1 – Toto, I Don’t Think We’re in Illinois Anymore

I was on the floor.

This wasn't unusual, as I was a restless sleeper. Tess used to say that I fought my sheets like they owed me money, and I'd rolled off enough mattresses in my life for my body to have learned to absorb the impact and keep sleeping.

However, today, the floor felt rough and prickly beneath my hand. I reached over feeling around for my phone, only to slap the ground next to me instead. I grasped a handful of dry, crunchy material. I squeezed it and then opened my eyes.

Hay?

I was lying face down in a heap of it in what looked like a wooden and stone building, with a low, beamed ceiling, and light filtering in through a gap in the wall.

Huh.

I sat up, and hay fell off me. I looked at my hands, and my fingernails were black. Dirt was buried deep under each one, grime that had to have been building for months. My palms were rough and calloused, as if I'd been working with them all my life. I turned them over and flexed my fingers. Gross, but kind of coup I could feel the hay under me and the rough fabric of whatever I was wearing. It wasn't my T-shirt and shorts; it was some kind of tunic and belt situation that looked like a costume from Merlin. I felt the earthy floor beneath my bare feet, chilly and gritty.

I'd never had a dream this detailed before. I don't usually remember my dreams at all. I'd close my eyes and open them again, and it was morning. Whatever my brain had dreamed up was gone. Kat said that she dreams in color every night with full narratives and plot twists and recurring characters. I always called bull. If I remembered this dream when I woke up, I'd have to apologize to her.

I sniffed. I could smell. Was that…wood burning?

Maybe this was that lucid dreaming thing? I'd heard about it online: people training themselves to realize they were dreaming and then controlling the whole thing, flying around, doing whatever they wanted. I'd never tried it because it sounded like a lot of effort for something that was basically just sleeping harder. But if this was the case? Was this lucid dreaming? Kind of sick, actually.

There was a goat in the corner that I hadn't noticed, and it made me jump when I saw it.

"Sup."

The goat remained silent. Damn, no talking animals in my dream. Underneath the hay, underneath the smell of the animals, I noticed something else. Something rotten and deeply repulsive.

"Dude. Was that you?"

The goat blinked, and I took another whiff. It was bad. It was really bad. Like the combination of onions and a middle school boy's locker room. I quickly turned my head, searching for the odor's source. I raised my arm, then sniffed my sleeve.

Holy shit.

It was me. That ungodly, eye-watering, smell was coming from my own body. I smelled like soap hadn't been invented yet, like I'd been marinating in my own existence for years without a single shower.

I gagged.

"Oh my god. Oh my GOD."

The goat was unmoved. It probably smelled worse.

I stood up. Looked around. Honestly? Still kind of cool. Disgusting, but cool. I'd never had a dream this real. The smell alone was insane. Full sensory immersion. If I could just figure out the lucid dreaming controls, maybe I could fly or something. Or at least spawn a shower.

I walked to the hole in the wall and peeked out. Outside, there were green hills and a dirt road, with no power lines or anything taller than two stories. I stepped outside, and the sun was bright and warm, and the air even tasted clean. The dirt road stretched in both directions, with cottages along it, and a coop for chickens in the grass nearby. It was all kind of beautiful, in a no plumbing kind of way. I made it about ten steps before a voice stopped me.

"There he is!"

I turned. Three guys were coming around the side of the barn, walking fast, and they did not look friendly. The one in front was wide, had a bad haircut and looked mean. The two behind him were leaner, but didn't seem any nicer.

"Uh," I said. "Hi?"

"You thought you could hide, Cassian?" The big one was close now. Close enough that I could see the vein in his forehead and a missing tooth. "You thought we'd forget what you done?"

"I don't —"

"You've a lying tongue and a coward's legs, and I mean to settle the debt for both." He grabbed the front of my shirt and violently pulled me forward. His breath was worse than I smelled, which was actually an impressive feat. "Did you think I wouldn't hear what you said to Marta? Before the whole village?"

"I dunno who Marta is bro.”

"He mocks us." One of the lean ones retorted. "Even now."

"I don't even know —"

The first punch caught me in the stomach. It was a full, closed fist, with no warning. It folded me over and dropped me to my knees in the dirt and the pain was spreading through my ribs. I couldn't breathe and felt my eyes begin to water.

The second blow hit my head. I spat the dirt of my mouth. Before the big one's boot landed, someone kicked my leg, and something familiar clicked in my brain: group home hallways, high school bathrooms, every fight I'd ever been in where nobody was coming to help, and I moved.

I caught his boot and twisted. He stumbled. I stood up. I punched the skinnier guy in the throat and he fell to his knees. The other one grabbed my arm, and I headbutted him. His nose crunched. He let go. I was swinging at everything, wild, nothing except adrenaline and years of knowing that if you can't win, you make it hurt.

The bigger one grabbed me from behind with one arm around my neck. The other guy stood up and hit me in the ribs twice. My breath was shallow, and my vision was blurring. I bit the arm around my neck. Hard. He screamed and let go. I ran.

My bare feet padded over dirt and rocks. I suddenly felt something sharp slicing my foot, but I kept going.

Behind me, footsteps, yelling, but I was fast. I cut into a tree line, branches whipping my arms and face. The ground was getting soft and wet under my feet. My ribs screamed. My head was ringing from the headbutt, which in hindsight hurt me as much as it hurt him, but I'd never been smart about fighting. I ran until I couldn't hear them. Then I kept running, because I didn't trust the silence. Eventually, my legs gave out and I grabbed a tree and slid down the trunk, sitting in the mud.

Lucid dreaming? What a scam! What an absolute, complete, scam.

I limped for a while. Through the trees mostly because I didn't trust the road. My foot was still bleeding, but not gushing. I tore a strip off the bottom of my shirt and wrapped it around the cut, which was disgusting, considering the cut was padded with dirt, but at least it had stopped the bleeding.

Eventually, the trees thinned and the dirt path widened, and I could hear something ahead. Voices. I stepped out of the tree line and saw a village. A real one. Or a dream one.

Whatever.

It was bigger than where I'd been before. Buildings packed close together along a wide cobblestone square. There were market stalls with fabric canopies and carts loaded with bread and fruit and things I didn't recognize. A woman balanced a basket of leafy greens on her hip as she made her way through the bustling market. A man hammered at a piece of metal in an open doorway, sparks popping off the anvil. Kids ran through the crowd, chasing a dog that was chasing a chicken that didn't seem all that concerned about being chased.

It kind of looked European. Not that I'd ever been to Europe. Not that I'd ever been anywhere, really. The farthest I'd traveled was a school trip to D.C. in ninth grade, where I got separated from the group at the Air and Space Museum and Tess had to come get me. But I'd seen pictures. Movies. Those Instagram reels Lyra used to send me at 1 a.m. with girls walking through little cobblestone towns in Italy or France or wherever. This was like that. Minus the Instagram filters. Plus medieval poverty.

Honestly, considering what plane tickets cost, this dream might be the closest I ever got to a European vacation. Might as well enjoy it.

The market smelled incredible. Like baked bread and roasted meat... For a second, I almost forgot that I was the worst-smelling thing in a half-mile radius.

Almost.

I wandered. Nobody seemed to care much. I was just another dirty person in a sea of moderately less dirty people. My feet ached and my ribs were sore and my face was probably doing something on the swelling front, but the sun felt nice on my skin. I focused on that.

Then suddenly, I heard him.

He didn't have to try very hard. He was the loudest thing in the square by far. His voice cut through all the various sounds of the village.

His height was matched by his lanky build, and his face was animated, as though every part of him committed to whatever he was expressing. A lute strap was on his back and a crowd gathered around him. Mostly kids sat in the dirt at his feet, but adults were lingering at the edges.

"— And the sea, she was angry that night. The pirate knew. He could feel it in the wheel, in the way the wood groaned beneath his hands. The ship did not want to go forward. The ship, if we are being truthful, wanted very much to turn around. But the pirate could not turn around because the mermaid was out there, somewhere beneath the black, and he had made her a promise." He spoke in a hushed tone. "And a pirate who breaks a promise to a mermaid does not live to break another."

The crowd was quiet.

"So he sailed on. Into the dark. Into the deep. And the sea rose around him, the waves were taller than the mast, and the rain came sideways, and just when he believed the worst had passed —"

The man stopped. The children drew closer.

"— The tentacles came out of the water."

Gasps.

"Not a small tentacle. Not the kind that belongs to the creatures you find in the shallows, the ones the fishermen pull up in their nets and curse at. No. This was a tentacle the width of the ship itself. It rose out of the sea black and shining and it wrapped around the bow and it squeezed — He made a creaking sound with his mouth, and a young girl in the front put her hands over her face. "— And the wood began to splinter."

I'd stopped walking. I was just standing there on the edge of the crowd watching this guy perform his whole heart out on a wooden crate for a bunch of kids, and I was into it.

"The pirate drew his sword," he said. "He was afraid. Let us not pretend otherwise. Only fools and dead men feel no fear, and he was neither… not yet. But the mermaid was down there. Somewhere in the black and the cold water, she was waiting. And he had promised."

He looked out at the crowd. His eyes were bright, and his face was flushed.

"So he jumped... and the ocean swallowed him whole!" he roared, throwing his arms wide. The kids screamed with delight. Then his eyes found mine.

"BROTHER!" He leaped off the crate and the kids squealed and scattered like pigeons. He covered the space between us in three long strides. Before I could react, he grabbed me, using both hands on my shoulders, then my face, tilting it to the sides to examine me.

"What—hey—" I protested.

"Fox! Look at you!" He held me at arm's length, then pulled me back in, one arm slung around my neck, dragging me into the crowd. "Look at him! My brother the fox! The rogue! The scoundrel!" He pointed at my face. “You see this? Three men, I'd wager. Perhaps four. He cannot go a single morning without finding trouble or letting trouble find him."

The woman with the flour clicked her tongue. "Your brother looks half dead, Wesley.”

"Half dead is half alive, and half alive is more than most deserve on a day this fine!" He squeezed my shoulder and it hurt; everything hurt, but he was beaming at me like I'd just come back from war and not from getting my ass kicked in a field. "Fox, you're bleeding. Must you always bleed?"

"I — Yeah. Dude. Rough morning."

He blinked. For a moment, a flicker of confusion passed over his face. Then it was gone.

"Rough morning, he says. "Rough!" He spread his arms and turned towards the crowd. "A fox does not have rough mornings. A fox has adventures. He merely refuses to call them that because he has no poetry in his soul." He gently poked my chest with one finger. "None. Barren. A wasteland where verse should be."

“Sure,” I replied. "That's... yeah."

A child grabbed his sleeve. "Did the pirate live? You didn't finish!"

"The pirate!" He clutched his chest as though he had forgotten the most important thing in the world, and was only now remembering. "The pirate, yes. Forgive me — my brother's blood distracted me from matters of the deep. The pirate lives, little one. He always lives. It is the mermaid's fate that should concern you, but that —." He held up a finger. "— Is tomorrow's tale."

"You always say tomorrow!"

"And tomorrow always comes. Have I ever lied to you?" He ruffled the hair of the nearest child and turned back to me, slinging his arm around my shoulders again.

"Come, fox. Let me see your wounds before Mother does, or she'll have both our heads. You know how she is when you come home bloody. The last time she didn't speak to either of us for a week, and that was for a split lip. This — He gestured at my face with a wince. "— This may cost us a fortnight."

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