Henry managed a half smile. “It would seem so,” he said, and even his voice was weak.
“How did you find me?”
“If I were guessing, I’d say you came after me.” Henry took several shallow breaths. “I’d say you’re somewhere right now, sleeping with my hat in your hands.”
“Yes,” Ling said, remembering. “Yes.”
Henry stumbled to the bed. Red marks dotted his neck. “Ling. It’s time for a different dream now.”
“I can’t. I can’t. The pain.”
“You’re not feeling any pain, darlin’. That’s just a bad dream. You can wake up in your bed anytime you like.”
“No. We have to go back. Back to the tunnel. Wai-Mae. We have to end it.”
“All right, then.” Henry took Ling’s hand. “Why don’t you dream about the tunnel, Ling? You know the one I mean. And you and I are both there. We are both there.”
Henry’s words swirled through Ling’s head. She relaxed, and the hospital dream fell away. Ling was back inside the tunnel. The bricks glowed brightly with dreams trapped in service to the great machine of forgetting. Henry lay on the ground, weak and pale.
“Henry?” Ling whispered.
Bells. The lilting notes of a tinny music-box song. The rustle of blood-stiffened skirts. She was coming.
“Do it,” Henry said.
Ling’s body still ached. She hadn’t much strength. If she was going to defeat Wai-Mae, she needed to get on top of the pain and change the dream as she had learned to do under Wai-Mae’s tutelage.
Breathe deeply.
Concentrate.
One thing at a time.
Wai-Mae blazed in the dark. “What are you doing, Little Warrior?”
Ling didn’t answer. She directed every bit of her mental energy to changing her legs back. But it wasn’t working.
“Do you think it was you who changed the dream all those times? No. That was my power, not yours.”
“No. I did it. I felt it.”
“I only allowed you to think it was your doing. So you would be happy. So you would come back to me.”
The courage Ling had carried into the dreamscape ebbed. It was like the day she learned she would never run again, never walk without those ugly braces. Once again, her choices had been taken from her without her consent. She felt the unfairness of it like a punch.
“You can choose to be happy.” Wai-Mae moved a hand across the entrance to the tunnel, and the surface came alive with new wonders: Ling in a beaded gown, dancing the Charleston on strong, sturdy legs. Ling standing before a mesmerized crowd at Jake Marlowe’s Future of America Exhibition as he demonstrated her advance in atomic science. Ling shaking hands with Jake Marlowe himself while her parents looked on, so proud—all of it so close Ling felt she could reach out and grab these dreams in her fist.
“Or you can choose to be unhappy.” The surface clouded. The image disappeared. In its place was a new picture, of Ling struggling to walk over New York’s bumpy streets while people stared. Ling sitting at the back of her father’s restaurant behind the teak screen, alone.
“Turn away from the world, sister,” Wai-Mae said gently. “Stay and dream with me. If we take that one”—she nodded toward Henry—“we will have so much power. Enough for many, many dreams. Soon, the other world will open for us. The King of Crows is coming. He will—”
A loud thwack reverberated in the tunnel as Henry smashed a rock against one of the brick screens. His whole body trembled, but he reached down deep, and with a cry, he smacked the rock against the wall again, cracking the screen. The energy inside it swooshed out on a tail of light that swirled around, then dispersed into the dark. Wai-Mae faltered a bit. Henry went to smash another, but he could barely lift his arm.
“You have no honor!” Wai-Mae grasped Henry’s head between her palms. “I will make you suffer as I suffered.”
“Wai-Mae, stop! Stop and… and I will dream with you,” Ling promised.
Wai-Mae released Henry, and he again fell to the ground. Sick and hurting, he made a feeble swipe at Wai-Mae’s ankle, but she stepped easily out of the way.