Lair of Dreams (The Diviners 2)

Wai-Mae marched to a puny, half-formed tree at the top of a hill. “Here. Like this. Watch.”

Wai-Mae threaded her fingers through the wispy leaves, holding tight. She closed her eyes, concentrating. The bark moved like melting candle wax, and then, with a great groaning, the trunk shot up several feet. Massive branches reached out in every direction, bursting with pinkish-white flowers.

Wai-Mae fell back with a gasp. “There you are,” she said, wiping a hand across her brow.

Dogwood blossoms drifted down toward the girls. One landed in Ling’s hair. She pulled it free, rubbing the velvety petal between her thumb and forefinger, feeling something primal in its core, some great electrical connection to all living things. If she’d been a true scientist, she would have shouted “Aha!” or “Eureka!” or even “Holy smokes!” But there were no words that she could summon to communicate the magic of the moment.

“Now it is your turn.” Wai-Mae twisted her mouth to one side, thinking. “We will need places to sit for our opera. Try changing this rock into a chair.”

It was as if Wai-Mae had asked Ling to grab the moon and put it under glass. “But how?”

“Start by putting your hands on the rock.”

Ling did as she was told. The rock was cold and dull, like clay awaiting the artist’s hands.

“Think only of the chair, not the rock. See it in your mind. Like a dream. Do you see it?”

“Yes,” Ling said.

“What does it look like?”

“It’s a red-and-gold throne fit for a queen.”

“I cannot wait to sit there,” Wai-Mae said, excited. “Now see the chair and concentrate.”

Ling kept her thoughts on the chair, but the harder she tried, the more it seemed to elude her. Shift, she thought, and Transform and Chair. But the rock remained a rock. Finally, Ling fell back in the grass, exhausted and angry. “I can’t do it.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I can’t!” She pushed herself up and stalked off toward the forest.

Behind her, Wai-Mae’s voice took on a steely resolve. “Little Warrior: You can do this. I believe you can.”

“Just because you believe something can change doesn’t mean it will,” Ling snapped, feeling ashamed of her outburst but helpless to stop it.

Wai-Mae came to her side, offering a moth-eaten dandelion. “Here. Try something smaller. Turn this into a cricket.”

Ling glanced from the dandelion to the magnificent flowering dogwood Wai-Mae had managed to create. “This is hopeless,” she grumbled, but she took the dandelion from Wai-Mae anyway.

“Concentrate. You are too tight! You want too much control.”

“I do not!”

“You do too. Let it become something else. Allow the Qi to move through you like a breath. Think of the dandelion changing from the inside.”

“Atoms…” Ling murmured.

Ling took a deep breath and let it out. She did this twice more, and on the third time, she felt a small fluttering at the tips of her fingers that strengthened into a stronger, buzzing current that coursed up her arm and along her neck all the way to the top of her head. Frightened, Ling dropped the dandelion. But as she watched, the dandelion fluctuated wildly between two states, weed and insect, before settling back to dandelion.

“I almost did it,” Ling said, astonished. “It started to change.”

Wai-Mae grinned. “You see? Here, we are like Pangu, creating the heavens and earth, but even better, for we can make it as we wish it to be. My powers have gotten stronger each night I’ve been coming here. Perhaps if you come back tomorrow night and keep coming back as I have, then your power will grow, too.”

“Can you bring physical objects into this place?” Ling asked, excited. “Can you take something out of this dream world? Have you noticed anything interesting when the transformation occurs—a smell or a temperature change? Have you experimented?”

“Isn’t it enough that this world exists? That we can be everything here that we can’t be when we are awake?” Wai-Mae asked.

“No,” Ling said. “I want to know how it works.”