Strange the Dreamer

These blue-skinned children are the children of the gods, who were slaughtered by the people of Weep 15 years ago. The children keep their existence a secret from the citizens of Weep, or otherwise they too would be killed. They have subsisted these long years on seeds given to them by the mysterious white eagle called Wraith; Sparrow uses her gift to keep the seeds eternally growing. Sarai is the daughter of Isagol, goddess of despair, and although it is still unclear what Sarai’s magical gift might be, Sarai is ill at ease with her close resemblance to her mother and regards Isagol as a monster. With regard to the other children’s gifts, Sparrow can keep things growing as long as she has a seed, and Minya can control the spirits of the dead—an ability that she uses to enslave the ghosts of dead Weep citizens in vengeance for the slaughter of her people.

Lazlo and the rest of the delegates near the end of their journey to Weep. Eril-Fane says that the delegates have all been recruited to help the people of Weep solve a serious problem that haunts the city, but he refuses to elaborate further. The delegates make a game out of trying to predict what the problem will be, and in an offhand acknowledgement of Lazlo’s inherent expertise, they beg him to take a guess too, for he is the best storyteller. They ask Lazlo for a story featuring both beauty and monsters. Lazlo privately wonders if Eril-Fane’s use of the word “haunt” to describe the problem troubling Weep is literal, and whether they will have to kill the ghosts of old gods, but he dismisses the theory as improbable.

As his public “guess” at the nature of the problem that Weep currently faces, Lazlo tells the other delegates the story of the seraphim and the demons, a myth that underpins most of the cultures in the world. It starts off as a silly story, but Lazlo finishes by predicting that the problem of Weep is the Second Coming of the seraphim and that the delegates will have to persuade the seraphim to leave, peacefully or forcefully. Lazlo notices Eril-Fane and his second-in-command, Azareen, watching him keenly.

Sarai wonders why Minya torments the human ghosts as she does and concludes that Minya must be motivated by her traumatic memories of the Carnage and her hatred for the humans. Sarai is conflicted, for unlike Minya, she and the others were too young to remember the Carnage and do not share Minya’s vitriol for humans. On the contrary, Sarai’s gift of entering humans’ minds and bringing them dreams draws her so close to humans that she pities them, a dynamic that makes it all the more difficult for her to fully embrace hatred as Minya has. Sarai retires to her rooms, which were once her mother’s, and reflects on how her human father, one of her mother’s lovers, had lain in this very room and plotted her mother’s downfall. Sarai rises to do her work involving her magical gift once night falls, even though she hates the task assigned to her. Part of Sarai’s gift gives her the ability to scream without sound, issuing forth an army of moths that carries the darkness of nightmares to the sleeping human minds below.

Sarai is the Muse of Nightmares; she can send her consciousness out via her moths and use them to turn people’s dreams into nightmares. Ever since Sarai developed this ability, Minya has tasked her with torturing the humans through their nightmares. Sarai does not like her gift, for she has developed sympathy for the humans after years of viewing the fears and vulnerabilities of their dream states. Sparrow, Ruby, and Feral are more interested in what Sarai learns about the lives of the humans; they, along with Sarai, envy the human’s lives. Sarai feels that the darkness of her ability reflects a darkness within her. Sarai does not dare to dream herself, for if she did, she would no longer be in control, but would be at the mercy of her subconscious mind.

The delegation nears the city of Weep, but Eril-Fane will not be joining them yet; he does not sleep well in the city.

Eril-Fane explains that 200 hundred years ago, a magical storm permanently altered the atmosphere and left Weep trapped in shadow.

Sarai is alarmed when her “lull,” the magical potion she takes to keep herself from dreaming, stops working. Minya toys with the ghost of a man who recently died in Weep, and from him the children learn that the Godslayer, who is revealed to be Sarai’s father, has returned to Weep.

Lazlo’s prediction of Weep’s problem is nearly perfectly accurate. It wasn’t the seraphim that descended upon the city, but the Mesarthim (the pantheon of gods that the Godslayer destroyed); however, the gods’ citadel is in the shape of a giant metal seraph, and its shadow covers all of Weep. The delegates are charged with eradicating the seraph from the sky so that Weep will finally be free of all memory of the gods’ dominion over humans.

Lazlo looks up at the citadel with excitement and wonder as Sarai and the other children secretly peer down at the approaching Godslayer and attendant delegates, whose arrival heralds their doom. The mysterious white eagle returns, unseen by any character but marked by the narrator.