#Dreamers – Writerz

Notes from the Edge 04-03-2024

Dell Sweet

Dreamer’s Worlds

Dreamer’s Worlds: The Legend of Sparrow

I had come back to spend time with Laura. I could not tell her my real reasons. That I was afraid of leading the Dream Killer to her. #Mythology #Fantasy #Readers #DreamTravel #Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XRM98LP

Dreamer’s Worlds: The Dreamer’s Worlds

Laura and Joe live lonely lives, but they are dreamers. When they close their eyes they dream travel through space and time, to other worlds with little more than a thought… #Mythology #Fantasy #Readers #DreamTravel #Kindle

A free chapter read from the series…

DREAMER’S WORLDS: SPARROW SPIRIT

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LEGAL

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual living persons places, situations or events is purely coincidental.

This novel is Copyright © 2010 – 2015 Wendell Sweet and his assignees. The Name Dell Sweet is a publishing name used by Wendell Sweet. The Name Geo Dell is a publishing name owned by Wendell Sweet. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic, print, scanner or any other means and, or distributed without the author’s permission.

Permission is granted to use short sections of text in reviews or critiques in standard or electronic print.

FOREWORD

My hope is that you enjoy this book as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Dell wrote the seed to this book some time ago. As we sat down together and began to work out how to write the actual book it seemed like a few hundred serious things happened all at once. I had things going on in my life, Dell had things going on in his life. It seemed time to concentrate on the actual writing would be difficult with a few hundred miles between us, and little actual time to get together physically, but in the end it all worked out. And now it’s your time. Read. Enjoy. We will be back in the fall of 2015 with book two…

Geo Dell

DREAMER’S WORLDS: THE DREAMER’S WORLDS

“I had looked in that jerky way dreams have of showing you something. Pieces missing, frames skipped in the film, scenes out of order: Bits of information that seemed to mean nothing at the time. Things you only know and never see. Even explaining it doesn’t do it justice, but if you’ve ever dreamed you know what I mean.”

Joe Miller

“I will say this about buildings, walls, houses, cars, trees… They harbor evil. They can hate. Maybe not in the world most of us live in, but in the world I spend most of my time in the rules are different. They can hate you. They can love you. They can kill you. You should know that if you ever dream.”

Laura Kast

DREAMER’S WORLDS TWO

Sparrow Spirit

ONE

On The Path:

Day One.

Laura Kast and Bear

The morning sun came up bright. Bear and I were sitting before a fire we had built a few miles from the village. We were not meant to travel in the night, that had been made clear. A few miles from the village everything changed. We weren’t in the land of the dead, any more than we were in the underground, but this was not the normal world either.

Neither of us knew exactly where we were or where we would end up. What would happen after three hands of time. Fifteen days.

But we had heeded the warning, and so, although neither of us needed sleep, we stopped, built a fire and spent the night wondering about what might lie ahead.

Several times in the night something came close to us. Studied us. We could see the eyes reflected in the black.

Some of those creatures sounded like horses. Hooves beat the ground, but their eyes matched no horse I have ever seen.

Some made the ground shake as they walked. Just before morning one of them called out to us once more.

“Dreamer’s!” The voice had come from the blackness, after the sounds of labored breathing and vibration from the ground as the creature moved.

The silence spun out.

“Hear this!” The voice continued… “If I find you in the daylight, I will do all that I can to help you… I have prayed you well, and I will continue to pray you well, but if I come upon you traveling during the night I will kill you both.”

The voice alone made the ground tremble. When it finished, the sounds of labored breathing came back. And heavy footsteps moved away. We had no doubt that whatever it was, was meant as a straightforward warning to us. That, along with the warriors warning made us glad we had stopped for the night. If there were a doorway or doorways along this path, there was no telling what could cross over from other words. No telling at all.

Shortly after the sun rose, the second sun rose, and the heat began to build. We broke camp and began our walk on the well worn path that ran beside the river.

We looked but we found no footprints or unusually disturbed areas of earth. I began to put it from my mind as the morning wore on.

On The Path:

Joe Miller

Gary stood where I had left him. But it wasn’t really Gary. He was whatever I believed he was. My own guilt turned into a mirror.

His state had changed considerably since I had left. His face was sunken, split to yellow bone. Beetles and worms crawled busily over his moldy gray suit and through his hair. His eye sockets were deep black with chips of blood-red at the centers. His hands not much more than bones and crumbly skin. Fingers clicking and clacking together as he moved them.

“I’m going in,” I told him. My hand fell on the knob.

“I’ll look forward to your arrival here,” The thing that was not Gary said.

“You’ll wait a long time,” I said quietly. My eyes left his and I turned the knob. It turned easily beneath my hand, the door swung inward, and complete blackness greeted me. I took a breath, tried to slow my heart rate and stepped into the blackness.

At first the floor remained under my feet the absolute black before my eyes. But the floor shifted, tilted down, changed texture. I stopped and regained my balance and at the same time the blackness began to clear.

A path came from the darkness winding down a steep cliff face to the valley floor below. I took another step, and another, and the blackness retreated completely to be replaced by early morning sunlight that fell from the sky above. I turned my eyes up to those skies above the valley, where twin suns rode close to one another, lifting from the edge of the world, sailing into the skies. I looked back to the door but it had disappeared. Nothing remained of my old world. I turned my attention back to the path and the valley below.

A large village spread across the valley floor. Smoke rose from several fires. I wasn’t close enough to see what those places were. The people seemed no larger than half sized ants crawling across the valley floor. Even so, I felt that they knew I was there. Felt me. My presence. And they had been expecting me to come to them. I clutched my medicine bag where it hung on its leather cording around my neck. Sent a small prayer of thanks to the Creator and began to walk my path.

In The Stone.

Sparrow Spirit

Sparrow Spirits eyes opened. This world was as real as any she could remember. The physical world. The world she had traveled while she was dead, but she had never succumbed to its reality.

It was early morning. The sun in the sky seemed so real. The clouds that floated in the pale gray early morning sky, their bottoms tinged with pinks and oranges, seeming to promise rain. And rain may come, but it was not the thunders that would bring it, she knew. The clouds were no more real than anything else here.

Something had awakened her; she did not know what. As she wondered a sparrow song came to her, sending the greeting once more that had pulled her from her sleep.

She called the sparrow to her, and she materialized within the stone, her tiny feet wrapped around Sparrow Spirit’s small finger. The sparrows spirit looked and seemed as real as anything else in her prison. The sparrow sang its message as Sparrow Spirit listened.

Out Of Time

The Thief Of Souls

He strode briskly through the cool night air, his feet stepping on rocks, bricks, glass and nails alike. His feet were bare, but he paid no attention to where he put them. He stopped before a slight mound, just a few inches across and squatted next to it. One hand shot out and exploded the earth where it touched it. His hand reached down throwing the dirt that remained aside. He slowed, stopped, and then lifted out a few feathers and bits of bone, a fragile, yet intact bird skull. He placed the pieces all together on a clean handkerchief he had pulled from his breast pocket. He stood, brushed the dirt from his hands, folded the handkerchief carefully and then walked off across the lot the way he had come. A few seconds later his feet touched down on a street in the city of the dead.

His boot heels clock clocked as he walked, bouncing off the empty buildings, echoing along the vacant streets. Dogs and coyotes fought over a nearby body. But they fled as the scent of The Thief of Souls came to them. The fight suddenly not important all. He walked to the edge of the city, savoring the pall of death that hung over it. The smells. The silence except for the death machinery.

He stopped at a small clearing. A stone altar and bare earth. He walked to the altar, placed the handkerchief upon it and then carefully opened it, allowing the bones and bits of feathers to tumble out onto the cold, stone surface. He set the handkerchief aside leaving the bird bones exposed in the weak moonlight. He withdrew a shiny steel knife from a sheath inside his coat.

Long, over nine inches of smooth steel. Curved and honed to a razor-sharp cutting surface. The tip itself was honed to a needle like sharpness. He held one hand out, palm down, and drew the steel blade across it. A few drops of thick, black blood dripped down upon the remains.

The effects were immediate. The bones began to shift, curl, the feathers seemed to melt into black goo surrounding the bones as they twitched and moved.

Smoke began to rise in curls. The drops of blood slowed. The thief returned the knife to his sheath, took the handkerchief that he had discarded, wound it around his palm a few times to stop the flow of blood, stepped back and watched the blood serve its purpose.

A few minutes later the mess began to grow, covering the altar top. Time slipped by as it continued to grow. Finally, it ceased and Abignew lay stretched out on the table. The thief bent low, placed his mouth over the demons’ mouth and breathed life into him. Abignew came alive with a sharp cough and a cry of alarm. He settled down when the Thief laid his hand upon his chest, pushing him softly back to the stone altar top.

“You let them kill you… You are not usually that stupid,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Abignew told him.

He shook his head. “Don’t say sorry. Sorry is only a word. Go find them and this time, kill them. I don’t ever want to hear of them again.” The Thief removed his heavy hand and helped Abignew from the altar. Together they walked back into the City of Dead.

The Red Way:

Laura And Bear

The first dead passed us by before both suns had fully lifted above the rim of the world.

We had heard them long before we saw them. Crawling, stumbling, crashing around in a thick forest that crept up to the edge of the path in many places. In some places it fell back a few hundred yards, in others, limbs overhung the path as if reaching their wooden fingers for the river beyond. What the dead had been doing in the woods was beyond me.

Bear and I watched stunned as they began to pour from the woods, which were so thick that it seemed as though night still held dominion there and take up following the path.

Bear had no more explanation than I did for why they were in the woods. Like me he thought that they were here to finish following their own path. For all who died there was a journey of death to make. The final journey. And it made sense to both of us that they were on the same path as we were.

“This path is part of their journey,” Bear said. “We are in search of our entrance, and they are as well.” He seemed to think for a moment. “Somewhere along this path their journey may end, and they will find their way to the Ancestors, the Land of Dead, or the Underworld.” We walked in silence for a time.

The dead came heavy from the woods as the suns rose into the sky. They came as they had died, or as they had become after death. Some crawling. Missing limbs. Eyes. Some not much more than skeletons, collections of bones walking along to the accompaniment of the clacks and clatter from their bones.

Some seemed whole, some nearly so. A young woman walked past me and smiled shyly at me as she did. As she smiled, I thought she looked like the picture of life until she turned more fully to me, and I could see the opposite side of her face was a ruined mass of torn flesh. One bright eye stared back at me from the ruined mass.

“Could you help me?… I can’t… I can’t find my way.” She said. She moved on without waiting for an answer, drops of blood spattered to the ground as she walked.

Some were more terrifying than pathetic. They stumbled about headless, bumping into one another, and nearly bumping into us occasionally.

One came crawling along the ground. Her body was gone from the waist down. The flesh was stripped away from her face, rotted away or eaten by the birds who still harassed her as she crawled along. Landing on her and pecking away small strips of her flesh.

As I watched one landed on her head, dug in its claws and pecked one of her eyes out. Her hands, which had been working to pull her along, came up and grabbed at the bird as a scream came from her throat. One hand hit the bird and it fluttered up into the air.

A man stumbling along beside her snatched the bird from the air, crushed it in one fist and dropped it to the ground. The woman snatched up the bird in one hand. Her fingers were down to the bone from pulling her body along, the white tips poked from the flesh, streaked with blood, bits of flesh and dirt. The birds mouth opened weakly. The woman looked at it for a moment with her one remaining eye and then thrust her head forward and bit its head off. The sound of the head cracking and breaking in her jaws came to me as she threw the body away, dug her hands back into the ground and began once more to pull herself along as she continued to chew on the bird’s head.

Shortly after that we both began to focus farther off down the path so we wouldn’t have to look too closely. As the day wore on the woods seemed to empty and the path became crowded in places. No matter how fast we walked the dead moved faster, as they were always coming up behind us and passing us. Occasionally one would stop, look around, and then wander off the path to the river or the woods. I saw at least two dozen disappear into thin air as I watched.

By noon the predators showed up and the crowded path began to thin out.

My first reaction was to stop them. To chase them away. And I did the first few times, but that only told them to stay away from us.

Wolves, Bears, big cats attracted to the smell of so much death. They ran at them, but the dead had no real way to run away or to defend themselves. They dragged them off into the woods where the screaming continued long after it should have.

Bear and I agreed that they were not really animals of all, but demons, spirits come to steal the souls of the dead. The ones that came as themselves were the worst of all. They swooped from the blue sky. Black shadows against the white clouds and dual suns. Hideous faces, some as dead as those they preyed upon. Some came from the ground, and twice they crawled from the river itself: After that we stayed farther away from the river.

By the time the suns were straight up in the sky there were very few dead left. The predators were stalking those and taking them one by one. They stumbled along fearfully, watching all around them as they tried to run. Or they ran toward Bear and me, screaming for us to help them. Swerving away at the last minute as if they realized we were something different and could not help them.

As the suns lifted higher into the sky the dead became less, although we could still hear their cries from the deep woods as they were devoured. Bear and I walked on in silence.

The predators, whether demons or real, ran along with the dead at the tree line. Sometimes concealed, sometimes showing themselves. Sometimes scenting the dead, sometimes seeming to scent on Bear and me. But always just a short space away. We didn’t lack for company.

The river, black and oily in the darkness, was not much different in the daylight. An odor of death and rot came from its waters as they bumped over rocks and rapids on their way to wherever dead water went to.

The birds came in mass just before the first sun sank into the horizon. They picked at the bits and pieces of the dead that had fallen on the path. There were so many at times that Bear, and I had to push them aside in order to walk. Once the first sun set the birds took flight: The path was picked clean as it had been the night before when we had started out on it. Now we understood how it had gotten that way.

Just before the second sun set the Moon began to show herself. I didn’t know if this was a Grandmother Moon, but I sent a prayer to her just the same as she came up to keep the darkness away.

As the sun set the other noises came: The shadows built at the edges of the forest. The heavy footfalls came from deep within the trees. The ground shook, and I remembered the voice from the night before.

Occasionally, as the sun set, we heard the cry of one of the bigger predators as they became prey to whatever it was that ruled the night. Just before nightfall we stopped, gathered dead fall together to see us through the night, and made a small camp at a wide area of the path.

The Moon came up full and Bear and I sat before the fire, each lost in thought.

The Red Way:

Joe

The suns were sinking lower into the earth by the time I came down off the mountain and wandered into the village. I was tired, as if I had a physical body. My eyes were heavy lidded. My strength nearly gone. One moment I was alone the next I was flanked by warriors who had fallen in beside me. Ghosting from the trees and walking beside me, matching my stride. They were bare chested; war paint adorned their bodies. Red, black, and bone bead work was woven into their hair. I followed them into the village.

It was a large busy village. Small children ran here and there. Happy, carefree. Wolfdogs chased after them, protected them, watched out for them, including keeping an eye on me, the stranger, as I walked past them deeper into the village.

The wolf dogs reminded me of Bear and made me wonder where Laura was. Whether Bear was physically with her, or only in spirit, walking some other path himself.

A clearing opened up and I found myself before a large teepee at the center of the village.

The tepee was off by itself, it was also clear that it approximated the center of the village. The heart. But it was a place of importance. An ancient old man sat close to a fire, nearby a young woman held a rabbit up to the sky in one hand. In the other she held a forged steel blade. The blade glinted in the moonlight. She closed her eyes, praying the rabbit’s soul back to the creator, and then lowered her hands. A few short minutes later the rabbit was spitted over the fire across from the old man.

I studied her face as she spitted the rabbit. Tattoos of small blue-black squares on one cheek. Exquisitely made clothing. Leather tunic, leather dress. Moccasins with high built-in leggings. She was young, graceful, her eyes sparkled with amusement as she caught mine looking at her. I felt the need to apologize, but she was gone long before I could say anything. The old man beckoned me to sit. He had apparently been waiting on me. I felt like apologizing again. He spoke slowly.

“You could apologize your entire life. But your actions say those words for you. If you truly walk the Red Path, there is no need to apologize it is known that you feel remorse. And if you do not, you do not walk the Red Path at all.” He picked up an iron Tomahawk from the ground beside him. “We will eat shortly. For now, I ask that you honor the Creator with me,” he said as he packed the tomahawk’s pipe bowl full of tobacco.

I didn’t understand what he said on one level. I didn’t know the language. On another level I heard him perfectly and understood the things he didn’t say. That he had expected me. That I was welcome. That he knew I would honor the Creator.

He lit the bowl, puffed, blew smoke in the four directions, and then passed the pipe to me. I acknowledged the directions myself, smoked and then passed the tomahawk back to him. We repeated the passing of the pipe two more times without acknowledgment of the directions, and then he set the pipe down. He reached forward and turned the rabbit on its spit where it sizzled and browned, and then looked up to my eyes.

“You still live,” he said.

I nodded.

He nodded back. “It will be harder if you live. Hard to walk among the dead with a body to live for… You should let it go.” He finished.

I digested his words slowly. “Is it required?” I thought to add something else but couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Across from me a young woman arrived with a skin and poured liquid into small wooden bowls. The old man gave me a bowl.

“It is not,” he said. “But I thought you loved the woman. Wanted her to succeed.” He nodded for me to drink and then drank himself.

I took a deep drink. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I had become walking down off the mountain. Heavy, fermented, sweet, it burned my throat on the way down. My eyes teared up. He smiled at me. “I want her to succeed,” I answered honestly. “I had hoped to dream her to life.”

“You cannot dream another to life,” he said simply and sipped at his bowl.

“I meant,” I started.

“I know what you meant. But death. Life. These are not your choices. These are choices the Creator makes long before we are born into these worlds. We can only accept them… She has died… None return from the dead… The legend of Sparrow Spirit should tell you that.” He said, holding my eyes with his own.

I sipped and nodded my head. “I should die,” I asked at last?

“I cannot say… I can only say I’m surprised you have chosen to walk alive. It is difficult dead… Alive…” He shrugged and sat his bowl aside.

Two young women appeared with a platter of steamed vegetables, and taking the rabbit from the spit, prepared a platter of food for each of us. The platters, I noticed when I took mine, were shoulder bones from Elk or Moose. I lost myself in eating. Surprised at my appetite. The old man ate with me, both of us silent. The two young women moved off a short distance and talked quietly between themselves. One had spirals on one cheek, the other wore a leather outfit with handprints and spirals. The same nine square pattern was tattooed on her cheek. The opposite cheek the young woman with the spiral had chosen.

“It is her name… Power… All she can be,” the old man said. It explained everything and told me nothing. “You could die a good death and be more help to her. What will you do alive? How will you, a mortal, help her with the things of the dead?”

I met his eyes. I had no answer. “Is it required,” I asked again.

“Isn’t your purpose to win?” He countered.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

He nodded. “Then you must leave it to the creator. Death. Life. Is his gift to give to you. For now he has purposed you to travel in the land of the dead, yet live. If he decides you must die, you will die. If he allows you to live, he will use you in that state.” He picked up the bowl and sipped from it.

I picked up my own bowl, found it empty, and one of the young women rose and came to me with a skin and refilled my bowl. She went to the old man and filled his next. I sipped at my bowl and thought about what the old man had said. But it made sense. Perfect sense. I had wondered, and more than wondered, even asked the Creator to allow Laura to have her life back once more, against my own beliefs. My beliefs said the Creator has given us all that we need. There is no need to ask for anything, only to give thanks. Sometimes hard to understand. A hard path to walk. But it was part of the path I had always walked, and I knew I would always walk.

“You will walk,” he said. “Starting tonight, after the Moon is heavy in the sky. But you will not walk for lengths in the moonlight. If you do you will surely die, and your death will be for nothing. You’ll walk until you can no longer see the glow of the village. You will stop and make your camp. When the brothers rise, you will rise quickly with them and be underway. You will see things that are not a dream. Things that can kill you. And some things that will try to take you away from your walk. You must walk, when the brothers set you will rest through the darkness. However, tempted, do not venture into the darkness…” He sipped at his bowl. “Will you live? Will you help her? I cannot say.” He sipped again and then nodded. “If you die, Brother, die well.” His hands rose, motioning me up and I understood it was time to leave.

The village was not as busy as it had been when I walked into it. The Moon was rising. The light bled from the sky. Four warriors walked beside me.

I passed Elders gathered around fires. They watched as I passed. A baby suckled at his mother’s breast. His dark eyes following me as I passed.

We left the village at a run and a few minutes later I was on my own. I built a fire and it burned brightly to keep the night away. The voices came to me shortly after that. Thousands it seemed, calling to me from the trees that started only a few hundred feet from me. Screams. Voices calling for me to help them. As the Moon continued to rise the voices came less often. I sat and waited for the sunrise.

In The Fight:

Abignew;

Dream Killer

Dream Killer: Abignew traveled with the Dream Killer. The Dream Killer was not much different from he himself. A minor demon. An evil device was how he thought of himself. An evil device that the thief could use to meet his ends. Dream Killer may have had legends spoken about him, but he was no different than Abignew himself, despite that.

They traveled at the edges of the forest with the dead. The spirit animals, the dead following their path, the predators that preyed on the animal spirits, none of those bothered Abignew, and from what he could tell, they didn’t bother the Dream Killer either.

The traveled in the black, and the shadows within the black. Things screamed. Some human. Some not. Other things came close until they got their scent and then they fled in terror. The Moon rose into the sky.

Abignew found himself wishing they could simply move from one place to the next as they did in any other world. But the rules here were different. No one did anything other than walk the trail of the dead.

Near to morning they slowed. A fire glowed in the near distance. Abignew’s crooked face split into a smile. They were here… All of them? He asked himself.

He scented the air. No… One. He didn’t know which one this one was, and he didn’t care. He would kill them all, either by fair measures or foul. That didn’t matter. So, it mattered very little which one he killed first. They slowed to a walk at the edge of the deepest shadows that favored the edge of the forest.

The things that had been in those places moved and crashed off through the trees in fear. The scent of their prey came to him as he drew nearer, and he smiled as they walked. Seconds later he was staring through the trees at the fire light…

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Notes from the Edge 04-03-2024

A free chapter read from the series…