Alistair’s dreams weren’t dreams at all. They were memories. Soft and lilting visions and sounds from happier times. Alistair saw his parents unloading the car at a beach house they had rented when Alistair was barely five years old. He saw Keri dancing at a ballet recital, her face twisted in a grimace as she performed pirouettes. He saw Fiona Loomis on her bicycle, riding up and down the street, her dark hair fanning out behind her like a crow’s wing.
Alistair watched snippets of his life, pleasant things, hopeful moments. For the longest stretch, he was back in the Skylark, a restaurant where he and Fiona went to dinner once. He was watching her smile, and eat, and laugh. Beautiful. He had never told her that, but it was true. She was beautiful, and not because she looked like she should be famous. It was how she cared about things. The tilt of her head. The way she brushed away her bangs. Her deep stare that told Alistair she was listening. And feeling.
Waking from these memories was jarring. It took Alistair more than a few moments to figure out where he was. To say he was disappointed would be an understatement. Each bit of realization slapped on another layer of dread.
I’m on a sofa … in a lounge … down the hall from a monster gallery … which is part of a space station … that is floating through Quadrant 43 … one of the many worlds in Aquavania. Damn it!
“There you are.”
Alistair rolled over onto his side and looked across the room. Chip was sitting on another sofa. He cradled a thick leather-bound book. On the walls, four black-and-white movies played. Cowboys and Indians. A heroic dog. Gangsters. Teenagers in love.
“How long was I asleep?”
“More than a few hours,” Chip said. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d come and watch a few movies. Maybe powwow with you if you were awake.”
“I am now,” Alistair said, rubbing his eyes. He did feel well rested. Hardly calm, but certainly well rested.
“Did you enjoy your memories?” Chip asked.
“What’s that?”
Chip looked up and sighed. “I wish I still had those. Thing is, when you first get to Aquavania, you don’t dream. This place is already like a dream, right? So instead you get to look at memories when you sleep. Sometimes when you’re awake too. Memories will smack you like gusts of wind.”
Alistair nodded, because that was exactly what had been happening to him. Memories as vivid as the present seemed to be hiding around every corner in Aquavania.
“It passes,” Chip told him. “Your brain changes. The memories stop coming. First during the day, then at night. Soon you only sleep. And it’s black. And it’s nothing.”
“I prefer nightmares,” Alistair said.
“Come again?”
“Really,” Alistair said as he sat up. “When you wake up from a nightmare, it’s a relief. You know that your real life is better than all that scary stuff. Give me nightmares or nothing over nice memories and dreams.”
“You’re not happy with how life is going for you?” Chip asked.
Alistair might have laughed if it weren’t so sad. “I’m trapped in some alternate dimension, full of monsters and crazy people, and I’m looking for my friend, and I promised some penguin that I’d find his friend, and I’m basically guessing about where they might be, and my best friend, he’s … well, let’s say life could be better.”
Chip laughed for the both of them. “When you put it that way…” He stood and walked over to the coffee table next to Alistair. He set the book down.
“Stories?” Alistair asked.
“A map,” he said. “Actually, a collection of maps. An atlas. If it were one map, it’d be as big as this space station.”
Alistair flipped the cover open and read the title and inscription:
THE CAPTURED REALMS OF AQUAVANIA
Without the tireless work of countless swimmers, this book would not exist. Remember their sacrifices and use this wisely. Pay heed to warnings. Whenever possible, record your discoveries.
He turned to the first page. It was a map labeled MAHALOO (THE ENTRYWAY).
On the edge of the page there were numerous candy-colored rivers, feeding into a ring of fields that formed a grassy border around everything else. In one of the fields there was a rock icon, which was labeled as THE HERDS OF NIGHT. Woodlands made up a great deal of the map, and there were valleys cutting through like wrinkles on an old face. The land was populated with numerous creeks, ponds, and lakes. On a few of the bodies of water there were golden rings, marked with text.
THE ELFIN SEA
ROKOKO’S LABYRINTH
ROOM 101
ISLANDS IN SOUP
THE HUTCH
That last ring was centered on a tiny pond, presumably the same pond that Polly had made Alistair dive into, the same one that led to …
Alistair pressed his finger to the golden ring and the pages started to flip on their own. He pulled his hand away, as if from snapping teeth, but it took barely a second for the book to stop on the page labeled THE HUTCH.
There it all was. The trails. The village. The platform. The sea of blood. The underground fortress. The tentacles. Golden rings clustered around the tentacles. They were labeled with more ambiguous names. All except for two. One was labeled PLANET POLAR BEAR. Another, THE AMBIT OF CIPHERS.
Alistair pressed the dot next to THE AMBIT OF CIPHERS. Nothing.
“No one’s been there and recorded anything,” Chip said. “So we don’t have any solid data yet. Only rumors.”
“What are the rumors?”
“That it’s a place where the Whisper keeps the worst of the ciphers. It forms a border around his home. If you make it through, then you make it to him.”
Alistair looked back at the map of the Hutch. There was a message written at the top in red ink: According to swimmer Alistair Cleary, the Mandrake may have dominion over this world. Hadrian may be dead. Until more evidence is presented, consider this map unreliable.
“We edited that after you went to sleep,” Chip explained. “Dot likes to keep things up-to-date.”
Along with the golden ring, Alistair saw a red ring labeled THE MANDRAKE. He pressed the red ring and a tab shot up from the page like an illustration in a pop-up book. It displayed the following text:
The Mandrake is a cipher with hummingbird bones. It can take a few different forms. The best way to identify it is to spot the horseshoe-shaped blue mark behind its ear. Its weakness is blood, but no one has ever managed to get blood on it. Do not trust the Mandrake. Do not attempt to capture the Mandrake unless you are experienced and prepared.
Alistair pressed the red ring again and the tab receded. “These tubes. Hadrian said one led to the Ambit of Ciphers. Was that the only way there?”
Chip shook his head. “If Hadrian was telling the truth—which, who are we kidding, is a gamble—then it may have been the quickest way. But if that means having to go toe-to-toe with the Mandrake, then the better bet has always been to take the long route.”
“How long is that?”
Chip picked up the atlas and thumbed the pages like he was cycling through a flip book. “Depends,” he said. “If you know what you’re doing, it might take two years.”
“What?”
Chip closed the atlas. “Not that long, in the grand scheme.”
The book was thicker than the heftiest dictionary Alistair had ever seen. There were probably thousands of pages in it, thousands of worlds. “So what should I do?”
“Sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Chip said. “As I see it, you’ve got two options. You can try to do what you’ve already been doing. You can journey to the Ambit of Ciphers and you can battle through the monsters until you get to the Whisper. Then you can battle him, and if you beat him, maybe you’ll find out what happened to your friend.”
“Sounds … difficult.”
“Sure does,” Chip said. “But it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Actually, I think you have a better shot than anyone. Even better than Polly, who, if I had to guess, has failed in her mission.”
“What’s my other option?”
“Find your friend’s world, add it to our maps, study it. If there’s a cipher there, bring that baby to us.”
“You don’t sound very excited by that option,” Alistair said.
“It isn’t sexy, but it has potential,” Chip said. “Dot’s got a theory, actually. She doesn’t think we have to look far for the missing daydreamers. She thinks they’re still embedded in their worlds.”
“Embedded?”
“All the stuff that daydreamers create—you know, landscapes, figments, machines, all of that—it all comes from their minds, right? Those things were once a part of them, like bits of dry skin that flake off.”
“Fiona told me something similar once.”
“Well, Dot thinks if you can extract the, let’s say, Fiona-ness from Fiona’s world, then you can bring Fiona back.”
“Sounds even more difficult.”
“Maybe not,” Chip said. “Dot’s actually made some progress. You see, there are still a bunch of figments on this space station, and she’s been running experiments on them. She’s learned a lot about the daydreamer who created this place. Even might have conjured … well, life.”
Chip reached beneath the front of his shirt and pulled out the thin chain of a silver necklace. A cylindrical and clear pendant hung from the chain. In the middle of the pendant, there was a tiny glowing orb, no bigger than a pea.
“What’s that?” Alistair asked.
“That’s life,” Chip said. “Beginnings of it, at least. Dot mixed bits of figments and baked ’em up in a lab with centrifuges and all that. I’m serving as an incubator for the time being, on account of my … well … Being chubby makes me a good insulator.”
As Chip slipped the pendant back beneath his shirt, Alistair asked, “What type of life is it?”
“Daydreamer,” Chip said, giving his chest a gentle pat. “The kid who created this place, actually. We’re trying a good ol’-fashioned resurrection.”
“And it’s worked?”
Chip held up crossed fingers. “Three hundredth time’s the charm? Seriously, though, we haven’t gotten past this stage yet, but getting to this stage is a big honkin’ deal.”
Ever since Fiona had told him about it, Alistair couldn’t shake the image: a pen entering an ear, a pen filling up with sparkling liquid. “What about the soul?” Alistair asked. “Doesn’t the Whisper steal their souls? With his pen?”
“What’s a soul?”
“Well, a soul is … a person’s essence … a person’s story … a…”
“It’s not a trick question,” Chip said. “Because I really wonder. I’ve asked Dot basically the same thing. Even if we do get this little orb to grow arms and legs and all that, will it be anything more than a big old hunk of flesh? Will it be an actual human being with feelings and all that? Dot thinks it will be.”
There was another, more recent image that Alistair couldn’t shake: Dot typing on her typewriter, her suspicious gaze never retreating from Alistair’s face. “She doesn’t like me, does she?”
“Dot doesn’t like anyone,” Chip said. “Don’t take it personally. She’s stubborn. Hard to convince. That’s actually why I wanted to catch you before she wakes up. We discussed things after you went to bed. She thinks you’re hiding something from us.”
“I’m—”
“And I agree with her,” Chip said. “But only on that front. Here’s the difference between her and me. She wants to keep you here longer. To study you. Find out what you know. I want to send you out, because I sense something in you. I think you’ve got the skills to do what has to be done.”
“What … has to be done?” Alistair asked.
“Even if we could resurrect your friend, we may never be able to keep up with all the new daydreamers we’re losing. This will keep going on and on and on. Isn’t it obvious what has to be done?”
It was. The Whisper had to be defeated. But what did that mean for Charlie? “I’m not sure you realize where I’m from,” Alistair said.
Chip shrugged. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about that. You know how long we’ve been experimenting and collecting data?”
“A few … years?”
Chip shook his head. “If only. Can you imagine how sick of this I am?”
“Very?”
“Very very. You’re an anomaly, Alistair, one in a billion. You survived the Mandrake. You found us in a single day. That means something. I’m not going to let you become another of Dot’s guinea pigs.” Chip pushed the book of maps toward Alistair. “You should take this.”
“Won’t you need it?” Alistair asked.
Chip waved him off. “We have tons of them. The daydreamer who created this place also made the ink that powers the books and a printing press gadget that reproduces them. When we write in one book, the same thing magically appears in hundreds of other books. So don’t worry. We’re fully stocked.”
Alistair picked the book up. It was surprisingly light, given its size. “So I’m supposed to go to the Ambit of Ciphers?”
“You’re supposed to do whatever it is you’ve been doing,” Chip said. “Trust your instincts. I think fate is on your side.”
A hilarious notion. For Alistair, the opposite was clearly true. On the walls of the lounge, the four black-and-white movies continued to play. Cowboys and Indians. A heroic dog. Gangsters. Teenagers in love.