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Andrea peeled her eyes open. The morning light shone through her window, much brighter than usual, like she had spent a long, long time in the dark and someone now shined a flashlight right in her face.
One by one, pieces pulled themselves together to form a picture. Francis. Her parents. Reverie. The faux ringmaster and Dream Clocks and locked iron gates. A world filled with contradictions: nightmares that bled from circus tents and dreams where kids could fly.
“Francis!” Andrea slid off the top bunk and peered down at her brother’s bed.
Empty.
Her heart dropped to the floor. It would have felt better if someone had crushed it with a rock. The window stood open, without any hint of frost. But Francis wasn’t there. A lump formed in her throat as the searing pain of losing Francis flayed her like it had the very first time, creating a fresh wound deep inside her. All that. All the nightmares. And her brother was still gone.
Andrea wrapped herself in her blue blanket and walked quietly down the hall, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she passed.
There she came to a stop.
Wide-eyed and openmouthed, Andrea placed a hand to her face. The girl who peered back at her from the mirror wasn’t twelve. She was tall for her age, her hair shorter than she would like, but this girl was only nine. The age she had been when Francis disappeared.
A surge of hope blew through Andrea’s soul. She bolted down the stairs, every muscle tight as she bounded multiple steps at a time and burst into the kitchen.
The digital calendar read October 22, 2017. The day after Francis disappeared.
But there sat her little brother, eating breakfast at the table.
“Ah, there you are,” her mother said. “Francis was telling me how you helped him through a bad dream last night,” Andrea’s mom ruffled Francis’s hair.
“Mom!” Francis said, with just a hint of a smile.
The doorbell sounded and Andrea’s mom went to the door and opened it, letting Andrea’s father inside.
“Good morning, sunshines,” he said, his voice a tad too cheerful. He set his jaw and looked over at his children, a cloud of sadness brushing over his eyes. “I’m here to pick up a few more of my things,” he said. “Then your mom and I thought it might be nice if I took you kids to the park.”
“Okay,” Francis said, shifting in his seat and staring hard at his bowl as he shoved another spoonful of cereal into his mouth.
Andrea couldn’t even speak. Every single thing she had experienced had felt so long. Years’ worth of time. And yet, here they were at the start again, but also at the ending. A completely different ending to their story.
Andrea bolted to her brother and hugged him until she was sure she had squished out all the air. As if he had been waiting for this moment, Francis dropped his spoon in the bowl of now mostly milk and hugged her tightly in return.
There in Andrea’s arms was proof that everything she’d been through had been worth it. She had done something very, very hard and hadn’t broken. And most important of all, she had really, truly found her brother and brought him home.
Mid-hug, Andrea’s mother pulled in behind them and wrapped her arms around Andrea and Francis. Her father rushed forward, bending down and joining the hug on the other side, their bodies wrapping the children in a cocoon of warmth.
Andrea’s eyes filled with tears.
“We love you both, and we’ll get through this together,” her dad said, resting his cheek on Francis’s hair. “You two are our whole world.”
“We . . .” Francis began, his voice at almost a whisper.
“Are . . .” Andrea joined him, pressing her forehead into his.
“A family.” The foursome finished together, the final word hanging in the air, lingering in the otherwise silent kitchen.
“We’re still your family, my loves.” Andrea’s mother kissed the top of her head. “We will always be your family.”
There would be no midnight dances in the kitchen, as there had been in the Sandman’s dream. But there could be this.
Andrea took in an unsteady breath and let the lingering sadness float away as she exhaled. Things would never be the same as they were when their family was together, but that didn’t mean she was loved any less. If she let that be her anchor, when the sadness arrived again in waves, she would be better able to keep it in balance. And there would be happy times, too, still to come. More memories to be made with her mom and her dad and her brother. Even if they looked different from before.
Her father gave an extra squeeze and looked away, blinking his own eyes fast, then wiping a single tear as he walked up the stairs to gather his things, and her mother returned to her cup of coffee.
Andrea hesitated a moment more, then pulled back from Francis and slipped her hand inside the pocket of her pajamas. Her fingers brushed against two items inside, something soft and something smooth. Her heart sped up as she pulled out a ruby-red feather and a single gold coin. The memories of Soar came rushing back. The fierce wind, the feeling of slicing a cloud, her laugh as she and Penny took flight.
Andrea jumped as the sound of the doorbell echoed again through the house.
“Geesh, Drea, it’s just the door,” Francis teased.
“I’ll get it.” Their mom went to the door and opened it.
After a few moments, Andrea’s mom called out. “Andrea, sweetie, can you come here, please?”
Andrea’s breath caught in her chest when she saw who stood in the entryway to their house.
Ms. Penelope. Their nosy neighbor. With hints of strawberry in her graying hair, and a full figure, and eager eyes.
Looking a bit different as an adult but recognizable just the same, Penny Periwinkle had, indeed, become an old woman. She wore small reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose and maintained her rosy, rosy cheeks, now framed by wrinkles. Smile lines. Penny had returned to her own life as a child. And she had had a happy life.
“Oh, Andrea, I’m so glad you’re awake!” she said. “I left something for you yesterday . . . It was just a trinket, but I wanted to make sure you found it all right.”
Andrea furrowed her brow, wondering what on earth Penny would have left for her—
Just a trinket.
Andrea considered the words and gasped. Her memory flashed back to the vial of sand Penny had collected in the Dream Clock tower and stuffed into her pocket. Just like the vial of sand Andrea had found on the windowsill the night Francis disappeared.
She didn’t know how many times the world could flip upside down on a girl in one morning, but here was the last piece of Reverie’s puzzle, standing in the entryway to her house, and she wasn’t a nosy neighbor at all. She was Andrea’s friend, who had been looking out for her this whole entire time. A friend who had waited patiently all those years, keeping the sand safe and knowing Andrea would need it to find her way through Reverie and to help them all get home.
“Yes,” Andrea said, her mind reeling. “I found it. Thank you.”
“Well, I hope you found it useful.” Penny—Ms. Penelope gave Andrea a secret wink and handed her a tin of shortbread cookies.
Wide-eyed and at a complete loss for words, Andrea nodded and accepted the gift.
“My own grandchildren are coming to visit, and it seems I’ve made too many. Silly me.” She smiled down at Francis, who smiled back like she was a familiar face to him, too. Someone more friend than neighbor.
“Maybe you could meet my grandchildren one day,” Ms. Penelope continued. “They’re about your age, you know, and I think you’d get along nicely. I could set out lemonade and cookies and give you some time to get to know each other. I’m quite certain they are always happy to make new friends.”
Andrea and Francis shared a secret look, and Francis said that sounded nice.
Andrea’s heart ballooned with gratitude. It rested inside her like a warm cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter’s day. She clutched the tin of cookies and winked back at Ms. Penelope, her good, old friend.
Once the door had closed and Ms. Penelope had made her way back across the street, Andrea returned to the kitchen. She looked forward to visiting her friend soon, when they could talk openly and freely about what happened to them. About what life had been like for her once she got home. And all they had been through together.
Andrea and Francis had time to talk in the lull after breakfast and before their father was ready to take them to the park. They hid away in their bedroom as their dad moved more boxes of his stuff into the back of his SUV. They wouldn’t have wanted to watch that happen anyway, even if they didn’t have to do something more important.
The two of them talked about everything as they sat on the floor and leaned against the bottom bunk. They had survived a nightmare, and the reality that existed for them now would still hurt a lot, in many ways. Andrea rested in the fact that she had chosen this and that whatever the future might hold, at least she and Francis would face it together.
Even though she couldn’t erase everything they had lost, and even though she had known the risk that she might have woken up without Francis, living this, her real life, was better than believing the lie that it was better to run away.
“What did you make as the door?” Francis asked. He stood and began rearranging the pictures on his dresser. “For the dream you trapped the fake Sandman in. How did you know he wouldn’t get out right away and keep us all trapped?”
“I made the door so that if he found it, he wouldn’t be a danger anymore,” she said, thinking back to the sad look on the dream sisters’ faces in the moments before she created the dream. “In order for him to get out of the tent, he would have had to learn to say goodbye.”
Francis paused and stared straight ahead a moment before nodding and continuing to play with the arrangement of the pictures. “And what do you think the real Sandman did to the fake one?”
Andrea hadn’t yet given a thought about what would happen once she handed the real Sandman his umbrella. Maybe Hubert was still in Reverie, working things out inside the tent, learning to say goodbye to his sister. Or maybe the Sandman had handled things a different way. Andrea hoped the boy who had pretended to be the Sandman had been able to find healing, one way or another.
Andrea shrugged. “Wherever he is, the real Sandman is back in charge. Everything is back the way it should be.” Andrea tried to convince herself as much as Francis. The room took on a slight chill as Andrea considered the possibility that Hubert might still be out there, somewhere, about to cause some trouble.
“Oh,” Francis said, seemingly satisfied. “Right.” He stood and straightened out his clothes. “I’m going outside to play while we wait.”
Andrea stared at the bottom bunk. The empty bed she had stared at for three years that once again would hold her brother each night. A bed that had never really been empty at all now that they were living in a world where Francis had never disappeared.
“Okay.” Andrea bit the inside of her lip as Francis bounced out of the room, uncomfortable at the thought of letting him out of her sight after everything that had happened. She ran down the hall and to the open window that looked over their backyard. She breathed in the crisp fall air and watched her brother as he climbed on a swing and pumped his legs, building momentum. She tested the breeze, searched it for any hint of the aroma that had carried them both to Reverie in the first place. But the wind only carried with it the scent of decaying leaves and a neighbor’s fresh cut grass.
Then she smiled as she pinched herself. Good and hard, just to be safe.