In Dreams (13 page)

But suddenly, I’m angry. I pull my hand away.

“It isn’t fair.”

He wrinkles his forehead, eyes concerned. “What isn’t fair?”

“You know everything about me. You’ve been in my head and in my dreams for as long as I can remember. You know that I love this painting. What else do you know about me?” I ask this as an accusation. Annie seems to be getting a normal boyfriend—why can’t I have one?

“I know that you’re afraid of clowns.” He smirks and tries to take my hand.

I pull it away.

“Look, they freak me out. It is a perfectly legitimate fear.” I narrow my eyes, my heart pounding. I try to calm down, but I can’t.

“Iris.” His voice is gentle. “I know that you used to complain about your grandfather making you go to museums, but that secretly you loved it. That your time with him made you feel special . . . I know you love the Yankees because of him, and when you should have been studying your spelling words in third grade, you were memorizing their batting order so you could impress him. But I also know you never needed to do anything to impress him because he loves you so extraordinarily. You are his sun and his moon. I know that when your grandmother died, he stopped going to church. And you became his reason to go on. You are his prayer. Or the answer to one.”

My eyes well. I turn my head because I don’t want him to see my tears. He knows enough about my vulnerabilities. I’m still mad. Just maybe a little less so.

“I know that the only person who has ever seen you cry over your mother is Annie. I know that every time you have received an award—like the time your short story won the county contest and you had a reading at the library—Annie has sat in the front row next to your grandfather. Sometimes with her mother, even though Mrs. Casey has six children and no free time. I know that your heart would still feel a pang because that seat should have been where your mother sat. But that you knew somehow her illness wasn’t fair. You never complained, especially to your grandfather, because to do so would have meant you were saying to him that all his love was not enough.”

I want him to stop. It’s too painful that he can speak truths I don’t even acknowledge to myself. I want to dream him away. Hide. But my feet are rooted to the floor. There is no hiding from him.

“I know that this scar”—he reaches out and touches the tiny pale scar in the shape of a sunburst by my left eye—“is from when you fell from the tree house. I know that to me”—he tilts my head until I am looking into his eyes—“that little imperfection makes you even more perfect.”

“But . . .” I pause to collect my voice. “I know nothing about
you.
And that’s not fair. You’ve been in my head. This voice. And how can you be . . . my age? But then you were the boy in the tree house? How can you change like that?”

“I am everything you need me to be. I am your guardian in the dreamworld. Just like in a dream you can change from six to sixteen inside of a breath, so can I. Just as you can fly or make sconces appear on the wall, so can I be what you need me to be. It is my world. This world.”

His index finger caresses my scar. I smell the ocean on him. His eyes dilate. His lashes are black and thick. But I shut my eyes for a moment. “I don’t even know if you’re real. And I won’t be my mother. I will not. . . .”

I let the words drift away. I open my eyes again. I will not fall in love with someone who can’t be a part of my world. My real world. How much of her life has she wasted in sleep? I know she loves Morpheus, but really? A few stolen moments in twenty years? I can’t do it. I am not that girl.

“I will tell you about me, then.” He smiles. “Everything you want to know.”

We walk on to the Degas exhibit, ballerinas in tutus at the barre.

“I was born in the dreamworld of Hypnos, Epiales, and Morpheus, with my allegiance to your father. But the way I was born is not the way you were born. I was part of the dreamworld. I was born of the figment of your imagination, the spark of a child who needed a protector from her nightmares.”

I stop.

“No,” I breathe. What he is telling me cannot be possible. I feel nauseous. “I made you up?”

“You are very powerful, Iris.”

That word again.
Powerful.

“I’ve spent my life in your dreams.”

“But you have no mother or father? You’ve never been to school?” I almost laugh because I know the questions are ridiculous. His life has been nothing like mine. I remember the dream, the tree-house dream. One moment he was a little boy. The next he was the guy standing in front of me. The man.

He shakes his head. “No. My world is the hallway, behind those doors, those endless doors. My voice was the one telling you to run in dreams when you were in danger. I was protecting you. From Epiales. My world is you, Iris.”

I swallow. “Why does my uncle hate me so much?”

“You have the power of a demi-goddess. But you have a mortal life. You laugh. You cry. You bleed. You . . . love. You have what he can never have: the power of the gods and the power of the mortal world, all in one.”

I touch his arm, as if to reassure myself that he’s here. “I couldn’t have just dreamed you up.” He’s too perfect.

His cheeks flush. “You were the spark, but just the spark. I was born into the netherworld, on the fringes of the Underworld, with the beasts that go bump in the night . . . and the worlds behind the doors that make you feel as if you must be in heaven. And until you finally found me, I assumed I would stay here forever.”

“And now?”

He looks away. “I would like to come to your world. With you. In your waking life.”

“But that would mean you lose your immortality. I couldn’t let you do that, Sebastian.”

I think of my grandfather. Someday he’s going to die. Just the thought of it, just for a second, when I’m alone in my room, will make me dizzy. I would give anything for him to be immortal. But the times he’s spoken about getting old, he’s only said that he’ll be happy to be with my grandmother again and that he hopes she’s making a big pot of gravy because he’s tired of takeout.

“Immortality is not necessarily a gift. Humans only think it is.”

He comes close to me, until we’re standing chest to chest. A tear escapes my eye, and he leans down and kisses it. His scent makes my head spin. He moves his mouth to mine and nibbles my bottom lip, then runs his tongue along it, feather soft, before kissing me fiercely. I kiss him back, and then put my hands in his hair, wrapping them in his curls. He slides one arm around me at the small of my spine, as if it were somehow possible to pull me into him, to entwine us like the swans. He takes his other hand and slowly moves it under my shirt, until he is cupping my breast. He presses against it, and then I feel his finger tracing the center of my breastbone up to the hollow between my collarbone. I feel as if I can’t breathe, as if the museum has disappeared and we are the only two souls in the entire universe.

And then I hear it. That pounding. We both open our eyes at once. I don’t know how long we’ve been here. It has felt like an entire day. But I think Epiales’s minions have found us.

“You have to go.” Sebastian slides his hand out, pulling away from me, his breath ragged. I see the slightest of tremors in his hands. And I know it’s not because he’s afraid, but because of us—because of me. I have that effect on him. And that makes me happy. Because he does that to me, too. I don’t want this dream to end. Not like this. Not again.

I shake my head. “No. It’s my dream. I control it.”

I hear Dr. Koios’s voice. “Iris, it’s time for you to come out of your dream. You must come back to us now.”

Not yet. I steal one more kiss from him. A deep kiss, as if it’s the last kiss I will ever have with him. The last kiss of my entire life. “Aphrodite says you must cross the River of Sorrows to exist in my world, but I can’t let you do it. Stay here. Promise me. Stay here, and I will keep finding you. Now that I know how. Now that we have”—I search for the word—“this connection. It will be easier.”

Easier, I think. Nothing about this is easy. And always there is the threat of Epiales.

“No!” he says furiously.

I look at Sebastian, my protector. My personal guardian. “I would come here for you, every night,” I whisper, even as I hear the words and know what that would mean. I would sleep. Like my mother.

He puts his hands on my shoulders. “You don’t want to be like your mother and Morpheus. All of the Underworld, all of the dreamworld, the Olympians, they all know how he aches for her. He mourns her when she is not here. But if he leaves his throne for her, if he makes that sacrifice, then Epiales will take his crown. The balance will be destroyed. There will be no more dreams, only darkness. The human world will be rendered in nightmares.”

I think of what that would mean. If there was no more peaceful sleep, if every night people had only the most horrid of nightmares. But before I can ask more questions, from far off in the museum, I hear deep voices.

Next, the sounds of footfalls, like many men running on the marble floors.

“Iris . . . you must come back to Annie and me now.”

“Please, Iris,” Annie’s voice begs me. “Please, come back. Right now.”

I look around. I don’t see an exit. The room we are in is actually an anteroom. Our only choice is to go into the main hall, and there we’ll be easy to spot. I start to panic. But then I remember. This is my dream, and I have the power.

Holding hands, we step into the main concourse. I see thirty or forty men, dressed like soldiers, running toward us from the far end of the museum. I grab Sebastian’s hand. I know Dr. Koios says I can stop and ask someone why he’s chasing me, but in my gut, I have a feeling that this is not the time. Not here, not in this dream.

“Run!” I say to him. We race through the museum. We run left, then right, through exhibits and rooms full of priceless art. It’s a giant maze. Every time I think we have reached a room that might buy us freedom, I am deceived. We run from room to room, portraits of gods and goddesses, kings and chiefs, maidens and lions, soldiers and farmers a blur of oil on canvas. We pass sunsets and flowers, marble busts and gold-inlaid drinking vessels. But it’s a dizzying array, and behind me, I hear the voices of our pursuers gaining on us.

“There’s no escape,” Sebastian shouts. “We’re trapped!”

We turn a corner. We are in the great hall of antiquities. All around us are ancient mummies and statues of civilizations long fallen. We cannot go back the way we came. The soldiers are coming.

“Come on,” I yell. This is my dream. Sebastian and I duck behind a stone sarcophagus in the corner. We crouch down. Soldiers enter the hall. My heart thumps, and I think they will hear its beat alone. But their footsteps pass us, and they run on to the next exhibit.

Follow me, I mouth. We creep from behind the sarcophagus and tiptoe across the hall. But as we move into the open, a soldier retraces his steps and spots us.

“They’re here!”

Sebastian pulls me behind a tall stone statue of a Roman god. As we take cover, I hear the sounds of gunfire, so loud and so close my ears ring. A bullet ricochets off the statue we’re behind, taking a chunk of the stone god’s face off. I feel chips of stone strike my face. Dust stings my eyes.

The soldiers are closer. More bullets echo in the hall. A glass case containing ancient pottery shatters near us, spraying me with shards, but I have no time to react.

This is getting way too close—and too real—for comfort.

No, I can do this.
I
control my dream.

I grab Sebastian’s hand, and we run straight toward a wall. I shout, “Trust me.” Neither one of us hesitates. And as we near the stone wall, at the last possible second, a door appears with an exit sign above it. I created the door.

Boom!
I push down on the brass handle.

And Sebastian and I burst through into blinding sunlight.

I blink my eyes. I try to look around the room, but my eyes hurt too much. “Can you dim that light?” I ask Dr. Koios weakly. I know Sebastian is not with me. I am here.

And he is there.

Dr. Koios nods. “Annie, go over to that credenza there and pour her a glass of water.”

Annie’s face is pale. Her eyes are wide. She does as he asks, and he switches off the light near me so his office is illuminated only by the soft green glow of a banker’s lamp on his desk.