Chapter 2

He settled on the wooden stool near the hearth, his satchel resting on his lap. His hands were rough, the nails cracked, as though he worked with stone or earth. He did not look at the Loom but kept his eyes on Boon.

“I am Kael,” he said. “And I would not have come if there were any other way.”

Boon poured two cups of chamomile tea from the kettle she kept warm over the embers. She handed one to him and sat on the edge of her bed, the only other seat. “Tell me about this dream. If it was never forgotten, how can it be lost?”

Kael wrapped his hands around the cup but did not drink. “It was not lost by dreaming. It was taken. Stolen from the dreamer while she was awake, tucked away into a place where even she cannot reach it. The memory of the dream remains, sharp and clear, but the dream itself will not come back to her at night. She lies awake, remembering, but she cannot enter it again.”

Boon frowned. That was not how dreams worked. Dreams were woven from threads of memory and imagination, bound to the sleeper’s mind. Once forgotten, they drifted to her Loom as loose threads. But a dream that was never forgotten should still belong to the dreamer. “Who is the dreamer?”

“My daughter,” Kael said, his voice cracking. “Elara. She is seven years old. Every night she begs me to help her find the dream she used to have—a field of silver flowers under a sky of green. She remembers every petal, every stem. But when she sleeps, there is only darkness. The dream is gone, though she has not forgotten it.”

Boon set her cup aside. The ache in her chest where her own memory had been pulsed faintly. A stolen dream. She had never heard of such a thing. “I cannot weave a dream that still exists in the dreamer’s mind. My Loom works only with what has been forgotten, threads that have broken loose.”

“Please,” Kael said, leaning forward. “The healers say she will waste away if she cannot dream. The darkness is seeping into her waking hours. She barely eats, barely smiles. I have no one else to ask.”

Boon studied him. Desperation clung to him like dust. She stood and walked to the Loom, running her fingers along the warp threads. The amber light pulsed, and she felt the faint tug of a thousand fragments floating in the air around her— remnants of forgotten dreams waiting to be woven. But none of them were Elara’s.

Then she felt something else.

A single thread, thinner than a spider’s silk, glimmering at the edge of her awareness. It was not forgotten, but neither was it attached to any sleeper. It hung in the air like a loose end, waiting. Boon reached for it, and as her fingers brushed it, a jolt of recognition shot through her.

This thread carried the warmth of honeycake and the sound of her mother’s laughter. It was her own sacrificed memory, the one she had woven into Lira’s dream. But it had not been fully consumed. A sliver of it remained, separate, intact.

Boon turned to Kael, her heart beating faster. “The dream you seek—the field of silver flowers—does it feel familiar to you in any way? Describe it again.”

He closed his eyes. “Silver flowers that chimed like bells when the wind blew. A sky that blushed green at dawn. And a child running through the stalks, laughing.”

Her breath caught. She had seen that field. It was the landscape of a dream she herself had dreamed as a child, before she had learned to weave. A dream she had forgotten until just now. Or rather, a dream she had given away. The memory she had sacrificed to help Lira was not a single moment but a whole dream—the dream of the silver field. She had thought it was just the honeycake, but the thread had carried more.

“That dream was mine,” Boon whispered. “I gave it away years ago. But it was never forgotten, Kael. It was placed into a sleeping child, preserved whole. And now it has been taken from her.”

Kael’s eyes widened. “You know this dream?”

“It was part of me.” Boon pressed a hand to her chest. “I thought I had lost it entirely. But a fragment remains here, in the air around my Loom. Somehow, your daughter’s dream and my lost dream are the same.”

The secret broke open between them like a cracked egg. Boon’s own sacrifices did not vanish into nothing. They left traces, threads that could be recovered. And this thread—this sliver of her own forgotten dream—was still connected to Elara.

“Can you retrieve it?” Kael asked, hope and fear mixing in his voice.

Boon looked at the Loom. The amber light flickered. She had never tried to weave a dream that was not forgotten. But if that thread was a bridge, perhaps she could follow it to where Elara’s dream had been taken. The cost would be unknown. She might lose more of herself.

She reached for the thin, shimmering thread and wound it around her finger. It burned cold, and she saw a flash: a stone chamber, a dark figure, a locked chest. The dream was imprisoned.

“I can try,” Boon said, her voice steady despite the fear. “But I will need your help. I cannot do this alone.”

Kael rose, his cup forgotten. “Tell me what to do.”

Boon unwound the thread and let it hang. The Loom hummed louder, the threads vibrating as if agitated. She took her shuttle and began to weave, not a forgotten fragment, but the bridge-thread itself, pulling it into the pattern. The Loom groaned, and the air grew heavy. A cold wind swept through the cottage, extinguishing the candle.

In the darkness, a shape formed: a door, woven from light and shadow, standing in front of the Loom. It had no handle, only a keyhole shaped like a crescent moon.

Boon’s hand went to her own chest, where the memory of honeycake had been. What key could open a door to a stolen dream?

She turned to Kael. “The dream is hidden in a place that feeds on fear. I can see it now. But to enter, I must sacrifice another memory—a stronger one. Perhaps the last clear piece of my childhood.”

Kael’s face fell. “I cannot ask that of you.”

“You did not ask,” Boon said. “I offered.”

She closed her eyes and searched her own heart for the warmest memory left. Her mother’s face, the day they had planted lavender in the garden. She pinched it between her fingers and pulled. The silver thread emerged, bright and warm. This time, the pain was sharper, a tearing at her soul. She bit her lip to keep from crying out.

She fed the thread into the keyhole. The door swung open, revealing a narrow corridor of swirling darkness, lit only by the faint glow of her Loom behind her.

“Stay here,” she told Kael. “If I do not return in an hour, close the door and leave.”

She stepped through, and the door closed behind her.

The corridor smelled of lavender and cold stone. At its end stood a chest, bound with iron bands. Boon approached, her footsteps echoing. The chest was locked, but she could feel the dream inside, pulsing like a heartbeat.

She pressed her hand to the lid. The iron bands groaned. From the chest, a voice spoke, not aloud, but inside her mind: “You have given much. What will you give to take back what was yours?”

Boon knew then that the secret was not only about her lost dream—but about the price of recovering it. She would have to release something she held dear, something she had never thought to sacrifice.

She thought of Kael’s daughter. Of the silver field. Of the child she used to be.

And she made her choice.