24

We follow Blake into a room

that looks like a cross between an office and someone’s house.

‘Put him down here,’ says the Queen to Wolfboy, patting a desk. Wolfboy lays Paul carefully down on the flat surface, and the Queen fetches a cushion to lay under his head.

The Queen of the Night is not at all what I expected.

She’s my age, plump, with dyed black hair, blue eyes, red lipstick and a pretty freckled face.

‘You can call me Amelia,’ she says to me and Wolfboy. ‘Take a seat where you can find it.’

Amelia’s apartment is large and, though clean, it’s filled with enough furniture for four families. There are framed pictures on the walls, and wooden cabinets with hundreds of tiny drawers, and an entire six-person dining setting pushed into a corner. Wolfboy sits in a leather armchair with burst seams, and I perch on the armrest. He rests his arm across my leg, and trails his fingers up and down my calf. I try to think serious thoughts.

Amelia leans over Paul and checks most of the things we’ve already covered. Blake must have told her a lot on the phone, because she seems unsurprised by his condition. Paul’s eyes are still now, and his face is smooth and pale. He has a wide mouth and eyelashes long enough to cast feathery shadows on his cheeks. He’s actually quite pretty, the perfect halfway point between Anglo and Korean.

Blake peers around Amelia’s shoulder. ‘He looks like Sleeping Beauty.’

‘Don’t ever say that to his face,’ says Wolfboy. ‘Actually, do. If he wakes up, promise me you’ll say that to his face.’

Blake scowls. ‘I’m not going to say that. And it’s not if he wakes up, it’s when. Right, Meels?’

Amelia takes off Paul’s shoes and socks and tickles his feet. He doesn’t move. She lifts his arm into the air, and lets it drop. Her manner is unhurried and her movements practised. From where I’m sitting it’s clear she’s a professional. Even if I don’t know exactly what sort of professional.

‘So, uh, Amelia, are you Wookey or Salamon?’ asks Wolfboy.

I grab his hand and hold it still. I want to concentrate.

‘Neither. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a Wookey.’ While Amelia talks she goes to a cupboard and selects a small bottle from the dozens inside. She uncorks it and waves it under Paul’s nostrils. Blake follows her every move, watching and learning. I’m surprised she doesn’t have her notebook out.

‘Grandpa used to own this building. After he died, my parents divided it up into apartments. We lived in this one and leased the rest out. When the renters and my parents left Shyness, I ripped down the dividers on the bottom floor, fixed up the rooftop and turned it back into the family business. I had to make adjustments because of the Darkness, but I did it in the end.’

Amelia corks the bottle.

‘So what is the family business?’

Amelia fixes Wolfboy with a no-nonsense look. ‘It’s the business of helping you, I presume.’

I squash my smile. I can already see why Amelia is nicknamed the Queen. She turns to Blake. ‘B, did you bring the pills with you?’

Blake fishes the ziplock bag out of her pocket.

‘Standard sleep program medication.’ Amelia points to the pale blue pill. ‘This puts the patient in an extremely deep dream state. The orange pill enables them to dream lucidly.’

‘What does that mean?’ I ask.

‘It means you know that you’re dreaming while you’re doing it, and you can remember your dreams when you wake up. But it’s also rumoured this second pill makes it possible for a third party to observe, possibly even extract or record the dream.’

‘And you believe that?’ Wolfboy sounds about as incredulous as I feel. Then again, what Amelia said correlates with Sanjay’s babble.

‘It’s theoretically feasible. I think Doctor Gregory has the tools to observe dreams, and possibly influence them in minor ways. I don’t imagine he can do more than that. The rest is spin.’ Amelia frowns. She seems troubled by the contents of the bag. Her voice trails off as she wanders over to a filing cabinet and fetches some digital scales. The scales beep when they’re turned on. She places the bag on the tray. ‘I’d be interested in analysing these in detail, but we need them, and we don’t have time.’

‘Do you think Paul overdosed on this stuff?’ Wolfboy’s hand tightens on my knee.

‘I think he’s taken the medication too often, without enough of a break in between dreams. He wouldn’t be the only person. I saw someone else with the same problem last month.’

I think of Paul’s twitching eyes from earlier. Even from here I can see that they’ve started to move again. ‘Could he be stuck in a dream?’

Amelia looks at me approvingly. ‘I think that’s exactly what’s happening. How long ago did you find him?’

‘About three hours ago,’ says Blake, ‘but he was already asleep when I found him, so we don’t know how long he’s been this way.’ That makes Amelia frown.

‘If he doesn’t wake by tomorrow, we need to go in and drag him out.’

‘How will we do that?’ Wolfboy sounds even more sceptical now. I don’t blame him.

‘It will be easier if I show you upstairs. Come.’

At first I think the staircase leads to another floor, but then I realise that I’m looking at black sky and stars instead of a ceiling. The room has walls but no roof. The walls are lined with metal shelves crowded with pots. All around us are the monstery silhouettes of plants, their leaves flashing silver in the moonlight.

I home in on an old margarine tub containing a familiar white plant.

‘This is the same as my teacup plant, isn’t it?’ I ask Blake.

She nods. ‘Indian Pipe. One of the few plants in the whole world that doesn’t need any sunlight to survive.’

My plant didn’t stand a chance in sunny Plexus. I don’t want Blake or Wolfboy to find out I’ve already killed it. ‘What’s your favourite?’

Blake drags me to another shelf. ‘This one—a Bat Plant. Isn’t it creepy?’

The Bat Plant’s leaves are bat-wing-shaped, with hairy trailing tendrils. At the plant’s centre is a twisted black flower like a shrivelled face.

‘Yech.’ I’m not brave enough to lean closer. The flower might come to life and bite me. I turn to get Wolfboy’s attention, but he is nowhere among the shelves. Amelia has disappeared too.

‘Up here.’

Wolfboy stands on top of the far wall, the moon sitting on his shoulder, the star-scattered sky surrounding him. My breath catches. He looks at ease on the high wall, at least four metres above the floor, a ladder resting at his feet. I half expect him to throw his head back and howl, like he did when we first met.

‘This way,’ he says.

I touch the ladder and look up. The rungs are solid under my hands but it’s a long way up. Wolfboy kneels and holds out his hand. ‘A rung at a time, that’s all. Eyes on me.’

When I crawl over the lip of the wall I’m relieved to see there’s no corresponding drop on the other side, only the large flat rooftop of the apartment building. I spy a greenhouse in the corner, and literally hundreds of plants on wheeled gurneys lining the edges of the roof, and crammed around chimneys and air ducts. Amelia is still nowhere in sight.

‘Wow.’

I’ve never really thought about it before, but there’s not much in the way of successful gardens in Shyness, at least not as far as I’ve seen. The Memorial Gardens is a graveyard of fallen trees; lawns and nature strips are nonexistent, and the creek is choked with dead foliage. And yet here, miraculously, is a rooftop jungle growing in the dark.

Blake pulls herself over the wall and skips ahead of us. ‘Do you love it?’

I do love it, but I’m even more confused than ever. I catch Wolfboy’s eye and he seems similarly bemused. I try to think up ways a crack gardener could help Paul. The rooftop looks as if it’s organised into plant types, in the way a botanic garden might be. One corner is devoted to cactus-like plants; a row of low glass boxes is home to a group of anaemic flowers. In the centre is something else familiar. I pull Wolfboy towards it, ducking under a vine with purple fruit.

It’s growing in a rusted bathtub with clawed feet, a fairly ordinary tree, except for the dozens of cream trumpet-shaped flowers crowding its branches. The flowers have delicate frilled edges, and hang face-down, like petticoats hung out to dry.

‘Datura,’ I say.

Wolfboy plucks a flower and examines it. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. Look at it. Exactly like the drawing.’ Its scent is so strong my head spins. ‘It doesn’t look poisonous, does it? It’s too beautiful for that.’

‘Why would Amelia grow datura?’

‘I don’t know. It shouldn’t be able to grow in the dark either.’

‘Over here!’ Blake beckons from the door of the greenhouse, practically jumping up and down.

I smile at her. ‘She’s in her element, isn’t she? How did she meet Amelia?’

Wolfboy drops the flower on the concrete. ‘No idea. They’re not the likeliest of pals, are they?’

I pick a path through the pots. ‘Do you think Blake wants to be a gardener or something?’

‘She’s interested in everything about nature. She could be a zoologist or botanist or biologist.’ Wolfboy nearly trips on a coiled garden hose. ‘Except she hasn’t been to school in years. Even Paul and Thom and I left before finishing. We’ve probably all screwed up our prospects.’

Amelia ushers us inside the greenhouse.

The air in the glass shed is warm and humid. We huddle in the only space that isn’t occupied by a trolley. Scant moonlight makes it through the dusty glass. There are four industrial lamps with large metal sunflower heads, but they aren’t switched on.

‘So the family business is a nursery?’ asks Wolfboy.

Amelia ignores his question. ‘If you want to meet the real Queen of the Night,’ she says, squatting low and patting an enormous glazed pot sitting on a pallet, ‘then here she is. The night-blooming cereus.’

We all look at the plant, which looks like a stringy and not-very-healthy cactus. It has several tightly closed buds scattered along its dry arms. Blake dotes over it.

Amelia sighs. ‘I thought she was getting close.’ She flicks on a lamp and trains its warm yellow glow on a group of plants. Only when she’s done this does she address Wolfboy.

‘I don’t run a nursery. I’m a herbalist. My grandfather did this, and his father, and his father before him, although they preferred to call themselves wildcrafters back then. I have all their notes and books and case studies, passed down through generations. We don’t just prescribe and use plants, we grow them. Every plant on this rooftop has a purpose. Each has properties that can help or harm humans. My job is to grow and propagate them, then prepare them for use.’

‘You can make us a medicine that will wake Paul up, can’t you?’ says Blake. It’s clear from the way she looks at Amelia that she thinks she can do anything—even drive away the Darkness with a single leaf, if she wanted to.

‘No, I can’t do that.’

‘Oh,’ says Blake.

‘What I can offer you is—less straightforward than that. The pills that Paul took are derived from naturally occurring plant substances. I have those plants growing in this garden. I suggest we send someone into Paul’s dream to talk him out again. Coax him back.’

There’s silence. Somewhere in the greenhouse, water drips. I want to laugh, but no one else is laughing.

Blake breaks the silence. ‘Of course…’ she says, like it’s the most obvious solution in the world.

I wait for Wolfboy to speak up, but he doesn’t. Someone has to say something.

‘What do you mean, send someone into his dream?’ I ask.

‘Exactly how it sounds.’ I can’t see Amelia’s face properly with the lamp blasting behind her. ‘I’ll use the plants to make a preparation that allows the user to penetrate the subconscious. Not just their own, but that of others near them. We’ll give a dose to Paul, and a dose to one of you.’

‘Bags not me,’ says Blake.

‘I’ll do it.’ Wolfboy is unhesitating.

‘Whoever takes the solution will also take the blue pill to induce a deep sleep. The combination of the two will give the ability to enter Paul’s dreams.’

I frown. ‘How many times have you done this before?’

‘I’ve never had to. Usually the sleeper wakes up before it’s necessary. But I’ve tried these plant extracts on myself, and they do what I say they do. I need twenty-four hours to prepare, and it’s a full moon tomorrow. That’s good timing. In the meantime, you can cross your fingers that Paul wakes up first.’

‘Okay, then,’ says Wolfboy, as if it’s all decided. I’m already composing a lecture to deliver in private; I don’t want to parade my doubts in front of Amelia and Blake.

‘Queen?’ Blake’s voice squeaks. ‘Meels? I think it’s happening.’

Amelia waves us in closer. While we’ve been talking, one of the buds on the Queen of the Night has raised its head and started to open. Thin outer petals unfurl after their long sleep. Inside the bud are paler white petals fluttering to life. The heart of the flower seems to glow with a pure light. Soon, the flower is the size of a human hand, and opening more each minute. The baby petals in the very centre are pink.

Blake looks up at us, her face luminous and full of awe.

Amelia uses a pair of tweezers to remove a pink central petal and drop it into a jar. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘Now we can collect the rest of what we need.’