The Girl Who Could Not Dream

  “I’m not leaving you here,” Ethan said.

  “I am,” Madison said. “Where’s the exit?”

  They were nearly to the level of the balcony when the door to the pit opened below them. “Hey, what are you kids doing?” a woman shouted.

  Above, from the kitchen, a door swung open, and the man with muscles came through. He was carrying a soda. He dropped it as soon as he saw them. “Stop right there!”

  Sophie, Ethan, Madison, and Monster tumbled onto the balcony. They ran for the cellar doors and burst out onto the lawn. Sophie shouted, “Glitterhoof! Help! Get us out of here!”

  Yelling, the muscle man emerged from the cellar doors after them.

  In the time that they had been in the basement, the sun had set, and the sky had darkened to a deep gray blue. As the pegasus trotted out of the garage, he sparkled in the light of the street lamps. Slowing, Madison gasped.

  “Don’t stop,” Sophie ordered, propelling her forward by the elbow. “Glitterhoof, fly us home!”

  “You are too many for flight,” he declared. Tossing his mane, he turned away.

  “Glitterhoof, please! You can—”

  He lifted his tail in the air—

  —and out flowed a rainbow.

  The rainbow arched into the night sky. As it hit the sky, it paled, nearly translucent—a moonbow. Sophie shot a look back and saw the muscle man had stopped. His mouth hanging open, he was staring at the sparkling pegasus and his night rainbow. Speeding up, Sophie propelled the others toward the moonbow.

  “Climb it,” Glitterhoof ordered.

  Sophie didn’t hesitate. She and Monster herded the others onto the rainbow. It looked pale and thin, but as soon as Sophie touched it, she could see it—the colors as bright as in the dream she’d swallowed. They scrambled on, hands and feet sinking into the glittering colors. It felt cool and wet, like mist, but also soft, as if they were climbing onto a damp pillow. Last, Glitterhoof stepped onto the purple band.

  The man unfroze and began running toward them again. “Stop!”

  “Step lively, little smelly ones,” Glitterhoof said.

  On hands and feet, they all scrambled up the rainbow. As they climbed, the colors dissolved behind them. Reaching them, the man leaped—and grasped at air. “Keep going!” Sophie shouted.

  Clinging to one another, they climbed the night rainbow into the sky.

  SOPHIE LOOKED DOWN—AND WISHED SHE HADN’T. She squeezed her eyes shut as her head spun, and then opened them again. Below, lights from houses twinkled like stars. Above, the real stars shone by the hundreds. She felt sandwiched between two skies, in a narrow strip of nowhere.

  The colors under her feet crept up her legs. Madison was hip-deep in blue. Ethan waded up the orange. And behind them, the rainbow faded into empty air. She couldn’t see Mr. Nightmare’s house anymore. It was blocked by a cloud.

  Monster’s tentacles were wrapped tightly around Sophie’s neck and waist. “I’m sorry, Sophie,” he whispered. “We’ll find a way to save them. I promise.”

  She hugged him back.

  Ahead, Madison scooped up some of the purple. It looked like cotton candy stuck to her hand. “Did he really just poop a rainbow? Seriously, did that just happen? Because I saw it happen.” Her voice was shrill again, as if she was about to burst out laughing or screaming or both.

  Only a few yards of the night rainbow were left before it curved down. Bathed in moonlight, the colors were soft and translucent. Climbing the green band, Sophie tried not to think about what would happen if she fell through. Her feet were buried in emerald-like dust.

  Glitterhoof trotted past them. His horn sparkled in the moonlight. “Isn’t this a glorious way to travel?”

  Monster fluffed his fur. “Not the word I’d pick.”

  “Do not tell me that the ferocious monster is afraid of heights?”

  “I am not afraid of heights,” Monster said. “I simply don’t trust your shiny collection of colorful water droplets. A rainbow is an optical phenomenon, not a mode of transportation.”

  “Why is the only one talking sense the thing with six arms?” Madison said, still shrill.

  “Tentacles,” Monster corrected.

  “That’s even worse.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Ethan told her.

  “I don’t want to ‘get used to it,’” Madison said. “I want to go home. Do you have any idea what it was like, grabbed by that gray thing, shoved in that basement? And when the fights in that horrible sandpit started, those two men tied me up. They didn’t want me to scream for help . . .” Her voice broke. “How did you find me? And why you, with him?” She stopped at the top of the curve. Wind whipped her hair against her cheek. She pushed it back behind her ear. “Also, how do we get down?” She pointed at the spot where the rainbow pierced the clouds and then plummeted toward the earth.

  “Simple.” Glitterhoof came up behind her. “You slide.” Using his horn, he prodded the girl in the middle of her back. She tumbled forward with a scream and slid face first. Ethan sat and slid next.

  Sitting, Sophie wrapped her arms around Monster’s stomach. Before she could think of all the things that could go wrong—or, rather, the one key thing that could go wrong, which would be falling to her death—she pushed off. The wind whistled past her ears and made her eyes tear up. Her clothes fluttered around her.

  The rainbow bumped up, and for an instant, Sophie and Monster were airborne, then they crashed down again and kept sliding, faster and faster. Red, orange, and yellow cradled them. Below, the street grew larger. It seemed to expand, as if it were a balloon that was inflating. She saw her street . . . And there was her house . . . her roof . . . her windows . . . Above the street, the rainbow ended, the colors dangling in the air.

  “Hang on!” Sophie shouted to Monster. She braced herself, and then they flew off the end of the rainbow and landed in a heap with Madison and Ethan behind the bookshop. Twisting, Sophie looked up at the rainbow—it was pale again. If she hadn’t known it was there, she wouldn’t have seen it.

  “Ow,” Monster said. “You’re squishing my tentacles.”

  Glitterhoof stepped off the moonbow and pranced over the tangle of arms and legs. Behind him, the night rainbow vanished completely.

  Squirming out of the pile, Sophie unlocked the back door to the shop and shooed everyone inside. “Quick, before anyone sees! Inside! Now, now, now!”

  Sophie locked the door, then ran to the front and went from window to window pulling the shades shut. Dreamcatchers shook as she bumped into them. Across the store, Monster flipped on the lights.

  Madison shrieked.

  Sophie spun around—but she was only screaming at Monster.

  Madison swallowed the scream. “Sorry. He looks worse in the light.”

  Miffed, Monster ruffled his fur. “So do you.”

  Tossing her hair as if she could erase her scream with attitude, Madison stomped over to the checkout desk. “I’m calling my parents. I want to go home.”

  “Wait, what are you going to tell them?” Sophie intercepted her. “You were abducted by a monster and rescued by a myth?”

  Madison brushed past her. “You can’t stop me.”

  “I don’t want to. I just want you to have a plausible lie. My parents are still in there. And Lucy. You could endanger them if you say something stupid.”

  “I’m not stupid—”

  At the window, Ethan interrupted them. “He followed us.”

  All of them ran to the door, crowding together to see. Sophie looked out between Ethan and Glitterhoof. A blue car with the license plate MISTER N was parked on the street in front of the bookstore. A familiar man stepped out of the driver’s seat and stretched, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He crossed to the back door of the car and opened it. The red-eyed monkey leaped out.

  “And he brought his monsters,” Ethan said.

  “We have to run!” Madison cried.

  “Back door!” Leading the way, Sophie
sprinted through the bookstore. She dodged piles of books. Behind her, she heard the others crash into them, and she thought of the books spilled upstairs—was this what had happened to her parents? Monsters came for them? Lunging past her, Ethan reached the back door first and yanked it open.

  Howling, the flame-eyed monkey threw himself at Ethan. He slammed the door shut, and the monkey thudded into it. Spinning around, Ethan cried, “He’s fast! Now what?”

  “Down!” Sophie commanded.

  At the front of the shop, the door rattled. It was locked, wasn’t it? She heard glass break—the window!—as they ran through the store to the basement door.

  Her hands shaking, Sophie grabbed the book with the key and unlocked the door. “Go! Fast!” Everyone piled through and thundered down the stairs, including Glitterhoof, who had to squeeze his wings against his flanks. Sophie shut the door and locked it, grateful her parents had put locks inside and out.

  A second later, something slammed into the door. It rattled on its hinges. She ran downstairs. Madison was zigzagging back and forth like a bug caught in a jar. Ethan grabbed Sophie’s arm. “Is there another door? A window?”

  She shook her head. There was no way out.

  “Then we have to try to block the door.” Scanning the room, he grabbed a chair and carried it up the stairs. Grateful that he was thinking instead of panicking, Sophie took another chair and followed him. Together, they wedged the chairs up against the door. “It’s not going to hold. We need more.”

  Hurrying back down, Sophie looked for something, anything else, that they could use. All the shelves and cabinets were bolted to the wall. The somnium was too fragile, and the distiller table was too wide.

  “I will block the door with my body,” Glitterhoof announced, “and save you with my life. Your valiant rescue of yonder maiden proves you are worthy of such sacrifice.” He trotted up the stairs.

  Monster followed him. “I’ll help, minus the cheesy monologue.”

  Madison squeezed herself under the distiller table, trying to hide. “It won’t work. They’ll break through. I don’t want to go back! I can’t!”

  Ignoring her, Ethan said, “We need something that will fill the stairs and not budge. Like a cement wall. Or a boulder. Or an elephant. Sophie, can you dream something up?”

  She shook her head, hard. That was crazy! “Last time the man with the mouth—”

  “Pick a different dream.” He ran to the ledger. “Something large. Huge. This!” He tapped a number in the ledger and then ran to the shelf. Scanning it, he found the bottle and shoved it at Sophie.

  “What is it?”

  “Large. Dream it in the stairwell.” He pointed.

  She hesitated for only a fraction of a second. She wasn’t sure it was the best plan, but at least it was a plan. She ran to the stairs. “Get out of the way,” she ordered Glitterhoof and Monster. Remember what you need, she ordered herself. Remember it’s a dream. She had to stay aware and control the dream this time. She didn’t have time to be confused or wander around or mess up in any way.

  The door shook and the hinges creaked. Cracks appeared in the wood as something thudded into it again and again. Sophie pulled the plug out of the bottle and drank it. It tasted like overripe melon. “Wake me if this works—or if he breaks through.”

  Sophie heard harsh cries and felt hot, thick air on her skin. Opening her eyes, she saw green. She was facing a leaf. A large, flat leaf. She looked right and left—enormous leaves were all around her. They even blocked the sky, tinting the light green as it filtered through.

  For a moment, it didn’t seem odd. She felt as if she’d been in this jungle all her life. She breathed in the heavy scent, as intense as fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies . . . And then she remembered: Just a dream.

  She pushed the leaf aside. “Hello? Anyone here?”

  She took a step forward, and the ground crumbled beneath her. Backpedaling, she clutched at the leaf and looked down. She was standing on a cliff. Before her, a waterfall plummeted thousands of feet down a rockface. Cries echoed through the air, and a pterodactyl winged across the cloudless sky.

  Sophie backed away from the edge of the cliff—and into a cool, leathery wall. She looked up, and up, and up, to see a gray turtle-like face on a long neck.

  Dinosaur, her brain helpfully supplied.

  Every instinct said to scream and run, but she forced herself to stand still. “Um, hi. I need help. But maybe . . . uh, smaller help?”

  The dinosaur shifted her weight, and from between her legs, a young dinosaur poked his head out. He still towered over Sophie.

  “Please, I need your help,” Sophie said. “Can you come with me?”

  He lowered his head in a slow nod and blew out his nose. His nostrils flared, and a stench like rotted lettuce rolled over her. She blinked as her eyes burned, and she coughed—then she woke to the sound of shrieking so high and loud that Sophie thought her eardrums were going to burst. She saw only gray.

  Waking from this dream was worse than before. It felt like several long minutes before her brain detangled itself enough to recognize what she was hearing and seeing. Madison was shrieking. And the baby dinosaur was here, in the stairwell, wedged between her and the door. She’d done it!

  Leaping up, Ethan punched the air. “It worked!”

  “Anything else come out?” Sophie asked Monster. She blinked hard, trying to make her vision steady. She felt as if her eyes were covered in cobwebs.

  “Just that,” Monster said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  The dinosaur tried to shift, but he was crammed too firmly between the walls. He filled every available inch, curved into a U shape with the bulk of his body toward the door and his head and tail pointed down the stairs. He craned his neck to look at Sophie. His droopy eyes looked sad.

  “Nice dinosaur,” Sophie said, patting his head. “Good dino.”

  “It looks like an apatosaurus,” Monster said in his professor voice. “An herbivore that lived during the Jurassic period. Not to be confused with the brontosaurus, since those don’t exist. Or more accurately, never existed.” The dinosaur lowered his head and peered into the Dream Shop. “This has to be a young one. An adult would have demolished the house.”

  “Please, don’t try to move,” Sophie told the apatosaurus. “I promise I’ll send you back soon.” He nodded his head slowly, as if he understood her. His whole neck undulated. She guessed he couldn’t talk. Maybe because he was a baby. Or because he was a dinosaur.

  Plaintively, Glitterhoof said, “Could someone make the screaming stop?”

  Crossing to the distiller table, Sophie knelt next to Madison. She patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Gulping in air, Madison quit screaming and said with a strained voice, “Nothing is okay about this. At all. And stop touching me.”

  Sophie retreated.

  Trotting forward, Glitterhoof nosed the dinosaur’s tail. It flopped down the stairs. “It is pleasantly large. I do not think even your enemy can dislodge him. Well done, Sophie.”

  Returning to the stairwell, Sophie called, “Go away! Leave us alone!”

  “Oh no, my dear Betty. Or do you prefer Sophie?” His voice was the same civilized tone as before, with the hint of a British accent, as if he were inviting her to tea. “You’ve stolen something that belongs to me, and I’m afraid I can’t leave without it.”

  “Does he mean me?” Madison said. “I think he means me.” She tucked herself farther under the table, as if she could blend into the shadows.

  “Yes, I mean you, Madison Moore. Or, more specifically, your mind.” Drifting down the stairs, Mr. Nightmare’s voice was like a purr.

  Madison whimpered.

  “And yours, Ethan Sandberg.”

  Ethan froze.

  “Yes, Ethan, you were invited as well. I even sent a friend of mine to escort you. He was most put out when you evaded him.”

  Monster wrapped his tentacles around Sophie’s le
g and bared his teeth. If he’d had laser eyes, they’d be shooting up the stairs. Sophie asked, “Your ‘friend’ wouldn’t happen to be a gray creature who looks like a giraffe?”

  “Indeed, yes. You’ve met him?”

  Sophie didn’t answer. She heard a snarl from upstairs—the flame-eyed monkey—and wondered if they knew she had the gray giraffe caught in the threads of a dreamcatcher.

  “What do you want?” Ethan called.

  “I thought that would be obvious. I want your nightmares. It’s nothing personal, children. Merely business. You have such deliciously vivid nightmares.”

  I was right, Sophie thought. He did kidnap them for their nightmares. Was she right about her parents, too? She must be. He’d need a way to distill their dreams.

  “I do owe Sophie a debt of gratitude for finding you,” he said. “She has an excellent eye for troubled youth. If she hadn’t given you dreamcatchers, I doubt I would have noticed you.”

  Sophie felt herself pale. It’s my fault, she thought. She’d drawn his attention to Madison, Lucy, and Ethan. She glanced down the stairs to see both Madison and Ethan looking at her—Madison with fury in her eyes and Ethan with, oddly, sympathy. She wanted to say she was sorry.

  But Mr. Nightmare wasn’t done. “I’ve found kids like you before, with superb imaginations and unresolved personal or family issues. But they all learn to live with their traumas and outgrow their nightmares, and then begins the tedious process of finding more dreamers. So I’ve hit upon a brilliant solution: Don’t let the nightmares die.”

  “You can’t do that!” Madison shouted.

  “You are mistaken, my dear. I can. Nightmares are my specialty.”

  At the top of the stairs, they heard a thud, thud, thud, as if something was pounding against the door. It creaked and splintered, and then they heard the wood shatter.

  The dinosaur swung his head toward Sophie and let out a low moan like a cow. They can’t get through, Sophie thought. “We’re safe,” she told Madison. “It will be okay.”

  “Safe?” Mr. Nightmare chuckled. “You aren’t safe, my sweet dreamer. I know who you are. I know where you live. I know what you fear.”