“Joy, do you want to see a sunset from Japan?” Yumio says.
“Yuh-huh.”
Everything around us changes. In front of us is a river. Far ahead is a mountain, and the sun is setting behind it, its orange colors spreading across not only the sky but the mountain and the river.
Joy stares at it with eyes agape. Suzy gasps. Madelyn takes in a deep breath.
“Fantastic!” Colin said. “Where are we?”
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“Why are we here, Madelyn?” Justin says.
She had asked to take us to the middle of the ocean.
“I think it is time to show little Zhoy the things she cannot see in this world.”
“Like what?” Joy says.
“Zhoy, in this world you can see anything. But one thing you have never seen, I believe, is a sunset.”
“What’s a sunset?”
“In the…uhm…waking world,” Madelyn says. “The sun rises on one side, goes up, and goes down on the other side.”
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After all the congratulations and the happiness at Amahle’s news, Madelyn wakes up and disappears. Immediately afterwards, Amahle disappears.
Justin puts his hand around Joy’s shoulders, “How was the Girls’ Night, Joy?” he asks with a smile.
“It was fun! Amahle let me taste a little bit of something called ‘Liquer’.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Just a little bit!”
“How was it?”
“I spit it out!”
Justin laughs.
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The music that fills the dream feels drunker and drunker as the hours pass. I didn’t know if people can get drunk in the dream, but from the music that comes from Amahle’s head, it certainly sounds like it.
Eventually, the limo returns to park right next to our island.
The limo driver takes Madelyn out and places her on the wheelchair that appears on our island next to him. Amahle steps out with Elvis. Suzy is after her.
But Joy doesn’t come out.
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About an hour into their ‘girls’ night’, music begins to fill Justin’s dream.
This is Amahle, no doubt. She is a singer, she writes and composes songs. And there’s music in her head, which in the dream is music we can all hear.
This is really happy and exciting music. Were I any good at dancing, I would be moved to dance. But I am a man of thought, logic, and brain. I am not that good with my body, not with sports and not with dancing.
A few minutes later, there are fireworks over Johannesburg.
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Amahle feels around with her hand once Joy comes back from her cabin, having put her toothbrush and toothpaste in place. “Joy,” Amahle touches her cheek, then her shoulder. “I want to do something nice. I want us to have fun! Can you get excited for that?”
“I want to go,” Joy says. “It sounds like a thing you do in the waking world.”
“It is,” Madelyn says.
“On special occasions,” Amahle adds. “This is a special occasion.”
“But why only girls? What kind of adventure is it? Why can’t Charlie come? I mean, he’s a dreamer. So it doesn’t matter that he’s not as strong as a girl.”
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Madelyn and Amahle appear on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge within minutes of each other. Amahle is in Johannesburg, as usual. Madelyn is back home in France. She keeps telling me which city she’s in, but I can’t remember. I used to remember everything, but now…There are facts that escape me.
In any case, their time zones are one hour apart, and apparently they’ve fallen asleep around the same time.
I look through the window in our living room and see Madelyn and Amahle talking to each other. Madelyn is with her regular wheelchair, not her flying one.
Joy comes out of the cabin and they talk to her.
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“Dad, give me a spray can,” Joy says, opening her palm.
Justin thinks for a second, then says, “What color do you want?”
“Red,” Joy answers immediately and with certainty. “For the Red Dragon.”
A spray can appears in Joy’s hand. It glows a soft-blue light for a brief moment and the light disappears. Joy has made the can permanent.
She walks over to the wall. “I have a message for Captain Badass,” she says. “And Grandma taught me to write.”
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“He watched us leave the dream!” Charlie exclaims. “He left your dream! That’s why he’s not here!”
Justin is beginning to pace back and forth in what now seems to be Captain Badass’ abandoned base.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he says.
“Why not, Dad?”
Justin exhales slowly. “I don’t know. How would he get from here to the suns? One ship was a dream ship, so it disappeared when I woke up and it hasn’t returned. His permanent ship is on its side in the ocean on Earth. How would he get from here to the sun?”
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Justin walks through the door.
Joy puts her hand on Charlie’s shoulder, stopping him from walking forward. As soon as he stops, she motions with that hand that they should wait. Her other hand is on her sword, ready to pull it out.
“Come in!” Justin says. “All clear!”
We all walk into the dome.
The look of the room is surprising. It is just an empty dome. There isn’t a table, a carpet, a chair, a piece of paper, a picture on the wall. There is the inside of the smooth dome. And then there are the telescopes - the three giant telescopes that I’ve seen outside begin inside, converging in the middle of the room.
“This is creepy,” Charlie says. “Where is everything?”
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Justin is armed to the teeth with two laser pistols, one on each side of his belt, and General Hawk’s Falcon on his back. Master Mind prepares by having two cannons come out of his exoskeleton, a different one out of each hand. Joy arms herself with a sword and a laser pistol.
Charlie and I remain unarmed.
Justin takes us to the moon.
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We are back on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge.
Joy and Justin are both clearly shaken by their conversation with the First Prisoner or The Guardian Spirit, or whoever he really is.
Justin stares at the horizon from behind the wheel, as he takes the ship out. Joy stands by his side, staring forward as well.
After a couple of minutes, as we fly past the clouds and into outer space, Joy hugs Justin. Justin stops the ship in mid-space and hugs her back.
“Red is not dead,” Joy says.
“No, she’s not.” He hugs her and doesn’t let go.
“She’s not a creature of the Dream.”
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“Stop, stop, stop!” Justin raises his hands. “We can’t believe this Guardian that he knows where Red is or that he’s a dream creature from outside my dream like the Fairy Flies. He’s a villain. He’s lying.”
Amahle clicks her tongue to indicate ‘No’. “Justin, you do not understand. Tell them what you told me,” she tells the Guardian.
The Guardian looks at Amahle in anger, then looks away. Amahe can’t see his expression, but she notes the silence. “All right,” she says. “Justin. He has told me he is of the Adroazni, a guardian spirit, and a child of the god Adroa.”
“So?” Justin says.
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Justin shakes his head immediately after the initial surprise. “He’s lying to us, Joy. He’s a villain and he knows we care about Red.”
Joy nods vigorously. “Lying. Red’s not dead and he wouldn’t know it!”
Justin takes her hand. “Shame on you,” he tells the Guardian. “It’s a good thing we never talked all these years. You are evil.”
“My friend is dead!” the Guardian yells at them as Justin and Joy turn their backs to him. “And it is your fault!”
“Shut up!” Joy whirls around. She takes off her necklace and throws it into the Guardian’s cell, where it lands on the floor. “I don’t want it! I don’t want anything from you!”
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“You,” he says. “What did you say to my daughter!”
I stretch my neck and see a man approach the bars. I have seen him before, but I did not pay him much attention, since Joy and Justin both pointedly ignore him every time they walk into the Infinite Prison. Now that Amahle says he comes from legends in the Congo, that gives more context to his black skin and his black hair that’s cut very short. The right half of his face is almost entirely covered by a metal mask, with room for an eye to peek through. But there is no eye behind that hole, but a soft yellow glow. Anything that is not covered by the mask looks human, including the other eye. He is tall, thin, and wiry.
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He crooks his head. “Amahle, which of the villains could possibly convince you that Joy is an honorary Zulu when you were very clear on the point that she wasn’t?”
“It was–” Amahle begins, when Joy cuts her off.
“No, Amahle!”
“He is your father, Joy. We do not keep secrets from him and there is no reason this should be a secret. It was the Guardian Spirit in your prison.”
“I have a Guardian Spirit in prison?”
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“His name is Master Mind,” Charlie says. “He’s a big robot.”
“A big robot?” Amahle is thoughtful. That seems to remind her of something.
“A big killer robot. He protects Joy.”
“Why are you all here, Charlie? Why aren’t you all gone from my dream?”
She takes a step forward.
“Stop!” Charlie grabs her hand. She stops.
“One more step and you’ll fall off the ledge of your Shroom,” he says. “This isn’t your dream, Amahle. If you fall down here, you’ll fall until you hit something or until you wake up.”
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Joy lands on Justin’s Shroom a few meters above us and disappears from view. She’s probably going back to Bonny’s Revenge.
We are all awkwardly left on Amahle’s Shroom: Amahle who has just told Joy that she believes her to be her dream, Justin who just found out Amahle can always hear him breathe and recognized him as the man responsible for killing her in the dream and almost killing her in real life, Master Mind and Charlie.
Justin’s face is red. He is looking down. He doesn’t know what to do.
He opens his mouth to talk, then closes it.
Amahle stands and listens.
“Charlie, I can hear you standing near me. Why didn’t you disappear with Joy?”
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Joy and Charlie lead the way out of the tunnel. Amahle holds Joy’s shoulders and moves forward. She doesn’t have her cane or Elvis, her seeing eye-dog. They disappeared when she left her dream.
I’m behind Amahle. And Master Mind walks silently behind me.
Justin is ahead of all of us. He waits outside, silent, afraid to make a noise.
“Careful, now, careful,” Joy says as Amahle takes the first step into her Shroom. “You are now on a Shroom. Stop here.”
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It is our fifth time in Amahle’s dream.
Joy and Justin have had arguments that had gone back and forth many times in Justin’s dream about re-introducing Justin to Amahle. Back when Joy had run away from home on her sixth birthday, Justin, on my advice, tried to convince Amahle in her dream that he was killing her. He had hoped that when she woke up, the darkness of her dream would disappear and he would find the way out to save Joy.
But weeks later we had discovered, upon returning to Amahle’s dream, that she had died in real life and was brought back. What Justin had done had almost killed Amahle. Justin did not want to face Amahle. Joy wanted to become Amahle’s friend and wanted them to talk and meet again BS fUB.
Joy had won the argument partially - Justin agreed that they could show Amahle the way out of her dream and into The Dream with a capital ‘D’.
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