It was wonderful to no longer have to look at them. It was also unsettling, because now I wasn’t sure where they were or what they were doing. But I inwardly shook myself alert, giving my focus to the nightmare that was coming to life.

Papa and I stood in the eastern street beneath a hanging shop sign as the rain began to fall thick and hard, drenching us within moments.

“Do you recognize this dream, Clem?” Papa asked me, bending close to my ear so I could hear him over the melody of the rain.

“I’m not sure.” But I had an inkling. I looked down to the cobblestoned street, where puddles were beginning to deepen, iridescent.

And I knew it, then.

This was Archie Kipp’s dream. A little boy who had almost drowned earlier that summer and now was terrified of water. A child’s nightmare, and they were always the hardest ones to champion.

Papa recognized the dream when the puddles became ankle deep within a moment. “We need a boat,” he murmured.

I nodded but waited, holding my magic on the tip of my tongue, where it crackled like salt as Papa strove to build us a boat. The water was rising quickly now. It was almost to my knees, and I felt my first true pang of trepidation.

“Papa?” He was taking too long. His magic was weak and dim, beating like a faint pulse. I saw that he was attempting to build something infallible, a small boat of tin and wood, and while I admired his sense of grandness, I knew the flood would rise swiftly. And once it did, the serpents would also arrive, slithering in the water.

“Let me,” I said. Papa glanced my way, and I saw how he trembled with exhaustion. The waters were mid-thigh now, and I didn’t want to drown tonight.

My father reluctantly nodded and I felt the shift of power flow from him to me. This battle was not ours anymore; it was mine.

I called to the stray pieces of nature around us—stalks of hay, threads of grass, feathers from nests, lichens from roofs, smoke from chimneys. I sensed I needed more, so I reached farther with my magic and gathered the distant sound of an argument leaking from a threshold, the wail of a baby, the song of a mother, the sting from a skinned knee. I wove everything together and I made a small boat, rough-hewn and narrow but sturdy.