The two words, on the surface, were perfectly meaningless. On top of that, they had been uttered by someone who was a figment of dreams—a frequent figment with an established history, but a figment nonetheless.

  And yet, those words had also stirred something, like a trick wind that began to blow away a dark, perfectly opaque cloud that had hitherto gone completely unnoticed. Since Lucy’s awakening in the fields, a haze had clouded her mind, softly fogging over a sense of time and place and select portions of memory from the real world. There had been no questioning it, for one does not know what one has lost if they do not know they have lost, but now from the gaps there stirred the shadows of an important memory.

  And though it was but a shadow, it was terrifying. And like how a child scrambles to their light switch to replace the infinite darkness with the solid limitations of a well-lit room, this shadow of a memory drew Lucy’s mouth to open in panic.

  It did not, however, draw out even the slightest hint of a voice, before her mouth, hanging open for a second or two, sank back down into a frown of silence.

  “You intended to ask a question, did you not?” The King was, once again, concerned and curious. More so the former, this time. “Why do you stay your voice?”

  His words fell on the ears of the girl staring up at him, her mouth still clamped shut. His words had promised, in their sub-text, that asking a question would be met with kindness and understanding, and so there was no need for fear or hesitation. But still the King did not receive even a drawn breath from his only guest.

  The question that could have filled the air was far from complicated. It could have been asked simply. And, simply enough, information about this “Final Dream,” and likely other tidbits about its dreamer, would become known.

  But what was the point in all that? This was all gibberish from a dream, a sleep-induced fantasy that didn’t matter, cobbled together from the mind of a girl who didn’t matter. Adding a voice to it, drawing forth the energy to care enough to want say anything about it, would only tie the girl to all these things that were immovable and fleeting—and painful. Better to stay quiet, let this all pass over like the sun and clouds and moon on another identical day, and float through the minutes and hours as a ghost with no worldly attachments.

  Now that was familiar, more than anything.

  The King’s look of concern was halting, especially this close up, but thankfully, turning around and walking back toward the entrance was easy enough, with clouds still propping up Lucy’s every step. Where was there to go after re-entering the castle interior? Out the gate and down the stairs? Back into the fields? It wasn’t ideal, but at least the nondescript clusters of grass blades could cover her up, sink her down into obscurity, while this dream—whatever it was—came to pass. As long as she was away from this place, hanging so vainly over the entire world, with another person casually investigating her every action and whim—as long as those were far away, there ought to be some solace from the sudden and gripping tension.

  That wish was granted when, only a few steps later, the castle and the sky faded away—but the monkey’s paw had curled, for from their absence emerged massive sand dunes, blistering winds, and scorching heat. The sandy ground scalded her bare soles and the wind stung her eyes such that her body recoiled and froze, giving up on taking another step before the mind could even process this physical displacement. An endlessly-long silhouette rose up far in the distance: the staircase leading to the castle. And so it was clear that Lucy had been transported to the desert in the world below, far from the King’s relentless insinuations, but also from any semblance of safety.

  The bottom of the stairs was just barely visible on the horizon, meaning that the start of it couldn’t be too far off. And reaching the bottom of the stairs meant reaching the grassy fields, for that had been where she was at the start of the climb.

  But the unbearable heat and harsh, cutting wind made walking even a few steps seem impossible, let alone to a spot on the horizon. Staying in one place, conserving energy, seemed the most mindful course of action—but even that was thwarted by the constant resistance needed merely to withstand the unforgiving environment. The pain, the suffering here was impossible to shrug off.

  And so, rather than the sands swallowing up the little girl that had fallen into their endless maw, their surface was—slowly, painstakingly—marked by her footprints.

  The wind picked up into a gale, kicking a torrent of sand into the girl’s face. Stinging, aching, then frantic desperate wiping at the eyes, and opening them again revealed that the empty desert was no more. The endless sands still claimed the earth, but now there loomed buildings in all directions. These were the very ones that could be seen from the staircase: some ostentatiously large and extravagant and rising proud and erect toward the sky, others barely large enough for two occupants and in various states of disrepair, often sinking into the dunes. These two varieties of structures scattered about and intermingled with no sense of separation. This contrast was jarring enough to begin with, and that was exacerbated by the noises they polluted into the air: the larger mansion-like buildings cackled with indulgent laughter, while the smaller shack-like buildings erupted with screams and crying.

  It was too much to bear, far too much to be assaulted with in both vision and hearing—and empathy. One could freeze in place from the overwhelming disparity, but that did nothing to drive any of it away.

  And so, once again, the sand was marked by tiny footsteps.

  And once again, just a short moment later, after the momentary sightlessness of a blink, the present environment disappeared and was replaced. This time it was the jaw-droppingly enormous wheat field, still locked behind a cage done up with an intimidating lock and no key in sight. This, too, was unbearable to merely stand in the presence of, for the iron bars of the prison carried a palpable air of hostility, casting a mean glare of sunlight in every direction.

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  More footsteps in the sand, and so the process repeated, replacing the wheat cage with the pitch-black darkness of the endless pit and the screams that came with it. The sight and sound of people falling into it over and over again was demoralizing enough, but there came also the sense of being gazed at—a gaze so inexorably bewitching that mindlessness and inaction were transfigured into the compulsive, subconscious urge to walk toward the edge of the abyss. It took far more willpower than the previous times—not least because there was, for some odd but terrifying reason, a sense of comfort in the idea of falling in—but eventually the dunes tracked footprints moving away from the accursed pit.

  Another blink, and this time there was no sand to graze at the soles. In fact, everything was different: from the heat beating down from on high, to the thoroughly empty and dry air that gave the cruel wind free reign. All of them had gone, giving way to ice-cold totality that submerged the entire body, shooting up through the nostrils, pouring down the throat and into the lungs to steal away air, breathing, the very ability to live and thrive and exist.

  Drowning.

  Everything else around here had drowned: buildings, roads, signs, billboards, cars, and bicycles. With the rushing water that had already invaded the body and threatened to claim it, there was no choice in simply staying inactive. One had to step away immediately—but how? There was nowhere to step; trying to do so only resulted in the futile kicking of legs against leagues of water that would never give way.

  It was here, in this realization of total defeat, that a pallor of grey calm suddenly diffused all panic and concern. It said that everything else here had drowned, was dead, had ceased to exist, becoming but an unseen, unfelt drop in the inescapable ocean. So perhaps, it said, it was right to stop struggling, to let go and drown in the depths of blue, primordial oblivion.

  But something pierced the mollifying grey. It was fear, perhaps, the primitive fear of dying. Or perhaps it was something more. Whatever the case, panic and concern surged back through the body, coalescing into a different kind of calm: that of determination.

  There had to be a way out.

  Of course, that seemed all but impossible, thousands of leagues beneath the sea with nothing to provide any sort of leverage. But this same kind of impossibility against the rules of the world was familiar—as was the notion of defying it.

  That hunch alone was enough to draw forth the sinking girl’s legs, reaching up and forward as if expecting to find a step.

  And, hopelessness against hopelessness, it did find a step there waiting for it.

  Contact with the step stopped the sinking, righting the body and allowing for another step further up. This, too, materialized a step in the water. And this continued again, and again, and again, reconstructing the once-haughty staircase from the grassy fields into a subservient rite of passage leading surface-ward.

  Getting to that surface seemed to be an insurmountably-long trek, even at a brisk run. But the ocean was perhaps not as endless as it had postured itself to be, for only a minute had gone by before there was the rush and splash of emerging from the water into clear, open air.

  The stairs didn’t stop there, nor did its climber. Higher and higher it went on, into the sky, reaching up to a familiar and regal structure that floated proudly in mid-air at what seemed to be the very centre of the world.

  At last the new staircase came to an end, right at the mouth of the bridge that led to the castle gate. After the rapid displacements and changes of environment, the castle’s completely unchanged and unmoved state of affairs was almost disorienting. The gate was even drawn open still, as if the King’s command to open it had occurred but a second ago.

  No invitation was spoken this time, and staying here on the bridge, which was safe at least from the harsher elements of the world below, would have been a perfectly viable decision. Still, the bridge and then the red carpet rung out with the sound of footsteps, for there was no stopping the vaulting momentum that had welled up from the depths of the ocean—from the depths of the self.

  The King floated in very nearly the same spot of the audience chamber, and though it would have been impossible to remember, the sun’s and clouds’ positions appeared to be the same, so that time seemed to have stood still. The King observed silently as tiny clouds formed and disappeared in the empty air, supporting yet more ceaseless steps, approaching ceaselessly until they were within speaking distance.

  “Magnificent,” the King said. There was no haughtiness nor condescension in his voice, but such a simple world of consolation did nothing to address the hellish ordeals on the way to his chamber, instead igniting a spark of frustration.

  “To provide some clarification,” said the King, “what you just went through was not my doing. It was not a punishment, nor a test. What manifested was a subconscious reaction to your own conscious state of mind.”

  As those words flooded every direction, the spark of frustration extinguished, the wind dying down with it so that near-silence remained. The King’s claim was bold, but did not feel untrue.

  “You were brought to all those troubled corners of the world,” the King continued, “where simply remaining inactive was not an option. And yet, despite the overwhelming suffering at every turn, you moved forward. You chose to move forward. Even in the ocean’s depths, where there was no ground to follow, you willed into existence your own foundation, and your own way out. Do you understand why you were able to take such monumental actions, despite being—no, feeling so small?”

  Drops fell through the open air, sparkling bright in the sunlight, so that they drew attention despite their tiny forms. These drops could not have come from a rain cloud, for the sky in the audience chamber could not have been clearer. No, these were the kind of drops that spilled from the eyes, travelling down the cheeks, seen glittering in the air before they are felt.

  They were the tears that fall in anticipation to a cutting answer before it is spoken.

  “You are not small,” said the King. “You are not inconsequential. Deep in your heart, you know this to be true. So I implore you: raise your head, Lucy Lockhart, and stop erasing yourself from every sentence and subject of your story.”

  The few drops of tears had turned into rivulets, gathering in the eyes and turning the audience chamber into a blurry watercolour painting, so that they had to be wiped away until at last they ceased to flow. Shame came afterwards, scalding and scornful, but there was no strike to be felt, no reprimand to hear. There was only the gentle breeze, the surreal but beautiful sights of the castle and the King’s robes, and the gentle but solid foundation of the clouds conjured at her feet. Nothing was urging her to hurry up, nor demanding she move out of the way. All of it waited for her—and it was decided that she would wait for herself no longer.

  Lucy stepped forward, conjuring clouds into an entire platform beneath her feet.

  She looked up at the King and opened her mouth, feeling the wind course through her entire being, stirring in her heart, overflowing with sentiment in her throat.

  And at last, she spoke:

  “What did you mean by ‘Final Dream?’”