The Sandman and the War of Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

doll exposed under her cape so the pirates would see it, she ran for the window. Straight into and through it. The glass shattered. Lady Pitchiner was gone.
    The pirates pressed at the window, staring down. The fall was more than a mile.
    Emily Jane had heard the alarms and the explosions echoing through the canyons she wascoasting. She knew the ruckus could only be coming from her home. She knew the sound of a Dream Pirate attack. They had attacked her father’s ship when she and her mother had first come this moon. And though she was wild, she was not foolish. She stayed with the Star Fish. Perhaps if she rode among them, she would not be seen. The Star Fish swam swiftly through the canyons, in a near panic from the sounds of battle.
    Between gaps in the canyons peaks, Emily Jane watched in horror as her palace was riddled with explosions. She could make out the window of her own room, then the awful sound of shattering glass, and there was the unmistakable figure of her mother falling.
    Emily Jane turned away. She closed her eyes tightly and would not open them; she let the Star Fish take her where they would. The Star Fishdarted on and on, away from the embattled moon, through the rings of meteors, and out into the ocean of space. Soon Emily Jane could no longer hear anything but the lulling sound of the wind as she was pulled farther and farther from her doomed home and into the eternity of space.

C HAPTER N INE

    A Little Girl Lost and a Titan Found
    A nd so Emily Jane traveled far from her home and far from her sorrow, until she came to an unexpectedly safe place—the Constellation called Typhan. Before the War of the Dream Pirates, Typhan had been a maker of storms and was a powerful ally of the Golden Age. He could conjure up solar winds so vast and terrible, they would scatter whole fleets of Dream Pirate galleons when required.
    But the wily Dream Pirates had managed to ravage him and render him harmless: They had extinguished the stars that had been his eyes. Once blinded, he could no longer see the pirates as theyattacked. And they had been merciless, killing so many of his stars that his once-vivid outline was nearly gone. He was now a forgotten ghost of his former self, and he had lost the will to make storms or to fight. He was a mournful, pitiful Titan. Only the harmless Star Fish ever swam among Typhan’s few remaining stars and moons.
    Now, as the Star Fish weaved their way past Typhan’s head, Emily Jane was as blind to the damaged giant as he was to her. Her thoughts were only of her poor mother, her vanished home, and the feeling of being as lost as any child could be. “Father,” she cried at last. “Come find me! Please! Please!! I am so alone!”
    Typhan heard these cries. He had only heard the taunts and laughter of the Dream Pirates since his sight was destroyed. He thought he would never again hear a voice that was not forged by cruelty.
    “Child?” he whispered. “How come you here?”
    Even in a whisper, his voice could fill a galaxy, but his was a strong, unthreatening voice, like a summer storm that has recently passed.
    Startled, Emily Jane looked up and saw what remained of the starlight giant. Like all Golden Age children, she had been schooled in the names and shapes of the Constellations, so she immediately recognized his dimmed face.
    Through tears, she told Typhan who she was and all the awfulness of her journey. This stirred Typhan, and for the first time since his blinding, he felt an echo of his former might. They had both been victims of the Dream Pirates and had been left to lonely fates. He summoned up a breeze that took Emily Jane and her Star Fish to a moon near the stars of his right ear. The travellers were exhausted, and resting was very welcome. As theylanded among the powdery craters, Typhan spoke once more.
    “Child,” he said. “You are not alone.”
    Those words were like a shield of comfort for Emily Jane. She felt safer, and even hopeful. And as she fell