“Yeah, and you zap all the monsters, and then it’s over,” Madison said. “He’ll be just an ordinary man, and we call the police. It’s brilliant!”
Sophie shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Agreed,” Monster said. “It’s my responsibility to keep her safe, and I can’t fight all the monsters that Mr. Nightmare has, especially if he’s off now dreaming up more.”
Ethan spun in a circle, gesturing at the remaining bottles. “Then Sophie should dream up our own!”
Sophie held up her hands. “You want me to raise a dream army?”
Ethan nodded. “Sneak behind him with monsters of our own. How about more dinosaurs?” He raced over to the ledger.
Madison snorted. “You want to cross town with dinosaurs? Exactly how far do you think we’ll get before everyone notices and stops us?” Good point, Sophie thought, especially given the curfew. The streets were being watched, and dinosaurs weren’t inconspicuous at the best of times. Madison continued. “What we need are ninjas.”
“Yes! Ninjas!” Ethan said. “Even better: ninja monsters with built-in throwing stars.”
A tendril of hope began to sneak into Sophie. She did have the same power that Mr. Nightmare had, and she had a shop full of bottled dreams. “Fine, I’ll do it, but we need to find someplace safe to hide you two.”
Ethan shook his head. “We’re safest with you.”
“Basketball Boy is right,” Madison said. “You’re the Dream Girl.”
Softly Monster said, “Sophie, you have to accept they’re part of this now. We’re all in it together.” He laid a soft tentacle on her cheek. “Until Mr. Nightmare is stopped, they won’t ever be safe.”
“But . . .” But surely they hated her, or at least distrusted her. She wasn’t like them. She didn’t have dreams. She was a freak, as Madison said. She belonged on her own.
Glitterhoof trotted forward. He laid his head on her shoulder as if to comfort her. “Sophie, you must trust them. Trust will breed friendship, which will breed kindness, which may save you all. Friendship will be your strength. Men like Mr. Nightmare know nothing of it.”
Rolling his eyes, Monster snorted. “Clearly, the glitter pony has watched too much TV. Still, the girl is right, and the boy has decent ideas.”
Glitterhoof nudged her toward the shelves of dream bottles. Monster jumped up onto the counter next to the ledger. Sophie took a deep breath. “I’ll have to work with whatever dreams we have left,” she said.
Flipping through the ledger, Monster said, “He wiped out our entire collection of things with teeth and claws, and who knows what we lost to that thing with the vacuum mouth.”
“How about this one?” Ethan picked up a bottle that swirled with sparkling blue liquid. It sloshed as he waved it from side to side.
Monster unfirmed a tentacle and plucked the bottle out of his hands. “Those are fragile.”
Checking the number, Sophie compared it to the ledger. It was labeled Forest variant, lots of fauna and waterfowl. “It has animals,” she said. Some animals were dangerous enough to fight monsters, or at least distract them. “Let’s view it.” Taking the bottle, she carried it over to the somnium. She dumped it in the top and put the bottle underneath to catch the dream when it finished. Madison and Ethan crowded next to her to watch.
“What are we looking at?” Madison asked.
“Just wait,” Monster told her.
Images swirled in the mist as the sparkling blue dripped through the tube.
“Whoa,” Ethan breathed.
An idyllic forest formed in the middle of the mist. Birds swooped through the air. A man in a suit and a woman with a parasol were having a picnic on the grass, and a rubber duck floated through the air past them, squeaking as it flew. And then without any transition, the man and woman were in a boat in the middle of a lake—the picnic was gone, and a baby moose stood by the shore of the lake. Rubber ducks flew in V formation overhead.
“Well, this makes no sense,” Madison said.
“And is useless,” Ethan said. “Rubber ducks can’t fight monsters.”
Sophie collected the bottle after the dream filled it again. She stoppered it and put it back on the shelf. She selected another from the same shelf and dumped it into the somnium. It was a different forest, with sunlight filtering through the trees and a stream trickling over rocks. A deer with magnificent antlers pranced across the stream, then paused to take a drink, while birds flew from tree to tree. She also saw a badger, a raccoon, and several rabbits. A few of the rabbits were wearing clothes, including top hats and gowns that stopped at their fluffy tails.
“Not seeing anything that can fight monsters,” Madison said. “These are like the screen savers of dreams.”
Glitterhoof snorted. “You do not have time to leisurely review your options. We’ve wasted enough time in chatter. Drink a dream, and then let’s leave.” He’s right, Sophie thought. Mr. Nightmare could be back any minute. She ran back to the ledger and began flipping through before the dream in the somnium even finished.
“We need friendly monsters,” Ethan said. “Like him.”
“I’m not friendly,” Monster said. “I’m just remarkably self-restrained. Sophie shaped me this way—the dreamer shapes the dream.”
As the forest dream finished, Ethan picked up the bottle and stoppered it. “So if she dreamed something happy but wanted it to fight, would it come out ready to fight?”
Stopping, Sophie glanced at Monster. She knew that he was friendly because she’d dreamed him—she’d changed the dream the minute she entered it. Her parents had told her that was why they let her keep him. And Monster had thought the teacher with the vacuum mouth was frightening outside the dream because he’d terrified her in it.
“Theoretically?” Monster considered it. “Yes, I think it would.”
“Okay, try for a vicious deer.” Ethan tossed her the bottle.
“Fragile!” Sophie cried.
Monster caught the bottle with a tentacle. He handed it to her.
“Better yet,” Madison said, “bring all the animals to life. We can have an army of forest creatures, like a Disney movie gone horribly wrong. If we’re going to go for the crazy route, let’s go all the way.”
“Seriously, it could work,” Ethan said. “Get that deer—it had sharp antlers. And a bear, if you can find one. Or wolves. Badgers. Porcupines.”
“Ninja bunnies,” Madison suggested.
Sophie laughed, in spite of herself, in spite of everything.
“You can do this, Sophie,” Ethan urged.
“He’s right,” Monster said. “Do it, Sophie. Frolic through the forest and think pugnacious thoughts.”
Sitting on the floor, Sophie leaned against the counter. She unstoppered the bottle and drank. She tasted fresh pine on the back of her tongue, and instantly she was in the middle of a forest. Birds chirped overhead. She was in a flouncy dress and carrying a basket. Whistling, she skipped through the trees, and then she stopped—she was supposed to find something. Frowning, she tried to remember what . . .
And then the memory slammed into her so hard that she staggered backward. Animals, she remembered. She was in a dream in order to find fighting animals. Bears, wolves, foxes, raccoons . . . anything with teeth and claws that could help against monsters.
The pine needles crunched under her feet. This dream had a smell. Pine. And flowers, sweet and heavy in the air. The forest extended a few trees in, then blurred into a generic green of “forest.” This dreamer didn’t have a very broad dream. Sophie reached the stream she’d seen in the somnium. Fish skipped over the rocks. She heard branches crack—and a deer trotted out from between the trees.
Seeing Sophie, the buck froze. He did have antlers—ten sharp points. He’s perfect, Sophie thought. She pictured him tossing a monster into the air with those antlers.
Sophie didn’t move. “Hi, I’m Sophie. I need your help saving my parents from a very bad man with a lot of monsters. Can you he
lp protect us?”
He ran.
“Wait, please, come back!”
But he didn’t come back.
She waited, but no other animals appeared. Walking along the path, she peered in between the trees, under the bushes, and up in the branches. She didn’t see anything.
Sagging against a tree, she felt like crying. She was both a freak and a failure. And now Mr. Nightmare was going to come back, and he’d capture all of them . . . Stop it, she told herself. Every morning since September, she’d been climbing on that stupid yellow bus without a single friendly face to sit with. She’d been braving the halls by herself. She’d been facing down the cafeteria. And gym class. She was alone in middle school, life’s shark pit. If she could survive that, she could wrestle this one ridiculous forest dream into helping her.
Pushing away from the tree, Sophie strode through the forest and into a clearing. Stopping, she scanned the view in all directions. If she couldn’t have a vicious deer, maybe she could find a porcupine or a badger or even a bear, like Ethan said. She’d barely begun to look.
She heard a rustle of leaves in one of the bushes at the edge of the clearing and turned her head. A pink bunny with a white cotton-ball tail, wide black eyes, and a bow tie hopped out of the bushes. He sat and looked at her. Several more rabbits joined him. One held a teacup, as if she’d interrupted a tea party. A few of them wore top hats and aprons, as if they’d hopped straight out of a Beatrix Potter story.
“Uh, hi,” Sophie said.
The rabbits stared at her. Even more hopped out of the bushes.
“Can you talk?”
They didn’t answer.
“Guess not,” Sophie said. “Any chance you’ll help me defeat Mr. Nightmare?”
The pink bunny very clearly and very deliberately nodded.
Suddenly, they all vanished. “Hey, where are you? I need your help!” She hurried into the woods down a path, and it bucked and bent under her feet. She tripped over a clump of moss and sprawled forward, but her hands landed on nothing as the forest dissolved around her. She felt as though she was being pulled apart. She tried to cling to the images—she couldn’t leave yet! She hadn’t found her army! But her thoughts frayed, and her vision died in darkness.
And she woke.
This time, it hurt to wake, maybe because of the way the dream ended, shredding apart in her mind. She felt as if she were clawing her way through cobwebs. Her brain felt packed with fuzz, and her head throbbed as if her skull were too small. When she opened her eyes, Ethan and Madison were both staring down at her. Monster was perched on the counter by the ledger. Slowly, the pain in her head faded.
“Really, Sophie?” Monster said. “Bunnies?”
Pushing herself up to sitting, Sophie looked around the Dream Shop. It was filled with bunnies. Dozens of bunnies. The closest bunny—the pink one with the bow tie—stopped and rose onto his hind legs. “We might have to fight monsters. Can you do it?” Sophie asked.
The bunny twitched his nose. And then he launched himself at a chair leg. He dug his teeth into the wood and kicked with his hind legs so hard that the chair shook. Sophie, Madison, and Ethan scrambled back as the other rabbits flew at the chair. They attacked it with kicks and bites until the chair collapsed beneath them, gnawed and pounded apart.
Calm again, the pink bunny hopped back to Sophie, and then drew himself up onto his hind legs and saluted with one of his front paws. The other rabbits also rose onto their hind legs and saluted in unison.
“ALL THIS CUTE IS GOING TO MAKE ME SICK,” Monster complained. Several of the rabbits skipped around one another, taking turns sipping from the tiny teacup that one of them held, in a sort of dance around the Maypole without a Maypole. “Did you tell them you’ll send them back into a dream after this is over?”
“I didn’t get to that part,” Sophie said.
“Humph.” Monster raised his tentacles up as the rabbits held paws and danced in a circle around him. “Stop that. Shoo.”
“No one will notice a few extra rabbits,” Ethan said as the pink bunny hopped over his feet. “Except that one. People might notice that one.”
Glitterhoof pranced from hoof to hoof. “We should hurry. Time slips away.”
“My Little Pony is right,” Madison said. “Enough with the bunnies. He could be back any moment now, and we’re fiddling around with rabbits.”
Sophie watched the rabbits dance, and her heart sank. “Sorry. It’s the best I could do.” The attack on the chair was impressive, but they certainly weren’t looking very vicious right now. She wished there were time to try again, though she didn’t want to face that headache. She hadn’t had a headache with the first couple of dreams—she wondered if she’d drunk the wrong type of dream, or too many too quickly.
“Come along, children and furry things,” Glitterhoof said as he trotted up the stairs.
Sophie followed behind. The basement door was bowed out at the hinges and shattered in the middle, leaving a gaping hole. Gashes split the wood in multiple places.
“Wait, what if he’s already here?” Madison asked.
Sophie laid a hand on Monster’s shoulder. “Can you check and see if it’s safe?”
“Stealth is my middle name.” He slunk up the stairs and then paused. “Actually, I don’t have a middle name. Wait here anyway.” He then scampered into the shop.
Waiting on the stairs, Sophie listened as hard as she could. She didn’t hear anything—aside from the soft thumps of the rabbits as they hopped up the stairs. They weren’t a match for monsters. Maybe they could serve as a distraction. It wasn’t a nice thought, but if the monsters were indeed hungry . . . She glanced guiltily at the bunnies.
Monster poked his head around the corner of the doorway. “All clear.”
“Take as many dreamcatchers as you can,” Sophie told Ethan and Madison.
Gathering up dreamcatchers from the windows, Sophie stuffed them into her pockets and then filled her backpack with a bunch more. The others pocketed as many as they could too.
“Ready?” Ethan asked.
She surveyed the shop. Three kids, a winged pony, one monster, and a bunch of fluffy rabbits. It wasn’t much of an army.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Monster said, “We may be little, but we are fierce.”
All the rabbits stopped and looked at her—silently, solemnly, as if awaiting orders. A shiver chased over her skin. There was something in the weight of all their stares. Maybe, just maybe, they’d do all right.
“Okay, anytime now,” Madison said.
Opening the back door, Sophie watched them all file outside. The backyard was dark, the shadows lit only by stray light from Ms. Lee’s windows next door. Crickets chirped.
“Any chance we can fly?” Ethan asked. “It would be harder for them to see us.”
Sophie turned to Glitterhoof. “I know you said three was too many, and now we have the bunnies, too, but you’ve been so brave and strong and . . .” She tried to think of another adjective.
“And sparkly,” Monster supplied.
“And heroic,” Sophie corrected. “Do you think you could try? Please?”
He preened. “But of course. Climb on.”
The three of them climbed onto his back, squeezing together around the wings. Monster clung to the winged unicorn’s mane. The rabbits climbed onto their laps and shoulders. Sophie felt as if she were wearing a fur coat. Several draped themselves over her shoulders and around her neck. Glitterhoof flapped his wings and rose off the ground.
Together, they flew up into the clouds and over the town.
Sophie felt wind in her hair. She tilted her head up and let the wind blow away her fear and doubt. She could do this. Droplets from the clouds sprayed into Sophie’s face as they burst through. She saw the house below them, surrounded by dense clusters of trees. Lights were on inside, casting an amber halo on the lawn. It looked so innocent and ordinary from above; no wonder they’d been fooled. She wondered what was waiting f
or them down there. She hoped her parents were all right.
“Wait!” Ethan shouted.
Glitterhoof braked with his wings. They all lurched forward onto the pegasus’s neck. He flapped, holding them at a steady height. “Ow, what—” Madison began.
“His car!” Ethan pointed at the street below as Mr. Nightmare’s car pulled away from the curb. High above, they watched him drive away from the house and around the curve. The other cars were gone—she guessed the fights were over for the night. “Go now!”
The man with the muscles was still in the backyard. Now she saw him for what he was: a guard. She didn’t see any monsters with him, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, lurking in the empty pool or behind a manicured bush or inside the barbecue grill. Leaning forward, Sophie pointed at him.
“Yes, yes, I do have eyes, you know,” Glitterhoof said. “Bright and beautiful eyes, I might add, fit for captivating princesses.”
Folding his wings, the pegasus dived for the muscle man in the yard. Sophie clung to his back as he flew silently, faster and faster. As if he felt a sudden rush of wind, the muscle man looked up, but it was too late. Glitterhoof slammed into him.
The man flew backward and landed flat. He opened his mouth to shout, and one of the rabbits hopped off of Glitterhoof’s mane onto the man’s face, pulled off his suit coat and top hat, and shoved them into the man’s mouth.
“Nice,” Madison said as she slid off Glitterhoof’s back.
Ethan gave the winged pony a thumbs-up.
All of them dismounted and crept toward the house. Just because Mr. Nightmare was gone, it didn’t mean the house was empty. It would be good if they could get inside unnoticed. “Monster, back door?” Sophie whispered.
Scampering ahead, he ran up to the back door and stuck his tentacles into the lock. In a few seconds, it popped open. The pink rabbit pushed past him and hopped inside, and then a stream of rabbits followed.
Sophie hurried to the door, but Monster stopped her, Ethan, and Madison with a tentacle. “Let the rabbits scout first,” he suggested.