A PERFECT WISH

The Sandman offered Andrea a seat next to him in the front row. Andrea wasn’t too sure she wanted to see the show, whatever it was, but if he wouldn’t talk to her now, she would have to wait. She slid into a spot a few seats down. The Sandman sat and fixed his eyes on the stage.

As if on cue, the curtains pulled aside and Margaret Grace stepped forward, exactly the same as in the final photograph in the hall and smiling with closed lips at the nonexistent crowd. Built out of stardust and silver, her sleeveless gown sparkled from every possible angle, bold enough to catch the eye but gentle enough as to not be blinding. Margaret Grace gave a soft curtsy and then began to sing.

Piercingly clear, satiny smooth, and as full as an ocean, Andrea had never heard a voice like hers before. If her voice were a color, it would have been the orange of the last sliver of sun before it slipped beyond the horizon. Within the first few notes, Andrea almost fell under her spell and forgot why she had come in the first place.

Almost. But she could feel the dream’s pull, its attempt to hypnotize her brain, to dull it to everything except the dream sequence itself. She had come to ask the Sandman a very important question about her brother—if he had been to Reverie. But the longer she stayed here listening to Margaret Grace’s song, the less important it seemed. The draw and the distraction didn’t feel too different from the other dream tents she had been in, except that in the others, she hadn’t been trying to remember something important. Andrea worked to stay focused, to not let it slip away.

The Sandman sat, still and unblinking, while he watched Margaret Grace sing. He loved her very much, that was easy for Andrea to see. But his shoulders slunk forward, and his brows pulled together in pain. She knew that face. In fact, she had made that same face herself when looking at family pictures with Francis still in them. She had once stopped and stared for so long that her mom shouted her name five times in a row just to snap her out of it.

Staring at the Sandman now, she wondered what could have happened to make him look at Margaret Grace that way.

Margaret Grace’s song swelled to a peak and then ended softly on one held-out, haunting note. When it was over, the air that was only a moment ago filled with sound got swallowed in the vacuum of silence. Smoke billowed into the room as the Sandman jumped to his feet and clapped and whooped and stomped a standing ovation.

“Brava!” he shouted, his hands wrapped around his mouth. “Bra-va!”

Margaret Grace surveyed the imaginary roaring crowd with an expression of gratitude, but also something else. Something more serious. The face you make when you are saying goodbye. She glided backward then, and the curtain closed before her.

The Sandman’s clapping slowed to a stop. He turned to Andrea, wiping away a few diamond-like tears from his eyes.

“Pardon me,” he said. “But it never fails to move me. That was my Margaret’s final show.”

“Her final show?” Andrea asked. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand.”

The Sandman heaved a deep and heavy sigh. “She’s . . .” He shook his head in near-disbelief. “She’s gone.”

“But I met her outside when I got my ticket. She was a bit younger, but . . .”

“Younger . . .” he said, his voice soft, his eyes glazed over like his mind had gone somewhere far away. After a long moment, the Sandman shook his head, regaining clarity. He bent over and peered into Andrea’s face. “Quite right, you did meet her. Only not in the way you might think. But there’s time for all that. You must be new. And since you are in my tent, you must already know who I am.” The Sandman held out his arms in a sweeping showman’s gesture. “I am the Sandman.” He lowered his arms and softened his voice. “Now, tell me, child, who are you?”

“Andrea?” Andrea said, more a question than an answer.

“Welcome to Reverie, Andrea.” The Sandman smiled. He set his umbrella once more in front of him, resting both hands on top. “How can I help you?”

Andrea wasn’t sure if the Sandman was truly happy to see her or if he was being polite, but she had to hope he really did want to help her. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have bothered to ask.

She shifted her weight, trying to grab the fringes of her question for him from the fog inside her mind. She had come to ask him something very important. “Well, sir . . .”

“One moment.” The Sandman held out a hand in front of Andrea’s face. “We will talk as we stroll. I could use some fresh air. Check in on my lovely dreamers.” The door to the dream appeared on the side of the tent, an opening in the canvas much like the entry.

Andrea hoped she’d remember what she needed to ask him once they got out in the clear night air.

The Sandman picked up a brisk pace once they exited the tent, forcing Andrea to take almost two steps to his one long stride in order to keep up.

“This,” he whapped the side of a tent, “is a wonderful dream. Have you been in it?”

Andrea shook her head and read the name on the sign: Bubble Delight.

“You enter, and you’re wrapped up inside a bubble! You float around bouncing into the other children, who are each in their own bubble. Up and down and bouncy-bouncy. Ha!” His laughter cut through the air like a sword. “Delightful indeed!”

They walked like this for a while, the Sandman pointing out tents, tipping his hat to the children as they passed. At one point, Andrea turned behind her to find that they had collected a river of children, an entourage of dreamers. The Sandman continued on with a sly smile, taking pride in his following. Like he was some Pied Piper who had been playing the flute the entire time they walked through Reverie’s lanes.

The Sandman slowed as they arrived at Reverie’s Dream Clock, where a show had set itself up in the square. The performers wore the colors of flames and juggled fire sticks and launched themselves in choreographed movements into the sky from a set of strategically placed trampolines. They flipped and twirled around the fire one after the other in a hypnotizing rhythm against the darkness of the sky. Herds of children paused in the square to watch them, their purple-lined eyes open wide in wonder.

“From time to time, I release one of Reverie’s dreams into the square,” the Sandman whispered. “That way all the children can enjoy it at the same time. Isn’t it something?!”

Andrea nodded. She had had no idea the dreams could be freed from their tents.

“The heartbeat of Reverie,” he said, his voice hushed in reverence.

Andrea looked up at the Sandman. He wasn’t staring at the show, like she would have guessed. Instead, he gazed in awe at the Dream Clock tower.

“It doesn’t look much like you,” Andrea said, referring to the image on the clock and stalling for time. She feared the Sandman would get distracted or bored and walk away from her before she had a chance to remember her question. She needed to focus. She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her head of the lingering fog that she suspected was caused by being so close to the source of Reverie’s magic.

The Sandman chuckled. “I suppose he does not. But, dear child, what are dreams if not filled with contradictions?”

Andrea looked between the picture of the Sandman on the clock—the wrinkled old man with the kind face and the nightgown and cap—and the Sandman next to her. A man of precise movement and tall posture and commanding presence. The ringmaster of a circus built of dreams. The one who might hold the answer to her question, if only she could remember it.

“Mr. Sandman . . .” she whispered. “I have something I need to ask you.”

The Sandman ripped his gaze from the clock tower and stared down at Andrea with a gentle smile. “Of course. Come this way.” He formed his fingers into a pair of scissors and made a cutting motion through the air behind him. The children who had followed them stayed in their places, their eyes fixed on the show, while Andrea and the Sandman strolled along the edge of the square.

They passed by several tents at the entrance to different lanes, Sleigh Ride, Spring’s Eternal Bloom, The Gray Nothing, and finally, at the entrance to a lane of nightmares, Root River. Andrea paused in front of it. She ran her fingers along the name. She had been in this tent before.

The memory came back to her then like she had sniffed smelling salts. The water rushing into her lungs, the roots wrapping around her ankles, her legs turning to stone.

Her question.

Francis.

The Sandman stopped and tipped his head, waiting for Andrea to speak.

The words poured out of Andrea, forceful and fast like a fire hydrant without its lid. “My brother, Francis Murphy. He went missing. And I went through the dream that he used to have . . . this nightmare. Right here. And, well,” she let out a shaky breath. “Do you know if he’s been here? And when? I need to find him.”

A flicker of sadness passed over the Sandman’s face. “Ah,” he said, his voice somber. “I see.”

He lowered one knee to the earth so his eyes were level with Andrea’s and tucked his umbrella underneath his arm. “Dear child,” he said. “So many, many children enter through Reverie’s gates. There’s no way I could possibly know them all.” He folded his hands and placed them on the top of his knee. “I am very sorry.”

“Oh,” Andrea pulled her lips to the side, unsure what to do next. A dry heat spread behind her eyes, and a black emptiness settled inside her stomach. His answer had been so . . . short, and so vacant of any of the things she wanted to hear. She had known finding the Sandman might not lead her to her brother directly, but she hadn’t expected it to be a dead end.

“Chin up,” the Sandman said. “Even though I can’t tell you if your brother was here, there is still a way I can help.”

Andrea pinched her eyebrows together. “There is?”

“Of course there is. Come along. Follow me.” He pushed himself to standing and ducked into a quiet lane.

Andrea followed in silence, at a much slower pace than before, until they reached a place in the lane between two tents that was empty, save for a few blades of brown, dry, overgrown field grass quivering in a quiet breeze.

“Before I make you my offer,” the Sandman said, stopping in front of the vacant space, “you must tell me two things. First, how long has your brother been gone?”

“He disappeared three years ago.”

“Oh dear,” the Sandman said, almost at a whisper. “Thank you for telling me that. And second . . . I must know . . . some children come to Reverie to remember. And others, well, they come to Reverie to forget. I must know, Andrea, which one are you?”

Andrea wasn’t sure what he meant by the question. Her confusion must have been evident on her face, because the Sandman tried a different angle.

“Did you give up a dream you wanted to live in over and over again and remember? Or did you give something up so it would be out of your head? So you could forget?”

“Oh,” Andrea said, scraping against the dirt with the toe of her shoe. “I paid with something I wanted to forget.”

There it was again, the small twisting of a hand inside her, digging around in a dark corner, trying to find the piece she had lost.

“I think it was what happened the night my brother disappeared.” Andrea took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “I think it was somehow my fault.”

The Sandman’s thin lips pulled into an even thinner line. “Oh, my child,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry. I understand your pain more than you know.”

Andrea sniffed and looked to the side. “Thank you.” She blinked back the burning that used to turn into wetness and fall down her face as tears. “I came here to forget, and I did forget . . . but I still felt guilty—I guess I still do—so I tried to remember on my own, without going through my memory tent. Then things got really strange and I went home for a little while. When I came back I found my brother’s nightmare.”

The Sandman nodded. “Let me tell you something useful.”

Both man and child turned to face the Dream Clock, where it peeked out above the endless sweeping tents and the flags that waved at the top. “The Dream Clock is vital to Reverie’s existence.”

“I know, the dream sand.” Andrea had been through this with Penny, and already at the square with him.

“Ha! Indeed!” The Sandman punctuated the end of the sentence by lifting his gray umbrella up above his head and slamming it, tip down, into the dirt. “But this—this simple, wondrous umbrella—contains all of Reverie’s dreams.”

He knelt down to Andrea’s level once more. “And each dream a child gives up to enter is imprinted here, inside my umbrella on a piece of parchment, which is then built into one of Reverie’s tents, or released into Reverie’s world if I will it to be so.”

The scent of mystery and twilight and secrets whispered in the dark wove around Andrea, infused into the threads of magic in the Reverie air.

“But we must not spend our lives chasing shadows. Your brother has been missing for three years, dear child. That is a long time for a person to go missing, and to have him ever return home.”

The Sandman sounded too much like her parents had when the police stopped searching for Francis. Andrea looked away, the heat behind her eyes growing even hotter.

“No, no!” The Sandman held out a hand. “No need to despair. You see, I want all the Reverie children to be happy. And I offer each child who seeks to find me the exact same reward.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of folded parchment. He handed it to Andrea, then pulled out a small stick of charcoal as well. “I offer you a wish, Andrea. A perfect wish tent built just for you. It doesn’t have to be a dream you’ve already had, or a nightmare, or a memory. It can be something special that has never before existed in the history of the universe, something made out of a wish from your heart. Something that is only yours.”

Andrea could hardly believe it. Penny couldn’t have been more wrong about what happened to kids who sought out the Sandman. She was so sure it would bring trouble, that the Sandman wouldn’t like Andrea, and here he was, offering her a gift.

“Your pain is so great,” he continued. “You wear it around you like a shroud. It’s time to release yourself from its burden.” He took the tip of his umbrella and tilted Andrea’s chin up so she would look him in the eyes. “If you wish, I can build you a tent to make the pain disappear. I can build you a tent to truly forget it all.”

Forget.

It had been such a relief to lose the memory of the night Francis disappeared. She had so enjoyed Reverie’s tents, feeling lighter than she had in years while tucked away inside them. Then the whole experience had morphed into a living nightmare when she woke up at home and had to relearn he was gone. Her return to Reverie had brought with it another round of momentary reprieve until she’d entered Francis’s dream. Andrea craved that relief again, craved the forgetting. So strong was her need for it that it brought her body to aching.

Forget. Forget. Forget.

The Sandman looked at her, his eyes soft at the edges. He watched her, neither as a ringmaster nor as a salesman, but as someone who understood the desperation inside her. Someone who had felt it himself.

“Your tent,” Andrea said. “Did you build it as your own perfect wish?”

The Sandman nodded.

“The woman in the tent, and at the beginning of the dream, and at Reverie’s gates. She’s your sister.”

The Sandman cleared his throat. “Yes, she is, in a way. My sister . . . she—she used to come here with me when we were children. And she . . .” He hesitated, frowning and lowering his eyes. “She died very young. So I created a tent filled with my Margaret in all her favorite places, in all the ways I knew her best. You see, I am in Reverie to remember.”

Andrea tilted her head, considering what it would be like if she asked the Sandman to build her a tent with a dream version of Francis. She didn’t much like the thought. Maybe that was what the Sandman had meant, about her being there to forget.

“Wouldn’t it be better,” the Sandman continued, “if there was a tent just for you where all memory of Francis, of all your pain, would be wiped away? Where the family of three eating dinner behind the panes of the dining room window would be just that. A family of three.” He leaned in closer, tempting her to put the charcoal to the paper. “You’d never have to leave the tent, if you so choose. What relief it could offer. It might be exactly what you need.”

Andrea felt the gravitational pull of the Sandman and his magic umbrella, felt her mind slowly letting go. She was so tired. Of the sadness, and the guilt, and the pain.

She closed her eyes and exhaled softly, imagining a scene of her family where her parents were still together. Where she never had a brother. Where she never felt the missing of him. And where she never had to protect her heart from breaking because there was never any threat of danger or pain.

She opened her eyes and stared at the parchment.

Forget, forget, forget.

Andrea twirled the piece of charcoal slowly between her fingers. It left a smudgy black stain wherever it met her skin.

“All you have to do is draw it,” the Sandman said, his voice slow and low and even. “And you can stay, and forget, and be happy.”

Andrea knelt next to the Sandman on the ground and moved the charcoal closer to the paper. Yes. It would be a big, beautiful house, and her mother, and her father, and none of the sad things and all of the good.

But wait.

Andrea’s hand hovered, barely floating above the parchment. Parchment thick and yellowed and curled at the edges like the poster for Reverie attached to the tree in the moonlit woods. Her insides twisted again, stronger now, winding her up tight like a spinning top, ready to unfurl.

There was no way to create a perfect wish and keep all of the good and also erase Francis. Because so much of the good revolved around him. Quiet moments at the kitchen counter, a box of crayons shared between them. His saggy bathing suit as he ran through the spray of a sprinkler while a golden sun set on a hot summer day. His scrunched-up face and unrestrained laughter as Andrea dressed his little body up in their father’s clothes.

Andrea shook her head, like it had filled itself in with cobwebs over the past few minutes and she needed to knock them down. Goosebumps ran up her arms at the thought of what she had almost done. She had wanted to forget her pain, not forget Francis entirely. Maybe the two were far more entangled than she once had thought.

She needed to find out what had happened, even if all she learned was that Francis had been to Reverie a long time ago. The loss of her brother had come with so many questions, and now, here, she had a chance to finally get one small answer. She would solve nothing by forgetting she had a brother. In fact, by wrapping herself in a lie, even one disguised as a beautiful dream, she would lose what little good remained. Living in a dream where she couldn’t remember Francis didn’t mean that in the real world he hadn’t still disappeared.

If the Sandman didn’t have the answers she needed, Andrea would have to go looking for them on her own.

Andrea dropped the black stick of charcoal into the dirt and sat back on her heels. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not sure what wish I want yet.”

The Sandman snatched up the charcoal and tossed it in the air, catching it with his other hand. Andrea picked up the parchment and they both stood.

“How about this,” he said, his voice kind and soothing, but with a hint of tension in the back of his throat. Andrea recognized it as the voice she had used to talk to her brother when she had tried to get him to do something she wanted but knew she’d have to be clever. “How about I leave you with the paper and the charcoal, and when you’re ready, you go ahead and draw your perfect wish. Bring it to me, and I’ll make it exist for you. Does that sound all right?”

Andrea nodded, but inside her head, a different plan was forming. She would look for clues around and in her brother’s nightmare. She would ask all the Reverie children she could find if they had seen him. It was possible some of them had come multiple nights; maybe someone would remember.

She was so lost in thought, she almost didn’t notice the charcoal the Sandman held out toward her between his long fingers.

“Thank you,” she said. She didn’t know what tent she would ask him to make, if she asked him to make anything at all, but she was glad to have the opportunity to make a wise choice when she was ready. She grabbed the charcoal and stuffed the parchment in her empty pocket.

The Sandman tipped his hat and continued down the lane, picking up another following of children in his wake, chin held high, surveying his land of dreams.

Andrea turned back to the nightmare tent that she was certain had belonged to Francis, hoping to find a clue.

For the just in case that hummed inside her.

For the prickle of hope that what had broken could be fixed and that the burden of guilt she carried might be lifted off her shoulders.

For her lost little brother and the sliver of hope that he was out there, somewhere, still able to be found.