Now the cold mist rose up from the colorless fields and got caught in the dark red-brown lingering leaves of the surrounding oaks. The blue sky soared high overhead. White streaky clouds glowed with morning pink, just like the white-painted outbuildings down below.

It was really nice.

He guessed.

For several minutes he and Declan walked in silence down the long, long driveway. Declan tapped away at his new cell phone in his peculiar Declan way, his thumb on one hand and his pointer finger on the other, glancing up just often enough to keep from walking off the driveway. Matthew threw animal crackers for the trailing dream creatures, careful not to chuck the food at the forever-sleeping cattle that dotted the pastures. The cows had been dreamt by his father. Well, by Niall Lynch, since Niall was not really his father. Matthew was father-free. Dreamt, just like the cows. And, just like them, doomed to an eternity of sleeping forever if something happened to Ronan.

When something happened to Ronan, Matthew thought.

A sour mood was rising.

He didn’t have a lot of practice at sour moods. He’d been a happy, feckless kid. Pathologically happy—he saw that now. Dreamt to be happy. Matthew had a hard time finding any memory that wasn’t full of good cheer. Even if it wasn’t a happy time, the youngest Lynch brother appeared in the memory with a plucky grin, like a sun flare in an otherwise dark photo, or maybe like a team mascot posing along with the players. Goofy and out of place but not necessarily unwelcome.

Like a pet, he thought.

All around him, unseasonable fireflies winked in and out. As Matthew watched them fade in and out even on this cool fall day, he wondered what kind of dream Ronan had been having to produce them. He wondered what kind of dream Ronan had been having to produce him.

His mind kept shouting the truth at him: You are a dream.

He hadn’t told anyone, but he was terrified of falling asleep forever. He’d already had a taste of it. Every time the ley line faltered, he went all … dazed. Enchanted. His feet began to walk, his body began to move, his mind went somewhere else. When he came to, he always found himself in a completely different location, his disobedient body having tried to take him closer to ley energy.

As trees took the place of the fields on either side of the driveway, Matthew hurled the entire box of crackers away from himself. The hand-cat said “Meow” in a disturbingly articulate way as it retrieved the box, but then a few little winged weasel things rushed out of the underbrush to fight for it until the cardboard box ripped asunder.

Matthew plunged past them, ready for the walk to be over.

“Matthew, stop,” Declan called. “I’ll go around.”