“What is this, uh, this, uh, place?” Madelyn looks around in shock. She clearly finds it harder to speak English under the circumstances.
“Hold on to your butt,” Joy tells her. “You’re going to love this!”
“My butt?”
Justin waves at Madelyn dismissively. “It’s an expression. Ignore it. This,” he motions with his hand at the Shrooms, “is the place where everybody goes when they dream.”
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I follow his gaze and realize I’m looking down two meters at Madelyn’s Shroom. We’ve been to her dream four times now. But now… Madelyn sits on the shroom, right at the tunnel entrance, her hands holding the ground underneath her tightly.
I have never seen another Dreamer outside their dream!
“Whoa,” Joy says.
“Oh, my god!” Justin says.
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At Charley’s question, Joy’s expression becomes serious.
“Where is Red, Dad?”
I’ve been here long enough to hear about Joy’s legendary friend, the Red Dragon. She hadn’t been heard of or seen since Suzy and I were summoned, since Joy first left Justin’s dream.
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. Then his expression turns more serious as well. “Why would you think I know?”
“I just realized,” Joy says. “That in all the adventures I had with her, in all the times I rode her, there is no way I wouldn’t have made her real. Red didn’t just disappear because you woke up, Dad. Red is permanent. No one killed her. So she’s still alive. Where did she go?”
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“She saw us!” Joy yells. “She looked right at us and saw us!”
Justin nods. “I think she saw us, too.”
“Was that a dragon?” Charlie whispers. “An actual dragon?!”
“Why’d you do that? What’s the danger?” Joy is upset with her father. “We could have talked to her! We could have played with her! We could have asked about Red’s sister dragons!”
Justin shakes his head. “We can’t be seen, Joy.”
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There, in the distance, amidst a sea of Shrooms, I see something yellow flying. It is as small as a faraway plane, but it is not the shape of a plane.
“A dragon!” Joy whispers in awe.
Justin moves with the speed of a pirate and covers Joy’s mouth with his hand. He grabs me with his other hand, and together, he walks us back to the shadow of the tunnel.
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I have seen Justin try to stay away from danger while at the same time teach Joy how to handle it, knowing it is unavoidable as she lives in other people’s dreams.
But this? Walking back to the dream of a man who kills people in his dream and strips them of their souls? A man who dreams he is an agent of God?
I trust Justin, but I’m also afraid. Joy knows to be afraid, but is excited by whatever it is he has planned. Master Mind follows us silently and has already proven he will sacrifice himself to protect Joy.
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This is, indeed, Hell. The ground is made of infinite fires, where in other dreams there would be ground or in Justin’s dream - an ocean. A pillar of fire stretches high and moves slowly. Hundreds of winged demons fly around.
Joy points quietly. There, right there, is Angel Chrysalis - an angel with wings of fire. We do not know what his name is in the real world. We only know what he called himself here.
Angel Chrysalis has a human woman stand in front of him on a floating rock.
He speaks to her and she screams.
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“Stay away from her, Mom!”
Joy explodes in anger, “I won’t stay away! Not from you and not from her!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Justin grabs hold of Joy as she tries to run towards Charlie. He holds her in his arms. “Whoa, Joy, hold on.”
A tank appears behind Charlie. Justin turns his attention, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! You too! There’s no need for that! Make the tank go away!”
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One of Charlie’s glass elevators waits for us at the end of the tunnel into his dream. Joy has made this one permanent way back a couple of days after their big adventure.
As we descend down to the park that was always there, we see a new beach nearby.
“The Child is there,” Master MInd points at a small dot on the beach.
At the park we activate our jetpacks and fly towards the beach.
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Justin flies Bonnie’s Revenge to Australia, apparently. This is an Australia that’s in his dream. Although I feel it is exactly like Australia, a little bit of my scientist mind is certain that this is because I am a dream creature. I have never been to Australia and I would not know whether this beach is authentic or not. Nor do I remember at present if Australia has a big volcano, like the one that is next to us.
A part of me feels like this was always true. But it could be that I was created in a way that makes me easily believe the logic of dreams.
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When Justin arrives at the dream, he comes down to Suzy’s and mine apartment and ‘crashes’ Joy’s school
“Today there’s no school,” he says to Suzy, who was teaching her how to put letters into words. “Today we go on adventure!”
“Yai!” Joy raises her hands and dances a happy dance.
“And Mom,” Justin looks at her. “You’re joining us on this adventure.”
“Oh, no, no,” Suzy waves him off. “I’m a social worker. I don’t do adventures.”
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Master Mind is a killer. He’s far faster and far stronger than any human. He is able to reach any ball in time and to send balls faster than Madelyn could hope to answer.
He serves again. She misses again.
She looks at Justin. Then rolls to position. “Please wait a minute,” she calls to Master Mind.
“I can destroy you now or I can destroy you later,” he says. “It is the same to me.”
She sinks into deep thought. Then, suddenly, small jets appear on all sides of the wheelchair.
Justin laughs. Joy nods. I smile with expectation. There’s going to be a fair fight!
The wheelchair rises into the air.
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“Can’t beat Master Mind,” Justin agrees. “I wonder why he wanted to play.”
“Are you ready to play, Madelyn?” As I hear him say her name, I am sure I hear him separating the first syllable of her name. As if he called her Mad Delyn. Does he think her first name is ‘Mad’?
“I am ready, robot,” she answers with confidence in her French accent.
“I will annihilate you. I will destroy the ground you roll on. I will make you wish you were never born,” Master Mind says.
Justin buries his face in his palm. “Oh, no,” he whispers.
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“Dad’s going to win,” Joy says with the confidence of a girl who believes her father is all-powerful. In this case, I agree with her.
Madelyn rolls to position. “I am ready. Let’s begin.” She takes her racket.
“I’ll take it easy on you,” he says.
Madelyn laughs. “As you wish.”
Justin serves. Madelyn hits the ball back with such force that it hits the ground and moves past Justin faster than he reacts.
“Love fifteen,” she says. “You play your best game with me or you don’t play.”
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And here we are again, entering Madelyn’s dream.
As the glass elevator descends, we see that we are above a tennis court.
“What’s tennis?” Joy asks.
I look at Justin, almost horrified. “Justin, have you never shown Joy what tennis is?” Justin looks away from me and shakes his head. “But it’s such a big part of your life! Even now!”
He shakes his head again.
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“Right now, I am lying at home, in my bed,” Amahle says. “My mother is there. And my friend, Sandile. They don’t let me do much because I was just released from the hospital. They’re very worried.”
“Tell them you don’t need them,” Joy says.
“What happened?” Charlie asks. “Why were you in the hospital?”
“Well, I, uh, died.”
“You died?!” This is Charlie’s voice.
“For a couple of minutes, yes.”
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We go into the elevator and into complete darkness. There is no sliver of light anywhere, not a faint light, not a star in the sky, not a single photon from the sun we are coming from.
“This is creepy,” I hear Charlie say.
“My logical response to this place is 82% stark fear,” I hear Master Mind’s response.
“Hold my hand if it helps,” I hear Justin say.
“My emotional health is not that fragile,” Master Mind says.
“I meant Charlie!”
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Something changes in Justin as soon as he is able to absorb that Joy can see into the dark dream while no one else can.
His back straightens. His voice becomes like that of a military commander, when he says, “Joy. Tell me what you see.”
She nods. “We’re at a beach. The woman is over there sitting on a beach chair.” Joy changes, as well. She isn’t the child asking her father for something she cadn’t have for the thousandth time. She is the adventurer I’d heard about. She’s giving a report of the hostile environment. “She has a beautiful dog sitting next to her. There are a few other people who came for the beach. And, I think, oh!”
“What?”
“A couple of penguins just came out of the water.”
“Monster penguins?”
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“Joy, stop kidding around!” Justin tells her.
“You stop kidding around,” she shoots back. “Tell me what’s dark here!” We’re standing at the edge of a dream so dark that there isn’t an iota of light anywhere. It is the dream of a woman called Amahle, who has been blind from birth and so her dream has learned to never show light. And yet, Joy insists there is no darkness.
“Those three buildings over there, they’re not dark! That woman over there with the dog, she’s not dark.”
Justin’s face goes white. “Amahle does have a seeing eye dog. I never told you that!”
“The clouds are not dark,” Joy points forward. “Those birds on the trees!”
Charlie steps to the edge and squints. “Joy, are you really seeing those things? I can’t see anything.”
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We prepare to go to Amahle’s dream: Justin, Joy, Charlie, Master Mind, and me. Suzy refuses to make the jumps from dream to dream. I am still getting used to Master Mind carrying me during those jumps, but I wouldn’t miss it.
Everyone including me gets jetpacks that Joy has touched and made permanent.
Justin creates a long, strong rope that Joy touches to make permanent even if Justin wakes up. That rope is tied to her abdomen and to Master Mind’s abdomen even before we leave.
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