Midrealm

  I finished with my all-black platforms over fishnet leggings and a plaid skirt (knee-length, because the school faculty were a bunch of prudes). An hour and a half after waking up, I was ready to go, and I hadn’t even smudged my clothes with my face. Maybe today would be less bad than all the rest of them.

  I went downstairs to the kitchen. A high-pitched squeal of “Sisor!” greeted me, followed by a giggle. That was my little brother Emery’s word for “sister.” He was currently sitting in his high chair at the table with cereal spread all over, several pieces of it stuck to his forehead.

  “Hey, big man,” I said, giving him a kiss on the forehead. It left behind a purple smudge. Mom could deal with that.

  “Esor, I go to da pawk today,” Emery said with a big smile.

  “You’re going to the park? Well, that will be fun.” I sat down to a plate of toast and eggs, already prepared by my mom. “Are you going to see birds while you’re there?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, nodding solemnly and stuffing more cereal in his mouth. “Birds and squalles and play and the jungo gym.”

  “Sounds like a lot of fun.”

  Emery was the one thing that I truly looked forward to each day. He was the only person I really loved spending time with, including my friends at school. Emery never had problems. He didn’t have drama. He loved me unconditionally. There wasn’t anybody else I could say that about. And Emery’s a happy kid, not one who screams and yells when he doesn’t get what he wants. He’ll work out some way to get it and make you happy to give it to him.

  “How did you sleep last night?” my mom asked, sitting down beside me with her own plate.

  “Fine,” I smirked. “I had a dream about shooting lightning out of my hands.”

  “That sounds fun,” she said, with no trace of a smile. My dad’s pretty tolerant of it, but my mom hates the fact that I went goth. She doesn’t make any attempt to hide it, either. That’s half the reason I keep it up.

  “I’m going to go to the mall after school today,” I said.

  “I thought maybe you could go visit your grandpa tonight.”

  “You know I’m not going to do that.”

  “Ester — ”

  “You mean Raven.”

  Mom ignored that. “You haven’t seen him in six months.”

  “I know,” I replied. “Since his last birthday party. And I don’t plan on seeing him again until the next one.” I stood from the table, shoving the last crust of toast in my mouth, gingerly sliding it past my lipstick without touching. I grabbed my backpack, sliding it on. “See you later.”

  I left through the kitchen’s back door, barely managing not to slam it. My mom already knew I was angry at her. She didn’t need another reminder, and I didn’t want to upset Emery.

  Despite how early I’d woken up, the amount of time it had taken me to get ready meant I needed to hurry if I wanted to catch the bus. I hated running though, not the least because my clothes were so ill suited for it. Instead I did a little half-skipping walk the three blocks to the bus stop. I’m sure I looked pretty ridiculous to anyone who might have been watching, but it wasn’t like I cared.

  The bus was just pulling up to the stop as I arrived. I leapt up the stairs and found my way to an empty row in the back, then sat and slung my leg out across it so that no one else could sit there. I pulled out my phone and started tapping away at one of the many games I played to waste time. It wasn’t as much fun as it used to be. Now I spent half my days in a world where I could use magic and had defeated a hellion of Chaos. Tapping little creatures on a phone screen just didn’t have the same appeal after you’d done something like that.

  Two stops later, the door opened and I heard a familiar voice at the front of the bus: “Hey, Raven! What’s up?”

  “Oh, great,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  Calvin made his way down the bus aisle toward me. He was wearing a blue shirt with a picture of Popeye on it that said I’M ON A BOAT. He had a broad, goofy grin on his face, and it was pointing right at me.

  “Mind if I sit here?” he asked, pointing at the seat beside me where my leg was clearly resting.

  “More than you can imagine,” I said.

  “Oh, um,” he started to stammer. Just then, the bus started off and he lurched, twisting mid-fall and sitting down hard on my shin.

  “Ow!” I yelled, yanking my leg away.

  “Seriously!” he cried, rubbing his butt. “Do you have spikes in your boots or something?” He looked down at them. “Oh…um, I guess you do.”

  I growled and turned back to my game, not because I was enjoying it, but because anything was better than a conversation with Calvin first thing in the morning.

  “So, I figured out where Midrealm is,” Calvin said in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “What?” I said, my curiosity piqued despite myself. I still didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking up from my phone, though.

  “Midrealm,” he whispered. “I whipped up some calculations last night and figured out where it is. We go to sleep here on Earth at 10:00pm, and we arrive there around 9:00am. So Midrealm must be somewhere around Bangkok, longitude-wise.”

  “I have no idea where that is.”

  “What?” Calvin said, aghast. “But it’s Bangkok.”

  “I thought you said Midrealm was in a different dimension,” I said.

  “It is. It’s like a parallel earth. I haven’t gotten to look at a map, but I think when we’re there we’re in, like, Europe or something. But if Morrowdust was on Earth, then it would be in the same time zone as Bangkok. Or Mongolia, or Vietnam. Take your pick.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “So what?”

  “What what?” asked Calvin.

  “Is that all?”

  “Well, yeah,” he muttered, looking confused.

  “Ugh,” I groaned. “Calvin, you just wasted a minute of my life that I’ll never get back again. Move somewhere else.”

  “But — ”

  “No. Move. Now,” I said firmly.

  Calvin slunk away. I spent the last five minutes of the bus ride tapping away at my at the game and giving less than no attention to Bangkok or Midrealm.

  I got to school and exited the bus as quickly as I could. Ember and Ivory were there waiting for me, both of them snickering about something as I hopped off the last step.

  It was funny. Just a month ago, Miles and Sarah had been the most popular kids in school, and even Calvin had had his own circle of friends. After we started going to Midrealm, we had to tell people we had a “sleep disorder” to explain the coma-like state we went into. Now, Calvin and Sarah and Miles had found that their friends and circles had started avoiding them. But not mine. My friends had always thought there was something wrong with me, because there was something wrong with everyone. Ember was anorexic, and Ivory was claustrophobic. Like, majorly. She couldn’t even go into the locker room because the walls felt too close.

  “Bye, Raven!” called Calvin, waving cheerily as he headed for the school’s front doors. I rolled my eyes and didn’t respond.

  “Do you know that kid?” asked Ember, staring daggers at Calvin’s retreating back.

  “Not really,” I said. “He’s Sarah’s little cousin, and so he thinks that makes us friends.”

  “He is so not goth,” Ivory said, sneering. “Neither is Sarah, for that matter. I don’t know why you hang out with that preppy little — ”

  “Hey,” I interrupted. “Cut it.” Sarah and I weren’t close any more, but that didn’t mean I was okay with people running her down behind her back.

  Ivory rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Smoke?”

  “Sure,” I said, heading for the back of the gym where we wouldn’t be seen. Then it would be a long twelve hours of waiting, through school and at home, dreading my return to a world where I’d have to put up with Cara’s training for one more day.

  RAVEN

  IT WAS SIX O’CLOCK IN the morning, and I refused to sleep.

  I lay in
my bed, staring at the white popcorn ceiling, earbuds in and blasting Fracture. I was sure everyone else was already in Midrealm, probably in the training rooms beating up training dummies with a variety of weapons. Me, I wasn’t interested. And it was the weekend, so I could stay up all night if I wanted and sleep all day. My mom might try to wake me up, but she wouldn’t be able to.

  Suddenly I realized that, if I fell asleep in the next couple of hours, it would be day on Earth and night in Midrealm. We hadn’t been in Midrealm during the night yet. I wondered what would be going on. There probably wouldn’t be much to do. Maybe I could go walking around Morrowdust.

  No, I decided, I’d ask for a horse and go riding in the countryside. The ride to the the hellion battle weeks ago was the first ride I’d taken in years. It reminded me just how much I missed it. Aside from Sarah, the other kids didn’t know I used to ride as a hobby. I’d stopped in ninth grade, but I always figured I’d take it up again eventually.

  A midnight ride through Athorn would be awesome. Despite everything that was annoying and terrifying, about Midrealm, in some ways it was pretty magical. Suddenly, as though my eagerness had sent a message to my body, I felt my lids growing heavy. Guitar thundered in my ears as I drifted to unconsciousness.

  I came to in my bed, the stone room lit by the fire of torches set into the wall.

  I rose and went to my dresser, pulling on my Realm Keeper robes and looked in the full length mirror on the wall. Despite their uniform look, which meant a concession to conformity that I didn’t like, I had to admit the outfit was pretty sweet.

  I stepped into the hallway to find Barius waiting there for me. His heavy jowls waggled as he scowled at me, his bushy eyebrows drawing together in annoyance.

  “And where in the bloody blue blazes have you been?” he demanded.

  “True Earth,” I said rudely. “Didn’t you know that’s where I go when I sleep?”

  I brushed past him down the hallway to the stairwell. Barius followed after me, clanking angrily in his silver and red armor.

  “The others have been here for hours,” he began. “They have been training hard.”

  “Good for them,” I said.

  “For some reason,” he said coolly, “I feel that you are not taking your responsibilities seriously.”

  “Responsibility implies choice,” I countered. “I didn’t ask to be here. I’m helping anyway. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do exactly what Greystone wants all the time.”

  Before he could answer again, I threw open the stairwell door and started down. Conversation died in the heavily echoing passage, and I reached the bottom to enter the great hall. The others were seated around our table, where they’d been brought a dinner of what smelled like chicken.

  Everyone looked up as I entered. “Hey, Raven!” Calvin called brightly. I ignored him.

  “Look who finally decided to wake up,” Blade said sarcastically. “Or go to sleep, I guess. Or both.”

  “Man, did you have the worst case of insomnia ever, or what?” asked Miles.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I said simply. “Don’t tell me you all actually missed me.”

  “I kind of did,” said Tess, her voice just above a whisper. She looked up at me shyly from behind her hanging hair.

  I blinked and stared back dumbly. Tess wasn’t normally glad to see me. Nobody was normally glad to see me.

  Though I tried not to, I couldn’t help but notice that Sarah was the only one who hadn’t spoken yet. I tried to avoid her gaze, but couldn’t resist looking over as I pulled up my chair at the table. She was staring at me, of course. She didn’t look angry, or even confused. I got the feeling she knew exactly why I was so late in coming. That was probably a conversation I’d have to have later. Great.

  Barius turned to one of the serving girls standing to the side in the great hall. “Would you please fetch Lady Raven some dinner,” he said. “Or, I suppose, breakfast.”

  “No, that’s fine — ” I started, but the servant was already gone. I sighed. It was weird having servants. It wasn’t like they were slaves — we’d made very certain of that right away. But I wasn’t used to having people around taking care of my every need. You would have thought it was awesome, but it was actually kind of annoying.

  I looked around, realizing for the first time that the worn old chair at the table was empty. “Where’s Greystone?” I asked.

  “He’s in conference with the king,” Sarah replied. “Now that Athorn seems stable and we’re starting to get our feet under us in terms of using our magic, it looks like Greystone wants to start the counter-offensive. He has to get Nestor to okay it, though, before we’ll start making actual plans.”

  “Nestor doesn’t want to?” I said in shock. I knew there was some kind of issue with the king, but abandoning the outside world to Chaos seemed a little extreme, even for him.

  “It is not Nestor who objects, Lady Raven,” said Cara from her position standing behind Sarah’s chair. “It is Queen Elanor.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “But that’s nuts. Right? What does she think, Chaos is just going to fade away and we’ll all be able to move out when it does?”

  “I do not presume to know the mind of the Queen,” said Cara snidely, making it abundantly clear that she didn’t wish to, either.

  “Hey, did you get your weapon?” Calvin asked, changing the subject through a mouth full of chicken. He held up a beautiful quarterstaff with the ends capped in shining studded iron. It looked like it was brand new.

  I looked around and saw that the others also had shiny new hilts sticking out of their scabbards, intricate detail cut into each. I looked up at Barius. “Do I have one?” I asked.

  “I thought you didn’t care,” he said gruffly. “Eat first. Then we can discuss it.”

  The servant reappeared with a plate of food and set it down in front of me. Despite my protests, I was hungry. We were awake for normal sixteen-hour days back on Earth. That meant that our bodies in Midrealm were asleep for sixteen hours. We usually woke up ravenous. I scooped up a drumstick and began munching on it. Struck by a thought, I turned to Barius. “You hungry? I’m not going to finish this whole plate.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, leaning forward and snatching up a breast. He ripped a huge hunk of meat off with his teeth, chewing noisily. I didn’t mind it. I had a baby brother; messy eating wasn’t exactly new to me. But I saw Melaine look at him disdainfully from behind Miles’ chair. She always seemed so haughty. I know I complained about Barius a lot, but at least he was just a crotchety old man.

  “Anyway, where were you before she came in?” Calvin said, turning. Darren, his Runegard, was seated beside him. Alone among us, Calvin had struck up a true friendship with his bodyguard. He insisted that Darren sit at the table with him, even though it clearly made the guy uncomfortable when all the other Runegard stood. “You were telling us about dragons.”

  “He was telling you,” Blade corrected. “None of the rest of us care.”

  “Dragons have not been seen for centuries, Sir Calvin,” said Darren. “But there was a time when they roamed the lands freely. I am not sure where. They were terrible to behold in battle. Their only weakness was that there were never very many of them — at least compared to humans, elves and the like. But even a dozen dragons were a force powerful enough to stop all but the mightiest army.”

  “And did they all breathe fire, or did they have other powers, too?” said Calvin eagerly.

  Darren looked at him as though he was crazy. “I’m sorry…breathe fire?”

  Calvin blinked. “Yeah. You know. Fire. From their mouths.”

  Darren looked around at the other Runegard, all of whom simply looked back at him and shrugged.

  “I am sorry, Sir Calvin,” Darren said, “but I have never heard of dragons who breathed fire.”

  “What!” Calvin exclaimed. He sounded enraged. “Everyone knows that dragons breathe fire. Even Blade knows that dragons breathe fire!”

&nb
sp; “True,” Blade said, munching away.

  “That’s, like, the basics,” Calvin continued. “It’s practically what makes them dragons.”

  Darren shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sir Calvin. They are extremely large beasts, with wings as wide as a great sailing ship. They can fly, and they can decimate scores of foes with their claws and their teeth. Their scales are their natural armor, resistant to all but the strongest of blows. They are clever beyond the knowledge of man. But they do not breath fire, or anything else.”

  Calvin slumped in his seat. He looked like his puppy had just died.

  I shoved a final bite of a roll in my mouth, then pushed back my chair. “Well, I’m sure you all will be getting back to Earth soon,” I said. “I think I’m going to go wander around.”

  “Aren’t you going to go practice?” asked Miles.

  “Not in the mood,” I said. “But…” I held my hand out to Barius, who grumbled a little before placing a new whip into my hand. It was beautiful, coiled up like a sleeping snake. I hooked it onto my belt. “I think I’ll just go out into the city. See what’s what. Maybe watch the moon rise.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” Sarah offered in a tone that brooked no argument. She stood from her seat and made for the door beside me. Inwardly I groaned. So I wasn’t even going to get back to Earth before she reamed me out.

  We went outside. It was late afternoon, and the sun was hanging low in the sky on the opposite side of the Runehold. The massive fortress cast everything into shadows, and I felt a brief chill touch me as it blew through my robes. I shivered and shook my arms, trying to dispel the cold. We passed through the two courtyards, each bordered by a wall, and came out into the city streets. From the hill where the Runehold lurked, I looked out across the rooftops of Morrowdust to where the royal palace stood tall and beautiful, its harsh angles catching every ray and glimmer of the sinking sunlight. It cast them back in my face, forcing me to look away as white spots burned into my vision.