ed felt he was maybe too old for that, but stayed where he was – no one was looking, and it was nice to have Dad to himself, even for a few minutes. Dad gave his hand a squeeze.

‘Things are better in the world, now,’ he said gently. ‘No one is going to put you on trial for your magic.’

‘I know,’ said Ed. ‘I guess I just wish my magic wasn’t so . . .’ he trailed off, the memory of that dark ocean coming back to him, and the awful Shudder-shadow rearing up from Poppley’s sleeping body still fresh in his mind. His dad seemed to know what he was thinking.

‘Your magic is part of who you are, Ed, and we love everything about you. Yes, even the scary bits. Even if you did use the scary side to hurt someone, we still love you, and we know you’re sorry. You don’t need to wish yourself different. If nothing was ever scary, no one could ever be brave, could they? That’s why nightmares exist.’

Ed looked up, feeling rather surprised that his dad has been able to see into his worries like that. ‘Er. I guess.’

Dad smiled. ‘You wanted to be powerful. You got your wish. Who knows – maybe it’s the start of something even bigger for you.’

Ed didn’t know what that meant, but he shivered. The information he’d been given was chilling. There was a way to strip magic from an Artezan forever . . .

Had that been the reason for the Artezan Masters disappearing?

22

Iron and Ice

‘Elodie! Elodie!’ Ed sprinted out of the house and across the garden as soon as he saw her venturing outside during a break in the rain. Mr Biscuits was creeping out of the ferns, his ginger fur covered in droplets that he shook off with a disgruntled mrow. The air was sharp with damp, but the sun was already burning that away, promising muggy afternoon thunderstorms to come. ‘Elodie, guess what?’

‘Teapot,’ she said, which was their usual response to each other.

‘No! Listen . . .’ And he told Elodie what Estha had said about iron collars, how the old Laird had been so afraid of the idea. ‘I asked Dad about it. He told me that in the Trials, Artezans were actually stripped of their powers. It can happen if we’re exposed to pure iron. Well, what if that’s what happened? We were thinking something bad might have happened to her, maybe to all the Artezan Masters – what if it was this?’

Elodie, who’d been cradling Mr Biscuits like a baby for the whole story, looked thoughtful. ‘All of them?’ she asked.

‘Maybe the iron collars got all three Masters,’ said Ed. ‘The Trials went on for years, and we know they caught a lot of Artezans.’

Elodie nodded. ‘I guess that makes sense. Powerful Artezans would have been easy to track down by the people doing the Trials,’ she said. ‘If their magic was so strong, everyone would have known about them, could have reported them to the authorities . . .’ Mr Biscuits miaowed, and she let him jump to the ground. She sighed, and dusted her hands on her skirt. ‘Seems like Granny M might have been wrong after all . . . they didn’t give up their magic. It was taken from them. That’s awful.’ She leaned on the fence and looked glum, but it was a deep sort of glum that seemed more personal than a general sadness about the Trials. Ed knew that expression – it was worry, and it hurt his heart as he knew it was hurting hers.

‘Are you alright?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been a wee bit quiet lately.’

She took a deep breath, like she was about to brush him off again, but then paused, and looked down. ‘Promise not to laugh?’

‘Sure.’ Ed folded his arms. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I keep . . . hearing things.’ She raised her eyes, embarrassed. ‘Not all the time,’ she added quickly, ‘but . . . often. Like, I’ll be minding my own business and hear something . . . whisper at me.’

Ed shuddered. ‘I thought I was in charge of freaky stuff.’

‘Don’t make it worse,’ she pleaded. ‘It happens when I’m trying to sleep, or relax and . . . I thought it was Mr Biscuits speaking to me at first, but he swears he’s not been doing it.’

Ed didn’t like it. ‘What are the whispers saying?’ he asked.

‘I can never quite make it out,’ she said. ‘They don’t sound angry, just . . . chatty.’

‘And unseen.’ Ed frowned. ‘That’s why you’ve been so distracted lately. Why didn’t you tell someone?’

‘Because it’s weird,’ she hissed. ‘I don’t want tae be that person who hears things. An’ I didnae want to worry you,’ she added. ‘You’ve had enough on.’

‘Who cares about me?’ Ed threw his hands up.

‘I do.’ She stared at him. ‘You’re the only brother I’ve got.’

Ed had to smile. ‘For that, I promise never to send a nightmare after you.’

‘I should hope not. Though that reminds me – Rhea told me that Poppley’s still spreading dirt about you.’

‘There’s a surprise.’ Ed was on the cusp of going on a rant about how Poppley would get his just desserts, then remembered his own watery nightmare and his resolve to stay away from anything to do with that. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m focusing on dreams now. I’ve got no desire to head back for more nightmares. I’m finished with them.’ And I hope they’re finished with me, he added to himself.

‘You can’t be finished with them.’ Elodie was suddenly insistent, looking concerned. ‘It’s half your magic, Ed. You know what happens to Artezans who try to live without using their magic. They get really sick, and then it explodes out of them. You’ve already seen what nightmares can do if they’re not controlled – look at what happened to Poppley—’

‘Oh, wisht,’ Ed snapped back. ‘You’re talking to me like I know nothing.’

‘Well, you’re acting daft,’ she said. ‘You know you can’t just pick and choose your magic.’

‘And if I could, I wouldnae’ve chosen this power at all,’ Ed fumed, thinking of his dark aura during his Reveal. Granny M had said that magic always came with a cost – it looked to Ed like the cost of being the Dream Laird was that he was also in charge of nightmares. The power to frighten, to terrify even in the waking hours. ‘I always end up getting the worse end of the stick. Always.’

Elodie started to go red. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘You always get the best of everything, whatever it is,’ Ed said, his face mirroring his twin’s against his will. ‘All the friends, the awards, the attention from Dad and Baba, and now the magic as well.’

Elodie’s mouth went very small and tight. ‘You think I’ve got . . . better magic than you? That I’ve got an easier time of it?’ She gripped at her skirt. ‘I just told you about the whispers! I am literally hearing things!’

‘Oh, cry a bit louder why don’t you.’ Ed folded his arms, trembling. ‘So you hear some stupid whispers? Who cares?’

Elodie stared at him in shock. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘This isn’t you. You’ve never been like this. What’s happened?’

‘I’m just sick of being the only one who struggles,’ Ed said, feeling mean but unable to stop. ‘And even when I get an impressive power, it turns out it can hurt people even when I don’t want it to.’

‘You did want to hurt Poppley,’ Elodie pointed out. ‘That’s where being angry gets you! We shouldn’t be arguing about this!’

‘Well, we are.’ Ed turned away, glimpsing the end of Elodie’s hurt expression. ‘Go on, go away. I’m sure your whispers will turn out to be something wonderful. It always is, with you.’ He stayed staring at the ground as Elodie walked off, Mr Biscuits hissing at him over her shoulder. Ed felt more guilty and horrible with every second that passed, but he wasn’t going to say sorry. Elodie needed to know how he felt.

Ed went to bed early that night, desperate to avoid his parents’ gentle questions about why he and Elodie weren’t speaking to each other. The promised thunderstorms had arrived, and they boomed threateningly, but the rain didn’t fall on the campers. Instead the storm rolled out into the Moray Firth to disturb the sleeping ocean. Ed didn’t think about this. His bed was warm and soft, and despite gaining the cold knowledge about iron collars and the argument with Elodie that same day, Ed slipped into a cosy pocket of sleep, curled up and safe.

Until the first icy wave crashed over him.

Ed gasped in shock – he was too startled to scream, and besides there was another wave rolling towards where he stood on a grey sandy beach. He was back inside his nightmare. And this time, he didn’t even have a boat.

The sea bowled him over mercilessly, knocking his legs out from under him and dragging him over the sand and towards deeper waters as though it had fingers and arms to grip and grab with. Ed was spun around; he couldn’t even think about digging his feet or hands into the sand to try and right himself. And use his magic? He was too busy trying to get some air into his lungs to get control over this nightmare.

The wave subsided for a moment, withdrawing ready to roar back at him, and Ed found himself on his hands and knees, his back to the ocean. He knew what he had to do – he had to believe his way out of this, like before. He could hear another wave approaching with a snarl like a predator. He steeled himself. It wasn’t going to get him so easily this time. He knew who he was, and even if he didn’t much like it, this place was under his command.

As the next wave reared, ready to smash down on top of him, Ed spun around and raised his hands.

And this time, his magic exploded out of him.

A force like a hurricane blasted straight from Ed’s palms, raising up an invisible wall of power between him and the wave. The water smashed into the force he had summoned and spilled away harmlessly to either side, far beyond Ed. He gasped, his eyes wide in shock at his own abilities. This was like nothing he had ever done before. This was a display of magic like something from the past – like the acts of the ancient Artezans who had parted the seas. The waves continued to crash against his invisible barrier, the bright turquoise and deep cerulean blues swirling with the angry white foam and froth, battering for escape and finding none.

Ed stood up, feeling a rush of exhilaration at holding up the ocean above him. The sand beneath his feet, still damp from the initial wave, felt solid and cold – more like glass than beach. But there was no time to marvel at this. The nightmare sea was still battering at his magic, more harshly with every wave. Ed had to vanish the ocean, just as he had before.

Just vanish it, he told himself.

Just concentrate, and vanish it.

The water continued to thrash at the invisible dam holding it back.

Vanish it!

Ed’s arms started to shake. The blast of magic he had commanded before didn’t seem to want to happen a second time. What was going on? Why wasn’t the water just disappearing? He could feel his skin buzzing with magic, with potential . . .

But his magic was not doing as he commanded.

Something was wrong.

Just voicing that thought to himself made Ed’s legs go, and his knees buckled as his magic wall glitched and stuttered like a video game on a bad connection. Water began to rain down on him, pitter-pattering from above. He knew he had to do something, tell that water to leave, change, stop existing, but his mind was in a magical blender and all he could think was how if this was a dream, a nightmare, it should respond to him, not come in fits and starts and failures like this . . .

Oh, Bel save him, was he in serious trouble here?

Can someone die in a nightmare . . . no, not someone, can I?

Sweat began to pour off Ed as his arms shook fiercely. If the water he was holding up crashed down upon him . . .

How would he be found? Just asleep peacefully in bed, but unable to ever wake up? Or would he be wet through from the nightmare-waves, soaked to the skin, clammy and cold? Who would find him? Was his body still even in bed as he slept, or had he been transported here fully, body and mind, like when he used his sea-glass tuil?

The water above him shuddered, ready to drop. Fear went through him like a lance.

‘EDWARD!’

Elodie . . .?

Ed turned, shocked to see his sister. Right there, in his nightmare!

How could she be here?

‘Ed!’ She was trying to run towards him, over the grey dunes, towards the danger of the water held above Ed’s head. He couldn’t understand why she might be running towards something so obviously dangerous . . . was she coming to help him? His heart rose.

Then sank suddenly. Elodie was not running to get to him, she was struggling to get away from something. With a jolt of realisation, Ed saw how the sand slipped and shifted beneath her feet, and black shadows – spiked, twisted, evil-looking wisps of darkness – were snatching at her. These dark claws reminded Ed of how Shudder had looked when he almost broke through into the waking world. And whatever it was, this nightmare was trying to snatch up his sister.

Ed yelped in horror. Without thinking about it, he went to move towards her, to help her, but gasped as a torrent of water splashed down on him from above. Quickly, he refocused on holding the force of the ocean up, the ache in his arms appalling. If it came down now, he would drown.

‘Elodie!’ he yelled, trying to look behind him to see where she was.

‘ED! HELP!’ she screamed, falling to the sand and shrieking as the shadowy darkness grabbed at her. ‘Help me!’ The shadows began to twist into the shape of fingers, a hand, arms. They darkened as if solidifying, and then seized Elodie around the ankles, the legs . . . up to her waist like a hideous spider wrapping up a fly in strands of oily black silk. She screamed, fighting hard against it, but to no avail as the darkness began to drag her away.

Her eyes locked on to Ed’s. ‘Ed, please!’ she shrieked, hands digging into the sand as she slipped helplessly across it.

But Ed was powerless. There were cracks in his fortification already – water was now streaming down on him as if through breaking glass and Ed’s arms were shaking. There was nothing he could do to save his sister except shout.

‘It’s not real!’ Ed yelled as loud as he could. ‘It’s not real, Elodie – don’t trust it. Don’t believe in it! Don’t believe in it and it can’t hurt you! Elodie! Elodie!’

Then the nightmare suddenly twisted and dissolved, melting away as the sound of his sister’s scream echoed round and round his skull.

23

Scarecrows and Spiders

Ed dragged himself awake, the nightmare clinging to the inside of his head. He forced himself upright and off the bed, grabbing at the windowsill as his vision swam. He felt weak, like he was recovering from a bad bout of flu – but he had no time to rest.

‘Elodie?’ His throat felt raspy, as though he’d been screaming for real, not just in his dream. He banged on the wall that separated their bedrooms. ‘Elodie?’

There was no human reply, but Mr Biscuits came galloping into the room and leapt up on to Ed’s bed, yowling at full volume.

‘Where is she?’ Ed asked him.

Mr Biscuits gave what was, for a small ginger cat, a roar and jumped down to the doorway, looking back at Ed urgently. Ed staggered after him, his stomach churning. He didn’t need Elodie’s power to understand what Mr Biscuits was trying to tell him. The worry they shared went beyond language, he was sure of it. He still felt really ill though, and was having trouble keeping his eyes focused. The cat led him into Elodie’s room where there was no sign of her. The bed was rumpled and the covers pulled up to the pillow, the curtains closed.

A stab of fear lanced through Ed like an electric shock. She was gone.

Mr Biscuits pawed at the empty space on the bed where Elodie should be, miaowing pitifully.

The sick feeling swimming through Ed’s mind and body intensified, and he had to sit down on the floor before his legs gave way.

They had both been there, in that place, on that beach, for real. And only Ed had come back. It wasn’t a regular dream. That nightmare, at the very edge of his ability to control, had been designed and written especially for him and his sister. It had devoured one of them – nearly both of them. Someone had to be out to get them. But why? Why would someone take Elodie? Who, or what would steal her away?

Ed’s mind was suddenly wide awake.

Ignoring Mr Biscuits’ plaintive wails, and the way his own limbs seemed determined not to do as he wanted, Ed hauled himself upright and back into his bedroom. If Elodie wasn’t in the waking world, there was only one place she could still be. He needed to get to the Land of Nightmares, immediately. Still shaking as if he’d run a marathon, he grabbed the jar of sea-glass and plunged his trembling hand in to grab a piece.

The contents of the jar immediately turned to sand.

Each piece of glass, as soon as it touched Ed’s fingers, dissolved and disintegrated. He scraped at the very bottom of the jar, trying to hold on to the last pieces, his last tuils to take him into the world he so desperately needed to get to. But every bit of glass he brushed against crumbled and became nothing but the same grey sand he had seen in his nightmares. Then, the jar itself began to collapse, the curves splintering and crumbling into sand, spilling down over the windowsill and on to the carpet in a grey-brown puddle of uselessness.

His tuils were gone.

The swimming feeling behind Ed’s eyes won out, and he flopped sideways on to the bed before sliding gracelessly to the carpet beside the heap of what had been his tuils. He stared at the ceiling, vaguely aware of Mr Biscuits sniffing and fussing at his face to try and rouse him, but his strength seemed to have been snatched away.

His way to the Land of Nightmares had disappeared. He was trapped. And so was his sister.

Harrison Crane was painting in the woodland that ran beyond the grounds of the house, his husband Jack beside him, enjoying a moment of peace. The stress of running the annual summer camp always got to them both after a couple of weeks, so early that morning they had left their children in bed, letting them sleep in, and headed to the woods. Harrison to paint, and Jack to sit meditating with his eyes closed – definitely not napping, if anyone asked.

The woodland was peaceful, but it was never fully quiet – there were too many animals and birds around for that – so Harrison and Jack both noticed when a sudden silence dropped over the clearing. Harrison’s brushwork paused, and Jack opened his eyes to look around. A moment later, there was a rush of wingbeats as every single bird seemed to take flight at once, flapping fiercely to get away from the space.

‘What the—’ Harrison started to ask, but then the earth heaved, a bulge beneath it rising up, scattering soil and leaves in all directions, uprooting the closest trees so they creaked and leaned hideously, pine needles scattering down in a sharp rain.

Then the thing wrenched itself out of the undergrowth in a hideously familiar shape.

Harrison didn’t have a great memory of his early childhood, but as soon as he saw it, he knew exactly what this creature was. His bibi had told him stories about Anansi the Spider, the playful, story-telling trickster god. In his grandmother’s tales, Anansi was a benign West-African character, full of glee and not a scary creature at all. But at some point in Harrison’s child brain, a misunderstood story meant that Anansi had transformed from a mischievous hero into a monstrous eight-legged horror that haunted his nightmares for over a year.

Harrison’s heart nearly stopped in recognition of what he saw.

The thing that had erupted from the woodland clearing almost defied description. It was a spider, eight-legged, eight-eyed and bristling with hair all over its meaty body, but one that was somehow engorged on darkness and fear, twice the size of a car, looking at its intended victims like they were particularly juicy flies.

Harrison dropped his paintbrush. He shot backwards from his canvas, falling over his stool and landing hard on his backside as he scrambled to get away.

Jack Crane stood up and gasped in horror, too terrified to scream.

The thing clicked its horrible mouth-parts, and its joints creaked. Everything about it seemed to radiate horror, darkness and doom.

Harrison scrabbled on the ground for a weapon, for anything at all. His fingers closed on his paintbrush – the tuil of his weather-magic. What good would that be against the thing?

The monstrous arachnid kicked the fallen canvas out of the way and took a step forward. Harrison raised the paintbrush and slashed at the air with it, not expecting anything to happen – his magical craft was painting, and he had neither paint nor paper.

But a tiny fleck of paint must have remained on the brush.

As Harrison made the movement, it flicked off the bristles and landed squarely on the creature’s horrible hairy head.

A bolt of neon-green lightning shot out of the clear summer sky, directly on to the spot where the paint had landed. With a flash, it struck the thing between its eight eyes and sent it reeling backwards – injured and raging . . . but not dead. Not by any means.

Harrison was frozen in shock, staring at his paintbrush.

That wasn’t how his magic was supposed to work at all. Had he not been confronted with his childhood nightmare come to life, Harrison might have been able to calmly consider the magical implications and consequences of what had just happened, and thought about whether he could maybe sweep more paint on to the brush and try for something even more impressive. But there was no time and his stunned brain had short-circuited as if it too had been struck by lightning.

The monstrous spider had recovered. It rounded on him, black beady eyes flashing and mouth-parts clacking dangerously.

Harrison wondered vaguely if he ought to have said goodbye to both of his children that morning, instead of letting them sleep in.

The creature lunged, mouth open like a wound, ready to bite him in half.

A blast of something white – something golden-white, rushing with a sound like a million beating wings and HUGE – smashed into the side of the beast and knocked it reeling across the field. Its eight awful hairy legs flailed as it righted itself, snapping and clicking to find out who or what had denied it from getting to its prey.

Harrison looked around in disbelief.

Jack. Gentle, joy-bringing Jack Crane was standing firm and steady in the clearing, hands balled into fists. His whole body seemed to be lit up from the inside, a powerful light shining through his skin, his long blond hair fluttering like pale flames. Like an avenging angel, he walked to stand in front of Harrison, and raised his hands.

The thing screamed, and clawed its way towards the two men, furious and impulsive.

It never stood a chance.

Jack’s eyes seemed to glow, a golden-white gleam from inside his head that bleached his irises the colour of the sun. From his raised hands, a huge sheet of pure force spread out into the air like glitter-filled ice. It solidified and hardened, becoming the polished-orange colour of his aura before shooting across the field towards the horrendous monster.

The force and the monster collided. There was no sparkle or gleam of magic, no destructive impact against the monster – the thing was just there one moment and gone the next, as though it had been erased.

Jack’s legs gave way, and he folded up beside his husband. The glow faded from his body, and his eyes blinked back to their usual grey-blue.

Harrison held him around the shoulders. ‘What – what in Bel’s name did you just do?’ he spluttered.

‘I’m not sure,’ Jack said, breathing heavily as though he’d been sprinting. ‘I just saw you in danger and . . .’ He gestured vaguely. ‘My magic has never done anything like that before . . .’ His eyes suddenly focused. ‘We need to get to the twins.’

‘I know. Come on.’ Harrison helped him up. ‘Something is happening to magic.’

Ed didn’t know how long he lay on the carpet, but when he came to it was with a painful jolt. Mr Biscuits had clearly gotten tired of waiting for him to do something and had decided to bite him on the ear.

‘OW!’ Ed put a hand to his wound, but Mr Biscuits didn’t flinch away. He nudged and prodded at Ed with urgency. ‘I know, I know.’ Ed stroked the cat’s horrible wee head briefly, before pulling himself up to standing. He felt slightly less awful than before, but still weirdly tired and lifeless. Whatever had weakened his magic in his nightmare still seemed to be happening now.

Ed quickly dressed and half-sprinted out of the house wearing yesterday’s clothes. He needed to find a sea-glass tuil to get back to the Land of Nightmares. And the only place he could find that was at the beach.

The mid-morning air was bitingly crisp, waking Ed up effectively. But the cold was out of season even for the Highlands, and the mist of the heer was rolling in thickly between the trees. It was gloomy, too, and with a jolt Ed realised what the landscape reminded him of: it looked like the Land of Nightmares. Not completely, but enough to stop him in his tracks. It was as though someone had taken the two worlds – the one of waking people and the one of sleeping dread – and mixed them together. And if this could look like a nightmare . . .

There was a scream from the field at the back of the house.

Ed spun on the dirt path, hands raised though he hadn’t a single way of fighting anything off. In the grey of the heer, which had gathered in the campsite like dust, he could see figures moving, running. Some of the shadowy shapes were darting quickly by, but others lumbered slowly, jerkingly, after them, as if they were hurt.

A blast of breeze swept across the field – Mr Shah, perhaps, with his breeze powers – and the heer shifted so Ed could see the people properly.

People . . . and things.

The lumbering figures Ed had thought were injured people came into focus. Human shaped, but not human at all – their arms outstretched wide, their legs unbending at the knees, and their sack-cloth faces painted carelessly . . . They were the tattie-bogles from the field, come to life. Or something like life.

Someone screamed again as the bogles kept on coming. They moved slowly, but determinedly, their wicked shapes dripping straw, their painted mouths open in silent laughter. One of them was knocked over by a brave adult, but the scarecrow’s twiggy fingers snagged on the woman’s ankle and held tight, forcing her to drag it along the field as she tried to flee, screeching in fright.

There was a sudden rush of wind, and the air itself seemed to blur as the lumbering figures were propelled backwards. The one holding the woman’s leg let go and straightened back up again as if it was a video being played in reverse.

Ed blinked, trying to make sense of it. And then he understood. With a big paper ledger in his arms and a tiny pen scribbling furiously, Finevan was striding across the field. He must have come over early for a free breakfast, and a good thing he had. He was moving his hand around and around as if he was drawing circles on his paper, and every turn he made with the pen was sending the advancing bogles backwards. He was literally winding them back in time.

Ed’s mouth dropped open in shock. He hadn’t known Finevan could do that. In fact, turning back time was a power so extreme, he’d never heard of any Artezan in history being able to do it. He watched Lexi step forward with a pair of scissors. She snipped at the air and one of the bogle’s heads popped clean off. She definitely couldn’t do that before.

A screech cut through the air, and the Artezans in the field scattered as a flock of bats materialised out of the heer that still rolled in, flapping and squealing and snapping their horrible jaws.

‘What’s happening?’ Ed gasped to no one, looking at all the monsters. They were nightmares. They had to be – he knew it as keenly as he knew fire was hot. His magic, coursing through his blood, recognised itself. It was here, where it should never be. Nightmares were alive, magic was behaving in extreme ways, and even the appearance of the waking world had transformed . . . What was going on?

He needed to get to the Sculptor’s Cave, to find Elodie, and try to put right whatever had gone wrong. But Covensea beach was half an hour’s walk away at least . . .

A pickup truck rounded the hairpin bend at the bottom of the dirt path, carving into the damp grass as it skidded to a halt. The doors flew open and Ed huffed in relief as his dads exited the vehicle. He’d been in such a hurry to get to the beach, he hadn’t even thought of checking for his parents.

‘Edward! Are you alright?’ Dad came over and hugged him tight.

‘I’m fine.’ Ed released himself. ‘Is Elodie with you?’ he asked, though he was sure he already knew the answer.

‘We were hoping she was with you,’ Baba said.

The three Cranes looked at each other. There was a BANG from the camping field, as one of the Artezans blew a hole in the grass like a trench for the still-advancing tattie-bogles to fall into. Mr Shah and Finevan had the bats trapped in a sort of whirlwind that spiralled up into the air. The Artezans seemed to have the situation under control, for now.

‘I think I know where Elodie is,’ Ed said grimly. ‘She’s in the Land of Nightmares. It’s my fault.’

‘What do you mean?’ Dad asked, his eyes wide.

‘We were in the same nightmare – I mean, really there in it, for real. I wanted to save her, but I couldn’t.’ Ed stared hard at the ground. ‘I could only save myself. And now there are nightmares out here in the waking world, too. I’ve messed everything up! I don’t know how, but I have. It’s all gone wrong, all of it.’

Baba put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Then let us help you to fix it.’ He gave a tense smile as Ed looked up. ‘We’re a family, we help each other.’

Ed swallowed hard; his throat was hurting him. ‘Al–alright. I need to get back to the Land of Nightmares. I need to go . . . I need to go to the Sculptor’s Cave.’

‘The Sculptor’s Cave?’ his dad asked, incredulously. ‘But . . . the tide will be coming in right now.’

‘That doesnae matter,’ Ed insisted. ‘It’s the most magical place in Covensea. It’s where I find the sea-glass for my tuils. I – I don’t have any left and I need one to get to the Land of Nightmares.’

‘What happened to all those tuils you’d collected?’ Baba asked.

‘Gone,’ Ed said miserably. ‘I couldn’t control my magic and they just . . .’ He rubbed hard at his eyebrows to keep himself from crying. ‘I just need to find more. It’s the only way to get to Elodie, and . . . and once I’m there I can stop all this somehow!’ Even as he was saying it, he knew it was the vaguest outline of a plan, but it was all he had. The tiredness he’d been fighting off was coming back, and even his joints seemed to ache.

His parents gave one another anxious looks.

Ed sighed through his teeth. ‘Come on!’ he snarled, wanting to thump something. ‘You said you wanted to help, and this is what I need! Take me to the cave! The longer we wait, the more the tide will come in!’

Baba looked at the sky, and suddenly, dark clouds began to swirl. He looked back at his son. ‘We’d better hurry, hadn’t we.’

Dad nodded, his face grimmer than Ed had ever seen it. ‘All of us.’ He yanked open the truck’s door, and Baba and Ed clambered into the cab with him.

‘What’s happening to magic?’ Ed asked. ‘I feel really tired, and my magic has . . . gone weird. And I saw Finevan and Mr Shah doing . . . amazing things. Is your magic OK?’

‘It’s gone a wee bit wild,’ Dad said, reversing quickly and turning to head down the track to the main road. ‘Your baba . . . flicked a paintbrush and caused a lightning strike. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘It’s like it wants to burst out of me,’ Baba said. He looked at the paintbrushes still in his hand. They pulled out of the driveway and started speeding away. The road was always empty at this time of day, but it felt eerie right now. ‘And your dad knocked out a monster with pure happiness.’

Ed gawped at his dad. ‘You did what?’

Jack Crane blushed bright red. ‘Don’t ask me how. There was this creature going for your baba and I just . . . I had to save him. That thing, whatever it was, was made up of darkness and hatred, and my magic is the complete opposite of that. I hit it with enough joy to light up Christmas, and it was sort of wiped out. I don’t know how I did it though. It’s as though a dam has been broken and suddenly magic is stronger than ever.’ Dad gritted his teeth as they swung out on to the main road, the truck roaring in complaint.

They shot down towards the beach, Ed hanging on to the dashboard, watching the sky darken and the trees begin to bend in a growing wind.

‘Is that you, Baba?’ Ed asked. ‘Are you making this storm?’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘And I don’t think I can stop it, either. Wrong sort of weather, or wrong sort of magic, maybe.’

There was a screech from overhead, and a bat-like creature with eagle talons and scaly skin suddenly leapt into the back of the truck out of nowhere. It leered at the rear window of the cab, but Baba raised the paintbrushes he still had in his hands, and a great blanket of snow fell heavily out of the sky, knocking the creature flat and sending it tumbling out of the open back of the truck and rolling down the road.

‘Gaun Baba!’ Ed shouted, punching the air.

They skidded off the main road to the track that led down to the beach, and Dad stopped the car at the gate. ‘We’ll need tae walk from here.’

Ed was already out of the cab. ‘You don’t need to come with me. Only I can travel to the other world.’

‘Are you sure?’ Baba asked. ‘Even now?’

Ed paused and looked around. Magic certainly wasn’t acting the way it usually did. ‘I . . . don’t know. It didn’t work the last time I tried.’

‘Then, how did Elodie get there?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ed admitted. ‘She wasn’t meant to be there. But everything’s gone wrong. The nightmare we were in . . . I couldn’t stop it happening. It wanted both of us, I think, but it just got one.’ Ed’s throat felt tight. ‘This is all my fault,’ he murmured to the ground, a traitorous tear escaping his eye and running down the length of his nose. ‘I should have tried harder to save her, last night. In my dream. I don’t know what, but I could have done something . . .’ He gritted his teeth, feeling magic fizz through his veins as his emotions threatened to strangle him. He couldn’t lose control like this. If he found a fragment of sea-glass to use as a tuil, he needed it in one piece, not undone back to sand.

The two adults looked at each other, and Ed could see a silent conversation passing between them. Eventually, Baba looked away, arms wrapped around his chest as if literally holding himself together.

Dad turned back to Ed, putting his hands on his shoulders. ‘Go and find her,’ he said, giving him a little shake. ‘You will find her, I know you will. You’ll know where she is, what she’d do if she was you. You’ve always been so alike. And don’t start with saying you’re no. Because y’are. You’re both stubborn and determined and excellent at hiding how you really feel. You always have been. Twins through and through, cut from the same cloth. You know how to find her. And you know she’d come for you.’

Ed did know it, right down in his bones. Elodie would walk to the edge of the world for him, if she had to. And at that moment, something seemed to make sense at last: all those years of wishing he could be more like her . . . he’d labelled it as jealousy when really it was admiration. That, and the fear that if he looked for those qualities in himself, they might not be there. Just because Elodie’s bravery was loud didn’t mean Ed was a coward. Just because Elodie’s magic was bright didn’t mean his was dark. They weren’t opposites. They weren’t two halves of a whole. They were the same, just written in different ways.

Ed looked up. ‘Why have I always thought we were different?’

‘Because differences are easier to see,’ Baba said kindly. ‘Easier to be scared of, easier to focus on. Plus, being a twin makes it extra hard – there’s always someone around to compare yourself to.’

‘Yeah,’ Ed admitted, ‘but you’ve always got a friend, too. She’s my best friend and my sister.’

His dad smiled. ‘So go and find her.’ He kissed Ed on the forehead.

Ed gave a wobbly smile back and nodded at Baba, who was still holding his arms tight around himself as if he might blow away in the wind if he let go. Baba nodded back, and Ed took off, heading towards the skittery wee path that had been carved into the cliff-side by endless boots.

As he disappeared down the path, his parents came together to cling on to each other.

The beach was damp when Ed got down to it, the tide already threatening to come in. The sand bubbled and floated in places, waterlogged. A fresh spike of fear jabbed Ed in the ribs. If he couldn’t get in and out of the Land of Nightmares fast enough, he might return to the Sculptor’s Cave and find it flooded, or underwater entirely. Time worked differently in the other worlds, but there was no way of measuring it and that made it dangerous.

Ed ran along the beach, clambering over the seaweed-covered rocks and rotting sea defences until he got to the cave. The sand was minutely drier here, the firth letting the ocean in sideways.

The cave was, mercifully, empty.

He hadn’t been back here since his Reveal, and the difference in how he felt about it was startling. The memory of his drowning nightmare hovered at the edge of his mind and with the ocean already advancing up the beach, the cave no longer felt welcoming and full of potential – it now felt like a hungry maw, determined to swallow him whole and never spit him out. But Ed didn’t have time to worry – he needed to stay calm, and trust in himself.

He scanned the beach for glass, looking in the rock pools where it gathered. There was usually a scrap of it somewhere, hidden treasure on the beach that had been special to him all his life. Even before he knew it was his tuil, Ed had felt compelled to collect it, pick it up, slip a piece into his pocket for luck.

But this time, there was nothing. It was as if someone had already been to the place and swept it clean, removing even the tiniest fragment of sea-glass. Panic started to wrap itself around Ed’s throat. If he didn’t have a tuil, how was he supposed to get to the Land of Nightmares? Ed searched frantically, skimming the beach with his eyes from the water to the cave walls, and finding nothing.

Frustrated and frightened, he thumped the stone wall of the cave, cutting his knuckles. He hissed in pain, bringing his hand close to look at the welling blood rising like a tide against his sandy skin.

Tide on the sand . . .

Ed looked down at his trainers, at how the grit of the beach clung to the leather.

A tuil is something twice made . . .

He bent down, scraping up some damp sand with his fingers. The tiny grains settled in the whorls of his fingerprints.

Could he just . . .

Doubt crept into his mind, and he mentally kicked it away. There was no time to wonder if he could do something, he just had to do it. Magic wasn’t behaving the way it usually did. If Baba could summon a lightning strike with a paintbrush, and Dad could blast a creature of darkness apart with pure joy, why couldn’t Ed, the first Dream Laird for hundreds of years, do this?

He gripped the fistful of sand tight, and began to squeeze it. As much as he wanted to think of Elodie, of how he hadn’t saved her, of where he needed to go to rescue her, he had to hold those thoughts at bay for a moment. This – what he was going to try to do – was between Edward Crane and his magic. For a few brief seconds, nothing else existed.

A jolt knifed up his arm like a static shock, and his fist suddenly glowed as the sand within it heated up. Ed had no idea what temperature sand needed to reach to turn into glass, but this was no ordinary process – it was deeply magical. Beams of light shot from between the gaps of his fingers and got brighter, brighter, brighter . . .

It was hot!

Ed gasped, not wanting to let go but frightened too. He couldn’t just stand there and let himself be burned. He pelted towards the sea, and plunged his hand into the surf.

The light got impossibly brighter, cutting through the grey of the water. Ed shielded his eyes with his free hand, as the object within his fist began to thrash and rattle as if it was a beetle in a jar. Ed held tight, and felt the seawater rise up around him, like he was in the eye of a whirlpool. The ocean swirled higher and faster, the world blurred . . . and then the familiar shift of reality washed over him, and he was back.

Back in Tìr Mulad-oidhche.

And this time, he was not afraid.

24

Successors and Skies

The Land of Nightmares looked damaged, more so than before. The sky was slashed with black as though something had raked across it with a huge claw. Where before the landscape had been simply grey, it now seemed smeared and torn; the gentle drift of charcoal from the trees was now a flurry of dark ash that twisted horribly into broken clouds.

Overhead, screeching wheeling birds that looked like shadows of skeletons were flapping their impossibly thin wings, clearly trying to escape something. The wind was pulling hard at Ed’s clothes and hair, scattering debris around his ankles from the ruin in the distance behind him. He had arrived in the same spot in this world, as always.

The ground suddenly shook, and bright light flashed close to where Ed stood, making him throw a hand up to shield his eyes. The next moment, a deep rumble of thunder boomed, so loud it felt close, and personal.

Ed squinted, trying to make out what was happening. The light flashed again, and this time Ed could see it was made up of jagged lines, like lightning. Deep fog, so thick it looked solid, was rolling in – a heer that had the same menace as a car driven at high speed. And it was coming from the direction of the Fracture.

Ed went still. He recognised that fog. And it recognised him, too. It crawled over the blustering ground, spilling from the bridge to the landscape towards him, devouring its own progress as the clouds from above sank down within it.

Edward . . .

The fog called to him. It had called to him every time he had looked out over the Fracture. He had ignored it each time he had felt that awful pull at his bones, felt that temptation to step out into what he couldn’t see.

But if this darkness, that bridge, that hidden and unseen divide between nightmares and dreams wanted him . . . maybe it wanted Elodie, too.

Ed pocketed his freshly-made piece of sea-glass, noticing it was blood red, and sprinted straight towards the Fracture. The swirling wind and crumbling ash in the air seemed to increase with every step, as if the world of nightmares was actively resisting him answering the call of the fog. He pushed onwards, fighting through the resistance, and imagining a clear path that suddenly burst into being as his power over the realm asserted itself. Magic was in flux, but this was Ed’s place, the world where his magic was strongest, and it would listen to him.

He came to a halt just in front of where the splinter of ground reached out over the Fracture into nothingness, and lightning cracked again from within the fog. The thick mist had rolled back now, once again haunting the middle of the bone-thin bridge.

Edward!

Ed flinched. There was definitely a faint call from somewhere ahead of him – could it be Elodie? Was she trapped?

He steeled himself, and looked down at where the bridge began. As it was when he saw it in the Land of Dreams, there was no indication of how far out the bridge reached, and it was thinner than the width of Ed’s shoe.

Ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach, and the way his heart was pounding in his chest, Ed took a step out on to the spindly bridge. Immediately he felt the urge to turn back fighting against the call to continue. It was more than just fear of falling. The depth of the Fracture itself seemed to seep into his body, saturating him with bitter unease. But he kept walking, until the physical horror stopped him, trembling, in his tracks.

Ed shut his eyes for a moment and pictured the sensation of fear lifting away from his skin like cling-film. He didn’t feel any braver for imagining it, but he did feel slightly more in control of the fear. The fog’s thickest point was right ahead of him, a grey crease down the middle of the Fracture, hiding its true width and depth, making Ed want to be sick with nerves. But he knew he needed to reach it. He needed to see what it was hiding.

With stretching fingertips, Ed brushed against the fog. The ice-cold droplets clung to his fingers. And Ed knew, as soon as he touched it, that this fog was not normal weather. It was alive. In whatever way dreams and nightmares were alive, it was alive.

And it was afraid. It knew who and what he was. It had been calling to him. It needed and feared him in equal measure. ‘It’s alright,’ he said, voice shaking. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

There was a moment where nothing happened.

Then, the fog twisted, and a face-like shape formed in the thicket of cloud. A frightened-looking face. A face with wide eyes, an open mouth and tears of ice running down its cheeks. A nightmare, but one that was bitterly afraid.

Ed badly wanted to turn and run as the face mouthed silently and wordlessly at him. It wasn’t Elodie’s face, and that was a relief, but he was shocked at how frightened the face looked. It was weeping, and apparently unable to move. Ed’s heart gave an unexpected ache to realise he had already seen this. At his Reveal. The face in the fog, shouting his name without sound. Magic had forewarned him, and he needed to be brave.

What could frighten a nightmare, or trap it like this?

He swallowed hard. ‘I’m Edward,’ he told it, gently. ‘Were you calling to me?’

The face nodded, still mouthing wordlessly. The colour of the fog deepened and rolled, reaching outwards to demonstrate, before coiling back in on itself. Ed could feel the magic here. With the same intuition that told him water was wet, he could tell the fog was being held in place by a strong magic, as though invisible layers of webs or netting were preventing it from shifting away as it should.

He touched the fog again, the damp cold kissing at his hand. ‘Are you trapped? I think I can move you . . . but I’m not sure what will happen if I do. The magic holding you here . . . it feels like a part of you. Do you want me to try?’

The face nodded instantly, its foggy eyes wide and desperate.

Ed reached out again – not with a hand, but with his mind, with his magic.

The fog began to ball itself up, tighter and thicker, condensing together into water and then ice. The endless streak of fog, that heer of permanence that hid the bridge over the Fracture began to thin. It was resisting him horribly, but through no fault of its own – the fog was part of the Fracture, that deep gash in between two worlds, and Ed was forcing it to leave, to escape its trap. But the magic keeping it in place couldn’t hold forever. This was a nightmare. And Ed was the Laird of Nightmares.

Move.

It loosened, peeling away from the Fracture for a moment, but then settling again. The face in the fog grimaced, and its tendrils twisted as if attempting to get away. It was trying to help, to shove itself far from where it was being held. Fortified by the nightmare’s efforts, Ed steadied himself on the impossibly thin bridge, and grabbed a hold of the icy cloud with his hand, focusing all his attention on moving it. It was strangely solid; it felt like shifting a huge bedsheet with one hand. Ed heaved with all his magical might, pulling the cloud of fog towards the land on the nightmare side. He almost lost his balance and his heart stopped for a good two seconds before he caught himself. The fog, now a dense frosted cloud, hurled through the air and landed on the ground, where it puffed out in all directions from the impact.

The suddenly empty air on the bridge in the middle of the Fracture seemed to tremble, and the last remnants of fog fell away, to reveal . . .

. . . a person.

But it wasn’t Elodie.

Ed could only stare in complete shock at the sudden appearance of the human beside him. It was a grown woman. She was wearing a heavy-looking dress with a tartan shawl in blues and greys, and she had very short red hair. Her eyes were closed, and she seemed ill. She was breathing heavily, swaying dangerously on the balance beam of bridge.

Ed reached out to grab a hold of her sleeve to try and steady her.

But it was too late.

The woman’s balance had tipped too far, and she was falling. She was falling, and taking Ed with her. The Fracture’s darkness rushed up to devour them, and Ed’s last thought as he slipped was Elodie! He hadn’t even had chance to find her before—

An icy tendril grabbed him around the middle, catching him in mid-air. The woman beside him had stopped falling, too. They were suspended over the maw of the Fracture by something freezing, but very solid. It was pulling them back . . .

Ed twisted around to see, and his eyes widened as he saw the fog. The fog was still there! Hovering, in a vaguely human-shape, but with impossibly long tentacle-like arms, it had reached out and caught them, bringing them to solid ground, to safety. Ed could have cried with relief.

The human-shaped fog stared glassily at Ed with ice eyes as he got his balance. It didn’t seem to be able to speak, but cocked its face to one side as if asking a question.

‘I’m alright,’ Ed managed. ‘Thank you. Are – are you?’

The fog deepened in colour, which Ed took for a yes, before turning to the woman it had also rescued, who had fallen softly to the ground. It floated over her as if checking her, worriedly. Had it been looking after her all this time? Or keeping her prisoner? Ed couldn’t tell. They had seemed to him to be one being, but had really been two, all along.

The woman raised a hand and touched at the fog, which swirled around her in delight. The edges of the fog cascaded through Ed’s hair, freezing his skin for an instant before it swirled into the realm of nightmares and disappeared from sight. He watched after it for a moment, then knelt down beside the woman.

‘What . . . was that?’ Ed asked.

The woman took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘That was a trap. A trap laid by someone I once trusted with my life.’ She groaned softly, her fingers clutching at the dirt she lay on.

‘Are you OK?’ Ed asked, wondering if he should move her or let her lie where she was. ‘Can I help you?’

‘You already did,’ she whispered. She opened her blue eyes, ‘Thank you, Edward.’

Ed was surprised. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘I know everything that happens here. I was once like you.’ She gave Ed a sad smile.

‘Like me?’ Ed frowned.

‘The Laird of Dreams and Nightmares. An Artezan of the Hidden and Unseen. A leader amongst my people.’

‘You were the Dream Laird?’ Ed gasped. ‘The dream-characters . . . they all thought you were dead – every Artezan on Earth thought you were gone, vanished!’

‘I am gone,’ she said. ‘There is barely anything left of who I was. Listen to me, Dream Laird . . . My magic was being used to maintain the Fracture, to keep the lands of dreams and nightmares apart. But not even my magic could maintain such a gap forever.’

‘But . . . it’s been four hundred years,’ Ed said, his heart aching as the woman’s eyes grew unbearably sad.

‘A long time to wait,’ she said. ‘And yet no time at all. Time moves differently, here. The one who imprisoned me knew that I could not last forever, even if it was centuries.’

Ed boggled at her. ‘But . . . who trapped you there? How? Why?’

She took a deep breath, her cheeks paling as she did so, as if she was drawing on some strength deep within herself. ‘United, the worlds of Tìr Aislingean were too powerful to be ruled by anyone but the Dream Laird. Separated in half, the beings within could be commanded by others. But to separate them would take magic beyond imagining . . .’

‘It would take the power of an Artezan?’ Ed guessed.

‘An Artezan Master,’ she sighed. ‘That is what I once was. I was trapped here, and drained of magic slowly, as my power maintained the Fracture between these two spaces. The spell keeping me in this place was only strengthened by my desire to escape, so by struggling I ensnared myself tighter. My magic powered the Fracture, and kept me prisoner as my abilities dwindled.’

Like a battery, Ed thought. This is what Granny M and Dad were talking about – Droch Mancers – leeching her magic away, draining her power to keep something running. But who trapped her here? She hadn’t answered that part of his question. But before he could ask, the feeble Artezan spoke again.

‘I longed to break free, but the magic holding me here was too strong, and could not be unwritten. It was only when I felt my successor begin to rise, to come into their magic, that my freedom felt like a possibility. And now my successor is here at last, it is time for me to leave this place, and for my torment to end.’ She gave Ed a weak smile.

‘Successor?’ Ed blinked.

‘You, Edward.’ She gazed at his face, eyes sharp, as if trying to memorise him. Her pale skin was decorated with freckles, and there was a scar at her left eyebrow. She looked delighted to have met him. ‘The new Laird, the new Artezan Master, about to come into his magic,’ she whispered.

‘But I . . . already had my Reveal,’ Ed stammered, afraid the woman was mistaken. ‘I already found my magic. How can I come into it when I already have it?’

Her tired eyes sparkled. ‘Edward, child . . . Artezan Masters are twice made.’

Ed stared at her.

‘Magic has been suffering due to my imprisonment,’ she said. ‘Dwindling. I could feel it. But now, as I fade and you rise, it will be thrown into turmoil as the power that should always have been there is unleashed upon the world.’

Ed thought about the haywire magic, and the escaped nightmares in the waking world. ‘I think it’s already started,’ he said. ‘Magic, and . . . nightmares where they shouldn’t be.’

‘The disruption has caused tears between this world and yours,’ she said. ‘Do not fear – you will be able to call them back. As your magic unlocks, all will be well. When the new Master of the Hidden and Unseen takes command.’ She took his hand feebly. ‘It is time for you to accept the role. When I fade, your powers will be unlocked. Use them wisely. Use them kindly. Bring the nightmares home, and give others space to grow to love their new powers. My magic is done, and my time as Master is over. I have nothing left to give.’

‘But you can’t,’ Ed said desperately. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know where my sister is, I . . .’

‘There is much to learn,’ she agreed, ‘but you have a lifetime to seize your Mastery. Your power will unlock, and you will become who you were always meant to be. Twelve years ago, I felt the world create you to take on the role that I had started to leave behind. I realised that the end of my life, the end of my magic, was approaching, and I was grateful – I knew I would be able to be at peace, at long last. As long as magic exists, there must always be the three Pillars, Edward. Three Artezan Masters. No more, no less.’

‘But . . . they . . . you vanished,’ Ed tried to say. ‘It’s been hundreds of years with no Artezan Masters, and magic has been getting weaker this whole time!’

‘We did not leave. We never left. I was trapped here,’ she said softly. ‘As far as I know, the other two Masters remain. And magic is not dwindling, Edward, it is—’ She stopped, suddenly making a face of pain.

‘What’s happening to magic?’ Ed was shaking, this was undoing everything he had ever believed. ‘If it’s not dwindling, what’s happening to it?’

‘You must seek it,’ she whispered, her breath coming in short gasps.

‘Where?’ Ed wanted to take her hand, but he was so scared, so frightened of hurting her more, of doing the wrong thing. He wanted to cry out and shout for his parents, for Dad to come and make everything better, for Baba to bring the sunshine and soft breeze . . . He wanted Elodie, with her understanding and her listening . . . but he was alone – so utterly alone with this sick woman whose eyes were fixed on his as though he was the answer to everything.

He had to be everything she needed, even if it hurt. Ed swallowed his worries and squeezed her hand, and her face creased in an expression of soft grief. ‘Where do I seek it?’ Ed asked. ‘Where is the magic?’

‘Hidden,’ she whispered. ‘And Unseen.’ Her eyes closed, and Ed feared the worst for a moment before she opened them again. ‘Follow the branches,’ she said, her voice nothing more than a note on the air. ‘Follow the three branches, and they will guide you to what you seek.’

Ed opened his mouth to ask her what she meant, but the woman was gone. Vanished, without sparkle or ceremony. Simply vanished from the space in front of him, her hand disappeared from his, as if she had never been there at all. He hadn’t even asked her name.

He stared at the empty space, his mind racing. Magic wasn’t dwindling. The Masters weren’t vanished. And he was . . . He was a . . .

Twelve years ago, I felt the world create you to take on the role that I had started to leave behind.

Ed had been born to replace her.

Artezan Masters are twice made.

Ed had been through his Reveal. Which meant there was something more to come.

Trembling and in shock, Ed got to his feet and looked back at the bridge. With the fog removed, the Fracture was now visible in all its glory. And the truth was revealed. The Fracture was no more than six metres wide at most.

The dreams and nightmares had been separated by hardly anything at all.

The two lands had never been at war. They’d been lied to and divided so that someone could rule one of them. The woman and the fog had both been held captive for four hundred years to maintain that lie. And she had died without even saying her own name.

Ed was suddenly vibrating with fury. Magic crackled along his skin and he felt that unstable flow of energy begin to ripple through him, this time with thorns and sharp edges. Whoever caused this, he was going to find them. He was going to find his sister. He was going to put this right.

He reached out a hand and felt the edges of two worlds in his mind, and in his grip.

Meanwhile, in the waking world, the ground shook, and the sand on the beach below the cliff seemed to shudder. Jack and Harrison Crane held one another steady as the sea began to rush in, out of the Moray Firth and towards the land with a cold, crashing, merciless bite.

25

Laird and Master

Magic surged through Edward Crane like he was a conductor in an electrical circuit. He could feel his connection to this place doubling, tripling with every second that went by. His skin was buzzing and crackling down to his bones with potential. With the edges of the realms in his hands, he pinched.

The worlds of dreams and nightmares smashed together, and Ed almost toppled to the ground as the land beneath him surged forward. Mist and dust billowed into the air from the impact. The bridge that had been joining them splintered like a twig, shattering shards of rock through the air. One of the pieces hit Ed in the face, cutting his cheek, but he didn’t care.

The dark air splintered with electricity; lightning carving through the darkness of the realm of nightmares, as rainbows as bright as summer sun streamed from the Land of Dreams. These two skyward phenomena crashed into one another, the white and purple lightning meeting and melting the colours of the rainbow, blending together like a tipped-over paintbox. The sky was mixed into a wonderful oil and ink effect, swirling into multicoloured clouds, teal and grey rainbows, and black-edged sunshine that somehow delighted and frightened you to look at.

But Ed had no time for admiring the effect of his work. He needed to find Elodie. She was here in the world, he could sense that, but exactly where was still a mystery. The realm of Tìr Aislingean was endless – he needed help.

As he tried to think where she might be, the mists either side of him began to clear, and from out of them, drawn by the bringing-together of their worlds, crept forward the shapes of dreams, nightmares and everything in-between. Every nightmare that had stayed safely behind in the realm, every dream-character with wide, curious eyes – every creature of the night came forward, to see their worlds brought together again. Ed saw Estha and her friends walking forward cautiously at first, and then sprinting towards him desperately.

‘What have you done?’ yelled Estha as soon as she was close enough. ‘You’ve put us all in danger!’

‘They’ll kill us!’ a fairy with huge shimmering pink wings wailed from beside her. All around, the dreams were clamouring, wailing, flying about in distress. ‘The Fracture was the only thing keeping us safe!’

‘No, it wasn’t!’ Ed bellowed. The magic under his skin raced, and he felt his hair crackle as if infused with static. He saw the dreams and nightmares step backward and forced himself to take a deep, calming breath. ‘Listen to me. Please? You’re not enemies! You never have been! Someone, or something, drove you apart and made you think there was reason to be afraid of each other. But you’re all the same! You’re all dreams and nightmares, depending on how you look at yourselves. You’re capable of anything. It just depends on who you visit whilst they’re sleeping. You can all inspire or thrill or terrify. You’ve just been told differently.’

Estha stared at him. Behind the selkie, Ed saw a few mouldy-looking skeletons wearing battle helmets give each other what, for a skeleton, seemed to be a quizzical look.

‘Think about it.’ Ed wanted to laugh. ‘There’s a giant snail in the Land of Dreams! That scared me to death when I first arrived. The fog-nightmare could be the heer on a red sunrise morning – that’s beautiful. And Estha?’ He pointed at her. ‘I’m sorry but that sealskin is downright creepy.’

She looked shocked, then smiled. ‘I suppose so, aye.’

Ed nodded. ‘Someone . . . I don’t know who, but someone told you that you were different so you’d be afraid of each other. But there’s nothing to be afraid of – you’ve more in common than you know. And . . . and your old Laird. The last Laird of Tìr Aislingean, and of Tìr Mulad-oidhche . . . she never left you. She was imprisoned. Here. It was her magic that cracked the Fracture open. She was trapped here, dying a little bit every day for hundreds of years.’ Just saying it made Ed’s throat hurt and his chest feel tight.

The nightmares to his left clustered together as if frightened, and the dreams to his right did the same. Except for Estha, who stepped forward. ‘The old Laird . . . she was really trapped here?’ she asked.

‘And she died here,’ Ed said, his hands in fists. ‘Her magic was being stolen, to keep the Fracture existing so that someone – whoever it was – could take charge of the Land of Nightmares. Together, yous would be too powerful to be controlled otherwise. Now my sister has been stolen as well. And I need to find her.’ He wanted to help put these lands to rights, to bring the nightmares and dreams together, it was true. But his sister was more important to him than a whole world of magic. ‘Does anyone have any ideas where Elodie could be?’ he asked desperately.

Estha pointed beyond Ed, at the Land of Nightmares. ‘Before the Laird disappeared she said she was going to the Screaming Mountains. As far as we knew, she never returned. Something may have happened to her there, before she was imprisoned. Maybe something has happened to Elodie there too?’

‘Well then, I need to get to the Screaming Mountains.’ Ed looked back at the assembled dreams and nightmares. ‘Right . . . who can fly?’

Ed had some regrets in his time, but this had to be in the top five. The flying creature carrying him looked like someone had crossed a butterfly with a bat. It had a bat’s claws but wings made of butterfly-like multicoloured facets of glass. Its furry bat-shaped body, instead of being topped with a mouse-like head, had two tessellated fly-eyeballs and a curled-up butterfly tongue in a tight spiral.

It was not a nice creature to look at, and Ed had forced himself to swallow more than one throb of grossed-out ick. Still, he wasn’t flying alone. Held fast in the creature’s claws, Ed was flanked by harpies, colourful birds, angels, demons and swarms of brightly coloured bees. Everyone, whether dream or nightmare, wanted to help him reach his destination.

It felt collaborative – and scary – but hopeful. If both sides of the sleeping world could come together like this to help him, maybe they could forget their differences and become a united land once again. Maybe it wouldn’t happen right away – there were hundreds of years of distrust to deal with, after all – but there was hope. And if Ed was to be a decent successor to the poor Artezan who had been trapped at the Fracture, he had to try and put the worlds back together emotionally as well as physically.

The flew on, into the darkness of the Land of Nightmares, over the skeletal forests and stinking swamps and miles of quicksand. Over the endless dank exam-rooms, the dentist-offices of terror and the mazes that had neither entrance nor exit. Every place that might house a nightmare, every frightening location that was a living being in itself, ready to bring thrills and inspire bravery in sleepers, spilled out below Ed in a glorious display of dark possibility. Eventually, these gave way to a razor-sharp forest of thorns and shadows, before the landscape rose up ready to meet the travellers. It was terrifying, but also glorious, and Ed felt a pang of guilt at not having explored more of it earlier.

Ahead, on the horizon, were the Screaming Mountains.

And, hopefully, so was Elodie.

26

Twins and Gifts

The dreams and nightmare-folk swooped down between the mountains whose jagged peaks were like knives against the sky. The creatures seemed to have no fear – they dived right up to the rocks and skimmed low against the bone-like branches of desperate trees that clung impossibly to the crops of stone.

Ed’s stomach clenched as the flying creatures swept across the landscape, but he kept his eyes open, looking for some clue of where Elodie might be.

He didn’t have to search for long.

Between the knife-sharp peaks and spine-tingling shadows, a jet-black spire rose up from one of the valleys. As the dream-creature holding him rounded the rocks, the spire was revealed to be coming from a building, as tall as a cathedral, nestled in between some of the lowest mountains like shining black rot in a mouthful of broken teeth.

This was the place. Ed could feel it in the marrow of his bones. He knew this was the place, because it scared him. And not much scared Ed, any more. ‘There.’ He pointed. ‘That building. What is that?’

‘The Splintered Tower,’ called a vampire from two birds away. ‘If you’ve ever had a nightmare about sharp edges, that is where it was born.’

The group dived down, heading for the clearing, which – now they were closer – Ed could see wasn’t covered in rubble at all, but fine grey sand, heaped up like dunes between the mountains, as if poured out of some gigantic sack.

They landed in a fluffy dune of sand, the batterfly letting go of Ed before coming to rest on an outcrop of shining black glass. Other dreams settled nearby, whilst some remained in the sky, apparently too nervous to land. Ed hardly blamed them; the gloom of the valley, the cold sand and the Splintered Tower made for an easy nightmare.

He stared up at the blackened polished glass towers, observing how they seemed much darker at the base and faded almost to invisibility at their pointed and spiked tops. The spires reached up like thorns into the ashen sky, and the double-doors in front of Ed loomed higher than the ancient kirk in Covensea.

Ed felt the warmth being leeched from his blood. And yet he could not turn away – his sister was inside. As though their twinship was a physical thread joining them together, he could feel it. He had almost found her.

‘What’s in there?’ he asked, staring at the doors. They were polished to a glassy gleam, and he could see himself reflected in them, distorted and stretched, the colours of his reflection dulled to a grey-brown sheen.

The nightmares exchanged looks. ‘We cannot speak of it,’ a glowering harpy rasped. ‘And yet, whilst we had no Laird, the tasks that came from this place were all we had.’

‘From this place?’ Ed asked. ‘Someone here was commanding you?’

‘We needed purpose,’ a vampire said. ‘With the fields of dream-scripts gone, we required access to sleeping minds. And we were given it.’

Ed looked back at the doors, at the warped image of himself staring back at him. Another mirror of himself was inside. ‘Purpose . . .’ He thought again of the dream-scripts, how he needed to give dreams and nightmares a way to exist in the minds of sleepers again . . . how someone had stolen this from them by imprisoning the old Laird.

His blood rushed, electric in his veins. He couldn’t ask them to give up more than they already had.

‘You don’t have to stay,’ he said, turning to the waiting dreams. ‘I’ll be alright.’

‘Are you certain?’ The vampire who had spoken before was clinging to the mountain face like a bat.

No, thought Ed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m the Dream Laird, after all.’

The vampire gave a nod. ‘If you need us, you only have to call. We shall answer.’ And with leather wingbeats and the rushing sound of feathers, the assembled dreams and nightmares took to the air once more.

Steeling himself, Ed turned back to the building. It repelled him like a dead thing, but he knew that was intentional. Just as the fog of the Fracture kept intruders away, so too did the aura of this building.

He pushed at the door. It swung open easily, but was so cold it threatened to steal the fingerprints from his digits as he took his hand away. A blast of stale air that tasted of dirt escaped from the doorway, shooting through Ed’s hair and pulling at his clothes.

Ed squinted as the wind let him go, looking into the space it had come from. The black glass of the building’s walls also lined the floor inside, in a smooth volcanic flow that rose up in gentle bumps and lumps. As Ed stepped on to it, he felt like he was walking on a dark beach that someone had taken the time to smooth with a polisher, whilst leaving the rises and falls of the sand.

His shoes slipped on the surface, and he almost fell – there was nothing to hold on to.

‘Elodie?’ he called, only to hear his own voice in the devouring emptiness of the black hallway. ‘Elodie? Where are you?’

There was, of course, no reply. But hearing sound, even if it was his own, made Ed feel braver. At the end of the hallway was another set of open double-doors and, pushing through them, Ed found himself in a circular room containing at least two dozen chairs around an immense oval table.

All of it was glass, and black, and freezing to the touch.

Ed felt magic prickle under his skin, like a reminder. Of course! He didn’t have to be cold and afraid here, not if he didn’t want to be. He held up a hand and pictured fire, how it looked, felt, smelled. How he’d been warned over and over again about not touching the log-burner in the living room, no matter how pretty the flames were. So hot, so intimidating, so much potential to burn.

Fire cracked into life in his hand. Not hurting him – it would never hurt him – but burning away on his palm. Ed breathed out steadily and lowered his hand. The orange crackling flames stayed where they were, floating in mid-air like a torch.

‘Good,’ Ed said. He wasn’t sure if he was saying it to the fire or to himself. With every use of his magic, he felt more confident. The words of the old Laird were still ringing in his mind.

Artezan Masters are twice made . . . Your powers will be unlocked.

Was he in his full power yet? He wasn’t sure. A feeling inside him, like a strange tightness in his chest, held his certainty at bay for now.

With the flame casting its flickering light, the black room glistened as though it was coated in oil or treacle. The floor was still made up of those bizarre lumpy piles, and Ed had the strange feeling that the room might dissolve at any moment. There were three doors leading off this room, two of which – the ones on the right and left – were closed, whilst the one in the centre was ajar.

Magic thrummed through his veins like confirmation. Blood that matched his own was through that doorway. Elodie. But there was something else . . . the door to the right had a curious energy.

Almost instinctively, Ed lightly touched the door to the right. To his surprise, it swung open silently, skimming perfectly over the floor and coming to rest against the adjoining wall.

Inside, all was dark. But the cold air in here was clammy, damp with breath.

Ed almost took a step backwards, away from the room, until he heard a noise from inside. A weak, breathy, desperate sort of sigh.

‘Elodie?’ he whispered, though he knew already it couldn’t be her – she would have yelled.

The sound changed slightly, and then there was a dragging, heavy, metallic noise, and it came closer, towards the light Ed had conjured until . . .

‘Shudder!’ Ed gasped.

The nightmarish young boy looked up at him from where he was chained to the floor. Thick black manacles were around his wrists and ankles, and his eyes were sunken and dark. He gave Ed a cracked-lipped sort of smile that had no happiness behind it whatsoever. ‘Hello, Dream Laird,’ he rasped.

‘You . . . know who I am?’ Ed cast his eyes over the chains – they looked heavy and thick, and there was no visible padlock.

‘Figured it out pretty quickly, even if you didn’t want to tell me,’ Shudder said. ‘And he . . . he knew it, too.’

Ed looked up, from the manacles to Shudder’s face. ‘He?’

Shudder winced. ‘Can’t say his name. Never could. Couldn’t tell you, even if I wanted to.’ The nightmare sat up. ‘He was giving me orders, at the same time as you. I failed him. Failed to make it through into the waking world through Poppley’s mind. He punished me.’ He touched at his chains.

‘But why?’ Ed looked at him. ‘Why come through to the waking world?’

‘It’s where you’re vulnerable,’ Shudder said. ‘Here . . . you have magic. There . . . only your friends.’

Ed thought of Nyx stabbing the Shudder-shadow with their knitting needles. ‘Did Nyx hurt you?’ he asked.

‘Not much. He hurt me more. Sent me here.’ Shudder sighed. ‘I never wanted to harm you. He made me do it. He commands us.’

‘Who?’

Shudder shook his head. ‘I can’t say. Even now. We all know, but we can’t name him.’

‘Why?’

‘It makes him see you,’ Shudder whispered, in a voice so soft it might have been nothing but air. ‘Even here.’

Beyond the door, there was a sudden screech, like wind through a keyhole, and Ed knew he had already lingered here for too long.

He straightened up. ‘I’ll come back for you. I promise. Right now I need to find my sister.’

Shudder looked him right in the eye. ‘You know it’s a trap, don’t you?’

Ed nodded. Of course, whoever took his sister had also scripted the nightmares to try and drown him. He was in danger from something or someone, there was no point in pretending otherwise. But Elodie needed him. ‘It might be a trap for me, but I have to rescue my sister. I’ll come back for you.’ He went for the doorway. ‘I promise.’

Shudder hacked a laugh. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Dream Laird.’

Ed went back into the large room, and towards the middle door. At once his blood sang in recognition – Elodie was beyond the doorway; he was so close.

‘She’s in there,’ Ed whispered. As the breath of sound left his mouth, the hideous stale wind suddenly came into the room, swirling about him bitingly, dragging at him as if trying to pull him away. ‘Stop that,’ Ed said firmly. The wind insistently tugged at his clothes. ‘Stop it,’ he repeated. ‘I need to go in there, can’t you see that?’

The wind swirled around him, giving off a keen sense of anxiety. Whether it had once been a dream or a nightmare, this pulling breeze was clearly concerned for Ed, and did not want him to keep going.

That just proved that he had to.

‘Go and . . . watch the front doors,’ Ed suggested, thinking of how Baba would distract him with tasks when he was worried or anxious about something. ‘Keep watch for me.’

Apparently accepting this responsibility, the wind zoomed through the room and back down the corridor.

Ed took a deep breath. He was going to find Elodie and bring her home . . . and rid this world of whoever had hurt her.

The central doorway led to a similarly large space, but it was gloomy within – there were no windows here, only the fire Ed had conjured for light, and a few glistening specks of what looked like quartz embedded in the glass walls. Ed almost thought the space was empty until . . .

‘Elodie!’ He darted over at the sight of his twin, who was hunched on the floor, her hands locked together in a metal ring.

‘Ed!’ She jerked her head up, her eyes filling with a look of relief. ‘You came!’

‘Elodie – are you alright – ARGH!’ As soon as Ed touched the metal his hand burned red hot. He yelled, throwing himself backwards and flapping his hands as his fingers steamed. It was iron. Ed stared at his reddening palms, his heart pounding.

‘Don’t touch it,’ Elodie whispered, shaking her head. The inside of the ring around her hands was lined with something soft like velvet, so the iron itself wasn’t touching her directly. But she was hunched as if to make herself as small as possible, and her eyes were wider than Ed had ever seen them. ‘Ed, it’s a trap,’ she said quickly. ‘I can hear him. He’s who I was hearing, all that time. The whispers. The noises. It was all him. I could hear him, whispering in this world whilst I was in another.’

Ed knelt in front of her to try and figure out how to get her free. ‘Who? And how did you get here?’

‘He took me,’ she said quickly, tripping over her words. ‘In the nightmare, with the sand and the waves. He wanted you, and if he couldn’t take you, he was going to take me, instead. I tried to run, but you couldn’t help me . . .’

Guilt throbbed in Ed’s chest, hot and sour. ‘The ocean was . . . I had to hold it up . . .’

‘It’s OK,’ Elodie said. ‘I know. You stopped the ocean from taking you. You made yourself safe. But . . .’

‘But I didn’t save you,’ Ed finished for her. ‘Elodie, I’m sorry, I never thought anything bad could happen to you in a nightmare, not for real.’

Elodie was barely listening. Her eyes were darting around the space, searching for something hidden and unseen. ‘He’s here somewhere, Ed. His words are like hot, broken glass rolling around in my head.’

Ed examined the cuffs without touching them. There didn’t seem to be a keyhole. He could try to conjure a hammer to smash the metal but feared he might break Elodie’s wrists in trying. His mind was whirling. ‘What is he saying?’ he asked her as he tried to think what to do.

‘Nothing with words, it’s like . . .’ Elodie took a shuddering breath. ‘It’s a sort of want, Ed. It’s a constant want and need. And there’s fear, too. He’s afraid of losing all this.’

‘All this?’ Ed paused.

Elodie gestured about as much as she could. ‘All of this! All this sand, this glass, this castle and so on . . . this is him.’

‘This is him?’ Ed looked at the molten floor. ‘But this place is part of the Land of Nightmares.’ Something was nagging at him. Glass and sand . . . ]Ed looked back at his sister’s hands, his head buzzing. ‘I need to get you out of here.’ He took her by the arms to help her up.

‘You can’t,’ Elodie said, staying low and looking around frantically. ‘The iron doesn’t hurt me, but it’ll hurt you if you try and get it off. He’s done this so you can’t save me!’

‘What?’ Ed looked up at her. ‘Who did this, Elodie? What’s his name?’

She stared at him, her frightened eyes swimming with tears. ‘The Sandman,’ she whispered.

As soon as she said it, the doors to the room banged shut, and a dark laugh the colour of shadows echoed through the space. ‘Finally,’ the voice slithered, ‘we can become properly acquainted.’

Ed stood up, but was immediately knocked to the floor by what felt like an invisible force smacking him on the backs on the legs. Pain lanced through his muscles, and Ed hissed. Elodie tried to get close to him, but the slippery floor and her bound hands slowed her down.

‘Hello, Edward Crane.’ The voice came from the other side of the room as Ed lifted his head up off the solid glass floor. ‘I have to say, I am rather impressed you lived up to human predictability so efficiently. Well done; you have arrived to rescue your sister, as I knew you would.’

Ed gritted his teeth in rage as he got up, legs aching with pain. ‘Who are you – why are you doing this?’

‘Oh, straight to the obvious questions? Now, where’s the fun in that?’ The black glass of the floor suddenly flowed like lava, rising up slowly into a stalagmite that took on a human and yet not human shape, with overlong thin limbs, damp-paper grey skin and eyes that looked as dark as empty sockets, though Ed was certain there were orbs there.

The person-shape stepped forward, assuming a solid form completely. The grey skin faded to bone-white. Jet-black hair not unlike Ed’s own, but as long as Elodie’s, crowned a harsh and staring face. A smart, but old-fashioned, suit covered a human shape. There was a fine covering of sand over the clothes, and more sand poured slowly, gradually, endlessly from the sleeves that bordered the spidery pale hands.

Ed recognised him with a jolt, though not through his appearance – he recognised the purpose of him. He had read about him, in Dad’s books of old fairy tales. The magical being who brought dreams by sprinkling sand into your eyes as you slept.

The Sandman.

But this sinister, otherworldly man did not fit the description of a benevolent fairy. He was staring at Ed with a hunger that made him want to run.

‘Let my sister go,’ Ed said, forcing himself to stay standing still. ‘You don’t need her. She’s nothing to do with dreams or nightmares.’

‘Ah, I must confess I have little interest in this girl beyond bait to bring you here.’ The Sandman raised a spindly finger, sand scattering itself over his pointed shoes that shone like obsidian. ‘She has proven to be a most tiresome prisoner.’ Now he was closer, Ed could see that his features seemed distorted. The look of him wasn’t quite right, as though he had put his body together in a hurry. His skin was too white, his lips sliced too far into his skin and his nose was barely more than the cartilage. He was trying to be frightening. It was working.

Ed’s stomach was tight but he kept staring into that hideous face, now complete with angry fangs and glowing-coal eyes. ‘You kept that Artezan Master here,’ he said. ‘You stole her magic, didn’t you?’

The Sandman straightened up, and his face smoothed over a little. ‘The magic of the Dream Laird kept me in power, and prevented the two lands from reuniting. It was essential that they remain separate.’

‘Why?’ Ed could only think to keep this nightmare talking. His brain was like sludge, no ideas bubbling to the surface at all. How did you fight a nightmare in their own world?

The Sandman gave a soft snarl. ‘This land – when it was one – was more than just a place of subconscious stories and frights. Dreams and nightmares gave birth to hopes, bravery and creative ideas for the human race. Their roles could be interchangeable – what inspired one human might terrify another. But this made them too flexible, too powerful . . . too unwilling to be controlled.’ Sand sprayed from the edges of his mouth venomously as he talked. ‘But separated, and with their precious poppy field of dream-scripts burned, their power was significantly diminished. They became needy, desperate for human belief, and they looked for someone to help them find their way into the minds of sleepers. Long before the Fracture, I had begun sewing the seeds of doubt amongst the peoples of this place – spreading whispers, convincing others that to be certain of having access to a sleeper, one must decide on a label – dream, or nightmare – and never deviate from it. Never try to be anything else – never attempt to change.’

‘They can be whatever they want to be,’ Ed said. ‘You can’t say that someone can never change.’

‘But I do. A nightmare who does nothing but scare loses the dream-like part of themselves. The despairing human mind is the ideal residence for nightmares, strengthening us, making a human believe in their own misery until their belief in us is absolute. The nightmares here now do as I command. They needed a ruler, one who was powerful enough to ensure their survival. They do as I say, follow my orders, visit the sleepers I choose, or else they perish. They bring human belief here in greater quantities than ever before, and only those most loyal to me share in the rewards. With Artezan magic, I can ensure there is always a sleeping mind ready for them. For us.’

‘So you took Artezan magic for yourself?’ Ed asked, his palms sweating. ‘What are you? A – a Droch Mancer? Are you really an Artezan? A human being?’

‘I am no such thing,’ the Sandman said as if disgusted with the idea. ‘I did not take the magic of the Laird. I gratefully accepted a share of her power, as payment for maintaining her prison.’ He let some of the sand tumbling from his sleeve fall into his palm, where it gathered in a tiny mound. ‘The leeching of magic was not done by me, it was shared with me. I was the only one who could ever have accepted such responsibility, such power. Belief is what sustains this place, and like the selkies, or the monsters of Loch Ness, I have become a legend.’ He tipped over his palmful of sand, letting the grains cast about in the air. He looked at Ed. ‘The Sandman myth is found around your world in many cultures, and has existed since ancient times. Humans believe that it is I who bring them dreams. Well, now they are correct.’

‘Who shared the Laird’s power with you?’ Ed demanded.

The Sandman shook his head. ‘As if I would betray my employer by telling you such a thing. Someone powerful enough to trap an Artezan Master in another world is not someone you offend.’

Ed was trembling with anger at the unrepentance of this creature. ‘She was the Dream Laird . . . and she was here for four hundred years and used like a . . . battery! Who took her magic? Who trapped her here? Tell me!’

The Sandman grinned his horrible grin. ‘You are delightfully ignorant, Edward Crane.’

The insult rolled off Ed like water off a toad’s back. He stood straighter, feeling the tingle of magic over the taut skin of his knuckles. ‘I know enough about magic to know your part in this is over. Whatever this fortress is that you’ve built yourself . . . I don’t care. You can keep it, but you let my sister go. You’re in my world.’ Ed stepped forward and felt the magic within him rush through his veins, crackle in the gaps between his fingers. ‘And it’s time this place returned to how it should be. Whole again.’

The nightmare in front of him tutted. ‘You think you have power over me, Crane?’

‘I do,’ Ed said firmly. ‘I have already closed the Fracture.’ He heard Elodie gasp.

Rather than looking shocked, the Sandman gave a laugh. ‘Oh, child. All you have done is pushed two edges of a wound back together. Without time and magic, it will split again.’

‘I’ll keep it together,’ Ed said. ‘This world needs to be whole again. And anyway, you’re just one nightmare, even if you are powerful. You shouldn’t get to decide how this whole realm works! The other nightmares here, and the dreams, need to have a say too.’

The Sandman’s grin widened, sickeningly. ‘You think I am just like any other nightmare?’ he asked. ‘I command this place. Lesser nightmares do my bidding.’

‘You chained Shudder up, didn’t you?’ Ed asked, thinking of the boy in the next room. ‘Because he failed you?’

The Sandman gave a horrible creaking laugh. ‘Well what could I do? When I was unable to stop you from entering the Land of Nightmares entirely, I had to become . . . creative, in my approach to keeping you away.’

Ed’s eyebrows furrowed as he realised what this meant. ‘You mean . . . You turned my sea-glass to sand?’

‘Not every time. Your initial weakness and pathetic inability to control your power properly had a part to play in the destruction of your tuils. I am one with the sand, I could feel the metamorphosis from glass to glass to tuil, and in reverse. But the first time, when you clumsily grasped at a piece of sea-glass? Yes. It was a pity your abilities began to strengthen, after that.’

The truth of the matter made Ed feel sick. This nightmare had been trying to affect his life in the waking world, on more than one occasion. ‘So then, when Shudder tried to break through into the real world . . . it wasn’t me. It wasn’t done with my magic.’

‘Shudder was tasked with infiltrating your world, and destroying you. Don’t take it personally with him, he could not disobey me, or else I would have destroyed him. He is of no further use, and locked away he will soon cease to exist through lack of belief.’

Ed silently resolved not to let that happen. ‘And – and the fog-monster I saw here?’

‘You have escaped my nightmares several times,’ the Sandman said bitterly. ‘Shudder, and the Rolling Darkness both failed to bring about your end. The ocean itself failed to bring you to me. But this time you have come to me willingly, and there will be no more daring escapes.’

The nightmare waved a hand and the glass beneath Ed’s feet suddenly turned to liquid, snaking up his legs before solidifying and trapping him in a horrible transparent cocoon.

Ed panicked, pushing at the glass that held him fast.

‘Let him go!’ Elodie shouted.

The Sandman turned, eyes flashing as he stepped closer to her. ‘It must be so difficult for you.’ He reached out and his bone-thin fingers brushed at Elodie’s hair. ‘So used to being the one with the attention, the power, the love of everyone around you. What does it feel like, to be second best to your brother for once?’

Elodie actually slapped his fingers away with her bound hands, her whole body vibrating with rage. ‘Don’t you dare touch me.’

The Sandman laughed. ‘This is my kingdom. My home, my magic. You cannot leave here without my consent, without my spells, so let us be civil about this. Give me what I want, and there can be as little unpleasantness as possible.’

‘What do you want?’ Ed asked, struggling.

‘To be left alone, in my world of nightmares,’ the Sandman said, still looking at Elodie. ‘For the Fracture to be put back. This is to remain my domain. The Dream Laird is dead. I require the magic of the next one.’ He turned to look Ed right in the eyes. ‘You have a choice, boy. Take the place of the Dream Laird properly – in her prison, where you now belong. Maintain the Fracture with your powers.’

Ed wanted to laugh, it was an obscene demand. ‘I would never!’

The Sandman’s unnerving grin grew so wide it split his head from ear to ear. ‘I said you had a choice, didn’t I? Give me what I want, or I shall lock your sister in iron chains until she is nothing but a shell of a broken Artezan.’

The threat sliced into Ed like a knife, making him gasp. Elodie squeaked in fright, looking from Ed to the Sandman in complete horror. ‘Ed, d-don’t!’ she cried.

But the Sandman was smirking. ‘I require magic for things to be put right. I can take yours, girl, but I’ll be through with it quickly. Once you have been drained, I will require another Artezan’s magic. And then another’s after that.’ The Sandman looked at Ed wickedly. ‘Or, your brother can accept my offer. The magic of a Dream Laird would sustain the Fracture between dreams and nightmares for a much longer time. He could save you, and many others, if he chooses to give himself up instead. What do you think he values more: You? Or his power?’

How could anyone ask that question? Ed looked around, searching for a way out, an answer.

‘You can’t!’ Elodie shouted at the Sandman. ‘You can’t do this!’

‘Why not. I have the both of you here, in my tower. Your brother came to attempt to rescue you, as I knew he would. I do not have to release either of you, but I am not cruel – I have no wish to kill you, not when your brother is worth so much more.’ He smiled down into Elodie’s face, uncomfortably close. ‘If he loves you, he will save you, won’t he?’

Elodie looked worried for a moment. Her eyes flicked towards Ed, who felt a jolt in his stomach. His sister looked back at the Sandman, as if considering.

Then she grabbed fiercely at the Sandman’s throat with both her hands.

She held on for only a second before he crumbled into sand, vanishing into a grey heap of grit on the floor then re-materialising a few steps away, the glass of the floor rising again eerily as the Sandman stepped into life once more.

‘Tut tut,’ he said merrily. ‘We don’t behave like that here, what have your parents been teaching you?’ His eyes glittered with malice. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I forgot – you don’t have parents, do you? You were taken in like stray cats. Do you even know to whom you owe your magic? Is it your so-called family? Your blood? Or an origin you cannot name?’

Ed shoved again against his glass prison. He was free from the waist up, but the glass was too tight for him to wriggle out. He had to do something, but what? He had no hope of concentrating like this, his mind was whirling with panic, too disorientated to think of controlling his own magic.

The Sandman flicked a speck of something off his sleeve, even as sand continued to pour from within his clothing. ‘My offer stands, for a final time, children. Elodie Crane’s freedom, in exchange for Edward’s brave sacrifice. Make a choice, or remain here, powerless. For all time.’

Panic had a hold of Ed’s chest. Elodie wouldn’t tell the Sandman to take Ed’s magic, would she? But then, she couldn’t give up her magic either. She had to escape from here, Ed had to make sure of it. She was his sister, his best friend . . . She was the only thing here that was real.

And the only thing Ed couldn’t, wouldn’t, ever change.

Ed looked down at the glass encasing him. This was only real so long as he believed in it. And although he could feel it crushing his legs, and touch the smoothness of it with his hands . . . it was only real if he needed it to be. His panic and fear for his sister had distracted him, turned his mind into a mess. Instead, he needed to harness it.

Your power will unlock.

Edward Crane did not need any of this to be real. What he needed was belief. Belief in himself, for once.

Ed shut his eyes, and let out a slow breath. As frightened as he was, he needed to put that aside, and remember who and what he was.

Your power will unlock, and you will become who you were always meant to be.

Immediately, the feeling of the glass vanished, and his trainers hit the floor. He opened his eyes to see the Sandman looking angrily at him, and Elodie’s expression filling with hope.

‘Ed . . .?’ Elodie stood up, her eyes wide with shock, a look of strange recognition on her face, as if she was remembering something from an ancient time. ‘How did you do that?’

‘This needs to stop,’ Ed heard himself say, in a deep, ragged voice that didn’t sound like his own. ‘It all needs to stop. Right now.’

The Sandman scoffed. ‘You are a mere Artezan, whilst I have centuries of belief powering my very existence, not to mention the lingering power of an Artezan Master in my grasp. One disappeared trap does not mean you will be able to end me.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Ed. And he frowned slightly as he imagined and conjured the hard, cold bite of iron in his hand. Immediately his skin began to tingle with discomfort. He forced himself to ignore it, to concentrate on his magic, to believe in himself. Dark coils of deepest purple shadow, just like those at his Reveal, drifted like smoke from where his hands gripped the metal. He saw Elodie take a step backwards. ‘You asked where we get our magic from. We didn’t get it from anywhere. It’s always been a part of us. The old Master is dead, true. But now that she’s finally free . . .’ he lifted a heavy iron chain in his hand, ‘. . . I am her replacement.’

The Sandman’s eyes went wide as Ed lunged forward with the iron chain. It caught him on the shoulder and the nightmare screamed a sound like a thousand smashing glass bottles before vanishing and reappearing behind Ed, shoving him hard to the ground. The iron chain crashed across the floor out of Ed’s hand; his palm was already burning red from the purity of the metal. Ed was imagining the chain to be made of the best kind of iron for stopping magical creatures – and unfortunately, that included himself. The pure metal was eating at his hands even as he reached to pick it up again, and he yelled in pain but did not drop the chain.

Ed tried to summon himself an iron-proof glove, but the Sandman made to swipe at him, sand pouring from his limbs, and Ed couldn’t hold all the thoughts in his mind at once. He scrambled away, lashing with the chain again. Both he and the Sandman cried out in agony. It felt as if it was burning Ed’s hand down to the bone.

Elodie, her face a mask of grim determination, rushed forward and grabbed the other end of the chain in her trapped hands. She screamed in pain at the burn, but didn’t let go. Her ordinarily burnt amber eyes glowed a vivid violet as she held on. Together the twins ran at the Sandman, wrapping the chain around his upper body and making him once again dissolve into sand, only to reappear gasping for air, close by.

‘What . . . what are you both?’ he rasped, eyes flickering from one to the other. ‘You are the same . . .’ He screamed again as he solidified, as if the effort of having a body was causing him pain. ‘How can you both be . . .’

‘We need to stop him disappearing!’ Elodie yelled, letting go of the weapon. Her eyes were back to normal but still blazing with fiery desperation, and her skin seemed to be illuminated with a purple glow from the inside. Something was changing.

Your power will unlock.

‘You wrap him up,’ Ed said, dropping the chain too. Blood stained the metal. He tried not to think about it. Sweat was frosting his back, and he was shaking. ‘As soon as you get a chance, cover him with the chain.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to keep him busy,’ Ed panted, launching himself at the Sandman and knocking him backwards. But before he could dissolve again, Ed imagined the floor beneath them was as clean as a whistle, a big empty space without a speck of sand, or glass, to be seen. It wasn’t even floor he imagined, it was empty solid nothingness – nowhere to run, or to hide. He didn’t know for how long he could maintain this illusion, but he had to keep the Sandman solid, even if the nightmare was screeching and striking him over and over. Elodie needed a chance to get close with the iron chain.

‘You will not win this fight, Crane,’ the Sandman screamed. He grabbed Ed by his hair and hauled his face back. ‘You are no Master – you are only half of what you think you are. Surrender whilst you still have life to live.’

Ed’s reply was to spit, hard, into the Sandman’s eyes.

The nightmare roared in rage, his grip suddenly as hot as fire – because Elodie had the chain around his neck. The bite of the iron travelled through the Sandman’s limbs and into his hold on Ed’s hair. It raced into Ed’s system like an electric current, scorching him and making him scream as the Sandman dragged a clawed hand down his face.

His right eye went dark. Pain and panic pushed Ed over the edge. He couldn’t fight any more.

Ed rolled away, clutching at his face, the right-hand side burning so strongly he wanted to pass out. Fiery pain was eating at his skull, burning through his eye socket. The glass building around him was cracking loudly, the sound hurting him inside and out. He felt like his entire body might vanish from the agony.

But Elodie had completed her task. She let go of the chain, leaving it heaped heavily on the Sandman’s chest, stopping him from moving at all. She was shaking, cradling her hands as her fingers curled up, red-raw from the iron. The fire in her eyes had diminished, but she stayed close by, ready to help again if needed.

And Ed knew he needed her. As a friend, as a sister . . . as the other half of himself.

He wanted to hug her, but that would have to wait. Keeping one hand over his face, he dragged himself over to the Sandman. ‘End this,’ he wheezed. ‘Give it up. You don’t have to fight any more.’

The Sandman laughed weakly, smoke coiling from his body. ‘You don’t know . . . anything. The worlds of dreams and nightmares should never be one.’

‘These worlds belong together,’ Ed panted. ‘They were one world. They should be whole again. Just give it up. Go back to being an ordinary nightmare. You can keep this glass castle. Please. You’ll die under that chain.’

‘Better to die . . . than live under the rule of the enemy.’ The Sandman cracked that hideous grin again. ‘You should not exist, Edward Crane. You should not exist, either of you . . . You are the same, split in half like some gross monstrosity. You are incomplete without the other. You are an unnatural split in the fabric of magic.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Ed spat.

‘I see it now. You, and your sister.’ The Sandman groaned. ‘Twice made.’

You will become who you were always meant to be . . .

There was a horrible cracking sound, and suddenly every pane of glass in the palace shattered. The sharp slices of glass rose into the air, suspended as if frozen in time.

‘Ed, come on!’ Elodie grabbed her brother’s hand. ‘We need to get out of here!’

Ed shook her off. ‘We’re not twice made,’ he shouted at the creature on the ground. ‘We’re our own selves.’

‘And yet you cannot survive without the other.’ He grinned through bleeding gums. ‘You have never been able to. Neither of you can survive without the other, but together you are monstrous. Magic is changed, and you are just the start.’

There was no time to ask anything else. The shards of glass suspended in the air trembled, and the building began crumbling around them. Ed staggered backwards as Elodie pulled at his arm with her hands still bound and dragged him out of the room. They ran down the collapsing hallway, ducking as the tiles flew up and the ceiling cracked and smashed, the doors wrenched themselves off their hinges . . .

‘Shudder!’ Ed yelled.

‘Ed, there’s no time—’

‘I promised!’ Ed pelted back through the collapsing room, to where the door had burst off Shudder’s prison.

Shudder was cowering on the floor, hands over his head.

Ed gritted his teeth and quickly turned the chains into water. ‘Get up!’ he shouted. ‘RUN!’

Shudder didn’t need telling twice. Together, he and Ed pelted from the glass castle, Ed seizing Elodie’s wrist on the way as the walls burst into knives of glass behind them.

The twins threw themselves out of the palace on to the dark nothingness of the ground outside, Shudder a second behind them. They turned over, watching as the Sandman’s glass towers collapsed in on themselves, turning from glass to sand to dust to nothingness, until all that was left of the palace was a memory, a heaped-up iron chain, and a cold sense of loss.

27

Scripts and Scars

‘Ed,’ Elodie said, turning to him. ‘Are you alright?’ She squeaked as he turned and she saw his face, her still-bound hands flying to cover her mouth.

Ed raised his shaking hand to his head. The whole right-hand side was throbbing, and felt swollen. He was having trouble seeing out of his right eye, and tried not to let the word blindness settle into his mind because it tasted of terror. ‘Is it bad?’ he asked.

Elodie nodded. ‘Yes.’

He was oddly grateful she hadn’t lied about it. ‘OK. How are your hands?’

‘Nothing compared to . . .’ She went to touch him, then hesitated.

‘Here.’ Ed examined the iron ring that held her hands together again, then closed his eyes for a moment and touched it with a finger. There was a sharp pain, but the iron melted away into a grey wisp that disappeared into the air. ‘That better?’

‘Yes, but . . . what happened in there, Ed?’ Elodie was looking at him with more concern than he could ever remember. ‘I thought you just sent dreams and nightmares places, I didn’t know you could create things or fight like that, and . . . and I felt so . . .’

‘Powerful.’ Ed sat up, trying not to move his face too much as he spoke. ‘Because you are.’ He winced. Talking was painful, and wincing was painful, too. He glanced over at Shudder, who was breathing hard, face down on the ground.

‘Powerful?’ Elodie said. ‘I just . . .’ She looked at her hands, red-raw from iron damage. ‘Ed, it felt like I was someone else.’

‘You’re still you,’ he said quickly. ‘But . . . I think that the Sandman was wrong about you. He didn’t expect us to be the same.’

‘The same?’ Elodie looked at him. ‘Ed, I don’t like this! I could hear the Sandman, from this world. I could hear him across worlds! I just want to go back to how it was at my Reveal, when I could only hear cats.’

‘Elodie, I don’t think your magic can go back to being like that,’ Ed said gently. ‘I know hearing those whispers wasn’t nice, but . . . that was your power waking up.’ He tried to smile but it hurt too much.

‘What – what do you mean?’

‘You understood the language of nightmares. You heard a whisper from another world. Your magic, Elodie . . . magic of the Hidden and Unseen . . . it’s greater than you thought.’

‘I don’t understand.’ She looked afraid.

Ed patted her wrist. ‘It all makes sense, now, why your magic started giving you the ability to hear more and more things. The Artezan Master who was dying . . . the old Dream Laird . . . her powers were decreasing, which meant yours were increasing. Because you’re meant to inherit her power. We both are.’

‘No way.’ Elodie shook her head. ‘I can’t be the Master of the Hidden and Unseen – you’re the Dream Laird, the replacement! You said it yourself to the Sandman. If anyone’s a Master, it would be you!’

He shrugged. ‘Think about it. We’re something twice made, Elodie. Twins. The same person, twice.’

‘But we’re not even identical!’ she scoffed. ‘We’re nothing alike.’

Ed sighed. ‘Actually . . . I think we are. I think we’re more alike than we realise. Dad said that to me, before I came to find you, and he was right. We’re both creative and stubborn and careful and determined . . . it just shows itself in different ways. Like our magic. You can hear the languages of unseen beings and understand them. I can create and command the hidden beings of sleep.’ He took her hand properly. ‘I have been such a bad brother.’

‘No.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘You’ve not.’

‘I have. I’ve been jealous of you when I should have been proud. I selfishly ignored you when you needed my help. I should have been better. If I’d listened to what you were trying to tell me, we might have figured out who we are sooner.’

‘It doesnae matter now,’ Elodie said. She leaned forward and their foreheads pressed together, the two of them completely exhausted. ‘And I should have tried harder to understand how you felt. If we’re in this together . . . let’s do our best from now on. Together.’

‘Always.’

Back in the Sculptor’s Cave, things were looking bad.

The tide was now at the cave mouth, the sand bubbling and moving like a horrible sort of porridge. Harrison Crane was drawing on his own forearm with a biro for want of any better art supplies, casting sunlight directly at the water to evaporate it, whilst Jack – standing on the edge of the grass-covered cliff top – was swiping with white-gold joy at any passing nightmare that tried its luck approaching the beach.

‘We need to get help,’ Harrison yelled. ‘The tide is in, the beach has turned to quicksand . . . we need to find someone!’

‘I am not leaving my children!’ Jack shouted back. ‘You go if you want to, I’m staying here til they return.’

Harrison gave a nod. ‘Then so will I.’

Ed resisted the urge to press at the burn on his face. ‘Magic was going a wee bit haywire when I left to come and find you. And now that dreams and nightmares aren’t being kept apart, the old Laird said that magic will be stronger in the waking world. This branch of magic is mended, now there’s a new Master. Or, Masters, I guess I should say.’

‘But if there’s two of us,’ Elodie said, ‘where are the others?’

Follow the branches . . . Ed paused, remembering the Master Artezan’s words. He wished they had been given more time together, but he guessed that was the price of being an Artezan Master – you had no one to teach you. You had to find your own way, with your own magic. ‘We’ll have to find them,’ he said. ‘One day.’

Elodie nodded.

Ed puffed out a breath, his cheek throbbing. ‘Alright. Let’s try to fix this. To bring them home.’ He raised his head. He shut his eyes and pictured Covensea – the grass verges thick with heather, the cliffs at the beach, the red squirrels in the pines, the roe deer running through the garden (with Dad chasing them crossly after they ate his cabbages). He pictured the tattie-bogles in the field, no longer lumbering after the summer-camping Artezans, but instead lying still. He pictured the skies, empty of nightmares, the summer air heavy in the lengthening afternoon.

He felt in his mind the cracks that had been scoured between worlds, desperate to close. The nightmares in the waking world would be drawn back to where they belonged.

In his imagination, the best gift he had even before he’d had magic, Ed put everything back the way it ought to be. And he felt his power lock on to the visions and make them right.

‘Come back, all of you,’ he said, in that deep scrape of a voice that didn’t seem to be his. ‘You don’t belong out there. Come home.’

Then, there was a rushing noise, like the sound of thousands of birds all flapping their wings at once, flying towards the two of them, and Ed actually ducked his head as if the noise had form. Elodie clamped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes tight.

‘They’re coming back!’ she shouted. ‘I can hear them!’

And then . . . it was over.

Ed straightened up. ‘They’re back. And they’re not unhappy about it, either. The place is . . . changed.’ The landscape had not changed. But the place felt different. It felt cosier, somehow. More full.

‘First thing you’ve done properly since you started, if you ask me,’ said a crackling paper-voice. Shudder, an amused expression on his face, had lifted his head to see them properly. He gave Elodie a wee nod. ‘Pleasure to meet you, Miss Crane.’

Ed shook his head, his anger over Shudder’s actions still somewhat hot. ‘All that time, you were working for him? I trusted you.’

To Ed’s surprise, Shudder actually shrank back. ‘I know,’ the nightmare said quietly. ‘The Sandman had my existence in his hands. I had to do as he said. He was aware the moment you first sent me out to Poppley, and he commanded me to continue. He needed you to believe in me, and you did. His plan was to frighten you into giving up your power willingly. To make you too scared to be the Laird of Nightmares.’

Ed folded his arms. ‘You should have told me about him.’

‘I couldn’t. He would have known. And when I failed to break into the waking world, he went after you himself, in your sleep.’ Shudder shook his head. ‘He wanted the Kingdom of Nightmares for himself. He feared what sort of ruler you would become, if you lived long enough.’

Ed suddenly felt the weight of a great deal of responsibility land on him. The adrenaline was leaving his body, and what was left behind was pain, knowledge, and an anticipation of the future. ‘He said he was working for someone. Who was he working for?’ he asked Shudder.

‘He was working for another?’ Shudder’s surprised face was honest. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know there was anyone who could command him.’

Ed knew he’d discover that particular truth another time. Whoever the Sandman had been answering to, Ed would need to find them and discover why they had hurt the old Laird so badly, why they wanted these lands kept apart. Why the Artezan Master . . . Masters, now . . . of the Hidden and Unseen were viewed as a threat.

But right now, he needed to show the inhabitants of Tìr Aislingean that he would be who they needed him to be. Ed glanced at his twin, and she gave him a small smile. He flexed his shoulders as he looked up at the blended sky, at the flocks of fairies flying alongside the vampire bats. They needed to be believed in, all of them. They needed their dream-scripts.

With his magic fully bloomed, Ed now knew exactly what to do.

The old Laird had grown a field of flowers, with scripts and words woven into their petals, for the dreams and nightmares to literally pick and choose from. But Ed didn’t know enough about plants. He’d do something he loved, and understood.

The Sculptor’s Cave was filling with water. It sucked the ocean inside relentlessly. If Edward and Elodie made it back, they would struggle to swim out of the cave itself. Harrison and Jack Crane clung to each other at the cliff’s edge. The nightmares had disappeared, vanishing out of the sky as if someone had switched them off, but there was no sign of their children returning.

‘Do you think they’re alright?’ Jack asked, in a tiny voice.

‘They have to be,’ Harrison said. His eyes were fixed on the sea below.

The journey back to where Ed always arrived in the Land of Nightmares was faster. Rather than call down a lift from flying creatures, Ed rerouted an immense dream-train that charged across the landscape astonishingly fast to pick up Ed, Elodie and Shudder, and rush them away from the mountains at high speed.

They reached the charcoal landscape, close to the ruins, and Ed urged the train onwards so they could disembark in front of what was left of the building itself. They tumbled out on to the dusty grey terrain, the wreckage looming as broken and disassembled as ever.

‘What is this?’ Elodie asked, looking at it in wonder. Shudder leaned against the nearest tree, exhausted.

‘I’m not quite sure what it used to be,’ Ed said. ‘But I’m going to find out.’

His powers unlocked, magic feeling electric under his skin, Ed put his hands to the darkness of the ground, dug his fingers into the dirt, and felt the texture of the soil welcome his magic home.

Immediately, colour spread from his fingertips. Greens, blues, pinks, reds and oranges rushed out from his touch, bleeding across the charred earth like paint spilled on to paper. The ashen ground became green-grey grass, the trees spouted blood-red leaves, the sky purpled and deepened as though it was expecting a swirling thunderstorm. The nightmare world was coloured in. Not brightly, for this was still a place of sleep and unease and fear, but the darkness was lifted – the greys mixed with brightness and a pale sun ignited in the sky, illuminating the landscape and throwing buildings, animals, nightmares and woodlands into relief.

And in front of Ed, the piles of rocky ruins began to shift.

He straightened up, lifting his hands from the ground as the world continued to blossom into colour, and watched as the rubble and broken beams, the splinters of wood and glass began to join back together as though someone was winding back the clock. The bricks twirled into formation, the archway raised itself, the doors slotted into place. The battlements connected like Lego, and the wreckage became a twisted and blackened, but handsome, castle. The spires were as sharp as thorns, the walls were jagged and the ground surrounding it was overgrown and more bracken than garden – but it was a castle.

‘The Castle of Night. The Home of the Dream Laird,’ Shudder said, softly. ‘It’s yours.’

Ed barked out a laugh at the very idea of it. ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t need a castle. This is going to be something you can all use . . .’ And, concentrating hard, Ed envisioned the great rooms and hallways of the castle suddenly filled with shelves and cases, and enough space for endless, endless books.

For a moment, Ed was aware of nothing but emptiness in his new library – not a single story or fable or legend sat waiting to be discovered. But then there was a rushing sound, like a million pieces of paper spinning about in a whirlwind . . . and the stories, the dream-scripts that had been hidden away for hundreds of years, flooded into the castle. Given a home, a place to be found, the unseen dream-scripts became ink, words, paragraphs, pages . . . books. Books full of happiness and adventure. Books full of fear and inspiration. Books to be brave with. Books to laugh at.

All the dream-scripts anyone would ever need.

Ed grinned through the pain in his face as the dreams and nightmares around him cheered for joy at the sight of the castle filled with words, rushing towards it in delight, to find themselves a way into the minds of the sleeping people, to be believed in, and to be free at last.

Elodie patted him on the shoulder. There was no need to say anything. Things were as they should be.

They smiled at one another, before Ed took his sister’s hand. Her left in his right.

He pulled the blood-red droplet of sea-glass from his pocket, loosened his grip on the Realm, and felt the world slip away from them. But then he was underwater, his mouth full of the ocean, a roof of rock above his head, and he realised that nightmares could exist in the waking world after all.

28

Water and Might

Ed had read many a story where something terrible happened right at the very end of the book, only for the main characters to wake up and discover that it had been a dream all along.

If only that could happen right now.

Screamingly aware of the finite amount of air in his lungs, Ed thrashed in the water searching for Elodie’s hand again. If he was going to drown, he didn’t want to do it alone. He grabbed at her, and she at him, their hands crashing and clutching for each other as the water rolled within the Sculptor’s Cave.

Their hands met. They were not alone. They never had been. And they never would be.

Suddenly an electric feeling shot through Ed, making precious bubbles escape from his mouth. The fizz of magic he had felt in the lands of dreams and nightmares was buzzing tenfold under his skin. He felt like a completed circuit, his veins transformed to wires, his eyes lit up like bulbs. Magic like nothing he had ever felt came to life inside him.

Because of her. Because of his sister. His twin, his other half. The both of them right here in the waking world.

Together they were the Master of the Hidden and Unseen, twice made.

And this wasn’t how they were going to die.

Ignoring the burn of salt water against his eyeballs, Ed forced himself to open his eyes – the one that worked and the one that was injured – to try to see. There was the tiniest speck of light in the distance, which had to be the way out of the cave. They could never hope to swim there, but Ed had other plans.

He reached out with his empty hand, feeling for the microscopic grains of sand floating in the water.

And an unexpected gift from his fight with the Sandman made itself known. During their battle, as the bite of iron coursed from the Sandman’s touch into Ed’s body, it brought with it a little of the nightmare’s own magic. Command over sand, over glass. The Sandman’s power. It was a power the nightmare had never meant to give up, and it was the way for Ed to save himself and his sister. And time, as Estha had said, was a slippery thing in their world. This command of sand and glass hadn’t just affected Ed’s present, it had changed his past, choosing him a tuil of sea-glass; giving him a love of the substance from his young childhood, a desire to always find it on the beach, and the ability to create the blood-red tuil in his desperate hour of need.

Ed had saved himself and his sister, in the midst of battle, and he was going to save them both again.

The grains of sand in the water gathered in his hand as if magnetised. They melted and came together to form a solid lump, a brick, a wall, a barrier . . .

Ed held on tight to Elodie, and she squeezed back desperately. A bright purple light streamed from their clasped hands, cutting through the water, lighting up the dark. Her magic amplified his, making it happen faster, firmer . . .

The sand against his skin heated up, turned red-hot, white-hot, liquified – even in the water – as it spread out from cave ceiling to floor. A huge window of solid glass, surrounded by water on both sides, fit perfectly into the curves of the cave.

And then . . . Ed moved it.

He shoved it out of the cave, and the water behind along with it. The volume of water he and Elodie were trapped behind dropped immediately, and the two of them gasped as their heads broke the surface. They stayed clutching hands, grimacing as magic they were using took a toll on their energy, but Ed kept on pushing the ocean back and back, until it reached the beach.

And it spread.

The full force of Ed and Elodie’s magic transformed Covensea’s black-streaked sand. The golden dunes melted like wax, and rose up against the sea, driving it backwards. The sand cooled to glass that dripped in waves of its own, forming a barrier that ran the full length of the beach, protecting the two Artezan children in a statuesque, translucent testament to how powerful magic could truly be.

Finally, the twins let each other go. They were soaked to the bone, shivering, coughing, but alive.

Ed and Elodie looked at each other, and gave identical shaky laughs.

They had made it.

The sun suddenly broke through the clouds overhead and beamed warmly down on to them with the intensity of an equatorial summer’s day. Their shivers stopped, and they stood up, looking to the top of the cliff to see their parents waving madly, making sunshine and happiness pour down on to them in warming, life-saving love.

Epilogue

FOUR WEEKS LATER

The doctors said the twins’ injuries weren’t as bad as they had first seemed.

Their hands, after some treatment and bandages, were completely fine. Ed’s face had started to heal well already, though it looked as though he was going to be left with a couple of pale scars running down the right-hand side. The damage had also stained his right eye, turning it from burnt amber to a piercing pale blue, though his sight was getting better in it every day, and there was hope that it would eventually be as good as his other eye again. As well as the blue eye, Ed now also sported a white streak at the front of his hair, which no doctor could fully explain.

But Ed knew the reason.

‘Iron damage,’ he said, looking in the mirror. ‘It’s where the Sandman raked at me when we were both being hurt by the iron chain. It might never go back to being black again.’

‘Suits you, I think,’ Dad said firmly. ‘Life’s full of battles, you can’t get away without a few scars.’

Ed smiled. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

He ruffled his hair. ‘Now are yous coming out to this party, or what?’

‘Or what, I think,’ Ed said. ‘I’m no quite ready to be partying, just yet.’

‘That’s fair enough,’ Dad said with a smile. ‘It’s funny – I’m used to magic fading into the background at the end of the summer camp, but this year it seems to be only just beginning. Did you see that Rhea Shah’s magic has changed again? She can make the trees change to look like they’re in all different seasons, now, not just red for autumn. And Cassie McLeod, from Skye, she can now make food cook itself by touching it with a knife, not just uncook toast.’

Ed laughed. ‘It’s going to take some getting used to.’ He paused. ‘How are you and Baba finding it?’

‘We’ll get used to it,’ Dad said, borrowing his son’s words. He folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. ‘Have you thought any more about yourself?’

Ed turned away from the mirror. ‘I think we . . . me and Elodie . . . need to find the other Masters,’ he said. He and his sister had been talking about it since they returned, on quiet walks through Covensea, along the beach (which Ed had recovered by dissolving the glass structures) and through the forest. Mr Biscuits would trot behind them as they walked, the two of them closer than ever, but each of them changed in ways that the other would never understand. ‘We became one, but what about the other two Masters?’ Ed said. He glanced out the window again. Magic isn’t going to settle to how it should be until all three Pillars are found.’

‘True.’ Dad nodded. ‘Where do you plan to start?’

‘The North,’ Elodie said, coming into Ed’s room from behind their dad. She was looking at a map on her iPad. ‘Wherever you can see the Merry Dancers – the Northern Lights. That’s where magic is strongest. That’s where Artezans were made, in the northern places of the world, and that’s where we should look.’

‘You seem to have this all planned out,’ Dad said. ‘Can I come?’

‘Well, we do need someone to drive,’ Elodie said, cheekily.

Baba appeared next to Dad, frowning but with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Do I hear someone calling for adventure?’ he asked.

‘I’m afraid so,’ Ed said.

Baba grinned. ‘I see. Well, leave it to me.’ He kissed Dad on the cheek. ‘They’re wanting to make a start on the Farewell ceremony, Jack. Are you coming?’

‘I am. Can’t tempt yous to join us at all?’ Dad asked the twins.

‘Nope,’ they said in unison.

Baba rolled his eyes and went to collect the trays of snacks in the kitchen and take them to the party-goers. Dad, however, paused.

‘Are you sure about all this?’ he asked. ‘Trying to find the Artezan Masters, I mean. You said someone trapped that poor woman in the Land of Nightmares for centuries. That’s not the sort of thing I like the idea of you messing about with.’

‘Her being trapped there happened hundreds of years ago, like you say,’ Elodie said. ‘Whoever the other Masters are now, they probably don’t even know about that. We need to find them.’

Dad nodded. ‘I suppose you’re right. But you can’t blame me and your baba for being cautious. You’re the most precious things we have.’

Ed looked at him and cocked his head to one side. ‘Did you know?’ he asked. ‘Did you know about Elodie and me?’

‘No,’ Dad said. He pushed himself off the doorframe. ‘But we are so proud of you both.’ And he followed his husband outside.

Outside, there was a lot of noise – explosions, laughter and general shouting – as the Artezans celebrated their last night at the camp. Magic was still going haywire (there was a loud BANG as someone blew up a tree) but since no one was actively having to fight monsters at the minute, they were happy to try and take things one day at a time. Ed could see the Shah family laughing at a joke the youngest had told, Poppley looking sulky as he was given a heap of laundry to put away, and Nyx and Finevan holding hands as they chatted to Lexi’s parents. Children played and ran about, and the sounds of joy drifted through the air, but Ed knew this happiness couldn’t last – it would be too difficult for lots of Artezans to keep their magic on the down-low. Magic that had once been dismissed as talent or luck would be far too loud and extreme to be overlooked now.

Magic seemed more free than it had before, and the old stories of the ancient Artezans felt possible again. There were going to be hard times ahead, Ed was sure of it. There were at least two more Artezan Masters to find, sleeping worlds to manage – and mysteries in their own world that demanded Ed and his sister’s attention even now.

The worlds had suddenly become very big and Ed was a part of something important. It was what he’d always wanted. And now, he felt ready for it.

Elodie put a hand to her ear. ‘Can you hear it?’ she asked. Her face was calm, but her eyes sparkled with a secret wonder.

‘Hear what?’

‘The whispers, Ed. The whispering world.’

Acknowledgements

It is an unusual thing to build a story around things you don’t know about yourself, but whilst Ed and Elodie (and me) may always have questions about what it is to belong, I know that I have the best family, team, and friends to help me find my way in this unexplored wilderness of history that has been tangled with both fiction and fact. To those whose stories have been lost, built over, or actively rejected – may your memories be a blessing.

The first big bouquet of thanks must go to my wonderful editor, Lena McCauley, for her hard work on this story – it was great to be back in a land of fantasy and magic with you! Also to assistant editor, Jadene Squires, for all the input and encouragement – thank you hugely to you both for helping make this book be the best it could be!

To my amazing team at Hachette and beyond – Dom Kingston, Beth McWilliams, Marwa Ahmad, Katie Maxwell, Ruth Girmatsion, Samuel Perrett, and Safae El-Ouahabi – you are all amazing, and endless proof that it really does take a village to create a book! Thanks as well to Joe Todd Stanton, my wondrous cover illustrator – you make everything magical.

Thank you to Isobel and Ian for putting us up, welcoming us all, and rekindling my love of Scotland. And thanks to my dad, Bill, for giving me the country in the first place. Touch not the cat, but a glove!

Always and forever thanks (for putting up with me) to my lads – Nicole, Darran, Alice, Nick, Mark, Olly, and Sana. Ready the memes once more as I start working on book two! Thank you as well to booksellers across the world for all the ongoing love and support, with special mentions to Nick and Mel, Jaime-Lee, Miles and Chris and of course my darling Helen.

Thanks unending, in every world there is, to my wonderful agent, Claire Wilson. A vision of a colleague, a gem of a friend, and never a single nightmare to be found – may all your dreams come true.

And to Joseph and Anton; my family, my coven, my hurly-burly, my future history . . . every day is magical with you.

ORION CHILDREN’S BOOKS

First published in Great Britain in 2024

by Hodder & Stoughton

This eBook edition published in 2024

Text copyright © L. D. Lapinski, 2024

Cover illustration © Joe Todd Stanton, 2024

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

In order to create a sense of setting, some names of real places have been included in the book. However, the events depicted in this book are imaginary and the real places used fictitiously.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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ISBN 978 151 0 11010 6

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