Sophie tried not to feel excited. She was doing this because she had to, because her parents were in danger (possibly), not because she was seizing the first excuse she’d had in years to drink a dream. She had said no.
The dreamer opened the door of the white house, stepped inside, and onto a cloud. Clouds were all around: a town shaped out of them. Houses were shaped out of clouds. Trees were puffy swirls of cloud. Rainbows arched between them. And then the winged ponies appeared: a herd of them, flying between the clouds.
One of the ponies halted in front of the dreamer. She climbed on and they flew, swooping and soaring, joining the herd as more rainbows shot into the sky around them.
Below, there was an ocean. All the ponies plunged into it, and then they were gone, and the dreamer was in a classroom clutching a pencil . . . The dream shattered as the teacher turned around with a mouth that filled his entire face. He stretched his mouth in a silent roar, which widened and widened until it swallowed the classroom like a whale in the water.
The dream went dark.
“Weird,” Ethan said.
“Actually that was reasonably coherent,” Sophie said. “You should see some of them. Completely useless for resale. This one will be hard to sell because it’s a mix of nice parts and not nice. Buyers prefer the dreams with more consistency.” Or so her parents said. It felt strange trying to sound like an expert. “Guess I try to wake up before the part with the teacher.”
“You don’t need to be afraid. I’ll be right here with you the whole time,” Monster promised.
The dream dripped back into the bottle, and she picked it up, then turned to Ethan. “I need you to promise that you’ll never tell anyone about this.” She clutched the bottle to her chest. If she was wrong about what was going on, her parents were going to be furious. But if she was right . . . Either way, she couldn’t sit here, hide, and hope everything was okay. It was already very much not okay. “Please.”
He shrugged. “Still not clear what’s going on.”
“That wasn’t a promise.” Monster drew himself up taller on the counter. His tentacles writhed around him, making him look like an octopus with the ocean currents around him. “You will promise.”
Ethan took a step backward toward the stairs. “Sophie, I think your ‘housecat’ is threatening me.”
Not for the first time, Sophie wondered what Monster had been like in the original dream, before she’d interfered. The dreamer must have woken up terrified. “He won’t hurt you.”
“That is not an entirely correct assumption.” Monster bared his three rows of teeth. “Promise, and I won’t. Don’t promise, and you won’t like the consequences.”
Sophie smacked Monster lightly. “Stop that.”
“This isn’t the time for your delicate human sensibilities, Sophie. He needs to promise. Your safety depends on it.” Before she could stop him, Monster launched himself off the counter and across the floor toward Ethan. Sophie hurried after him, but Monster was quicker. He wrapped his tentacles around Ethan’s wrists, black bands like handcuffs. “My Sophie is very special to me. You will promise.”
Trying to shake him off, Ethan shrank away. “Okay, okay, I promise.”
Monster released him so fast that Ethan staggered backward and bumped into a shelf. Bottles rocked and clinked into one another. Kneeling, Sophie scratched Monster on the head. “Uh, he’s normally very sweet.” She’d been right never to bring friends home. She shot Monster a warning look and mouthed, Behave.
Sweetly, Monster wrapped his tentacles around her neck. “Don’t worry, Sophie. I’ll be right here with you.” Tentacles around her shoulders, he led her to a beanbag chair in the corner. She sank into it.
Ethan hung back. “Now what happens?”
“Now, Sophie sleeps.”
“But what—”
“Shh.” Monster snuggled next to Sophie. She put her arm around him and stared at the bottle. The promise she’d made to her parents echoed in her head. She thought again of the backpack she’d seen on the kitchen table. She wished she was sure whether it was Lucy’s. It could all still be a coincidence, including the gray giraffe.
There was one way to be sure, if she dared.
Taking off the stopper, Sophie drank the dream.
SHE WAS ON THE STREET OUTSIDE THE POST OFFICE BUILDING.
Above the post office, the sky was smeared blue. On either side, the buildings were blurry, as if she were seeing them through cloudy glasses. All the windows were gray. She didn’t know why she was here. Did she have to mail a letter? She opened the door to the post office . . .
Inside was a classroom. Back to the door, the teacher was writing on the chalkboard, and Sophie remembered in a rush: watching the dream in the somnium, sitting on the floor with Monster, drinking the bottle. But in the somnium, the teacher appeared at the end of the dream. She was messing up the order. She was supposed to find the winged ponies first.
Shutting the door, Sophie jogged away from the post office. The houses were indistinct smudges on either side of her. She craned her neck, looking for the white house with blue shutters. The street was silent. No cars, no buses, no bikes.
Behind her, she heard footsteps.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the teacher. His face was only a mouth. No eyes. No nose. He spoke: “You cannot escape me.”
His mouth began to open, wider and wider, and the post office was sucked into his mouth. A few buildings followed, like a painting ripped from a wall. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen! She must have changed the dream.
Sophie ran.
Ahead was the white house with blue shutters. She heard a whooshing sound, like water going down a drain. Don’t look. Just run.
She threw herself at the door. Yanking it open, she glanced back. The teacher’s mouth had stretched impossibly wide, and the street was flowing into it like a river. She jumped through the door and shut it behind her.
The door promptly disappeared.
She was in the clouds. Sophie exhaled. She didn’t think he could follow her if the door was gone. And the teacher hadn’t been in this part of the dream. Only the winged ponies. She was safe. Maybe.
Harp music played, chords plucked at random, no clear melody. All around her, pink fluffy clouds drifted into the shapes of castles and trees and mountains. She was standing on one cloud, and a rainbow unfurled over her head as if it were a ribbon tossed through the air.
Monster would hate this, she thought.
Several winged ponies flew between the clouds, a rainbow of pastel colors: pinks, purples, baby blues, above the real rainbows.
“Hello?” she called to the ponies. “Can any of you help me? I need help!”
One of the ponies paused midflight. “Who calls for help?” His voice was as deep as a foghorn. Leaving the herd, he flew toward her. His hide shimmered as if he’d been painted with glitter, and he had a silver unicorn horn spiraling up from the center of his forehead. “Oh, my, it’s a damsel in distress!”
“I need—” she began.
Flapping his wings, he rose higher. “Come with me,” he commanded. “The others must hear your words.”
“But I can’t fly!”
“Use the rainbow.” He pointed with his horn at a rainbow that kissed the nearest cloud.
He couldn’t mean she should walk on the rainbow, could he? She’d fall! Except she wasn’t falling through the cloud, and this was a dream . . . Crossing to the rainbow, Sophie tapped the yellow band with her foot, and her toes sank into the colorful mist. She tested putting weight on her foot—and it held. Taking a deep breath, she climbed onto the rainbow.
Ahead of her, the winged pony trumpeted, “Assemble, my friends! There is a damsel in distress!” He whinnied loudly and flicked his tail to catch the attention of the other ponies. “Attend to me!”
Several ponies circled closer, flying around the rainbow. A few of them had unicorn horns; a few didn’t. One had flowers braided into her mane. “How can we aid you,
Damsel?” the pony with flowers asked. She had a voice like a wind chime, light and tinkling.
Quickly, Sophie explained everything as best she could: about herself, about the Dream Shop, about her parents, about the missing kids, and about Mr. Nightmare.
When she finished, the ponies turned to each other, whickering and whinnying. She heard one say, “I am not a dream. Such lies! Such nerve!” Others echoed her.
One by one, they took flight. Plucking at the top of a cloud tree, one pony swallowed a mouthful of pink cloud before flying away. Another dived inside a cloud castle, and the drawbridge (made of clouds) shut behind him with a poofing noise. The pony with flowers snorted at Sophie and then flew up toward the sun.
“Wait! Please! It is true, I swear!” Sophie called after them. “And after it’s over, I promise I’ll send you back into a dream.” This had to work! She was risking so much . . . “Come back!”
At last only the glittery unicorn remained. Lowering himself onto the rainbow beside her, he sniffed her hair and puffed air in her face. “I have often wished for a quest of my own. Please, tell me more, Damsel. What would I have to do to complete this implausible task?”
She took a deep breath and told herself it wasn’t over yet. She needed only one pony. “You have to come with me out of the dream, and then fly me and my friends to a particular house and then back safely, without being seen.”
“And what will be my reward?”
She had no idea what a winged unicorn who lived in a world made of fluffy clouds would like. She’d never even ridden a regular horse. She’d read a few girl-with-horse books—one showed a girl giving an apple to a stallion on the cover. “An apple?”
He considered it. “Indeed, that would be most—”
Before he could finish, the rainbow beneath them evaporated. Sophie plummeted. Wind tore at her as she clawed at empty air. She felt as if her whole body was screaming.
“Dive, Damsel, dive! Down into the foam, down in the briny deep!” the iridescent unicorn cried. “Down to our destiny! Dive, my brave friends!” He flattened his wings to his sides, and dived straight down toward the sea. Other ponies dived around him.
No, no, no! She knew this part of the dream—below was the ocean, and once they splashed down, she’d be in the classroom with the teacher. The dream couldn’t end yet! He hadn’t said yes. “Come with me!” she called. She didn’t know if he could hear her.
The ocean rose toward them. The ponies hit the waves one after another as the clouds tumbled around them, the castle falling apart. Then she was in the foam, and the waves crashed over her head, and the ponies had all disappeared, as if they’d dissolved into the surf. Water poured down her throat and—
She sat in a classroom. The teacher was at the blackboard. In chalk, he’d written: You cannot escape. Jumping to her feet, Sophie ran toward the door. She had to reach it before the teacher turned. Lunging for it, she yanked it open—
And there was nothing there. Vast emptiness before her.
A hand clamped onto her shoulder. She spun around, and the eyeless teacher opened his mouth wide. She screamed and threw her arms in front of her face—
A VOICE BOOMED IN SOPHIE’S EAR. “GOOD MORNING, Damsel! Or perhaps it’s afternoon. Difficult to tell in this cave of yours.”
Sophie pried her eyes open, and the winged pony blew air in her face.
Sophie’s eyes watered. The pony’s breath smelled like overripe strawberries. Slowly, as if swimming to the surface of the ocean, her brain woke, and she realized she was back in the Dream Shop. “It worked! You’re here!”
“Of course I am. You are a damsel in distress, and I am supremely heroic. But before we begin our quest, I have a few complaints: I can’t see the sun, the clouds are much too firm under my hooves”—he pranced, demonstrating, and his hooves rang like chimes—“and lastly, it . . . well, not to be rude, but quite frankly, this place smells. I think that’s because it’s infested with monsters.”
Sophie shot up to sitting.
Beside the winged pony, Monster waved hello with his tentacles. Sophie relaxed. “That’s my friend Monster.” She pointed at Monster, then Ethan. “And that’s Ethan. And my name’s Sophie, not Damsel.”
Eyes wide, a dazed Ethan raised his hand. “Uh, hi.”
“Humph,” the pony sniffed. “And that one?”
From beside the somnium, a man slinked out of the shadows. He had no eyes or nose, and when he opened his mouth, it stretched so wide that the skin curled back to where his ears should have been. Jumping to her feet, Sophie cried, “Watch out!”
The eyeless man inhaled, and the bottles tumbled from the shelves and flew into his gaping maw. Other bottles across the room rattled together.
“Get a dreamcatcher!” Monster yelled as he launched himself toward the man’s legs.
Sophie threw herself at a counter and grabbed one of the nearly complete dreamcatchers. It lacked the feathers and ribbons, but the threads were all there. She clung to the counter as suction pulled at her. Her feet lifted off the ground.
“Sophie!” Monster released the man’s leg and wrapped his tentacles around her, trying to pull her down. He wrapped two tentacles around the distiller table leg to anchor himself.
Both of them were pulled toward the man’s overwide mouth, and Sophie felt her grip on the counter begin to slip. She screamed, and Ethan lunged for her. He grabbed her around the waist, and all three of them were lifted into the air.
Neighing as loudly as a trumpet, the winged pony charged from the opposite side. He pinned the man to the wall with his horn, piercing the man’s shirt collar, close to his throat. Abruptly, the man closed his mouth.
Sophie crashed to the floor. Scrambling forward, she pressed a dreamcatcher against him. “Move away,” she ordered the pony. “You can’t be touching him.”
The unicorn stepped back, and the man opened his mouth again. The wind howled in her face, but both Monster and Ethan held on to her ankles, anchoring her from below the gale. She felt the pull as if being sucked in by a tornado.
At last, the man faded and then disappeared. Sophie fell to her knees.
Releasing her, Ethan flopped onto his back. “What was that?” he panted.
“Not a nice monster,” Monster said. “Curious. Or perhaps not. Sophie, were you afraid of him in the dream?”
“Of the terrifying vacuum-mouth man? Gee, let me think . . . Yes, obviously.”
As if this satisfied him, Monster nodded. “So he came out as you expected him to. Like I did. You expected him to be terrifying, and he was. You expected me to be your friend, and I am.”
“But why did he come out at all? I didn’t want him to.”
“Perhaps he wanted to. My theory still holds. I chose to come out of the dream, and so did vacuum-man and the obnoxiously sparkly pony.”
Ethan rolled onto his side to look at Sophie. “Why did he disappear? What did you do?”
Sophie held up the dreamcatcher. “Changed him back into a dream.”
“But . . . how?”
“You need to hold the dreamcatcher onto the dream creature for long enough for it to dissolve back into a dream. A single touch won’t work, which is a good thing because otherwise, Monster would be in constant danger.” She wrapped her arms around Monster, and he squeezed tightly with all his tentacles.
“So, do you do this all the time?” Ethan’s voice was shaking, but she could tell he was trying to sound cool and unfazed. “Run around town, create and dissolve dreams, like some kind of superhero?”
Any second, he was going to bolt out of the shop screaming. Or lose it and start yelling at her. This was too much. Repression or not, he was going to freak out. “I’ve never done it before today,” Sophie said as soothingly as she could.
“If you’ve never done it, how did you know what to do?”
Monster fluffed his fur and stepped in front of Sophie. “Her parents told her how to do it, when they taught her how to destroy me. They thought she needed to k
now in case my monster tendencies got the better of me.” He bared his three rows of teeth.
Ethan backed up quickly. He thumped against the somnium table, and the glass tubes clinked as they bumped into one another. He jumped away from the table and then backed against a counter. “I didn’t mean . . . Sorry. This is just, you know, new to me.” His voice squeaked on the last word.
“And to me,” the pony put in. “Quite frankly, I always imagined my first quest would be in a more majestic location with much more savory companions. Perhaps it would be best if I returned to my dream.”
Sophie took a deep breath. It was too late for Ethan to flee or for the winged unicorn to change his mind. She’d already broken her most serious promise to her parents, and she was determined to see this through. She tried changing the subject. “What’s your name?” she asked the winged pony.
“Glitterhoof.”
Monster snorted.
Glitterhoof shot a look at Monster, then tossed his mane. Sparkles sprayed up in a cloud, dusting the Dream Shop in a fine layer of glitter. “It is an honorable and accurate name, Smelly Monster.”
“Just Monster,” Sophie corrected, trying to brush glitter off her shirt. It clung to her fingers. Ethan had glitter in his hair. Monster had dodged most of it.
Sliding closer to Sophie, Ethan said, “I’m sorry. Guess I didn’t really believe you before.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Just have a couple questions . . . Is he really . . . you know, real? Is he alive? Is he going to fade away? How long will he last? Will he go back to being a dream? When he’s in the dream, does he exist when no one’s dreaming him? Or is he, for all practical purposes, dead?” He lowered his voice on the last word.
“I’m right here, and I can hear you,” Glitterhoof said.
Ethan blushed bright red. “Sorry. It’s just . . . All this . . .” He raked his hand through his blond hair. “I mean, wow.”
Glitterhoof tossed his mane, shedding glitter again. “I understand your wish to know more. I am supremely interesting.”
Monster snorted again. “He also can’t answer you, because he doesn’t know. I can tell you that when I was a dream, that’s all there was. We exist within the dream, like characters exist inside a book. The dream doesn’t change, unless it’s dreamed again. Like a book rewritten. You feel safe inside your dream. You know you belong there.”
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