“Don’t move, Sophie,” Dad said.
“It’s okay, baby, don’t be scared.” Mom’s face was chalky, as if she’d used powder instead of blush on her cheeks. Her voice sounded unusually shrill.
Sophie didn’t move.
She was lying on the floor. Her head rested against a cabinet, and her feet were stuck in a pile of sponges and mops. She had the open and empty blue bottle in her left hand. Curled against her right side was a furry warmth.
Her mom tightened her grip on the broomstick. “Kenneth, what is it?”
“Some sort of badger,” Dad said.
“It has six tails,” Mom pointed out.
Sophie shifted her head slightly. Her monster was curled up beside her, still snoring, but the cupcake-pink sheets and the rose-wallpapered bedroom were gone. She was home in her parents’ dream shop beneath the bookstore. “They’re tentacles, not tails.”
“Badgers don’t have tentacles,” Dad said.
“Sweetie, you know it’s not a badger,” Mom said to him.
“It looks like a badger,” Dad insisted. He inched closer. The floorboards creaked under his feet. He stopped as the monster gave a whistle-like snort in his sleep.
“It looks nothing like a badger. Sophie, did it hurt you?”
“It’s a he,” Sophie said. “And he’s really very sweet. Can I keep him? Please?” She shifted so she could look at the slumbering dream monster. If you ignored all the tentacles and the sharp teeth and the sheer size of him, he could almost pass for a housecat. Maybe a housecat with an enormous appetite.
“Absolutely not,” Mom said.
“I think it’s a wombat,” Dad said. “Or a wolverine. Some w animal. Sophie, if you can inch away, I’ll spray it with the fire extinguisher, your mother will incapacitate it with the broom, and then we can look up what it is.” His voice was light, but Sophie saw that his hands were shaking. Her parents were scared, and they were trying not to scare her.
Sophie wrapped her arms around the monster. “Don’t hurt him!”
The monster woke up.
Lashing out with his tentacles, he snapped his jaws and snarled. Her parents rushed forward, but Sophie jumped up to block them. “Stop!” She shook her finger at the monster. “You stop too!”
Cringing, the monster whimpered.
“Sophie, what’s in your hand?” Mom was frowning at the blue bottle that Sophie still had clutched in her hand. “Did you . . . Oh, Sophie.”
“I’m sorry!” Sophie stared down at her sneakers, unable to meet her parents’ eyes. They had told her time and again to leave the bottles alone. “It was only a monster-in-the-closet dream.”
Both of her parents were silent.
The monster growled softly and leaned against her ankles. She bent and scratched behind his ears. He bared his teeth at her parents. “Be nice,” she told him. She risked a glance up at them.
Her parents didn’t look angry, but they did look extremely worried. Sophie felt her heart thump faster, and not in the pleasant way that it had within the dream. Her father set down the fire extinguisher. Her mother laid down the broom. “Tell me the dream,” Dad said quietly.
Sophie described the room and how the monster had emerged from the closet. She told them how she’d spoken to him and how they’d fallen asleep. “And that was it,” she said. “It was a nice dream.”
“You made it a nice dream,” Mom said. “I doubt it started out that way. This monster was undoubtedly meant to eat you.”
The monster made a chirping sound, as if to deny he would ever do such a thing, and he pressed closer to Sophie’s ankles. She caught her balance on the counter. He was heavy. “See, he’s sweet!” she said.
Mom sighed. Sophie looked at her hopefully. She knew that sigh. It meant that Mom was about to cave. “Sophie, we won’t hurt your new . . . friend. But we will need you to step away from him so we can turn him back into his dream self. Kenneth, pass me one of those dreamcatchers.”
“No!” Sophie shrieked. She threw her arms around the monster’s neck. “Please, I promise I’ll take care of him. You won’t even know he’s here.”
Her father climbed a stepladder and took down a dreamcatcher. It was a pretty one, a circle of soft wood with a spiderweb-like tangle of string in the center. Charms and crystals hung from the strings, and feathers dangled from the bottom. He handed it to Mom.
The monster shrank back and bared his teeth.
“Give him a chance,” Sophie said. “He doesn’t deserve to be sent away. He’s special. Can’t you see? And he likes me.”
“Sophie, dreams don’t belong in the real world,” Mom said gently. “He shouldn’t be here.” Holding the dreamcatcher, she stepped toward Sophie and the monster.
“But he is!” Sophie cried. “Maybe he’s here for a reason! Maybe he’s supposed to be my friend! I want a friend! You never let me have friends!”
Mom halted. She looked pained, as if Sophie’s words had jabbed her. “That’s not true. You have friends at school.”
“Friends have playdates! Friends don’t keep secrets from each other!”
Her parents exchanged glances.
“And you think this . . . thing will be your friend?” Dad asked. “He’s a monster. He could decide you’re his midnight snack. He could rampage through town. Last thing this town needs is a rampaging monster.” He didn’t say it with much conviction. Sophie sensed she might be winning.
Sophie squatted beside the monster. “If you stay, will you be my friend?”
The monster licked her cheek. He then looked directly in her eyes with his wide lemur eyes and said in a gravelly voice, “Yes. I will be an excellent friend for you, Sophie.”
Mom dropped the dreamcatcher. “He talks!”
Sophie patted the monster’s head. “He’s a very clever monster. Please, please let him stay!” The monster lolled his tongue out and tucked his extra tentacles behind him so he looked more like a cat or a stuffed animal than a monster. He turned his wide eyes on Sophie’s parents.
“Oh . . . well . . .” Dad said. “We want you to have friends. Real friends. But . . .”
Mom knelt in front of the monster. “If you mean my daughter any harm, I will personally skin you before shoving you back into a dream. Understood?”
The monster managed to look solemn as he nodded.
Mom fixed her gaze on Sophie. Sophie had never seen her look so serious. “If we keep him—and I said if—you must make three promises to me. One, you will never drink another dream. Two, you will not let anyone see your monster. And three, you will never, ever, ever tell anyone that what you dream can become real.”
Sophie nodded vigorously. She wrapped her arms around her monster’s neck. He wound his tentacles around her waist. One of his tentacles patted her shoulder.
Dad took Sophie’s hand in his. “Repeat the promises.”
“I’ll never drink another dream. I’ll never let anyone see Monster. And I’ll never tell. Can I keep him, please, please, please?”
“There are people out there who might . . .” Dad began.
“Don’t scare her,” Mom said.
“She should be scared,” Dad said. “This is serious. We are taking a risk we might regret, and she must understand the consequences.”
The monster spoke again for a second time. “I will protect her.” He wound his tentacles tighter around her, comfortingly warm.
“Very well.” Mom stood and straightened her skirt. Now that this was resolved, Sophie could tell she was moving on. “We’re having fish for dinner. What do you eat, Monster?”
“Small children,” he said hopefully.
Mom recoiled.
“Joking,” the monster said. “I am telling a joke. I am a funny monster, aren’t I?”
“Hilarious,” Dad said drily.
Monster untangled himself from Sophie and trotted after Mom. “Just a few hamsters would be fine. Or mice. I like mice.”
And that was how Monster came to join Sophie’s fami
ly.
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About the Author
SARAH BETH DURST is the author of award-winning fantasy novels for children, teens, and adults, including The Girl Who Could Not Dream; Drink, Slay, Love; and The Queen of Blood. She has won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature and has been a finalist for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy three times. Sarah lives in Stony Brook, New York, with her husband, children, and ill-mannered cat.
Learn more at www.sarahbethdurst.com
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Sarah Beth Durst, Journey Across the Hidden Islands
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