It feels kind of nice existing for someone else now.
Stranna’s voice is thick as she turns back to the boy. “If we go anywhere, Erik will give you a piggyback ride, okay?”
The boy nods.
“Sorry, Cain.” Erik sounds truly bummed and claps a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks for helping us out.”
Heidi sidles up to me. “I’m cold.”
“We should find a place to bunker down,” Erik says.
I inspect the expanse before us. Cold gray rubble, but as I limp around chunks of stone, I catch little threads and tiny blinks of light, like veins of ore. Whenever I look closer, they disappear, but instead of seeing empty destruction, something awakens inside me. It’s the same feeling that drew me to the wheat field. The promise of more. Of something good.
This place isn’t dead.
It’s merely forgotten.
“We don’t need a place to bunker down. We need a place to live.”
“We’ll find one,” Stranna assures me, but her eyes settle on the horizon, like we’ll be traveling for a long time until we do. I admit I’m curious what’s beyond this rippling border wall we cut through, but somehow I know that’s not where my final days need to take me.
“It’s a wasteland.” Erik follows my gaze to the rubble in front of us. “We can’t build anything from this—certainly not in the state we’re in.”
“It’s not a wasteland,” I say. “It’s a blank canvas.” I walk up to the nearest chunk of stone and touch it with my burned and bleeding hand. Warmth fills my body just like it did when I was standing in the wheat field.
The stone shoots up from the ground, stretching and widening and growing like one of those nature videos on time lapse. Each stone multiplying and finding a shape, fitting together like a living puzzle. I stumble back, and the growth stops, but not before a perfectly formed castle turret stands before me with a toothy top for defense. It has windows partway up and is definitely not Roman. It’s much more . . . Harry Potter.
Stranna gasps. “How did you do that?”
“There was light in the stone.” That’s all that makes sense. Well, maybe it doesn’t make sense, but somehow I knew the light was waiting for direction. I’m merely surprised it listened to me.
“You should try it.” I step forward and touch another stone, holding a mental picture as the warmth floods me again. This one grows like the other one but moves stones aside as it finds its proper place. I laugh in amazement.
It’s absolutely pure creation.
The second tower settles, and in between the two turrets is a tall wooden drawbridge with copper chains. The kids shriek.
“He’s making us a castle!”
They swarm the structure, running around the lone piece of wall and drawbridge, shouting suggestions.
“Keep going!”
“I want my own room!”
“We need a moat!”
“Can we have a pet dragon?”
“It needs a garden . . . and all the princesses need pretty dresses.”
“I don’t want a dress—I want a sword!”
I want to keep going. Keep creating. My mind grows tired, but my body doesn’t. It’s like I’ve worked a full day drafting a dreamscape—my creative well half empty, but the inspiration still going strong.
Stranna gapes at it all. “I don’t understand. You can’t use nightmist in here.”
“It’s not nightmist. It’s . . . something else.” The same thing that made those cardinals. “I think it’s like your phoenix. How did you make her?”
“I didn’t. She was in the wheat field when we found the children the first time.”
That takes me aback. Questions rise, but now’s not the time. I walk around the drawbridge and find more stones with tiny light threads through them, building a scene in my mind before touching each piece. Walls form. More towers with conical roofs and snapping flags of red.
The children cheer, and Heidi runs to the base of a wall and scoops up a handful of stiff gray dirt. Yellow flowers bloom out of it. She squeals and plants them.
Somehow, this makes sense to me. Amid all the confusion of this Nightmare world, I understand this. It’s creation. We’ve broken through Tenebra’s boundaries and walls and found raw unprogrammed ImagiSerum. We’re programming it and directing it from inside the dream . . . with our minds.
Except the power that allows us to do that is not a program. It’s Light. It’s Him. Just like that wheat field is Him.
My mind isn’t the one connecting the dots, my soul is.
The children create an entire garden, complete with three fruit trees and a grape vine that climbs the newly made walls. The grapes are pastel pink and purple. A little girl touches a leaf, and a ladybug forms in the spot her finger touched.
Some of the boys create a small moat, though it’s empty. They send a few turtles down its banks. Erik lowers the drawbridge, laughing the whole time. Stranna still stands dumbfounded.
“Come on, Stranna!” I call to her, running across the drawbridge into a courtyard in desperate need of grass.
She follows, but slowly. “I . . . I can’t.” She tucks her hands in the folds of her toga.
