“Guns?” he said, his tone lifting because all at once he wasn’t exactly sure. Everyone in the incensed crowd was brandishing something as they pursued him. He assumed it was some kind of weapon.

“And they’re angry with you?”

“I think so.” It was odd to dig into a dream like this. Your awake self couldn’t quite put a finger on what had seemed so immediate and real to your sleeping self.

“Goodness,” Peach said. “As if you haven’t been through enough.”

“The war is over. But in my head, it doesn’t quite feel over.”

She nodded, her face far away and thoughtful. “My dad used to tell me something about bad dreams. Especially the ones where something was coming after me. Wolves or bears or monsters. He told me I should stop running, turn around and say, ‘Well, what do you want, for crying out loud?’”

Kennet laughed. “Turn the tables.”

“Exactly.” She shrugged. “I have to say it worked. I’d either wake up, or the dream would go somewhere else.”

“Well, maybe I’ll give your dad’s technique a try.”

“You have nothing to lose. But enough of me gabbling away. What can I get for you, dear?”

Two nights later, no more than three, the dream came for him. This time it wasn’t just the Chenogne residents or the inmates of Mauthausen. Jock was in the mob. And the headless Marco Malinda. Pete von Asselt. Marty, Schmitt and Nichols. And leading them all: Hook.

Perhaps it was the sight of his bosom buddy in the vanguard that made dream-Kennet turn tail and run twice as fast. He ran over snowy fields and through barnyards filled with dead horses, where his boots crunched over the shells of broken goose eggs. The mob pursued him into a forest where he dodged through trees and followed tank-treads across a bobbing pontoon bridge. They chased him over a golden river and through a desolated city of rubble and ruin, and finally up one hundred and eighty-six granite steps to a sheer drop-off littered with dire choices: pick a friend to push, or jump.

Kennet was here alone. He had no friend to pick or push.

He had to jump.

Then he remembered. Like a fragment of a dream within a dream, the alternative came back to him: stop running, turn around and ask.

He was already halted. Shaking inside his clothes, he turned to face the crowd.

Well, he cried out loud. What the hell do you want, for crying out loud?

The horde had been surging up the steps like a wave. They ceased as if hitting an invisible wall.

And he saw what they’d been brandishing all this time.

Not guns. Not sticks or staves or torches or knives.

They held notebooks.

Cardboard, canvas, leather, in all colors, brand new or worn to smoothness. Pages tight and trim, or loose and falling out.