Emery woke up to Wes poking her in the ribs. She'd slid sideways and come to rest with her cheek on his shoulder. She had dreamed of the stuffy room and the VHS tapes and the cigarette carpet, but there were no three men, and the little boy really was Edgar. Waking from it had been relief enough, but another relief was that she and Wes were still at the same place on the edge of the lake. No dream windows had swallowed them while she slept. She righted herself and Wes, looking as if he'd just woken up himself, fell asleep almost instantly. In minutes--or what must have been minutes--he'd slumped into her, their shoulders together, his head resting atop hers. She let him stay there; the weight felt nice.
The breeze rippled the surface of the lake. The trees swayed gently on the opposite shore. The poppy fields, wide and endless, shivered. The hypnotism of it relaxed her and also kept her awake. She tore herself away from the scene only long enough to look up at the lone mountain. The rivers that fed the lake originated from high on the mountain, the top of which was so tall it was almost swallowed by the purple clouds.
Her head had stopped pounding, but exhaustion still weighed her down. After checking to make sure Wes was asleep, she let herself cry. She wanted to be sitting in Grandpa Al's office, sipping tea and watching leaves fall from the woods to scatter across the sports fields. She wanted to be in her dorm room with Edgar, watching The Good, The Bad, & the Ugly and quoting lines before the characters had a chance to say them.
She really wanted her parents to climb through a gateway and pull her out of the Dream, but they were overseas somewhere, doing some kind of important, covert work for the Hypnos State.
With that last wish conceived, considered, and discarded, Emery wiped the tears from her face and took a deep breath.
Some time later, Wes woke up again. She didn't know when, exactly, because she didn't know he was awake until he lifted his head from hers. They sat in silence and watched the lake ripple.
"This place is different than the other parts of the Dream," Emery said.
"It's more peaceful."
"More peaceful? Compared to everything else, this is heaven."
Wes made a noise.
"Wesley Jager, did you just laugh?"
"I'd call it more of a snort, but whatever you want."
"I wasn't even trying to be funny."
"You try to be funny? I thought you were trying to be annoying."
"Well I do that, too, but--" Emery caught the smile sneaking across his face. "And cracking jokes, too? Wes, you're scaring me."
"Ridley says I'm only funny when I don't mean to be. Most of my jokes don't go over very well. I think they come off as harsh."
"Hey, there's one thing we have in common. And younger siblings, I guess."
"I like Edgar. He's...thoughtful."
"Yeah, he likes you, too. When have you two ever interacted?"
"There were a few times. I think he gets teased a lot by some other kids in his class. I sat with him at lunch a few times so they would leave him alone. I know I'm not the most popular, either, but generally people don't mess with a guy who has a giant hammer."
Wes said it lightly, like it was no big deal. He looked away across the lake.
Everything inside Emery went very still, and in the stillness a single clear note rang out. She had felt the sensation only twice before: the first time when she met Joel; the second when she met Jacqueline.
"He does," she said. "Thank you."
Wes shrugged.
"I'm sorry for saying you were useless, and would get in my way." She busied herself with her bootlaces so she wouldn't have to look at him. "Actually sorry, not just saying it to get you off my back. I don't want this to sound like one of those fake apologies. I, um, I'm glad I'm not here alone."
"Oh." He paused. "I am, too. Glad I'm not here alone."
"You wouldn't be here if it weren't for me."
"Yeah, well."
Another long pause.
"Do you know why people don't like you?" Wes said. He said it lightly, again, but in a way that made it very clear he was tiptoeing around her. "This is a legitimate question, I'm not trying to make you mad."
"Because people like to hate people who are good at things?"
"It's because of your parents."
"Because my parents are good at things?"
"Because you have parents."
Emery looked up.
"A lot of them--a lot of us--don't have one parent, let alone two. A lot of us don't have grandparents, either, and definitely not grandparents that run the school. I only have Ridley, and I still consider myself lucky. Last year, Isaiah Howard got the statistics for the number of dreamhunters under the North American Ward who pass their Insanity Primes. The percentage was so low they didn't publicize the numbers." He ran a hand through his hair. "Your parents were in that percentage. Ours weren't. You're going to be in that percentage. We're not. We weren't made to be great dreamhunters; we were made to be regular dreamhunters. At some point we all kind of realized we were here so that the Hypnos State has meat shields to throw at the nightmares. If some of us live longer, that's a plus for them. If we don't, oh well, there'll be a new generation to take our place.
"But you--you're their golden child. We all heard the stories about your parents. The others don't dislike you because you're good at things. They dislike you because you were made to be good at things. Because the Ward needs us, but they want you, so you have everything you need to do well. Your family, the best teachers, leniency when you do something wrong."
Emery balked. "But...none of that is my fault."
"No, it isn't. That doesn't mean it's not unfair, or that it's wrong for the others to be angry. I was angry. It was worse because you clearly didn't know, and you went happily on as if we were all jerks for treating you like that."
"I didn't--"
His look silenced her. "It was the way we felt. It's the way they still feel."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"I don't think so. It's not...about you. Not really. Most of them don't know you."
Emery sat back against the boulder, wanting to scoff but holding it in, because he'd said he wasn't trying to make her angry, and she believed him. "What about you? Do you know me?"
"Better than I did. Honestly, if I had to be stuck in the Dream with anyone, I'm glad it's you."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "You're top of the class. If anyone could figure out how to get us out of here, it's probably you."
"Says the kid who can dreamform like he's already graduated. Speaking of which—" Emery sat up straight. "You never did explain why you get such terrible grades when you can dreamform like you do. You made that ladder—twice—and you tore through that closet door. Where did you learn that? And why am I the only one who knows you can do it? I'm assuming I'm the only one?"
Wes looked away. Looked back. Sighed. "Ridley knows. I practiced a lot when we were younger. I was, um, inspired. I don't tell anyone because the Ward tends to send particularly good dreamformers on certain kinds of missions. Missions that go into the Dream."
"And you didn't want to go?"
"I'd heard that hunters who entered the Dream often were more likely to suffer more serious Insanity Primes. I didn't want to make things harder on myself than they were already going to be."
He looked around and put his hands up in the air as if to say, Look at this mess.
"I don't blame you," Emery said. "I know everyone thinks I'm going to breeze through my Insanity Prime, but that just makes me feel like I'm not. It'll be the big joke—Queen Emery couldn't hack it, right? Everyone thought she'd pass the Prime, turns out she was the one who failed spectacularly. It seems silly to complain about it, though, because you're right: I have my whole family to get me through it. It must be so much worse for someone who doesn't. If—if you don't mind me asking—"
"My parents are dead," Wes said. "Both of them were hit hard by their Insanity Primes. They were so far gone, the North American Ward sentenced them to dream death before their doppelgängers could come looking for them."
Emery had heard of dream death in passing, during studies of the Insanity Prime, but she had never seen it performed. That was a ritual left to the dreamkillers. All she knew was that it involved the separation of the subconscious from the conscious, releasing the hunter's connection to the Dream and forcing their minds to cannibalize until the dreamhunter died. It was only performed once the dreamhunter was too far gone to realize it was happening, but to Emery it still sounded terrible.
"We do it that way," Grandpa Al had said once, "because there's nothing we can do to help them, and it stops their doppelgänger from wreaking havoc to get the hunter's body, then wreaking more havoc once they have it."
A doppelgänger was another dreamform, but this one developed without the dreamhunter's permission. It was a manifestation of a hunter's subconscious that grew as the hunter became more powerful. Doppelgängers were tied tightly to the Insanity Prime, since that was the time that most dreamhunters reached their peaks, and it was because of the doppelgängers that so many hunters succumbed.
"Did your parents ever see their doppelgängers?" Emery asked, quietly.
Wes shook his head. "I don't know. They were taken to the Ward headquarters in D.C. a long time before I understood what was happening to them. I hope they didn't. I heard it's terrifying."
So had Emery, but she'd heard it from her parents, who had both killed theirs. Doppelgängers wanted only one thing: to live in the waking world. To do that, they needed a real body, and only their dreamhunter's would work.
Dreamkillers, like Grandpa Al, like her parents, were named for killing their doppelgängers. If they didn't, the doppelgängers would kill them.
"Did your parents say what it was like?" Wes asked.
"They said it was the hardest thing they've ever done." Emery pulled her knees up to her chest. "You're destroying a part of your own mind, and it looks like you. That can't be easy."
"I know you only survive if you do see it and kill it, but I've always wished I wouldn't have to. I jump every time I look in a mirror."
"Only if your hair floats."
"What?"
"Yeah, I think Lenton mentioned it a few times in class," Emery said. "That's how you know the doppelgänger from the dreamhunter. The doppelgänger's hair floats, like they're in water. My dad says it's because they're still part of the Dream, and no matter how much they want to be corporeal, they can't completely separate themselves."
"Floating hair." Wes scrubbed his hand through his brown waves. After so many dream-windows and however much time without a shower, his hair was limp and dull. "They look exactly like us, don't they? Is that based on our actual forms, or how we think we look? Our current state, or how we should look?"
"How you should look? What does that mean? You look how you look."
"I mean like...if anything changed between now and when we were born."
Emery let out a long, exaggerated sigh. "Hypnos's balls, Wes, I hate riddles. What are you talking about?"
Wes frowned. "I'm talking about my eyes. Isn't...I thought everyone knew. I thought you'd know, anyway, because of your grandpa."
"Your eyes?"
His eyes were black, flat black, as always, like they were all pupil. It made him look drugged sometimes. Intense. Emery had always thought they were strange. Sometimes people just looked strange. But people didn't have black eyes. Very dark brown, maybe, but not black. Emery shifted. His gaze followed her.
"They're dreamforms?"
He nodded.
Permanent dreamforms took a degree of skill most dreamhunters never mastered. Their weapons were the only permanent dreamform most dreamhunters managed to make, and they were guided carefully through every step of the process for over two years. Other permanent dreamforms took months of molding and shaping, hard focus, and a depth of understanding about what was being created in order to make the dreamform function on its own in the waking world. Dreamhunters in the medical field learned how to do it, but it was impractical for most others.
Emery caught herself staring. "Eyes must be complex as hell," she said. "Who did them? What for? Did something happen? Were you--I mean--"
"I was born with white sight. It's rare...people with white sight see the Dream, but not the waking world. Most people who have it don't live through infancy."
"I didn't know they did eye transplants for white sight sufferers."
"They didn't, until me." He smiled a little. "I went from white eyes to black ones. It was your grandpa who made them."
"Grandpa Al made your eyes?" She'd known Grandpa Al was a great dreamformer, and had been slated to enter the Hypnos State's medical division instead of their administration, but she'd never imagined him making something as complex as eyes. "No, he didn't tell me. But--do they see like normal eyes? Do you have X-ray vision or something? Can you see colors no one else can?"
"I think they see like normal eyes. If he'd formed them differently, they may not have worked. I've tried to research what went into making them, but at some point it's not a matter of knowledge, it's a matter of focus. You have to stay so intent on that one thing. You start thinking about how nice the weather is and suddenly there's a leaf growing out of your optic nerve. I want to learn how to have that kind of focus someday."
"Well, you're already part of the way there. You're a great dreamformer."
"Hopefully I don't lose my mind first."
Emery snorted. "Same here. Don't worry, everyone expects me to be stable, so I'm probably actually a giant time bomb. We'll lose our minds together."
The poppies swayed. Water lapped at the shore.
"That doesn't sound so bad," Wes said.
Emery began to close her eyes again when something shimmered on the edge of her vision. Past Wes, halfway up the poppy hill they'd come down, a dream-window pulled itself fully into existence. The inside was dark except for the two big, old oaks framing it in.
Emery jabbed Wes in the arm. "Look!"
Wes gaped. "It's his."
They scrambled to their feet. Wes turned in a circle, searching the area. "Is he here? Nearby? He must be--do you think he's been following us this whole time?"
"Who cares? What if that's not a window? What if it's his gateway? Wes, we could get out!"
"I don't think—" Wes started, but Emery was already running.
This time, when she sprinted for the darkness between the oaks, she didn't have to pull Wes with her.
(Next time on The Children of Hypnos --> Fairytales!)