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

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BK8NKC8

A free chapter read from the series…

DREAMER’S WORLDS: SPARROW SPIRIT

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Dreamer’s Worlds Sparrow Spirit is Copyright © 2015 Dell Sweet
& Geo Dell

Copyright © 2010 – 2015 by Dell Sweet & Geo Dell All rights
reserved.

Cover Art © Copyright 2014 Wendell Sweet

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book
may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share
this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
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your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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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