Cedric sat bolt upright in bed.

He’d been having a dream. He rubbed the sand from his eyes and tried to remember what he’d seen. He looked behind him to see the Dreamcatcher, which was hanging about a foot and a half above where his head would lay on the pillow. It was suspended by a thin piece of leather tied on either side of the circular frame. The leather was bent at an angle where it hung from a thick iron nail that had been hammered directly into the paneled wall.

Cedric had to look to see if the Dreamcatcher was there because he was not accustomed to seeing images while he laid in the bed on the nights he slept at Davian’s flat.

The Dreamcatcher was brown on the frame, and the strands that formed the inner web were white. And when Cedric looked at it, he remembered what he’d seen.

It had been a dog. And the dog was reddish-brown, and there must have been sunlight shining on the short fur because Cedric remembered that color very distinctly. And the dog had short little ears that folded over themselves and covered up the canal and he had a serious brow, a very serious brow if Cedric remembered correctly, and there were wrinkles in the brow that made deep creases so that the dog had a face that looked not just at him, but into him, with eyes of longing, and sorrow, and—

“Cedric…?”

Cedric realized the alarm clock was still ringing.

“Cedric?”

It was Davian, and he was in the hallway outside where Cedric slept.

“Cedric! Are you okay?”

Cedric turned his body and let his hand fall on the button atop the alarm clock, which shut it off and made it quiet.

“Yeah,” he said through the wall. “I’m up.”

Cedric put on a pair of socks he’d left on the floor. Though Davian happily trod through his own house unshod, Cedric did not like the feel of dust beneath his feet, however seldom that occurrence in a house cleaned by a spectral hand.

When he opened the door, he found Davian leaning forward on a bench, where he was lifting a dumbbell with his right hand, and when he extended his arm, he put it down and looked to Cedric and said, “Good morning.”

Cedric was still a little dizzy and said, “‘Morning.”

Davian shifted in his seat and prepared to do another set, so he was looking down while Cedric stood there, in a white tank and flannel pajamas, just watching him readying to pick up the weight.

And he was still watching when Davian lifted it up and lowered it.

The third floor was the top floor and perhaps it was rightfully called the attic because things up here were not like the rest of the house. And sometimes, like today, when he found Davian at the weight bench, he wasn’t a Victorian, he couldn’t do magic, and he too had to tear his muscles before he could put them back together.

“Davian?” he said, after he’d done several curls.

The Mage was still looking down, with his bicep in the corner of his eye.

“Yes?”

Cedric did not say anything for a moment, because he was watching, and wondering if Davian was counting, which, he had to have been.

“I think…” he said. “I think the Dreamcatcher still has something in it from when you were using it.”

And Davian stopped then, because he must have been done with his set, and he just let the iron hang for a second or two from his extended arm and didn’t move.

He brought his arm up just slightly, because maybe he hurt to hold the arm like that, and he needed to compress the muscle to make it stop hurting. He was still looking down when he said, “Why do you say that?”

He put the weight down and looked up.

“You have to hang it over the bed. It doesn’t work if you don’t hang it.”

They were then looking at each other.

“It’s right where you put it,” Cedric said. “I didn’t move it.”

Davian was very still.

“I saw a dog,” he continued. “A dog that—”

“There are a lot of dogs in the world,” Davian said simply, seeming to look Cedric up and down. “Born every minute.”

“I know, just, it—” he said. “The dog was… looking at me.”

Davian raised one eyebrow, just slightly, and when he did this, one side of his mouth brought his lips closer together, and they became thin.

They were just looking at each other, and Cedric felt cold, so he returned to his question, and asked, “Could it be your dog?”

Cedric thought Davian went a long time between blinking, and he desperately wanted the Mage to hide those eyes.

“No,” he said. “It’s not my dog.”

And then he closed his eyes and moved his head, and the chin followed, the chin that never had a single hair on it.

“I don’t know what you saw,” Davian said. “But it wasn’t my dog.”

Cedric looked at the treadmill, the bike, anything else, because he had the instinct to wander.

“Bring it to me,” Davian said. “Let me see it. Perhaps it’s reached the point of saturation. Perhaps—”

“Perhaps that’s why it failed you last night.”

So Cedric went back to the bedroom. He slipped the leather over where it was hung, but he did not touch the nail and left it jutting out from the wood at the thirty-degree angle with which it had been wedged into the wall. And when the Dreamcatcher was free, he brought it to the Mage, who took it in his hand and stopped looking at Cedric and looked at it instead.

Cedric saw that the man had a pensive expression on his face, and looked worried, and his brow was drawn together.

The room went dark then, because Davian held the Dreamcatcher flat in his left hand and his raised his right over it. And when he did this, he brought his forefinger against his thumb, and it was this action that took the light from the lamps and made the room dim. Slowly, he motioned as if he were pulling a thread from the face of the net while it lay in his hand.

Cedric had seen this before. This was how the Mage pulled the images out of the Dreamcatcher. And when they were pulled from where they had been caught, a small thing like a cloud appeared, and on the cloud were dancing colors that formed pictures, little pictures that flashed and moved but never made a sound.

When Davian saw her, because he smiled and relaxed his face, he knew it was Lila. And she had auburn hair and she was smiling too and she was probably something like seven years old. And as Davian watched her, his expression softened and tiny lines appeared from the corners of his eyes.

The little red-head twirled around, and when she did so, her blue dress spun out and wide around her knees, and she had on black shoes that were round on the toes and had the strap over the top and the buckle on the side, and those white socks that flared out at the cuff into lace or waves or—

Davian closed his eyes, and the light came back into the room because the image suspended over the Dreamcatcher stopped.

“Thank God,” he said, quietly. “She’s still there.”

Cedric didn’t say anything, but he felt something within his chest, because it was his heart, and his heart was pushing against its restraints, and every second or so it felt as if it might break the rest of him.

“I need to fix it,” Davian said, still not looking anywhere at all. “I need to take it and fix it.”

Somewhere, Cedric thought he wanted to protest. Because if he didn’t have the Dreamcatcher, he thought, the nightmares would return. And if the nightmares returned, perhaps he would return to when he wasn’t sleeping because he was waking up before the Sun, restless, and lost.

But Cedric did not say anything, because Davian was still holding the Dreamcatcher and he wasn’t looking at Cedric anymore and hadn’t looked at Cedric for some time. He stood there for a while, and then his mouth was dry and he was desperate for leaving, so he said, unsure of himself, gesturing with his hands though the Mage’s eyes were still cast away, “I’m… I’m gonna get something to eat.”

And when Cedric turned to go downstairs, Davian was still sitting and looked very much like he had no desire to get up.

‘When calcium loses an electron, it behaves spectroscopically like an alkali metal, forming features in the spectra of cool G, K, and M class stars. Three of these absorption lines are found as a NIR triplet at 849.802, 854.209, and 866.214 nm. Where would these lines appear in a spectrum measured from Betelgeuse, if Betelgeuse is receding—’

“Cedric?”

He looked up and when he did so, his eyes passed over his coffee, a spare pencil and eraser, and landed on Daisy, who herself was standing next to a tall man with jet black hair. They were both dressed unseasonably; Daisy’s clothes, top and bottom fraying in places, included a floppy t-shirt and oversized shorts that hit just above the knee. Cedric tried to look at the man with her, but his eyes fell instead on the strands of colorful beads, numbering at least ten, strung loose about his neck.

“I hope we’re not being untoward; I see you’re working on something,” Daisy said. “Do you have a couple of minutes? I wanted to introduce you to my good friend.”

Cedric looked at him then, and he looked back.

“His name is Benjamin.”

Cedric had the instinct to stand, but that felt weird, so when he hesitated, he did nothing, and reached out his hand while remaining seated at the undersized table in the coffee shop.

Daisy spoke over their introduction, saying brightly, “I hope we can help you. Ben’s got a lot of experience diagnosing many things, but especially… Dreamlessness.”

And then she added, “It’s important to know what you’re dealing with.”

Cedric opened his mouth to protest, because he felt seen, and because he knew he’d never said anything to that effect to the woman. But he choked and the eldest present spoke first.

“Cedric,” Ben said, hands warm, neither wet nor dry. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Daisy has spoken highly of you.”

Cedric took back his hand and felt stupid. And then he realized it wasn’t just that broach of etiquette that was making him feel the fool.

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” he said. “Last—”

He was being defensive, and he knew he was revealing a position of weakness. And he hated himself for it.

“Do you mind if we sit down?” Daisy asked.

They hadn’t bought a coffee, nor did they look as if they had any intention to purchase a bagel, with or without a schmear. Cedric wanted to flee, but his curiosity got the better of him, and because he was still looking, he said, rather skeptically, “…Sure.”

“We won’t be long, really, I promise,” Daisy said, and, without so much as a second breath, turned to her companion and said to him with renewed brightness, “You sit, I’ll grab a chair.”

And Ben sat. And maybe he was oversized for the little metal chair, or maybe he was unaccustomed to sitting at such small tables, but at any rate, he looked very much like he did not belong.

But that is not to say he looked at all uncomfortable.

Instead, it was Cedric who sat there dumb while the din of the meeting-place echoed around them. And there they sat, quiet amidst the noise, and the student searched his thoughts, desperate to speak, and feeling as if he were playing an anxious game of chicken.

“When was it,” Ben said to Cedric, and over the neglected problem set, “that you saw the Dream as the problem?”

There it was. Cedric had known the guy all of two minutes and already he’d delivered to him a swift kick to the shins.

And he wanted to fight, and say it wasn’t anyone’s damn business but his own, and whoever these two were, they didn’t know him, didn’t really truly give a shit about him, and no matter what they said, he wasn’t ever going to open up his wallet or give them a dime, much less a dollar.

But instead, Cedric just kind of squinted, and tried to think, though the sunlight was filtering through the window, and it seemed as if the chaos in the coffee shop had increased.

Daisy returned with a third chair, and she put it down and sat, somewhat less strange looking, somewhat far from the table’s edge. And, though he didn’t realize it, maybe it was the way she’d smiled and laughed at him on the first day, practically unbidden, that convinced him, despite instinct, to tell the truth.

Cedric said, while no single dream rose to his memory, when they all flooded his nerves simultaneously, “When I couldn’t tell the difference between what was real — and what I’d made up.”

Ben did not move, but he seemed to be listening, and after a while he said, “Which scared you more?”

That ‘you’ struck him, and it was an enormous word in a deceptively diminutive package, and his memory stuttered on it, like whatever he had heard wasn’t what Ben had actually said, and maybe his attention had lapsed and missed something very important.

“I think what Ben is trying to say,” Daisy spoke up, “is that sometimes what we’re afraid of tells us a lot more than what we should flat out avoid.”

Cedric just looked at her.

“It’s kind of like your stars, right?” she asked. “That’s what you’re studying? Starlight?”

He was looking at her, but he wanted to be back in the lecture hall, where instruction came toward but never at him, where no one called on him or asked him questions because no one knew his name.

“It’s not real,” he said then, quietly. “So why does it matter?”

But by the way his voice had become soft, whatever question he had attempted melted into despair.

Daisy wasn’t smiling anymore, and she looked all of a sudden very concerned, and she might have considered to touch him, or at least Cedric predicted that this was when someone else would do such a thing, but she did not, and just looked at him with open eyes.

“It’s as real as you make it,” she said.

Cedric received the care, but it hurt, and he snapped back.

“Real? You know what’s real?” he said, voice climbing. “The fact that I don’t fucking sleep.”

“I lay my head on the pillow and it doesn’t matter how tired I am and how much I want — and need — to sleep, after hours I’m still laying there like a fucking moron,” he continued. “Normal people sleep. Normal people get tired and lay down and when they close their eyes, they fall asleep.”

He pushed his back against the chair and leaned back in disgust. “That’s not how it works for me.”

Neither of them said anything, so Cedric kept talking.

“And, y’know, sometimes I do fall asleep. And the first thing I see in the darkness is something so gruesome that I wake back up and look at the clock and it’s been fifteen or twenty minutes and I know fat fucking chance for me for the rest of the night.”

He knew he’d lapsed and drifted, and he knew he was semi-incoherent, but he didn’t care. He just frowned, and couldn’t really look at either of them because he was stewing in his own rage and shame, and he let them linger at the edges of his vision because he knew a real man would have kept his mouth shut.

Ben said something then, but Cedric wasn’t sure if he heard it.

And soon after, the two of them left Cedric alone, but not completely alone. And when he was still in the coffee shop and too exhausted to pick up the pencil, he knew he hadn’t remained ignorant to what the man had said to him. He knew, because the words stayed with him, and he realized very well that he had heard the healer, and he’d heard every word.

‘What you see is not the wound.’

Although the sky had been blue when Cedric left the University, by the time the train crawled out from beneath the Queensborough Bridge, as far as he could see, it was black.

The lights from the chamber were covered with a dirty plastic that made them amber and orange and speckled where the dust collected, and the platform had lights that flickered and buzzed and made him uneasy. And soon he left the northernmost reach of the elevated train and continued further north and further east by way of his aching feet, the only way he could hope to stop the perpetual motion.

He opened his eyes and looked up into the inky night, which was getting blacker still, and he knew it would be hours until he could see the white heat of a faraway star.

Inside the house, the smell of food wafted into his nostrils and even from several yards away, he could hear silverware clattering against dishes. He bent down to remove his shoes but his eyes drifted toward the clock, whose hands had moved into a position that was somewhat more advanced than he would have preferred. So he took a breath and tried to accept what he could not change.

Cedric walked into the dining room, where there were six people sitting around the table because Zahra had come to visit and Myrtle was missing.

And his own plate was white and empty.

“Hey Ced, welcome back,” Elmer said. “You thirsty? Suyon and I found a recipe in one of the Matron’s old cookbooks.”

He must have been talking about the carafe on the table, because it was filled with greenish liquid and several large ice cubes.

“It’s kinda like fruit punch,” he said. “Except it’s—”

“Cedric,” came Friday’s interruption, impertinent and dripping with sarcasm. “It’s nice of you to join us for supper. You know…”

“Ever.”

Cedric looked at her.

“But we didn’t bother fixing a plate for you. Figured you were too busy to show up for dinner at the poorhouse. Or maybe, more likely,” she said, getting more theatrical the more web she spun, “you didn’t want meatloaf because you were expecting beef Wellington.”

“Really, Friday,” Zahra said, unamused. “Enough.”

“I just want to know why we bother setting the table for someone who can’t bother to get his ass in the door for six,” Friday said, eyes practically embers. “Someone who isn’t in his bed half the time, who clearly has somewhere else he’d rather be.”

And Cedric heard Owen’s voice come as a predictable encore, mumbling without raising his eyes, “And it was my room first…”

Cedric didn’t really know what he wanted to say. He frowned and looked at Friday, who looked back with a grimace on her lips that was completely unrepentant.

He held his tongue until he could not, when the twitching in his face was too much to bear. And though his gut burned in fury, he remembered Suyon, and Elmer, and the dining room table, so he just said, measuring his words preciously, “I was held in the tunnel.”

“Oh!” Friday said with false brightness, mocking him. “Do you hear that, everybody? It’s not Cedric’s fault that he’s late! Isn’t that nice?”

Cedric lowered his eyelids and tried to remain cool in spite of the violence. He hated to look at her but he would not back away from the one who tried to bore into him with her face and her voice and her hate.

She said, glaring through him, tone darkening, “It’s never your fault.”

“Friday,” Zahra said, volume rising slightly, but still restrained. “Please have some respect.”

She scoffed and turned away. “Respect? Respect?! Yeah that would be nice,” she said. “We should all show some respect for the Matron and what she does for us. Especially when she takes us in and shelters us instead of making us go out and get a job like a real adult would.”

“But then again,” she said, bringing her finger to her jawline to sarcastically imply consideration.

“I guess you don’t need a job if you’re always going back home to your sugar daddy.”

Cedric threw up his hands and walked out of the room.

“You do understand why she’s angry, don’t you?”

Cedric just sat there for a moment and felt Zahra’s gaze on him. He had gone upstairs to the music room, and he had just sat there, silent, dwelling in the vain hope that he could pretend he didn’t exist.

But the world, as usual, would not go along with that farce, and Zahra had left the dining room and followed him, peeling back a curtain to find him no more than three minutes after he’d tried to hide.

“Cedric?”

He just hoped, wherever she was, whatever she was doing, that Eloise… Eloise wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire.

“No, I don’t,” he replied carefully. “I don’t know why she hates me. I have no idea. All I know is that she’s had a massive chip on her shoulder ever since I first walked through that door.”

“She’s always hated me,” he said, remembering. “And no matter how much I try to stay out of her way, it just seems to make her hate me even more.”

“I don’t—” He was meandering. “I don’t know what I ever did to her.”

Zahra paused after that, and it was warranted, because what she said hit Cedric like a ton of bricks.

“She’s jealous.”

But Cedric could not accept what he heard, and because he was taken off-guard, he almost laughed.

“Jealous? She’s… jealous?” he asked, incredulous. He added, “…Of me?”

“Yeah. She is. She’s jealous that you go to an Ivy League school—”

“Go to an Ivy League school?” he said, defiant. “I don’t go to an Ivy League school. I sneak into the back of lecture halls and pray no one notices I exist. There’s a big fucking difference.”

“Jealous that—” she began, but he intercepted.

“If that’s what she wants,” Cedric bargained, “she could easily get accep—”

“Jealous that Davian likes you so much, has always liked you, from the first moment you got here, and meanwhile—”

“Davian? She’s jealous over Davian?” He could not believe what he was hearing, and though he didn’t want to feel it, or feel anything at all, his blood began to boil.

“Before you got here, believe it or not, he used to show up once or twice a month and give demonstrations and talks and teach us things. He came alone and he left alone. And she hoped if she worked hard enough and proved herself, that he might someday pick her to take with him.”

Cedric listened, statuesque.

“And when you showed up and he took an interest in you,” she said, “All that stopped and the only reason he came by was to pick you up and take you somewhere.”

“You’ve been a part of the secret boys’ club since you got here, and for years Friday had been working like mad, day and night, and after all that, he just looked right over her head as if she’d never been there at all.”

He was silent, because he knew what Zahra would say on her next breath.

“All because she’s—”

Cedric broke character and cut her off.

“All because she’s a girl, right?” he accused. “Is that what it is?”

Zahra just looked at him with impassive eyes.

“Yeah, well, there’s not a damn thing I can do to change that,” he spat.

“And y’know what? She’s got her whole life ahead of her. If she wants Davian so much, she can have him.”

He repeated himself, “She can fucking have him.”