They slowed to a walk
when the trail brought them out onto the riverbank again. Maurice reached up
and discovered he had a hat with a long feather in it. He tipped it grandly to
her, then offered her his arm. Holly curtsied again and linked her arm through
his, and they settled into a leisurely stroll along the water's edge.
"So, does this
kind of thing happen a lot around here?" He would visit her dreams every
night, if this was her pattern.
"It
depends." She shrugged and reached up in the air. A butterfly appeared
from thin air and landed on her finger, slowly fluttering its jewel-toned
wings.
"On what?"
"How rotten the
real world is and how much I need to bash somebody before I turn into an ax
murderer in real life." She blew a kiss to the butterfly and it fluttered
off her finger and away into the sunshine and shadows.
"Wait a minute!
You know you're dreaming?"
"Is this a
dream?" She tugged her arm free and darted away, laughing. She immediately
vanished into a hedge maze that sprang up from the ground faster than a
lightning flash.
Maurice grinned and
dashed into the maze after her. "Hey, Holly, where are you?"
"Over
here!" Her voice came through the greenery from straight ahead.
"Oh, yeah,
that's a big help," he muttered.
He stumbled around five corners with no results before he got fed up. He raised his hands experimentally, because this wasn't his dream. Magic swirled thick and hot, buzzing around his fingertips. He snapped his fingers at the hedge wall in front of him. It vanished in a blue flash of light.
"That's more like it. I don't care if it's only a dream. It feels good to be up to full power again." He blasted the next hedge wall, then a third. He stumbled out into a rose arbor.
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