Since no one had yet had the courage to venture back to ascertain what had become of their homes, for the time being the six companions and the hummeybees had the town completely to themselves. The hummeybees had discovered a delightfully well-stocked garden in the center of town and were busily buzzing from blossom to blossom before settling into the nearby treetops for the night, while the people, after helping themselves to the stores of an equally well-stocked kitchen, were lounging at their ease in front of their unwitting host's fireplace.
"So," Peyr laughingly finished his account of the day's events, "once Timi released all restraints on her perilous charm, the Figments had no choice but to do exactly as they were bid and take themselves back home."
"Their tails between their legs," joked Mischa. "At least those that had tails."
"And you're telling us that these abilities were in Timi before she ever dreamed the Figment?" questioned Gyfree.
"I think they had to be," Timi herself admitted softly. "Now that I look back at myself honestly, I always seemed to have the talent of drawing people to me. I think it frightened me, frightened me so much that I went out of my way to go unnoticed, to try to push people away from me, to convince myself that I was somehow less than what I was. Then when I dreamed the Figment, I was less." A flush rose in her cheeks, and the old fear shone in her eyes. "But I will also admit that any power I might have possessed before I dreamed my Figment was nothing compared to the power I possess now that I have reabsorbed him. I dreamed him far, far more powerful than I had ever been, and now all that increased power is inside me. I even have powers and abilities that I never had before, simply because I dreamed those things as part of him. Just as the power of your Figments is now within the two of you."
Peyr gave Timi a reassuring squeeze, and smiled as she turned her eyes in his direction. "You've already proven that you can be trusted with those powers."
"And us?" queried Gyfree. "Do the rest of you still trust Drew and me?"
"Trust really shouldn't be an issue here," stated Peyr. "Whatever powers you've gained should be well within your ability to control."
"What makes you so sure?" persisted Gyfree.
"You both already had so much power," Timi replied, "what difference can the power added by your Figments really make? And I for one believe that you two will always use whatever powers you possess for the best of this world. Despite, Gyfree, what you inadvertently did to me when you turned me into a Dreamer."
"Which, you will note, ended up being of great benefit to this world," Peyr interjected dryly.
"It certainly saved our lives," Sevor declared, pulling Mischa close as the memory of the horde of Figments flashed through his eyes.
"The one thing I still don't understand," Timi commented after a lengthy and thoughtful pause, her brow creasing in a delicate frown, "is what happened to the Source. What happened to your Figments is easy to understand—"
"At least for you," irrepressibly interrupted Mischa.
Timi glared at the other woman but continued on as if she had never been cut off. "But I'm still not sure how sticking your hands into the Source made it disappear."
"To tell the truth, neither am I," Gyfree admitted.
Staring drowsily, but not dreamily, into the flames that tamely crackled and flickered in the fireplace, Drew thought of the fire that glowed deep within her, and of all the things she had seen in the light of those wild flames. She had learned much, had even learned much about herself, but there were still things she didn't understand, things that hovered in shadow, things she was still trying to grasp. "It's hard to explain," she murmured, trying through words to find understanding not just for the others, but for herself, "but although there was something about the Source that made me think at first of a giant wound that needed healing, I somehow knew there was more to it than that. The closer I came to it, the more it seemed like a door that had been opened so quickly and violently that it had been torn off its hinges, a door that could not be repaired until someone with the correct tools came along. A door that desperately needed to be repaired." Drew shook her head, as if the ideas she was grasping had jumbled her thoughts. "Yet it was also more than just a damaged door, for it seemed not so much as if the Barrier had been ripped open there, but as if the Barrier had itself been built around that gaping portal. And somehow I knew that in our hands Gyfree and I finally had the tools to fix it, then close it, and even lock it so it could never be opened again."
"I'm sorry to say this, Drew," Timi sighed, "but the more you explain, the more confused I become. You're not making any sense at all."
"I wouldn't say that," Sevor remarked cryptically.
"Wouldn't say what?" demanded Peyr.
"That she doesn't make sense. Because, in fact, she makes perfect sense," Sevor answered with a mysterious smile.
"Well, if you understand what I'm trying to explain, I wish you'd clarify it for me too!" Drew snapped.
"Be glad to. I guess now that everything's been finished, there's no harm."
Mischa growled playfully, baring her teeth at him. "Now!"
Sevor grinned impudently at Mischa, but then the smile slowly faded and his eyes sought out the fire as if his explanation, like Drew's, could be found in its flames. "When I first met you I told you that I had been dreaming about you for years. I meant it. I was a young man when I first dreamed of Mischa, and Timi didn't enter my dreams until the night Gyfree changed her, but I've witnessed from very early on almost everything important that has happened to Gyfree and Drew. That's how I knew about Drew and the hummeybees, even though she had almost completely forgotten. And how I know things that Gyfree has himself carefully forgotten, assuming he ever understood them at all."
Gyfree leaned forward, the arm he had wrapped around Drew's shoulders pulling her forward as well. "Such as?" he demanded.
Despite the insistence in Gyfree's voice, Sevor's eyes never wavered from the fire, and it was several minutes before he continued. "It's a funny thing about fire," he mused when he finally spoke again. "Sometimes it springs into existence in a single moment, like when a bolt of lightning strikes a dead tree, but other times it takes a number of things to create a fire. Take our fire here for instance. I collected the wood from a shed outside. Mischa piled it in the fireplace. Peyr opened the flue so there would be enough air to sustain the flames. And Drew, in a fashion I'd rather not think about, sparked it to life with a touch of her hand. In other words, it was a group effort, with several of us contributing to the creation of the final product."
"And I thought Drew was confusing," snapped Timi.
"Be patient," Sevor returned, another smile kinking the corners of his lips. "I promise, at some point it will hopefully all make sense."
Peyr quipped, "Let's hope that point is sooner rather than later."
Sevor grimaced, but continued, "There are more worlds in existence than mine, or Drew's old one, or the hummeybees' home, or the one beneath us now. And most of these worlds are like the fire in this fireplace. They were created not by one thing, but by many. They are the products of a collective effort. To be specific, they are the outcome of collective dreams."
Drew gasped, "What are you trying to say?"
"You should have learned by now the power inherent in dreams," Sevor answered softly. "So you shouldn't be so surprised. Dreams that are strong enough create worlds of their own, but at the start these are no more than feeble mists floating somewhere between the void and the solid, waking worlds. To take this a step further, you might say these misty places exist in a universe of dreams that is separate and distinct, but not completely apart, from the universe of the void and the universe of waking. This is the universe visited by Dreamers whenever they dream. And there are places in this universe returned to time and again, places visited by not just one Dreamer but many, places that once created, however tenuously, slowly take on a life of their own. A real life that can move them from outside the universe of dreaming into the universe of waking worlds. These are the worlds created, slowly over time, by the power of collective dreams. Most worlds, whether or not you accept it, were brought into existence as collective dreams."
"But what of the people who live in a world like yours, or this one, or my old one?" Drew questioned.
"When you dream, don't you people your dreams?" responded Sevor. When both Gyfree and Drew silently nodded, he added. "Like the misty places they first occupy, these dream people are insubstantial and vague, but as the world they occupy solidifies, so do they. And when the world slips free from the dream universe, so do the people who only started as wisps of dream themselves."
"Are you saying that the worlds we know are all populated by Figments?" demanded Mischa.
Sevor shook his head. "Remember the hummeybees?" he chided. "If you anchor your dream creations to a real world, they take on a new life different from the existence of a Figment. And some of these onetime Figments even start to dream real dreams themselves. Dreams that over time may contribute to the creation of other new worlds."
"What of my Figment, then?" demanded Timi. "Wasn't he anchored to the same world as the hummeybees?"
"No," answered Sevor with a shake of his head. "He never belonged there, not even in his own mind. Given the time, he might have been able to anchor himself to this world, but fortunately that didn't happen."
Timi questioned, "And if he had?"
"It would have been nearly impossible to expel him. And impossible for you to reabsorb him. Yet his powers over people would have been the same."
"So why don't all Figments become as solid and living as the hummeybees?" asked Peyr. "Or do they, over time?"
"Only if they are connected strongly enough to a dream world that becomes real. Many Figments aren't even linked to any specific dream world, for they are neither dreamed repeatedly in the same dream setting, like Drew's hummeybees, nor dreamed somewhere so decisively that they can't break free. And just as it takes truly strong dreaming to create a Figment in the first place, and even stronger dreaming to connect a Figment to a world, it also takes a lot of truly powerful dreaming before a world can slip from dreaming to waking. Most dream worlds never move beyond the realm of dreams," answered Sevor. "Many are created, only to slowly fade away, just like a fire deprived of fuel. Any Figments brought to existence in these dreams slip into the void. They may easily visit any of the worlds within the dream universe whenever they choose, and the very strongest may even slip into a waking world, but the void is their home, and as long as they live there, they can never be anything other than Figments."
"Yet if that's true," commented Drew, "there should be far more Figments than there are people, and in my old world alone, there are a lot of people."
Sevor's eyes gleamed wickedly. "Figments don't reproduce, remember? People, on the other hand, are quite proficient in that area."
A thoughtful frown settled over Gyfree's face as he observed, "Earlier you said that Figments aren't bound by the same rules that bind people like us. They don't age, and in the normal course of things, they never die. So how do you explain the fact that my Figment had aged, just as I have aged, in the time since I first dreamed her?"
"She chose to age, to change in the same way she could feel you change. Figments don't age naturally, but they are usually able to change at will. There have only been two exceptions to that rule, at least as far as I know," Sevor responded.
"My Figment," stated Drew.
And Timi added, "And mine."
There was a long moment of silence, a long moment when all eyes delved deeply into the fire, and then Gyfree asked, "So what does any of this have to do with me? Or with what Drew and I did to the Source? Isn't that where this explanation started?"
Sevor again nodded. "Remember what I said about the fire? That sometimes creating a fire is a group effort, and sometimes a single thing can bring it into being? Well, it's the same with worlds. Drew dreamed the hummeybees' world into existence without any help at all. And you did the exact same thing."
"Now what are you talking about?" Gyfree demanded.
"This world, of course. This world that has chosen you as its Keeper. This world that has been your home since you were a child. It was never here until you dreamed it into existence."
Every previous silence had been thoughtful, even uneasy, but the silence that followed this announcement was stunned. Then finally, in a voice that would have been faint even for her old self, Timi asked, "So everyone on this world was once just a Figment?"
"Everyone on every other world I know of was once just a Figment," replied Sevor, "or the descendant of a onetime Figment. But you were all a bit different. Most worlds start as dreams, and these dreams are peopled by Figments, and if these worlds and Figments move out of the dream universe, it only happens gradually. Gyfree's dream of this world was so powerful that the world itself never existed as just a dream. This world sprang to life, full life, with people and all, from one powerful dream. Perhaps that is why dreams have so much power here, because this world was created by perhaps the most powerful dream ever dreamed. You, Timi, just like Peyr and Mischa, were born of people who were as living and breathing as no Figment has ever been, because that was what Gyfree dreamed: a real world filled with real people. A world he could escape to. A world that wouldn't hurt him the way his own world did. And just as importantly, a world where there were no dreams other than his own, for already he had seen the power in dreams, and he feared what dreams could do even more than he feared people. In his young mind, everyone had the same powers dreaming that he had. It wasn't in his power to stop his own dreams, but it was in his power to stop all others, so that at least here he would have no dreams to fear other than his own."
"But this world was already here when my Figment chased me here," Gyfree protested. "It was here before I ever knew it existed!"
"It was here because you had already dreamed it here. You dreamed it to be here whenever you needed it, and when you did need it, it was waiting, shining through the void to lead you home."
"So that's what the Source was!" Drew suddenly exclaimed.
Sevor smiled wryly in her direction. "Very good. You've impressed me once again."
"Well, I'm glad you're impressed," snapped Mischa, "but my head is reeling, and I'm feeling quite befuddled. If someone says one more thing that I can't understand, I'm going to scream."
Drew leaned forward despite Gyfree's convulsive grasp and laid a comforting hand on the other woman's shoulder. "I think it's more simple than you realize," she said soothingly. Then, with a quick smile at Sevor, she added, "Just correct me if I'm wrong."
"Certainly," agreed Sevor.
"It's just like the fire again . . ." began Drew.
Mischa groaned, "Please, not the fire again."
"Trust me," comforted Drew. "A fire always has to start with a single spark. Something ignites it with one single flash. However large that fire might grow, it still begins with just that first spark. And that's how Gyfree created this world. It had to start somewhere. Like a fire, every dream has a beginning, a starting place. And for this world, that place was the Source. The place where the dream of this world began. The place where this world itself began. The Source was never a break in the Barrier. It was where Gyfree began his dream, and then began his life in the world he had dreamed into reality."
Gyfree disagreed, "It's not just like I decided to show up one day, and here I was. And in fact, the first time I showed up, I was sent away again. Against my will."
"But you hadn't fully dreamed yourself here. You were still sleeping in a bed, away in the other world, so you had to return so you could wrest yourself away completely."
"But I felt myself break through the Barrier," Gyfree persisted.
"But if you created this world, you also created the Barrier around it," insisted Drew. "And I would suspect that you didn't do that until you found yourself pursued to the world that you had dreamed as a safe refuge. You were dreaming the first time you were chased here, so in your dream you created a Barrier to keep your Figment out. But you left a door in the Barrier so you could still get in. You left a door in the very spot the world began for you. Right at the Source."
"Very, very good," murmured Sevor.
Gyfree shook his head, his eyes a puzzle that demanded solving. "It just doesn't make sense to me. Even with everything I've seen and experienced, this world is far too alive to simply be one of my dreams. Especially since I would have had to dream it while I was still in a world where dreams are severely limited in power."
"Where your dream of this world started is irrelevant; where it ended is all that matters. Dreams in your old world are limited, but only within that world itself," Sevor informed him, "and only because most of them don't have the power to take hold and stay once they have been realized. That has nothing to do with their power in realms in which dreams can take hold, especially when dreams originate from a Dreamer as powerful as you."
"Why is our old world so limited?" questioned Drew. "Why are dreams there so weak?"
"Because that is how it was dreamed into existence. Yet there are many worlds out there, many worlds besides this one, where dreams don't immediately vanish into the dream world or the void, where dreams are part of reality, where dreams can shape reality. Worlds like the hummeybees'; even worlds like mine. After all, Drew did dream a road into my world. The power of dreams may be strongest here, but their power has never been limited to just this one world. Even in your old world there are dreams that cling, dreams that stay like ghosts to haunt the waking. These dreams might not be as powerful as they could be here, but they are not completely without power either."
"What are you trying to say now?" demanded Mischa.
Sevor's smile was even more wry than usual. "That Gyfree and Drew can dream their way into more worlds than just this one if they ever choose to, and change more worlds as well. They are only limited by whatever limits they set themselves in their own dreams."
"This is going way beyond me," complained Gyfree. "I can't accept that I created this world, and now you're trying to claim that there are no limits to what Drew and I could do."
Sevor shook his head. "There are always limits. Look around you, and you will see that this world is everything you dreamed it to be, but that your dream was controlled by definite limits."
Another piece of the puzzle clicked together in Drew's eyes. Looking up into his face she insisted, "If you really think about it, Gyfree, think about it as if it has nothing to do with you, you'll see there are so many strange things about this world that make sense only if you understand that they sprang originally from a dream."
"Such as?"
"This storybook town, to begin with. It reminded me of an illustration in a picture book from the moment I set eyes on it. If you dreamed it, you would have dreamed it as an ideal, and the only ideal you could have envisioned as a child would have been from a favorite movie or a treasured book. I doubt, from all you've hinted, that your childhood held many movies or even television shows."
"But there was a book," Gyfree conceded. "It was the one thing that was mine, the one thing I cherished. The one thing in my life that felt real and permanent."
"And then there are those other houses, the ones nearest the Barrier," Drew pressed. "The ones farthest from where your dream first took shape. The ones that had such an unpleasant effect on both of us. They looked just like the average house I grew up in, the average house that seemed to cover the part of the world I grew up in. If you ever lived in such a house, however fleetingly, you could have easily dreamed it and its duplicates into this world."
"I seem to remember a house or two. Maybe even more, although what I remember most was a large barren room full of children. But they all seem distant and unreal. Not like the pictures I recall from my book."
"Isn't distant and unreal a good way to describe how those houses still feel, at least to Dreamers like us? People who are sensitive to the peculiarities of things that spring from a dream? Is there anyone or anything other than a Dreamer who could create such houses, and make them feel that way?"
"But why would I dream something like those houses instead of more like the ones here, in this town?" Gyfree questioned.
"Haven't you ever had something unexpected slip into a dream?" Drew questioned. "It's like me and the hummeybees again. When Sevor first told me that I had dreamed their world as a refuge, I couldn't understand how such frightening creatures could have ever been a part of such a dream. Yet when I thought about it, I realized that, of all the hiding places I ever dreamed, only one never posed a threat of its own." Color flooded her cheeks as she thought of her hidden room beneath the stairs, and as sudden light flared in his eyes, she knew that his thoughts had followed hers as unerringly as he had always followed her himself. Leaning forward, the color in her cheeks even brighter, she continued, "I guess it wasn't in my nature to dream a perfect world, and it probably wasn't in your nature either. Just because your dream started as something desirable doesn't mean it would continue that way until the end. You began with a dream that was special to you, and then the dream turned and you found yourself in a place that was hauntingly familiar and uncomfortable, and then it stretched away into empty land, the sort of land that always springs up in my dreams when I'm feeling helpless and lost, and then the dream ended. At the edges of this dream you later erected a Barrier in fear of what nightmares might spill into your world, but where the dream started, at the Source, you left a perfect town against the Barrier itself because that was where you had first dreamed it into being. But even despite the success of your dream, you still were afraid to close the one opening in the Barrier, because at the time you thought this world was nothing more than just another dream, and that it could still transform into a nightmare like dreams often do. You may have dreamed your fears away over time, but you also dreamed away your memory of what the Source truly was. But you didn't dream the truth completely away, for the truth is still there, hidden in the Source's name. A source, after all, is where something begins, and not an exit as you always claimed yours to be."
"Very, very, very good," breathed Sevor, his eyes finally as wide with surprise as everyone else's.
"So if the Source was really just a door to this world, what happened to it today?" Peyr inquired after another uneasy pause. "And why have Dreamers always slipped through the Barrier itself instead? After all, the Source was the one place that could always be relied upon to take Dreamers back to their own world. How could it have ever been the way in when it has always been the surest way out?"
"That's a lot of questions all at once," Sevor responded with a laugh, "but I'll do my best to answer them all. The Source was a door, just as Drew surmised earlier, but something strange happened after Gyfree tore through it so violently, and after he and the Keeper had thrust his Figment back through. Despite the fact that he had finally gained his dream world, Gyfree never even thought of trying to close that gaping door. Because his earlier life experiences had indeed made him distrustful, he wanted it to stay open in case he ever needed to escape this world too. Yet his Figment was still there, on the other side, held at bay by the Barrier he had dreamed to keep her out, but quite capable of slipping back in through that open door. He wanted that door open, but at the same time, he would only be safe if it was closed. So he dreamed that it led outward only, led irresistibly out of this world. And from that moment on, the Source always provided a sure way out, but only someone or something extraordinarily powerful could force a way in."
"Such as my Figment and his army," stated Drew.
"Right. Since the Source was the one open place in the Barrier, it was the easiest to enter, but since Gyfree had dreamed it leading inexorably away, it was the most difficult to move beyond. It took the strength of Drew's Figment, combined with the strength of his immense army, to move beyond the threshold of that door."
"You haven't really answered all my questions. What about the weakness of the Barrier itself?" Peyr interjected.
"That's right," added Mischa. "If Gyfree had the power to dream this world into existence, why couldn't he dream of a more substantial Barrier? A Barrier capable of keeping more than just his own Figment out?"
"Several reasons. First, once a world slips from dreaming to waking and becomes, for lack of a better word, real, it is no longer limited by the dream or dreams that brought it into existence. Just as Figments change when they become bound to a world, so do the worlds to which they are bound. And something like a Barrier can, and in fact will, change over time."
"And second?" wondered Timi.
"The same reason you are what you are," Sevor replied enigmatically.
Timi drawled, "A clearer explanation would be appreciated."
"This world was safe for Gyfree, but it was lonely. That was why, in a moment of weakness, he changed you with a single dream. And it's why he dreamed a Barrier that an occasional Dreamer could slip through. To be exact, an occasional Dreamer from a specific world. You see, without thinking about it, he was waiting, but he wasn't waiting for just anyone. He was waiting for Drew, and he needed to make sure she had a way to get in when she arrived."
"Are you saying he was somehow expecting Drew from the very beginning?" questioned Mischa, eyes wide and expression stunned. "Expecting her from the time he was just a little boy?"
"Yes," answered Sevor. "He could feel her shortly after he arrived here, could actually feel her from the moment she was born, could feel her long before he was old enough for his dreams of her to even take shape. Without truly understanding what he was feeling, or what the future would bring, he dreamed that the Barrier would be weak enough to someday let her in, yet strong enough to afford her whatever protection it could. And that's why, once she was here, her Figment couldn't find her, at least at first. The Barrier was shielding her because that was one of the most important things it had been dreamed to do."
Gyfree's arm tightened around Drew with a strength that stole her breath. But before she could protest, Peyr remarked, "Well, you've managed to answer all of my questions except for the first one I asked. The same question that started this whole thing. What exactly happened to the Source today?"
"Maybe I can answer that now," Gyfree murmured, his earliest dreams flitting through his eyes with his most recent ones. "If the Source was a door, it really was a door torn off its hinges. And where that door had been, there was nothing left, nothing to fill the empty space left behind. That's what Drew and I did. We dreamed a new door, gave it form and substance, and then we closed it so that it could never be opened again."
A worried frown settled over Mischa's face. "So what happens to the next strong Dreamer who arrives? We have had to rely on the Source a few times before."
"If a Dreamer is meant to leave, at some point, even if it takes a long time, that Dreamer will leave. But any Dreamer powerful enough to stay will be able to stay," Sevor told her gently.
"How many truly powerful Dreamers can this world survive?" Mischa insisted.
Sevor quirked an eyebrow, but his eyes reflected the concern in hers. "At least two."
"Maybe the Keeper can stop . . ." Mischa blurted before her eyes widened and she turned to Gyfree, consternation darkening her face.
"That's right," Sevor reminded her, "Gyfree is now the Keeper."
"This does get a bit tangled," remarked Peyr. "If this world has a Keeper, it's because Gyfree dreamed a Keeper for this world. Would that be right?"
"Absolutely. Gyfree dreamed a world that had the power to take care of him. A world he could trust even when he could trust no one else. But he needed more than the comfort or care that trees and rocks could supply. So he created a world that was conscious and alive, but that also invested its powers in a single person. A person who could then, along with the world, take care of him."
"So how could Gyfree dream a Keeper for this world, then become that Keeper himself?" Peyr continued.
"I'm not a small boy anymore," Gyfree answered for himself. "I don't want or need to be taken care of. For a long time now, I've wanted to take care of this world and its people. There's no one else I would trust with this task as I trust myself. I have the powers and the desire to keep this world safe."
"So did you choose to become Keeper, or did the land choose you?" Mischa pursued.
"I don't know," admitted Gyfree.
"Does it matter?" asked Timi. "For whatever reason, Gyfree is still as dedicated and as effective a Keeper as this world could have. In the last few days, he has accomplished more than his father could have ever accomplished. We don't need him despite the fact that he's a Dreamer, but because of it. And if he's now the Keeper of the world he created simply because he created it, well, who's better qualified? I've said I trust him, and I meant it. I for one am willing to trust him completely with the well-being of this world."
"And are you willing to trust him even when it comes to Drew? Willing to trust that he will serve the best interests of this world even if that means she cannot stay?" Mischa inquired, her eyes filled with an apology as great as her hidden fears as she looked at Gyfree and Drew.
"If there is a consensus that Drew must leave, then I will leave with her," Gyfree confessed. "I haven't waited all my life for her to appear just so I could watch her disappear. I feel nothing from the land other than its own desire for her to remain, but if you can't trust me in this, I will go with her."
"You would desert this world?" Mischa rasped sharply.
"I don't want to, but I will if that is my only choice. Although with the Source gone, I'm not sure how."
"With a dream," Drew whispered sadly. "You heard Sevor. You know as well as I do now that dreams really can take us anywhere."
Timi exclaimed, "This is absurd! Since her arrival, Drew has done as much to help this world as Gyfree has. From all I've seen, Gyfree needs her so he can be the best possible Keeper, and this world needs her because Gyfree alone may no longer be enough. This world is changing. It has been for some time. Didn't you hear what Sevor told us? Once a world has been truly established, it will grow and change just as we do. And just as we do, a world can die. Somehow I know, that for all the dangers behind us, there are still dangers ahead. And I would rather face them with Gyfree and Drew than alone."
Her own eyes shadowed by the dreams that still haunted her, Drew murmured, "I don't blame Mischa. I did bring an army of Figments on my trail. And I opened up the way for Gyfree's Figment to finally break through."
An ominous stillness followed, and the only sound was the snarling of the fire, a snarling that echoed deep within Drew. Then out of the stillness Mischa's voice finally crackled, "There were Dreamers who came before you, and many have been followed by Figments. You may have been the strongest, but not all have been weak, and not all of the Figments have been easy to expel. The fact that you were followed no longer matters, for the things that followed you have been defeated or expelled. What matters now is what effect you would have on this world if you stayed. What matters is whether there would be more harm in your staying than there would be in your leaving."
Sevor stated quietly, "I know this isn't my world, and the decision isn't mine. The decision may not even belong to those in this room, but to the rest of the people in this world. But I do feel compelled to say that I have dreamed of worlds other than yours, and of dangers you have yet to face, and I would not be hasty exiling Dreamers with not only the power but also the character of Gyfree and Drew. If it was my world I wouldn't ask them to stay, I'd beg them."
"Isn't this your world now?" Mischa questioned with a shy smile.
"I hope so. In which case, I'm begging for them to stay."
"Me too," Peyr and Timi echoed in unison.
Mischa tore her eyes from Sevor's smiling ones and looked deep into Drew's, so deep that Drew was almost certain that the other woman could see all the dreams that had chased her throughout her life, all the nightmares that had somehow herded her here. "Well, Dreamer," she murmured, "what are your dreams now?"
"To stay in the first place that has ever felt real to me, real enough that I don't need to dream of something better, real enough to live for. And to wake up to the man of my dreams even when I'm done dreaming," whispered Drew.
Mischa nodded, but her eyes probed even deeper, to Drew's very core, where a dream of fire, for the moment, peacefully glowed. "There's so much I'm still trying to absorb. So much I'm trying to understand. So just answer me one more question," she requested.
"I will if I can."
"What is a dream, and what is reality?"
Drew smiled, and seeing the birth of a different fire in her eyes, Mischa smiled back. In a voice that made the flames in the fireplace leap high, she replied, "Reality is whatever we dream it to be."
The fire had died down, as all fires denied an endless supply of fuel inevitably must, and the six companions had tactfully split apart to seek their own rooms for the night. Timi and Peyr, then Sevor and Mischa, had disappeared up the stairs, but Gyfree and Drew had lingered behind, his arms wrapped about her waist and his face immersed in her hair as she watched the soft glow of the dying embers. Then as the last of the firelight faded, she twisted in his arms and lifted her face toward his, her lips as warm and inviting as the fire had been, far too warm and inviting to resist. His breath was cool as his mouth plunged down, and her tongue felt like fire, but as their lips parted against each other, her breath heated his just as his tongue cooled hers, until all they shared was a deliciously arousing warmth. When at long last he raised his head, he commented hoarsely, "Time to turn in."
Swinging her up into his arms, he headed toward the stairs, but instead of setting his foot upon the bottom step, he continued on, pausing outside a narrow door nestled beneath the stairs. With a flick of one hand, he flung the door open, and together they peered into the cramped and gloomy space cluttered with mops and brooms. Then a dream brightened their eyes, a dream they had shared and would always share, and the closet before them stretched back farther than their eyes could follow. Unlike the shadowy room Drew had once dreamt alone, this one was well-lit, and instead of the narrow bed that had sheltered her in her lonely dreaming, there was a spacious one stacked with welcoming pillows and thick blankets. Kicking the door closed behind them, Gyfree carried her across the room and laid her gently among the pillows. As she opened her arms to him, he lowered his body slowly over hers, until his entire length pressed against her, his body trembling just as she was trembling. Lips hovering directly above hers, once more waiting to crash down, he whispered, "Except for the room, we're not dreaming this time."
"So what's the difference?" she whispered back, her eyes alight with mischief and desire.
"Let me show you," he answered.
Alone in their secret corner of the void, the watchers still watched. They had watched through the darkness, fangs gnawing anxiously on bone, fingers flexing nervously around heart and lungs, dog and mother waiting for the darkness to pass. And then, when the brittle bone seemed sure to snap, and the quivering heart and lungs sure to collapse, they could once more see through the eyes that had for a time seen through theirs. Before them stood the Dreamers, so small and vulnerable, like children holding hands, and then the Dreamers looked up, pinning them in place, pinning their masters in place, and as they watched through their masters' eyes, they knew they and their masters were the ones as helpless as children, that their masters were once again as vulnerable as they had been in the moment of their creation, and they were grateful that they were the ones simply watching, that they could still hide in the dark where they could not be seen as their masters had been seen, or understood as their masters had been understood, or accepted as they could not have borne being accepted. Their masters had been imprisoned by those dreaming eyes, but they at least were still free.
And still they watched the Dreamers, watched through eyes that were just their own, watched because they could see clearly now that the darkness had receded. They watched, and they listened, and they learned about the world beneath the Dreamers' feet, and they learned about the ways of dreaming. They learned more and saw more than their masters had ever taken the time to learn or see. And still they watched, fangs gently gnawing bone, fingers softly massaging heart and lungs, watched because they had been granted the power to watch, watched because they felt the need to watch, there in their hidden corner of the void.
On they watched, until finally the dog grew restless, and his fangs again grew sharp, and as the woman's fingers pierced his heart and scraped raw his lungs, he growled, "Why are we still watching?"
"We're not," hissed the nightmare mother. "We're planning."