The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 19: Fabian Fenhallow, Dolphin Lover

She stared hard at the padlock and tried again.

Small. Inside the lock. Growing larger. A thing, a space, a little kernel. Blowing up like popcorn. She imagined pulling that atmospheric veil of the Dream to that one spot and ballooning it outward. She imagined it pushing the metal apart.

The padlock twitched in her hand. The loop bulged in one spot, then in another. Emery put all her focus on the space between. The metal let out little groans as the dreamform inside expanded. Joel breathed something beside her. Her focus wavered. The dreamform pushed through the metal, looking like a piece of gray putty. It disappeared in a puff of purple and blue, but the damage it had done was enough. Emery yanked the lock off and pulled the door open.

"Em, I don't tell you this enough, but you are the most amazing person I know," Joel said.

"There are at least fifty other dreamhunters you know who could do that better than me," she said.

"Yeah, but they would all give up when it didn't work." Joel slung an arm around her neck and kissed the side of her head. "I wish I could do things like that. "

"You really don't. I feel like I got hit by a truck."

Her nose had started to bleed, too. Just a little trickle that she wiped away with her finger and thumb.

She followed Joel into the concession stand. It did indeed smell like cheese and pretzels, and the largest freezer was mercifully unlocked. The shelves inside had been removed so the sculpture could sit inside like a glorious tribute to weird dolphin fetishes. Joel grabbed an old towel folded on a nearby shelf and threw it over the sculpture so he could pick it up without touching it.

Getting back to the Crossing with the sculpture required only the confidence to walk across campus like they were going exactly where they were supposed to, and not doing anything suspicious at all. Though a few night and day division students were out, most of the day division had gone to bed for the night and most of the night division had retired to their dorms to study, or taken to the Sleeping City for missions. Emery felt a twinge of annoyance thinking about it; if she could go out on missions, she probably wouldn't have this weight sitting on her chest, whatever it was.

"Did you know," she said, as they crossed the quad, "Fabian Fenhallow had a special sonar sense that let him communicate with dolphins? Won't hear about that in the history books."

"Did you know all his ancestors are part dolphin?" Joel said. "Explains Jacqueline."

"Did you know on his gravestone they originally wrote, 'Fabian Fenhallow, Dolphin Lover'? But his family knew the scandal that would happen if his greatest secret was revealed to the world, so they had the last part chiseled away."

"His greatest accomplishments paled in comparison to his greatest love." Joel hugged the sculpture. "History may have forgotten, but this school never will."

The Crossing's atrium was closed to students and faculty after dinner on school nights so the kitchen staff could leave for the night and the cleaning crew could switch shifts. The fountain at the center of the atrium had been turned off for the night, and it sat in the middle of the room, silent, overlooked by the darkened hallway of student council offices up above. Emery and Joel hugged the wall by the doors while the Class Nineteen student council closed up their office and disappeared from view down the hallway.

When the coast was clear, Emery and Joel snuck across the floor.

"You think it's cold enough in here to keep this thing from melting before morning?" Emery asked.

"Yeah, they always turn the heat down at night to save money. Having you sat on the seats in here at breakfast? They're freezing. And by the time they turn the heat back on, too late! The breakfast crowd already told their friends."