A door squealed open. Footsteps on a cement floor. The nurse whistled to herself as she approached, a lullaby. Sleep now, darling, sleep now, my boy. Let the wind sweep, and let the trees sway, and you’ll still be here, come the next dawning day. The whistle grew louder as the nurse neared. Immense, a round-hipped silhouette against the sweeping light. A spark: the needle, raised. Kai pulled against the leather cuffs, and knowing that she dreamed she knew she pulled against bonds she’d tied around herself. The needle descended, but she tore free, and ripped the mask from her face, and scrambled over the bars and ran down the long alley between beds, thousands all alike, holding all shapes of creatures and all sizes, birds the size of galaxies, their wings bound with leather straps, lizards with IVs dripping into their arms, women, men, angels, demons, tubes drawing rainbow-colored blood out to a vast net beneath the floor that beat like a heart. She ran, and the nurse followed. Search the faces. Mara’s here, somewhere. All fears touch, deep enough in dream, and so in a good nightmare you can find any other dreamer—even those who think themselves awake.

Find Mara, raven haired, in her blue dress. Mara, sleeping, to be woken with a kiss. Gods. Sweat soaked Kai’s hospital gown. The nurse’s footsteps were bass drum beats, drawing closer. Kai dared not look behind. She knew what she would see: a mountainous woman blocking out the sun, needle in hand, its point at once hair-fine and larger than Kai’s whole body, a point that would obliterate her if driven home.

Kai ran past the sleeping dead, through the caverns of her mind. Bound. Bleeding. She ran faster than the beat her heart made. No music, just bare feet on concrete, and footsteps following, and millions of forced breaths.

Don’t look back. Bend the dream to your will. Mara is here. Find her and leave. You are here because you chose to be here. (But she could not believe that whisper. To believe was to admit her control, break the nightmare, return to the branching gardens of her own mind. The nightmare telegraph’s other double-logic: you must accept that all nightmares are real.)

Mara was not here. An infinity of beds, endless beings endlessly dying but never dead, their suffering cultivated, and Mara lay in none of them. Impossible. She had to be here, awake or asleep. But Kai tired, slowed, and the nurse’s footsteps grew louder, even and inhuman as a metronome’s tick.