Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1)

by Laini Taylor

It had to do with a name, and the discovery that, in addition to being lost or forgotten, they could also be stolen.

He cherished them like a little stash of gold in a corner of his mind.

Lazlo couldn’t have belonged at the library more truly if he were a book himself.

It was impossible, of course. But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming?

And as for fairy tales, he understood that they were reflections of the people who had spun them, and were flecked with little truths—intrusions of reality into fantasy, like… toast crumbs on a wizard’s beard.

Without his books, Lazlo felt as though a vital link to his dream had been cut.

So he hoped, so he dreamed: that, in the course of time, grain by grain, the gray would give way to the dream and the sands of his life would run bright.

It was jarring. It was wonderful.

Who had ever expended so much passion on a dream, only to stand helpless as it was granted to others? Others, moreover, who had expended no passion on it at all.

Strange the dreamer—library stowaway and scholar of fairy tales—had never been thirstier, or more full of wonder.

She was, Sarai thought, like springtime distilled into a person.

It was a different life out here, but make no mistake: Lazlo was every bit the dreamer he had always been, if not more.

Calixte was not only the first girl Lazlo counted as a friend, but also the first criminal.

“Beautiful and full of monsters?” “All the best stories are.”

And Lazlo was surprised by the strength of his gratitude—to be believed, even by a tomb raider from a family of assassins.

“It’s a woeful species that’s all male.”

And that’s how you go on. You lay laughter over the dark parts. The more dark parts, the more you have to laugh. With defiance, with abandon, with hysteria, any way you can.

For what was a person but the sum of all the scraps of their memory and experience: a finite set of components with an infinite array of expressions.

Sarai was the Muse of Nightmares.

Anyone who has ever been excluded can understand what they felt, and no one has ever been quite so excluded as they.

So they layered cynicism atop their longing, and it was something like laying laughter over the darkness—self-preservation of an uglier stripe.

What could it be, that would be clear at a glance?

He had loved the library, and had felt, as a boy, as though it had a kind of sentience, and perhaps loved him back.

And Lazlo, who lacked not only a mother but a father, too, thought that having one might feel something like this.

There was the city—fabled Weep, unseen no longer—and the day was bright, but it lay dark.

Lazlo felt as though the top of his head were open and the universe had dropped a lit match in. He understood in that moment that he was smaller than he had ever known, and the realm of the unknowable was bigger.

“You two idiots,” said Azareen, and Lazlo felt a curious twinge of pride, to be called an idiot by her, with what might have been the tiniest edge of fondness.

He realized that all this time he’d been looking to the Godslayer as a hero, not a man, but that heroes, whatever else they are, are also men—and women—and prey to human troubles just like anybody else.

Here was the radical notion that you might help someone simply because they needed it.

But really, nothing could have prepared her to enter the dream and find herself already there.

No one had ever looked at him like that before. It made him want to check the mirror again to see what she had seen—if perhaps his face had improved without his knowing it—and the impulse was so vain and unlike him that he flung an arm over his eyes and laughed at himself.

And so Grief and Shame abided in adjoining rooms with the door shut between them, holding their pain in their arms instead of each other.

“I’m not a dream,” said Sarai. There was bitterness in her voice. “I’m a nightmare.” Lazlo breathed out a small, incredulous laugh. “You’re not my idea of a nightmare,” he said, blushing a little.

“Well, I have at least a hundred nicer things to say and am only prevented by embarrassment.”

He thought she would be beautiful in any color, but found he missed the true exquisite hue of her.

All the things that hadn’t quite made sense now shifted just enough, and it was like tilting the angle of the sun so that instead of glancing off a window-pane and blinding you, it passed through it to illuminate all that was within.

Theirs wasn’t the only love story ended by the gods, but it was the only one that ended the gods.

She wept, and Lazlo drew her into an embrace as though it were the most natural thing in the world that he should draw a mournful goddess against his shoulder, enfold her in his arms, breathe the scent of the flowers in her hair, and even lightly stroke her temple with the edge of his thumb.

Lazlo felt many things for her in that moment, feeling her tension as he held her, and none of them were disgust.

She saw no mockery, but only… witchlight, still witchlight, and she wanted to live in it forever.

“I hope you’ll let me be in your story.”

“I only mean,” he rushed to explain, “if you’re afraid of your own dreams, you’re welcome here in mine.”

“You must see. I want you in my mind.”

There was a scientific explanation for everything. Even “gods.”

That’s what a kiss is like, he thought, no matter how brief: It’s a tiny, magical story, and a miraculous interruption of the mundane.

“Sarai,” he breathed against her cheek. He felt like a glass filled with splendor and luck. His lips curved into a smile. He whispered, “You have ruined my tongue for all other tastes,” and understood finally what that phrase meant.