The main floor of the arcade had bright green carpeting and several game stations. There were cars stationed before screens with simulated roads, electric basketball hoops that flashed with color when a basket was made, and several games that involved dancing—some with a partner and some without.
The music from each game blended and blurred into a cacophony.
To the far end, beside a giant machine that popped fresh popcorn and kept it warm, there was a row of tables and a shelf of old board games whose boxes were discolored and held together by bits of tape. They were no match for the intrigue and allure of bright lights and catchy music, and that was precisely why Artem liked them.
The four of them assembled around a table, out of the glow of most of the arcade games, but not at all immune to their noise.
Vien selected one of his favorite games, which of course involved logic and strategy and contemplation, and Artem set about arranging the pieces.
Gwendle rested her chin on her palms and sighed, as though to say she was bored. She didn’t much care for quiet games. She excelled at dancing and sharpshooting virtual discs on one of the arcade screens. But she didn’t voice her displeasure because it was clear that something was troubling Artem.
After the pieces were laid out, Artem finally spoke. His voice was soft, and they all had to strain to hear him over the games.
“Do you ever wonder about the pinks?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Plum asked, setting her pawn on the board. Its shiny plastic reflected the bright lights on the ceiling.
Artem shrugged. He looked uneasy. “I mean, do you ever wonder what they do with our blood and our interviews? Where they go when they leave here.”
“There’s no mystery to that at all. They test our blood to make sure we’re healthy,” Gwendle answered brightly. “There’s nothing strange about it, and the needle barely even hurts.”
“But what is it all for?” Artem pressed. “Why did Dr. Abarrane bring us here?”
Vien’s expression turned thoughtful, then concerned. “Why are you asking about these things?”
“There has to be a purpose, doesn’t there?” Artem said. “We’re the oldest class at Brassmere. What happens when we’re older? Will we work here?”
“I might,” Gwendle said. “I’ve always liked the idea of being a teacher.”
Artem looked to Plum, his eyes pleading. “What about you?” he said. “Do you ever wonder what’s outside? Where the pinks are going when they leave?”
Plum blinked. “It’s dangerous out there, Artem,” she said. “Maybe Dr. Abarrane is preparing us for that. If we’re meant to know, we’ll know.”
“Real-life monsters?” Artem’s tone was cynical. “Is that it?”
“We don’t know what Dr. Abarrane’s plan for us is,” Vien agreed. “But he’ll make sure we know when it’s time.”
Artem slid his piece across the board, and he bowed his head. He didn’t say anything more about it.
CHAPTER 2
Plum, Vien, Artem, and Gwendle had chosen one another. Dr. Abarrane liked to tell them this, and it was true. They had been at Brassmere since they were babies, and possibly had been sharing dreams even then—though there was no way to be certain.
Plum was the first of them who learned to crawl, and she’d made her way to Gwendle in the playroom. Vien was next, followed by Artem. When one of them cried, they all seemed to share in that distress. Every nanny at Brassmere had made a note of it. Over the years, Dr. Abarrane tested the power of their bond. He would assign them dormitories on opposite ends of the academy and make sure they didn’t attend the same lessons. They would go days without communicating, and sometimes even weeks.
It didn’t matter. They always met up again in their dreams. They never needed any guidance or instruction to find one another. It just seemed to happen.
At first, the dreams had been pleasant. Plum remembered this, though it was a fuzzy, faraway sort of memory of swing sets and swimming, sun and laughter.
The first monster had been a shadow that looked like a man in an overcoat and top hat, but who morphed into a dragon when it came close. They had been eight. Plum remembered this because the dream happened on the night of her birthday. It wasn’t her real birthday—she couldn’t know for certain when exactly she’d been born. But it was the anniversary of the day Dr. Abarrane had found her.
They hadn’t been frightened of the dragon at first. Nothing in their young lives had given them cause to be frightened at all. But then the dragon grabbed Artem in its talons and flew away with him.
It had taken what felt like hours to find him, after climbing through mountains as high as the clouds, hiking through shadows as dark as night.
Artem had been horribly frightened. Vien had been thoughtful, Gwendle curious. But Plum had resolved to be stronger. She took to the library that following afternoon and studied every detail about swords so that she might dream up a weapon worthy of slaying the next monster that dared to invade their dreams.
This proved to be useful, because the monsters soon became a regular occurrence.
Tonight, the dream began in a cave, and the cave was unfamiliar.
Plum was the first to arrive, which was typical. Gwendle kept a flashlight under her mattress—contraband—so that she could burrow herself under the blankets and stay up late to sketch. Artem was a fitful sleeper, and it took him the longest to settle into his dream state.
As for Vien, his mind liked to wander. Of the four of them, he was the only one to have solo dreams. He might be flying over burning cities or swimming into the mouth of a whale right about now. One could never be too certain.
Alone in the cave, Plum shivered. She could see her breath, and when she inspected her hands, fine icy lines traced her skin in snowflake shapes. She caught her reflection in a gleaming frozen stalactite and saw that blue circles traced her dark eyes.
She was wearing her school-issue nightshirt—red with the gold gargoyle logo across the stomach, with a hem that stopped midway down her calves.
A coat was too much to hope for in this place, she supposed. Dreaming up frivolous things like clothing was often a challenge. Dreaming up food was a specialty of Gwendle in particular. But Plum often found that she could not conjure the things she needed or wanted, even with the power of her will. She had learned to save her energy for what was most important, like weapons, which she would surely need in almost every dream. Monsters were a common occurrence.
She attempted to untie her braids, hoping her long hair would serve as a scarf. The ribbons wouldn’t come undone, though, and she trudged forward, hugging her chest and rubbing her arms.
The cave was narrow, lit by faintly glimmering bits of purple and blue within the stone. Darkness awaited her at either direction, and as she walked, her bare feet made gentle splashing sounds against the wet earth.
“Gwendle?” she tried. “Artem? Vien?”
A grumble answered her—a low, inhuman creaking sound that could be mistaken for a dying man’s laugh.
The walls began to shake.
Plum spun, rock crumbles falling down around her.
The grumble turned into a hiss. Plum reached over her head and broke the stalactite from the cave’s ceiling. Immediately it transformed into her familiar sword, arched and gleaming. She bent her right knee, assuming her fighting stance.
But no monster emerged. The hiss turned to laughter, and then a voice spoke, clear as any waking sound. “Would you say that Vien is your favorite friend?”
The pink woman’s voice.
Plum clutched her sword tighter, but a cold sweat formed at the nape of her neck.
A dragon, she had been prepared for. Or the rotted, staggering corpses of people she knew in life, freshly emerged from their graves. She knew a great bit about monsters and tricks. She would even have expected the darkness to swell and then burst into millions of bees.
But she had not expected this. Her eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
> Someone was there. She knew it.
The cave continued to shake, until the walls fell away and the ground dropped below Plum’s feet. She was falling, falling.
Sword pointed downward, Plum leaned into the momentum of the drop, landing hard on her feet on the head of some giant, scaled creature. An alligator, she suspected. She jammed her sword between its eyes and it thrashed and roared.
Above her, stars began to emerge in the sky, and the stars were voices, asking questions in the pink woman’s voice.
Blood stained her sword and her shoes. She was breathing hard, and her heart was racing.
The giant alligator would not die quickly. It thrashed and bucked, trying to throw her into the foggy marsh upon which it floated. Plum drove her sword hilt in deeper.
Growls and snapping jaws told her that this was not the only creature she would have to defeat, though, and before she could react, a set of sharp teeth had snared her ankle and pulled her underwater.
Pay attention, Plum told herself as the air escaped her. It’s only a dream. Just a dream.
Her lungs burned in protest. It was impossible to see at first, and then hazy swirls of red floated up before her eyes. She tasted the copper of blood. Her blood. The creature still had her ankle, and it was pulling her farther and farther from the surface.
Frantically she felt along her hips, hoping for some sort of weapon to appear in its hilt. There was always a weapon hidden somewhere. But all she felt was the fabric of her nightshirt.
She fumbled in the darkness, feeling the monstrous alligator’s face, searching for a weapon. Come on, come on. There had to be something she could fight with. But there was nothing. Her head was starting to feel light, her body numb. She hoped that she was waking, but knew how unlikely it was for a dream to end so soon.
Pay attention, she told herself again. There had to be a way out of this.
Something reached through the murk and the blood and pulled at her. They were hands, she realized, trying to free her. The monster, though, would not relent. It clamped on her leg until she could feel its teeth grating against bone.
Plum was too weak to scream. All she could think about was air. A great, open blue sky filled with it. When she came out of this, she would never ever take a breath for granted again.
Something darted past her. A cloud of black hair, then the flash of a jagged knife. Vien.
More blood bloomed like wildflowers in the water, but this time the blood did not belong to Plum, and suddenly she was free. Someone was pulling her up, up, up.
Plum broke the surface with a gasp, and it felt as though her chest were ripping apart.
“It’s okay.” Gwendle’s voice. “I’ve got you.”
Gwendle had her arms burrowed under Plum’s, and Plum sagged gratefully against her, taking a moment to collect herself.
“Thank you,” she said at last.
Vien bobbed to the surface next, spluttering, his face dripping with pink bloody water. He paddled his way to Plum. The divot was prominent between his eyebrows as he studied her. “Are you all right?”
Plum’s teeth were chattering. “My leg should heal itself in a moment.”
“Moment” was their only measure of time when they were dreaming. Minutes and seconds and hours and even years all held their own meaning in dreams and were not to be trusted.
Gwendle whistled sharply, and something swam toward them in the waters. It was not the drab green of the strange alligators, but rather a bright teal blue, like the paint in the girls’ bathroom at Brassmere.
The creature was gigantic, and it swam under them and then began to surface, acting as a sort of island to protect them.
Plum sat on the creature’s slick back, working the air back into her lungs. Vien fretted over her leg, which was mangled and red.
Gwendle set about the task of charming the creature that had rescued them. “There, there,” she cooed, her voice turning into a little song. “You’re a friend, aren’t you? And you’re so beautiful.” It was some sort of whale that let out the cheerful whinnying of a horse when Gwendle lay on her stomach and petted it. Though she had a talent for throwing knives and possessed bizarre strength in her dream state, Gwendle’s real weapons came in the form of animals. They were drawn to her, and eager to please her whims and fancies. Which was odd, given that animals avoided her when she was awake. The occasional stray cat that was sly enough to slip through the fence would hiss when she approached. Snakes flicked their tongues. Even mosquitoes wouldn’t bother to suck her blood.
But as with many creatures in their dreams, this whale adored Gwendle as she hummed to it. The top of its tail flicked happily, and its lids were heavy as the effects of Gwendle’s calming presence washed over it. It let out a sigh through its flared nostrils that rippled the water’s surface.
“Take us to Artem,” Gwendle said, and the whale began to coast forward.
“Where is Artem?” Plum asked. Vien shared a bunk with him and would have been the last to see him before he fell asleep.
“I thought he fell asleep first,” Vien said. He had torn away his sleeve and was using it to wrap Plum’s wound. “Does this hurt?”
Plum shook her head. Pain was fleeting here. Still, when she looked down at the wound, she saw a dark patch of blood staining the makeshift bandage. Strange that it hadn’t healed yet.
As the blue whale coasted forward, the sky began to shift from starry black to bright pink, and then the soft blue of dawn. It was comforting, the calm and the lull that happened either after something frightening, before something frightening, or in between frightening things.
Plum studied her hips, which were absent their familiar sheaths, wondering why this dream had not equipped her with her usual weapons. “If the alligator had eaten me, I would have woken up,” she said. “Before either of you even got here.”
“It would have been a solo dream,” Gwendle said cheerily. She was patting the whale affectionately. Its massive body thrummed with a soft coo.
Plum puckered her mouth and considered this. What would a solo dream mean? She supposed it would be scary to have to face the monsters alone. Then again, none of the other students at Brassmere seemed afraid of their dreams. Perhaps monsters were less common in solo dreams. Perhaps solo dreams did not teach one to be brave or strong in the physical sense. Perhaps for some they were a place to reflect.
Tilly, a tall girl with dark eyes and freckles who was especially good at archery, had once told Plum that her own dreams were mostly a distorted version of what her day had been like, and what she expected of the days to come. They were often absurd, but rarely anything frightening.
A flock of birds fluttered overhead, and Plum turned her head to look. They were bright purple, with white-speckled wings.
“Artem must be nearby,” Vien said, as the three of them looked up. Artem was always dreaming of things that could fly.
As though Vien’s words made it true, Artem appeared through the haze that swirled over the water. There was an island just ahead of them now, its grass aggressively bright. Artem knelt near the shore, his eyes fixed on something that couldn’t be seen from where they coasted.
“Where have you been?” Gwendle called out. The whale was swimming faster now, bringing them closer. “A giant alligator was eating Plum. We could have used your gills.” Artem didn’t really have gills, but in dreams he could always breathe underwater.
Artem didn’t look up, and as the whale brought them to the water’s edge, Plum’s stomach filled up with dread. She looked to her leg, which had begun to hurt, and which was now bleeding through its bandage.
She was the first to stand, and the first to step onto the island. The grass doubled in height the moment her feet touched it, and continued to grow until it reached her shoulders. Artem, who had just been kneeling right in front of her, was far away now.
Plum heard Vien and Gwendle calling for her, but when she spun around, they were buried somewhere in the tall grass as well.
&nb
sp; “I’m here.” Artem’s voice was a whisper in her ear. “Just ahead.”
She moved forward, her heart beating faster now. Adrenaline made wounds bleed more, and Plum wished she hadn’t learned this in her medicine courses, because now this always happened in her dreams. Her leg left a trail of blood behind her as she went.
There are no animals to hunt us here, she thought, willing it to be so. Sometimes this worked.
She found Artem in a small clearing, knelt over a lump of what appeared to be blankets.
Plum crouched across from him, the bundle lying between them. “What is it?” she asked.
Artem raised his head. In the shadow of the high grass, his face was pale. Dark blue circles ringed his eyes.
“They’re coming for us.” His voice was hollow and strange. “One by one, until they find the one they need.”
“What are you talking about?” Plum’s voice came out a hoarse whisper. Artem seemed in a trance, as though he were asleep even in his dream. “Who’s coming for us?”
In answer, he ripped the blanket away, and when Plum looked at what lay between them, she saw herself. She saw herself still and white, with her arms crossed over her chest. Dead.
CHAPTER 3
Plum awoke with a gasp. Across the room, Gwendle stirred in her bed and then fell silent. The space between their beds felt impossibly vast. A canyon of wooden planks and a throw rug that was fraying at the edges.
The pendulum of the grandfather clock swung steadily, its brass face gleaming in a strip of moonlight.
For a few seconds, Plum didn’t believe that she was awake at all. Dreams could be deceptive sometimes, and she looked for anything out of place. Faces in the shadows, or a metallic gleam to the spider that was dripping from the ceiling on a slender thread. She concentrated hard on these things. When she was awake, she always made a point of studying her surroundings so that she would be able to spot the discrepancies in convincing dreams, and because of this, she was never fooled.