Chapter 1

Confusion

'Serious upset in dreamworld,' Gido said.
His face was changing as Leo peered at it. One minute he was clear and human-looking, and the next he seemed more animal, disappearing into a background of trees and dark green foliage.
'I can hear you,' Leo called, and his voice sounded as though he was under water. 'But I can't see you very well.'
'Tiny worm-hole,' Gido replied. 'Poor reception I'm afraid. I'm supposed to be in a dream in Africa right now, but I've heard what's going on in your part of the world and I'm worried, I can tell you.'
'What? What's going on?' Leo asked.
'The Stealers have got control of a bunch of innocents, turned them into troublemakers. I knew it would happen… always knew… you can assist… '
'I can't,' Leo said it with certainty. 'I've got loads of revision in the holidays, and my mum and Carl are getting married soon, so I'm going to be very… '
'What? Don't let me down, Leo. You and Ginny are the only people who can help.'
'Ginny won't do it,' Leo said. 'And neither will I.'
A shout from his mother, Rhian, disturbed him.
'Who d'you think you're talking to,' she called up the stairs. 'Get out of bed and stop messing about!'
Leo woke completely.
How weird, he thought. He could have sworn he was already awake, and had just closed his eyes for a moment before getting up.
He dressed quickly. The brief conversation from his half-sleep would not go away. It had the feel of an interrupted telephone call. There was more to be heard, but obviously he wasn't going to hear it.
It made him feel uncomfortable.
He had not forgotten Gido, but it was so long since he'd had any contact with him that it was the last thing he'd expected. It was over a year since he and Ginny had experienced the horror of encountering one of what Gido called 'the Stealers'.
Their full name was the Dreamstealers, zombies created by the Cauldron of the Undead in a historic horror story which Leo wished he had never heard. Their entire purpose was to turn people into undead like themselves.
Moving between dimensions they had the power to latch on to peoples' good dreams and rob them of them. People who fell to their power became empty, and turned to avarice and apathy to try to fill the void inside them. One of them had met his end at the hands of Gido and his friends, who called themselves the Dreamkeepers, and it was Leo and Ginny who had assisted them and made this possible.
Leo never wanted to meet any of them again. He knew there had been three of the Stealers, and that two of them remained at large, but it was not, he told himself as he pulled on his school jersey, his responsibility to dispose of them.
And if there was trouble in dreamworld, as Gido had put it, then Gido and his friends could deal with it.
The thought of what he and Ginny had gone through raised the hairs on his neck in an unsettling way.
He made his way to the bathroom and after splashing his face briefly with water and giving his teeth a quick brush, he made his way downstairs.
Gido sat at the kitchen table.
Leo gaped.
'What are you doing here?' he asked, amazed.
'Shan't stay long,' Gido said smoothly. 'I want to talk.'
'Go away,' Leo said in a panic. 'If my mother sees you here she'll go mad… I can't explain who you are, or anything… '
'Must tell you,' Gido continued as though Leo hadn't spoken. 'We need you. Desperately, unfortunately. Only you can help.'
Leo sat down and said.
'Go away,' again, as though he meant it.
Gido shook his head.
'Manawl's brooch,' he said. 'All dreamworld has known about it for centuries, but no-one actually knew where it was. The Stealers think they've found it. I'm furious - especially now they've pulled in the parliament and taken over Cilgerran. Means rescuing the castle as well as the brooch.'
'Talk sense,' Leo said.
He looked at the table between them. The breakfast cereal label seemed to be different from usual. It said Pocol Funta on it.
'I've never heard of that before,' he thought.
He picked up the box and shook it. Sounds of squeaking and running feet emerged from the top.
He put it down hastily. Something very odd was going on.
'Just want you to know,' Gido said. 'I suppose now I've made contact, they'll sniff you out too. Be warned. Sorry old bean… didn't mean to cause you trouble. Got to go… I'll be in touch.'
And with that he disappeared out of the door.
Leo looked at the cereal box again. He really didn't fancy trying what was inside it.
'I think I'll just have toast,' he said, and his voice came very slowly and he could hardly put the words together.
'Make your mind up,' Rhian said.
She was standing at his bedroom door, looking at him as he lay in bed.
'Why aren't you up?'
Leo struggled to the surface. In front of him he saw the time on his digital alarm 7.33.
'Oh no,' he cried. 'I must have gone back to sleep. I dreamed I got up.'
His mother laughed.
'Done it myself before now,' she said. 'Come on. I've got to be out by eight and I'll give you a lift if you want.'
Leo leapt at top speed to the bathroom. It seemed odd doing the same things a second time, and he wondered whether when he got downstairs he'd find himself facing Gido again. But he didn't. And the breakfast cereal on the table was reassuringly his own favourite, familiar brand. He breathed a sigh of relief.
He'd been dreaming. An odd dream admittedly, but a dream just the same.
'Last day of term,' Rhian said as they left the house. ' Lucky you.'
'Carnival tomorrow too,' Leo said.
'And only three weeks to the wedding,' Rhian said.
Leo's father had died when he was six, and he and his mother had lived alone together until she had met Carl two years ago. Leo liked Carl. He was a pleasant easy-going man, and Leo was pleased his mother was marrying him. It made Leo feel less responsible for her. Carl encouraged him in the things he was interested in so it was a great match as far as Leo was concerned.
The wedding itself was to be a simple affair followed by a meal at a smart restaurant in Haverfordwest with a dozen guests.
Leo was looking forward to meeting some of the people his mother worked with at the Building Society, and some of Carl's fishermen colleagues.
He felt annoyed with Gido for spoiling his good feeling. The prospect of the long summer vacation was clouded now by the possibility of the re-appearance of the Dreamstealers.
Throughout the day at school Gido's words kept coming back to him. And it began to dawn on him that although he tried to set it aside as only a dream, he couldn't.
Some corner of him knew that Gido had been to see him, and that it wasn't a fantasy dream. He didn't want to think the visit would lead to anything more, or that Gido's cryptic message was serious, but inside he knew it was.
He tried to remember what Gido had said, and all he could remember was something about a brooch, and trouble in dreamworld.
In a way he would have preferred to forget it, but his mind kept going back to it.
'I wonder if Ginny's had any dreams,' he thought. 'P'raps I'll text her and see.'
Then he remembered that Ginny's gran, her mother's mother, had died only a few days before, and he thought he wouldn't bother her now. It wouldn't be a good time to introduce the topic of the Dreamstealers into her life. She was probably feeling bad enough already.
Besides which Leo had other things to think about. Everyone was talking about the coming week-end carnival in Narberth, which was where Leo lived. It was a once a year affair, a highlight in the calendar of everyone for miles around. People who lived as far away as Haverfordwest and Carmarthen made the trip each year, to join in the fun and festivities, and Leo was determined he would enjoy it.
This year would be special because rather than going with his mother Rhian and his soon to be step-father Carl, he was deemed old enough to go with one or two friends.

After school, he and his friends, Greg and Lawrence (more commonly known as Loll), were standing by the school gates talking about the coming festivities, when Bos Gribley, a boy whom Leo couldn't stand, walked past. Hearing their conversation he stopped, and turning to the little group he shouted,
'See youse lot tomorrer. Bets I've got more to spend than you 'ave.'
and smirking, walked on his way.
Bos was a bully and a sneak and he was also always broke, hard-up, a cadger with never a penny of his own to spend.
'Bos's got money! I don't believe it,' Loll said.
'He can't have a job. Can he?' asked Greg.
'Who'd give him a job?' Leo asked. 'No-one round here would trust him as far as they could throw him!'
'P'raps he's nicked it,' Loll said.
'Nah,' Greg said. 'He's lying. I bet he hasn't got any money at all.'
Leo, listening, remembered suddenly that once, the last time he had met with Gido and his friends, they'd warned him about Bos.
'He's been got at,' Gido had said.
A creepy feeling entered Leo as he recalled it. He had thought no more about it until now, and perhaps it was only because of his morning dream that the memory had come back.
If Bos had been 'got at' by the Stealers, he could be dangerous. It was a shock to Leo to think he'd not observed Bos more closely.
The trouble was he'd always disliked him and it was easier to ignore him and steer clear of his company than to try to find out whether he was zombied by the Stealers. And even if he was, what could Leo do about it? Nothing.
He couldn't get it out of his mind though.
He wondered what would happen if he and Ginny got pulled into another battle with the Stealers, like the one before.
The prospect was gloomy. He and Ginny had previously been picked out to rescue the Keepers because they had certain special skills. Neither of them really understood what these skills were, since they seemed to happen by accident. They had certainly been able to help the Keepers, who referred to them as 'psychic'. But since that time Leo had been glad to feel he was completely ordinary. Being psychic was too much trouble.
He wanted to enjoy the school holidays, and get on with having a simple life.
But in his middle he knew it was impossible.
Gido had sowed a seed and in no time it would grow into something real, he knew it . It was all a question of watching for the clues as they came. And if they did come he was sure he would have no choice about following them.
With a big sigh, he decided it was out of his hands.
He turned the corner into Picton Place, glancing up as usual at the ruin of Narberth Castle that stood on the mound behind.
He stopped short, and stared at it.
The castle was lit by the golden rays of the lowering afternoon sun, and between the tall outlines of skeleton walls, he saw, like a watery reflection, three figures.
One was a man in a frock coat, whose brilliantly coloured waistcoat seemed to pick up the rays of the sun. He was bald on the top of his head, but around his ears long whisps of hair blew in the light breeze. Gido.
Beside him sat a round little lady in a flowered apron, her dark hair scraped up into an odd sideways knot on the top of her head. She looked like a cottage loaf. Maria.
At her feet lay an animal, a creature whose face was human and would have inspired artists in its versatility and subtlety of expression. It's ears were cat-like, and though its fore-quarters were slender and smooth-haired, its rear end wore a bush of long, russet coloured hair. The Grolchen.
Leo knew them immediately. The three Keepers.
They were all looking at Leo as though they had been waiting for him to appear. Gido began to speak and Leo heard it in his ear, like a stage whisper with static interference. It made him jump.
'It'll be a hot-bed of destructive anarchy until they actually have the brooch in their hands, unless you can do something. If I could do it myself I would. I'd get down there and snatch it back, but it's on the outer circle, like this is. Hence the poor reception. We can be reached at The Way in emergency. You know it of course. What schoolboy doesn't know Carreg Coetan?
Good luck with Cilgerran. If we can be there with you we will, but we may not make it. Choose your time - watch the moon and all that…'
The figures were dissolving and disappearing before he had finished speaking.
Leo gazed at the spot where he'd seen them, convinced they would return.
He had no idea what The Way might be. He knew nothing of 'outer circles' and 'the moon and all that'.
What on earth was Gido talking about? If Leo was going to get pulled into something, he would at least like to know what was going on.
He focussed on the mound and tried to conjure them back by speaking to them.
'Where is The Way?' he said, out loud.
'No good asking a wall the way,' came a laughing voice from behind him.
He turned with a start, and saw Carl approaching, on his way home from work.
Feeling foolish, he grinned and said the first thing that came into his head.
'Learning my lines for a play,' he said.
'Thought you might be,' Carl smiled.
Leo wanted Carl to walk on home, and leave him to try to make himself heard by the three in the castle. But he realised he had no reason not to walk with Carl who would think it very odd if Leo chose to stand in the street alone, talking to himself.
He glanced up at the castle, and Carl did the same.
It stood empty, the shaft of light from the sun illuminating nothing more than the outline of the ruined walls against the sky. No Keepers re-appeared
'I never walk past it without looking at it,' Carl said.
'Me neither,' said Leo and joined him in walking home.
He went to his room as soon as he arrived and tried to put down on paper as much as he could remember of what he had heard. It didn't make any more sense on the page than it did in his head and the tantalising smell of supper, one of his mother's delicious chicken casseroles, wafting up the stairs, was doing a great job of distracting him.
In the end he screwed the notes he'd made into a small ball and threw it in the bin.
'How am I supposed to help if I don't know what he's talking about?' he asked himself. 'I'm just going to ignore them and maybe they'll go away and find someone else to do whatever it is they want doing.'
But he also remembered that on the previous occasion when they had needed help the Keepers had been more than insistent on gaining his support, and he had an uneasy suspicion that the same thing was about to happen again.