The Changeling (Book One of The Síofra Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page A

I glanced up at the sky, amazed to find that the canopy of branches was so dense it blocked out most of the sky, but even here the moonlight filtered through the leaves and lit the way.  The way the moonbeams danced through the trees gave it a magical feeling.
    "Beautiful, isn't it?" he asked, his lips turning up at the corners.
    "I've never seen any place like this," I replied softly, stunned at how dense the woods were, how thick the bushes grew, how bright the wildflowers that littered the ground were.  “Beautiful doesn’t begin to cover it.”
    The forest floor was covered with dark green grass, and tiny blue and white flowers were growing in clusters.  It smelled crisp and heady with flowery perfume, and the tang of the sea still lingered in the air over it to create a scent that left my head spinning. Overhead, I could hear the trill of birds as they called to one another and flitted through the branches.  The forest was alive and I could feel it calling to me.
    "There is no place like this. Come on. You haven't seen anything yet." He tugged on my hand excitedly and led me farther into trees.
    His excitement was infectious, and I found myself anticipating what he might be leading me toward. I tried to focus my thoughts more on where we might be going than in the beauty that surrounded us, but it was difficult. My eyes kept drifting to the sides of the path, feeling a sense of peace and belonging that I didn’t want to leave.
    Aleksander grinned at me, his eyes dancing with eagerness as he pulled me through a large cluster of bushes. When we broke through the flora to the other side, I stopped short and gaped at what lay before me.
    It was a small pond, the edges rimmed with white pebbles and water so still I could see the reflection of the trees as they moved in the breeze above us. A large smooth stone jutted out over the water, and I dropped Aleksander's hand, desperate to climb onto the rock and look into the water below. He smiled at my eagerness as I scrambled up and stretched out on my stomach, peering over the edge .
      The water itself was still as glass and unlike anything I had ever seen. It flashed and lit from within, projecting different images like a giant television with some invisible spectator idly flipping through the channels. The water glowed crimson color, and a young boy appeared in the reflection of the water. He couldn’t have been older than five or six years. Dressed as a knight, he wore a set of gleaming armor and held a sword aloft in one hand, his face serious as he scrambled onto a horse and charged at a shadow lurking in the distance before the image slowly faded and disappeared.
    Without warning, the reflection shifted again. This time, pale yellow like sunlight lit the waters, giving it a sunny, cheerful glow. An old woman sat in a white wicker rocker on a wide country porch. In her lap, a giggling baby girl was patting the woman’s cheek and making her smile. Her mouth moved as if she were speaking to the baby, but I couldn't hear anything before the image faded, the colors altering as scene after scene played out before me.
    "What is this?" I asked, unable to tear my gaze away from the shifting images before me. 
    "I thought you might like this," Aleksander said, climbing onto the rock next to me. He stretched out his lanky frame so that he too could peer over its edge, his side pressing against mine in the small space. "This is what we call The Pool of Dreams. What you see before you are the dreams of humans on earth.”
    “These are people’s dreams?" I asked, turning to look at him. "How does it work?"
    "You know how I said that this place ran parallel to the mortal world? There is a small space between their world and ours where the power that created their world and ours exists.  We call it the Dreaming. This is where human souls like to wander while their bodies are relaxed enough to allow their spirits to roam, like extra slack in their mortal tether. This is the