Dreamland

Dea closed the door behind her. It didn’t have a lock, but it didn’t matter. She doubted she’d need much time.

She ran the water in the faucet, turning the hot water on as high it would go. She barely recognized herself in the mirror. She looked ski

Like someone from another world.

Her image soon began to fade, as steam rose up from the porcelain and clawed its way across the surface of the glass. Soon she couldn’t see her features at all, only the vague outlines of a girl. Then even these faded. The steam looked just like fog, like a thin curtain she could pass beyond.

Briggs rapped once on the door. “You okay in there?”

Dea allowed herself to smile. “I’m fine,” she answered. “Be out in a second.”

She placed a palm to the mirror. The glass trembled. She felt warmth, the pressure of a second hand, reaching across dimensions.

“Hi, Mom,” she whispered.

PART FOUR

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

—Henry David Thoreau

THIRTY-ONE

Co

“Hello.” She shaded her eyes with a hand. Still, he could tell she was smiling.

“You came,” he said, moving toward her. “I was hoping you would.” She visited nearly every night. Still, he waited in agony all day, wondering whether he would see her, and when.

“Of course I did.” She put her arms around his neck, stretching up onto her tiptoes to kiss him. She tasted like honey, and her skin was gold-bronze from the sun, and very warm. No cancer in this world, she’d told him. I guess I should take up smoking. Except there are no cigarettes, either.

“You’re in trouble with Gollum, you know.” He loved how she felt in his arms, light and heavy at the same time, solid and soft. “She says you haven’t visited in weeks.”

Dea wrinkled her nose, which was very lightly freckled from the sun. It was amazing how healthy she looked here, so strong and happy and confident—the same Dea but not the same Dea at all. Like a flower after a good long rainstorm, opening into the sun, full-throated and joyous. “Gollum’s dreams,” she said, “involve far too much horse manure for my taste. And Star Wars. Lots of Star Wars. Did you know Gollum was a Star Wars freak?”

“I do now.”

“Tell her I’ll come soon.” She kissed him again, just lightly this time, on the very top of his chin. But he ducked, and got one on the mouth instead. She pulled away from him, laughing, but kept her arms around his waist.

“I see you have your escorts with you.” He nodded to the eagles, now perched on a nearby telephone line, preening. They were enormous, but the wire stayed taut beneath their weight—details, Co

She rolled her eyes. “Escorts,” she said. “More like bodyguards.”

He looped a finger in her hair, tugging gently—loving the feel of her, the smell of her hair, the closeness of her body to his. “Is your dad really afraid of what I might do?”

“He’s afraid of what I might do.” Her voice was teasing. “He’s worried I might go rogue and try to escape.”

He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t ask her again, but now he found he couldn’t help it. “When?” he said. “When are you coming back?”

“Co

“Complicated. I know.” He didn’t mean to sound bitter.

She looked at him again. When she frowned, her nose pulled slightly to the left. He loved that. “You think I don’t want to come back?” She shook her head. “My dad keeps my mom locked in a weird tower. My mom is busy plotting my father’s downfall. Half my dad’s army is rebelling, and now a league of monsters is marching on the city. We’re talking major malfunction over here.”

It was crazy how she could talk about things like monsters and towers and still sound so absolutely, so resolutely Dea: sarcastic and fu

“So let me come to you.” He kissed her neck and shoulder. “I want to be with you, Dea.”

He could feel her shiver when he moved his mouth toward her jaw. “I want to be with you, too,” she whispered. “But you know it doesn’t work like that.”

He’d asked her a hundred times to take him to the city, to show him the palace where she now lived and the slave pits she was determined to close down; to see the mirrors through which she could keep watch over him (“Just as long as you stay out of the bathroom,” he’d said); to see the strange hybrid monsters and animals that had crawled out of or been recruited from other people’s dreams. Her answer was always the same: It doesn’t work like that. This, here, in Co

“Come on.” Dea kissed him again, leaving a lingering taste of sugar. “Let’s be happy, okay? Let’s walk and be happy and forget about all the bad stuff.”

They walked through the ruins of an old fort—a place Co

“How’s your dad?” Dea asked. She’d been avoiding the subject, letting Co

“Better.” For days after Co

Dea squeezed his hand so tightly he could feel all the bones in her fingers. “I heard,” she said.