Dreamfire: A Novel

List of Characters

Family

Josh Weaver (Joshlyn Dustine Hazel Weavaros)

Deloise Weaver: Josh’s younger sister

Lauren Weaver (Laurentius Weavaros): Josh and Deloise’s father

Jona Weaver: Josh and Deloise’s mother (deceased)

Kerstel Weaver: Lauren’s wife, Josh and Deloise’s stepmother

Dustine Borgenicht: Josh and Deloise’s grandmother, Peregrine’s estranged wife

Peregrine Borgenicht: Josh and Deloise’s grandfather, Dustine’s estranged husband

Friends

Winsor Avish: Josh’s best friend

Whim Avish: Winsor’s older brother

Saidy and Alex Avish: Whim and Winsor’s parents

Haley McKarr (Micharainosa): Ian’s twin brother

Ian McKarr (Hianselian Micharainosa): Haley’s twin brother

Davita Bach: the local government representative

Young Ben Sounclouse: the local seer

Schaffer Sounclouse: Young Ben’s great-grandson

The Outsider

Will Kansas: Josh’s apprentice

One

The sewer wasn’t the worst place for a nightmare, Josh Weaver admitted to herself as she fumbled with the boxy, rose-gold lighter in her hand. But it was hardly a warm afternoon in the park, either.

She stood knee-deep in very cold water that smelled of rotting fast food and gave off fumes like fresh asphalt. Her jeans were soaked—she’d slipped and fallen twice—and her black shirt was too thin to keep her warm. Around her legs, oily patterns floated on the surface of stagnant, brackish water as it flowed down the cramped concrete sewer tunnel and into the darkness.

Josh moved her lighter in a wide arc, which brought back the sharp pain in her right elbow where she’d slammed it against a ladder climbing down here. The ladder had been behind her a moment before; now it was gone. Like so many things in the Dream, it had vanished without reason.

When the lighter grew hot in her hand, she let the cap close with a click. The darkness was absolute—No cheating, it seemed to say—and while Josh had been in dark places lots of times, there was a bad vibe down here; it drove the adrenaline that made her hands want to grab a weapon and her legs ache to run. The feeling might just have been instinct, but Josh knew better than to ignore it. Instinct had saved her life too many times.

For a moment she hesitated, rubbing her numb fingertips against the warm metal lighter. Then she closed her eyes against the dark and broke Stellanor’s First Rule of dream walking: Never let the dreamer’s fear become your own.

Usually when Josh was inside the Dream universe, she kept the image of stone walls in the back of her mind. The walls—thick and high and impenetrable—protected her from the dreamers’ emotions and made it possible for her to focus and not become paralyzed by terror or anxiety. But now Josh imagined a tiny hole in one wall, a well-worn hole the size of her pinky finger where a cork usually fit, and when she pulled the cork out, a slither of blue smoke came through.

A man in an old-fashioned coat. A gas can. A mask. A little boy wearing the gas mask, his face turning white, then blue, the mask pulling at his skin, sucking, sucking …

And something else, a hint of primal fear, like a match held to the woman’s anxiety and ready to set it alight: dreamfire.

Josh jammed the cork back in the wall before the dreamfire could overwhelm her. She opened her eyes and flicked the lighter again.

So there’s a bad guy down here somewhere, she thought. Skippy.

A sloshing noise came from one end of the tunnel, and Josh saw the dreamer come running—a woman in her early forties, nice-looking in a middle-class, soccer-mom kind of way.

They’re coming! the woman warned Josh, stopping a few feet away. I got them away from the children, but they’re coming.

Who’s coming? Josh asked.

The men, with the gas masks. They put a mask on Paul and he turned all blue.

You’re dreaming, Josh calmly told the soccer mom. You need to wake up.

Sometimes the best way to deal with dreamers was to point out that they were dreaming. Some would realize the truth of the statement and wake up, while an interesting few would gain conscious control over their own nightmare.

Soccer mom did neither.

"Blue," the woman repeated, her eyes staring into the darkness. Josh felt the dreamfire flickering against the walls in her mind, like flames burning just outside her field of vision.

All right, she thought, this lady is not hearing me. We need an out.

Unfortunately, there was no immediately apparent way to escape the dream. Josh needed a doorway, a manhole, an iron gate. Any kind of porthole, anything that would move them both to a different place.

Don’t worry about Paul— she started to say, and the woman let out an operatic scream that echoed up and down the sewer tunnel in a wicked one-woman chorus.

Josh grimaced as the dreamer took off running, splashing through the water like a duck taking flight.

Before Josh could go after her, a gust of freezing air swept the back of her neck. She spun so fast her feet lost purchase on the greasy tunnel floor and she fell on her butt—again. The hand holding the Zippo slipped underwater.

But before the light went out, she caught a glimpse of the man who had been standing not five feet behind her.

Now she understood why the woman was so upset.

The man stood tall and wide enough to fill the tunnel. He wore a green-black leather trench coat that glistened like the shell of a beetle. Big green buttons ran down the front and a wide belt cinched the waist. On his head sat a matching felt fedora with a black band.

A gas mask covered his face, and two rubber tubes connected it to a huge canister that he wore on his back. The canister was so large that Josh could see it over his shoulder. It was made of something white and slick, like bone. The gas mask hid his face, but the two hands sticking out of the overlong sleeves were massive, and the fingers, thick as quarter rolls, were spread wide apart. Even in the meager half-second glimpse she got of him, Josh saw the muscles in the backs of his hands straining against the flesh as he forced his fingers farther away from each other. His hands must have hurt, spread so wide.

Josh sat in the water, in the dark, and listened to the gritty sound of the lighter flicking futilely. The man in the trench coat didn’t make a sound, but she felt his presence somewhere nearby, like air pressure against her skin. He was close—how close? Which side? She hated not knowing where he was, because she was going to have to make a run for it and she needed to know which direction to run.

Some nightmares could be dealt with, resolved, like the one the week before when a man dreamt that he had started a grease fire in the kitchen while frying a couple of breaded tennis shoes. Josh had just walked in, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and put the fire out. Man relieved, nightmare over.

But this dream was too minimalist to work with; there were no possibilities for improvisation in the tunnel. The source of danger was obvious, but the means of defense were a mystery. What could she use against this canister-carrying menace?

Possibly nothing. Not all nightmares could be resolved, and if that was the case in this nightmare, Josh had only one option left.

According to what was formally known as Tao Sing’s Dictum: If you can’t face a nightmare, run from it as fast as you possibly can.

The man in the trench coat still didn’t make a sound. Finally, the lighter’s wick dried enough that the little flame burst into action, and Josh’s throat shut as if a string had been yanked tight around it.

The face of the man in the trench coat was less than a foot from her own.

All she saw during that glance were his eyes, bulging from above the rubber rim of his gas mask. They were black. The man carrying the canister had black eyes, deep and yet shiny. They had no whites. They had no irises. They had no pupils. It was as if his eyelids opened onto deep space.

He peered at her. A feeling emanated from this man—no, this creature—that made it hard for Josh to focus. Part of the feeling was intense desire, not for her but for violence, and part of it was indifference. The thing living in the trench coat wanted to kill, but it didn’t care what, and this deep, unconscious need to end life was the source of the woman’s dreamfire.

Only the deepest fears could awaken dreamfire, and only the strongest mental walls could stand against it. One moment of weakness would be enough to ignite a hysteria that would render Josh as powerless as the dreamer.

Josh began wondering if she’d have to kill the man.

This would hardly be her first time. But her father had once told her that even when he was in Vietnam, the killing hadn’t seemed as real as Dream death did. Every sense was exaggerated—the sound of ribs cracking exploded in his ears, the blood was as thick as frosting, and it dried bright crimson, when it did finally dry.

And Dream death didn’t always work. Once, Josh had blown a zombie’s head off with a shotgun, watched it roll down a staircase, and felt his hands continue ripping her hair out. She’d had to break his body open like a lobster before he finally stopped coming at her.

The man in the trench coat struck her as the kind of guy who wasn’t going to go down easily.

Then he spoke, the words muffled by the mask. No accent. No cadence. No real interest.

You’re Jona’s daughter.

Josh was so startled she forgot to kick him. He knew her mother? Her mother had been dead for five years; Josh didn’t bump into a lot of random people who had known her. And besides that, he was a nightmare, not a person—he shouldn’t have been able to recognize Josh.

But while Josh stared at him with a tilted head, the man in the trench coat reached for a second gas mask dangling from his canister, and she remembered what the soccer mom had said.

They put a mask on Paul and he turned all blue.

That was when Josh remembered to kick him, leaning back on the hand that wasn’t holding her lighter and using the leverage to get her right cross-trainer in under his chin.

His head snapped back. The felt hat flipped off his skull, revealing strands of gray-black hair twisted around a palm-sized bald spot.

Josh lashed out again. This time her heel caught him square in the breastbone and sent him flying into the side of the tunnel. His canister clanged against the wall.

She didn’t waste any time. Before he could so much as finish sliding into the water, she was on her feet and running full-out through the tunnel. The water felt thick; it clung to her jeans as if trying to hold her back.

Move, move, move, she told herself.

The dreamer appeared around a bend in the tunnel, and Josh stumbled to a stop beside her. I can’t get this door open! the woman screamed, knocking her fashion-ring-laden hand against a steel access door in the wall.

Finally, Josh thought at the sight of the door.

She listened for a moment, but between her own breath and soccer mom’s gasps and sobs, she couldn’t hear anything. Either the man in the trench coat wasn’t following, or else he could move silently. She thought she could guess which.

Cold air gusted from the direction she had run.

Don’t panic, she told the woman, and braced her shoulder against the door. In the real world, she could never have knocked down a steel door, but this was the woman’s dream, and it would respond to the woman’s perceptions. If she thought Josh capable, the Dream would conform.

Josh launched herself at the door. Pain shot through her shoulder, but the hinges creaked.

Harder, the woman urged.

Josh managed not to glare at her. She threw herself against the door again, so hard her arm moved in her shoulder socket. This time the door fell outward.

And kept falling. On the other side of the doorway stretched black emptiness. Josh grabbed the tunnel wall with her free hand to keep from tumbling into the void.

I’m gonna die, the dreamer whispered.

If she hadn’t felt sorry for the woman, Josh would have been annoyed. Why were people always so quick to assume that they were going to die? Josh had been in much worse situations than this one and made it out unharmed.

She relit her lighter with one hand while she pulled a makeup compact from her back pocket with the other. All of the facial powder had long ago fallen out of the hunter-green case. When she revved up the Zippo and reflected the light off the mirror and into the doorway, a shimmering surface appeared where the empty doorway had been a moment before. This filmy glaze, which dream walkers called the Veil, stretched across the doorframe like a huge soap bubble sparkling in the firelight.

Through, Josh said.

I’m gonna die.

The air that rushed over Josh’s hair lifted it off her ears and slid icy fingers across her scalp. She turned without thinking.

The man in the green-black trench coat stood an arm’s length away.

Josh raised her right foot, set it against the dreamer’s waist, and kicked her through the doorway. Then she jumped after her.

Two

Josh stumbled on her way out of the Dream and ended up on her knees on the archroom’s tile floor. At the same time, somewhere else in the world, the dreamer was probably bolting upright in bed.

Josh’s younger sister, Deloise, rose from a chair that sat near the stone archway through which Josh had fallen. But instead of helping her up, Deloise put her manicured hands on her hips and said, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! Do you have any idea what time it is?

Um… Josh shook her head, trying to reorient herself. Around six thirty?

Try eight twenty. You’re going to be late to—oh, drat, Josh, you’re wet. And you smell like you’ve been swimming in a septic tank.

Despite her attempt to appear disapproving, Deloise was smiling. She usually was. When Josh held out her hands, Deloise took them and tugged her sister up.

Deloise was—to her infinite pleasure—a full four inches taller than Josh, and at least four times as pretty. When people said her blond hair had good body, they were talking about the Venus de Milo’s body, and when they said her brown eyes resembled a doe’s, they were talking about Bambi’s mom. And people were always talking, because not only was Deloise beautiful, she was wonderful. She preferred young children’s nightmares, where she could soothe, reassure, and comfort, and she was well suited to the task. In the World, kids were unnaturally drawn to her, as if they knew subconsciously that she fought for them. And she was social, and funny, and enthusiastic, and sensitive, and … a hundred other things Josh was not.

Josh groaned as she got to her feet. A puddle was forming on the clean, white tile and her hand was red from where she had let the Zippo burn too long. Her entire body shimmered with the aftermath of passing through the Veil, scientifically called Veil dust but more commonly known as fairy dust.

Josh wiped her face of fairy dust with a white hand towel. How late am I going to be, you think? she asked. Her seventeenth birthday party was set to start at nine.

You’ll make it if you hurry. I ironed your outfit.

Deloise was already dressed in a dark blue dress with palm-sized white flowers printed on it. A white shrug covered her bare shoulders—Laurentius Weavaros did not approve of his daughters showing skin—and her left wrist was adorned with a pearl bracelet that matched the accents on her ballet flats. Like most dream walkers, Lauren believed that young women should dress modestly, and he wouldn’t have been the only one frowning if Deloise had showed up in heels.

Deloise shut off the archroom lights while, ahead, Josh scrambled up the spiral stairs in her squishing shoes. I only saw a minute of that nightmare, but the dreamer looked like she was caught up in some serious dreamfire, Deloise said, following.

"Yeah. The guy in the trench coat was gassing people to death. Although he was also wearing a gas mask.… And he said the strangest thing—"

Josh pushed open the door at the top of the steps and let herself into the kitchen pantry. Spice racks and soda caddies cleverly disguised the door to the basement. After Deloise closed it behind herself, only Josh’s gritty gray footprints on the floor suggested the room held anything more than nonperishable foodstuffs.

In the kitchen, Josh and Deloise’s stepmother, Kerstel, was preparing a tray of bruschetta and goat cheese. The girls’ mother had died five years before while trying to open a new archway between the World and the Dream, and three years later, their father had married Kerstel. She was twenty years too young for him and better educated than he was, but she was smart and funny and a good cook, and she thought Josh was a responsible young person, so Josh didn’t mind having her around. Deloise positively adored her.

Saidy Avish was assisting Kerstel with the finger foods. Saidy and her husband, Alex, lived on the house’s second floor with their daughter, Winsor, who was—or had once been—Josh’s best friend.

Saidy looked disparagingly at the mess Josh tracked on the floor and ordered her to remove her shoes. Kerstel said, "Josh, I just washed the floor," but she was laughing.

Barefoot, Josh followed Deloise down the hall and into the stairwell. Deloise floated up the steps, her ballet flats hardly indenting the carpet. What were you saying?

Yeah, the guy in the trench coat. He said… Josh hesitated, half wondering if she hadn’t misheard the words through his mask. He said I was Jona’s daughter.

What? Deloise looked sharply at Josh over her shoulder, lost her balance, and had to grab the banister to keep from falling down the stairs. Josh put a hand on her sister’s back until Deloise was moving forward again.

That’s impossible, Deloise said. I mean, how could he know who you are?

He couldn’t. Now that she had a moment to think, Josh found the man’s recognition even more disturbing. He had been a figment of the nightmare, not a conscious being with a mind or a past. He had never met Josh’s mother.

I must have misheard him.

Well, you should talk to Dad about it, Deloise advised. Or Grandma. They’ll know. You didn’t break Stellanor’s First Rule, did you? She turned sharply again, her voice rising with alarm. He might have been able to read your mind if you let the dreamer’s fear take you over.

I didn’t break Stellanor, Josh said, although that’s exactly what she had done. Yes, letting the dreamer’s fear touch her was dangerous—especially when dreamfire was present—but sometimes it was the only way to get vital information. And she was careful. I’ll ask Grandma later, she said, and let the subject drop.

They reached the third floor. The house, originally a Greek-revival mansion, had been renovated and expanded several times, and now contained two three-bedroom apartments on the second floor and a four-bedroom apartment on the third. Because the Dream required monitoring, continuously but especially at night, and because the archway in the basement was the only one for miles around, it made sense for a number of dream walkers to share the house.

The Weavaroses lived on the third floor. The living room, once nothing more than four white walls and a couch, had flourished like a garden under Kerstel’s care. Now the windows were dressed with brown velvet curtains and the taupe walls bore earth-toned textile art created by a local craftswoman. Alpaca throw blankets were piled in a wicker basket at the end of the couch, and the air smelled of Kerstel’s favorite toasted-almond-scented candles.

Josh and Deloise’s bedrooms were connected by a bathroom and sat between the master bedroom and an extra room used for storage and the collection of junk. Two weeks earlier, Kerstel had decided to clean out the junk room, but she had lacked answers when Josh asked about the unexpected change. Just seemed like a good idea, she’d said finally.

Deloise said this meant Kerstel was pregnant, but Josh thought she probably just wanted the extra closet space.

Josh’s own room was a wreck of textbooks and martial-arts books and clothing she couldn’t be bothered to put away. Half a dozen blankets, none of which matched one another or the sheets on the bed, were heaped on the mattress and the window seat and the overstuffed recliner in the corner. Most of her possessions looked like they had been won in a street fight; even her hairbrush had a corner chipped off.

Winsor was sitting on the corner of the bed, leafing through a knife catalog. Her dark, layered hair shone in the ruddy light of the bedside table, and she smiled knowingly—and just a bit scornfully—as she looked up at Josh, blue eyes cutting through her overlong bangs.

Though not shy, Winsor’s combination of intensity, obvious intelligence, and reserve often created a barrier between her and other people. She could appear cold without meaning to—at least, Josh thought she didn’t mean to. If her family hadn’t lived on the second floor, Josh considered it unlikely that they would ever have become friends. After a wardrobe malfunction at a middle school pool party, Winsor had developed great sympathy for dreamers trapped in shame and embarrassment nightmares. Josh couldn’t count the number of times she’d had to pass up a perfectly terrifying monster chase because Winsor wanted to help some kid dreaming he was naked in his school cafeteria.

I told Del you would be down there. Winsor shook her head. Workaholic.

I’m not a workaholic, Josh told her, although winter break had just ended, and she had worked like a sled dog the entire time. She fought the urge to flop down on the bed—she didn’t want to contaminate her blankets with sewer sludge.

You’re a workaholic in dire need of a shower, Winsor replied. Although her voice was light and she continued to smile, Josh detected a fine edge to her tone, like a very long, thin blade hidden beneath her words.

Nothing had been right between them since the summer before, and Josh was beginning to think that the damage to their friendship was irreparable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Josh said. I’m moving.

As Josh closed the door to the bathroom that connected her room to Deloise’s, she heard her sister say, Look at this place! Winsor chuckled.

Josh leaned against the door and sighed. She was exhausted. No, she had been exhausted for weeks. She was beyond exhausted and into bone-tired. And now she had her birthday party to deal with.

Her image in the mirror was a mess. Smelly, grayish water dripped out of her short brown hair. Her mouth hung slack with fatigue, and her green eyes, too pale to begin with, were now the color of cheap pottery glaze.

She peeled off her thin black shirt, shivering, and tossed it into the hamper with the rest of her clothes. Her right shoulder was swollen and already turning purple. Only a dreamer’s soul—or spirit or consciousness or whatever one wanted to call it—was present in the Dream, so a dreamer couldn’t be killed or injured no matter what happened to them. But a dream walker entered the Dream body, mind, and spirit, and whatever injuries they sustained in the Dream remained real when they returned to the World.

Josh pulled the compact out of her pocket and tossed it onto the wicker dish on the counter, along with her Zippo. Engraved in the lighter’s rose-gold plating, among the myriad scratches and dents, she could still make out the inscription: To J.D. Love Always, Ian.

Ian had been the only one who ever called her J.D.

For a moment Josh stared at the words, realizing it had been exactly one year since Ian had given her the lighter. Such an odd gift coming from him, so thoughtful. And it was all the more precious because it was one of the only things she had left of Ian.

Finally, she removed a long golden chain from around her neck and set it in the wicker dish. A tiny pendant hung from the chain—a plumeria blossom stamped on a golden disk. The plumeria represented the True Dream Walker, who had been the first person to enter the Dream and end nightmares. Josh wasn’t really sure she believed in his legend—and she certainly didn’t believe the tale that he would someday return—but she had grown up hearing the stories just like every other dream walker before her. Moreover, she believed in the ideals his legend stood for, and she wanted to wear the pendant tonight of all nights, when she accepted the mantle of responsibility he had—according to the stories—passed down to her. But she took it off so she could wear the only other necklace she owned: three jade teardrops, set an inch apart, hanging from a thin golden chain. Her grandmother had given it to her, and Deloise had shopped for Josh’s outfit with it in mind.

Half an hour later, she was dry and dressed in a floor-length light-green skirt with a knit cream top that hung over her hips. Although the outfit didn’t resemble the formal gowns most girls wore to their seventeenth-birthday parties—except one of the Grodonia girls, who had worn a black leather miniskirt, a blue-green corset, and a belly-button piercing so new it still dripped blood—Josh doubted anyone who knew her expected that she would arrive dressed for the prom. This was the only skirt she owned.

Turn around, Deloise said after fastening the necklace behind Josh’s neck.

Josh went back into the bathroom to look at herself. Deloise had done a good job; the color of the jade matched the shade of the skirt exactly and made Josh’s eyes appear darker than they were, drawing out the features of her face.

Oh, it’s perfect, Deloise cooed, obviously pleased by this feminine touch. Winsor gave an indifferent nod of approval.

It was perfect—even Josh could see that. Which was precisely why she had asked Deloise to select an outfit for her. Deloise knew about things like details and accessories and the hidden implications of clothing.

We’re going to be late in four minutes, Winsor announced, standing up and smoothing her dress.

Deloise grinned. Come on, birthday girl.

Josh took a deep breath and followed her sister through the bedroom door. She had faced hundreds of other people’s nightmares; tonight she had to face her own.

*   *   *

They held the ceremony out on the lawn. Josh knew what to expect, but the sight of the stone pathway leading to a giant weeping willow tree in the moonlight, marked every yard by a glowing white candle, still made her suck in a breath.

Oh, Deloise whispered, I love this stuff!

Paper lanterns hung from the branches of the ancient willow tree, casting a yellow glow over the grass. The air was chilly but not cold—unseasonably warm for January—and Josh was glad Deloise had picked a sweater for her to wear.

More than a hundred people had gathered around the tree. Josh had known most of them all her life—they were all part of the local dream-walker clan—but she was self-conscious with the knowledge that tonight everyone was looking at her, talking about her. Expecting something special from her.

She started to ask Deloise to stay with her and found that her sister had already vanished, along with Winsor. The crowd’s chatter died down as everyone turned their attention to Josh, which only increased her desire to go running, but she forced her wooden feet in their dainty cream slippers to keep walking along the candle-marked path. Through the thin soles, she felt the sharp gravel path with each step.

She sat down on a stone chair placed at the bottom of the willow tree’s trunk and forced herself to look up bravely into the crowd. At first the glare of candlelight in her eyes was too strong, but after a few seconds the faces began to make themselves known to her. She felt less anxious as she recognized people and returned their smiles—her martial-arts instructor, her cousins and aunts and uncles, her mother’s best friend. Just as Josh recognized Young Ben Sounclouse, he stepped out of the circle and came toward her.

Young Ben had to be approaching a hundred years old. In his twenties, he had taken over as seer for a really old guy named Ben, and everyone had been calling him Young Ben ever since. His face was dappled with liver spots and he walked slowly, but he had quick eyes and good hearing aids. He was the local seer, one of a small group of dream walkers who kept histories, doled out wisdom, and—most important—wrote prophecies. Under the monarchy that had once ruled Europe, Asia, and North America, seers had garnered great respect, but since the revolution—led by none other than Josh’s own grandfather—the seers had lost all of their political authority, and no one was quite sure how they fit into dream-walker culture anymore.

In the nineteen years since the overthrow, a permanent government had yet to be formed, and the junta that remained in power had thrown out the grand old ceremonies and elaborate rituals that the monarchs had loved. Coming-of-age parties—once a standard rite of passage with a well-known form—lacked their former ostentatious pomp.

Young Ben was wearing a Hawaiian-themed tux that didn’t really fit—his beer belly was slumping over the cummerbund—and he held a heavy rosewood box. Jewels set into the lid caught the candlelight and glittered like colored stars. A lot of communities printed scrolls off computers and handed them out in sealed envelopes these days, but Young Ben still hand-wrote his on parchment and presented them in the same jeweled box he’d always used.

Good evening, he said, standing next to Josh’s chair. His ancient voice sounded like a record played with a barbed-wire needle, but it carried clearly between the branches. When he put his plump hand on Josh’s shoulder, his touch was warm and firm with affection. Welcome to Josh’s birthday, he added, and easy laughter relaxed the atmosphere. We’re here tonight to welcome one of my favorite people into adulthood. Laurentius, Kerstel, you’ve done a wonderful job. You’ve given Josh every value a good dream walker needs, and I know Jona would be proud. I doubt there’s one among us who hasn’t been downright astonished by Josh’s skills in the Dream, by her determination not just to end nightmares but to resolve them, or by her commitment to return night after night. I can’t think of a higher compliment than to say that when Josh decides she’s going to help a dreamer wake up, that person can know for certain that they aren’t going to be abandoned to the monsters. And I don’t know of a higher calling, or someone I’d rather see take it up. He gave the crowd a big smile. Does anyone have anything they’d like to say?

Josh—who was already hot-cheeked and sick to her stomach—wondered if that wasn’t a little like saying, If anyone has any reason why this child should not be allowed into adulthood, speak now or forever hold your peace.

And this, she realized, was what she was afraid of. Her deepest fear, her personal dreamfire, surrounded her in the form of friends and family. This was her moment of truth, and she was terrified that the truth was exactly what would be said.

For an instant, she thought she saw Ian’s face in the crowd. Seven months ago he had been the one sitting beneath the wings of the willow tree, and she had been the one telling the crowd everything she loved about him.

He wasn’t here tonight to tell her family the whole truth about what had happened to him. The evidence was right in front of them, but they didn’t want to see it because Josh was their darling, their prodigy, proof of their success as a family and a community. They didn’t want to think about Josh’s mistakes.

She killed her boyfriend.

No one said that, or the other things she was afraid to hear. No one even made a joke at her expense. One by one, people rose to talk about her gifts, her abilities in-Dream unaccounted for by her training. They recalled her moments of glory—how at the age of eight she had resolved the first dream she ever walked without a word of instruction from her parents; how at twelve she had jumped out the window of a nine-story building and landed in a Dumpster, not a scratch on her or the old woman she had saved from a nightmare’s burning apartment; how at fifteen she had dragged her own father, unconscious, out of the Dream after he was hit in the head with a hockey stick.

Everyone said nice things. But the longer Josh listened, the more apparent it became that no one was going to mention anything she had done outside the Dream. They spoke as if she existed to them only when she walked, only inside the Dream’s nebulous fantasy world.

What else could they talk about? she wondered. My so-so grades? My complete lack of social graces? Last summer?

Her heart hurt at the thought of last summer. She felt the pain as an injured muscle—sore, battered, aching with every breath and beat. No one was going to bring up last summer, and she couldn’t decide if she wanted them to or not, if it would be better to keep up this charade of her infallibility or to face what she had done. For a moment she even thought of stopping the ceremony and giving her own account of what had happened the night the cabin burned—wasn’t that what a true adult would have done?—but the idea so frightened her that she only gripped the rough arms of the stone chair and swallowed hard.

When people finished talking, Young Ben stepped around to face Josh, and Laurentius and Kerstel fell in on either side of him. Stand up, Ben whispered, after several seconds’ pause, and Josh realized he had been waiting for her and scrambled to her feet.

"Joshlyn