Born into Greyworld: The Dreamtime Chronicles Series

By Kathleen Medina

Twelve-year-old Kate wakes every morning to the bitter reality of Greyworld a barren, industrial land locked in perpetual twilight since the cataclysmic event known as the Shift. Protocol monitors all aspect of citizens lives. Imagination and individuality are suppressed. Children are disciplined and controlled through the use of behavior-moderating substances.

Kate tries to bury herself in the underground world of books and movies that her mysterious friend and mentor, Mrs. Hatpin, left to her before her sudden disappearance. Kate escapes into her dreams and travels to other realms of beauty and nature and magical possibilities. But as the horrifying specter of Shadowman begins to infiltrate her dreams, she realizes nowhere is safe. Then Kate sees him outside her school. Is he real? How could he be both in her dreams and in her everyday life? Could he be behind the epidemic of missing students?

The dimensions of reality and imagination begin to overlap as clues to an existence beyond Greyworld emerge. Can Kate access this other world before it is too late and Protocol gains control of her mind? Can dreams be just as real as waking life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 21, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465321138

Kathleen Medina

Kathleen Medina is a practicing clairvoyant. She has also made her living crewing on boats in Hawaii, as a massage therapist in Australia, and traveled the world studying mysticism. She currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her dog Diego.

Book preview

Copyright © 2008 by Kathleen Medina.

photo by Paul Stewart

cover art by Loana Hoylman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

To all children and the children’s heart in everyone

BEWARE: using the magical practices in this book will bring surprising results!

The Dreamtime Handbook

Chapter One

Kate holds her breath. She probably doesn’t need to hold her breath, but it’s an instinct. She accelerates through the dark tunnel, the pressure squeezing her body. Even in pitch blackness she closes her eyes. She moves faster, faster, then pop! She is free!

Kate squints in the bright light. She loves this place; it is always so sunny. She takes a big gulp of air; it tastes so clean. She pulls her arms close to her body and crosses her ankles. Now more aerodynamic, she gathers speed. She soars over the vast green landscape, following the river below as it unfurls like a shiny blue ribbon. Jagged snowy peaks fall away behind her. She dives straight at the lofty pines then arches up into a perfect loop.

Kate aims across the narrow valley. Ahead is a small cottage on a gentle rise. Behind it, a vegetable garden gives way to an orchard of fruit and nut trees. She opens her arms and unlocks her legs to slow down, then descends effortlessly, like a feather in a breeze. She floats toward the red tile roof of the cottage, stops about twenty feet above it, and hovers. She waits, but she can’t seem to remember what she’s waiting for.

Then a shimmering black shape zooms past her head. She starts flying forward again and drops a few feet. She quickly steadies herself, limbs outstretched, rocking back into balance. The black shape lands on a peach tree in the orchard behind the house. Large iridescent wings unfold, shudder once, then retract. The raven cocks its head. The bird looks awesome and creepy at the same time. Its beady black eyes fix on her, and she stares back.

She feels a tug on her solar plexus and a strange tingling in her belly, and she is slowly pulled forward. She moves her arms in a reverse breaststroke, trying to back up. The raven blinks; its gaze completely locks her attention. She flails, now inches from it. In her mind Kate hears stop and see. The command stills her. She is held by an inexplicable force. Her vision fills with the luminous black orb of the bird’s gaze. Then she remembers.

But it’s too late. Kate knows what is coming next but feels powerless to do anything about it. A ghastly figure emerges from the ebony depths. Its clawlike hand grasps her forearm, and the sharp bones press into her flesh. Kate screams and wrenches her arm away. The momentum throws her backward, somersaulting through the air, and she plummets helplessly into the darkness.

Chapter Two

Time to get up, Jan said, knocking twice on Kate’s door. Kate struggled to surface. Her nose was plugged up. She swallowed and took a deep breath through her mouth. Her heart pounded, and the white heat of adrenaline coursed through her veins. She sat up on the narrow bed and pushed down the crumpled sheet. The blanket was in a pile on the floor. Kate wiped the damp hair off her forehead and tried to clear her mind. She noticed red welts on her arm where the bony hand had seized her. How can she have these marks when the figure grabbed her in her dream?

Kate looked around her dim gray room. Small and square like a cell, it contained the few things she owned. Most were left to her by Mrs. Hatpin: the monitor, the black crate of movies and books, the afghan still packed in its box. Kate’s narrow bed sat against the wall. To the right of the bed was a small window with thick, streaked glass that looked out on the street below. Outside, the rain fell hard and mean. Kate heard her mother’s footsteps echo across the bare floors of the apartment. Then she heard the whisper and click of the front door closing.

What was worse – waking up in Greyworld, or Shadowman sabotaging her only escape, her dreams? Kate called him Shadowman because he seemed hollow, like the shadow of a person. He wore a long gray trench coat. His features were blurry except for his dead eyes. They looked like black holes.

The sabotage wasn’t fair! The only thing she had left was her dreams. Why was everything being taken away from her? Mrs. Hatpin had disappeared. And now the world in her dreams, the place she could fly, where there was some color and light, animals and trees and flowers, was threatened. Somehow he was ruining it. Almost nightly now, Kate found herself drawn to the cottage with the orchard, and the crow, and then into Shadowman’s grasp. As she stared ahead at the bare metal door to her room, she tried to think back. When was the first encounter with him? When had it started?

The first time was six weeks ago, soon after Mrs. Hatpin disappeared. Kate didn’t leave her room for weeks afterward. She lay in bed, sleeping and dreaming. She would watch Mrs. Hatpin’s and her favorite movies on the old monitor. She must have watched Wizard of Oz fifty times. She kept the monitor on day and night. She slept by the light of the blank screen. She read A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe over and over as she sat hunched by the window, constant drizzle falling against the cold glass. She had felt weak, sick in her body, sick in her heart. She missed more than five weeks of school. Dire threats from Protocol forced her to get up: Return at once or report to Detention Center. Her mother couldn’t cover for her illness any longer. It was mandatory that Kate return to school.

That was two days ago. Now it was business as usual. Her mother, Jan, was knocking on her door to wake her up before she left to work the early shift. Every day, Jan walked the four and a half blocks to the underground station. She rode the crowded subway thirty minutes to the shipping center in the port on the harbor. There she merged with hundreds of other workers as they went to their jobs. They were like little blood cells flowing through an artery to feed Greyworld. The port was the heart of the city, and it pumped twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Loads of electronics, plastics, Polycloth, and hydroponically grown food floated in on the harbor’s metallic water to be processed and distributed throughout the city. There was no real food and no cotton or wool because there were no more plants or animals. Jan was a packer; her job was to box and organize the incoming supplies for the State stores.

The dense population sprawled for miles from the harbor to the Outlands. Large rectangular fortresses of cement, metal, and glass dominated the landscape. Few neighborhoods with traditional houses still existed. Acres of pavement and highway covered a now dead terrain. Like most cities, this one was originally built around industry. Now survival was its only function. The factories and most supply shops operated around the clock, and shifts were twelve hours long. Jan worked the typical first shift, from 0700 to 1900.

Jan and Kate lived in an area of apartment complexes that butted up to Old Town. A few old-style houses were left standing there, but most people lived in the Standard Housing Blocks. The constant low clouds and drizzle that settled in around the skyscrapers caused a perpetual twilight. Color was swallowed up into monochromatic shades, from black metal to dirty white concrete. Since the time of the Shift, this land came to be known as Greyworld.

Kate got out of bed and went to the window. The floor was cold against her bare feet, and as she stood by the window, she rubbed the sole of one foot against the top of the other to warm them up. She looked down at the street below. The black umbrellas of passersby bobbed over the broken sidewalks. A bus went by and splashed the pedestrians with water from the standing puddles. Smoke curled from stacks on the roofs. Along the sidewalk across the street, a row of vendors stood at their carts, huddled under a large black awning as rain fell relentlessly. A bare limb of a dead tree rubbed against the utility wire that looped across the front of their apartment complex.

Mrs. Hatpin told her that many trees used to dot the neighborhood. But few survived the Shift, and the ones that remained were now dead. Mrs. Hatpin was the only person Kate knew who talked about the Shift and how things were before it. It was against Protocol to discuss anything before New Count, but Mrs. Hatpin seemed to exist outside Protocol. She had access to secret books and movies. She had memories that were now forbidden.

Kate put her hand up to the cold glass. She knew it was time to get ready for school. She knew she was being closely monitored. She wasn’t under Mrs. Hatpin’s safeguard anymore. The strange protection that Mrs. Hatpin had enshrouded her in was gone. And her mother couldn’t shield her from Protocol. So Kate was on her own.

She walked across her bedroom and stepped into the tiny bathroom. She leaned over the metal sink, splashed water on her face, then pressed a washcloth to her eyes. As she patted down her black hair, she watched her face in the mirror. Slightly almond-shaped dark eyes stared back at her. She pinched her pale cheeks.

She had the odd feeling she sometimes got when she looked at her reflection – as if there were two of her. The one looking back at her, and another one deep inside that she could sometimes see beneath a shine in her eyes. This inner her seemed to be the real her, or at least more real than her outer self. The outer her felt fragile and vulnerable, as though it could break easily like the shell of an egg.

As Kate stared into her eyes, she relaxed her focus. The details of her heart-shaped face blurred in the semidarkness. She waited for the glow she sometimes saw. It was something she had learned from Mrs. Hatpin; they called it soft eyes. Kate watched the mirror as the fuzzy aura emerged. She was framed in a gentle mantle of light. Mrs. Hatpin said it would protect her; she wanted to believe that.

Kate put on her uniform: a scratchy gray skirt, white starched blouse, gray sweater, and stiff black shoes over charcoal leggings. She picked up her satchel from the top of the monitor, put on her light gray plastic raincoat, and quickly left the apartment. The elevator let her out in the nondescript lobby. She pushed against the revolving door and stepped onto the crowded sidewalk.

Kate merged with the pedestrians, keeping her chin tucked in and her face out of the rain. Some students took the shuttles to school, but the shuttles made her feel claustrophobic. She had the weird sensation that they could take you somewhere you might not return from. And she liked to walk. Walking to and from school was the only chance she had to be outside within the bounds of curfew.

Kate stopped with the crowd at the crosswalk. As they waited for the signal to change, she glanced over toward the street vendors lined up along the facade of the building across the street from her apartment. Under the black awning, Kate caught sight of the noodle vendor. He stood behind a large iron pot that was steaming over a gas burner. White plastic bowls were stacked on a flimsy table. Steam swirled and billowed from his cart, partially obscuring him. Sometimes Kate felt him watching her. He had a peculiar manner; he spoke simply and softly, but something in his intense stare made him seem more perceptive, more awake than most adults. Mrs. Hatpin had Kate buy soup from him every day. But Kate hadn’t bought any since Mrs. Hatpin disappeared. She didn’t know what to say to him.

Chapter Three

Kate was now twelve. Before Mrs. Hatpin arrived, when she was three, she was sick a lot. On one of the many visits to the Clinic, she heard the stiff-backed doctor with the black hairs in his ears tell her mother, Children with her kind of skin have trouble. He had frowned disapprovingly as he whispered, That gene isn’t as adaptable to this, uh, moderate light.

Kate often wondered about that gene. She knew it must come from her father because her mother was fair with light eyes. But her mother would not talk about Kate’s father, and she knew better than to ask anymore.

He’s gone. That’s all you need to know. This was her mother’s standard response.

On the subway ride home from that visit to the Clinic, Kate’s mother was staring at the packet of pills she clutched in her trembling hand.

What are they, Mom? Kate asked as she tugged on Jan’s sleeve. Kate kept her voice high and chirpy, wanting to engage her mother.

They’re just vitamins, Kate, Jan said with a sigh. You’ll be fine. Jan averted her eyes and looked out the scratched Plexiglas window of the subway car.

The next morning Kate took the pills, then drank lots of Juice-ade to get them down. But her stomach promptly revolted, and she vomited. This happened every morning until Jan flushed the pills down the toilet. Jan didn’t call the doctor anymore, and Kate didn’t improve. About the time they were running out of options, Mrs. Hatpin appeared. Jan saw her fussing with some old black crates one morning by the elevator. That evening Jan saw the old woman again, this time buying soup from the noodle vendor. Jan didn’t care for his soups; she found them spicy and strange tasting. She was at the adjacent stall buying Betterbars. Kate wasn’t eating enough, but Jan could get her to eat Betterbars; they were made of ground-up vitamins, had nut flavoring, and were coated with synthetic chocolate. Mrs. Hatpin walked directly over to Jan, but Jan kept her head down to avoid eye contact.

I believe we’re neighbors, Mrs. Hatpin said brightly.

Jan glanced up guardedly. Mrs. Hatpin’s round, plump face was so animated, and her eyes were so clear, that Jan’s defenses dropped a little. Mrs. Hatpin was dressed in the old style – a skirt and a shawl. She chattered on, and Jan relaxed in her presence. Then they walked together to their apartment building and talked for a while inside the dimly lit lobby. Jan rode the elevator up to her floor under a strange