Eye.

No.

Eyes.

At least a hundred eyes stare at me. Brown, blue, green, pink, red. They stare and blink atop a silver base.

It's so close, and I realize I want to touch the statue more than I want anything else. As if I touched one of Cece's experiments, I'm brimming with energy. Even without putting my hand on the eye statue, it washes away the sleepy black glitter from my eyes.

As I look, I don't see. I'm inside my own head. The sunset city that I'll never be able to find.

My fingers brush against the stone, and I'm surprised how soft the surface feels. Not hard granite and not slimy like eyes. Almost like skin. No electrical shock rips through me. it's a little warm, and my hand meets that warmth like a magnet snapping to another. You belong to me, it says, and I belong to you.

The white marble buildings and pillars, the shining curls of water falling into a fountain. The reddish pinks and deep ambers, an eternal, perfect dusk, like that one breezy and beautiful autumn evening crystallized forever.

Just a continuous day of loping around pumpkin patches and looking at the scarecrows, and then going home to watch the best Halloween specials with gnarled trees, bouncing skeletons, and bedsheet ghosts.

Everything's a blend of dream and memory. How old was I in those days? Seven, eight? They were these perfect moments I created alone when my imagination could go free. At the playground, I'd crunch my green rain boots on leaves and peeking through the metal fence into the woods. Looking at the red and yellow blanket of leaves, I'd make up stories about witches, vampires, and werewolves.

That kind of energy fills me, something nostalgic but with a promise. A promise of something greater behind everything.

"Eileen." A hand on my shoulder, and I snap out of it. My heart feels empty when I look behind me at Cece. She hesitates, like I'm something unknowable. I shake my head. She knows more than I ever will.

As people go about their day and see the strange sight, a small crowd forms, including Lavinia in a dress as gray as a storm, who regards the statue curiously.

I gawk. "It has hundreds of eyes." A sharp ache stings my head, behind my left eyeball.

The skin around Cece's eyes tightens. "Yes, you're right."

Lavinia says, "I only see one."

Cece clicks her tongue. "Unfortunately, my dear, you're rusty."

Lavinia's mouth presses into a thin line. "Has Atal looked at this yet?" Atal is the high priest at the temple. Though we don't have a church, there is a small temple, with an outside that glints and shimmers like topaz, where glittering water runs into pure green-blue pools.

Cece reaches out. "Don't touch it. It could be cursed."

Keziah asks, "Do you think the Great Ones are coming here? Planning something?" The Great Ones, who've pulled the greatest disappearing act by running truant. It feels weird they'd come back after finding the sunset city.

Cece shakes her head. "They're far too lazy for that. And not quite intelligent enough to plan in advance." From what she's told me, the Great Ones are best compared to the Greek gods, hedonistic and temperamental. Nowhere as apathetic and untouchable as the Old Ones or as cunning and human-involved as the Outer Gods, except to marry Dreamlands villagers to bear offspring in their image.

at first it reminds me of a moldy cherry cobbler, and then it's like a half-slice of pomegranates, a small amulet of red eyes.

The light flows into Cece's hand, and she stiffens.

She weighs the amulet in her palm

"Interesting," Cece says, unfazed by the magical display. I can see the gears turning in her mind. "I should examine it for special properties."

Lavinia replies dryly, "I'd say the eyes are special properties."

A little condescending, Cece says, "See, you're not so rusty, after all."

***

There's something she's hiding, won't tell me if I tried a thousand times.

It's not only about wanderlust, like a poem Tennyson wrote about Odysseus, bored with his safe life after he comes home. I used to think Odysseus was stupid. With everything he went through, why shouldn he want to live a quiet life with his wife and son? With people who actually missed him when he was gone.

How could a guy who survived so much not realize how lucky he was? To be gone all that time and to still be missed, and then to be so great he'll die unforgotten. I want that. I want that return to love, but to do that, I need to prove I'm worth something. I can be brave and strong and good. I'm not worthless like Mom, my old one back in the waking world, said I was.

Everyone thought it. To the teachers who said I was dumb to the kids who'd pick me last in dodgeball or knocked my lunch tray out of my hands, so I ate my chicken fingers in the bathroom. I'm not like a rose in a pot, which shrivels when it's not given enough water to love its roots, which dies because it's been cut away from what it knows.

The waking world wasn't meant for me. Or maybe I wasn't meant for it. A mutual breakup. I didn't run scared; I left for greater things. Because if I was afraid, would I live in a world with beings people might call monsters, with powers I can't understand?

Mom and Dad, I can't even remember what number they were in the families that took me on. I don't know if I want to remember. I was with them the longest, though, and I told myself that counted for something.

If I can come into the Dreamlands, I'm a dreamwalker, that's the word Cece uses, like the legendary Randolph Carter or Alice Liddell or only a handful of others who've managed to get here from the waking world. That means there's something more to me. It has to.

Even if Cece can traverse these spaces because of her science experiments and take me with her, I must've been able to come to the Dreamlands on my own. When I was in elementary school, one of the reasons my many foster parents got tired of me was because of my night terrors. And the more families I had, the worse they got, as if my memories fueled the terrors I never remembered, even if I was tired at school the next morning and dozed off at my desk and got glue in my hair.

When I'm home alone, I sneak down the steps in the dining room, going down to the basement. Unlike some of my old homes, it's always bright and there's always something buzzing. This is Cece's workshop, full of contraptions, generators, wires, and gears.

I almost see the amulet immediately on a table covered in meticulously drawn blueprints, pencils and drawing compass lying flat. I walk toward the table, and my foot knocks against something, a box full of rolled papers. Something catches my eye about one, seeing the corner of a drawing of the moon. I pick up that paper and unfurl it as one of the lights above me flickers.

A map of the Dreamlands. My breath catches in my throat. It even has then-unknown Kadath, which was nothing but a mystery until Randolph Carter traveled there in search of the sunset city and outwitted Nyarlathotep.

I slip the amulet into my pants pocket and carefully crease the map until it's small enough to fit in my coat.

***

With the amulet warm in my pocket, I brush my fingers against it to ensure it's still there. I go to the two-story cottage where Lavinia, Marceline, and Asenath live. Their home is a warm, burnished orange, and smoke curls out of the chimney.

On the porch steps, I meet Marceline. She has a pumpkin in her hands, no doubt given to her by one of the farmers. She bows her head, murmuring to herself like a prayer.

"Thank you for this gift." When she looks in my direction, Marceline jumps. "Ah, Eileen! You surprised me."

I scratch the back of my head. "My bad."

She shakes her head, smiling so easily. "No, it's not bad. I enjoy most surprises."

I eye the giant golden pumpkin in her arms warily. "I wanted to ask you something. And maybe Lavinia, too."

Marceline raises a brow. "Oh?"

"Yes." I pull out the amulet. A small breeze shifts the leaves around us.

"Ah. Cecilia let you borrow this?"

"Yeah," I lie.

"Asenath might know something, too. The three weird sisters of this little town," she replies jokingly. They aren't actually sisters; I think the three of them are partners, a triad, but they tend to be private, and like I do in most small towns, I don't push many topics.

I grin. "I think everyone here is weird."

Marceline laughs, and it makes me flush. I'm not used to people laughing with me.

Pointing to the pumpkin, I ask, "What are you doing with that chonky boy?"

She looks down at it and frowns in thought. "Oh, I'm not sure yet."

When we go inside, the living room is smaller than Cece's, and, in contrast to the outside, it's full of different shades of green, from grass to the ocean. Paintings of pastures and hills and seasides line the walls alongside bookshelves.

From the plump, lion-clawed sofa, Lavinia straightens her dress. "Wow, Marce, this is quite the gourd."

"Thank you." Marceline sets it on the coffee table. "I was merely given it. What do you think we should do? Should we carve and light it? Perhaps with the design of a cat?"

"Perhaps." Lavinia smiles at me. "Hello, Eileen."

"Hi." I wave.

As Marceline heads into the other room, and I hear water running, Lavinia asks me, "What's the matter? Is it about this morning?"

"Kinda. I wanted to talk about this eye amulet."

Lavinia nods. "It really is a fascinating amulet." Lavinia stands and ushers me upstairs. "Come, Asenath might know something as well."

As we head upstairs the colors ripple from teal to bright blues, and when she enters the closest room to the left of the hall, I go, too, and startle. I heard about fish-people, but I've never seen someone in mid-transformation. The woman on the bed has the covers over her shoulders, but gills flutter on her neck. Each shivering breath she takes in sleep is labored and whistles out of her nose.

"I think it might be connected to the Great Ones."

Lavinia's frown deepens, her eyes tired. "I'd suggest putting this away and not thinking about those things. You don't know what they could do to you. Even as some of the least powerful cosmic entities out there, even under the thumb of an Outer God, they can do whatever they wish."

I say, "I feel like this is a sign."

"A sign of what? If the Great Ones want something from any of us, it can't be good."

Scratching the side of my head, I ask, "They're neither good nor bad, aren't they?"

"It's complicated, to say the least."

"I dunno. After I went through, it's easier to think there are gods that don't care."

Softly, Lavinia asks, "What happened?"

I say, "Both my parents died when I was very little."

"I'm so sorry. I can't imagine how hard that is." Can't she? I can't imagine her childhood was any good, but I don't pry. Two people can go through horrible things without understanding one another.

"I feel like sometimes I don't miss them. I don't remember them, not much." Besides flashes of crawling around on a checkered tiled floor toward an old beagle. "I miss that space in me that was full before."

Lavinia pulls me into a hug. "Aw, hun." When my cheek touches her shoulder, she smells like chimney smoke and rain. She draws away with a sad smile. I try to return it, but it's hard.

"And sometimes I resent them. Because if they were still here, I might've never gone through all the stuff I have."

"But you also might not be here," Lavinia murmurs. I guess that's true.

To my surprise, Marceline comes in with a wet washcloth in her hand, handing it to Lavinia. I wonder how long she's been listening. People here are good at keeping quiet and hearing secrets.

She says, "I try to tell myself, like the good book says, 'Some things are precious because they don't last long'."

I blink. "That's from the Bible?"

Marceline shrugs. "Oscar Wilde, same difference."

Lavinia shakes her head. "If Cecilia can't determine what it is, no one can." Again, I hear the distaste in her voice.

"Why don't you like Cece?" I ask.

Lavinia purses her lips in thought. "I don't know how to say it. I don't dislike her. I'm merely afraid of her." Afraid. I remember what it's like to be afraid.

I blink, looking up at the dresser. A porcelain whale sits on top of it. "Why?"

Lavinia sets a hand on my shoulder. "You have a good relationship with her, so there's no need for you to worry about that."

"But if there's something for anyone to be afraid of, I should worry."

Lavinia looks tired, and she shuts her eyes. "You should enjoy your childhood while you still have one."

"I'm not a child! Not after everything I've been through." And even if I miss some of those hazy days, the good ones, I'm not sure if I ever want to be a child again. That means powerlessness, and besides, a lot of adults don't see kids as fully human, especially kids like me.

"No one should be able to take that away from you. No one. Whatever happened was a reflection of those who hurt you, not you." I believe, though it would've been hard.

When you get bullied and then shunned by people whose whole goal was to take you in and give you a new life, it's hard not to blame yourself, myself, even if I was a kid with my age in the single digits. If everyone gets tired of me and abandons me, how can I say everyone else was wrong? I was the one constant.

Asenath murmured, "If I could take back those years my father took from me, I would." Though she stays in bed, there's steel in her voice.

"I want to feel something more."

"I understand."

Marceline: "You're a child, but you're also a human being capable of making your own decisions."

As she rubs a wet cloth on Asenath's brow, Lavinia says to me, "There's no reason to disrupt your equilibrium."

I say, "Now you sound like Cece."

Lavinia sobers at that. "It'd be a shame not to have you at the shop."

***

Later in the evening, I sit on my bedroom floor, staring at the books of old fairy tales and adventure novels. Brothers Grimm, Arabian Nights, The Fellowship of the Ring, Alice in Wonderland.

"What do you think I should do, Caramel?" I mutter to my cat, who bumps her furry head against my hand.

The idea of only being here in this grand place, only existing, feels wrong. It's so rare for someone from the waking world to be here in life; most people die here and treat it as an eternal retirement. But I'm here in my life, which is still being written, and to not do something feels like a waste of everything that's happened, like I owe it to everyone and myself to leave.

Who will miss me? As human as she looks, it's not in Cece's chemical makeup. Lavinia has Asenath and Marceline. Nell doesn't really get sad or angry about anything. Despite everything her people have been through and all the perspectives she's experienced, Nell's grown more distant instead of more sensitive. I don't blame her.

And I think about the main thing that's constantly occupied my mind: The sunset city so above anything I know, so perfect it makes me cry. I pick up my backpack, and I loop the amulet over my head and put it around my neck.

With a look at Caramel, I say at the bedroom door, "C'mon, girl."

***

Thank you for reading! The support has been overwhelmingly helpful. This chapter actually got accidentally deleted from my word processor, but thankfully I back-up my stories regularly. Note: Always back-up your work!

I'm doing an ONC cross-promo for other stories in the contest, so be sure to also check these awesome works out:

Broken Bonds by wera_nyooms

The Uninvited Princess by JJJ000YYY

A naive young princess gets banished to a tower, and is inadvertently trapped with a wizard. Now, she must navigate through a world full of magic while the fury of the king looms over her.