It opens its fiery mouth with a roar, and flames rip into a palm tree just above me.
“No!” I scream. I duck toward the ground, covering my head with my arms, desperate to block the burning force of the dragon’s fireball.
The roar blasts all around me. I cringe, terrified, but instead of scorching heat, I feel nothing but a sharp wind. Sparks snap around me, and the palm fronds curl into ashy black above, but my skin isn’t singed. I stare up at the burning palm tree, confused.
“Special effects!” Linus yells by my ear. “The fire’s real in the tree, but that’s all. See?” He waves his arm through a projection of orange light that looks like flames.
I’m dumbstruck for an instant, but then I see the dragon flying away in the smoky sky. Dragons don’t exist, I remind myself. No matter how convincing and frightening the effects are, they weren’t designed to harm. Yet the fury behind them is undeniable.
“Ian,” I say, as it hits me. “Ian must be controlling the special effects.”
He must be mad at me. This has to be his version of revenge.
“Let’s go,” Linus says, dragging me up. “Where are your parents?”
“This way,” I say, and I run up the ramp into the Lost and Found building.
I speed into the second room, where the two sleep shells are parked, and I throw up the lid for my mother’s. Her face is still slack and peaceful in sleep. The sour smell is as strong as ever, but I ignore it and start to pull her out. Linus lifts up Larry’s sleep shell lid, and he’s still there sleeping, too.
“Help me,” I say, getting my arms under Ma. “I can’t carry her alone.”
“What about him?” Linus asks, pointing to Larry.
“He’s too heavy,” I say. “We’ll come back for him.”
I half expect Linus to argue, or scold me for being hard-hearted, but he just closes Larry’s lid again.
“Right. We can take her to the van, and then we’ll drive around and come back. Get her legs,” he says. He gets a good grip around Ma from behind, under her arms, and I grab her ankles. “No. Turn around,” he says. “Take her knees on each side of you, like a wheelbarrow. Face around the other way. You’re the leader.”
It’s awkward, but once I grab her knees against my hips, we’re mobile. Linus is close behind me, bearing most of Ma’s weight. Our first steps are lurching and uneven, but then we get in stride.
“Watch the glass,” Linus says.
I’m careful around the broken glass by the door of the Lost and Found, but soon we’re outside, and then we’re hurrying as fast as we can go, back along the Main Drag. The awning is burned to ashy shreds, and the sinkhole is still there. We veer around it, and I look anxiously ahead toward the keep. I know the dragon is an illusion, but that doesn’t mean Ian is fake. He could intercept us at any time.
“What do you think happened with Burnham and Ian?” I call over my shoulder.
“I have no idea. Keep going,” Linus says.
I’m scanning the sky for the dragon and watching for holes in the cobblestones, all the while going as fast as I can. My arms strain from carrying my mom. As we get nearer to the center of the park, I’m completely convinced the fire at the keep is real. The toppled tower burns in the moat with a noxious, smoky stench, and the jumble of fabricated rocks has become a lacy black skeleton in the green-and-blue flames. Streaks of fire race up the north side of the keep and start spreading, fanlike, along the walls. Even the bridges are starting to burn.
My gaze snags on a dark shape at the bottom of the stairs and I come to a halt, terrified. I lower Ma’s legs to the ground.
“Linus! There!” I say, pointing.
The dark shape moves, crawling, and then slumps down again. From behind him, bright yellow flames silhouette his smoking form.
“Burnham!” I scream. “Come on!” I call to Linus.
I dart toward the blistering heat and instinctively hunch low, with a hand up to protect my face. I glance back to see Linus right behind me. Arcing sparks drop to the cobblestones and sizzle around us. The black smoke is nearly blinding, and the fire creates a deafening roar of wind that whips around me. By the time we reach the dark figure at the bottom of the steps, the heat is overpowering. I roll over his inert, heavy body and cringe at my friend’s pained expression.
“Burnham!” Linus shouts.
He hauls Burnham up under the arms, just as he did my mother, and I grab Burnham’s legs the same way. We run away from the keep, carrying Burnham through the burning debris that rains out of the sky. As we reach Ma where we left her in the square, I stumble and fall, bringing Burnham down with me. By the flickering light, I check quickly to see if he’s breathing, and he lets out a moan. Then he coughs raggedly and curls over on his side. His clothes are hot to the touch, but I can’t see any blood, and his hands and face don’t look burned. Trembling, I take off his dirty glasses and lean near to him.
“Burnham. Can you hear me?” I ask.
He keeps his eyes closed and shakes his head, but it’s sort of an answer. I tuck his glasses inside my shirt, and they snag in the medical line that’s still bunched there. I’d entirely forgotten about it, but it’s still attached behind my ear.
“You’re going to be all right,” I say to Burnham. “We’ve got you. Just keep breathing, okay?”
I check my mother to be sure she’s still breathing, too, and then a rumble draws my gaze back to the keep. The back wall bows out unnaturally, and then the upper floors begin to tumble inward. The flames extend higher, hot enough that I can feel them singeing my cheeks despite the distance.
Then, after an ominous teetering, the keep implodes inward with a cascade of stone and roof tiles. Flames roar from the crashing ruins and engulf the massive timbers.
The wind whips my hair into my eyes, and I shake my head, trying to get my vision free. Then the ground rumbles again, and the burning ruins collapse even further, dropping into a deeper abyss. A sleep shell lid, an entire dome of glass, flies up on a wave of heat. My heart clenches as I realize what this means: the burning, dropping keep has fallen deep into the vault of dreamers. The underground dome must have collapsed at last. Everything and everybody down below is being destroyed.
I stare, aghast. Sparks are careening wildly toward the orange sky, and the lid is still soaring in the heat.
The hole takes the moat with it, and the nearest cobblestoned pathways, while the inferno burns even hotter.
“We have to get out of here!” Linus says, as more of the square begins to topple into the hole.
Burnham coughs again and audibly struggles for air.
“Rosie!” Linus yells.
He has my mother over his shoulder, the full weight of her. Burnham is coughing harshly, but he’s rolled over to his hands and knees like he wants to get up. I yell to him again, and slide under his arm to support him. It’s like lifting a tree, but I help him to his feet, and he leans on my shoulders.