“So, yes, as I said, you didn’t just find your own way through the Mists,” said Flua-Sahng. “Didn’t find? Won’t find? Aren’t finding? Can’t find?” She pondered, then shrugged. “The point is, you’re not that remarkable.”

  “Sheesh,” he grumbled. “Good to see you again too.”

  She giggled and patted his hand. “Correction, you’re not remarkable in that respect.”

  “No, what makes you remarkable is that you’re having this conversation, even as a disembodied Spirit wandering on the boundaries of the Mists. You should be lost in dream right now. Instead, you’re conscious. . . . Somewhat. Arguably. ‘Which one? I only saw the hair.’ Hmph!”

  “And the reason I’m conscious, unlike the others I’ve seen here, is—” began Proto eagerly, as an insight started forming.

  “Yes, precisely!” interrupted Flua-Sahng, beaming. “Because of how you sleepwalk! It’s really quite unique.” She winced as Proto blinked. “Sorry, I know the only thing more disconcerting than me reading your current thoughts is when I read your future thoughts.”

  Proto opened his mouth to reply, then let it fall shut. What was the point?

  “Aw, don’t be a Debbie Downer,” she chided lightly. “Anyhow, the point is, you’re starting to understand something! This is a big day, Proto. You’ve been a seer. Now, it’s time to step forth into your next stage in life. This is like your Evaluation Day, but with Flua-Sahng, instead of that bohemian lush who’s ostensibly my son!”

  “No celebratory armagnac to drink, I’m afraid, but feel free to drink in my radiance. And some tea.” The Queen of Heaven conjured a kettle and a cup. “It’s rooibos with berries and rose. No, you may not have lapsang souchong. It’s not that sort of day.”

  “We’re celebrating me by drinking your favorite tea?” questioned Proto.

  “Look, it’s red. That’s all that matters, right?” Her eyes and smile were wide. “‘Which one.’ Psh! Pretend it’s hair, why don’t you!”

  Proto sighed at his celebratory tea.

  She rolled her eyes, conjuring up a brown bottle. “Alright, have some eighty-year-old armagnac too. But do try the tea. I put a lot into that brew! Though not as much as Anima and her brew. My ostensible daughter, Anima.”

  “Speaking of Anima, were those her fairies who carried me here?” Proto recalled the fae pink-eyed figures who’d borne him aloft from the breathing world.

  “With those cute gossamer threads and flappy-flappy butterfly wings? Yes!” delighted Flua-Sahng. “My daughter does do a good job with that, at least.”

  Proto sipped his tea. It was rather nice. There was no caffeine, no alcohol, no mind-altering effect—just scent and flavor and nourishment. Yet it seemed to stir the life up in him. It didn’t force anything. But it seemed to coax his human part to come out of its own accord. Coaxing and charming. And so red, through and through. It reminded him of . . .

  Seeing an excited smile forming on Flua-Sahng’s face, he frowned.

  “Oh, don’t stop the thought there!” she cried. “Reminded you of what, Proto? Or . . . whom?” She batted her lashes.

  Proto kept his mind studiously clear. “So. This is it then, huh?”

  “Of course he changes the subject!” she grumbled. “Anyhow, what do you mean?”

  “Seer for a week, and now I’m graduating, huh?” he said.

  “Oh? Did I say that?” Flua-Sahng tapped her chin. “I’m quite sure I didn’t say that.”

  Proto blinked. “That I’m graduating? Or . . . ?”

  “Never you mind. Just eat, drink and be merry!” the Queen of Heaven enjoined, waving toward the tea and armagnac. “For tomorrow, you . . . well, you’ll remain safely frozen. But you’ll have forgotten so very much. Not oblivion, just oblivious!”

  Proto opened his lips, planning to say, “More clever wordplay about my body’s physical destruction?”

  Instead, what came out was, “Mooff clvf wrrdpll—” at which point he cut off. His mouth had been stuffed with something—curried chicken on milk bread, judging by the flavor.

  “Yes, eat, drink and be merry,” Flua-Sahng said, “is what you would’ve asked me in a moment. Let me save you the trouble! I know you’ve been craving that.”

  Proto unsuccessfully tried to speak, then gave her a thumbs up.

  “I know Lilac’s going to make you a very nice sandwich soon,” she went on. “And normally, I wouldn’t steal her thunder. I’m not the sort to wear a white dress to a friend’s wedding. Or radiant raiment of star-shaped leaves, for that matter. But you won’t remember any of this when you’re with Lilac. So, chomp on!”

  Proto happily complied, smiling—and not just because of the flavor. Flua-Sahng had just divulged something important, assuaging some of his fears.

  Glancing at her freckle-dusted face, he saw a slight smile.

  As they continued walking, a cliff rose in the mirky distance. From time to time, Flua-Sahng waved her pale arm, glowing red, and the mists parted before her like crowds before a queen.

  “I have a question,” he said.

  “Well, question away!” urged the leaf-garbed monarch. “I should say, now’s the time. When better to learn the world’s secrets than when you’ll be forgetting everything in fifteen minutes? Everything from your last week, anyhow.”

  “I won’t forget everything,” replied Proto firmly.

  “No?” She tilted her head at Proto. “Like what? Or . . . whom?”

  Proto smiled and said nothing.

  “Oh, don’t you dare just think it!” She slapped his hand.

  He laughed. “Good use of whom.”

  “You’re not going to say it, are you?” She tsked. “Well, just remember, Porno, it’s twenty-nine divided by two plus seven! Not twenty-seven!”

  “Thanks, Himari,” replied Proto. “Anyway, my question is about this weird coincidence I’ve noticed. I visited someone’s dream every day at Somnus’ Palace, right? Well, I met an awful lot of people from those dreams during my last week. That . . . wasn’t just by chance, was it?”

  “‘Chance,’ Proto? I don’t know any Chance, do you? Sounds like a dog’s name, frankly,” Flua-Sahng replied. “No, if you’re wondering whom to thank for weird coincidences, I’d suggest Lady Luck, the Fates, or—well. You know.” Smiling, she shrugged and flushed with radiance.

  “I take it that’s all the answer I’m going to get right now,” said Proto.

  “All things in due course, Sleepwalker!” she waved. “Meanwhile, I answered the question, didn’t I? Would you prefer it if I just said yes? I could just yes and no you all day, if you’d like. The Queen of Dullards, they’d call me! Or, perhaps, the Mother of Proto! Mister Desk Job and Video Games and a Bronze Medal.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Sheesh!” he exclaimed.

  “I’m just jesting, Proto. You have far too many voices in your head to be a dullard.” She squeezed his hand. “In fact, you have far too many of all sorts of things, as Miss Beatrice would say! Except they’re not things, are they, Proto?”

  “I’m just indecisive,” he protested. “Anyway, I can’t make a choice until my Saturn Return. It’s Fate!” His lips quirked up. “Well, Lady Luck, Fate, or . . . ”

  “Or your Mom,” replied the Mother of All.

  “ . . . well, that does it, doesn’t it?” Proto slapped his hands off. “Go ahead and flush my memory. No point in me going on any further.”

  She laughed. “Oh, Proto. I am going to miss this. It feels like we’ve known each other more than a week, doesn’t it?”

  He opened his mouth to reply, then peered at her with narrowed eyes.

  Zeal gleamed in her gaze—but only briefly, like a comet in the night. “But you’re forgetting something, aren’t you?” she continued. “Something else you wanted to ask me?”

  “Hm?” He tilted his head. “Oh, right. That fortune in the fortune cookie. What was going on with that?”

  “Yes,” she instantly replied.

  He stared at her.

  “You wanted yeses and nos!” She beamed with self-satisfaction. “I could’ve given a mysterious reply that answered your question on a superficial level, while simultaneously hinting at the deeper answers you’re destined to discover at a later date. Would’ve been happy to, in fact! But no.”

  Proto eyed her. “I’m sorry, Queen of Heaven.”

  “Forgiven!” she waved lightly. “Let none say Flua-Sahng’s stingy with forgiveness.”

  “So, will you . . . ?” he began.

  “Nope! You get to be surprised this time. We have to learn our lessons somehow.” She shrugged. “‘You can keep what you love, if you give up everything else.’ My, it does sound awfully like something I would say, doesn’t it? Or . . . something I will say? Did say? Might have said? This one’s tricky.”

  “I’d remember if you’d said that to me,” replied Proto.

  “Would you though?” She smiled. “Oh, Proto. They say that life is ‘but a sleep and a forgetting.’ But you’re something else!”

  “It doesn’t help that you’ve been erasing things,” he grumbled. “Like that thing about Yemos that I don’t remember anymore.”

  He scanned that space in his memory: Mercune spun to Flua-Sahng. “Have you seen what he might do? Forget Eremon and Yemos and his—” What followed was emptiness. But he could feel the shape of its absence, like a footprint on the emotions surrounding that memory. Or like a fossil, indented with the form of some long-lost life.

  Flua-Sahng’s lips quirked up. “You’re smarter than you let on, Proto. You should speak your interesting thoughts more often. Those who can’t read minds might mistake you for an emptyheaded bantering ditz!” She tittered at his sigh. “Anyhow, yes, I erased the Yemos thing. But, frankly, that’s a needle in the haystack of what you’ve forgotten.”

  “What you’ve erased, you mean?” he questioned.

  “Oh, you’ve forgotten quite enough on your own, Sleepwalker!” she chided. “But yes. I erase what you’re not allowed to know. Or . . . won’t be allowed? No longer might be allowed? No longer might have been allowed? Heavens, that’s a tough one! So many conjugations in your language, constructed in the weirdest variety of ways.”

  Proto blinked and shook his head. “What?”

  “It drives a seer batty!” Flua-Sahng complained. “Normal, sensible languages have a future tense. Some even combine the future and present tenses. Like Japanese, that lovely language that half your friends speak—Red, Ausrine, Himari, Shirley, Hisoka, and so forth. Easy to talk about prophecies in Japanese.”

  “Not English! No Sir!” she ranted. “You have will, shall, about to, going to, fixing to, verging on, inclined to, meaning to, planning to, eager to, raring to, and zounds more. And they’re all used like different future tenses, all slightly different gradations of the future and probability and volition. You think you can just ignore them all and use ‘will’? Nope! You’ll sound like a dullard, and no one will listen to you. And it gets worse—I haven’t even touched yet on might, may, must, has to, ought to, able to, can, could, should, and, worst of all, shall. Does shall mean will, should, or must, Proto? Tell me! And then tell me, why does it mean something different altogether when you say, Shall we?!”

  “Um.” Proto blinked. “I suggest you use the subjunctive for everything.”

  “Yes! Finally, we see eye to eye. A true fellow seer!” she cried happily. “It seems you do remember one thing I told you. Well, it’s a good one. You forgot what we did together last Summer, but at least you remember the subjunctive.”

  “ . . . wait, what?” His eyes widened.

  “Ha! Just playing with you, Proto. I knew that’d get you excited. Look at that face! Already considering the Possibilities!” She tsked. “‘I know,’ he says to the Mother of All. ‘Which one,’ he says to the Queen of Heaven. Well, I’m inclined to make like an ice queen and freeze you solid!—except you are already.”

  “It’s nice that my scuttled wreck of a frozen body is such a fertile source of humor for everyone,” observed Proto.

  “Everyone?” Her brow inclined. “Who besides me? The voices in your head, Proto?”

  He opened his mouth to retort by listing everyone who’d laughed at his plight—but, recalling no names except Somnus-Proto Lawyer and Miss Beatrice, he let his mouth fall shut.

  Flua-Sahng tittered. “Oh, Proto. They’d put you in the nut block with the crackpots, if you weren’t cracked up in a block of ice already.”

  “Sheesh!” he exclaimed.

  The Mother of All laughed musically.

  Meanwhile, they’d reached the cliff that towered above the Mists. This was, of course, the cliff near Somnus’ Palace—the one he’d stood atop with Lilac, watching the slumbering Spirits rove.

  Scanning it from top to bottom, he saw the walkway leading from the clifftop to Anima’s cave. But he couldn’t tell if it continued past that and reached the ground. It wrapped around the cliff face and wound out of sight.

  Flua-Sahng didn’t lead him in that direction. Instead, she walked the opposite way along the bottom of the cliff.

  They eventually reached a different cave. At first glance, its entrance looked like merely a crevice in the cliffside. But the Queen of Heaven waved her hand, and light flowed outward, illuminating a tunnel. Inside, glossy stone of blood-red blazed reflectively. The passage abruptly widened ahead, like a maw and gullet opening into a belly.

  “After you!” she urged.

  He eyed the tunnel, then her, then the gorge-like tunnel. “Remember, I’m your key to saving the future, okay?”

  “Oh, get going.” She swatted at his back. “I’m your best ally! And you can tell my son I said so.”

  They’d walked about two minutes into the craggy and shimmering crimson when Proto saw Jag, dressed in his usual sweatsuit of grey and green, frozen mid-stride.

  Proto did a double-take, hardly believing his eyes at first. Until that moment, the fact that he’d be returning to Somnus’ Palace hadn’t felt quite real. It’d felt like some abstraction, like when a theologian tries to explain that Heaven isn’t in the clouds. But there was Jag.

  “What’s he doing here?” asked Proto. “And why isn’t he moving?”

  “Well, my son’s Oddjob Assistant is likely on an oddjob, don’t you think?” said Flua-Sahng. “As for why he isn’t moving, I can take the credit for that. Like most things.” She covered up a light yawn.

  “You can do that?” asked Proto.

  “‘You can do that?’” she repeated with exaggerated yokel wonder. “Hmph! You didn’t act half so surprised when my son did that to his entire Palace full of people! Of course he can, right? He’s the Lord of Dreams!” She waggled her fingers and made a woo-woo face. “Lord of Layabouts, more like. Spends more time drinking spirits than ruling Spirits!” She sighed. “But I love him.”

  “I can tell by how you talk about him,” said Proto.

  “Are you being smart with me, Young Man?” she admonished. “I have a high opinion of you. Let’s not spoil it! A woman likes a man who’s smart with everyone except her. Like Cleopatra and Marc Antony.”

  “I . . . don’t know what that means,” he said.

  “Lesson learnt, I see. Well done.” She smiled. “Smarts and modesty! But if you can only have one, go with modesty.” She gestured at Jag.

  Proto eyed the Oddjob Assistant. Even on this mission through the subterranean gloom, he looked as happy-go-lucky as a guy in tap-dance shoes in a 1950s musical.

  Proto’s lips curved up. “Poor guy.”

  Then, he suddenly recalled that, when Somnus had frozen everyone during his Saturn Return, they’d been able to hear the conversation that ensued. His eyes widened. Can Jag hear all this?

  “No, don’t worry. Quite oblivious,” Flua-Sahng replied to his unvoiced question. “Yes, I can do that too. Queen of Heaven and all!”

  “Queen and modest,” he observed.

  “You’re getting smart again, Proto!” she sweetly noted. “Anyhow, Jag here is very lucky. I mean that literally—he’s a favorite of Lady Luck’s. Jet got the whole bag of talents, but Jag got Lady Luck. Tough choice! But, if I had to choose, I’d choose Jag.”

  “Choose him for what?” he asked.

  “Hint hint, I’m not talking Euchre partners,” she replied. “Anyhow, I trust you’ll have some fun with Jag here. He’s really more interesting than you might’ve realized your first time around. You could almost write a book about him! No epic trilogy or anything, but maybe a novella.”

  Meanwhile, Proto stared at her, sifting through her words. “Does that mean things will be different this time? The things that happen to me at Somnus’ Palace?”

  Flua-Sahng’s lips quirked up. “No, not in the way you’re thinking. And yes, more than you could possibly imagine.”

  Proto sighed.

  The Cryptic Queen of Heaven threw back her red head and laughed. “Oh, I love my mysterious replies! Sorry, Proto, I can’t do the yes-or-no thing anymore. It’s who I am. Red hair, seeing the future, modesty, and mysterious replies—all part and parcel!”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learnt lately, it’s that an orange can’t be an orange without being orange.”

  “Oh, that’s cute! You should tell that one to Astrid!” she replied, swat-clasping his hand approvingly. “I should clarify, being overly smart with us isn’t good, but being affectionately wise is the best thing possible. Even better than a nice face!” She patted his cheek. “Or modesty.” She waved toward Jag again as they advanced past him.

  The Oddjob Assistant remained frozen in place—at least until they were far beyond him and lost in the shadows. Whatever oddjob he was on for Somnus would remain unknown for now.