“...Why didn’t you tell me, Manfred?” I ask, my face contorted in a mixture of pity and sadness. I already know the answer.

“Because I didn’t want to be abandoned...”

“Even when your adoptive mother – Minerva – has been killing you? Making you sick?”

“Mmm-hmm,” he nods, his round eyes of gray flickering with tears. “Because I’ve nowhere to go... please Miss Amelie. Please don’t tell on her to anyone else. Please. I beg you, please,” he grabs onto the fabrics of my sleeve.

“This is... what your mother – what Minerva’s been doing is... nothing but wrong...” I trail off, clutching my head in our shared dream.

“As long as I follow along, I’ll still be loved. And nothing bad has to come.”

“Even when it means you will die?” I ask, lowering my knee, brushing his face with my fingers.

“Yes...” he nods.

“Then I’ll save you. I’ll save everyone.”

“You have a way to do that?”

“Of course I do,” I say, trying to hold back my tears, “I’m the best Dream Merchant there is.”

Manfred’s little form turns back into the form of a little Celendir, vanishing in the wind.

I awake in Manfred’s bedroom, my hand on his. He’s been fed the antidote, mixed with a glass of warm, pristine tea. Minerva doesn’t know this, of course. She does not have any idea that I now know everything. One could call it quits here, and just like the Doctor before me, carry on as if nothing has happened, feeding Manfred the antidote at the right intervals, carrying on this charade.

Minerva looks to Manfred – who she believes to be René – with a sorrow so deep I can feel her emotions entangling with mine. She cries into the pillow next to him, squeezing it tight. Memories of her squeezing her son’s casket all alone, singing her lullaby, surface to my mind.

If I do not save Minerva, no one will. And Manfred will once again be alone.

It was time to complete my final project.

I silently get up towards the bathroom. And cracking all of my remaining Eisen bar, I set it alight to inhale it entire.

* * *

“Mum,” René whispers, coaxing her awake. Minerva sluggishly lifts her head from the stained pillows, bleary-eyed. She finds herself arising from the bed of her childhood home, a cottage tucked deep in the mountains, where she also raised René after returning with Hugo.

“René...?” Minerva slowly raises herself up, adjusting her hair, feeling the folds of the pillows and pillowcases, slowly folding the edges of her bedsheets, gawking at me. I am conjuring the form of René, down to every minute detail – the little scar on his shin, his hair of gray and navy, his little nose and his big round eyes, a thin frame, in loose blue pajamas. I mimic the quality of his voice down to the last tremule.

“Where... where...” she mumbles, feeling around to feel the solidity of the bedframe.

“What’s wrong?”

“Huh?” Minerva recoils as if surprised. I make the little René recoil in tandem.

“Sorry, René... it must have been a bad dream. A really long bad dream...”

“A nightmare?”

“Mmm-hmm...” she trails off.

“Want some chamomile?” René says, expectant gleam in his eyes.

“...Mmm – thank you,” she says. Her tense shoulders seem to relax. She rubs her eyes and parts the frizzled bangs of her hair out of her eyes. She reaches for the mirror by the bedside table and swivels it at herself.

The wrinkles on her face her gone. Her hair comes down to her shoulder in beautiful braids. She is the image of herself exactly as she was before her family was picked from her.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Massaging her neck, she gingerly draws herself out from the fluffy bedsheets, motioning her legs aside and stepping onto the wooden floorboards. They make a soft creak, cool to her soles. A long, silk nightgown graces her frame. She dons a soft gold cardigan folded over a chair, buttoning the tops. She steps outside.

René is almost done with the tea. He pours a cup out, his little hands trembling under the weight of the teapot and a handle that is too thin – and spills some over the cup into the saucer.

“Oops...”

Minerva softly brushes her son’s hair. “Let mum get the rest. Thanks.”

The door opens to the scent of cool spring outside. The winds from the mountains descend and brush the pine-green grass in waves. A mourning dove coos in the wind among an olive tree. Mother and son seat themselves on a small, round wooden table, with a fixture. Minerva adjusts her sunhat at an angle to her head.

René takes a sip.

“Mum?”

“Hmm?”

“What was the nightmare you had?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, it’s...” her voice pauses as it tenses in her throat. She looks up, exhausted. “It was about... not being able to be by your side.”

“What do you mean?” I make René ask, quizzically. “Did you go somewhere?”

“No, no!” Minerva blurts out, suddenly pulling René into a tight embrace.

“Mum?”

“No, no... I – I didn’t go anywhere. You have nothing to worry about. You’ve nothing to worry about...”

“Oh...” I make René say, lowering his voice to a wistful whisper, “then... it’s me who went?”

She gasps.

René continues. “It’s okay, mum. Hope I wasn’t away for too long...”

“Wait, René, something isn’t right...” she says. “I’m... you’re –”

“What’s wrong? Are you in danger?” René asks rather timidly, standing up.

“This – grass – it shouldn’t be here, it’s from the meadows down south, but we are up in the mountains...”

Good. I nod, watching them from the side, invisible to both.

“And our tree, it should have blossomed with flowers by now. It should be peach...” Minerva sighs. “Oh, René...”

René makes a feeble smile. “Did I do a good job?”

Minerva collapses to her knees. Hot tears spring up from her closed eyes. “It shouldn’t have been this way... it shouldn’t have been this way... you are still alive... you are still here... you should’ve been alive... you should’ve been here...”

She wails, echoes of her cries carried by the wind to disappear before the mountains.

“I’m so sorry that I couldn’t be by your side... mummy’s so sorry... it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault! I’m so sorry René.....!” Her chest heaves in roiling sobs. Anguish throws themselves out into the air.

“I’ve always been by your side...” assures René, hugging her. In her diminution, Minerva’s been reduced to her form in the midst of her elementary-school memory, with a cast on her arm.

“I’m so sorry to make you see me like this...” Minerva bawls.

“It’s not your fault, mum. It was never your fault.”

“But this means you passed through the Labyrinth of Echoes! That means you’ll be – you’ll soon be... it’d been 3 years... 3 years and no news... and now it’s all so sudden...!”

Tears erupt again as Minerva shakes her head. Her son pulls her close.

“We can’t change what’s already been passed, mum,” he assures, wiping her tears away. “But you can still do something. You can still do something to save me.”

“What is it?” Minerva exclaims, holding his hands.

“Manfred in the cottage by the sea. Do you remember?”

Minerva cups her mouth. She stumbles back, shaking her head.

“No,.... no..... no........!”

I see memories, memories so far chained under the weight of her being, released all at once to her own conscience. How she mixed the calcophout flowers into the tea. How she’s been mixing it all the time. All the time in the hope that René would return, and that it made Manfred René. Another boy... another boy forced to be her son.

Her remorse arrives like such a violent tide that I – for a moment – feel the dream about to crack under the weight of her throes.

Minerva clutches her head and retches to the side, crying out with such disgust at her own self that René has to stop her, clutching her arm.

“Please... please forgive me, René, please forgive me for what I did, please forgive me... don’t hate me.... don’t abandon me!” she prays, rubbing her hands together, her eyes wide, afraid, afraid of the judgment and label that would come from her son.

But judgment is not the way I intend things to unfold.

“Mum, mum.... “ he assures, his hands on her shoulder, “I know you did it out of love for me. I do. But it’s a wrong thing to do. Now that I’m here, you have to put a stop to it, okay? You have to put a stop to it. Manfred’s of the same flesh and blood as I am. If you love me, if you love him, let him go. Give him that tea no longer. Can you promise me that?”

“Of course... of course... of course,” she says, blotching the tears by her sleeves.

René pulls her close. Wordless moments pass in that embrace, their warmth and rhythm of heartbeat a conveyor of thousand words.

“And mum... you know what I came here to do, right?”

Minerva nods, but then shakes her head.

René answers gently. “In this dream, I can spend only a day. No more and no less. The heavens allowed me to bid you a last goodbye. After that, I will be released to the cosmos. My atoms will fly into the night sky, and once again become part of the earth and sea.”

“But it means you’ll be gone! I can’t – I don’t want to leave your side!”

“No, mum,” he says, “I’ll once again be a part of you. And I’ll always be here,” he smiles, touching her heart.

I unfold the last day for Minerva with her son within my dream. With Eisen, I can sustain it for a full day, though at a significant cost to my health.

Every movement and moment I conjure with my own heart brings me closer to the dream shattering away. But I hold on. I persist.

Minerva and René take to the stream with splashes. Minerva forms her son’s hair into a mohawk with soapy suds. They race about in a game of tag, in a match of hide-and-seek. They play cards. They pretend warriors. They giggle and laugh, knowing that a few hours later, all of it has to end.

The 24 hours pass, and I am at my limit.

Immortality is a myth, as much as it is a dream – we have to end, and draw the curtains close.

But for now, both mother and son hold eternity in the palm of their hand.

I'll carry on just a few seconds longer.

For from away, the scent of baked cookies wafts into the room.

Fin