Hennessy couldn’t yet reply. Or move. Dreamers always did this after a successful dream; they saw their temporarily paralyzed bodies from above for a few minutes. She was still getting used to the idea that this paralysis didn’t have to be synonymous with shame. Before all this, it had always meant she’d made another copy of herself. It had meant failure. Now, even though she couldn’t see what she’d brought back from the dream, she was sure, at least, it wasn’t another Jordan Hennessy.

No more copies.

Ever.

She’d never been so long without any of her girls before.

Jordan, Jordan.

“The world shouts at you. The waking world, the dreaming world. You don’t have to listen to it, but you do. And until you learn to shout louder than it, we’re going to keep having this happen.” Bryde had uncovered Ronan from beneath a pile of hay bales and wheels like the prize in the bottom of a cereal box. His star pupil was just as paralyzed as Hennessy, so Ronan couldn’t escape the lecture as Bryde went on. “I expect better from you. How long did it take us to find a place with this much power in the bank? And what did you write a check for? This. This shit. Did you give half a thought to any other dreamer while you were doing this? No, you just ran your mouth and out this came.”

Aaaaaaaaand Hennessy was back. She could feel her body again, and she was looking at the world through her own eyes. Shouldering off her cage of wheels, she searched the hay around her, looking for whatever object she had brought back from her dream. The painting. The brush. The palette. Something. But all she found was hay and wheels and yet more hay.

Bryde was still going. “And what a way to die. Suffocated under rotting food for cows that don’t exist anymore. The Greywaren—isn’t that what your forest Lindenmere calls you? Dreamer and protector? Dreamer and protector and fool with lungs full of silage if I hadn’t been here. For what?”

“I was trying,” Ronan finally snarled.

“So was Hennessy, and you took it from her,” Bryde said. Man, that little rubbishy part of Hennessy was having a field day. “Did you manage to find your painting, Hennessy?”

“The haystack has not produced a needle thus far,” she said.

Bryde flicked his eyes around the barn. Dreams could sometimes end up quite far away from their dreamer, especially when they were big, but there was no sign of any of the large things from the dream, like a canvas, or the chair he’d been sitting on.

Then she spotted it.