The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 11: The Dream

Emery fell into the Dream.

It was a fall and it wasn't. There was no forest on the other side of the gateway, but when the light returned, Emery was collapsing back-first onto a pile of...foam? Cushions? She couldn't see what she'd fallen onto, but it didn't hurt. She had not come from anywhere. There was no gateway. There were no walls or ceiling or sky. For a moment, after she pushed herself off the surface of her soft landing, there was no ground.

There was nothingness around her in the way that there could be nothingness in a dream: she couldn't focus on her surroundings. There was something in her brain telling her they weren't important. She didn't need to make sense of them.

She grasped at the thought. Dream logic. They did sections of dream logic every year in dreamforming class, and by their final year of school, they would have an entire class of just that. How the dream functioned while a dreamhunter was physically inside it, what it did to their bodies and minds, and the strange and unusual things it did to protect itself. The first rule of dream logic was the will of the Dream itself: the Dream wanted everyone inside to forget where they were, to unravel their memories and their lives piece by piece until they couldn't leave. A dreamer could exit the Dream by waking up, but a physical body from the waking world, once caught, would rot away there forever.

The Dream wants you to forget.

Emery dropped to her knees and threw her arms over her head. The Dream wanted her to forget, so she had to remember. She had to remember anything and everything she could about the waking world.

Grandpa Al had a special teacup that he only used in his office. It sat beside the nameplate on his desk. Powder blue with cobalt designs and a gold rim. Grandma Juno had given it to him years ago, after they got married and before she was lost in the Dream.

The Dream wants you to forget.

Grandma Juno had forgotten and had gotten lost, and had probably died here. Emery growled and thought harder. Edgar. The sleeves of Edgar's favorite sweater hung well past his hands. It was a hand-me-down from their father, and Edgar insisted on wearing it every time he watched A Fistful of Dollars.

Why, though?

Why?

Because their father was the one who had shown him that movie for the first time.

The Dream's oppressive pushing against Emery's mind let up, but she needed more to keep it away.

Her father could stand in a room full of people and still hide behind his glasses. He was Grandpa Al, but younger and taller and tealess. When she was little, when he still smoked, he gave her piggyback rides, and she felt like she was on top of the world.

Her mother could hide in an empty maze and everyone within five miles would still know she was there. They called her "the Siberian." She came from...from...Emery cursed. She always forgot the name of it because she was stupid and had never cared enough about where her parents had come from. Khakassia! Her mother was from Khakassia. They'd first come to the Sleeping City from Moscow when Emery was eight, and her mother had let Emery hide behind the protective wall of her legs until Emery had worked up the courage to venture out.

The pressure drained away.

She needed more. Something recent.

Lewis brought Kris flowers for her botany notebook at student council meetings. He'd done it every week for two years, and Emery was no longer sure where he was getting the flowers, but he never missed a week.

Kris wore a different barrette every day of the week, always butterflies on Monday. If she forgot to put it in or wore the wrong one, her anxiety would have her flitting around the student council room in a panic until Jacqueline let her leave to fix the situation.