I fell past the bridge and landed in the water beside Dishrag’s raft, close enough that, once I surfaced, I could grab the paddle wheel and pull myself up. The trash-filled water’s slimy grip let me go and I dragged myself onto the barge, gasping.
A few pieces of the witch ball sifted far out of reach through the water beside the raft. I tried to grab them anyway and missed. The pieces of glass and mirror on the blackboard beneath me I scooped up and stuffed in my pockets.
Garbage clung to my hair and to my clothes. I swiped at it until a nightmare’s hoof crashed down next to my head.
“Watch out!” Pendra shouted. She sounded terrified. I rolled away. That hadn’t felt or sounded like smoke.
Pendra held a barge pole, like the one I’d used up on the bridge. She swung it around and I ducked low.
She was trying to clear the ’mares off the barge so that we could get away. She’d almost cleared me off too.
Meantime the ’mares bit at Dishrag, pulling pieces of cloth from his flanks and neck.
A ’mare came at me, too, its ears pinned. Its mirrored eyes glinted starlight. Dishrag bit it on the flank and pulled it away. Smoke oozed everywhere. Another nightmare crowded Pendra near the edge of the raft.
It was trying to push her into the water.
“Pen!” I swung my own barge pole and caught the nightmare true in its neck. The horse disappeared in a dark cloud.
The two remaining ’mares fought hard to avoid the water, but we pushed them off and they sank deep when they couldn’t find their footing, until the river bubbled and smoked.
From the shore, I could hear Anassa shouting as she rode away.
I pulled the piece of mirror out of my pocket and gave it to Dishrag. “Payment,” I said. I hoped it was enough. “Finally. Anassa’s not the only one who can pay.”
Dishrag nickered and leaned to my hand. “We’ll see,” he said. A soft muzzle picked up the mirror. He closed his washcloth eye and his shiny-paper eye. “I’m thinking the bridge attack is a pretty good scary story. One that’s all mine,” he said. He opened his eyes; one was a mirror now.
We’d driven the nightmare herd away for now. But I could hear Anassa up on the bridge span, laughing. We hadn’t won for good. She would finish the bridge, they would capture the tunnels, and the lighthouse—and I’d helped them by breaking the light.
I had no witch ball to bring home to keep the nightmares and Anassa on their own side of the river. I had no way to keep Mike safe or to get us out of trouble with Poppa and Momma. I’d failed completely.
But the moon was setting over the darkened lighthouse. The beam my ancestor had made drooped down the fishbone wall and coiled like a dimming snake at the tower base. We couldn’t cross that way, and we couldn’t swim.
“Will you take us to the lighthouse,” I asked the pony. If Dishrag still worked for Anassa, I would find out soon enough. He’d said he would never take her there. That he’d never been able to make it across the deepest part of the river.
But the pony kicked in his traces and began to paddle. Pendra poled while I pushed away garbage until we were in dark, clear water. Then the current grew faster and the boat spun wildly again.
“Together!” I shouted, and Pendra and I both used our poles to steady the raft while Dishrag paddled as hard as he could. The river tossed the raft, but we didn’t stop. Sweat poured down my face, burning my eyes. The lighthouse blurred in the distance.
Then the raft shot out of the current. The river slowed. We were on the other side. The blackboard ground against rocks and Pendra and I tumbled to our knees, our poles skidding into the shallows.
The pony’s towels had come unwound around his hooves and he couldn’t move. But he looked at us and nickered. “Go now. Don’t wait.”
We pulled ourselves up the rocky shore as the moon set. Across the river, pink light sparkled. “Hurry,” I said, looking back once at the raft and the pony slowly folding himself back together. “Thank you,” I whispered. Then I tugged on Pendra’s wet sleeve.
We had to get back to Pendra’s before Aja woke up and noticed us missing. Before we were stuck here forever. And then I had to sneak back into my house.
We scrambled up the wooden steps, Pendra following me, curiously quiet. Just as I opened the lighthouse door, she grabbed my shoulder. “You have to tell me exactly what’s going on.”
I took her hand from my arm. “I don’t.”
“But this is magic! You’re on a quest. Is Mike too?” She looked at the lighthouse, the rickety stairs we’d just climbed. “This is made of fishbones!”
I reached for anything to tell her that would stop her questions. I didn’t have the answers she wanted.
“It’s a dream, Pendra. You’re dreaming.” I yawned carefully. “It’s really late.”
“Eleanor! This isn’t a dream!” She sounded frightened, not angry. “Please tell me.”
“I can’t,” I said, and led her to the hatch. “Just follow me.”
I climbed up and through, until my head bumped the bed frame. In my own bedroom.
Oh no. The lighthouse led to only one place.
Back home.
Pendra emerged from the river beside me. She looked around, confused. “This isn’t my room.”
“It’s mine,” I whispered. This was bad—Poppa had banned Pendra from the house. “You have to go home. My father will kill me if he finds you here.”
Pendra, wide-eyed, nodded. “That wasn’t a dream, was it?”
I shook my head, knowing she could tell when I was fibbing. “Not like a normal dream, no.”
“And those horses?”
“Pen, I’ll tell you later. You have to go back to your house.” I’d go with her to get my sleeping bag and be back here in no time. We crawled from beneath the bed and she followed me into the hallway. I paused at Mike’s door, feeling relieved. I could tell her what happened, and we would figure out something. We always did.
My relief was short-lived.
When I cracked Mike’s door open, I saw a lumpy pile of blankets on her bed. The kind of pile that we’d make when we were hiding beneath another bed.
In an instant, I was in her room, sweeping back her covers.
I didn’t want to see those pillows, all white and punched into shape. But no Mike.
Had she been magicked away? Sent away? A trail of socks, pencils, and tape led from her door to mine. No. She’d heard who had the witch ball as clearly as I had. And now she was missing. Would she have gone to the river alone? The nightmares on shore had circled something. I’d thought it might be the crabs. What if it was Mike?
Outside, it was still dark. We’d made it in time. The gray clouds rolling in kept everything dim a lot longer. That might give me more time to get everything put right again.
But Pendra waited in the hall. “Hurry.” I pulled her down the landing and through the first floor, until we were out the basement door again.
No one had woken upstairs. We’d done one thing right. I hugged her goodbye. “I’ll get my sleeping bag later,” I said.
“You’re not coming? Why?”
Upstairs at her house, a light went on in the hallway.
I shook my head. “I can’t. Pen, I have to find where Mike’s hiding. She wasn’t in her bed. Please let me go.”
Would she listen? Would we still be friends?
“All right,” Pendra said, and I could see she was troubled, but I couldn’t linger to fix it. And at least she didn’t demand that I do what she wanted. “I’ll see you in school on Monday. Good luck.”
If I was still here on Monday and not stuck on the river or sent away myself.
She watched me, bleary eyes squinting a little in the predawn light, mouth skewed to one side. Then she rubbed her nose and turned on her bare heel and began to trudge back up the hill.
“See you Monday,” I answered, then eased the basement door shut and tiptoed back upstairs, barely breathing at all.
I checked my sister’s room once more, but Mike was still gone.
Under her pillow, where she knew I’d look, I found a note: Going to get the witch ball.
Oh. Mike. Please, no. The sun would rise soon. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be trapped. Like the crabs. Like Anassa.
If I went back, I could get trapped there too. But Mike was already there.
I didn’t think any further than that. I crawled under my bed again and dove back into the river.
I fell through, then landed hard in deep water. The river knocked my breath right out of me. I felt the current start to pull at my clothes and spin me.
I struggled to stay on my back, trying to catch a stuttering lungful of air. Then I turned over and swam diagonally for the nearest shore, toward the bridge and the nightmares.
Near the inlet, the sound of horses blowing mist and pawing at the sandbar grew louder.
I tried to keep my own splashing down, swimming low, using long breaststrokes until the sand ground against my clothes and my fingernails filled with grit.
When I stopped swimming, the river tried to pull me with it. I dug my fingers into the wet sand and the grasses along the riverside. My lungs ached, and my arms and legs felt like they were made of worn cloth.
One reed moved, dipping its beak close to my ear. I heard the snick of garden shears, saw a glint of beach glass and the glow of driftwood in moonlight.
The Heron.
Its red eye came closer. I sank lower in the water.
When I whispered, “What do you want?” it turned to look right at me.
“The same thing you do.” The Heron clacked softly. It sounded like reeds brushing together. “To fix the river. To send you home.”
“You wanted us to stay before.” I shivered. The night breeze was cold, but the fact that the Heron hadn’t said “you and your sister” was colder.
“You can protect the other side better, I decided. Anassa’s too strong for you.”
I broke things everywhere. Even when I tried to fix them. Who would want you anyway. I started to crawl away, toward the horses. “Anassa said you would throw me away. I’m going to get my sister. Go pick on the broken dreams.”
“You misunderstand.” The Heron followed me on stilt legs. “I want to help you. Your sister doesn’t belong here either.”
Without the lighthouse beam, everything was edged with moonlight on the river. I smelled the salt-edge of the water, the green of the reeds, and smoke. The nightmares. The cloud-veiled moon and stars weren’t strong enough, especially this late, to let me see them. But when the horses started to run, I heard them. The Heron’s head turned too.
The light broke through the clouds and I saw the dark forms of the herd more clearly, just as they turned toward my hiding spot. Mike rode the lead horse, her fingers curled through its mane, her eyes blank with fear or something worse.
If I’d stayed home, this wouldn’t have happened. Mike would be safe. I’d be warm and dry, in bed. Pendra would never know about the river.
Probably.
. . . Probably not.
My shoulders shook with guilt. “How could you possibly help now?”
“I can help you make a new agreement.”
“Why didn’t you do that earlier?”
“I was trying to save myself. I was running out of glass.” The bird showed its wings. Most of its feathers were missing.
“No.” I didn’t want the bird’s help after everything that had happened. Anassa was right about the Heron. I crawled forward, up onto the shoreline, and the first of the horses swept past me. I saw the crabs from the tunnels being pulled behind one of the nightmares in a net. The two of them clung beneath James’s shell, trying to avoid the hooves.
But if I didn’t take the Heron’s help, how would I rescue Mike?
More guilt. I’d led Anassa and the nightmares to the tunnels where the crabs had been working. I’d made the cracks in this world worse. Just like the snake had said on the bridge. If I’d just followed the rules, let house magic work, there wouldn’t be any cracks. Mike wouldn’t be here. The old agreement would never have broken. Poppa wouldn’t be so mad. And we’d be safe, me and Mike.
Well, safer.
A nightmare whinnied.
No one was safe now. Not here. Soon, not on the other side either. I imagined the dock and my house growing dark beneath storm clouds, then the rest of the neighborhood.
More hooves beat the ground and the low water. The Heron rose and flew away.
I felt it go, a missed chance.
The nightmares’ breath tangled with mine, they were so close. I tried to stay as still as a reed. As quiet as a new dream. The ’mares’ velvet sides brushed my shoulders.
I couldn’t see the horse Mike rode any longer. The ’mares were circling me too fast.
It grew darker. I could hear their teeth chattering with excitement. Mirrored eyes reflected my face.
I saw my own face, grimacing. Angry. The part of me I always fought against. The part of me that yelled at my sister—that cried and stormed.
I saw scenes play out in the horses’ eyes. The sound of my yelling rose up in their breath.
“That’s not me,” I murmured. “I’m not like that.”
Mike heard me. Her eyes cleared for a moment. “You are. So am I.”
And then teeth gripped my pajamas at the shoulder and lifted me. My wet pajamas dragged in the sand and then dried against the hot side of a ’mare’s ribs. I was set astride the horse closest to Mike’s. The teeth released my shirt. The smoky horseback felt solid against my tailbone, jarring me as the dark mare began to run.
The crabs bounced in a net behind Mike’s ’mare. Their metal shells struck rocks on the beach and sparked in the brightening air. We ran up the beach and farther, passing the bridge pilings. I could hear Anassa laughing. Past the barge. Dishrag saw us and began to chase but wasn’t fast enough.
The weather grew dark and wind tangled my hair. Mike bent close to her horse’s neck and wound her fingers in its mane. We were riding toward the sunrise, toward the rocks. The broken profile of the jetty rose black against the sky.
I became motion. My heart began to pound out my fears. That I was bad, that I was broken, that I would disappear. That my sister would too.
As the ’mare ran faster, I lay on its flank and cried. The fears sank away from me, into the ’mare’s skin. I couldn’t remember anymore why I was crying. I felt the nightmare take my worries. But I didn’t feel any lighter.
And then Mike began to speak. A ribbon of words spilled from her lips.
She fed the ’mare flickers of stories. Her horse grew larger and faster with them in its teeth. Every bad thing she’d ever done. All the rules she’d broken. The fights.
“No, Mike!” She was saying things that had happened to her, that she hadn’t done on purpose. And the nightmare was turning them into strength. The words slipped from her lips, curls of white mist. Mike had stopped making any sound.
Once I saw what was happening to Mike, I pressed my lips tight together and refused to speak any more of my fears to my horse.
Mike’s nightmare passed mine, and as it did, I pulled the net holding the crabs free of the horse’s back. I watched James and then Sheila tumble back, rolling on the sand, avoiding the hooves behind us. They dragged themselves out of the nets and scrambled up the dunes.
My hair clung to my forehead. My ’mare and I were no longer keeping pace with Mike. I was going to lose her. I spoke to my horse, telling it about the time I’d gotten in the way of a fight, how I’d said nothing hurt until I believed it. The nightmare sped up, growing faster, even as I grew weaker.
But we once more matched, then exceeded, Mike’s pace. And pulled alongside her.
When I could reach her, I grabbed her hand. “Listen!” I shouted. “Don’t forget!”
Both ’mares slowed. One tried to bite away my hand, but I held fast. Then I pulled Mike off her horse and onto mine. In her pocket, I felt something sharp scrape my leg. Pulled the hilt of a paring knife from her pocket.
My sister’s skin was cool. She leaned limp against my shoulder as we continued to move forward with the herd. I held her fast with my left hand and used my right to stick the paring knife into the nightmare’s neck.
The horse bloomed into a puff of dark smoke and Mike and I fell through it, hard, all the way to the sandy ground.
The herd of nightmares, one fewer in number, began to circle us again. Eyes rolled back, teeth bared, they came at us.
Mike clung weakly to me, her eyes half open. “Eleanor? What are you doing here?”
“Keeping an eye on my sister,” I said.
The horses circled us again, speeding up and pulling closer. Their hooves made no sound, their smoke bodies pressed tight together until it was hard to breathe. They swirled around us like gray glass, sealing us up. The sun peeked over the edge of the dunes, but it looked like a lighter gray smudge against the darkness of the horses. I pushed the knife into the air and cut an opening for the light to come through.
The herd split apart. Heads reared, holes tore in the smoke, and shards of smaller horses galloped away. I stood on the beach in the predawn light and hugged Mike tight. She was quiet, staring after the ’mares. She didn’t follow when I started to walk toward the water, where Dishrag and the Heron were paddling closer.
“Mike, get up.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Mike, come on.” I shook her.
“It’s just a dream,” she whispered.
The forgetting. It had her—or she had it.
“No, it’s not. Remember the stories? Once upon a time, there were two girls . . .”
Mike stared at me. Then blinked slowly. Nothing.
“What about Someday?”
Nothing.
“Mike! Someday our real parents . . .” All my hope went into that one. That was her line. She always said it.
But there was silence. Then: “That’s just a story.”
“It is not just a story, this is not just a dream. Mike, remember! Someday our real parents will—”
“No one’s coming for us.” She sat down on the sand. I felt like sitting down too, but I forced myself to stand.
The barge ground against the beach and Dishrag stepped off. “I am. And your sister is.”
“And we are,” the Heron said, with its flock behind it. The birds landed on the beach, their small feet erasing the dips and drags where the nightmares’ hooves had chopped the sand.
“We’re trapped here,” I whispered to Dishrag. “The lighthouse beam is broken; it’s morning.” I tried not to think about what was happening at home. Of the oncoming storm, of parents waking up and discovering us gone.
Then the Heron croaked, “Once upon a time.” Exhaustion weighed each word. The bird’s beak was rusted nearly through, its driftwood wings, cracked. Its feathers, mostly fallen away. Fighting the ’mares had cost it dearly. The bird’s frame looked white as bone.
It began again. “Once upon a time, the nightmares won.”
Then it stopped. Waves slapped the shore. Dishrag’s barge ground on the sands.
“Tell the rest,” I said. I pulled the glass feather from my pocket and held it out.
The bird slumped, shaking its head, refusing to take it. “This is the end of the story. You fell through the river and everything broke. I have nothing left to tell. The horses are crossing the river. Anassa has finished her bridge. They’ll break through the lighthouse and head for reality soon.”
We’d lost. I held my sister and watched the gray shapes move across the purple-lit bridge, toward the now-dark lighthouse.
Mike sighed and buried her face in my shoulder. “Tell me a story,” she breathed.
Would it help fix Mike’s forgetting? Would it make things worse?
Dishrag nudged me with his towel nose. “The Heron might be done,” he said, “but you know more of the story. It’s your turn to tell it.”
I knelt at the edge of the shore, my feet and knees in the water. In the distance, the nightmares had reached the lighthouse and were swirling around it.
I didn’t want any more stories. I didn’t want to make things up any longer. Or to have to stick to the rules.
I thought of Pendra, who always wanted magic and truth, and of the Heron, who’d never given up until now. And I thought about Mike, about school and the science fair. If the weather let up, that might still happen tomorrow. I hoped it would. We’d worked so hard. But more than that, I didn’t want to be stuck here.
I thought about the story the Heron had told, the first one. Where the young girl fought her way home and brought back her mother. And an agreement made of glass.
She’d made it here and brought it back by making the lighthouse too. Out of fishbones and . . . I thought for a moment . . . glass.
The crabs and their underwater tunnels. The glass shards that patched the cracks.
I would bring back my sister.
Don’t tell anyone anything, or the magic will stop working.
That was the rule. The biggest rule of house magic.
But the river, and the Heron, and the pony weren’t anyone. And Mike needed me to try.
I looked at my sister. She elbowed me back.
“Tell a story, Eleanor.”
I would, but I would tell a true one this time. Maybe Mike would hear it and not forget as much.
Broken or not, it was who we were. And maybe we could use that to get back home.
I stared at the water. Began to think of the way things had happened for a long time. A story grew in my mind that had scary parts and sad parts. Enough loss to make it fragile. Enough hope to make it float. It wouldn’t sound like a fairy tale, not after a while.
I put the glass feather into the water.
“Once upon a time, there were two girls who knew their real parents hadn’t gone away.”
I spoke and the river began to bubble. I gave Mike the last pieces of the ancient witch ball. She skipped them across the shallows and into the deep.
“No one knew their house was magicked. No one could know. Not even their best friends. Not even their gran. If they told, the magic would stop working. Until one day, it stopped working anyway, and the river broke through everywhere.”
I let the river hear my anger. “It wasn’t fair. It was hard to be scared. It was harder to lie.”
I told the river about the broken pictures. About my missing books. About the paring knife I’d stolen. I described my friends’ faces when I’d told them everything was all right, even when it wasn’t, and how I felt when they’d smiled and believed me. I told it how much I loved school. And how much I hated home. “But I don’t want to be sent away,” I said. “Or forgotten.”
The river kept bubbling, water spilling over a small, submerged sphere.
“I don’t want my sister to disappear,” I said. Mike squeezed my hand. “She is wild and brilliant and when she was born, Poppa was so angry, at both of us. Because we were in the way. Because we weren’t worth anything.” I heard again his silence on that topic. The anger that never quite ebbed. “We’d pretended we were worthy sometimes. Heroes. On a quest. We pretended to be birds too.”
I told the river my dreams. Told it the properties of glass. I spoke about quiet and magic and lies and truth. “And then there was Momma,” I said. “Who is maybe a good witch and maybe isn’t.” And then there was Poppa.
I gave everything to the river and let it make me something in return. The first small bubbles looked like a pot boiling, air trapped beneath the water. Then those joined others to make bigger spheres. I didn’t stop talking. Blue and turquoise, threaded with light, the bubbles rose to the surface. The sun’s beams brushed them and made them solid.
Things work differently here, the Heron had said.
Whorls of water and air, story and sunlight. Mike waded out and gathered a few. Her face lit with memories, sad and bad and good also. “I remember,” she whispered.
I spoke and spoke until the surface of the river glittered with witch balls. More than we’d ever need.
Mike stood among them, holding four in her arms.
“Now you tell,” I said.
She spoke about coffee mugs and ponies, about not wanting to fight. “There’s no happily ever after,” she whispered, “and there are monsters, and that’s not fair. But once upon a time, there were two sisters who rescued each other.”
“And we kept on doing that, until we didn’t need to anymore,” I added.
As we spoke, one perfect turquoise witch ball bobbed to the surface. The birds rose as one—a flock of ravens and gulls, led by the bone-white Heron—and dipped their claws in the water, lifting out the float, and then more.
They put these on the barge. Some were dark, some light.
“Scary ones in there,” Dishrag said.
Mike reached into the pile of glass spheres and pushed several aside. The glass clinked as the raft swayed against the river’s pull.
With both hands, my sister offered the pony the darkest witch ball.
One that swirled with charcoal and smoke.
Dishrag’s lip twitched. Mike strung the float on a piece of netting the birds brought. She tied it around Dishrag’s neck.
The pony’s nostrils flared and his tail lifted high. He stepped carefully with his new weight.
“We have to stop the nightmares,” the Heron whispered. The bird was a pile of bleached wood on the beach, its glass feathers nearly gone. “They’ll darken the world if they run loose. Eleanor, I believe in your stories. In what you did here. You were honest. You are stronger than Anassa, stronger than the ’mares.”
The Heron’s words settled around me like a dawn breeze. I breathed them deep. We’d done things I never thought we could. Maybe we could do even more. “We will try,” I promised. “For you. And for us.”
“I believe in you both,” the Heron creaked.
The ravens pushed the raft from the sandbar. Dishrag worked the treads hard and the wheel spun, throwing water everywhere.
The flock followed, but the Heron stayed on the beach, no longer able to fly.
When we reached the lighthouse, the last few nightmares were passing through a crack they’d broken in the thick, low wall of the lighthouse. They’d knocked down the stairs. The light was shattered.
My mouth felt dry as paste. There was a pale-green shape among the nightmares.
Anassa, moving through the crack with the last of the horses, turned back and laughed. “You’ve lost,” she gloated. “We’re going through. All thanks to you. You can try to follow, if you’re fast enough, but we’ll arrive long before you. You can’t do anything right, Eleanor. Better than that? You won’t remember a thing before long. You’ll want to forget how you failed and the ’mares will help.”
I slumped. We’d tried and it hadn’t been enough. I’d missed my chance to stop Anassa at the bridge.
Across the river, the sky began to glow red. The sun pushed at the clouds. If the past was any guide, we might not remember any of this. Not the dream reeds, not the Heron—if we made it home; not the real world, if we stayed here.
Mike looked as if she was ready to throw one of the floats after the snake.
Breathe, Eleanor.
Suddenly, I had a better idea. I gathered up the glass balls into the garbage bags that had fallen off Anassa’s dress. The birds helped me, and soon Mike did too.
“We’re not giving up,” I said, looking at the birds. “You can’t give up either. You help us and we’ll help you. Deal?”
One young raven stepped forward and nodded. Its glossy black feathers were made of curled, tarnished forks and plastic combs. Its black beak, pieces of tires. “A deal. Which is an agreement,” it said. “When you take the witch balls to the other side, you’ll have several. They should last you a long time.”
“If the nightmares can get through.” I pointed at the crack in the lighthouse, so narrow, and getting smaller now. “So can we.”
I ran my hand along Dishrag’s mane. The pony nickered at me. “How?”
“Want to be a nightmare?” I winked at him.
Dishrag cocked his head and blew hard through his nose. Then he pawed at the barge. Once. Twice.
“I’ll need you to run really fast. With us on your back. Can you do it?”
The crack in the lighthouse was growing darker. I could hear the wind whistling through it.
“Maybe,” Dishrag said.
I turned to the birds. “I need you to carry the witch balls. And to follow us through.”
The birds cackled at one another in distress.
“We’ve never been out of dream,” the comb raven cawed. “We’re not allowed.”
“Come with us just for a moment, to do a job. For the Heron’s sake,” Dishrag said.
The raven’s tire beak closed and opened. Then it picked up one of the trash bags, and the other birds followed. As they rose, glass shifted and clinked. The flock hovered in the air.
I helped Mike onto Dishrag’s back. Then I climbed up, too, and held on to my sister.
The towels felt warm and soft. Mike leaned forward and hugged his mane and neck. “You are the best pony,” she said.
“I’m trying to be a nightmare,” Dishrag said. “Shhh.”
Mike lifted the witch ball to Dishrag’s mouth and the pony took a large bite, like an apple. The glass broke in his mouth, but he crunched it, then swallowed. He began to paw the beach and move forward on the sand. We clung to him, tendrils of smoke moving through the rolled towels.
The birds rose in the air as we began to move, their wings colored red and purple by the sun. “Will we make it?” And would we remember on the other side?
Dishrag shouted, “Yes!” as he threw himself at the hairline crack running up the tower. Darkness split the bone-white wall and the crack began to widen as we moved forward.
My panic rose and then turned to fear. I heard the nightmares whispering in the passage ahead. We slipped through the darkness. Then the light disappeared behind us as Dishrag’s hooves beat the ground faster than before.
I couldn’t breathe. I was so afraid. But Mike began to yell and I did, too, because we were riding through the dark on the fastest pony ever. We caught up with the herd, passing Anassa, passing everyone.
Still shouting, we rode with the nightmares out of the river and into the real.