Dream a Little Dream (The Silver Trilogy) (F) (13 page)

Grayson’s head emerged from the towel. “I made a
total
mess of it,” he agreed. It didn’t seem to bother him that there were two Henrys here. “I let the coach down, and the team, and you … and Emily and Florence and my father and … listen to what they’re saying!”

The opposing team’s fans were still chanting. “Grayson Spencer, the losing Flame, send the Frognals a sympathy card!” And “The fire of the Flames is going out, Spencer the loser’s a layabout.”

Grayson was pale as death.

“The first couplet doesn’t rhyme,” I said.

Henry nodded. “And the meter of the second one’s all wrong. Idiots.”

That didn’t seem to cheer Grayson up. He disappeared under his towel again. I suspected that he was shedding tears into it.

“I’m afraid he has this dream quite often,” said Henry sympathetically.

“What, about sniffling into a towel?”

“No, of being a total failure on the basketball court, so that we all lose and everyone turns against him.”

“Has it ever happened, then? In real life, I mean?”

Henry shook his head. “No, never. Grayson is brilliant at all kinds of sport. Last season he went on playing even with a badly bruised shoulder and scored eight points. What are you actually doing here?” That last bit came out so unexpectedly that I didn’t have time to think my answer over properly.

“I wanted to see the game—what do you think?” I felt a little uncomfortable under his piercing gaze.

He grinned broadly. “Barefoot and in a nightdress? And isn’t that Grayson’s sweater you’re wearing again? I told him he’d better get it back. It’s rather too large for you, I’d say.”

“Well, and you’re here twice—that’s rather too often, I’d say,” I replied, imitating his mocking tone of voice. But secretly I was annoyed. I really could have worn something else. The nightdress was old and ugly, and with Grayson’s sweater over it I probably looked as if I’d run away from some kind of madhouse. But I could always alter that—after all, this was a dream. I briefly narrowed my eyes, and when I opened them again I was wearing my favorite jeans, sneakers, and a red T-shirt with
I AM PROTECTED BY THREE INVISIBLE NINJAS
on the front of it. I was also wearing mascara and a touch of lip gloss.

So it worked.

“You’re really good,” said Henry, standing up. “Or, alternatively, I am. It all depends.” He looked at me with his head to one side. “How about going for a walk?”

“But we can’t leave poor Grayson in the lurch.” Particularly not now, when the fans of the Frognal Flames were joining in with their opponents’ chanting. “Bad, worse, Spencer’s the worst!” they were yelling, and, “Never trust Grayson Spencer!” A white-haired old lady in a Chanel suit was standing at the top of the tiers of seats, in the back row, shouting, “Grayson Ernest Theodore Spencer, I am severely disappointed in you!” and angrily waving an umbrella in the air.

Henry climbed over the seat beside me and shook Grayson by the shoulder. “Hey, Grayson! Pull yourself together. This is only a nightmare.”

Grayson lowered the towel. “You can say that again,” he muttered.

“No, really, you’re only dreaming it. Or do you seriously think Tyler Smith of the stupid Hampstead Hornets could bring off a spectacular dunk like that? Look at him!”

“Well,” said Grayson doubtfully, “people sometimes rise above themselves in the heat of a game.…”

“But Tyler Smith? Not in a hundred years.” Henry straightened up again. “Do me a favor—dream something else! Something nicer! But wait until we’re out the door, okay?”

Grayson looked at us undecidedly. “You mean this is a dream?”

“Of course it’s a dream,” I said. “Or do you think there could really be two of Henry here?”

“Hmm, yes, that
is
odd,” admitted Grayson.

“Come on!” Henry reached for my hand. “We must go, Liv.”

“Grayson can come as well.” My heart was beating a little faster, and I didn’t know why.

“No, I can’t.” Grayson shook his head. “I’m not backing out now! I’d never let the team down. It would be cowardly and unworthy.”

“But, Grayson, none of this is really happening.” I had to shout over my shoulder, because Henry was already leading me up the steps, and the noise in the hall was terrible.

“Grayson will be fine by himself,” Henry assured me.

“But … it sounds as if they’re going to kill him any moment now!” We’d reached Grayson’s door, and I turned back again. “Listen to that!”

“I’m not deaf!”

“Burn him now, burn the traitor. Burn him now, not a day later!” chanted the mob, while Henry flung the door open and pushed me out into the corridor on the other side. He energetically slammed the door behind us, and the shouting and noise in the hall fell silent at once.

“You’re a fine kind of friend,” I said reproachfully.

“And you’re still here.” I didn’t know if he was saying that to me or to Frightful Freddy, who now spread his wings and fluffed up his feathers slightly.

“No one can come in unless they say my name three times backward.”

“Yes, sure, maybe next time, Fatty,” said Henry. He had obviously forgotten to let go of my hand, and I decided not to remind him. Not yet, anyway, because it felt rather good.

Surreptitiously, I glanced at Henry sideways. The lighting conditions in this corridor were like the light on a summer evening when the sun has just sunk beneath the horizon and it isn’t really light or really dark. There were no windows or lamps anywhere, so it wasn’t clear where the light came from. But it made Henry look rather good. I hoped it did the same for me, because he was subjecting me to a thorough examination as well.

“You’re still here,” he repeated.

“Is that a good thing or not? And shouldn’t we go back in again and help poor Grayson?”

“Don’t worry about Grayson. He’s fine. He won’t even remember his dream tomorrow morning.”

“How about us?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” He smiled at me. “Coming for a little walk?”

“We’ve been doing that for some time.” And in fact we had. We strolled down the corridor side by side, holding hands. A brand-new experience for me, both in a dream and in real life. I didn’t mind if it went on a little longer.

“Let’s hope Lottie doesn’t come around the corner with her hatchet,” I murmured.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.” Only now did I see that several other passages branched off this corridor, all lined with doors and all of them infinitely long. We ought to have passed my door long ago, but it must have changed places again. “If we were in Grayson’s dream back there, whose dream are we in now?”

“Interesting question,” said Henry, and at first I thought he was going to leave it at that. But then he added, “There are only two possibilities: Either this is my dream, in which case I’m dreaming about you. Or…” He fell silent again.

“Or it’s my dream, and then I’m dreaming about you.” It was a very nice dream at that. I smiled up at him. “You know something? I’ve never held hands with a boy before.”

He stopped and raised an eyebrow incredulously. “Really not?”

“No.” His voice had sounded so intrigued that I was quick to add, “But of course I’ve kissed and so on. Lots of times.” At least in my dreams. Once—and I was ashamed of it to that day—once even with Justin Bieber. On the other hand, my experiences in real life could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Well, to be precise, on two of the fingers of one hand.

“Oh, well, that reassures me,” said Henry ironically, but I had the impression that he was holding my hand a little more firmly as we strolled on.

“This feels different from a normal dream,” I said. “It’s like the other night in the cemetery. I know all the time that it’s a dream. So I can say things that I’d never say otherwise.”

“That kind of thing is called lucid dreaming. When you realize that you’re dreaming…”

“I know, I read up on it on the Internet. But the Internet didn’t say anything about other people being able to have the same dream at the same time.”

“No, you won’t find anything on the Internet about that.”

“Where will I, then? And what does it all have to do with Grayson’s sweater and these doors? Do you have one too?”

“Of course.” Annoyingly, my last question was the only one he answered.

We went a little way farther in silence. Then he said, “I’ll show you my door if you show me yours.”

“I think that one could be my mother’s.” I pointed to the pale-gray shop door that I’d noticed earlier.

“Matthews’s Moonshine Antiquarian Books? I’ve never seen that one before. Looks pretty.”

“I’m sure it’s Mom’s. It even has her name on it. She went back to her maiden name of Matthews when she and my father divorced. And a bookshop like that suits her down to the ground, only if I went through that doorway, I wouldn’t be in a bookshop, would I? I’d be in the dream that my mother is dreaming at this moment.”

“If you could get through the doorway at all…”

I shook myself. “I bet she dreams of Ernest all night—yuck. Just remind me of that so I never happen to go in there by mistake!”

Even as I was saying that, I realized how absurd it was, but Henry only laughed.

“Yes, there are some dreams one really wouldn’t want to share. Take Jasper, for instance. Most of the people in his dreams are stark naked.…” He suddenly stopped. “This door is mine, by the way.”

“How funny. Right opposite mine,” I said. “There was a red one there a little while ago.”

“Yes, they keep changing places. I still haven’t entirely worked out the system behind it.”

His door, like mine, looked rather old, but it was taller and broader than mine, and painted black. There was a classical knocker shaped like a lion’s head, and the words
DREAM ON
were carved into the lintel of the door, which made me smile. The only odd thing was that instead of a single keyhole, Henry’s door had three of them, one above the other.

Meanwhile, Henry was scrutinizing my door. “Looks as if it led into a cottage in the Cotswolds,” he said. “Except for the lizard. Does the lizard have some deeper meaning?”

“How would I know?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Why do you have so many locks on your door?”

He didn’t answer at once. Then he said, “I just don’t like having unexpected visitors.”

I tried to think about that, but it was difficult to work it out clearly. Maybe because Henry was still holding my hand. “If these are the ways into our dreams, then why are we out here?” I asked. “And what’s going on in there without us?”

“I’ve no idea. I suspect that without us nothing goes on in there, but of course we can’t be sure. It’s something like the light inside the refrigerator.…”

The sound of a door latching made us both jump. Jump away from each other, to be precise. But there wasn’t anyone in sight. The corridor was empty.

“We’d better go home now and … er … get a bit of sleep.” Henry gave me a crooked grin. He had let go of my hand and was taking three keys out of his jeans pocket.

“Why are you whispering? There isn’t anyone here.” I stared back the way the sound had come from.

“You never know.” Henry turned the keys in their keyholes, one by one, and each time there was a loud, metallic click. “Sleep well, Liv. It was nice sharing a dream with you.”

“Yes. I thought so too.” Sighing, I turned to my lizard doorknob. A pity the dream was over. I still had so many questions. And after all … “Thanks for holding hands.”

Henry was half into his doorway when he turned back to me again. “You’re welcome. Oh, and Liv?”

“Hmm?”

“If I were you, I really wouldn’t go to Arthur’s party.”

“Oh.” I tried not to show that my feelings were hurt. First Grayson, now Henry.

“Unless you’re really, really keen on something dangerous with an uncertain outcome,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

I felt rather as if I’d been caught out in something.

“Seriously, if you’re clever, you’d better stay away from us. We’ll just have to find someone else to take Anabel’s place.”

“Take her place doing what?” I asked, but the black door had already closed behind him, and I could hear him bolting it on the inside. Three times.

If you’re clever
 … Well, I wasn’t stupid, anyway. So I also knew that people who said things like
You’d better stay away from us
had something to hide. But that had been clear to me all along. There was more than one mystery to be revealed here. And it was in the nature of mysteries to be a little dangerous as well.

Maybe it was only my imagination that made me think it was suddenly turning cold. The light seemed to be paler, the shadows in the corridor deeper, and I was overcome by an unpleasant sense of not being alone. I quickly opened my green door, slipped inside, and let the latch click shut behind me. Not a second later, I heard knocking on the wood from the other side of the door, a very soft, gentle sound, hardly more than scraping or scratching. Something told me it would be better not to look and see what made that sound.

“There you are at last, Livvy,” someone said behind me, and when I turned around, I saw Mia, Lottie, and Mom sitting in the Finchleys’ brightly lit kitchen, with playing cards on the table.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“What?”

“Well, that strange scraping at the—” I hesitated, because when I turned again, the door had disappeared. Where it had been I now saw the kitchen window, framed by what were probably the most hideous tartan curtains in the world.

Somewhere or other, an alarm clock was going off.

15

“IS THAT FOR SCHOOL?”
asked Lottie, pointing to my notebook.

“Yes,” I said untruthfully, hoping she wouldn’t read what I had just been writing.

TIME OF DAY: 2 a.m.

GRAYSON’S SWEATER: on

MEMORY OF A DREAM: yes

MEMORY OF GREEN DOOR IN THE DREAM: yes

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DREAM:

A flood. Lottie, Mia, Mom, and I are drifting through an unknown city on a raft. Buttercup is swimming along at the same time. I see the green door on one of the flooded houses. I know that for some reason it’s important, but I don’t feel like swimming over to it. The water looks cold. I’m sure there are crocodiles in it.