“Yeah. Not the flowers or anything—just the basic shape from a bird’s-eye view. We’re trying to work out the layout of the human dreamscape, but it’s tough when none of us can leave our sunlit zones. We think there are at least three zones, but we need you to split up the picture so we can see if our theories work on it. Can you do that?”

A sense of purpose filled me to the brim. I was proving to be really useful within the group. “Of course,” I said.

Eliza switched on the TV. I set to work on my sketch, drawing a circumpunct surrounded by three rings.

The background music for ScionEye floated from the TV set. Scarlett Burnish was reading the midday news. Eliza pointed at the screen, chewing her crackers. “Do you think she’s actually older than Weaver, but she’s had so much surgery she physically can’t develop wrinkles?”

“She smiles too much for that.” I continued to sketch. Now I had something that looked more like a bull’s-eye, with five sections. “So we’ve established that this”—I tapped the center of the circle—“is the sunlit zone.”

“Right. The sunlit zone is where spirits have to remain for a healthy mind. The silver cord is like a safety net. It stops most voyants from leaving that zone.”

“But not me.”

“Exactly. That’s your personal quirk. Say the majority of us have an inch of string between our body and our spirit,” she said, measuring with her fingers. “You have a mile. You can walk to the outer ring of your dreamscape, which means you can sense the æther for much farther than we can. You can also sense dreamscapes. We only sense spirits and aura, and not from very far away. I can’t sense Jaxon and the others now.”

I could. “But I have a limit.”

“That’s why we have to be careful. We don’t know your limits yet. You might be able to leave your body, or you might not. We’ll have to see.”

I nodded. Jaxon had talked me through his dreamwalker theory several times, but Eliza was a much better teacher. “What would happen if you tried to leave your sunlit zone? Theoretically.”

“Well, we think that the second zone is where amaurotic ‘nightmares’ take place. The cord sometimes lets you get that far if you’re stressed or nervous. Beyond that, you start feeling a massive pull back to the center. If you walked beyond the twilight zone, you’d start to go insane.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I really am a freak, aren’t I?”