Killington was gone, if he’d ever been there, but Giles, shaking, let the story just sweep him along.

He told Doree it was her imagination and tried to signal her to talk to him via telepathy, just like he was supposed to. He watched Tanya hold Doree with golden arms and tried to sort out who had that magical power and why. He watched Tanya nearly “send Doree Sleepy Dark” and understood that Tanya Honey had some ability to sing people to sleep but that it was nothing like the injection of Sleepy Dark that he himself had suffered.

Right on cue, Doree shook it off and ran from the room and soon after that, the sureness that she was up on the hilltop popped into his mind. She must have sent the thought to everyone at the same time; he smiled, anticipating the conversation at the bottom of the stairs.

Once she was gone, he was in theory free to say anything again. But Doree had Tiffany’s power to glamour, even though it was a diamond in the rough. Tanya and Ser questioned him a bit more with fading interest and the others shuffled tiredly and drifted away one by one.

Cloud Rock seemed to run down like an old clock. Even Tanya and Ser waved him away and went off to their room. Giles could almost feel the machinery resetting itself.

He walked through dim light to the top of the long stairway to where Doree’s silhouette was outlined against the bright Chaos and went down to her.

She sighed as he sat beside her and put a fatherly arm around her shoulder. It was so dear, the way she leaned against him. Jasmine did that sometimes.

He’d forgotten she would speak out loud. “You really are…” He put a hasty finger against her lips and waited with delight for her to look into his mind. Her small dark head nestled against his ribs.

Her thoughts lit up the interior of his head. It was like she stood open-mouthed with her hand on a light switch, astonished face gaping. In a box somewhere he had a polaroid of his mother at a surprise birthday party, looking just like that.

Giles determined to break out of the story, to change it, but it proved hard to do. He found himself saying all the things he’d said before, about being characters in a story.

Her voice in his mind was American and chattery, though it held a hint of the dark timbre Tiffany’s voice would have. “You really are a different person than you were when I first saw you, aren’t you?”

“Yep, I am. I can … see .. them both…” With an effort he ground the speech to a halt. Doree’s eyes grew wide, like she felt something wrong.

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What could he tell her? That he was really a third person who had created this whole story and now was living it? He realized how much he’d been hoping that Tiffany would suddenly emerge from this small form and take the responsibility out of his hands.

Her agitated voice spoke in his mind. “So, I can’t see your whole story or anything unless you think it at me, talk like we’re quiet talking now. Well, I sort of can, I see jumbled pictures, this pretty lady and she’s tall and you’re, ugh, in love with her, and you, uh, you, uh…” Her voice shrank down real small. “Are you gonna do six to me anyways?”

She’d seen herself in his mind as a grown woman. She hadn’t drawn away yet but her physical body was tensing.

And so he let go of the comfort of talking to Tiffany. She wasn’t Tiffany, at least not yet. He allowed the story to restart, to flow as it had flowed. She relaxed against him, the momentary lapse forgotten like a brief spell of vertigo. He told her all the things about Ed and his bad back and being picked by the Planners and used for an experiment.

The moment arrived when he told Doree about seeing the mountain in his dreams. “I usually don’t pay any attention to dreams—”

“Oh, you should,” her cheerful voice chirruped in his head. “I listen to mine all the time.” And she left some pictures for him to look at if he wanted to, “waterfalls of light, flying angels, that kind of thing.” When he told the story to the crowd, he hadn’t really looked but this time he did.

He recognized it.

It was a painting Mary Hammond had made so long ago that he couldn’t remember a time when it had not hung on the wall. A moonlit blue lake blanketed the foot of a waterfall that thundered from some unseen source that glowed with hints of wonderful forms.

His mother had somehow painted Doree’s most private dream.

“That’s… that’s so beautiful,” he wanted to say, but he managed to stick to the main storyline.

The scene rolled relentlessly on through Doree’s shock at realizing that she had not grown older. Closer to the moment when he would hit that black wall.

What would happen this time? Why had he gone through all this? What had he gained? Tiffany had set this up, he had no shadow of doubt, but why?

In a moment he’d be pulled away and Doree would tumble into a field of stars and see something so shocking that she would scream aloud. At least he would watch closely, see what she saw.

The world around him swirled and started to dissolve.

“No, don’t go!” Doree cried. Her hands passed through him like ghosts. He strained to see but of course, Robby had been pulled away before Doree fell out. He learned nothing new.

Her fading wail mixed with Tanya’s booming “What is that child doing…??!” as he stretched like bitter taffy, half his heart staying with Doree.

A cold room solidified around him, harsh light on his closed eyes. His teeth chattered and snapped as someone smacked his face.

His eyes flew open. Miserable sterile florescent lights, hard square surfaces bright with danger. He was a hunted animal and any move could kill him.

A thick well-fed face with breath like poison fire swam in front of him, gloating, eager, grasping.

Killington again. Was the man everywhere? But this was also the man who had torn open the sky with a knife.

Giles’s back hurt as the man gripped his shoulders. “What did you see, Begley? Speak!”