Charlie~~

In Somnia's headquarters, I use the room dedicated to tracking dreamers to look up Nora's location. No one around me would think that this time is any different than the other times I've used the room to locate her. Most of them are aware that she's my job.

After seeing Nora yesterday, I was actually excited for today, which is weird when I'm dreading tomorrow's arrival when I'll orient the latest batch of dreamers. But after tomorrow, my debt will be paid.

A projection appears above the computer's holo-screen of Nora walking past a bakery I recognize. I know where I can rift to that will keep me out of the eyesight of any dreamers.

We can't always see a dreamer's current location, only if they're in view of one of the many security cameras placed throughout the city. Dad's been working for years to find a way to be able to see anywhere within the dream, without needing the cameras. He has yet to be successful and for that I am grateful. I value my privacy from him too much to accept knowing that he could be watching me at any moment.

I rift behind a dumpster, a block from her, but in the direction she was headed.

Raymond told me that he thought someone had followed him to the meeting yesterday. I reached out for the presence of another Lucid and felt one. When that door to the hallway opened, bringing with it light, I was not expecting to see Nora.

Until that moment, I didn't realize I was missing our conversations and that feeling I'd have when I knew I should stop talking but couldn't bring myself to stop.

Ahead of me, Nora waits at the intersection. I step up behind her.

"Hello."

She whirls around, grasping her heart.

What will Dad make of this when he's told I'm talking to her? He'll probably make it pour on us again.

"This arrangement isn't going to last if you plan to sneak up on me every time. Especially when it's dark out."

"You'll get used to it. Maybe."

I take her toward the alley I rifted into.

"I'm not going in there with you."

Fair point. "Then at least just step off the sidewalk. I don't want to just vanish in the streets in front of everyone." I hold out my hand.

She eyes it warily.

"We have to be touching for me to rift with you."

Holding out her hand, she hovers it over mine. "This isn't a trap?"

"If it was would I tell you?"

She purses her lips but places her hand in mine. Her warmth seeps into me, and I thread my fingers through hers.

"What happens if you let go?" she asks.

"I doubt anything bad."

"So you don't know?"

"Just hold on tight." I close my eyes.

"Charlie!"

When I open them, I'm standing in one of my menageries. Tents line both sides of us, their materials in fabrics of purples, greens, blues, reds, and silvers. String lights hang overhead. Above them the sky is black as it always is here, twinkling with stars.

Men and women dressed in costumes that shimmer and sparkle walk past us, laughing, pointing up at the lights, their arms gesturing wildly as they talk.

Nora clutches my hand, inching herself toward me to stay out of the way of the circus performers. "Where are we?"

"My menagerie. Come on." I guide her down the row of tents and turn at a break in them. Wooden stairs lead up to a bridge that overlooks the circus. I take a seat on it, letting my legs dangle over the side.

Nora looks unsure. "Menagerie?"

"I made this." I motion to the world below. "Through manipulating the dream."

Nora takes a seat when I say that. "Can I do this?"

"I don't know." I explain to her about the different classes of Lucid dreamers and that I'm a Class One. "Since we're at the circus, try picturing a top hat in your hands. Let's see if we can narrow down what you are before trying the Class One powers."

Nora keeps her eyes open, staring down at her hands, her forehead drawn together in concentration.

A black top hat with a silver ribbon appears in her hands.

Though her face morphs into shock, I can tell she's conjured before. Her face lacks awe.

I have her create a weapon next. She decides on a knife, which appears in her hand seconds later.

I pick up the top hat, twisting and angling it until the ribbon catches the glow of the lights strung behind us.

"It's pretty," she says.

"Complimenting your own work, are you?" I plop the hat on her head.

She tilts the rim back, glaring up at me. "I meant your work." Another top hat, this one with a gold ribbon, appears in her hands. She places it on my head and tugs it down until it's tight.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but do think you could set the knife aside?" I grimace, not looking at her. "I know you don't like me very much."

The woman with red hair passes underneath the bridge, her black gown swishing around her legs and against the dirt pathway. Although she walks away from us, I know she wears a masquerade mask. I've seen it countless times.

She's in all of my menageries. My subconscious can't seem to let her go.

I take the top hat off and spin it around between my hands.

"What's next?" Nora no longer holds the knife.

I stand, holding one hand out to her and clutching the hat in the other.

She takes my hand, and I create a pocket in the dream, rifting us into it.

The pocket is a black void, waiting to be manipulated.

Nora squeezes my hand. "Don't leave me here."

"I won't. I promise. Being Lucid is tied to memories. You have to embrace them to unlock your potential. You used memories to conjure the hats and knife, but Class One powers are more intricate. You almost have to breathe life into your memories. I want you to picture your home in the real world."

Nora continues to hold my hand while taking off her hat. Her eyes are closed, and her chest rises and falls. A soft smile graces her lips.

Blue chrysanthemums appear with a gap between them. A sidewalk fills the gap leading to a driveway and a front door. A two-story, orange-bricked house comes into being around the door and behind the flowers.

Dad was right to suspect she'd be a Class One. He said it's because of her father, but he's never been tested to see if he's Lucid. As far as I know, she wasn't adopted.

Her hand slips from mine, and she heads for the front door almost like she's in a trance-like state, her steps slow and unsure.

She pushes open the front door revealing a living room still decorated in a 2060s style to the right and a dining room to the left, beyond it a kitchen with white cabinets and silver accents that were popular in the late 2040s.

For a few minutes Nora stands in the doorway as if in a daze, and it's not until I say her name that she seems to come out of it. Without uttering a word, she darts up the stairs that are in front of us.

"Nora, wait!" I take off after her.

"My room, it's right over here." At the top of the stairs, Nora turns left coming to a stop before a brown door. She twists the knob.

"Don't."

She pushes the door open, and the house around us disappears, leaving us again in the vast void of malleable blackness.

"What— Where—"

"You believed it was real." I place my hand on her shoulder and rift us back onto the pathway we first appeared on at the circus. "Before Somnia, did you ever lucid dream?"

She looks down at her hands, one still holding the top hat, and nods.

"If you didn't stay focused, reminding yourself that it wasn't real, you'd fall back into the dream's lull and lose any control you held over it, right?"

She clutches the hat. "I—I thought I was home. It felt so real. Is all this from that void too? Is that where we are?" She motions around us at the tents, the food stalls. "Are you one thought away from all this disappearing?"

I dip inside a stall that sells cotton candy, the attendant whose booth this is is currently in the largest tent to sell the fairy floss to the same audience members he sells to every loop. This loop is longer than the one in the ski lodge but shorter than the rainforest's.

I gather up the cotton candy, waving my hand around in the silvery machine that glows under the circus lights and pass the finished product to her. "We're outside of Somnia, not in that void. This is permanent."

She takes a small bite of the pink fairy floss. "Are these people real then?" In the stall across from us, a man with a pointed and oily mustache hands over two sanded wooden mugs full of foamy root beer to two young men.

Farther down the path a woman sings a bawdy tune.

"They aren't. I made them."

"Is Tye real?"

I blink, not having expected that question. "Of course. Everyone in Somnia is real. They're either like you or work for my dad."

She sets the cotton candy on the stall's table. "Sometimes I can't help wondering if I'm the only person who is real. That this is my dream, and I'll eventually wake up." She lets the hat drop on the dirt to spread out her fingers. "If this was a dream, I shouldn't have exactly ten fingers."

"You also shouldn't be able to read the same thing twice or look into a mirror and see yourself—not a distorted blurry version of yourself. But you double checked those envelopes when you worked for me. There is nothing natural about this dream."

She scratches her head, drops down to retrieve the hat, and starts walking.

I keep pace with her, waiting for her to talk. 

Now that I don't have to hide who she is from her or who I am, I want to ask her about the world. What was it like to go to school? How does the sun in Somnia compare to the real one? Has she been outside the country?

Has she ever been to a circus and does mine do it justice or is it laughable?

She steps in front of a burgundy tent decorated in silver moons and suns. Pushing back the flap, she steps inside with me on her heels.

Within the tent is a round table. A woman draped in blue robes sits behind it, her back hunched over her crystal ball.

She doesn't look up, is not able to understand we are here.

A stack of ivory-colored tarot cards is perched at the edge of the table.

Nora tilts her head examining the woman. "If you had a chance to be free, would you go for it? Would you leave all this behind?"

She looks like she's speaking to the woman, but I know it's me her question is directed to.

In a heartbeat.

But no, that isn't true.

I had the chance to leave, and I threw it away for her, but I won't tell her that even to convince her I'm not her enemy.

"None of this is real. I want nothing more than to see the world. But I've spent too much time in the dream. It's ruined me. I can hardly sleep normally—my dreams plagued by one nightmare after another that wake me up." I sink onto one of the two stools before the fortune teller. "No matter where I go, I'd have to eventually hook myself into this dream, just to get any rest."

She frowns, tucked in the shadows of the tent. "Why was Radia taken?"

I should have known this question was coming. "She's Lucid. My dad's holding her in a separate dream to keep her own dad in line. She's okay though. I spoke with her a couple weeks ago."

"What's it like in that dream?" Her voice sounds as if she's about to cry. She covers her mouth with her hand.

How do I tell her that her friend is trapped in a cell with nothing to do but read the books I gave her? "The dream is a building. Similar to the building that you were brought to that day . . ."

"When I realized Doctor Pace isn't just some random evil genius but an evil genius who is your dad?"

I rake my hand through my hair. "Yeah."

Nora waves her hand through ribbons draped from the ceiling. "Could you tell her that I haven't forgotten her nor her last words to me?" She keeps her focus on the ribbons. "That Tye still cares about her? That he hasn't forgotten what happened?"

"Is that a lie?"

She inhales, the ribbons waving as her hand brushes by them as she walks through them. "Yes." Stopping, she stares into a silver and gold mirror. "I think." Her reflection is clear, every bit as beautiful as she is.

"I'll tell her."

"Thank you," she says, her voice choked up, and her back still to me.

My watch vibrates alerting me to a message that Cobbs has decided to call a last minute meeting to update us on one of his research studies. I let out a heavy sigh. "I'm going to have to go. Are you up for trying to rift?"

She drags herself away from the mirror. "Is it hard?"

"After what you did in the void, rifting should come with ease. Close your eyes."

She does so, and I stand, drawing near her.

The fortune teller rises to her feet, causing Nora to open her eyes, but the woman is only continuing the loop, stepping outside to call out to visitors.

"They're kind of creepy, Charlie."

I laugh. "You get used to them."

She gives me a not-buying-it look before closing her eyes.

"Think of a place that no one will be, and not your house. My dad's been bugging it."

She flinches.

"I can stop by your house later and check for them."

Her shoulders relax. "I'd appreciate that. A lot."

"Now wherever it is you are picturing, build it in your mind like you did with your home." I force my hands to stay by my sides and keep myself from placing them on her arms. "Now go."

She vanishes.

Something akin to pride fills me. But also a sense of melancholy hovers around me. I'm in danger, aren't I?

I think this was one of my favorite chapters to write. I love dark circus stories, so I knew I wanted Charlie to have one of his menageries be a circus.