Lair of Dreams

“The same.”

“You see? We are like sisters already!” Wai-Mae bit her lip hopefully. “And do you like opera?”

“Opera is for old men,” Ling said definitively.

Wai-Mae’s mouth opened in shocked surprise. “Oh, Ling. How can you say that? The opera is wonderful! They are our stories we carry with us, just like dreams.”

“I don’t like fairy tales. I like facts. Science.”

Wai-Mae made a face. “Sounds very dull.”

“Well, if you’re so keen on the opera, you’re in luck. My uncle runs the opera house,” Ling confessed. “In New York. That’s where I live.”

Wai-Mae made a high-pitched sound, and it took Ling a second to recognize it as excitement, not distress. “You are the luckiest girl in the world to have such an uncle! Do you go all the time? Do you sit in the balcony and eat pumpkin seeds and imagine yourself living out those scenes? When I come to New York, you and I will go to the opera, and you’ll see how wonderful it is! Clearly, fate has brought us together. We shall become the best of friends. And in the meantime, while I am on the ship, we can meet up each night, here in this beautiful dream world.”

They’d come to the end of the trees. Ahead, it was only blocks of gray and brown, like a vague sketch waiting for detail. “This seems to be as far as we can go,” Ling said.

“Would you like to go farther?”

“But we can’t go farther,” Ling said, irritated. She really was starting to wonder if Wai-Mae might be a bit simple.

“Then we will change it, make it into whatever we like. Go where we wish.”

“You can’t change a dream.”

“Yes you can.”

Ling spoke as if she were a peeved schoolmarm explaining a subject to a confused child. “I’ve dream walked plenty. It doesn’t work that way. You can walk inside an office building. You can take the stairs, which already exist. But you, yourself, cannot turn that building into, say, a schoolhouse or an automobile.”

Wai-Mae’s expression was quizzical. “What’s an automobile?”

Ling shut her eyes, took a deep breath. “Never mind.” She started back toward the forest. “Henry! Henry!”

“Here we can change things,” Wai-Mae said, catching up. “It isn’t like other dreams. Here, I’ll show you.”

Ling stopped and folded her arms across her chest, defiant.

“Think of something you want,” Wai-Mae said. “Something small.”

I want my legs back, Ling thought. I want to walk without braces, without people staring at me in pity or fear. I want to wake up without pain.

Ling swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. “Fine. Shoes. I want a pair of beautiful shoes.”

“Very well,” Wai-Mae said, pleased. She reached down and scooped up a rock, and her hand dropped as if the rock had real weight.

“How did—”

“Shhh. Watch.” Wai-Mae shut her eyes. Her mouth went tight with concentration. She moved her hands over the rock, skilled as a magician with a well-worn trick, and as Ling watched, astonished, the rock shifted beneath Wai-Mae’s hands, no longer solid but something between states, a moment of becoming, observed. Wai-Mae’s edges blurred as well, as if she and the rock were joined in this alchemy. The rock wavered for a moment more, and then it was gone. In its place lay a pair of elegant embroidered Chinese slippers.

Ling ran her thumb across the raised thread at the tips of the shoes and felt just the tiniest static, some lingering charge. “How… how did you do that?”

Wai-Mae wiped sweat from her brow. “It’s this world. Our dream-walker energy is like magic here.”

“Not magic,” Ling murmured. Her mind whirred: She knew the dream world was not the real world, and yet, as fantastical as it all was, she’d never been able to change or create anything within it. This seemed unbelievable—as if Wai-Mae had altered the atomic structure of the dream landscape somehow.

“This place makes whatever you dream come true. It makes me very tired, though.” Wai-Mae trembled, breathing heavily. For the first time, her mouth wasn’t running amok. “Come back tomorrow night, and I will show you how to do it, too.”

“But how do I come back?”

“Take the train from the old station, of course. Just as you did tonight,” Wai-Mae assured her, grinning. “We will be friends, you and I. I will show you how to change dreams. And you…” Wai-Mae twisted her mouth to the side and looked up to the trees, thinking. “You will tell me stories of your New York City so that I will know it when I get there. So that I will not feel like such a stranger.”