Page 115 of Awakened Ash and Alchemy

Missing her aunt killed the smile as Angela entered the circle’s web. In the middle, she lay down on a thin mattress that didn’t look any thicker than a yoga mat. She expected to feel the hard floor, but instead it gave the illusion of floating.

“This is nice.” She hadn’t expected that softness and how it cupped her spine.

“It’s a dream mattress.” With bare feet, Dremulus stepped inside the circle as the three witches spread out equally along the outer perimeter holding assorted bundles, feathers, and smoking incense, including a small bell. A fourth witch, much younger than the others, remained by the table cluttered with more tools, like an apprentice carefully watching their craft.

“Comfortable?” Dremulus asked.

Angela didn’t need to try too hard because the mattress made it easy to get comfortable. Pity it did nothing for the thing sitting in her chest that grew into the well-remembered dread of what came after falling asleep—the terror that stopped her breathing, trapping the scream in her throat before she woke.

Every. Single. Time.

It made her hesitate even now, in broad daylight.

“Can you tell me what’s going to happen?” Zarek had given her a brief outline.

“You’ll sleep. The witches in this room will hold the protections of the Dream Circle. The Sworn Exarchs are outside and will join us once you fall asleep to protect you, too.”

You’d think with all that protection, sigils, and whatever smoking incense they were using would make her nerves settle.

“All you’ll hear is my voice as I guide you through the dreamscape. If you should ever become frightened at any point, just call my name. Dremulus. And I will be with you, as a dream walker. You will not be alone in this, I assure you. And, my dear, you will not be judged,” he said with a soft calming smile as he crouched down beside her in the most comforting bedside manner. “What happens in the dreamscape stays in the dreamscape.”

“Done this before, have we?” She grinned back at him.

He smiled, tilting his head to share a coy wink. “A few times.”

“Right. Okay, then.” Angela took a deep breath, then laid her head back and closed her fingers around the medallion. “Time to face my fears.”

“Close your eyes. Take deep breaths. And just allow your body to follow.”

She let her eyelids grow heavy, the candles dimming from her view. The low and dreamy music complimented the soft incense. With the accumulated debt of too many sleepless nights, she went under almost immediately.

“Can you hear me, Angela?”

“Yes.” Even with her eyes closed, she knew she was still in the room—but not. The light cleared as she stood. Wow, that was quick.

“Tell me what you see.”

All around her, enormous white clouds spread beneath her feet like a floor. Letting her hand pass through one, it was cool to the touch, like pressing into something that was both there and wasn’t.

She was also in two places at once. Asleep and awake, dreaming and present, with her body on the dream mattress in a room in the Keep, and here… standing in a sky that didn’t hold a horizon.

“It’s nice.” The sky was so rich a blue she could get lost in the color’s depth, it was so close she could touch it, even reaching out to do so.

“Can you see me?” Dremulus sounded close, and yet far away.

The clouds parted to one side and a familiar figure descended as if stepping down some stairs that weren’t there. Instead of his usual black suit, it had been replaced with a white one, but it was still the same person she’d known for most of her life. And the last person she’d expected to appear in the clouds.

“Father Michael?” She rushed over to hug him, the way she always did. With all the changes she’d gone through these past few weeks, this was the hug she needed. He smelled like clean linen and old books, something that had always meant safety to her, even when she’d grown too old to admit she still needed it.

“What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d be your dream guide. I think I’d qualify from the practice I endured when you were younger.” Father Michael’s laugh lines deepened with his smile.

“Are you allowed to?”

“This is your dream, Angela. I suspect you chose me.” He then tossed his thumb back toward the void. “Unless you’d prefer the gentleman in the white pajamas.”

“No. You’ll do perfectly.” She hooked her arm around his, and they slowly strolled among the clouds shifting beneath their feet. “I wanted to thank you for our last conversation. What you said about my non-friend.” A conversation that seemed like eons ago.