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The thoroughfare came to a cement ramp that led up to the megalith itself. Large glass doors stood open, and inside, Jane could see lights.
Dozens of Christmas trees of every size, color, and combination decorated the expansive lobby. Little crystal ones like Stefan’s lined a red carpet that led to a massive reception desk. Lasha bounded to this and took a seat behind it like a professional.
Jane stepped through the doorway. Immediately she was overwhelmed by a sense of having forgotten something crucial that she needed to do. She turned back to the entrance and felt a cold fear.
“The White Witch’s magic,” said Ciris. She took her hand and pulled her in. “I will guide you.”
Two trees with branches painted white and bedecked in clear lights perched on either end of the desk, saturating Lasha’s face, revealing the deepest emerald eyes Jane had ever seen. His mop of shaggy hair was a luxuriant blond, and freckles spattered his nose and cheeks, the latter blessed with a set of impish dimples that appeared when he smiled, as he did now.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Stefan roared, “We’re not here for games!”
Picking up a small, silver Christmas tree, Lasha reclined in his chair. The tree was crowned with a solitary, pink star that pulsed bright and dim and cast its blush across his face when he held it close. He inspected the ornament as though his day, until now, had been a tedious monotony.
“We’re here to see the Dreamer,” Ciris declared.
“Oh really. Well, she’s sleeping and doesn’t want to be bothered.”
“I’ll kill him!” Stefan lunged across the desk.
With a kick, Lasha smoothly rolled his chair back, crossed his legs, and continued his exploration of the artifact in his hands.
“State thy business,” Lasha droned.
“There’s a promise, and I intend to keep it,” said Ciris. “This queen needs to get to the Free City. She needs to meet the Orb Thief.
His eyes lit up. “Queen? Queen of where?”
They turned to Jane. She had been watching this droll spectacle unfold as if it had been rehearsed.
“I—” She faltered. The deepening amnesia engulfed her. “I can’t… I don’t… remember.”
“A queen who does not remember cannot see the Dreamer,” said Lasha as if he were reciting from a rulebook.
“It’s the enchantment,” said Ciris. “It springs from here. Think. Think hard. Where are you from?”
Jane closed her eyes, rewinding the clock of her mind—back through the city, the cave, the staircase chiseled into the cliff face, the door, the room with the fireplace, and her moment with Knutson. Down the dark hallway to General Alexi and the other man with the American accent, the coffee and cookies. Through the suburb just outside the blast zone, the military transport and the handsome but sad soldier who was once a surfer boy from California, his story of the orphans, back on the JTS airplane where she’d read the biography of Abraham Lincoln. All the way to Titan Tower in New York. Until she was making love with Christy in front of a television broadcasting drone footage of the protest fires.
“America!” she said, opening her eyes.
“America?” said Lasha, his gaze fixed on her. “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of it.”
“You little shit!” Stefan roared, slamming his hand flat against the desk.
Lasha erupted into a fit of giggles.
“And I’m not a queen. I’m the President-elect of the United States of America.”
“Fine.” He set down the ornament. “Cost of admission: I want to go. I’m tired of this pocket.”
“No!” said the teens in unison.
“You won’t be alone. There’re the other orphans,” said Ciris.
“They want to eat me!”
“I’m talking about the good ones.”
“And then they’ll all join the hunters, and then I’ll be alone.”
“The old lady will come,” said Stefan. “She likes you, I think.”
“I don’t like her. Stinky witch.” Lasha looked around as though someone was going to jump out and scold him.
“Fine,” said Ciris. “It’s your funeral.”
“No!” exclaimed Stefan. “It’s too dangerous.”
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With a sigh, Ciris dropped her shoulders. “Maybe it’s the right path.”
“He’s too small. He can’t even take the beast.”
“I’ll learn. I promise!” Lasha pleaded.
“He can meet the Orb Thief. Better now than later,” said Ciris. “You’ve seen the moon here? It’s full of blood tonight. For all we know, the Chaos will come here first.”
“Fuck!” Stefan turned in a frustrated circle, pointing at the smaller boy. “Just don’t you get yourself killed.”
A victorious smile spread across Lasha’s face.
“Okay. Hurry up. Let’s do it. Off to the Dreamer,” said Stefan with a clap of his hands.
“One more thing.” Lasha crossed his skinny arms.
Stefan grabbed his own scruffy hair and pulled. “What?”
“A kiss.” The boy’s dimples deepened with his devilish grin. “From Ciris.”
“Oh, you little… I will kill you. You’ll wish the howlers got you.”
Ciris put a hand on Stefan’s chest. “It doesn’t matter. Come here.” She leaned across the desk. Lasha approached, a wary eye on the bigger boy. She brought her face near to his, rubbed his nose with hers, and quickly planted a kiss on his lips.”
Lasha collapsed back in his chair, panting. “Wow! The kiss of true love.”
Stefan rolled his eyes.
Lasha set about rearranging the Christmas trees. He started by dragging the largest one that stood guard by the door over to the desk. The two that sat on the desk he put on the floor by the chair.
“Hmm, how does it go?” he mumbled to himself.
This process went on for some time as he crisscrossed the room, setting a tree here and another there, then recalling something and moving a tree he’d just positioned to a new location.
In the middle of the room was a large, empty dais elevated on steps. In another reality, it may have been occupied by a majestic statue of St. George battling the dragon. Lasha carefully gathered all the small tree ornaments and set them in a broad circle, demarcating the perimeter of the dais’s platform.
At last, he said, “Okay, come in here.”
They stepped over the trees into the circle.
Lasha looked around, lifted his hands in a dramatic gesture, and looked around again as if he expected something to happen. Nothing.
“Well?” said Stefan.
Lashed hummed thoughtfully.
“You forgot.”
“No, I didn’t. I never forget.” He cradled his elbow in one hand and tapped his chin with a slender finger. After a moment, his eyes lit up. “Stefan, your tree! That’s it.”
Stefan pulled the small crystal tree from his satchel and handed it to him.
Lasha tapped the top. The blue laser inside of it blinked to life.
The warm, stagnant air of the lobby broke with a cool breeze, causing goosebumps to travel across Jane’s skin.
“You did it, Lasha!” exclaimed Ciris.
“Well, where is she?” said Stefan.
“I don’t know. I think I need another kiss.”
“Lasha!”
“Fine.” He positioned the tree in the circle with the others.
The instant it touched the floor, Jane noticed the bed at the center of the dais.
Déjà vu engulfed her. She should have been shocked at the marvelous manifestation, yet the moment she saw the bed, she felt that it had always existed there, going back years, centuries, eons—only now she was choosing to acknowledge it. It was the kind of bed she remembered from her childhood; unlike any bed that had ever belonged to her, but the elaborate beds from the stories her grandfather, a true raconteur, used to tell her when she was a little girl visiting his secluded cabin nestled deep inside the Allagash wilderness of northern Maine.
The bed was crafted from snow-white wood, smooth and polished to a lustrous sheen that reflected the Christmas tree lights with an ethereal shimmer. The large footboard was meticulously carved into a scene of hounds with gnashing jaws and furious figures hunting a doe across a meadow. While upon a hill, a stag stood stoic, its rack crowning the mural and twisting up and around to form the footposts, which in turn supported a tester of graceful storks. Each stork held in its bill a corner of the chiffon canopy that descended around the bed like a mist as they soared across the sky. The bed’s legs were those of a dragon, its talons piercing the marble of the lobby floor to anchor it; the creature’s spines formed the side panels that supported a thick, voluptuous mattress.
A cool and gentle wind parted the chiffon to reveal a little girl covered in a white sheet, her black hair fanned out in a delta over a plush pillow, and her thumb, damp from her sucking, rested gently against her lips. The head of the dragon, like a great sentinel, stared down at her with wise, serpentine eyes.
With awe, they approached her as though she were an altar, taking in the magnificent bed on which she slumbered. But their gazes always returned to her face, for her sleep was a sight to behold. She was still, as if she were an integral part of the bed itself, as if she were hewn from the same wood by the master’s skilled hand.
“Is she dead?” whispered Lasha.
“No,” said Ciris, “look.”
The lids of her eyes were alive with the flicker and roll of dream sleep. The instant Jane noticed this, she felt a force of work and effort radiating from the sleeping child.
“Lo, the Dreamer,” Ciris said, a reverence in her voice.
“When will it happen?” Lasha asked.
“The witch said to wait,” spoke Stefan. “Dreamers dream what dreamers dream.”
Jane, though unable to comprehend, could not look away. The girl was no older than eight or nine, her black hair matted to her face by sleep’s sweat. Her long eyelashes brushed her cheeks. As the minutes ticked away, the child’s body became more animate—the twitch of a finger, the shifting of a leg, the slight movement of her lips as if to form a word, then let it go.
It was Lasha who finally spoke. “Will it hurt?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” responded Ciris. “It’s different every time. The first time, it hurt. I was sore for weeks.”
“Are you afraid of pain?” Stefan asked.
“No!” the boy shot back, “I’m not afraid anything.”
“Really?”
“Nope.”
“Not even of the Sisters?”
“Nay,” said the boy, wrinkling his nose in a growl.
“Nor of the hunters?”
He prided up his chest, his small hand falling on the hilt of his knife. “Nay!”
“Not of the unknown, the dark and the alone of the Chaos that approaches beyond the Veil? There’s still time to change your mind.”
“Nay. I fear not,” he whispered, almost crying.
Stefan grabbed him and hugged him. “It’s okay to be afraid. It’s just not okay to quit.” Stefan kissed his forehead. “You stay by me and never leave my side. You understand?”
Lasha nodded, tears in his eyes.
“It’ll be a great adventure.”
Suddenly, Ciris spun around and looked back past the desk to the doorway. “Here.” She pulled off her sword and tossed it to Stefan, then leapt down the steps and out into the darkness of the shantytown.
The boys stood still as statues, watching and waiting.
The Dreamer dreamed. Jane could now hear her raspy breath.
The panther burst back through the doorway, bounded up the steps into the circle, and crouched before the bed, where it let out a roar. When it stood, it was Ciris, naked. Sweat covering her skin, her hair was wet and glistened in the light like a dark rainbow.
“They’re coming,” she snarled, her incisors extending past her lips, her tail whipping and snapping.