Disclaimer: The Dreaming and all related Endless characters belong to DC comics. They are being used for entertainment purposes only. No money is being made off their use. Silver, other unrecognizible characters, and the story belong to me, Magik, the author.
A tall, skinny man exited from a door of wood and walked into the garden. He paused in front of the girl and smiled at her. She came here every night.
"When will he see me?" she asked in a voice soft as the wind.
"Soon, I'm sure," Lucien answered her and then patted the girl on the head. She looked at him like he was an idiot but then continued to watch the birds, her mouth a thin, pink, little line on her pale face.
"You always say that, Lucien. Always. Does he even know I'm here?" the girl questioned and bit her bottom lip. One single drop of blood formed where her teeth had bit through the fragile flesh.
"I'm sure he does, Silver. You have to remember, dear heart, that he is a very busy man. He is the Lord of Dreams..."
"The Prince of Stories, Lord Morpheus, etc, etc. You've told me the names before, Lucien. I am becoming bored with this ordeal. Every night I wait and every night I never see him. Does he even really exist at all or is he like the pictures in my head? The ones that mean nothing. The ones that disappear like dust in the wind. I grow tired of this, Lucien. Very tired," she finished and propped her tiny chin in her wiry hand.
Lucien smiled as her and patted her on the head again. "One day, Silver, you will meet him and then all your questions will be answered. I have work to do in the library. Be a good girl." With that Lucien walked away into the wooden door on another tower and left Silver just sitting there, alone in the garden once again.
She bit her lip, feeling more blood gather there, and then continued to watch the trees and the birds. A black raven flew up beside her and landed on the bench. She gazed at him with her pale, bored eyes.
"Hello Silver," he cawed.
"Good day, Matthew," she replied her tone straight and stern.
"How are we today, kiddo?"
"I have yet to see him. I have yet to meet him and tell him of my troubles. I sit in this garden night after night ever since I was born and I have still not spoken with him. Tell me truthfully, Matthew, does he even exist?" Silver inquired her eyes locked in front of her, staring at nothing but seeing everything.
"He exists. If he didn't there wouldn't be anywhere for you to go. There wouldn't be any hopes, any dreams. People would be robots," Matthew told her with a laugh on his tongue about childish questions.
Silver turned to him her silver blue eyes like black holes filled with the distant light of condemned stars. "I still wish he would see me. I sometimes think, in the middle of the night when I sit here all alone, that he is afraid of me and won't see me. I think, that he sits in that tower," she pointed to a high window. "He sits there and he watches me and when I go away he comes out. Something tells me that he wishes I was gone and that I never came here at all. Something, like the pictures in my mind that mean nothing but contain everything, tells me that he, the Dream King, does not like me."
Matthew shook his head at the empty eyed girl and then flew away. "One day, Silver, you'll see. One day he will speak to you and you'd better know what you're goin' to say."
"I have always known," she whispered to the empty garden and then stared up at the tower, awaiting the presence of the Dream King. Waiting for the day he would talk to her.
Silver woke to find a world that was desolate and poor. She woke to sheets with holes in them and floorboards that were eternally cold. But at least she woke.
"Come on, Silver! Get up! There's school today!" her mother yelled in at her from the kitchen.
A tear fell from one of Silver's silver blue eyes and rolled down her pale cheek to wet her pillow. School was hell in her clear, large eyes. There were more pictures in her head when she was there then when she was anywhere else.
"Come on, Silver!!" her mother cried as she marched into the girl's room and tore the sheets off her trembling form.
"I don't feel good, Mother. My head hurts again," the girl complained. "My stomach hurts, too."
Mrs. Elisabeth Cunnings looked down at the shaking form of her child. Silver's ribs stuck out and her arms were like sticks. A continuous daze covered the eyes that should have been so pretty and sickness made the hair paler than it should be. But there was no way she could provide any better for her children than she did. Mrs. Cunnings prayed that no one ever found out how poor they were and just how much the children suffered. Poor Silver was the worse off. Mrs. Elisabeth Cunnings stared down at her seven year old daughter and then covered her with the sheets.
Silver stared at her, mouth agape, showing little, white teeth in perfect straight rows.
"You're staying home today. I'll have Eddie fetch your homework," a meager light started to blaze in the girl's eyes. "Tomorrow, you're goin' back to school, though."
Another tear dripped from Silver's eye as her mother left the room. Within minutes the busy sound of her brothers and sisters getting ready for school drifted into her room. And, as usual when she stayed home, they trooped in to make sure she was still alive.
Silver pulled the covers tight around her as they came in and examined her with their dull brown eyes. Eddie, the oldest at ten, with short dirty blond hair, then Maggie and Magdalene, who were six, with long strawberry blond hair, and finally Donnie, the baby at four who went along to day care, with his full head of blond curls. "Hello," she welcomed them.
"Mom says you're stayin' home again," Eddie said.
"That's right."
"You're okay, ain't ya?" Maggie questioned as Magdalene was the shy one.
"I'm fine."
"Silver's sick, she is," Donnie laughed.
"You don't look fine," Eddie commented. His eyes took in her weak form. "Looks like a good slap would break your jaw."
"Well, Eddie, no one going to slap me here," Silver protested.
"Nah. You don't look well at all. My friend Bill his father's a doctor. He told me that if I ever needed his father's help, he'd come...for free. You want me to ask him, Sil?"
"Better ask Mother about that, Eddie," she commented.
"Come on gang, Sil needs her rest," he bossed and the kids started to file out.
"Bye bye, Sil," Donnie proclaimed happily.
"Bye Silver," Maggie called as Magdalene waved shyly.
"Bye. Be good," Silver called after them.
Eddie stayed there, his brown eyes dull but strong. He rubbed his temple to drive away the headaches that came with hunger pains. "Look, Sil, this is gettin' bad. Look at you. Look at us. I hate to say this but we may have to tell someone soon."
She sighed and ran a very thin hand through her pale hair. "Don't worry, Eddie. The minute I go back to school, someone will figure it out. Don't worry." Then her eyes fluttered closed from exhaustion and she slept.
Eddie brushed a lock of hair off her face, pulled the sheets even tighter around her, and left her there, sleeping like the dead. It struck him as just a little odd that his sister spent so much time asleep. He had no time to ponder the fact because right now he was just glad that she was still alive. Silver was so weak and pale that it looked like Death would come in on her big butterfly wings and carry Silver away. Sometimes, when Silver coughed up blood or couldn't open her eyes, he wished she would.
Silver opened her eyes and felt the light of the Dreaming wash over her like a wave of warm water. For some reason this place looked different now and she knew it was because she was older. She sat on the bench and brushed at imaginary dust on her pale blue dress made of silk and satin. Lucien came out of a tower door and smiled when he saw her sitting there on the bench.
"Hello Silver," Lucien said as he walked past her. "Been a while since you've come."
"Wasn't my idea, Lucien. There's something about artificial sleep that inhibits dreams. At least there is when they do something to suppress your dreams," she muttered angrily.
"What happened?" he asked as he sat next to her on the bench. He looked at the girl. She was no longer seven.
"My brother Eddie told his friend's father, who is a doctor, about me. The doctor came over to see me and when he did...he called Child Protective Services.
"I was in the hospital for a long time. They said that there was so much extensive damage that had been done to my internal organs that they were afraid I'd die. They wouldn't let me slip into a really deep sleep for all those years because they were afraid I'd just slip right through their fingers," Silver told him as she brushed a hand through her silver hair.
"How's your family now, though?"
"Fine, Lucien. Eddie and I are with the same foster family. Maddie and Magdalene live with another family not far from us. Donnie...Donnie was taken by a family somewhere in Georgia but I'm sure he's fine. Momma took it badly though. She committed suicide a few years back."
"How old are you now?" Lucien inquired as he pushed up his spectacles.
"Now. Now I'm ten, almost eleven. I missed this place. I missed it so much," Silver proclaimed.
"Are the pictures still in your head?"
"Yeah. A little. They've got me on repressive drugs," she commented as he stood up. "Let me guess; work."
"Yes."
"Is that all you do?"
"No. But at the moment it needs to be done. Be a good girl," he told her and then walked away.
Silver sighed and stared off in front of her. The garden had changed since the last time she was here and she needed to memorize every detail of it. The ivy still twisted up the latticework and the birds still sang their sweet songs. But something seemed to be missing.
"Matthew?" she called out. "Matthew! Why haven't you come to see me? Where are you?" Her silver blue eyes scanned the sky. She looked up at the tower window and thought she caught a glance of a pale faced man but shook it off.
"Matthew won't come today," someone said and Silver turned to find the Trinity standing before her. There was the maiden with her fair hair and blue eyes, the mother with graying brown hair and a kind smile, and the crone who had built gray hair, squinty eyes and a sharp voice.
"Hello," Silver called out to them in a strong voice.
"Hello daughter, friend, sister," came the chorus.
"Changed your names yet my friends?" she questioned.
"Don't ask that question. Take it back," the hag said.
"Okay," Silver replied and her voice started shaking. "I take back my question."
"Use your questions for good," the maiden told her.
"Don't waste them, daughter," said the mother.
"Why won't the King of Dreams see me, maiden? Why does he fear me, crone? Does he exist, mother?" Silver cried and her voice was weak and dim.
"He is busy and has not been told of you," the fair haired maiden answered.
"He fears nothing," the old crone croaked.
"He lives within all of us," the mother whispered with a kindly smile. Then the Trinity faded away.
Silver sighed and continued to stare at the twisting ivy even as the waking world began to pull her back to its side. But, she thought as the Dreaming began to fade, why has my presence been kept from him? Will he ever see me? I have much to tell him. Much indeed.
Part Four
The girl in the mirror smiled as Silver smiled and pictures filled her head again. Broken glass and black feathers fell like snow in a world of red blood and white wine. The sound of squealing tires filled her ears along with the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. She was drowning.
"Nooo!" the scream broke the hold Silver's vision had had on her. Never had the images been so real, the sounds so crystal, and the tastes so true. She opened her eyes and screamed again.
Broken glass and crushed metal were all around her. She was trapped and there was blood everywhere and noise. It was so noisy. It was too noisy.
The world turned into a black and red haze. Blood dripped into her silver eyes and matted her hair. Silver couldn't think right, everything was soooo....
She opened her eyes and stood in the Dreaming. Actually she was at the gates of the Dreaming. "Let me in!" she called out.
The guardians of the gate did nothing. They didn't even seem to notice her. This had never happened to her before. She had never seen the gates before. Whenever Silver dreamed she went into the Dreaming. What the hell had gone wrong? Why was she outside?
"Hey!" she yelled as she flung a rock at one of the guardians, the hypogrifth she thought. "I want in! I want inside the Dreaming! Let me in!"
A pair of cool eyes steadied on her shaking form. "What business have you hear, little ghost?" the dragon said as he turned his harsh gaze on her.
"I come here, to the Dreaming, every night when I dream. I sit in the gardens and wait until the day when the Sandman comes down to talk to me. Please, I must be allowed to enter the Dreaming," she pleaded as tears filled her large, silver eyes.
"Go away, little ghost. This is no place for your kind," the Pegasus said as it flexed its large, white wings.
"Yes, go away," the hypogrifth added.
"No, I'm not a ghost. I'm a girl. My name is Silver. Ask Lucien. Damn you, ask Lucien. He'll vouch for me. I swear," Silver yelled as the world of the Dreaming started to melt away leaving her blinking at a bright light.
A bright, white light was shinning into her eyes. She hurt. A headache throbbed dully behind one temple and her body didn't seem to want to move.
"Eddie?" she managed to call out. The vague, raw quality of her voice surprised her. What was wrong?
Panic ran through her limbs like wildfire. Why was she moving? She could sense fast movement and the bright lights flickered overhead as she moved from on to the other. "Eddie?" she called out with more strength.
"She's awake," someone said as a masked face looked down at her.
"Who are you? Where's Eddie? Where's my brother?" she asked, hysteria threatening to overwhelm her.
"It's okay, girl," the masked man said as he pushed a strand of blood matted silver hair off her pale face. "You and your brother were in an accident."
The man continued talking but Silver stopped listening. The pictures. The broken glass, the blood. They hadn't been fake. It had been real. "Eddie?" she rasped again, tears quickly filling her large, red-rimmed silver eyes.
The man looked at her again. There was sympathy and pain in his eyes. "I'm sorry but we couldn't save your brother, Miss. He came here DOA."
Silver could feel her heart nearly stop as the tears trickled down her face, washing away some of the blood. "No. No, Eddie," she murmured as she continued to move steadily under the bright lights.
Now realization began to sink in. The Dreaming had thrown her out because it thought she was dead. It was an easy mistake to make. Probably happened all the time. Even as Silver calmed herself with these thoughts some part of her mind continued to whisper that it was a lie. She had died just like her brother. She had to be. The guardians of the Dreaming never made a mistake.
