The alcohol and the exhaustion took hold. As the song played, Henry thought of all he had lost: The loving, strong parents he’d longed for but knew were nothing more than a child’s wish. The easy way things used to be with Theta. The music inside him that he’d never finish, never put out into the world as his story. He cried for poor, sweet Gaspard and those summer-still nights at Celeste’s, the boys with their arms flung carelessly over each other’s slender shoulders. Most of all, Henry cried for Louis. How could Louis have left him like that? How were you supposed to go on if you knew love was that fragile?
“Forget.” Wai-Mae kissed Henry’s cheek. “Forget,” she said, and kissed the other. She raised the dagger high. “Forget.”
Sweetly, she kissed his lips, and then she plunged the slim blade into Henry’s chest, just above his heart. Henry gasped from pain, and she breathed her dream into his open mouth. It flowed into Henry, siphoning away his memory and cares and will, along with his life. For a moment Henry thought about fighting back, but it all seemed inevitable, like finally giving in to drowning after a fruitless, exhausting swim. Already the iciness was spreading through his veins, weighting his limbs, filling him with an aching hunger that could only be fed by more dreams. Henry felt as if he were falling into a deep, deep well. The music-box song came to him, distorted and slow. As his eyes fluttered, he could see glimpses of those radium-bright, broken creatures watching him from the dark.
They opened their mouths—“dreamwithusdreamdreamdream”—and their din swelled as it joined the song, a discordant lullaby.
The fight left Henry. The dream army advanced. Henry closed his eyes and fell deep.
A dog’s insistent barking woke him. Henry opened his eyes to blue skies sponged with shimmering pink-white clouds. He felt as if he’d been sleeping for ages. The prickly points of grass blades scratched against his arms and neck where he lay; his surroundings smelled of warm earth and river, sweet clover and Spanish moss. Another bark caused him to turn his head to the right. In the tall green grass, an excited, puppyish Gaspard snuffled closer. He smeared Henry’s cheek with his slobbery tongue.
“Gaspard. Hey, boy.” Henry sat up and buried his face in the dog’s velvety fur. Down the dirt path, smoke puffed from the cabin’s chimney. Henry could smell it now. Woodsy and sweet, it burned the back of his throat just right. A pot of jambalaya was on. Henry could almost taste the spicy roux.
He heard Louis’s fiddle sawing away on “Rivière Rouge.” Gaspard ran toward the cabin and Henry followed. Dragonflies floated on the feathered edges of sunflowers. Birds chirruped their June song, for it was high summer. It would always be summer here, Henry knew. The old hickory steps creaked beneath the weight of his feet. He was back. He was home. The door opened in welcome.
There was a bed against the wall, and a small table with two chairs and a stool, where Louis sat, handsome as ever, the fiddle nestled under his stubbly chin. Shafts of sunlight poured through the windows, bathing Louis in a golden shimmer. He smiled at Henry. “Mon cher! Where you been?”
“I’ve been…” Henry started to answer but found he couldn’t quite remember where he’d been or what that other life was like, if it had been important or lonely, wonderful or awful. He had a vague feeling that he was angry with Louis. For the life of him, he couldn’t think why. It no longer mattered. All of it floated away the moment Louis crossed the sun-drenched floor to kiss him. It was the sweetest kiss Henry could recall, and it made him want another and another. Henry pulled Louis down onto the bed and snaked a hand up his shirt, marveling at the warmth of his lover’s skin.
“I will never leave you again,” Henry said.
Outside, the morning glories bloomed fat and purple and spread across the ground in a widening bruise.
“Did you find Evie?” Mabel asked as Sam stormed into the library, tossed his coat on the bear’s paw, and threw himself on the sofa.
“Yeah. Sorry, kid. We have to do this without her.”
“She’s not coming?” Jericho asked. He removed Sam’s coat from the bear and held it out to him, waiting patiently until Sam rose from the sofa, took the coat, and hung it properly in the closet.
“Remind me to give Evie a piece of my mind,” Mabel fumed.
“Save it,” Sam advised. “She doesn’t deserve any piece of you.”