Liana wanted to sleep, but she kept thinking about Herago having to break up rocks. Why did people have to do that? She tried to imagine him working with a team of boys doing the back-breaking work. It must have been horrible. She shuddered at the thought, and shuddered again as she remembered where the rocks had come from.
Then she thought about all the buildings that the Bartyronians had put up in Seren-ila. They were mad about building things. Before they came things had, of course, been built in Seren-ila, but only when they were needed. Sometimes buildings were destroyed by bad weather – Liana remembered some terrible storms when she was very little, which had blown down some habitations – sometimes they just wore out, and bits needed replacing, and of course, there were sometimes more people living in the valley than before, and they all needed a habitation, though it seemed like the number of people in Seren-ila stayed more or less the same over a long time. So in Seren-ila, occasionally, buildings had to be put up. Buildings in Seren-ila were mostly made from things that grew – trees and grasses and other sorts of plants. The earth itself was also used – dug up, mixed with water and spread over the buildings to bake in the sun and give strength. There was also a sort of paste that was made from the ash from Greblara. This was mixed with colourful plant pigments, and was used to coat the buildings, making them warm and beautiful. Building in this way produced elegant, useful places to live and work. Places you could enjoy, and where you could enjoy other people.
But the Bartyronian attitude to building was different. Things were made from stones cut into blocks, piled high and stuck together – Liana didn't know how they did this, but it enabled them to make very tall buildings, with floors piled one on top of the other. Buildings that made the people looking at them feel small and insignificant, and the people working at any level feel less important than the people working above them.
The stones came from Greblara and its sister mountains, of course. Greblara, Ciblara, Mentinara and Anglara. The Grabble mountains. But mostly Greblara, as that was the mountain between Seren-ila and Bartyronis. The mountains were being torn up, like a picture on a piece of paper.
Liana thought about all of this. It stopped her sleeping for a long time. And then, when she did fall asleep, her dreams were just a jumble of images. She saw buildings floating in the air, and a mountain – not Greblara – turning itself upside down. This was not a control dream. She didn't know she was dreaming, and when she woke in the morning she felt anxious and tired.
The following night it was the same. Her dream was full of piles of rocks. They rolled down a hill and into a river. On the river she saw Silmoa in a boat, using her shocking stick to push herself along. Every time the stick touched the bank it lit up, and the whole river made a buzzing sound. Silmoa looked at Liana, and then Liana woke up, sweating. She was more tired than when she had laid down.
By now Liana was beginning to wonder if she really had met Herago in her dream. Or even if she had, perhaps the possibility of it happening again was gone. Perhaps she would never have another control dream. Perhaps Seren-ila would never return, not even in her dreams.
The next night, Liana closed her eyes and her mind repeated Seren numbers again: Twil, twilfti, twillo, twillorio, twillorinio. The numbers calmed her down, but still, she couldn't sleep.
Then, in her head, she spoke words about Seren-ila. She spoke the names of people she knew. Then the names of plants and animals, which were things the Bartyronians had no names for – or if they did, they hadn't bothered to teach them to the Grabblers. In between these words, Liana spoke the name of Seren-ila. So in her head a sort of chant was playing:
'Seren-ila,
Trentaya,
Seren-ila,
Herago,
Seren-ila
Ralkino,
Seren-ila,
Herelina,
Seren-ila,
Mountain-mouse,
Seren-ila,
Greblara,
Seren-ila,
Screeching Owl,
Seren-ila, Seren-ila, Seren-ila...'
With the chant still playing in her head, Liana drifted into sleep. Images of water and rocks appeared again, but soon they faded. With relief she realised that once more she was in Seren-ila. She jumped in the air, and decided to fly, even though she had no wrist-flyers. She knew then that it was a control dream.
Liana flew a little way, looking at the old habitations which she knew no longer existed in reality. Soon she was in the garden of the House of the Green Jewel. But Herago was not there. Maybe he would come later, or maybe he would never come. What should she do? All she could do, really, was wait.
Liana remembered the days she had spent in the real House of the Green Jewel, where Piacho would answer her questions and help her to understand everything she wanted to understand. She wondered how real this dream really was. Was everything she saw just a surface that looked like reality, or were there things beyond the surface?
Liana walked up to the door of the building. Putting her hand on the door knob, it felt just like the door knob she remembered from Seren-ila. She turned it and pushed.
The door opened, and she walked inside.
It was just how she had remembered it. The wall facing her was covered in shelves. Like so many Seren-ilian buildings, this one had curved walls. In Seren-ila, buildings swirled around you, in circles and ovals. Not straight, flat Bartyronians lines. So there were beautiful curving shelves full of books, forming an arc. Some of the books were very old. They all had decorated coloured spines, with drawings of people, animals and landscapes.
Liana remembered that there was another room in this building, through a red door to the left of the bookshelves. She looked in that direction. The door was there.
Liana stood still and quiet. She could hear something. At first, she thought that some of the sound from the room she was sleeping in had leaked into her dream. Was it time to get up? Were people in the hostel speaking about her?
But no, this sound was inside the dream, and it was coming from behind that door. Could Herago be in there? Maybe, but who would he be talking to?
Suddenly, Liana felt frightened. Maybe this wasn't such a great dream after all. Quietly she walked over to the door. She opened it slowly and looked inside.
There was little light in the room. In fact, she realised, it was now dark in Seren-ila. Not dark as it was in the hostel before she fell asleep, but dark like it would often be as the sun began to set, and the light tried hard to force its way through the smoky sky. At this time, herb lamps were lit, and their warm glow would be comforting and pleasant. But no herb lamps had been lit here. And the sight Liana saw in the room was not comforting.
Through the gloom, Liana could make out figures. Two people who dressed and looked like Bartyronians. But also two people wearing the Trowster cloaks of members of the Seren-ila Counsel of the Wise. A man and a woman.
As Liana's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see more of the Seren-ilians. And now she recognised them. But no sooner had she understood who they were than they vanished from sight.
There are levels of dreaming, Liana thought. There are ordinary dreams, where you are just swept along by something you don't understand, and you have no idea at the time that you are dreaming. Then there are dreams where you know that you are dreaming, but you can't affect what is happening. Then there are the full control dreams, where you can do anything that you can imagine. And there are dreams where you are only partly in control – you might be able to will things to happen, but you might not. To these Liana now had to add the shared dream, where you and someone else – only Herago, in her experience – are dreaming and controlling, though you can't control what someone else is doing in that dream.
Now Liana wondered whether some of these different dreams could overlap. So while she might be having a shared control dream with Herago, couldn't she also be having a dream where other things happen, like seeing someone you remember from Seren-ila. That was what must have just happened.
It was disturbing.
Just then, Liana heard a voice from outside the building. It was Herago, and he was calling her. His voice got more and more insistent. She went outside, and saw him standing there, surrounded by the stuff he used for his impossibles.
'Liana,' Herago said, 'what were you doing there? I thought at first that you weren't in this dream. Come on, we've got work to do.'
Should she tell Herago about the strange figures inside the learning house? There was no use worrying Herago about it. Just another thing that her mind had made up, after all the worries of the day. Wasn't that what Piacho would have said about it?
'Come on Liana! What's the matter with you? We need to be thinking about our Impossibles. We can't just do them the same way we did them in Seren-ila, you know. They have to say something about Bartyronis. They have to tell people how Seren-ilans, Grabblers, are treated.'
'Yes,' Liana replied, 'and also how ridiculous this whole Barty setup is.'
'That's it!' said Herago. 'So you need to think about how that will fit with our old Impossibles, and a few new ones that I've been working on.'
And so they began. The work was hard – harder than the work for the showing had been. But they both enjoyed it, and laughed a lot as they talked about how their new act would go down with the Bartys, and especially with Tyro and Sleech. They worked until the sirens in the real world woke their sleeping bodies, and they had to return to face whatever the Bartys had to throw at them. And when they returned to the land where they were known as Grabblers, they walked with their heads held high, knowing that they still carried some of Seren-ila in their minds, in their dreams.