Chapter Seventeen

 

Tonight, the Dreamland stars stretch out and become an infinity of prisms and colors I can’t even name. I am instantly in the mountains, and a shower of violet lights skids and scatters out from my feet as I land. This is the fastest I’ve ever gotten here, and it’s exhilarating. Being here on a mission, I’m noticing for the second time, is much different than just hanging out.

The tangy scent of the pine trees gives way to buttercream Macaroonies, and I capture that immediately, breathing deeply. I have to follow that $2 bill, and I’m not sure how to do it, but Macaroonie vapors are a good start. I can’t do this the way I found Dad. Changing the dream web to another color—another person’s energy—I suspect only works if you know what to change it to. All I have is the rich butter-coconut aroma in my nose, a picture of that $2 bill in my head, and the name Noonie’s on my lips.

I focus on the tops of the trees, where the coral has deepened to an iridescent violet-pink. I know I have to go over the mountains like last time, but where? I concentrate on the Macaroonie smell. It becomes sweeter, more layered and luscious, settling into my lungs.

I close my eyes to breathe deeper, but then I remember I have to keep them open to fly. I focus on the shifting sky, right where it meets the trees, and picture that flattened out bill, warm from riding in my pocket all day. I push the two visions together, superimposing each upon the other, pressing as hard as I can. It feels like an ice cream headache freezing and squeezing the middle of my forehead. The images give way—there—and merge into each other like a deadbolt sliding into place.

I rise silently, gathering speed over the jagged trees to the crest of the Dreamland Mountains. Suddenly, the two images slip out of place into swirls of butterscotch gold and the deepest pine green. I can barely hold on, but I grit my teeth and push back hard, keeping the image of the $2 bill and my tree line pressed together. The spiral waves shiver back into place and go still—but it’s no longer the evening horizon in front of me.

The greens and golds have formed themselves into an enormous, ornate building. Creamy caramel marble steps rise into spectacular pillars, leading to imposing, dark green doors with brass fittings that shine like mirrors. The gleaming marble towers endlessly above the doors, disappearing into a misty cloudbank. The silence is still pervasive, but it has shifted, opened somehow, as if I’d been underwater and then surfaced into a silent room. I glide up to the doors, following the steps without my feet touching them. One of the doors stands open, and I slip inside.

I brace for the uneven gravity of another person’s dreams, but instead it seems as if I’m looking through a magnifying glass. Whatever I focus on is clear, but the edges seem to curl upwards, as if my vision is trying to fit into a tunnel.

And what a vision.

The marble walls rise upward, just as endless as they appeared outside. There is no ceiling that I can see. The walls are a shiny golden-white eternity of drawers stacked on top of each other, punctuated with glittering brass knobs and intricate locks. Wall sconces cast steep wedges of light above. A marble counter stands directly in front of me, and behind it the entire wall is the deep emerald green of the front doors, with a huge, polished spoke wheel mounted in the middle of it. Golden hinges the size of telephone poles flank the right side, while the other three sides sit flush with the wall, reinforced with thick brass fittings. I finally realize what I am looking at: a vault. A giant vault, inside a bank only possible in someone’s dreams.

A shadow moves behind the counter and climbs up onto a tall seat, sliding into the light of one of the sconces. It’s Mr. Noonie—but Mr. Noonie from twenty years ago. His graying brown hair is now a deep chestnut, and his weathered skin has gone smooth. He wears a rich herringbone jacket instead of his baker’s apron.

Dad said as soon as you enter someone’s dream, they start to wake up. I freeze, not sure what Mr. Noonie can see. A cluster of tiny amethyst fireflies? A nighthawk lurking in the shadows? He isn’t looking in my direction at all, though. He unfolds something on the counter, just out of my vision, then holds it up to the light, smiling—the $2 bill. He reaches into his pocket, produces a large shiny key, and unlocks a drawer in the counter. He places the bill carefully inside and then locks the drawer, satisfied.

Something pulls on me, a gentle wisp of gravity coming from the direction of the door. I have to go soon, but first, I have to make him do something. I’ve done it with people in my own dreams, but never someone else’s—and that’s what I’m going to have to do to shield Brian.

Mr. Noonie climbs down from his chair. I look around. The watery tunnel vision wavers a little, and the sensation of being pulled gets stronger.

-Look up. I say it aloud, but it somehow emerges soundlessly from my forehead. Look up!

Mr. Noonie hesitates in mid-descent and tilts his head, darting a quick gaze up into the limitless tower of drawers before stepping down behind the counter.

Yes!

I can still see his head as he walks deeper into the shadows.

-Macaroonies! I shout impulsively, as the gentle suction from behind becomes an insistent tug. Macaroonies? Where did that come from?

My vision starts to spin at the edges. As I retreat through the doorway and over the steps, the bank dissolves completely, spinning into gold, white, and green. The green slows down, morphing into familiar pine trees. I drop down lightly, scattering fuchsia sparks flecked with remnants of Mr. Noonie’s gold. Home.

A surge of energy flows through my veins as I take a deep breath of sharp, cool mountain air. I did it! The soft scuttling and a barely visible glow in the bushes announce the arrival of the Dreamland menagerie, as if they’ve all come out to see how it went.

“It was easy,” I inform them. My head is still throbbing, but it was definitely a success.

The rosy droplets of my words ripple into the dream web and skip out across the horizon. A few of them gather around a large, pulsing blue glow in the trees. As the glow brightens, the animals make soft skittering noises, and I realize they didn’t come out to get a dreamwalk report—they came out to announce the arrival of a visitor. As the glow makes its way toward me, I smell his soap and hear his triumphant voice before I see him take shape in the clearing:

-About time you got here. Look! I made it!

Lucas’s glee is contagious, and I laugh too, blurting out: -Here you are, the man of my dreams. This would normally cause my face to burst into mortified flames, but we are in my world now—and here, everything I say is the exact right thing.

We stand in front of each other, and the full moon casts silken silver light onto our faces, igniting his eyes and outlining his hair. He takes both of my hands in his, stepping closer, and the warmth radiating from his body envelopes me completely. His touch makes me shiver, as if the velvet tip of a feather is tracing an achy trail of pleasure from my fingertips to my shoulders, around my neck, and down my spine.

-Where do you want to go? he asks quietly, eyes locked with mine.

-You know where. Connor’s.

I can barely get the words out. Lucas is so close, it feels like our bodies have begun to merge. Violet and cobalt sparks shiver and pulse between us, and my heart swells like it’s going to burst.

-Are you sure? His lips brush mine with a ragged whisper. The effervescence between us begins to vibrate softly like a single note on plucked on a harp. Our bodies draw together like magnets, but I pull away.

-Yes—we’d better—I’m not sure how long we can do this together.

His eyes glint wickedly in the moonlight. I step back, fighting his gravity, freeing my left hand. Our remaining joined hands melt together completely, warm and humming, spun together with sparks of blue and violet.

-Dreamwalk, Lucas. I meant dreamwalk.

-I know what you meant. He grins innocently.

I pretend to glare at him and resist the urge to step back into his arms again, but only because if we touch any more, we will sink into each other and never find out anything about Jackson Connor.

-Okay, he relents. What do we have to do?

I point to the summit. -We have to go over the mountain, and we also have to follow the painting. Keep your eyes open and focus on both things. You have to squeeze them together.

Lucas frowns. -Like those 3-D pictures, where you go cross-eyed until a dolphin jumps out at you? I can never see those things.

-Me neither, but yes. No. It’s the total opposite. Instead of relaxing, you have to push really hard.

We face the horizon, still holding hands, and concentrate on the top of the mountain. The gentle hum between us gets louder as I press the Dreamland painting into the sky in front of me, pushing inward until they lock together, becoming one and the same. The wind swirls around us, scattering blue and purple fireflies as we rise and skim across the tops of the trees, until they fall away past the moon, leaving only the two of us and the spinning streaks of a million stars.