Dream a Little Dream (The Silver Trilogy) (F) (29 page)

When everyone finally sang “Happy Birthday” for me, and even the people sitting near us with their own picnic joined in, I had to admit that, all things considered, it had been a really successful birthday party. I knew I mustn’t forget to say thank you to Florence later. Although she was overdoing it again now, making everyone get up and start playing croquet.

I decided not to, and instead I helped Charles and Lottie to clear away the dirty plates and pack them in crates, while Mom and Ernest took Buttercup for a walk around the park and Mia and Daisy fed bits of apple to some greedy squirrels.

Charles was pensively examining a half-eaten blueberry muffin. “I can’t say I ever heard of mooberries before, but I definitely like them.”

“Mooberries?” Lottie gave him a puzzled look. “What are they?”

I decided to leave the two of them to work it out together while I collected the empty glasses.

“Can I help?” asked a voice behind me, and I almost dropped a champagne glass with shock. Where on earth had Henry learned to creep up on people like that?

He smiled at me. “It’s not much fun over there playing croquet. Florence isn’t playing very well, Emily is complaining that Grayson holds his mallet the wrong way, and Persephone has just been describing your ball dress to me. In every detail.”

I felt the blood shoot into my cheeks. I hadn’t talked to him about the misunderstanding over the ball yet.…

“Amazing all the stuff that goes into a ball dress. Taffeta, tulle, beads, ruffles, roses, four different shades of smoky blue…” He looked inquiringly at me. “And what the hell is a duchess line?”

“Look, just because I have a ball dress doesn’t mean I really have to go to that ball,” I said hastily. When he raised one eyebrow I added, even more hastily, “It’s just that … because Florence told Mom that you’d invited me … and all of a sudden I somehow had this dress … and I haven’t the faintest idea myself what a duchess line is.” I took a deep breath. No, this wasn’t working. “Anyway,” I said, trying to conclude with dignity, “I just wanted you to know it doesn’t mean a thing. I couldn’t care less about the ball.”

“That’s a pity,” said Henry, “because I’ve already hunted down the medal that my great-grandfather was given for conspicuous gallantry in the face of the enemy. Grayson is terribly envious of me for having such a genuine, stylish accessory to my white tie and tails. The man from the evening-dress rental company and I tried to persuade him to carry a top hat, so that he’d stand out from the common herd as well, but we got nowhere.”

I could only stare at him. A piece of apple promptly flew at my head.

“Sorry!” called Mia.

“How about a walk?” Henry held out his hand, and I took it before Mia could throw another piece of apple. Henry’s hand felt strangely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. In dreams his physical closeness didn’t make me feel half so self-conscious.

We walked side by side in silence for a while, and I tried to get my breathing under control. Then we turned off along a sandy path leading through the trees. The sun fell through the changing leaves and cast splashes of gold on the ground.

“I’ve missed this,” said Henry suddenly, and cleared his throat. “I’ve missed
you
.”

If one of Mia’s missiles had hit me at that moment, I wouldn’t even have felt it. I stopped in the middle of the path. Henry turned to me and pushed back a strand of hair from my face.

“Dreaming somehow wasn’t any fun without you,” he said. And then he leaned forward and kissed me carefully on the mouth.

For a few seconds I forgot to breathe, then I felt my arms rising and going around his neck of their own accord to draw him closer. We weren’t kissing so cautiously now, but much more intensely. Henry put one hand on my waist, the other went behind my head and buried itself gently in my hair. I closed my eyes. This was just the way kisses ought to feel, I was sure. My whole body was beginning to tingle when he suddenly let go of me and pushed me a little way off.

“Like I said, I’ve missed you,” he said softly, reaching for my hand again to lead me on.

I couldn’t work out how he could simply go on walking like that as if nothing had happened, while I was having difficulty in standing upright at all. It was as if the kiss had turned the bones in my legs into licorice. Very soft licorice. Luckily Henry was only making for the nearest bench, a few yards away, and I was able to make it that far. I dropped onto the bench beside him in relief.

He put his arm on the back of the bench behind me. “Almost as nice a view as in Berkeley, right?” he said, pointing downhill with his other hand.

“Mmmmm,” I agreed. “We’ve lived in so many parts of the world—this one really isn’t the worst.”

“Better than Oberammergau?” he asked.

“What?” I moved away from him in shock.

He laughed. “Whether he’ll come by way of Oberammergau or by way of Unterammergau or whether he’ll come at all isn’t certain,” he said, but he said it in the German wording of the little folk song that was the puzzle I’d set as a barrier, about a boy called Hans going to see his girlfriend Liesl.
Ob er aber über Oberammergau oder aber über Unterammergau oder ob er überhaupt nicht kommt, ist nicht gewiss.
He laughed. “Are all German folk songs such tongue twisters? Dream Lottie wanted me to sing it, but then she said it was okay anyway. Hey, don’t look at me as if you were horrified, Liv—did you really think I wouldn’t work it out? After you gave me so many helpful hints?
Heut’ kommt der Hans zu mir, freut sich die Liesl.…
Did you see that funny video on YouTube, the guy in lederhosen with the mandolin? I’ve thrown myself away.…”

“Then you knew the answer all along?” I asked indignantly.

“Not all along. Only once I typed ‘Hans’ and ‘nicht gewiss’ into the search engine.” He frowned. “Why do I suddenly get the feeling I’m that millipede you met in Hyderabad? I wish you could see your shocked expression.”

I didn’t have to. I really was shocked. And disappointed. And furious. “What’s the idea?” I cried. “Pretending to me that … and then simply going behind my back and…”

Henry leaned back. “Why are you getting so upset? I only solved your puzzle. I thought you wanted me to.”

“
Wanted
you to?” I glared at him angrily. “Have you lost your marbles? What have you watched me doing in dreams? What have you done to me?”

“I haven’t done anything,” he said, sounding injured. “I didn’t even go through that door.”

“How else would you know about the millipede?”

“Lottie told me. She likes talking about you. I know that you hate to eat bananas, you stopped believing in Santa Claus when you were three, and you always start crying at the same place in
Finding Nemo
.”

“Lottie?”

“The dream Lottie.” He sighed. “I’m afraid we’ll have to sit out that formation waltz if we don’t want to make idiots of ourselves.”

“So you haven’t been visiting my dreams on the sly?” My fury was subsiding as quickly as it had developed.

He sighed again and shook his head. “No, I haven’t. Ask dream Lottie. I was good and stayed outside the door waiting for you. But you never turned up.” The look in his gray eyes was honest.

“Sorry,” I said remorsefully. “And I’m sorry you were left waiting. It somehow all got to be too much for me. These dreams are so confusing. You begin to doubt your own sound human reason. And I hate it when they throw up more and more questions and there are never any answers.”

“Oh yes? How about psychology and science?” he asked ironically. “Didn’t you say there’s an entirely rational explanation for dreams?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I said it’s about as-yet-unexplored fields of psychology. And to be honest, it’s not the dreams that give me such headaches—it’s not even mysterious creatures rustling in corridors.”

“But?”

“But what
really
happened. And what hasn’t happened yet.” Now it was my turn to sigh. “People who seriously believe in demons give me a headache.”

“You mean Arthur?”

I nodded. “You may not think that he wanted Tom Holland dead, but I’m sure he did. He thinks the demon cleared Tom out of the way for him. And the reason why he goes on with all this conjuring-up-demons stuff isn’t because he’s uncertain and scared. He goes on with it because he really
does
want to liberate the demon from the underworld. He’s genuinely passionate about the whole thing—you must have noticed that yourself.”

There was a flicker in his eyes. “I’ll admit that he’s changed since we’ve been playing this game. And the Anabel situation is wearing him out. But he’s not a bad person.”

No, maybe not bad, but possibly in the midst of going crazy. “Anabel hinted that she wasn’t unfaithful to Arthur with Tom Holland, but someone else.” I hesitated, but then I said it all the same. I simply had to be sure. “The Tittle-Tattle blog said you and Anabel got on well, and if it wasn’t Tom…”

Henry’s eyebrows rose. “Are you suggesting that I had a relationship with Anabel?” There was utter disbelief in his voice. “Do you really think I’m someone who’d get involved with his friend’s girlfriend like that?”

Did I? No, not really. On the other hand, Anabel was incredibly attractive; what boy wouldn’t be tempted? “All right, no,” I admitted. “I do believe you. But you were on the same flight as us, and I thought…” Okay, maybe I ought not to do so much thinking.

“I helped Anabel move to Switzerland.” He shook his head. “I was worried about her. She more or less went to pieces after Tom’s death, and then there was what happened to her dog.…”

Children’s voices came from somewhere; two little boys chased past us with a football and disappeared behind a group of trees. I watched them go.

“Arthur’s your friend,” I said. “And you think you know him well. But are you really sure of what goes on inside his head? The way he appointed himself head demon conjuror as if it were perfectly natural—what does he think will happen when that last seal is broken? Does he talk to the rest of you about it?”

“I … all Arthur himself wants is for this to be over at last,” said Henry. But I realized that he wasn’t certain.

He looked thoughtfully down at the city. Suddenly I was sorry we’d talked about it. We should just have gone on kissing. I hesitantly put out my hand and stroked his hair. I’d been wanting to do that for so long. Considering the way it stood out wildly from his head, it felt quite soft.

He immediately turned back to me.

“You have rather lovely eyes,” I said softly.

A smile spread over his face. “And everything about you is rather lovely,” he replied, and he would certainly have kissed me again if, at that very moment, Mia and Daisy Dawn hadn’t suddenly been there in front of us, as if they’d materialized out of the ground.

“We’re going to let the balloons go now!” said Daisy Dawn, and Mia bleated like a sheep. “Baaaa.”

Henry and I didn’t say anything to each other on the way back, but about halfway he firmly took my hand, and a strong, totally irrational feeling of happiness took me over. It had really been the best birthday of all time.

But without those black thoughts in my head, it would have been even better. Much better.

The sun was quite low in the sky, bathing everything in warm, golden light, and I remembered the Berkeley dream again. And how, that night, Henry had said,
It’s in dreams more than anywhere else that you get to know people best—along with all their weaknesses and their secrets.

Suddenly it was clear as day what I must do next. There was a perfectly good way of finding out what went on inside Arthur’s head. I just had to steal something from him first.

And declare my abstinence from dreaming over.

28

DAMN. IT WAS A BLIND ALLEY.
Arthur had secured his door with a four-digit code, just like the locker in school.

So far everything had gone smoothly. Admittedly it had taken half the week before I finally had a chance to snaffle some personal item belonging to Arthur, but then it was surprisingly simple: I’d borrowed a pencil from him in the library, and then I just “forgot” to give it back. He had been chewing the end of the pencil shortly before he lent it to me, and you can’t get much more personal than that.

It was an almost solemn moment when, after so many days, I went through my green door and into the corridor again. The corridor itself lay ahead, quiet and peaceful. But I’d made up my mind not to let any invisible, rustling presences lead me astray. This was only a dream, and I had a mission. Also, even though I didn’t know Arthur’s door itself, I had a fair idea of where I’d find it. After all, Henry’s door was right opposite mine as well.

The other doors had been playing their catch-me-if-you-can game again, but all the same I found Anabel’s door quite quickly in a neighboring passage. Opposite her magnificent Gothic porch, there was a plain, smooth metal door without any decoration except for the letters hammered into its center, saying
CARPE NOCTEM
.

Even their doors matched in a curious way. There was something utterly humorless about them both. I shuddered when I remembered my dream meeting with Arthur and Anabel, and once again I wondered whether I was doing the right thing. I mean, they were a really strange couple—did I truly want to know what a character like Arthur dreamed about?

Well, maybe I never would. Because I couldn’t get any farther anyway. It was infuriating. Four silly numbers! So unimaginative. I’d been expecting puzzles with all kinds of thrills and spills, maybe a doorkeeper with a curved sword or some such thing, but not a simple lock like that. I could have kicked the wall with frustration. It might have been possible to get through the metal with an oxyacetylene cutting torch, but to be honest I had no idea what a cutting torch looked like, so I couldn’t dream one into existence. I was tapping various combinations of numerals in at random when someone right behind me said, “Try one seven zero four.”

“Henry!” I spun around. “Are you nuts, scaring me like that?”

“I’m glad to see you, too.” Henry was smiling at me. “One seven zero four,” he repeated. “Anabel’s date of birth. Get a move on.” He cast a meaningful glance at Anabel’s door behind us, and I realized that this was no time for a romantic reunion. I turned back to the numerical combination for the lock.