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It was a dangerous thought to have in a dream-box setting. The earth suddenly trembled under their feet. A second, harder shudder followed the first. Malta clutched at a tree to keep from falling. ‘What was that?’ she demanded.

‘An earthquake,’ he replied calmly. They were common enough in Trehaug.

The suspended city swayed with the living trees that supported it and took little harm.

The quakes, however, often did great damage to the excavation work.

He wondered if this were a real earthquake pushing its way into the dream, or an imagined one.

‘I know what a quake is.’ Malta sounded annoyed with him. ‘The whole Cursed Shore is prey to them. I meant that sound.’

‘Sound?’ he asked uneasily.

‘Like scrabbling and scratching. Don’t you hear it?’

He heard it all the time. Waking and sleeping, the sound of the dragon’s claws working feebly against its tomb haunted him. ‘You can hear it, too?’ He was astounded. He had learned to ignore what he had always been told was his imagination.

Before he could reply, everything began to change.

The colours of the forest suddenly grew bright and new.

There was a strong fragrance of ripening fruit on the warm breeze.

The texture of the mosses underfoot became coarser, while the path suddenly sparkled in sunlight.

The blue of the sky deepened. This was no longer Reyn’s memory of a tapestry.

Someone else was adding to the dream-box vision, and he did not think it was Malta.

When thunderclouds began to boil up along the horizon, he was certain of it. He glanced up fearfully as the rising winds sent ripe fruit plummeting from the trees. One spattered into seeds and pulp right by Malta’s feet. The rich smell of its spilled nectar was decadent.

‘Malta. We should part now. Tell your mother that…’

Lightning cracked the sky overhead. Thunder followed instantaneously. Reyn felt his hair stand on end and a peculiar smell rode the wind. Malta cowered low and pointed wordlessly up at the sky. The erratic winds lashed her hair wildly and pressed her nightdress up against her body.

A dragon hovered above the trees. The powerful beat of her wings spurred the winds.

Even the cloud-dimmed light of the sun could not diminish her glory.

She was iridescent. Colours chased one another over her silver body and wings.

Her eyes were copper. ‘I have the power,’ she declared.

Her voice split the sky. The branch of a nearby tree cracked and fell heavily to the earth.

‘Free me and I will aid you. I promise you this.’ Her wings lifted her to the sky where she turned a slow, dazzling loop.

Her long serpentine tail lashed the sky behind her.

Rain began suddenly to fall, a torrent that drenched the humans.

Malta fled shivering to the shelter of Reyn’s arms and cloak.

He put his arm around her. Even in the shadow of the hovering dragon, he was aware of the warmth of her skin through the damp cloth of her nightdress.

From beneath his cloak, Malta squinted up at the beast. ‘Who are you?’ she cried loudly. ‘What do you want?’

The dragon threw back her head and roared her laughter.

She swept past them and rose again into the sky.

‘Who am I? Do I look so foolish as to gift you with my name? No. You will not come to control me that way. As to what I want…a trade. My freedom, in exchange for this ship you mention, and if your father is still aboard it, his life. What say you? An easy trade, is it not? A life for a life?’

Malta looked to Reyn. ‘Is she real? Can she help us?’

Reyn stared up at the dragon above them. She beat her wings heavily as she rose into the storm torn sky. Up and up she rose, growing smaller with distance. She shone like a star against the dark grey clouds. ‘She’s real. But she can’t help us.’

‘Why not? She is immense! She can fly! Couldn’t she just go to where the ship is and…’

‘And what? Destroy the ship to kill the pirates? Possibly, if you truly thought that was wise. Possibly, if she were truly free and flying. But she isn’t. She is only showing herself to us, in this dream, as she imagines herself to be.’

‘How is she really?’

Reyn abruptly realized how close he had come to a very dangerous topic.

‘She’s trapped, far beneath the earth, where no one can free her.

’ He took her arm and hurried her down the path, to where he had willed a sturdy little cottage into existence.

He opened the door and Malta darted inside gratefully.

He followed her, shutting the door behind them.

A small fire illuminated the simple little room.

Malta gathered up her hair in a bundle and squeezed the water from it.

She turned back to him, raindrops still glistening on her face. The firelight danced in her eyes.

‘How is she trapped?’ Malta demanded. ‘What would we have to do to free her?’

He decided to tell her enough to be honest. ‘A long time ago, something happened. We’re not sure what.

Somehow, an entire city was buried under a heavy layer of earth.

It was so long ago that trees have grown in the earth above it.

The dragon is in a chamber deep within the buried city.

There is no way to free her.’ He put all the finality he could muster into his words.

Malta looked stubbornly unconvinced. He shook his head at her.

‘This is not the dream I imagined we would share.’

‘Couldn’t she be dug out? How can she be alive, buried so deeply?’ Malta cocked her head at him and narrowed her eyes. ‘How do you even know she is there? Reyn. There is something you are not telling me,’ she accused him.

He straightened his back and stood his ground. ‘Malta, there are many things I cannot tell you. I would not ask you to betray the secrets of the Bingtown Traders. You must trust me that I have told you all I honourably can.’ He crossed his arms on his chest.

She stared at him for a time. Then she lowered her eyes. After a moment, in a quiet voice she said, ‘Please do not think ill of me. I did not realize what I was asking of you.’ Her voice grew throaty as she added, ‘I look forward to a time when there will be no secrets between us.’

A blast of wind buffeted the cottage walls. Reyn suspected it was the dragon flying over them. ‘Free me!’ Her long wild call slid down the sky to them. ‘Free me!’

At the sound of the dragon’s voice, Malta’s eyes grew wide.

A second wave of wind hit the cottage, rattling the shutters, and she was suddenly in his arms. He held her close and felt her trembling.

The top of her head came only to his chin.

Her hair was damp under his touch when he stroked it.

When she turned her face up to his, he fell into the bottomless gaze of her eyes.

‘It’s only a dream,’ he assured her. ‘Nothing here can hurt you. Nothing here is quite real.’

‘It seems very real,’ she whispered. Her breath was warm on his face.

‘Does it?’ he asked in wonder.

‘It does,’ she assured him.

Cautiously he lowered his mouth to hers. She did not avoid his kiss. The thin layer of veil between their lips was an almost pleasant coarseness. Her arms came around him and held him with awkward inexperience.

The sweetness of the kiss clung to him as the power of the dream-box faded and he drifted into ordinary sleep. ‘Come to me.’ Her words reached him faintly. ‘Come to me at the full moon.’

‘I can’t!’ he cried out, desperate that his words reach her. ‘Malta, I can’t!’

He awakened saying the words into his pillow. Had she heard him? He closed his eyes and tried to will himself back into sleep and the shared dream. ‘Malta? I cannot come to you. I can’t.’

‘ Is that what you say to all females?’ Somewhere a voice laughed in wicked amusement. Claws twitched feebly against iron-hard wizardwood. ‘Don’t fret, Reyn. You cannot go to her. But I shall.’