Kerry Schafer - Wakeworld

First and foremost, great love goes to my family, who share my time and attention with the stories in my head without complaint. I am especially fortunate in my Viking, who reads early drafts and dares to give honest opinions. Your willingness to engage in brainstorming, butt-kicking, motivational speeches, and hugs, even when I bite the hand that feeds me, is priceless.

Much love also goes to my agent, Deidre Knight, who frequently steps outside the demands of her job to also serve as counselor, advisor, shoulder to cry on, and friend.

I’m ever grateful to my talented editor, Danielle, who always sees how to make my books stronger, and to Brad in PR, for being so responsive to my requests and so pleasant and lovely to work with.

I also want to thank all of the medical providers who cared for and about me during this sometimes difficult year. Dr. Moline, Dr. Cooper, all of the nurses and scheduling people, and the wonderful tech who nurtured me after my biopsy—bless you. Without your kindness, responsiveness, and skill, my encounter with breast cancer would have been so much more traumatic, and I think I would never have made my deadlines. So I also owe this book to you.

As for my friends—you are many and wonderful, and I can’t begin to thank you all. Julie and Leigh—you have been there through the good and the bad, and I doubt the book would have been born without you. Huge thanks to Jenn and Susan, not only for your friendship but also for quick reads at crucial moments and great feedback. Alex, our sprints and accountability program helped so much in getting my edits done. Thanks to my sisters at the Debutante Ball for all of the support and friendship as we went through this debut year together. And the rest of you—both online and off—even though your name isn’t on this page, please know that it is in my heart.

Last, but far from least—my heartfelt thanks to everybody who reads, buys, borrows, loans, or loves books. The whole point of writing stories is to have them read, and without you, publishing this book would be a meaningless endeavor.

It was chilly in the old cabin. Vivian tucked her feet up underneath her to escape a draft and wrapped the faded old quilt closer around her shoulders. It smelled, incongruously, of cinnamon. The old gray cat in her lap purred on, undisturbed, but the penguin across the table fixed her with an inscrutable gaze and made no sound at all.

The cat’s name was Schrödinger, but other than that there was nothing more mysterious about her than any other cat. The penguin, on the other hand, did not belong to any recognizable species. He stood a little larger than an Adélie, smaller than a King. His beak was a little too yellow, his breast too perfectly white, except for a crimson splash over his heart. He’d been standing in the same spot for hours, staring in silence, and showed no signs of wandering off to do other things.

And the penguin, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting . . .

Precisely the reason why she had named him Poe.

One dim overhead light illuminated piles of books and documents propped drunkenly against each other on the table in front of her—each one important, each one selected with care from the shelves in her grandfather’s secret room and carried out to the relative normalcy of his kitchen. Dream theory, string theory, alternate realities. Psychosis. Mythology. Anything that looked like it would shed some light on the nature of the Dreamworld and the Between. Some volumes were printed and richly bound in leather with gold embossing; others were nothing more than handwritten notes, loosely tied together with string.

Vivian had taken a leave of absence from work to give her time to study. On the dotted line that asked for a reason, she’d written executrix of a complicated estate , which was true enough. Nobody needed to know that being the executrix also meant inheriting the role of Dreamshifter, a task she was woefully unprepared to take on. Her grandfather had taught her absolutely nothing before her initiation in the Cave of Dreams. All sorts of good and valid reason for that, but it didn’t change the fact that she knew next to nothing and was responsible, alone, for monitoring all of the portals between dreaming and waking and that place between, where realities and dreams shifted together. She was the last, he’d said, the only living Dreamshifter, which meant there was nobody on the face of the planet that she could ask for help or advice.

And so she and Zee had taken refuge here in her grandfather’s old cabin, which offered not only safety and concealment but also a treasure trove of information. The first thing she’d waded through was the Code—based on oral tradition and handed down from one Dreamshifter to the next. At some point it had been transcribed in a cramped and difficult hand. Others had crossed things out and added things in, so many voices from the past offering up their point of view on what needed to be done. Instructions for keeping the balance, when to close the doors and when they could be opened. Guidelines for the teaching of the heir. Protecting oneself from danger. A listing of creatures known to roam the Between.

There was a lifetime of information to absorb, and she had so little time. Besides the dream doors to mind, there was the matter of the missing dreamspheres and the Key to the Forever. Not to mention the dragon loose in the forests surrounding Krebston. Vivian kept the police scanner on at all times, monitoring the calls as they came in: something seen flying above the river at night, a UFO with wings. A fire in the Colville National Forest, which witnesses claimed was started by some giant animal breathing flames.

No deaths yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Right now, though, the scanner was quiet and Vivian’s head was stuffed full of lucid dreaming theory, alternate reality continuums, astral projection, and practical theory for locating and walking through doors. Her eyes gritted and stung, blurring the words until she blinked them back into focus. Maybe she should go lie down, close her eyes for just a few minutes.

To sleep, perchance to dream. She feared her dreams—what she might become, or what might materialize. The last time she closed her eyes it had been to a vivid dream where the otherworld self of her ex-lover had beaten her nearly unconscious. She had shifted into a dragon and consumed him. She could still taste blood, could feel the separation of flesh and bone, hear the horrible shrieking sound he had made just before he died. And because of who and what she was, she wasn’t entirely sure that what she dreamed wouldn’t become a reality in the waking world.

Sleep was out of the question. She got up and started a fresh pot of coffee, put eyedrops in her burning eyes, and returned to the table, wearily shuffling through the books and papers, overwhelmed by the staggering volume of print and her own fatigue. Poe hopped down from the chair, knocking over a bamboo cylinder that she had propped against the table. As she bent to pick it up, she noticed that something about it seemed wrong, but it took her a moment to realize that although the cylinder itself looked weathered and scratched, the wax sealing the end was fresh. With the aid of a paring knife fetched from a kitchen drawer, she incised the wax around the top, taking care not to cut into anything that might lie beneath.

The scent of dust and mildew made her sneeze and sneeze again as the wax seal came free. Gingerly, she tipped the cylinder upside down, cupping her palm beneath, and withdrew a scroll so ancient she feared it would disintegrate in her hands.