Through shadowy ways they wended, passing several underground brooks. Flua-Sahng hopped and skipped lightly over them in her radiant raiment of star-shaped leaves, and Proto followed in his tracksuit.

  Eventually, they reached a black river that was much broader, at least a hundred yards wide. Beside it was a rowboat with a single paddle.

  Proto eyed the inky river, then Flua-Sahng.

  “No, I don’t have a swimsuit,” she answered the question he’d chosen not to ask. “And I warn you, if you say, ‘As long as we’re in the same position, right?’ I’m tossing you in. Don’t think I won’t do it!”

  “I know you will,” he replied. “I’m still a seer, you know.”

  She smiled and patted his cheek again. “For a few more minutes.”

  “So. Touching that water will make me lose my memories of life, right?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Good memory! For now. Yes, this is the River Lethe. The same you paddled across with Lilac.”

  Flua-Sahng lifted her hand, and mists swirled about it for a moment. When they dwindled, a flask was left atop her palm, emblazoned with the planet Saturn. Uncorking it, she dipped it in the River Lethe and filled it partway, then sealed it off.

  Proto looked down at the Saturn on his tracksuit, then back at the flask. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Yes.” Flua-Sahng winced apologetically. “Yes, that’s how. I’ll make it taste good, I promise.”

  Proto looked away wistfully. Images of his last week formed and faded, like wisps of smoke above a flame.

  Then, his eye caught upon something purple, lying in the rocks along the shore. Squinting, he approached and lifted it.

  It was just a swatch of cloth, evidently torn off and discarded. But it was made of the same lilac-covered fabric as the belt that Lilac had given him.

  He found himself recalling when they’d sat beside the Sea of Dreams together, as sakura petals rained upon them.

  “Thinking of the sea?” asked Flua-Sahng gently. “That’s for the best. Waves swell and waves recede. The sea remains, and more waves ever come.”

  Proto stared at the fabric. He wondered how Lilac had lost it here.

  “Probably retrieving something from the Sea of Dreams, as she often did. Did and does, I should say.” Flua-Sahng smiled and squeezed his hand again. “Come on. You’d best leave that behind.”

  Leave what, though? He stared at the fabric for a moment longer.

  Proto couldn’t help recalling something he’d tried to forget—something that had occurred to him a while back, which he’d forced himself not to dwell on.

  Whenever he went into the Mists—whether in Mercune’s dream or otherwise—he recalled all the Possibilities that had been open to him, during his Saturn Return at Somnus’ Palace. He recalled everyone who might have been his true love, for whom he might’ve been a true love.

  Remembering all those Possibilities, of course, was profoundly sad. It seemed to taint the best part of each memory—that feeling that he’d stumbled on the one-and-only perfect outcome for his life.

  But there was something else sad that he’d forced himself not to think about: He had no memory of any Possibility involving any of the people he’d spent time with during his last week. No Red, no Black—none of them. What could that possibly mean but . . . ?

  “You’d best leave that behind.” The words echoed through his memory.

  Pressing his lips and wiping an eye, he followed the Queen of Heaven toward Somnus’ Palace.

  They didn’t cross the River Lethe. They wound around it into another tunnel, leaving the black waters behind, except what Flua-Sahng took with her in the Saturn-blazoned flask.

  Proto was so immersed in the moment that he almost forgot why he was here—why the Queen of Heaven had arranged for this whole convoluted series of wondrous and improbable events. But as he glanced at her, briefly, he seemed to see the face of Mercune, a face so very similar to hers.

  And, in that instant, he remembered—he still had to save the future.

  “So, I still don’t know what I need to do in Mercune’s dream.” Proto had stressed about this throughout his last week. Now, though, the thought just brought a dull ache. “Should we talk about what I can—”

  “No,” she kindly interrupted. “Let’s not talk about that.”

  “But I haven’t ‘learnt what must be learnt’!” he protested. “I haven’t—”

  “Oh, I don’t think you’ll know that till the moment comes,” she broke in firmly. “No, we discussed that plenty over your last week. We talked about it at the end of your last practice run in Mercune’s dream, and we left off in precisely the right place, I think. The rest is up to you. Naught’s left for me to say. What’s left is what you’ll do.”

  Part of Proto wanted to argue with her, wanted to remind her just how high the stakes were. But what could he say to that?

  Nothing, as it turned out. It almost seemed unreal when, after a quiet minute of walking through the cave’s umbral redness, they reached a sliding white door, gleaming smoothly amid the craggy stone.

  “Here we are, I suppose. Brings back memories, doesn’t it?” mused Flua-Sahng.

  “Yeah. Feels like a long time ago,” said Proto. It really did. That life he’d led here—visiting dreams of space fleets and barbarian hordes, Prototypes and fairies, demons and cosplay conventions—felt like a life he hadn’t really lived. A life he’d merely dreamt of long ago.

  He recalled Somnus’ words: “What’s real and what’s dream—the breathing world or the Mists? And where do we fall between the two? The fact is, it’s all both real and dream.”

  It felt like yesterday, and long ago.

  “Hmph, not all that long,” sniffed Flua-Sahng. “You’ve been to my son’s palace more recently than me. Ask him when he last had me over!”

  “Didn’t you just have him over a few days ago?” he asked.

  “Beside the point!” she waved. “Doesn’t count. Not the same thing at all!”

  He laughed quietly.

  “How can I harangue him about his drinking while I’m serving tea?” she complained. “Much easier when we’re sitting at his personal bar! With all those ridiculous green and brown bottles backing up my accusations!”

  After a moment, she frowned at Proto. “What?” she demanded. For his laughter had grown louder as she spoke.

  He’d been feeling darkly morose. But Flua-Sahng’s words today, like a Spring shower on the dark Earth, had stirred some life in him. And now, finally, sprouting forth from that darkness, he felt a lively hearkening to be here again. He wanted to see his friends here. He wanted to see Astrid, Lilac, Dahlia—even Somnus!

  True, he would have to choose where to go eventually. That would be a hard choice. But right now, he felt sure, he was meant to be here.

  Eying him, Flua-Sahng’s lips curved up, and she nodded in satisfaction. “Speak those thoughts, Proto!” she quietly urged.

  Then, she retrieved her flask and conjured up a few vials of other liquids. One by one, she poured them inside. She swirled the Saturn-blazoned flask lightly, then handed it to him. “Here you go. My gift to you.”

  He received it and lifted it toward his lips, inhaling the aroma. Roses. Cinnamon. Dark red berries. Ginger. It reminded him of . . .

  He found his eyes drifting to Flua-Sahng.

  “Of course it does. I made it myself,” she noted bashfully with a wide smile.

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  Proto blinked, tilting his head.

  Flua-Sahng giggled. “Just kidding! Not like that. I’m not Anima. Except in the technical sense that, alas, she is my flesh and blood. Unlike this drink.” She tittered. “No, drinking this won’t make you fae. But it will make you forget.”

  Proto eyed the Lethean waters that she’d casually scooped up and mixed without measuring anything. “So I’ll forget just my last week and my time at Somnus’ Palace? And nothing else?”

  “You sound doubtful, Proto. Don’t doubt the Queen of Heaven!” she chastised lightly. “You think I didn’t make it right? I made the world, and you think I can’t make a cocktail?”

  “I know, I know.” He eyed the flask. “But . . . just those memories, right?”

  “Yes, Proto!” She rolled her green eyes. “You’ll forget your last week and your original time at Somnus’ Palace. Everything else you currently remember will remain.”

  Proto started to nod, then peered at her with narrowed eyes. “Everything else I currently—”

  “Don’t even ask!” Her lips curved up. “All things in their due course.”

  Proto obliged but asked something else instead: “Will I forget all this forever?”

  “Oh, forever is an awfully long time,” she waved. “Even I haven’t been around forever. Except maybe in some abstract egg-in-the-womb sense. I leave the temporal metaphysics to my husband. Me, I can’t even conjugate verb tenses!”

  “ . . . what?” said Proto. “Can we do yes-or-no again?”

  “Just drink my drink already! I put a lot into it. . . . A lot of heart.” She tittered, then added more quietly: “But it’s okay. I know you’ll return it. To someone or other. And, in the end, what I’ve lost will find a way back to me.”

  Proto stared at her: the radiant Power responsible for how his life and world had changed throughout his last week; the sunset-haired and shamrock-gazed woman with whom he’d shared so much in one week.

  Then, he drank her drink. It had a yuletide richness, its spices warming even amid their chill; numbing, and yet awakening new feelings too. It was like her.

  “That’s the trick, isn’t it?” she went on quietly as he drank. “‘You can keep what you love, if you give up everything else.’ True. But some things, you can give up over and over again, and just keep getting them back. And they only get better by doing so.”

  Proto gazed at the Queen of Heaven, trying to parse what she’d just said, even as strange sensations started seeping through his limbs.

  “And don’t you dare say, ‘Dahlia again?’” she admonished, planting her hands on her hips, “or I’ll dropkick you back into the Mists!”

  She looked halfway between laughing and crying.

  Proto approached Flua-Sahng and hugged her, and she returned it eagerly. Amid the red locks pouring all about his face, he felt a tear fall onto his cheek.

  After a moment, she withdrew slightly. “I know you like to keep your past close enough that you can get back to it.” Her voice was wavering. “Well, it’s just your luck, so do I.”

  “Luck, Fate, or . . . ?” he replied.

  Flua-Sahng flushed with radiance and beamed, hugging him again. “Keep your past close, and the Queen of Heaven closer!”

  Tears fell, time passed. Then, they withdrew.

  And Flua-Sahng was turning toward the shiny white doors and tapping them. And they were sliding open, one set of doors after another, like a bank vault or a secret government facility in a 1960s T.V. show. It seemed they’d never stop.

  But they did. And before Proto knew it, the stairway leading up into Somnus’ Palace loomed before him. He stared at it like something foreign and incomprehensible.

  “You’d best get going,” the Mother of All urged softly. “It’s a strong drink—I daresay, the strongest you’ve had! Wouldn’t want to forget where you’re going before you reach the right floor. What’ll we do if you wander to the wrong storey and wind up becoming a shadowseer or ferryman instead of a visitor? Or, Heavens, a fairy!”

  Part of Proto wanted to banter back. Part of Proto wanted to ask, “What’s a ferryman?” But he’d run out of time for that.

  He pressed his lips, then raised an open palm. “Goodbye.”

  Taking a deep breath and letting it out, she nodded, her green gaze shimmering. “Yes, I’ll be with you. Adieu, Proto.” Radiant in her garb of star-shaped leaves, the red-haired Power handcurled her farewell, with slender fingers pale and human. “Adieu.”

  Proto took in the sight of Flua-Sahng one last time, even as the peripheries of his memory started dwindling inward. It reminded him of when dreamers were waking in the dreams he’d visited. With his inward eye, he could see the mirk upon the far horizons of his mind, closing swiftly upon him. He struggled to imprint her image on a part of him that wouldn’t fade—upon his changeless core. He tried to firm up that part of himself, to ensure he had a changeless core.

  Then, he turned and walked into Somnus’ Palace, leaving the Queen of Heaven behind him. And he began to climb the stairway.

  This wasn’t the staircase he had taken with Lilac, when they’d gone to the Sea of Dreams—the stairs emerging into the lounge. Somehow, these stairs looked older. A little more faded. Maybe a little smoother from aeons of falling feet. But, like the other staircase, each floor’s doorway opened up into a corridor with a different décor and color scheme.

  And he hadn’t forgotten which floor was his floor. No, when he saw those blue walls and silvery glowstrips and hovering mists, he felt like he was returning home. He found himself grinning involuntarily.

  Proto left the stairway and entered the blue hallway. He’d never taken this route—at least, not that he remembered. And the memories of Somnus’ Palace that he did have were fading fast, like details of a dream after waking. But he still retained an instinctive feel for how this place was laid out, like an adult visiting a childhood home.

  He ambled through the misty blue toward the lounge. Part of him wanted to find his bedroom, tap the sliding white door, and lay in bed for a while. He felt a little sleepy. Which was odd, given that he already was sleeping.

  But Proto knew he couldn’t do so. He had no bedroom. He wasn’t yet a visitor—not even a provisional visitor. He couldn’t open the sliding white doors here—not even the doors leading to observational visits.

  He paused and frowned. What’s an observational visit? No answer came to him, and he eventually shrugged and resumed walking.

  A minute later, though, he realized there was a problem: He wasn’t where he’d thought he was. He was in the Zone of the Twins. He must’ve taken a wrong turn at some point. He struggled to remember the route from here to the lounge.

  Then, he paused and blinked. What? Zone of the Twins? What the F does that mean? He stared at the strange patterns of the silvery glowstrips on the wall. What am I doing here?

  A bleary moment passed. He felt like the guy waking up alone in the hospital at the start of a postapocalyptic zombie movie.

  Then, he remembered: The lounge. Right. He shook his head and resumed walking toward the one place here that still shone brightly in his memory.

  His sleepiness kept rising, though, like a river almost flooding with the rain. He found himself nodding off as he walked. Over and over again, he startled back to wakefulness, his head snapping up. And he’d find he’d wandered the wrong way again.

  Eventually, Proto concluded it was futile to go further like this. What good would it do if he got where he had to go and promptly passed out? He needed sleep.

  So, Proto lowered himself to the ground and lay on his side. Mists roved about him, swathing him like sheets. They matched the mists that now were blanketing his mind. He smiled, feeling sure that he was doing precisely what he should be doing, like a child being tucked under the covers at bedtime.

  Presumably, he slept awhile. When he stirred, it certainly felt like he’d slept. He felt refreshed from head to toe. As he stood and stretched, his old tracksuit felt as comfortable as ever. His mind was clear as could be. But the blurriness was taking a while to clear from his gaze.

  He blinked and squinted at the light. Mist hung over his sight, and it clung there even after he rubbed his eyes. But a bluish hallway soon emerged from the bleariness.

  Pondering his life and the strangeness of this place, he started walking down the hallway, passing some shiny white doors as he walked. They had no knobs, and nothing happened when he touched them.

  He passed a few intersections but always continued straight. He was afraid he’d lose track of where he’d been. Maybe that mattered, maybe it didn’t, but that’s how Proto was. He liked to keep his past close enough that he could get back to it.

  After about five minutes, he reached a door that, unlike the others, was open. He heard a faint clinking from far within.

  As he crossed through the doorway, the misty blue and silver décor gave way to wood paneling and wallpaper of green and purple with interwoven gold vines. Old-fashioned gas lamps threw more shadows than they dispelled. The clinking grew louder as he advanced.

  He emerged into a late-19th-century-style bar room lounge. The sides of the tables had exquisite inlays of medieval scenes. The chairs had cushions matching the wallpaper. Both were mahogany.

  On one wall was a gigantic painting of a long-bearded old man with a thick tome in hand and some sort of fairy beside him. He was watching a young man work on the beach, as a late teenage girl reclined nearby and spoke with him.

  On the opposite side of the room was the bar. Behind it stood a woman with her black hair up, except two long strands that framed her face on either side. Her eyes were similarly dark, but her complexion was powdery pale. She wore an elegant French waitress outfit of black and white. She had just finished polishing a glass and was setting it back with the others. Clink.

  Her curved eyes caught upon him as she did so. “A visitor?” Her head tilted and she squinted at him. She seemed to be asking him an actual question, not just politely welcoming him. But he wasn’t sure what to say other than the obvious.

  “Yes?” he replied.

  “Well, we’ll see about that!” another voice jumped in. This was a man’s baritone, booming and affable.

  Proto turned and saw that a lean but strapping fellow of about forty had entered through a doorway under the painting. He had dusky hair midway down his back and wore a long robe matching the wallpaper. A nocked bow was embroidered in gold on his left breast.

  “We’re a private establishment, you know. Not just any old pub!” the man went on. “This is Somnus’ Palace.”

  Proto rubbed an eye. He felt lucid, but everything around him seemed strange and hazy, like he’d just woken from a dream but the world was still sleeping. “And you are?”

  “The man himself.” He spread his arms forth winningly. “Somnus, in the flesh. So to speak. A pleasure . . . ?”

  “Proto.” This was all beyond strange, but the woozy warmth in his head obscured that fact.

  “A pleasure, Proto. Please, have a seat.”

  He did so, following the man’s hand to a barstool.

  “Anything you’re partial to?” asked Somnus. “I favor an old armagnac myself. That or absinthe. The richer, the deeper, the better.”

  “Armagnac, please,” Proto replied absently, still observing his surroundings. “An eighty year old.”

  It took him a moment to realize that the robed man was tilting his head and staring at him.

  “A man of taste, I see!” Somnus finally declared, slapping the bar. “Yes, pour him an eighty-year-old armagnac, would you, Lilac?”

  “Would you believe it? He picked my favorite drink!” marveled the long-haired man, as the bartendress retrieved a brown bottle from the shelves. “Picked it in this day and age! A young fellow like yourself! You can’t be a day over . . . ” He eyed Proto questioningly.

  “Twenty-ni—” Proto paused and stared into space. He blinked a few times, then shook his head slightly. “Twenty-seven.”

  “Oh? So young?” Zeal gleamed in Somnus’ gaze. “Hm. My favorite drink! We’re going to get on well, I think. Life here will be a bit different for you, maybe. But I think you’re going to like this.”