Kane surprised himself by answering honestly. “If you were going to kill me, you would have. I think I’m safer with you than without you.”

The boy produced his knife, slicing through the whip of braided hair. “That’s right. Now tell me, what do you remember?”

Kane rubbed his wrist. “I was running away from Ursula and tried to escape into the locker rooms, but I ended up here instead.”

“Before that.”

“I tried to go to the football practice to…deliver a coin.”

“That’s a terrible lie. Here, does this mean anything to you?”

With the tip of his dagger, he traced something on the damp floor.

“It’s the number eight?” Kane guessed.

The boy was unimpressed. He asked, “Okay. And what do you remember about reveries?”

“Reveries?” Kane stumbled on a loose stone, and the boy hauled him forward. They were moving quickly now. “Like, dreams?”

“Sort of.”

They crept into another cave, this one marbled in bioluminescent pools the color of a cloudless June sky. Things moved in the pools, their wakes edged in phosphorescence.

“Reveries are what happens when a person’s imagined world becomes real. They’re like miniature realities, with their own plots and rules and perils. For instance this reverie appears to be about a subterranean civilization that worships a god called the Cymo. My guess is that we are in someone’s rescue fantasy, made real. For instance you appear to be some sort of—what do you call the people who study bones and dirt?”

“Archaeologists?”

“Yes. Keologist, as they say here. The reverie’s plot appears to be about archaeologists that stumbled upon these caverns and must rescue those girls.”

“The cheerleading team?”

“Evidently.”

“But why were they dressed like sexy secretaries?”

The boy shrugged.

“And those boys—they were the football team, right?”

“Right.”

“How come no one remembers who they are?”

The boy hooked an arm around Kane’s waist, helping him over a mound of mushrooms.

“Most people never know they are in a reverie. Their mind just accepts the new world they’re in and the new role they’re given. Think of it like a movie, full of actors, except they don’t know they’re acting. They think it’s real. Very few people remain lucid like us and Ursula, but we still need to play along or else we’ll get in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Every reverie has a plot. If you don’t follow the rules of the reverie, you risk triggering a plot twist, and plot twists can be pretty deadly for people trapped inside reveries. So we have to play along, and we have to do our best to keep people safe until the reverie reaches its end.”

The skin of Kane’s neck prickled. Something splashed nearby, gone in a sparkling ripple.

“But if this is all just a wild fantasy, how can it be dangerous?”