Vanessa recoiled in horror. Where had the boys gone? What had happened to them? She stumbled backward, one step, two, and before she could catch her balance, a third step sent her tumbling onto her bed as the purple mist swirled away into the darkness of the fireplace.
“No! No!” she cried out. “I have to go back. I have to find out what happened!”
She leapt from the bed to the floor, clutching her tunic around her, and took three deliberate steps forward. Nothing happened. She tried again, and yet again, frantic to return to Partequineus, desperate to find out what had happened to her new friends. And then she heard a voice calling her name.
“Vanessa?”
Mom! She thought. Ohmigosh, I can’t let her see me like this. She jumped back into bed and pulled the sheet and blanket up to cover her tunic. She was badly out of breath, gasping for air, her eyes wild.
The bedroom door opened. “Vanessa, what’s wrong?” her mother called out. “I heard you screaming.” She hurried into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. She put her hand on Vanessa’s forehead. “Are you sick? What’s the matter?”
“Just a nightmare,” Vanessa managed to blurt out. “I’m okay now.”
“Are you sure?” her mother said. “It feels like you have a fever.” She reached for the sheet to pull it down, and Vanessa clutched it tightly around her neck to hide the tunic.
“I’m okay, Mom, really!” she said desperately.
“I think we’d better go to see Doctor Patterson,” Vanessa’s Mom said. “You haven’t been yourself at all lately.”
“I’m not sick.”
“You’ve been acting very strangely.”
Vanessa twisted her head away and stared at the wall. A long moment passed. Then she sighed and slowly turned back. She looked her mother straight in the eye.
“Mom,” she said, “what if I told you I’ve been to a strange and impossible place? Somewhere far away, where everything is different.”
“Different how?” her mother said.
“Where the sun is red instead of yellow. Where there are three moons in the sky, and where I rode the most beautiful pony in the world, faster than the wind, and where there’s a dragon in a cloud that’s keeping all the children prisoner, so they can’t ever escape.”
Vanessa’s Mom smiled gently. “What a wonderful, amazing dream,” she said.
“But it isn’t a dream. I’ve been there more than once, too. Three times, in fact.”
“Sometimes dreams can seem very real,” her mother said, “especially the scary kind. So real that they return night after night. Dreams like that often come when you have a fever. We’ll see the doctor tomorrow, and maybe he’ll have an idea about how to make them go away.”
“But I don’t want them to go away,” Vanessa said. “What if I could prove to you that Partequineus is a real place?”
“Partequineus?”
“That’s what the land is called. Partequineus. It’s summer there all year long, and time doesn’t work like it does here. You remember old Mrs. Baxter, who sold us this house? Grace? She’s there too, only she’s my age. And all the boys and girls who live there dress just alike, in short blue and golden tunics that shine with their very own light. I’ve got one, too. They gave it to me.”
“Sweetheart, you’re talking nonsense.”
“No, I’m not! What if I showed you my tunic? Then would you believe me?” She grasped the sheet and blanket, ready to pull them away so her mother could see what she was wearing, and a tiny voice inside her head began to chant, “No, no, no.”
“I want you to stay in the house all day tomorrow,” her mother said softly. “You can sleep late, and I’ll call Dr. Patterson for an appointment in the afternoon.”
“All right,” Vanessa said softly. She lay back down and rested her head on the pillow. It was no use. Even if she showed her mother the tunic, which the voice from Partequineus didn’t want her to do, it probably wouldn’t make any difference. Grownups just didn’t believe in mysteries.
“It was only a dream,” her mother repeated.
“If you say so,” Vanessa said. But she knew it wasn’t true.