“There are more of us,” the boy said, shrugging. Like it was no big deal. Like it was obvious. “Millions more, in the city. Masters and slaves and pits to hold them. Servants, pickers, barkeeps, bankers.”

“That’s impossible.” The dream around Dea was shifting. Now the hedges webbed together, and became curtains of heavy velvet. They were standing backstage, in the stifling heat. Onstage, the little girl was flying without wings while an invisible audience applauded. “The dreams . . . collapse. Everything falls.”

“Not everything.” It was so dark, Dea could barely make out the angles of the boy’s face, a bit of light from an unseen source touching his cheeks and chin. He smelled like leather, like campfire and smoke. “People dream, and when they wake up, their dreams collapse. That’s what makes a picker’s job dangerous.” He smiled slightly, as if he was proud of this. “But there’s more. Certain things are left. Like . . . rubble. Residue. A whole world of things is left. You saw some of it. You walked it. Even the desert goes on for days.”

“So where did it all come from?” Dea asked bluntly. She was unreasonably angry. “Who dreamed it? And when?”

“Who dreamed your world?” The boy was standing so close, Dea could smell him: sun-baked leather and salt and something she couldn’t identify, something deep and earthy. “Look, I have to go.” Onstage, the little girl thudded to the ground. She tried to fly again, lifting her arms, bawling. Nothing. The audience began to boo and jeer. “I have to get back,” the boy said, in a different tone. “You should go, too. Remember what I said about the mirrors. I’m on your side. I’ll be watching for you.”

The boy pressed something into Dea’s palm. Dea opened her hand and saw a coil of soft leather. But just as quickly it changed, and became a moth—and then, expanding, a bird with feathers of soft velvet folds, and eyes winking like buttons. It hovered briefly above her palm, and then took off, swooping off into the dark.

“See you later,” he said. Then he turned around and vanished. He moved into the dark, or became the dark, Dea didn’t know which. She felt the sudden brush of wingtips; the velvet bird swooped past her cheek, and she followed it. One step, two steps, into darkness.

Then the bird vanished through a fissure between the heavy curtains, and Dea knew she’d found a doorway out. She elbowed past the curtains, choking on the sudden sensation of fabric in her mouth, pouring down her throat, and woke up sweating in her sleeping bag, the fabric stuck to her mouth, her zipper pinching the skin of her neck. She sat up, gasping, unzipping her jacket, swallowing against the phantom sensation of choking. It was still dark outside but she knew she wouldn’t go back to sleep.

She crawled into the open air and stood, sucking in deep breaths, grateful for the wind. Still, she could feel a phantom fluttering pressure against her palm. She grabbed a flashlight from her backpack and started into the maze. The wind whispered and hissed through the dried corn husks. She thought of what the boy had said.

We’re as real as you are . . .

Who dreamed your world?

She saw a rat, frozen, dark-eyed, in the beam of her flashlight—she yelped and it scurried off quickly, its tail slithering in the dried leaves. The rats grew big out here, in the fields, feeding off mice and the litter from passing cars. She walked more quickly, suddenly eager for the bright lights of the gas station, for the stink of gasoline and the burnt smell of all-night coffee and shriveled hot dogs rotating on spits, where she could at least feel like a person, and pretend that she was just another normal girl, stopping late-night for a bag of chips and a soda.

It was a good mile and a half to the gas station, walking next to the highway and then down a thin ribbon of concrete that passed for an exit ramp. The night clerk was the same as always, a guy a few years older than she was, who might have been good-looking except for his low-lidded eyes, like a lizard’s. He was probably stoned. She could feel him watching her as she moved through the aisles, picking up random supplies, lingering, grateful for the ritual.

“Hey,” he said, when she went to pay. Her stomach knotted up. She didn’t respond, hoping he would take the hint and stop talking. He didn’t. “You live around here or something?”

“Where’s the bathroom?” she blurted out, to avoid having to answer, though she knew where the bathroom was and had, in fact, washed her hair in the sink two days earlier. He pointed, looking vaguely disappointed.

The light in the bathroom was broken, and flickered on and off, creating a strobe effect and plunging her at intervals into long seconds of darkness. She locked the door and leaned against it. The strangled feeling had returned. She had no choice: she’d have to move. Which meant that she was officially on the run, possibly forever.

Like mother, like daughter.

She stepped to the sink and ran the faucet, cupping her hand under the water and drinking, suddenly parched. She splashed water on her face and looked up just as the lights flickered off once again. Her image in the mirror was suddenly transformed, all holes and dark planes, and she thought of standing backstage with the girl and seeing faint light reflect off the white of her teeth.

The light went on again. Now it was just Dea in the mirror, water clinging to her eyebrows and upper lip.

She must have been taken through the mirrors.

You’ll have to go in after her.

She reached out, very cautiously, and touched the mirror with a finger. She didn’t know what she expected, but she felt nothing but smooth, cold glass. She jerked a hand away, as if she’d been burned, and then exhaled. Stupid. She was going crazy.

And yet—and yet—her mother had come to her in the mirror at the hospital.

The lights clicked off once more. Dea ran the water again and dampened a finger. Quickly, before she could reconsider, she reached up and scrawled across the mirror: Let me in. Almost immediately, the words began to dissolve, gravitating down across the murky reflection of her face.

And then—Dea swallowed to keep from screaming—all at once, the mirror began to dissolve, too. Her face was gone. The glass was melting, pouring, beading into the sink; and everything it touched dissolved just as quickly, as if the liquid were an acid that was swallowing objects, transforming them into shimmering, reflective pools. There was no longer any sink, or wall, or floor. There was nothing but a vast hole, full of a shifting darkness, and a path through to the other side.

Dea’s ears were filled with the sound of wind. She felt an invisible pressure on her lower back. She thought of the men with no faces, and towers built from the bones of men.

She knew if she took even a step forward, the life as she knew it, real life, would change forever; it would mean she had gone insane. Or that the world had gone insane.

The wind blew harder. She thought—just for a second—she detected traces of her mother’s scent.

She went forward, into the mirror that was no longer a mirror, along a path of darkness.

PART THREE

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke.

Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

—Chuang Tzu

TWENTY-THREE

She was in a tunnel filled with the smell of damp; the paving stones beneath her feet were slippery with trickling water and garbage and other substances she didn’t want to think about. Up ahead, she heard voices and shouting, and, through a vaulted archway, had a glimpse of a sun-dappled street, and people passing back and forth. From a distance, they looked like bright blobs of color, streaming together into a single rainbow image.