“Well, at least I get to relive my youth, as I await my happy ending,” muttered Proto.

  “About that.” The Queen of Heaven winced a smile out.

  Seeing the look on her face, Proto wanted to fall back onto his bed and close his eyes, but he didn’t have a bed handy. “What now?”

  “Oh, please don’t be cross, Proto,” she entreated. “I’m going to ‘do you a solid,’ as your sort say. Your ilk. Your type. Your . . . persuasion. Mm. Anyhow, in short, I’ve compartmentalized your mind.”

  Proto blinked. “ . . . what?”

  “I said, I’ve compartmentalized your mind!” Flua-Sahng repeated. “Even more than the average man’s. Now, you can not only ignore me and the pile of dishes as you watch T.V. Now, you can practice cane-sword mastery in your sleep, while failing even to notice the entirety of your waking life.”

  She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Hmm, now that I think about it, maybe you haven’t changed all that much. You people.” She shook her red head grimly.

  “Unfortunately, I’m still not quite clear on what’s going on,” noted Proto.

  The Mother of All sighed and rolled her eyes. “What I mean, Sleepwalker, is that your mind is in two parts now.”

  “One part remembers everything that happened in your visions of being ages nineteen to twenty-seven, then going to Somnus’ Palace, then having that lovely week of visiting Mercune’s dreams, then going to Somnus’ Palace again, and so forth. That half of you is the one talking to me right now.”

  “The other half is even more of a know-nothing, believe it or not. All he knows is that he dumped his new girlfriend yesterday, and life holds no meaning anymore.” She smiled blithely.

  Proto frowned. “I hope you’re being nice to him.”

  “Oh, very nice to him. Such a sweet boy,” she assured him. “It’s you I harbor reservations about, Mister Red-and-Black-and-Lilac-All-Over.”

  “Anyhow, my point is this,” she said. “As we go through the next ten years together, all you’ll experience are the things you do while sleeping.”

  “Meanwhile, Wakey-Wake Proto will go about his business, every bit as sweet, innocent and boring as you remember. Because he’ll be doing exactly the things you remember doing,” she explained.

  “And when things finally get exciting at my son’s palace, and that Other Proto is dallying with Lost Spirits and what-have-you, and having his lovey-dovey last week in the breathing world, he’ll take care of all that business too. By that point, alas, he’ll be every bit as depraved and insufferable as you.”

  “Oh, I should mention,” she added. “He’ll do exactly what you recall doing while you were there. So you needn’t be concerned he’ll mess up your romance with your true love or anything.”

  “Well, unless you and that cane-sword of yours fail,” she noted. “In which case we’ll have bigger things to worry about than Proto’s love life.”

  “In brief, all you need to worry about, Sleepwalker, is saving Time.” She batted her lashes.

  “Happy times,” he mused. “So, no Euchre with the gang? You couldn’t start me a week ago and let me, um, chill with Karen Black?”

  “‘Chill,’ indeed,” she scoffed. “No, your days of chilling in aunts’ basements are thoroughly behind you, Proto, so I suggest you find some other licentiousness to occupy your vain musings.”

  “As for Euchre, I’m afraid you’ll also have to miss that frivolous degeneracy,” she said. “For the most part. If I let you live through all that again, with all the knowledge you’ll be learning here, you’d almost inevitably thwart Fate, sending the future rocketing off-course forever. This is Serious Business! Things are Getting Real! We’re not in Somnus’ Palace anymore, Toto!”

  “I still don’t understand,” he said.

  Flua-Sahng clasped his hands earnestly. “I know it’s hard to understand, but try hard—you’re going to be cool, Proto!”

  He sighed.

  She giggled and patted his head. “You’ll see. It’ll take a while, but we’ll take this journey together. This long, long, long journey. We’ll have good times, you’ll see. You’ll be happy, in the end.”

  “Happy and thoroughly trained in the cane-sword?!” he asked.

  “Oh, you’ll be the most trained in the cane-sword since at least World War I!” she promised.

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  “Well, if I have to waste ten years of life, at least I’ll get a marketable skill out of it.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Don’t be a grump, Sleepwalker,” she chastised. “Remember when you were watching my son Velnias swordfighting, and you were complaining, ‘I’ll be leaving this world just as everything gets cool’? Well, guess what? You won’t. You’ll be the bleeding edge of coolness.”

  “Coolness?” he said.

  “You’ll have a cane-sword! You can name it Bleeding Edge!” she exclaimed.

  “Can I?” he asked.

  “Well, yes,” she confirmed. “Although the world’s going to name it something else.”

  “The world?”

  “Stop repeating portions of my sentences,” she chided. “I swear, you’re like Death Valley.”

  He raised his brow. “Death Valley?”

  “You echo what I say, you’re both deep and vapidly empty, you’re flat and bony, and you’re quite hot sometimes,” she replied instantly. “What? What is it, Proto?”

  He eyed the skylight and nodded grimly. “Tossed you a softball, huh?”

  “Come now, I’ve planned that line for aeons. Flatter me with a small smile?” she urged. “Ah, there we are. It makes it all worth it. You work ten years for true love and a happy ending; I work aeons for a smile.”

  “About that, though.” He peered thoughtfully at the sword rack. “There’s something I don’t get.”

  “Yes, there is,” she confirmed. “Is. Will be. Was. Had been. Will have been. Pick whatever tense you want, that one remains true. As I said, I lead my own in the love of joys unknown. And you make it easy, by knowing next to nothing.”

  “You’re like an assembly line for Proto-insults,” he remarked, and she tittered agreeably. “Anyway, my question is, why are you going to all this crazy trouble to have me learn about cane-sword-fighting in my sleep, if I’m just going to forget it whenever I wake up?”

  Flua-Sahng smiled and regarded him for a few seconds before responding. “Have you ever noticed how, when you’re dreaming, you seem to know and understand all sorts of things that no longer make sense to you once you’ve woken? Insights come so easily, sometimes, when you’re dreaming?”

  “Um, sure,” he answered slowly.

  “Yes,” she nodded. “Scientists say it’s just a trick of the mind. They explain that, when you’re awake, your mind follows tight, strong chains of reasoning that help ensure you’re thinking realistically. In contrast, your sleeping mind follows more attenuated chains of reasoning—reasoning that wouldn’t really hold up, if you thought hard about it. When you wake up, you can’t seem to make sense of your dream anymore—and that’s because it never did make sense. It was just a bunch of hyper-attenuated, unrealistic reasoning, according to those scientists.”

  “Well, guess what. They’re wrong!” she announced. “As always, scientists take some palpably magical phenomenon, think of the most mundanely boring and disenchanted explanation possible, and declare that that must be the true explanation. Nope nope nope! You really do have insights in dreams, and you forget them when you wake up!”

  “So, bearing that in mind, here’s what’s really going on.”

  “As you know, my kind are called Elements when we’re up in the breathing world in physical form, but we’re known as Daemons here in the dream realm,” she explained. “The Fates place limits on what Daemons like me can do to intervene in the breathing world. For example, I can’t simply tell you how to save the world and the future. Can’t? Couldn’t? Mm.”

  “Anyhow, Fate’s limits are relaxed greatly while you’re sleeping. I can tell you almost anything I’d like—as long as you forget it when you wake up,” she said. “After all, what’s the harm in knowing Fate’s secrets while you’re asleep?”

  “Now, that’s very nice and all for purposes of conversation. I can chat with you all I’d like, about whatever I’d like, while you’re dreaming. And you can even remember it in future dreams!” she went on. “That’s why, in dreams, we often remember past dreams that we forget while awake. We can carry on whole dream-friendships. Can and do!” She smiled sweetly.

  “But . . . none of that helps me much, when my goal is to save Time,” she noted. “To comply with Fate’s rules, I have to make you forget all the best stuff I’ve taught you, as soon as you wake up!”

  “Sooo . . . I found a loophole.” She winced a smile out. “I do enjoy loopholes. I love loopholes even more than milk bread and long walks in the starry wastes! I have more loopholes than Nomura’s belt armor!”

  “Sheesh, you’re nerdy!” exclaimed Proto.

  “And you love it. Loved? Will love?” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Anyhow, the loophole is, what about things you do while you’re asleep?”

  “For example, sleeptalking. If you were to sleeptalk some key fact I shared with you while dreaming, well, technically, that complies with Fate’s rules—even if it’s something you have to forget upon waking up.”

  “And if you were to sleepwalk . . . well. That opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities, doesn’t it?” She smiled. “Don’t you think, Sleepwalker?”

  What . . . ? He felt like he was on the verge of something, but what? Before him loomed a precipice of understanding. Of that, he felt sure. But was it a cliff to be climbed or leapt from?

  “Here, Sleepwalker. Let me help you.” The Queen of Heaven waved a radiant red hand. “Have some future memories, just for tonight. Why not? I can do that. It’s within the rules. You’re sleeping!”

  Strange sensations tingled through Proto, spreading from his core into his limbs.

  Suddenly full of warm assurance, he found himself strolling toward the sword rack. Studying the cane-swords, he selected one, tested its weight and balance, and assumed the Ox Horn posture.

  “Ox Horn”? What?

  But no answer came.

  Instead, almost in a trance, picturing a foe standing before him, he launched with his sword into See the Roses, followed by Luna’s Question and Sol’s Answer. Then, quickly shifting his weight, he thrust forth into Luna’s Retort. From the resulting Einhorn posture, he stabbed promptly into The Leech.

  “Luna’s Question”? “Einhorn”? What are these names? How am I doing this? he wondered.

  But even now, the familiar strains of Awakening the Wind were swelling all about him. With it came memories of a future past, singing through him like lyrics long forgotten. They sang of darkling adventure, of Fortune and a red rock, of duels against darkness and the mask he would wear, and of . . .

  His eyes widened. He turned to the sunset-haired monarch standing nearby, garbed in radiant raiment of starry leaves. She had a faint smile on her freckle-dusted face.

  His mouth fell open, as the fullness of memory filled him. “You! The Queen of Heaven!” he found himself exclaiming. Because, for him, it all finally made sense.

  And the Queen of Heaven threw back her red head and laughed. “Welcome back, Proto! It’s good to finally see you again. All of you. It’s been so long. Welcome to The Beginning!”