by Ryan La Sala
Kane could go anywhere. He could be anyone in these worlds. He could inherit any life, become anything, and forget everything else.
He could forget this battle. He’d forgotten once before, hadn’t he?
Kane took a great breath in, held it, then let it out. He shook out his hands. No. He didn’t want to forget. Not again.
He reminded himself of the few reveries he’d witnessed. They all taught him something new about the way dreams inhabit a person. Dreams can be parasites we sacrifice ourselves to. Dreams can be monstrous, beautiful things incubated in misery and hatched by spite. Or dreams can be the artifacts we excavate to discover who we really are.
Kane didn’t know what his own dreams were. He only knew that if he wasn’t careful in this moment, they could rise up and dethrone his rule over what was fact, what was fiction, and what was right.
Harvesting reveries wasn’t right. Hoarding them away in an ethereal vault was not right.
Running away wasn’t right, either.
But what could he do?
He rummaged through the debris, the desk, and the shelves, sensing for any ethereal object that might help him. He attempted to venture into the passages beyond, but every time he did he ended up back in the room with the curios, which amused Ms. Daisy endlessly.
When it got to be too much, he took a break from searching to cry some more. He wasn’t the right person for this. He wasn’t brave, like Sophia. He wasn’t smart, like Elliot. He wasn’t cunning, like Adeline. He wasn’t independent, like Dean.
And he wasn’t strong, like Ursula. More than anyone else, he wanted to be like Ursula. He wondered how anything could ever touch a person who was that strong and that good. He thought about the unfairness Ursula had endured, from others, and ultimately from herself in that final moment. He made himself face his own cruelties toward her, too. He hadn’t written the BEWARE OF DOG sign all those years ago in elementary school, but it was his imagination that inspired it. He was a scared kid, hurting who he needed to hurt so he could escape, and Ursula had been his friend anyways. It made him cry harder.
Beware of dog.
This memory turned a switch in Kane’s head, and before he knew fully why, he was kneeling in front of Ms. Daisy. She raised her dog eyebrows at him. It was very doglike. Too doglike. Why would someone as ridiculous as Poesy own a normal dog?
“Beware of dog,” Kane said. He looked between Ms. Daisy’s sleek, black coat and the door’s lustrous, black finish. The only time he’d seen the door work from this side was when Poesy was returning from walking Ms. Daisy. Otherwise, the whistle had to be used to call it. But whistles didn’t call doors. Whistles called dogs.
Kane’s hands were shaking as he scratched behind her ears.
“Find Sophia,” Kane begged.
Nothing happened.
“Find Ursula.”
Ms. Daisy’s nubby tail wagged, but that was it.
“Dean,” Kane said. “You know Dean, right?”
Ms. Daisy’s ears shot up, looking around for Dean excitedly. Kane pulled her to the door and pointed.
“Can you find Dean?”
Ms. Daisy sniffed at the door, circled it twice, and then assembled her sleek frame into stoic focus. From her keened a whine like Kane had never heard from a dog, but it was an old language between her and this doorway. The locks tumbled apart, reassembled, and clicked. The doors groaned open just an inch, issuing a strange, melodic whispering. To Kane, it sounded like triumph.
“Good girl.” Kane patted Ms. Daisy on the head absently. She licked his knuckles.
“Dean?” he called through the door.
Ms. Daisy bound into the hallways of the sanctuary, returning with a leash in her jaws. Gingerly, Kane took it from her, clipped it to her collar, and then fastened it to the leg of the settee.
“Stay,” he commanded.
She blinked at him, betrayed.
“I’ll use the whistle to call you,” he promised. “I just have to find it.”
Kane approached the doors like they might eat him. Again he had the urge to vanish elsewhere, to deny that he had been given this chance, but the invasive daydream only lasted an instant before he snuffed it out. Running was not the answer; it was just the thing that he wanted.
And, he reminded himself, saving the world was not usually a matter of want.
• Thirty-Four •
WONDER
Kane took only what he could carry in his backpack, unsure what to expect from the reveries. He knew it was useless to prepare too much. Reveries had their own rules, and Kane was about to break all of them in a mad search for his friends, his sister, and the lost whistle.
The doors lead Kane into a dark copse of trees that swished gently against the tall frame, nearly hiding it. Kane shut the doors quickly—he couldn’t risk anyone finding their way into Poesy’s sanctuary or activating any of the remaining thousands of charms. He’d have to find another escape; hopefully, Ms. Daisy had done some of his work for him.
It was night here, wherever here was. A rain forest, maybe? The air smelled sour with the musk of rot and overripe fruit. Neon birds flitted between bulbous nests embedded in thick trunks, curious about Kane. He thumbed a wide leaf, surprised to find it was plastic. The trees sounded hollow when he knocked. Odd. Kane looked up.
Above, the night strobed with starlight as the constellations zoomed by above. Planets passed, too. As they did, small labels appeared on them, or rather appeared on the glass dome that covered the false rain forest. Outside the dome was a vast, metal wing, which is how Kane reasoned they were on some sort of spaceship. One that was flying through deep space very fast, by the looks of the stars cascading around them.
The dome flickered, and an announcement began to play.
We hope you enjoy your flight on Starship Giulietta, said a pleasant voice-over accompanied by text. The glass now showed a 3-D rendering of the spaceship. It looked like a massive cruise ship with wings and rocket blasters. Our estimated time of arrival to resEarth is six hours and nineteen minutes. Your all-access ticket allows you to avail yourself of all amenities up to one hour before docking. Thank you for traveling with Giulietta BeyondTM. We thank you for patronizing our reservation planets and hope you will continue on with us to resMars next.
The stars returned. Whatever. No time to wonder. Kane pushed through the plants. The forest floor was carpeted in glowing moss, and Kane quickly identified a trail of blood. His heart burned. He forced himself to take calm breaths as he pushed apart fanning leaves that hid a clearing at the forest’s edge. Within it lay Dean, unmoving.
Dean.
Sensing him, Dean’s hand tightened around something—the Dreadmare charm clutched in his bruised knuckles—but then Kane had him in a hug.
“It’s you,” Dean whispered, as though this was the last thing he expected.
“Can you move?” The question was warm against Dean’s neck.
As an answer, Dean’s arms tightened.
“What hurts?”
“All of it,” Dean whispered.
He was in and out of consciousness after that. Kane pulled him up as gently as he could, talking to him to keep him focused.
“We’re in some sort of spaceship,” Kane said as he dragged him through the forest. The doors had vanished. “How did you get here?”
“Teleported.”
“Can you see where the Sophia is?”
“No.”
“What about the Others?”
“No.”
Kane already knew the answer, but he asked anyways. “Are you able to teleport?”
“Not from space.” Then, as explanation, Dean added, “Space is so big. Too big. And I can’t account for the velocity. It could kill us.”
Kane began to wonder about the sheer size of these combined reveries, but again stopped himself. No ti
me to wonder. They stumbled through a copse of palm trees and entered what Kane realized was the ship’s pool deck. And it was quite the pool deck. Above the sheet of cerulean water, waterfalls poured into floating, oblong tubs with clear bottoms, filling the dark deck with aquamarine light from above and below.
People lay strewn across plush pool chairs, sleeping or passed out. Kane and Dean snuck into a large structure Kane hoped was a locker room. It wasn’t. It was some sort of cabana equipped with a curtained bed, and the entire back room was a tiled shower. Perfect. Kane could work with this. He let Dean slide onto the floor, locked the doors, and hid away his backpack by a cracked window. Just in case.
“Hey, hey, wake up. We’re safe. We need to get the blood off you, though.” Kane said, nudging Dean. “Can I get you out of these clothes?”
Dean nodded sleepily but was no help whatsoever. The Dreadmare armor had done a good job protecting Dean, but Kane’s fingers still grew sticky with blood trying to peel the boy’s shirt off. The source was Dean’s chest. Even through the Dreadmare armor, Poesy’s nails had left deep gouges in Dean’s flesh.
Looking for soap, Kane located a lit panel showing teardrops in different colors. There was blue, there was red, and between was pink. Kane went with pink.
Water came from every direction, soaking Kane and Dean instantly. Kane slammed the panel until it lessened, but this also activated a small light show of pink and green.
“Sorry,” Kane said, blotting Dean with a soaked towel and what he hoped was soap. Dean’s face scrunched up in pain, but he endured it.
Kane continued to apologize the whole time. Then he needed to remove Dean’s pants. He got the button open and then had to stop, because.
Just.
Because.
“Are you hard?”
Dean was grinning goofily. His eyes stayed closed. “Got you,” he said.
Kane swore at him, throwing the towel in his face. “You’ve been fine this whole time?”
“Oh, no, my chest hurts.” Dean scrubbed his face with the towel. “But I was enjoying the attention. And I do need help.”
“What did Poesy do to you?”
It took Dean a long time to put his words together. “She tried to take away my sight when I refused to tell her where Sophia’s reverie manifested. If it wasn’t for the Dreadmare armor, she would have taken everything from me. As it is, she got me pretty good.”
Dean wouldn’t look at Kane. Downcast, his eyes weren’t their usual shade of green. They weren’t brown, either.
“Look at me,” Kane said.
Dean’s gaze rose. His eyes were pure white.
Kane fell backward until he was against the opposite wall. “You’re not…”
Dean crossed his arms over himself, turning to give Kane his profile and closing his eyes again. “Not what?”
Real.
Kane couldn’t say it. He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. White eyes told you who was real in a reverie, and who was from the reverie itself. And Dean’s eyes were undeniably white. He was reverie-born.
Finally, Dean spoke. “I told you, anything Poesy wants from a reverie, she takes.”
A hundred moments replayed in Kane’s mind. A hundred unspoken thoughts shouted through him. Kane had wondered from the start what someone like Dean was doing working for someone like Poesy, and now he understood. Dean had no choice. He was a weapon, salvaged from a world crushed by Poesy long before this battle began.
“I’m so sorry,” Kane whispered.
“Don’t be,” Dean said, still looking away. Kane knew there was nothing he could do but wait for Dean to go on, if he wanted to, and soon enough he did.
“The world I come from is a cruel one. People like me are hunted. Slain. Eventually, I got caught looking too long at the wrong person, and that was my end. They found me, but Poesy found me, too. She offered me a choice, and I’m glad I took it. I survived and my cruel world didn’t. That’s it.”
“What do you mean, people like you?”
“People like you and me. There is no nice word for it in my world. To name it is a crime.”
Kane knew. He himself had lived a life beyond the true horrors of society’s many hatreds, but the one he could glimpse easiest into was the horror that would have been his own if he’d been born into a different place, at a different time, or within a different life. Dean’s life, maybe.
Kane scooted forward, unable to resist the need to touch Dean and confirm the boy was solid. Dean’s hands rose automatically to rest on Kane’s hip, the same place they held Kane when they’d kissed.
“It’s okay,” Kane said. “It wasn’t—”
Dean’s eyes flashed. “Don’t say that. It was real. It was real to me.” His hands tightened, and he pulled Kane closer, like he needed to hold on to him or risk fading away. Or apart. His shoulders shook under a weight Kane couldn’t see.
“I feel real,” Dean said into Kane’s chest.
“You are,” Kane said back. “It doesn’t matter where you came from, or how you got here. You survived, and you’re here now, and you’re real.”
Dean’s breathing steadied. “That’s what you told me the first time.”
He held on tighter, and Kane let him. Their past was an ache between them. A knot that wound tension and tightness through the space they shared and the skin they touched. Kane had fought to untie that knot and destroy it a few times now, but he knew he had to let it live. He couldn’t destroy the past Dean loved any more than he could unravel this reverie. It was real to the person who needed it, and Kane was powerless against that need.
Kane put his head against Dean’s, who traced infinity symbols into Kane’s temples.
“So you can’t teleport us off this ship,” Kane said.
“Correct.”
“And we’re trapped here until we land?”
“We are.”
Kane had closed himself to wonder when he’d entered this reverie, but now wonder was everywhere within in. Wonder about the vast dreams around them, about the bad power within him, and about the nightmares that raced ahead of them. In every scenario, he faced what came next with the boy before him. They would figure it out together.
Dean got Kane’s hint and pushed through his pain to sit up. He placed a hand on Kane’s jaw to kiss him. It felt very real.
Kane closed himself to wonder once again, turning away from all the world’s bad potential to face this one good thing. This was real, was right now. To Kane, it was better than real. It was fantastic.
Kane stopped wondering, and he kissed Dean back.
• Thirty-Five •
LAST CALL
The walls were still damp when the cabana unlocked itself for the robotic cleaning staff, but the boys were gone long before that. They had made the bed as best they could, which the robots were programmed to appreciate for three full seconds before stripping the sheets entirely.
Many floors away, Kane and Dean sat at a bar sipping fruity drinks, dressed in the clothes they’d scavenged from the pool floor. The shirts were bold and floral, giving the appearance of resort wear, but every seam was lined in pudgy piping. To Kane, that put this version of the future deep in the imagination of the ’80s. That explained all the buttons on the ship. And the synth music. And many of the haircuts.
“I can’t stop thinking about those space burgers,” Kane said over the din.
“I know. You’ve said so six times.”
Kane’s face burned. Since the shower he couldn’t seem to shut up, which was the opposite of his usual aloofness. He got like this when he was excited. Being with Dean felt like nothing he had ever known. The newness for Kane combined with the assuredness in Dean’s touch—it was exhilarating, a world within itself. Kane wasn’t about to shut up anytime soon.
“Last call,” said the bartend
er. “Docking in one hour.”
“Come on,” Kane said, pulling Dean from the bar and onto the crowded dance floor. Dean hugged his arm as they made their way to the side of a platform atop which a dancer twirled and flexed.
“Are you sure about this?” Dean said.
“Yeah, we blend in better here than at the bar.” People were watching the dancer, not the two boys off to the side.
“No,” Dean said, stiff in Kane’s arms. “I mean us. Together. Isn’t it…you know?”
Kane looked around. Whoever had dreamt this world had dreamt it full of the gays. In fact the variety of people on the dance floor, and on the ship in general, felt conspicuously queer. Grimly, Kane imagined the reality that required a reverie like this as an escape.
“We’re perfect,” he told Dean. They hugged together, trapped in the crowd’s heat, until the music ebbed into a pounding ballad. Dean pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” Kane asked.
Dean took a deep breath. “Before, on the bridge. Did you mean it when you said I was nothing?”
Kane was suddenly speechless.
Dean’s face scrunched up. “I mean to say that I can be nothing, if nothing is what you need. I’m very good at vanishing.”
Kane’s first reaction was to bundle Dean into another kiss and tell him if they survived this, they’d begin wherever they left off. But he couldn’t know that. He stopped himself from kissing Dean, because sometimes kisses break wounds open instead of closing them up.
“You’re not nothing,” Kane said. “And nothing is not what I need. What I need right now is help getting my friends and Sophia out of here, and then a way to summon the loom and end this. I don’t know what comes after that, but I know I want you there with me. We can find out together, okay?”
“Are you sure?” Dean’s pale gaze searched Kane’s face for an answer, as though Kane hadn’t just given him one. “Are you sure that I’ll be here?”