Beck slipped into the Reverie just as smoothly as he had that morning, his ethereal outline peacefully asleep in bed and none the wiser to his dream-self ripping the sheets away and storming to the entrance of the room. He was startled when something pulled at his pant leg, but when he looked down it was just Patch catching it with their claw.

“In a rush?” the creature asked.

“Yes, to give my uncle a piece of my mind,” he retorted.

A knock rang from the door to the suite. Beck pulled it wide, and his uncle stood framed within it. The fox-like velour was once again draped around the man’s shoulders, unmoving except for the twitch of its nose.

“You have something to say?” He said, a corner of his mouth turned up.

Beck pointed an accusatory finger at him. “What is this game you’re playing? Earlier you argued in favor of bringing me deeper into this venture, yet the information most important to my well-being is restricted by your word.”

Rowan’s nonchalant expression remained unmoved. “I take it you were able to ferret something surprising out of Fielding?”

“You could say that, yes. Only the fact that while we’re in the Reverie there’s the possibility of others hijacking our bodies!”

The fox made a sleepy grunt, which his uncle silenced with a scritch under the chin. “Like you pointed out, I am all for getting you up to speed,” he said. ”But I also stated that these things must be learned in order. It’s useless to teach calculus if the student has yet to comprehend algebra.”

“I understand that you’ve been hiding a real and present threat from me.” He glared at Rowan, challenging him to deny his claim.

His uncle considered him. “If you did know an inkling of what you were talking about, you would know that the threat is very much not present. But if it will put your mind at ease, let me show you why.”

Rowan made his way past Beck into the room and stopped at the foot of the bed, much as the Stranger had before. Beck’s ghostly echo remained unaware of the man standing before him. “Your duplicate here is a reflection of your body in the waking world, while the you that is here discussing this with me is your consciousness. When your consciousness returns to your body, that is when you wake up. But what if a different person enters your body here? Nature has programmed us to return to the waking world when a consciousness returns, but we’ve discovered it doesn’t care which consciousness.

“For the sake of the scenario, let’s suppose I am a malcontent who wants to assume your appearance,” his uncle continued. Before Beck could react, Rowan reached towards the form in the bed. He made to stop his uncle, but their hand hit something solid before getting to his double. Rowan felt against the invisible obstacle some more before turning back to his nephew. “As you can see, you’re protected from outsiders even if you aren’t being guarded by a velour.”

Beck ran his arm through the air above his sleeping phantom, but wasn’t blocked like his uncle was. “Is this something to do with the fact that this dream belongs to me?”

“Partially, yes.” Rowan motioned to the head of the bed frame. “The source of this protection is behind there, why don’t you move the bed to the side?”

Beck gave him a withering look. “Don’t feel like pitching in?”

His uncle rapped his hand against the invisible surface in reply.

With a sigh, he went to work pushing the furniture out of the way. Patch butted one of the bed posts with their head as though to help, but it still remained heavy and left Beck winded. Once an ornament on the wall poked out from behind the frame he stopped. It was a hoop hanging off a nail, sinew stretched across it in a spiraling pattern, feathers hanging from the bottom of it. He recognized the decoration as the same type that was displayed in the library.

“It’s a dreamcatcher,” he said.

“So you’ve heard of it,” his uncle noted. “Do you know what legends say about them?”

He thought back to what the fortune teller had told him. “I’ve heard that they are meant to stop bad dreams.”

“That’s the general idea. Because of that cultural imprint, they act as a ward against foreign entities in the Reverie.”

Beck went to touch the dreamcatcher, but the wood and fibers passed through his fingers, like how the body in the bed reacted to his touch. “Is it anchored to the waking world?”

“Yes, they are similar to the velours in that regard; they are both tied to the room. We have them throughout the manor as security against those in the Reverie. That one is hanging in the same place in the waking world, protecting your room.”

“I’m guessing it doesn’t stop me because I am the owner of this dream, but why isn’t Patch affected? They were able to prance through my double just fine.”

“You and I are different types of creatures,” the bear said. “Our husks aren’t compatible with each other’s cores.”

Beck slowly nodded, not really catching what the velour meant. He remembered how the Stranger’s presence had been blocked by an unseen force, the very same way his uncle was held back now. “If this wasn’t here, then I would have been in deep trouble. What would we do if the dreamcatcher was removed?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Rowan looked at him with incredulity. “That wouldn’t happen, no one here is foolish enough to do that.”

“For the sake of argument let’s say that someone else has woken up in my body, what would we do?”

His uncle sighed. “If that were the case, there’s nothing really stopping you from retaking it. Your consciousness would still be active here in the Reverie, and with a velour with you it wouldn’t take much effort to pull the other’s consciousness out of your body so you can re-enter.”

Beck studied the man, whose tight smile could be read as anything from familial pride to a pained grimace. “Why are you trying so hard to convince me to not be afraid of this possibility when you yourself are terrified of it?”

Rowan raised an eyebrow, his features contorting into bemusement. “What gave you that impression?”

“That’s why you had me memorize the sequence of words when I first arrived, is it not? Otherwise I can’t imagine why you would be so adamant I recite it after sleeping without Patch in the room. If possession wasn’t such a concern, why have a system like that in the first place?” He paused, realization flooding in. “It has happened to someone before, hasn’t it?”

His uncle opened his mouth to respond, but a voice from the hallway brought him to a halt.

“Mister Barclay? Are you in there?”

Beck gave his uncle a perplexed look. Rowan was frozen for a moment, before pointing at his nephew and then to the entry of the suite. With reluctance he went and looked down the short corridor. A young woman was at the other end, peering around the doorframe. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a bun, and her curious eyes peered into the darkened room with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation.

The woman’s expression mirrored how Beck felt. “Hello,” he called out. “Who are you?”

Uncertainty grew on her face. “I’m the help you hired, sir.” Her voice had an Irish cadence to it, but not one as strong as Nora’s. She looked past him into the shadows of the room. “Should I come back later?”

“Um,” Beck trailed off, desperately trying to gauge what was going on. Rowan was now at his shoulder, and Patch at his feet. “Sorry, you’ll have to forgive me, I just woke up. My uncle came to fetch me, I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Alright.” She still looked unsure, but backed away from the doorframe nonetheless.

He turned to his uncle. “Another traveler?” he asked under his breath.

Rowan gave a slight shake of his head. “I believe she’s earnest in her claims. We can discuss afterwards, but remember that this is your dream, and hence your manor,” he whispered.

Beck hummed, believing he understood what his uncle was getting at. He walked out into the grand hallway, blinking against the brightness. His uncle and Patch followed. As the bear ambled out into the light, the woman smiled down at the creature.

“Those are beautiful kitties, what is the big one’s name?” she asked.

If Beck wasn’t taken aback, he would have laughed. “That one is named Patch.”

“Oh, that’s a lovely name!” She crouched down and rubbed the velour between the ears, making the bear grunted happily. The fox around his uncle’s neck craned its head to look. Beck thought the other creature seemed almost jealous.

“I’m all out of sorts,” he admitted. “What’s your name, Miss?”

She straightened up. “It’s Maude, sir. In searching for where I was meant to be I believe I found the servants’ wing, but most of the doors were locked.”

“I see.” His uncle’s words about how his dream world operated came back to him. “Check the drawer of the console table out in the foyer, I must have left the keys there.”

“Very well, I’ll take a look, sir.”

“Thank you, Miss Maude.”

With a swift nod, she turned about and started down the hallway, her boots clacking a receding rhythm into the manor. Beck glanced back at his uncle, whose grin was now genuine.

“Quick with the uptake as always, it seems,” Rowan noted.

Worry crept onto Beck’s brow. “Do you think there will actually be a key where I told her it would be?”

“More than likely. You’re the master of this world, small changes like what you requested the Reverie is more than willing to fulfill; it likes to correct itself if it perceives a gap in its fabric of reality. When you spoke of the theoretical location of the key, you created the gap to be filled.”

“I wasn’t sure if I was going about things correctly, like if I wanted to affect a change I needed to think about it hard enough or something silly like that.”

His uncle tutted. “Telepathy is still in the realm of fantasy, I’m afraid. The Reverie is most amenable to spoken or written word. If I were to guess, with how long they have both existed in humanity’s history, this subconscious realm has grown quite accustomed to our languages.” He put a hand on Beck’s shoulder. “Don’t worry yourself with the minutiae, you already manifested change in this dream like a natural.”

Beck let his mind wander back to the person who appeared to them. “That woman, did the Reverie create her?”

Rowan moved his head around in short arcs, as though sifting through his words. “In a manner. An appearance like hers was inevitable, given the nature of the setting your mind has created here. The Reverie latches on to the blueprint of reality you have in your mind, both in constructing the landscape of your dream but also how it operates. A mansion isn’t made to be empty, there are always people running it and living in it. I’m sure this maid is only the first of many the Reverie will populate your world with.”

He hadn’t considered that anyone would manifest out of the ether to attend to his manor here, but now that it was a fact it made sense to Beck. Normally the places he found himself when dreaming weren’t barren like this one had been. “I haven’t met or seen anyone like this Maude in my waking life, why wouldn’t a dream version of Nora or someone else I know appear instead? That would follow the mental blueprint idea you posited.”

“If this were a normal dream that would make sense, but the Reverie is rarely that simple. In my travels I have yet to come across a clone of myself or anyone I know, even when willing my own dream to materialize them. My theory is that humans inside this realm adhere to reality in that there is only ever one of us, that everything that makes up a life cannot be replicated.”

“That’s a shame. It would have been interesting to see what alternate versions of yourself were up to.”

His uncle’s eyes grew serious. “I wouldn’t want multiple Nora’s running around, one is more than enough.” That elicited a laugh from Beck, but he continued on. “If there were multiple versions of us, would we all be living identical lives, or would all of our personalities be different? Who could say for certain who the canon version of us would be? In that hypothetical, when I die my legacy would be overwritten again and again up to time immemorial, until any sign of my personal existence would be whittled away to nothing. It’s a horrifying prospect.”

Beck’s amused expression melted. That didn’t seem like a topic he wanted to think about too hard. “So, do you think Maude could be like Nora was when she was younger?” he asked instead.

Wrinkles formed around the edges of Rowan’s mouth. “Heavens no. When she was your age she was probably just as ornery as ever. Now come, it is time to show you what the terrain outside of your dream looks like.”