“How many?” he asks. “How often?”
“Just one that I know of.” I open my hands helplessly. “But I can’t be sure. We haven’t . . . spoken much of late.” I wonder if he has found the nickel and note yet.
“Did he say what the dream was about?” Dr. Cliffton asks, and when I recount the nightmare of the two little birds, his eyes become glassy. He squints, as if he is reaching for something just barely beyond his grasp.
“Was there anything special about the night before? Or did he mention anything out of the ordinary that morning?” he asks.
I think back to our discussion, with the sun soaking through the drapes, to the troubled look on Miles’s face.
To the gap in his mouth.
“He lost a tooth,” I say. “He said it came out in his sleep. He almost choked on it.”
Dr. Cliffton chuckles and claps his hands together with a loud crack. A look of realization dawns across his face.
“Of course. Of course.” He shakes his head. “I’ve heard rumors over the years of children around this age possibly having dreams. Granted, their parents weren’t eager to speak up about it.” He smiles sadly. “Considering how families with ‘exceptions’ can be treated here.” He pushes his glasses back up onto his nose and hurries on. “But now—?thanks to you and Miles—?I finally know what must have happened.”
“I’m still in the dark,” I admit.
“Let me explain. If you had to guess, what would you say is the most common of dreams?”
I touch the upholstered buttonhole of the armchair. “Falling?” I guess. I shrug. “Flying?” I remember the Tempests last night, the lake lightening under my feet, and am glad Dr. Cliffton can’t read my thoughts. “I’m not sure.”
“All good guesses, but no. It’s the loss of one’s teeth,” Dr. Cliffton says. “Imagine for a moment that in the middle of a dream, you open your mouth and feel that all your teeth are lost. Nothing but gums left.” He stands up and begins to pace, his excitement growing. “Losing teeth in dreams is a well-documented subconscious projection of anxiety. It’s one of the most common dreams—?if not the most.”
He stops in front of the window and looks out at the horizon. Then he faces me.
“So when it comes to finding a new Variant, we always must look at things inversely.” He smiles. “Variants are like that: one big riddle. So now, when it is the dreams that are lost, we find them in a tooth.”
So Miles isn’t special. Relief washes over me. Not like Mother had been. He just happened to lose a tooth in the night, like many other children in Sterling before him. Perhaps the whole thing could have been solved so much sooner if parents hadn’t been so afraid to admit that their children had seen something disappeared. I start laughing with relief and can’t stop, even when we go to wake Miles and tell him that beyond all odds, an eight-year-old child of Juliet Quinn’s is the one who has finally brought dreams back to Sterling.
Dr. Cliffton needs teeth to test his theory about the Dream Variant, so I give him the one I plucked from Miles’s pillow last night. We all agree not to mention the theory to anyone until there’s more proof, and Dr. Cliffton gleefully sets to work. He manages to procure a few more teeth while we’re at school, and then he spends all of Saturday working with one of the local farmers to find a tool and method for crushing the small white jewels into a fine powder.
Dr. Cliffton tries the first Variant batch himself and then applies a second over Mrs. Cliffton in her sleep. She wakes on Sunday morning telling him of the most beautiful place she visited in her mind. We celebrate with poached eggs and cinnamon pears.
There’s one Variant portion left. Will offers it to me and Miles, but we let him take it. The next morning, we all look up as he appears at the breakfast table.
“So?” Dr. Cliffton asks. “What did you think?”
“Good,” Will says. He reaches for the coffee.
“Are you going to tell us about it?” Mrs. Cliffton asks.
“No.” He brings the mug to his lips to hide a grin. “Not a chance.”
That evening, Dr. Cliffton takes the news to the Sisters’ Council. He is gone so late that I don’t even hear him come home.
“The Council is thrilled,” he informs us in the morning. “They voted to approve immediately. I already have a list of orders from the voting members, and they’re asking me to seed the Variant into the Market as soon as possible.”
The news of the Dream Variant has broken by the time we leave for school. It’s too sensitive to appear in the Sterling Post, but it spreads like wildfire anyway. Cars drive by the Clifftons’ house for the next several days, leaving parcels of potatoes and fresh brown eggs and even precious bags of sugar at the gate. The phone rings until Mrs. Cliffton tires of answering it and simply takes it off the hook.
“Miles,” she says. “A classmate of yours called today. Wants to have you over after school next week.”
He beams, even at me. It seems as though the discovery of the Variant, and the part that we played together, will be enough to thaw the last remaining tension that has lingered between us ever since I accused him of taking Mother’s necklace.
“You did it,” I whisper to him over dessert.
“Kinda you, too,” he says back, and that’s when I know we are okay again.
Dr. Cliffton begins a waiting list for orders and sends out a request to the town that he’ll pay an entire dollar per tooth. “Legitimately lost teeth only, please,” he reminds a group of Corrander boys who show up at the door with a few suspiciously bloody baby teeth and younger siblings lagging close behind.
It is just the thing to distract everyone as preparations launch into full force for Disappearance Day. With one week remaining, groundskeepers set to work on the orchard and school lawn, trimming grass, stringing lanterns, and clearing brush from the paths. Beas has extra rehearsals every day for an orchestra performance at the Harvest Fair. Will spends time with Tuck the carpenter constructing a stage, a podium, and additional seating.
My gaps in Cass’s letters are growing larger. I mention nothing of this when I write to her on Saturday. Nothing about Miles’s discovery, the Variants, the Marketplace, the Tempest race, or Disappearance Day. How I’ve finally stopped searching for my reflection when I walk past windows and mirrors. “I have practice now for this new game called Stars,” I write. “It’s similar to darts.” I force my pen across the page. “I miss you and Father, and Mother most of all. Some days I’m so anxious to be back home with you again.”
But there are some days, like the next afternoon—?when I’m sitting outside with Will and Miles under crimson leaves pattering with rain, feeling warm under a cloak of Embers and Veils, and watching raindrops slide over my opened palm—?that I find I’m not quite as anxious as I used to be.
Mrs. Cliffton opens her daytime scheduler at the breakfast table before school. “Let’s talk about what still needs to be done before the twenty-ninth.”