Reluctantly, Beck let the velour climb onto his back again. His uncle led him to the front gate of the manor, through which the streets of Boston flowed. Instead of going through he went to one of the gateposts under the lamplight.

“Look here,” Rowan motioned to the brickwork.

He examined where his uncle was indicating closer and realized there were some protrusions. They looked familiar, but were completely out of place here. “Are these buttons for a lift?”

“Elevator buttons, yes. You only have two right now, which makes sense. We’re at the main exit of your dream world; any guess what these do?”

Beck looked around him. “I don’t see any carriages to take us to different levels, so I imagine different dreams are analogous to floors in this case.”

“Very astute, as always,” his uncle said with a grin. “The first button always leads out to the in-between. All subsequent ones lead to other’s dreams. You’ve only invited me to your dream, thus the one additional button.”

He scrutinized the controls. “They aren’t labeled, how do you know which is which?”

‘You’ll need to memorize them. Memory techniques are something we’ll need to work on as you become more accustomed to the Reverie. Being able to mentally keep track of things can get you out of many rough spots out here.” Rowan raised an eyebrow at his nephew. “I personally have dozens of buttons in my own world, and this aspect is on the lower end of complexity in this field.”

“Something else to look forward to,” Beck muttered to himself. He looked out through the gateway into the city beyond. “It just looks like Boston out there,” he said louder.

“No, you wouldn’t see anything; it’s set to my floor — er, dream — right now. The connection is still one-way.” His uncle thrust an arm through the gate, but it did not appear on the other side. To Beck, the forearm terminated uniformly at the threshold between the estate and beyond. Pulling his arm back, the spatial divide splitting his uncle’s limb traveled up past his wrist and fingers until it was whole again.

“Huh,” was all Beck could say. The sight was strange, but not the strangest thing he’d seen that day.

“Now if you’d hit that first button there, we can see what type of landscape we’re dealing with.”

He pressed it, and as soon as he did the space beyond the gate instantly changed. The soft glow of twilight spilled through the portal, mixing with the yellow glow of the lamplight. Ahead, the terrain was no longer rivers of asphalt, but a wooded glen overlooking a pond. A pungent scent akin to the soil of an April morning drifted through.

Beck pulled his gaze from the scene to the edges of the gate. Above the arch of it and past either gatepost was the nighttime of his dream. Clutching a bar of the fence surrounding the property, he angled his head to catch as much of a glimpse as possible past the entrance. On the other side was just the end of the driveway where it met the main road. He drew back to look back at the forest that sprawled out impossibly through the same space. A thrill ran through him, a familiar kind from his first lessons when he was ignorant of his uncle’s duplicity.

“I’m not sensing anything immediate,” Patch said.

“That’s good,” said his uncle. “Seems a pleasant enough space to be connected to.”

Rowan strolled through the entrance into the glen with Beck trailing in his footsteps. The air immediately tasted different, unsullied by humanity’s chemicals. It subtly reminded him of home, but the light breeze did not carry the Atlantic salt that flavored his memories. The dirt under his shoes felt supple. The fading light of this space’s sun filtered through the leaves above in small smatterings, but what it revealed looked very much to Beck what he would expect to find along wooded paths in the real world. All of these familiar trappings should have felt comfortable, but instead undermined some of the enthusiasm he felt.

“This place feels too normal,” he said to no one in particular.

“It isn’t uncommon to find more ordinary spaces like this,” his uncle replied. “Usually there is some level of unreality the Reverie imposes on the in-between, although it may be difficult to pick up on when first entering a region.”

They ventured towards the pond. Between the tree trunks Beck glimpsed tiny flashes of light. He realized that what must be fireflies danced in small pockets around them, always a few steps off the trail they walked. The well-trodden path wasn’t the only indication of others having passed through; over the pond a jetty had been constructed, though no boats were moored to it.

As they approached the dock, Beck began to realize that something was off about the woods. It was convincing in its appearance and in the earthy smells that arose from the fallen leaves carpeting the ground, but the sounds were wrong. Rather, the lack of them.

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“Do animals exist here?” he asked.

Rowan relaxed his muscles and turned to his nephew; apparently Beck wasn’t the only one that noticed the strange atmosphere. “Depends on the space, but the ones like these woods that aren’t as strange do tend to attract wildlife.”

His uncle didn’t mention the obvious. There was no birdsong. No chittering of mammals. No buzzing of insects. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it felt ominous.

“Take a look around, see if you can find anything out about how this place operates,” Rowan suggested.

“I don’t want to wander too far and get lost.”

His uncle patted Spool on the head. “The velours are excellent guides, you don’t need to worry about that. Just heed Patch’s warnings if he senses something.”

Rowan started down a trail that branched off from where they stood. Not knowing what else to do, Beck headed off in the opposite direction. The thin path he walked was peaceful, winding through the oaks that made up the forest. The crunching of leaves under his feet broke the haunting silence, but besides the decaying foliage and the numerous trees, there wasn’t much else to this land.

“So, what are we even keeping an eye out for?” he asked the velour.

“We are scouting,” the bear said. “Mapping new regions like this is critical to Master Rowan’s understanding of the Reverie. All of the areas in the space between dreams are interconnected through doorways like the one at the entrance to your dream.”

He looked around him through all of the trunks, seeing nothing but more trees. “I would think if they are anything like the one we traveled through to get here that they would be easy to spot.”

“You underestimate the scale of the Reverie.”

“Fielding compared the amount of spaces like this that exist to infinity, I am aware of how huge it is.”

“Master Fielding is correct, but perhaps only described to you the broader picture,” Patch grunted. “These in-betweens can be small, or they can be expansive. I am not sensing any pitfalls nearby, so this one could be the latter. Entrances to other in-betweens are similarly random. There might be a few clumped close together, or there might be miles between them. There might be only one, the same one that we used to enter in.“

He sighed. “I assumed that traversing undiscovered dream worlds would be, you know, exciting.”

“Once you are more experienced, I think you will find the boring worlds more desirable. The interesting ones – if you could call them that – are not for those with weak wills. They aren’t suitable for those with strong wills either, for that matter.”

Beck scowled, but refrained from commenting. He turned to the surrounding woods again, focusing on a group of blinking lights nearby. Breaking from the trail, he wandered towards them. While he expected the fireflies to start floating away from him, they remained in place even as he drew near. It was then that he noticed the pattern that the lights illuminated in, blinking in and out in perfect sync with each other.

He reached out and touched one. It wasn’t an insect at all, but a small bulb. The dim twilight had hid the illusion, but up close Beck could clearly see that all of the lights were linked together, the wire connecting them draped over the underbrush and snaking under the fallen leaves.

“Well, this certainly is out of place.” Beck tugged on the cord, but it was firmly tethered to the ground. “Not sure what purpose these would serve.”

“It probably doesn’t serve any,” Patch said. “Many features like this only imitate aspects of your reality.”

Beck let the wire go and strayed further from the trail. He hadn’t gone far when a sound split the quiet next to him. Patch immediately became alert on his back as Beck flinched from the noise. Due to the surprise it took him a moment to realize it was a warbling bird call that was startling close. The cry ended, but Beck remained frozen for a minute, unsure of what to do.

Warily he took a step, and immediately another cry rang out. A bubbling panic started to rise in him before the sound repeated the same tones that the last call had. His curiosity overcame his fear and he walked towards the sound. It didn’t react as he stumbled through the underbrush towards it, and when he came across what was making the sound Beck already had a good idea of what it was.

The call faded as Beck located the box it was emerging from. It appeared like a form of radio device that was dangling from one of the oaks. The cord connected to it was tossed over a branch, its end also rooted into the ground like the string of lights.

His uncle came jogging in from behind, setting off the audio device again. Rowan didn’t look concerned at all, admiring the bizarre setup with an inquisitive eye.

“It’s motion-activated, somehow!” Beck yelled over the chirping blaring in his ear.

Before it fully died down again, his uncle bent down to pick up a stone. He tossed it deeper into the forest, and a cacophony of animal sounds followed, emerging from more devices scattered throughout the forest. The amplified calls were almost deafening compared to the calm before. Beck cupped his hands over his ears until the noises passed.

“I suppose if there was any wildlife in this world, they would have been scared off long ago by this ruckus,” his uncle said.

“Who strung up all of these contraptions anyways?” Beck mused.

“Probably no one,” replied his uncle. “The Reverie likely created the world this way. In its entirety it is quite impressive, but the details are where it becomes confused.”

“A natural force can be confused?”

“Calling the Reverie a ‘force’ might be reductive. There’s a reason the wind and the seas were worshiped by cultures of old, but you have to admit that none of what we would consider natural could replicate those that interacted with it.”

Beck looked at his uncle, trying to gauge his meaning. “So the Reverie is a god,” he suggested.

Rowan twisted his features into a grimace. “I’m sure there are those who believe that. Personally, if an entity can only achieve creation through smoke and mirrors, I don’t think they could be considered a strong god. If you’re interested in discussing the theological implications of the Reverie, Fielding has a good ear for it. Nora, on the other hand, would probably beat you over the head with a broom.”