Hobby by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online

gift of understanding simply by mentioning the dream. "Nothing."
    "What do you mean?" Ambrosius asked cautiously. There was a slyness—and a fear—in his eyes that he could not disguise.
    Hobby weighed his words carefully. He thought his entire future might lie in what he said next. "The dream, Ambrosius. It was not about drains."
    "Ah..." Ambrosius let out only one small syllable.
    "It was a dream about ... armies, about the Duke's losses to come. There will be a battle, and his army will be defeated. He was right in a way. And you dismissed him."
    "I did not dismiss him," Ambrosius said. "I sidestepped him. To tell a prince to his face that you have dreamed his doom invites your own. The greatest wisdom of any dreamer is to live to dream again." He smiled, but it sat on his mouth and never reached his eyes. Unaccountably his brow was spotted with sweat.
    "The only duty of the dreamer is to tell the truth," Hobby said. "About the dream."
    "You do not listen well," Viviane said.
    "
He
does not listen at all," Hobby retorted, suddenly sure that Ambrosius had never understood the dream's meaning. The man was a charlatan through and through. The actual dream had never mattered. He would have told the Duke the same whatever the dream. Lady Renwein had the right of it. And Hobby suddenly knew something else as well: Ambrosius was afraid of both the dream and the dreamer. "You are jealous and afraid," he spat out. "You know yourself to be nothing more than a sleight-of-hander.
I
am the true dream-reader."
    Ambrosius did not answer, his face drawn.
    "I am sorry," Hobby said quickly. "I should not have said that." But whether he meant he was sorry for his tongue's sharpness or for saying out loud what they all already knew, none of them was sure.
    Ambrosius turned and gave Viviane an unreadable look. "The boy is right about one thing. My hand is quicker than my mind. We go from here at once.
    "Tomorrow is soon enough."
    "Now."
    "Boy," Viviane said, turning a smile on Hobby that made him flush all over. "Take these coins. Go into town. Buy yourself some token of the place. Kiss a pretty wench. Twelve years is none too soon for that." She reached into the pocket that hung from her belt and fetched out a handful of coins, much too much for an evening's entertainment. "Come back in an hour or two. No sooner. I will change this stubborn old man's mind that we all may have a good night's rest."
    Hobby took the coins and went. Not to buy a token. Not to kiss a town maid. But to think long and hard about the power he had, this dreaming. And to think what it had to do with the matter of truth.

13. RESURRECTION
    THE TOWN WAS QUIET, THE STALLS SHUT DOWN , the players all in their beds. The tubs and trestles on which goods had stood all day were pulled in for the night.
    Hobby wandered through the empty town, sitting at last with his back to a stone watering trough, meaning to think. Instead he fell asleep and dreamed.
    He dreamed three dreams. The first was of a hand pushing up through earth, as if someone long buried sought the light. A revenant, a shadow, a ghost to haunt him. He cried out and his own cry wakened him for a moment.
    The second dream was not so frightening as the first. There was a bear, not much more than a cub, padding through the woods with a crown upon its head.
    The third was a dream of a tree and in the dream he slept, dreaming.
    A rough hand shook him awake. He swam up into the light of the torch, thinking,
It will be one of the guards. Or Ambrosius. Or Viviane,
though the touch was too rough for hers.
    But when he heard the low, familiar growl of a dog, he knew that his first dream had, in its own way, come true. "Fowler," he whispered, meaning both the man and his breath. "I thought you were dead."
    "You left me unconscious, boy. And we such good friends," Fowler said. "I heard about you when I arrived. Quite a performance, I was told. The Duke wants more. He's not yet satisfied."
    "How did you know it was