Dream Forever

by Kit Alloway

“What would help is less stimulation,” Will told her. “He needs to be quiet and warm and feel like he’s safe, and then I think there’s a good chance he’ll come out of it. And then you can stuff him full of cookies or pot roast or whatever seems most appropriate.”

  “What happened?” Whim repeated. “We just got him back.”

  They kept talking, but Josh’s mind drifted away. Something inside her head was different, and she kept being drawn back to it, the way her tongue was always drawn to the spot the dentist numbed.

  But her mind was just that: numb.

  She didn’t come back until Will called her name, and then she realized they were alone in the hallway.

  “Do you need to lie down?” Will was asking.

  Josh shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  “You aren’t fine,” Will said firmly. “Josh, you just stared at a wall for ten minutes without speaking. That’s not fine.”

  She felt bad that he was worried, and she could see that he was. But she felt no desire to argue, and somewhere inside she knew that wasn’t normal for her.

  “Saidy said you need to rest,” Will said. “Can you go upstairs and lie down?”

  Josh felt a deep fear at the idea of being alone. “Can I lie down in your room?”

  “Sure.”

  The walk to the second floor took longer than usual, Josh thought. Or was time moving more slowly?

  The guys’ apartment looked strange to her. For the first time, she noticed that it had a sliding glass door to the second-floor wraparound porch. Was that always there? she wondered.

  Will tried to guide her toward his bedroom, but she felt compelled to go into Haley’s room.

  “Josh?” Will asked, following her in.

  She walked past his unmade bed, Mirren’s shoes set neatly against the wall, a dropped steno pad. There, in the catchall on the dresser, just where she’d remembered it, was a photograph.

  Ian had hated the photo, thought the blue backdrop was cheesy and the lights made him look pale. Really, he had just hated the emotion in his eyes. But Josh had loved that photo, because she’d been standing behind the photographer when it was taken. Just before the camera had clicked, she’d mouthed, “I love you,” and the photo had captured all the warmth and affection of Ian’s resulting smile.

  Josh stared at the photograph. She didn’t know why she’d wanted to see it, and she didn’t know if she should feel awkward about gazing at a photo of her ex in front of her current—?—boyfriend.

  “What’s that?” Will asked.

  “Ian,” she said without thinking, but as soon as his name left her lips, the photo changed. Ian’s smile became a mocking smirk, and his green-hazel eyes turned wicked at the corners.

  I’m going to kill you all, he whispered.

  Josh slammed the picture, facedown, on the dresser. She was trembling again, and the numbness returned, like clouds cast before her eyes.

  “Josh,” Will said. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  This time she was whispering, not screaming, but the message was the same.

  “Forget, forget, forget.”

  “Josh,” Will said, more loudly.

  “Forget, forget—”

  “Josh, you’re okay. You’re safe. There’s nothing to remember or forget.”

  “For…”

  She couldn’t even remember what had upset her, or why. Will took her hand and led her into his own bedroom, and she was relieved to be away from whatever it was.

  “Lie down,” Will said, and gently pushed her back on the bed.

  He lay down beside her, and they shared her pillow.

  “Don’t leave if I fall asleep,” she said.

  “I’ll stay.”

  “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  She didn’t know. And she didn’t want to.

  Twenty−nine

  Will sat at his desk and watched Josh toss and turn in his bed. He’d hoped she would sleep, but she couldn’t keep her eyes closed for more than a few minutes. Sometimes she mouthed the word forget, and Will was afraid she didn’t know she was doing it.

  Something very, very bad had happened in the basement.

  Had they seen the future? Had they seen Josh merging the universes? Was that what was so terrifying? Or had it been something worse, something Will couldn’t even fathom? Why had she gone to find that picture of Ian?

  And why had Haley lied to them about seeing Ian?

  Will had known from the moment Josh asked the question. Haley had retreated into silence for so many years that he had no idea how to lie, and he’d broadcast his lie in every way possible. He’d looked down, his voice had risen, and he’d even unconsciously nodded while saying “no.”

  Will hadn’t pushed him, figuring Haley would talk about Ian when he was ready. Now, watching Josh doze and whisper and toss her head back and forth, he wondered if he had made the wrong choice.

  Eventually, Josh sat up and refused to lie down again. The sun had almost set and the room was bathed in blue light, and the shadows seemed to swallow her up. Will sat beside her on the bed, their backs against the wall.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Hungover. I can’t remember what happened.”

  “Maybe it’s better if you don’t try.”

  She leaned into him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. Touching her felt good, even better when she turned so she could snuggle into him and rest her head on his chest.

  “I was thinking about what you said.”

  “When?” Will asked. He was relieved to hear that her voice had lost that frantic, shrieking sound it had had in the basement.

  “In the car.”

  He smiled. “We have our best talks in automobiles.”

  “Yeah.”

  Will stroked her hair. He really did like how long it had gotten, how the locks framed her face. It made her look gentler.

  “I was thinking about how you said you couldn’t keep up with how fast I change. Sometimes … I can’t either. And I keep thinking that we should wait until everything settles down to get back together, but nothing ever seems to settle down for long. There’s always something else coming down the track.”

  Will knew all that, and only too well. He’d spent months thinking about it.

  “So what do we do?” he asked.

  “Well, I see three options.”

  Always the dream walker, he thought fondly, and he tried not to laugh.

  “We can wait and hope for some kind of long-term quiet. We can give up. Or…” Josh glanced up at him, nervously, just for an instant. “We can throw caution to the wind and hope we don’t get hurt again.”

  Will’s heart throbbed, a spasming muscle. He was afraid to push; this possibility felt too delicate. “Which option would you like to take?”

  Suddenly Josh was in motion, up on her knees and turning toward him, forcing his legs down so she could sit on his lap, their faces inches apart. She hesitated, though, before laying her hand on his chest.

  “You’ve probably noticed,” she said, “that I’m not a very cautious person.”

  “I might have picked up on that.”

  “Sometimes I act before I think; sometimes I make really bad choices.”

  “Only sometimes.”

  She smiled then, and all her insecurity seemed to melt away. “But I don’t think I made a bad choice in you.”

  Will let his arms snake around her waist, felt his blood rise to his skin. She was so close. “I completely agree with that.”

  “So maybe we could try again—”

  “Yes.”

  “—as long as you promise not to bail on me when the next storm rolls in.”

  “Josh, when the next storm rolls in, I want to be that calm in the center of it. I want to be your safe place.”

  She touched his face on either side, and despite the quick rise and fall of her chest, Will knew she was still deciding. He’d seen that expression on her fac
e a hundred times in the Dream, just before she decided whether to abort or fight tooth and nail. And just like always, when she made her decision, she straightened her shoulders and nodded to herself.

  And then she kissed him.

  It was like it had always been with them: they started out so slowly, being so careful of one another, afraid of the trust that intimacy required, and then the instant they were sure of each other, they lost all control and Josh’s shirt was on the floor and Will was on top of her, her fingernails biting into his shoulders, her neck arched up for his mouth, his hands lost in her hair, and he was telling her that he loved her because he simply couldn’t hold the words in.

  She cupped his face in her hands. “Say it again.”

  Will couldn’t contain his smile, either. “I love you.”

  He said it again, and again, against her cheek, into her mouth, and then they were kissing hard enough to bruise their lips, and Will’s arms were wrapped all the way around her torso, crushing her against him, and when Whim started shouting that they had to come watch the news, Will was just grateful he had locked his door.

  * * *

  Eventually, she said, “We have to stop. Sorry. I’m not ready.”

  Will nodded, swallowed, tried to convince his body that Josh was right. “You don’t have to be sorry. It’s okay. We shouldn’t rush into anything.”

  “We went too fast before.”

  “I know. It was too much.”

  She was sitting in his lap again, facing him, and they were half-naked and covered in sweat.

  “It’s not that I don’t love you,” she said.

  “What? I know that. I never thought that.”

  They were both breathing hard. After their first encounter with Feodor, they’d slept together the minute they were both healed enough to do so, in what Will now realized had been a frantic, desperate attempt to reassure themselves that they were still alive. It had ended up becoming another thing Josh didn’t know how to talk about, and Will had a feeling that a second pass would yield similar results.

  “We should wait,” he told her. He grabbed her shirt off the floor and handed it to her.

  “This is yours,” she said, and she laughed and helped him put it on. She pulled her own on, but they remained sitting there on his bed, calmer but still unable to stop touching each other, and Will realized Josh had tears in her eyes.

  “Hey,” he said, brushing them away. “It’s fine. There’s no reason to rush.”

  “It’s not that. It’s … Sometimes I have a hard time believing I’m worth loving.”

  “Josh,” he said softly. Her words hurt him. “You are so deserving of love.”

  “The only good thing about me is the dream walking. If whatever I do means that the World doesn’t need dream walkers anymore, what use will I be? I don’t even know who I am if I’m not dream walking.”

  How could he reassure her? Josh didn’t realize how unfailingly loyal she was, how dedicated to her work, how competent she was at so many things, and Will sensed that if he tried to convince her, she would just dismiss him.

  “Take away the dream walking, the whole True Dream Walker thing, the prodigy thing, the athlete thing, the science thing,” he said, “and underneath all that, I still believe you’re someone extraordinary.”

  It was the best he could do, and he knew it wasn’t enough, but there were some things he couldn’t make her believe. She had to choose to believe them for herself.

  “Come here,” he said, and he pulled back the blankets on his bed. Josh climbed beneath them, and they curled up together the way they had after so many of her nightmares.

  “Do you still have nightmares?” he asked.

  “Not the kind you mean. Not often.”

  He was glad to hear she could rest again, but some part of him missed waking up at three a.m. to find her crawling in beside him, all tears and supple warmth.

  “Will,” Josh whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Say it again.”

  He smiled.

  Thirty

  Josh and Will didn’t get up until the next morning. Each time Josh woke, she just burrowed into Will’s chest and went back to sleep. She didn’t want to break the spell they’d cast around each other, and she didn’t want to face her life.

  She was so confused.

  Finally, it was the worries that woke her. She worried that she and Will were setting themselves up to get hurt again, that she was meant to end the World, that she couldn’t trust Feodor, that Peregrine was going to kill her, that Haley had been permanently damaged, that something terrible was coming to get them. She worried and worried, and after an hour she kissed Will’s closed eyes and snuck into the living room.

  Whim was parked on the couch, leaning toward the television with his elbows on his knees. Discarded food containers littered the coffee table.

  He glanced at her and said, “I see you and Will got back together.”

  Josh felt herself blush. “Sorry if we … were loud.”

  “I was referring to the hickey on your neck.”

  “Oh, God, really?”

  While Josh went into the bathroom to look at her neck, Whim called, “A third major tear opened up about six this morning.”

  Suddenly the hickey didn’t seem so important. “A third?” Josh asked. “When were the first two?”

  “I tried to tell you last night, but Will locked his door.”

  God bless him for that, Josh thought as she went back into the living room. She plopped down on the couch and reached for a bag of Cheetos. “Did you sleep at all last night?” she asked, taking in Whim’s red-rimmed eyes and haggard look.

  “Josh,” he said, utterly humorless. “You aren’t listening. The Veil is coming apart. Look.”

  Josh finally looked at the television, and the Cheetos in her hand slipped to the floor.

  Over a city built close to a large body of water, dominated by a giant temple and an enormous bridge, a tear in the Veil stretched a quarter mile above the city and straight down into the ground. The camera cut to cell phone footage of a ghost man with red eyes and fangs tearing down a street on horseback. Another jerky piece of footage showed a purple wind howling around a corner, turning everyone it touched into flowers.

  No, no, no, Josh thought.

  “Where is this?” she asked, her mouth dry.

  “Istanbul. The others are in Vidoño, which is in Venezuela, and Prague. They’ll show them in a minute.” Whim rubbed his eyes. “What’s left of them.”

  Vidoño didn’t appear to have been a large town before the tear, but it was hard to tell because part of it had sunk into the ocean.

  “I don’t understand,” Josh said. “What’s happening? There hasn’t been a cluster of tears like this in seven, eight hundred years.”

  “Josh, there’s never been an event like this. They’re only showing the big tears on TV, but The Daily Walker and DWTV are reporting hundreds of smaller tears. Everywhere. A cruise liner sailed right into one this morning and disappeared.”

  All Josh felt was panic. “What’s the junta saying?”

  “Nothing. They’re doing what they can, but they aren’t prepared for this. No one is. This is way beyond our ability to contain. There’s footage all over YouTube of nightmares in Pittsburgh, vampire-angels attacking people on the streets, cars without drivers running people down. Some kind of plague is spreading in Cabo, and blood-snow is falling in Burlington, Vermont.”

  “Gimme your phone,” Josh said, and Whim handed it over. She dialed Feodor, and she’d never been so relieved to hear him answer. Some part of her had been afraid he was somehow responsible for all this.

  “Are you watching the news?”

  “I am aware of the situation, yes. It’s quite extraordinary.”

  “Meaning what?

  “Meaning I have no explanation for it. Something would appear to have destabilized the Veil on a far larger scale than the phenomena we’ve previously observed.”

&n
bsp; “That’s doesn’t make sense, Feodor.”

  He sounded amused when he said, “I am not claiming that it does.”

  “Could this have been caused by Peregrine staging nightmares?”

  “Only if the nightmares he staged caused enough turmoil to destabilize the Veil.”

  “I’m guessing that’s what he did.”

  Which meant that Peregrine had managed to switch bodies with Snitch, and that he now had complete control over the Dream.

  “I’m going to go in with the VHAG,” Josh told Feodor. “I need you to start building duplicates of it. We don’t have a choice about distributing them now.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand.”

  She woke Will up and told him what was happening, but he didn’t really seem to understand until he saw the news footage. “How many?” he asked.

  “Three huge ones, a hundred smaller ones,” Whim said.

  “But more will open,” Josh warned. She ran a hand through her hair. “We’re looking at a cascade effect. We could … it’s possible we could lose the whole Veil.”

  And then the three universes will merge whether I want them to or not, she added silently.

  Whim got off the couch, stood in front of her, and saluted.

  “Tell me what to do,” he said.

  “What?”

  She’d never seen Whim’s face so serious. “If there’s one person in the three universes who can fix this, I think it’s you. And I can’t sit here and watch it on TV any longer. So use me. Tell me what to do. I’m your soldier, Josh. Give me orders.”

  “I’m not…” she started to say.

  “Yeah,” Whim told her, “you are. You’re the general. Deal with it.”

  She gave up arguing and hugged him, and he hugged her back with unusual strength. “I don’t know if I’m worthy of that kind of faith.”

  “Maybe not,” Whim admitted. “But you deserve that kind of loyalty. Besides, you and Feodor seem to be the only people with any idea of what’s going on.”

  “Thanks.” Josh let him go and felt herself slipping into action mode. “Is everybody here safe? How close is the nearest tear?”

  “DWTV is tracking them. If their map is right, more than a hundred miles.”

  “Then I need you to call Feodor back and—”