The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 29: Snowfall

Stepping into Emery's own dream did feel unsettlingly like stepping inside her head. As they moved through the window, there was a feeling in her mind like something had just been slotted into her head, not painful, just strange, like something stuck between her teeth.

The dream itself was crisp and well-formed, like Klaus's had been, and like his, it was night. But unlike his, there was no forest to be seen. They stood on the sweeping lawns of an old palace beside a wide river, and on the other side of the river was Moscow.

The view took the breath from her lungs. Seeing the palace through the window had made her suspicious; it looked far too similar to the Grand Kremlin Palace to be coincidence, but she hadn't expected to get here and for the city of her childhood to be waiting for her across the river. It sparkled in the night, skyscrapers and onion domes, pastels lit from below and glass reflecting the stars. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the Federation Towers. The rounded top of Moscow's own Hypnos State training center, the Cradle. Though there were no clouds overhead, snow fell on the city, dampening its sound to nothing.

Emery took a step toward it and knew immediately that she would not be allowed to cross the river, no matter how badly she wanted to. Her dream did not take place there; it happened here, in this imitation-palace, on this estate that existed nowhere in the waking world.

"Is that the Kremlin?" Wes asked, looking toward the horizon.

"It's Moscow," Emery said. "A little dream-warped, but that's it." She tried to keep the longing out of her voice as she tore herself away from the view, but both Jacqueline and Wes became strangely silent.

The lawns dipped down before them, giving them a top-down view of the mazelike hedges that framed the wide stone path to the palace. Ornate wrought-iron lampposts, crafted to look like sinewy arms spearing out of the ground and holding their lanterns aloft, lined the path, which had been cleared of snow. It looked like something more out of War and Peace than modern-day Moscow, and as Emery, Wes, and Jacqueline started down the path, the hedges and the lampposts rose up around them, much taller than they should have been. Thick flakes of snow fell from the cloudless sky, but the drifts on the ground never got any higher. None clung to their clothes or their hair. When Emery held out her hand to catch a flake, it touched her skin and popped like a soap bubble.

Closer to the palace, the hedge walls gave way to hedge sculptures. They were twenty feet tall, covered in snow, and more detailed than any hedge sculpture had a right to be. On their left: a rearing horse not unlike the horses that framed Jacqueline's gateway. On their right: The symbol of the dreamhunters, a sword thrust upward behind the closed eye of Hypnos. They walked past, and the next set came up. The left: Clint Eastwood in a poncho and a cowboy hat. The right: Fabian Fenhallow waltzing with a dolphin. Jacqueline scowled at that one.

The final set of hedges came up, and these two flanked the staircase to the palace's entrance like sentinels. One was Grandpa Al, one hand holding his cup of tea, the other hand resting on the pommel of his dreamform sword, the sword's tip balanced on the ground. The other hedge was Edgar, arms at his sides, hands empty. There was no expression on his face, but as they climbed the steps into the palace, Emery had the distinct impression he was watching her.

Up close, the palace's walls were eggshell blue, and the windows and doors trimmed in lavish gold. Russian words curled across the large front doors in gold script.

"What does it say?" Jacqueline asked.

"Find home here," Emery replied, fighting her strongest urge to run back the way they'd come. It had been a mistake to bring others into her dream when she herself didn't even know what was inside. No one was supposed to see these things but her. No one was supposed to know. Was this how Klaus felt when they'd been sneaking around in his dream? Was this how anyone felt when they thought about dreamhunters stepping into their heads whenever they visited the Dream?