I leap over the glass counter, full of chocolate treats that gleam, smooth as beetle shells. My yellow coat swings behind me. "Hey, get back here, you stupid pumpkin!"

As the cackling assailant snakes out the door, white chocolate truffles in its green, vine-y clutches, my shoes clatter against the wood floor.

From behind the counter, my coworker Nell says, "Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue." Their voice utters everything with a dry tone, which reminds me of my third grade teacher's flat disapproval at me failing yet another multiplication table.

Not stopping, I swing open the oak door. "Nell, just so y'know..." Outside, the early sunset is pink. "I fully expect you to help me!"

"Hm."

I run out on the cobblestones alone. The cottages, made of pale bricks and timber, sit in their square sleepiness. On top of their gabled roofs, smoke curls out of the chimneys. The pumpkin jerks along the path, past rustic porches and beds of yellow and white carnations. Unlike the waking world, no bees hum over the flowers, still as paintings.

Sucking in a deep breath, I follow the pumpkin all across town, past several houses, the bakery, the school, and the university. I dodge other townsfolk, who take the sight in stride, and several cats who saunter along the stones. The trees, which all have at least a dozen cats perched on them, watching with what I bet is amusement.

As I run, I go past Marceline, who carries a linen basket of bread.

She follows my movements. "Eileen?"

"Hi, Miss Bedard!"

I can do it I can do it I can do it.

Except I can't. I trip and fall into a shallow pool of mud. Cold hits my chest, and my teeth clatter in my mouth.

Before I can get on my knees, someone's at my side, helping me up. It's Marceline again, a woman about twice my age with thick, coiled hair I've always admired; it reminds me of Granny's from what photos I do have, and she owns it in a way I feel like I can't with my dark curls. Her shiny dress is an emerald green, and golden ladybugs glimmer on her ears.

"By the Mother of a Thousand Young, why are you running so quickly?" She's so much taller than me; too many times I remember how small I am.

I look down. I'm completely soaked. "That pumpkin stole chocolate from us."

Marceline offers me exasperated sympathy. "Again?" When she looks me up and down, she purses her lips. That means she's about to mention my adoptive mother, Cece, who she dislikes for some reason. "Cecilia probably doesn't want you to chase after thieves. I'm sure Lavinia isn't too worried, either."

I can't explain things to her. Like I need the guilt of failing someone, of not be useful enough to them. When you're useless, you get forgotten or reminded that you're useless.

Marceline continues, "Be careful of that statue in the town square. It's—"

I launch into a sprint in the pumpkin's direction. "Cool, okay, thanks!"

Turns out, I'm too late. As the street lanterns burn, I reach the outskirts of town. I'm careful not to go off the road or go farther into the forest; the last thing I need is to get far from the cats, who patrol the gray stone wall curving around the town; they huddle by the braziers and watch for zoogs, which might kill me. I only go, so I can see the pumpkin patch.

A thin mist lingers over the patch. I don't know why they sometimes up and leave the earth, and I can't tell which ones will come alive. Some are that deep and bright autumn orange. Others are golden or green, but they all squat there like the covens of cats that lounge together on trees and roofs.

No more writhing vines anywhere. The grim smile is gone, and the truffles are lost with it. I walk among the patch to look. I wait, afraid that any second something will snare around my ankle and drag me into the ground.

The color of the sky is pink, almost as deep as a rose, and it reminds me of the books I've read, the dreams I had when I didn't leave in the land of dreams. A rose-gold sunset city so beautiful and perfect I'd tear up thinking about it.

I rub my eyes on my sleeve and try to catch my breath. As the sky darkens, the cat's eyes begin to glow. Not like headlights, but like the milky, reflective surface of sleeping tail lights when another light creeps on them. As I walk, I see the lights flicker and rotate as they follow my every movement.

The cats have every reason to be cautious, to watch us; many of them had been killed before, by an unkind couple who hated cats. It was only when a black kitten went missing that a young boy who loved it cast a curse on the town. He was a refugee named Menes, and he came to Ulthar in a caravan after losing his mom and dad to a plague in the south along the river, Skai.

When his kitten couldn't be found, and the townspeople mentioned the old couple who murdered cats, who they didn't confront because, well, what happened behind closed doors was none of their business.

The boy paced along the outside of town and sobbed, and then he yelled his curse of the cruel husband and wife into the night.

The morning after Menes said his curse, every cat who'd disappeared was dozing by the hearth or licking their chops. The townspeople, in shock, were nonetheless happy their cats had come back, though they were distrustful of the refugees, who'd left as they slept.

It wasn't until the cat-hating couple didn't come out of their house for a week that the townsfolk investigated, and discovered a horror: in a bed were the dead bodies of the woman and man, side by side; all their skin had been eaten, and all that was left in the shadows were their bones.

In the center of town, on a bronze sign set in a small, stone pillar, it reads: NO ONE MAY HARM A CAT.

Now, the cats multiply—at least twice as many cats as other beings. And never die. Let's just say we don't have a rat problem; the only rat in town, Brown Jenkin, has a human face, which you'd think would help him out.

The smell in the air is a mix of grass, river silt, and baked bread. My breaths are short and painful in my lungs and throat. In defeat, I go back to the shop, Lavinia's Chocolates.

When I go inside, a warm orange light greets me, and the different treats glisten in the glass. Truffles, fudge, and even ice cream in the corner freezer. The pumpkin had reached with its enormous vine and slid the glass open, snatching what it wanted. How do pumpkins get a taste for sweets, anyway?

"No luck?" Nell asks.

I frown. "Hey, thanks a lot."

"You're welcome."

"That was sarcasm."

They blink. According to Nell, they try to blink at least once a minute, since they know staring unsettles others. "Ah. I see." Their face is milky and narrow, blue-veined shadows under their watery, gray eyes, long hair so pale it's almost white.

"I don't get paid enough for this. Four milk chocolates truffles an hour is far too little. Think about it. Do the math."

I grimace. My ankles hurt. They always feel like candles, these skinny pillars of wax that keep melting away. "I'd rather not." Since I started learning math, the numbers always get jumbled in my head.

"Four truffles, sixty calories each, five hours of work. That is exactly the smallest intake you need."

"And? You're not supposed to live off chocolate. Eat some bread or some pie." I've never been as good at Cece at melting my tone into something sweet, and I wonder if I'm being too abrasive, too irritable. If I'm being too much like how Mom and Dad were to me before Dad died, and Mom got worse.

"It is viable here. The nourishment intake requirements differ from the waking world, so I don't see why not. And I think this body approves." Having a Yith as a friend can be strange. Truly having no corporeal form because your entire home was destroyed means thousands and thousands of years of finding new bodies and living in them.

I can never tell Nell it makes my skin crawl. Sometimes, I feel like I can glimpse Nell's real form, cone-shaped with amber eyes and fungus-tendrils sprouting from their head like flowers. And every now and again, a faint clicking in my ears.

It feels judgmental, but the person whose body they took over is still in there, someone who never agreed to this. Apparently, the person they live in was going to die, but it doesn't matter much to me; they're still human, and they're still in there somewhere.

"I can't feel my toes," I complain, sitting on the closest stool.

"You know, I find the texture of white chocolate to be the least satisfying. I am unsure what properties contribute to this." Their eyes fall on me. "You're not content."

I breathe in sharply through my nose. "Give me a minute."

A blink. "I'm sorry for not coming with you. I'm not known to be very good at catching things."

"It's fine."

"Have you seen that statue of the eye in the town square?"

"No. I was too busy running after a pumpkin." I was in the town square, but I didn't see an eye statue. Maybe I was going too fast. Or maybe I was too busy eating gravel.

Nell says, "It showed up in the middle of the night. It's been there all day."

"Really?" I scratch the back of my head. When I'm set on something, I've never been known to be observant. "How big is it?" I ask, chin propped on my hand.

The mention of a randomly appearing statue doesn't bother me. In the Dreamlands, things aren't like in the waking world. Things appear, disappear, and then end up in places you'd never guess. That's how I explain why I can never find matching socks.

"I'm not sure. I suppose about your height."

"So, it's short," I joke.

"I've seen it before. In many planets, in many aeons. It's one of the signs of the Great Ones."

Honestly, in a world with Old Gods, Outer Gods, and Great Ones, which are all different beings, I get confused. But when I think of the sunset city I see when I sleep, these dreams within dreams, I understand.

A chill goes through me. The Great Ones, beings of great power who marry humans in dream-villages and wreak havoc wherever they want. Compared to other cosmic gods, they're weak, false gods, but compared to people, they're unstoppable. The Outer God, Nyarlathotep watches over them. "Didn't they leave Kadath"—a cold palace full of glittering black spires—"for the sunset city? What would a symbol of theirs be doing here, in a little town like this?"

Except for Cece with her electricity exhibitions, which are a big thing for a simple and old town like this with no phones or computers, no one here is really well known for much. Even me. Especially me.

It might seem like aliens from other planets or witches, like Keziah, or beings like Brown Jenkin should be scary. Abnormal.

"What do you think would happen to someone who touched the eye statue?"

"I'm afraid that powerful entities tend to be chaotic in their methods. Therefore, I'd say touching it is a bad idea. Anything involving agents of Nyarlathotep is suspect. I tend to prefer the quiet, though I imagine some find it boring."

"Not boring." I look down at my muddied shirt. "Nope. It's..."

"Unremarkable?"

"I guess. What if someone touched it? What do you think would happen to them?"

"I'm unsure. Most of my knowledge comes from the waking world. The Great Ones are a mystery to me. But again, given that they're overseen by perhaps the least congenial of the gods, which is quite a feat, I'd say it's best to avoid anything to do with them."

"Yeah." I look out the front windows, the deepening oranges and blues. "I guess you're right."