The Dreamway

by Lisa Papademetriou

  “Up to what?”

  “Up to where we’re going.”

  Stella looked about her. They were simply bobbing like a cork in the water. “It’s going to take forever to get anywhere—we’re in the middle of a dream ocean!”

  “It isn’t really a dream ocean,” the mouse corrected. “It’s part of the Dreamway. We’re close to a station. The hub of the Water Line, in fact, and besides . . .” He cleared his throat. “You do have an oar.”

  Stella saw that this was, in fact, correct. Lying across her lap was a wooden oar. She sighed. “All right,” she said at last. “Tell me which way to go.”

  Ocean

  ANYWAY WAS RIGHT—STELLA PADDLED, AND it wasn’t long until they came to a series of tall, dark buildings. The waterway stretched between them, like a street, and Anyway directed Stella between the long-legged edifices that resembled water bugs beneath a cold gray sky. There were lights on in the buildings and curtains at the windows, but Stella didn’t see any people.

  After several turns, they came to a tunnel, and Anyway directed her inside to a dock. She used a sheet to tie up her brass headboard to a cleat on the dock and followed Anyway up a steep ramp. They came out into a large, wide-open space with a domed ceiling made of glass. It looked onto miles of ocean from far below the surface. Light filtered softly through the water, rippling on the gray floor of the station. It reminded Stella of the large tank she had seen at the aquarium two summers before. A cloud of silver fish, each as long as her finger, floated past her on the air inside the station.

  “Breeze fish,” Anyway explained as he watched them for a few moments.

  There were many tunnels with tracks leading out of the station, but Anyway avoided those. Instead, he led Stella toward the information booth.

  He didn’t ask for information, but went around to the back of the booth and pointed to a low door. “Through there,” he said, and then scampered inside.

  The door only came up to Stella’s chest, so she had to duck. She crouched low and hunched forward, feeling the floor descend in a long, low ramp. She went down, down, down, and as she did, the ceiling got higher and higher. A noise came from below that was like the sound of a beehive—the humming of electricity mixed with a metallic rattle. It was only when she came to a metal walkway and looked down that Stella realized they were in a baggage handling area. Acres of conveyor belts stretched out below, lined with crate after crate. Every crate held a single item with no rhyme or reason between them: there was large marble statue, then a single wooden toothpick. Dragonflies flitted among the baggage, landed briefly, and darted off. “Baggage Inspectors,” Anyway explained. “Every piece of baggage has to be ticketed and routed.”

  “Ticketed?”

  “Sleepers need a ticket to ride the Dreamway,” Anyway explained. “When they come in, they’re supposed to declare their baggage and then hand it over. They get a ticket with a destination. The baggage is routed to their dream and shows up there. Baggage is what powers all the lines, light or dark.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Anyway twitched and muttered something about “babysitting” and “history lessons.” Then he cleared his throat and began, “A while back, the Dreamway was split into two sections. Light baggage goes to power the pleasant dreams—daydreams, dreams of flying, you know, dreams of strength. The dark baggage goes to make power for the darker stuff—falling, unprepared for a test, those dreams where your teeth all fall out—”

  “I didn’t know other people had those.”

  “Oh, yes!” Anyway looked surprised. “Nondentura. That’s a very popular stop.”

  “So—nightmares,” Stella pressed.

  “Well, first there are dark dreams, which are more like . . . worries,” Anyway explained. “That’s your mind trying to sort something out. But a Nightmare—that’s something else. They have their own line, the Nightmares. They run on an entirely different system. They have . . . a life of their own.”

  “But if my brother’s on the Nightmare Line, why are we here?”

  “I want to get this paper from your brother’s notebook tested. Once we do, my friend can tell us exactly where he is on the Nightmare Line. Then I can go file my report, and we can go get him.”

  “Uh, we get him first,” Stella corrected. “And then you file a report.”

  Anyway sighed. He darted up Stella’s leg, crawled up her shirt and dove into her pocket, reemerging a moment later, one tiny fist held aloft. “Forward,” he said. “Toward the Receptacles of Image Determination!”

  “Uh, what?”

  “Just those big bins over there—we need the dark one.” The mouse pointed a tiny finger, and Stella saw what he was talking about. Two cargo containers, one black and one white. Stella hurried down several flights of metal stairs as baggage hummed and rolled through its steady roller coaster around and beneath them. They finally reached the ground level and traveled across the floor to where a tangle of belts angled into the enormous dark box.

  A golden glimmer flashed and flickered over the container, now disappearing inside, now darting back out again. It was to this flicker that Anyway called, “Spuddle!” The golden dragonfly stopped in midair, its wings still vibrating. The dragonfly blinked at Anyway and whispered, “Oh, no.” He zipped down to face the mouse, casting nervous glances at Stella.

  “Uh—this area is for authorized personnel only,” Spuddle said quickly. “That is, erm—do you have official clearance for—this?” He looked at Stella.

  She stared back and was surprised to see that this fly was unlike any other she’d seen. His various parts were made of brass. Beneath his wings, Stella noticed cogs turning and gears spinning. Like clockwork, he ticked with every second that passed.

  Stella thought, Time flies, and giggled softly to herself.

  “Shut it, bug,” Anyway snapped. “I’ve come to collect on the favor you owe me.”

  The dragonfly hushed him and looked around nervously, but the conveyor belts hummed on, and none of the other golden flecks paused in their work. “What is it that you need?” he hissed.

  “Test this,” Anyway said, producing the single sheet of paper from Cole’s notebook. “I want to see the final destination listed on it.”

  Spuddle looked horrified. “You’re not supposed to have that! That’s against the regula—”

  “Well, I’m sure Dr. Peavey will be fascinated to hear what happened to a particular silver soup spoon that disappeared from the conveyor belt recently,” Anyway prodded, and the dragonfly hushed him again.

  “All right, all right! Just a moment! Hand it here.” Spuddle took the paper. Then, looking around frantically, he dove toward a particular gray frame. Bins traveled through the frame, and something silver shimmered down on them. The silver shimmer then let out a white pouf of smoke or a black one. If it was white, the bin was sent to the right conveyor system—the one that delivered baggage to the white bin. If the smoke was black, the baggage went to the black bin.

  There was a slender space between two baggage buckets, and Spuddle dove into the gray frame with the paper. He dropped it and then darted away to tap at something that vaguely resembled a computer keyboard. The keys had unfamiliar symbols, most of which looked like parts pulled from a watch. The moment the paper went through the machine, the computer monitor lit up. “That’s odd,” Spuddle said slowly, reading from the screen. “Undisclosed?”

  The routing belt stopped moving. The paper shivered and shook as silver powder rained down. The gray frame rattled, and black smoke and sparks spewed from the system, hailing down on the baggage below. “Eeeep!” Spuddle shouted.

  Anyway’s eyes went wide. “That’s unexpected,” he whispered.

  An alarm screamed, and a voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Inspectors are on their way. Please be prepared to show your paperwork. Inspectors are on their way. Please be prepared to show your paperwork. Inspectors—”

  “What the heck do you think you’re doing?” Spuddle screeched
as he zipped over to them. “What was that thing?”

  “A Chimerath pulled her brother through,” Anyway shouted. “He’s somewhere on the Nightmare Line! Didn’t the machine say where?”

  Spuddle pulled up short. “No,” he said. Then he added, “You have to get out of here.”

  “Not until I find out just what’s going on!” Anyway countered.

  “Are you insane? I could lose my job, and if the Inspectors see that”—he pointed at Stella—“well, I don’t need to tell you what will happen!”

  Anyway hesitated.

  “I think we’d better listen to this fly,” Stella said, aware of how strange the sentence sounded.

  “Dragonfly!” Spuddle snapped. “Follow me!” He darted along the edge of the wall and came to a metal door. “This way, this way!” Spuddle cried as he whooshed to the right, down an arched hallway. “Here! Here!” He zipped into a room, and the other two followed. “Shut the door!”

  The door closed with a thunk. Spuddle ducked behind a lamp shaped like Barney the Dinosaur. The entire room was piled high with strange treasure—a juke box, several old Coca-Cola bottles, clothing of all kinds, several candelabras, a bicycle, floor lamps, a Captain America lunchbox, a guitar, a suit of armor, posters for monster movies, rugs, stuffed animals—more than Stella even had time to take in. “What is this?” she asked.

  “Spuddle, come out from behind that ridiculous lamp, I need to talk to you!” Anyway bellowed. It was really very surprising how loudly he could shout, given that he was a mouse.

  With nervous clicks and twitches, Spuddle darted out from behind the large purple dinosaur. “Yes?” he said brightly.

  “I’ve heard that there have been some irregularities,” Anyway snapped.

  Spuddle hovered in midair. “Irregularities?” His large clockwork eyes blinked and he began to tick faster, like an old-fashioned watch wound too tightly. He let out several nervous hiccups. “I suppose you could say that. We’ve had . . . less baggage than usual. I think some is . . . vanishing?” He let out a nervous hiccup.

  “Is it more than just what the Pirate takes?” Anyway pressed.

  “Yes . . . it seems to be . . . well, to me, though no one else seems to care—” He looked over his shoulder and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Someone is taking the light baggage! It’s uneven, I tell you—I’ve filed report after report, but nobody ever replies!” Spuddle tick-tick-boinged worriedly.

  “Is the baggage usually even?” Stella asked.

  “If anything, there should be slightly more light baggage than dark,” Spuddle said. “But now there’s more and more dark baggage, and it’s more and more powerful—like this thing.” He held up Cole’s paper.

  “Look, Spuddle—her brother is somewhere on the Nightmare Line,” Anyway said.

  “And we’re going to rescue him,” Stella announced.

  Spuddle gasped so loudly that he actually inhaled a feather from the nearby boa, and had to cough and sputter to spit it out. “You’re going to the Nightmare Line?” Spuddle gaped at Anyway.

  “Well, unless we think of another option,” Anyway said quickly.

  Spuddle gasped again, inhaling another feather.

  “Maybe hover somewhere else,” Anyway suggested.

  Hack-hack-hack. “Good idea.” Spuddle perched on an empty green Coke bottle. “This has to be reported directly to Dr. Peavey!”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Anyway agreed.

  “No reports until after we get my brother,” Stella insisted.

  “How can we get your brother when we don’t know where he is? His paper is marked Undisclosed, remember?” Anyway demanded. “Dr. Peavey will know what that means. We need to see him right away!”

  “After the Inspectors leave,” Spuddle put in. “I don’t want to try to explain this to them.”

  “I’m sure they’ll understand,” Stella said. “Won’t they want to help—?”

  “No,” Spuddle replied. “They’re huge and made of steel. They fix things or they smash things. That’s it.”

  “We’ll move on when they’re gone,” Anyway agreed.

  Frustrated tears rose in Stella’s eyes, blurring her vision. As unlikely as it seemed, the mouse and the fly were her only hope of fixing whatever, exactly, had gone wrong. She swallowed and forced herself to breathe. She looked around, desperate to anchor herself to something, to find some meaning that made sense. But it all just looked like junk. “What is this place?”

  “This is something I wanted to show you,” Spuddle explained. “All of this baggage has been marked Undetermined. Like your paper there.”

  “So—what?” Stella gaped at the roomful of objects.

  “Yes—so what?” Spuddle agreed. “What does it mean? Baggage makes the dreams. People bring it in. We route it. They step off the Dreamway into a dream made from whatever they brought in. But this stuff—it doesn’t have a dream destination. It’s just marked Undetermined. What does that mean? Where are all of these Sleepers going?”

  “So—you think this baggage is from people who are in the same place as my brother?” Stella asked.

  “Possibly.” Spuddle sighed. “I don’t know for sure. But quite probably—wherever that is.”

  “Maybe there’s a clue in here then,” Stella said. She began to examine the objects, which were piled haphazardly, as if she were in a junkyard of valuables. A top hat, a wrench, a teapot, a bust of a raven. A notebook was half hidden beneath it, and she began to move the bust for a better look.

  “Don’t touch!” Spuddle screeched. He began to click-click-click faster than ever.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Anyway told Stella calmly. “You’ll grind the fly’s gears.”

  “Shh!” Spuddle hushed unnecessarily. The lights went out for a long moment, then snapped on again. “Inspectors are testing the system,” he whimpered. The room plunged again into darkness. “They’ll reset it, and then we can duck out of here.”

  “What if they check this room?” Stella asked.

  “They don’t even know about this room!” Spuddle huffed. “This is a secret room. I only found out about it a short while ago! They’ll never—”

  He stopped suddenly. All three froze at the unmistakable sound of footsteps. Heavy and foreboding. And they were coming toward them.

  Where Memory Meets Water

  THE FOOTSTEPS SOUNDED THE WAY they do in movies—thudding and ominous—and drawing nearer.

  Thump, thump.

  “The Inspectors should stay at the conveyor belt! They shouldn’t be in this area!” Spuddle whispered. “I swear, I’m going to fill out Official Complaint, Form 246A!”

  “You guys seem to put a lot of faith in paperwork,” Stella said.

  Anyway and Spuddle stared at her in shock. “Doesn’t everyone?” Spuddle asked. He hiccupped nervously.

  “Look, we can discuss this later,” Anyway said as he climbed out of Stella’s pocket and leaped onto a suit of armor. “But first—hide.” Stella hurried to the edge of the room and pressed herself against the cold stone wall. It gave her the oddest sensation—it was as if the room had once held magic, but it had all leaked away, leaving everything deader than if it never had any in the first place.

  The clunk, clunk, clunk of boots stopped right outside. The door rattled on its hinges. Anyway peered at Stella from the shoulder of the armor. “They won’t get in,” he said.

  “How do you know?” Stella asked.

  “I don’t; I’m just saying that.” Then he scurried into the visor of the armor and disappeared.

  Thunk. Thunk.

  She had to hide. She scanned the room for a likely place and spotted a beautifully carved chest. She didn’t like the idea of being shut up inside so instead hid behind it, covering herself with a wall tapestry as the door banged on and on.

  It is a horrible feeling to simply sit and wait to be found, and Stella shivered as she shrank back against the wall.

  There were a few things hidden near the chest: a s
ilver brush, a hand mirror, and a small, oval pendant. The pendant had a symbol on the front. It was a letter A, drawn to look like a star. Stella picked up the necklace, and the moment she touched it, a feeling like a wave of electricity traveled through her.

  Thunk.

  She didn’t know what an Inspector looked like, but if the turnstile operators were gargoyles, any horror she could imagine was possible.

  She couldn’t get caught.

  She couldn’t get kicked out of the Dreamway.

  She had to find Cole. The Chimerath, or whatever it was, was sucking up his light like pasta. And it was happening fast. Stella knew it—could feel it in the real world.

  She slipped the necklace into her pocket as one last, loud crash finally shattered the door. The deliberate boot steps crossed the threshold, and Stella shrank away from the sound. As she did, something small and sharp poked her in the back.

  After that, everything happened at once. The tapestry she was hiding behind moved slightly; at the very same moment she realized that the thing in her back was a key—a key in a small door—and she turned it, swinging the door open. Twisting backward, she crawled into the darkness, kicking the door closed behind her. She moved forward, feeling along the wall until her fingers uncovered a hole. It seemed large enough for her. Stella squeezed her body into the hole and realized it was a pipe. She shimmied along the metal tube, forcing herself not to wonder what usually ran through it or whether or not it might start flowing at any moment. She crawled and crawled, the metal rough against her hands until—finally—a gray disk of dim light showed in the distance. A few moments longer, and she came to the end of the pipe. Her body spilled out into the semidarkness of a large industrial area. She lowered herself on to the concrete and looked around the dark, grimy tunnel. It was a no-man’s-land of steel cylinders and beams.

  “Where am I now?” Stella asked out loud, and her voice echoed in the empty space.

  “You’re at the edge of the Memory Line,” a voice replied. “Where Memory meets Water.”