“That doesn’t mean it’s not magic.”

“You want to believe that, just like everyone else. I get it. Makes life more exciting. And maybe you’re right. But whatever it is, it’s no good to me if it can’t be kept.”

I understood. Something that disappears isn’t worth having unless you already have a lot of everything else.

But then I thought about sugar. I thought about this night, which was precious to me even if I hadn’t found what I was seeking, even if—I glanced at the brightening sky—the night was almost over and I might never have another one like it.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

“Hey. Your friend. What’s so important about finding her?”

Maybe she had already left the city. She had said we would never see each other again.

“Nothing,” I said. “Not really. I just needed an excuse to screw up my courage to go beyond the wall.”

I think I believed that, at the time.

* * *

Dawn was seeping through my window when I snuck into my room. Brilliant pink and syrupy orange. High-Kith colors.

I fumbled out of my clothes. I slipped my passport into a wide crack in one of the beams where it supported the ceiling. The dream vial I tucked among the dull clothes in my wardrobe, having no better place to hide it.

One hour, maybe, of sleep. Then work.

Work as always, days of sameness.

Except that I was different. I felt the difference shimmering all over my skin.

I returned to the wardrobe. I slid the dream of new vial from its hiding place. A splash of golden liquid sloshed at its bottom. The thin, curved glass was cool beneath my nervous fingers. I carried the vial with me into bed.

I uncorked the vial. Its liquid smelled like lemons and fizzed. Popping bubbles tickled my nose. This seemed somehow so friendly, so teasing, that I was reminded of Sid. I tipped the vial and drank.

The liquid burned, pleasingly, all the way down.

The pillow beneath my cheek felt as smooth as milk.

I dropped like a stone into sleep.

20

I WAS IN THE AGORA. I recognized it by its black-and-white diamond pavement, but it looked so astonishingly different from the agora I passed through every day that I didn’t pay attention, at first, to the cluster of people at its sunny center.

The walls of the buildings that surrounded the agora had been white all my life. But in my dream the walls rioted with color. I was too far away to see the patterns, though the slight geometry to the lines and shapes suggested that the images were made by tiny mosaic tiles.

No gaping holes marked the pavement such as the hole where children had ice-skated during the ice wind. Instead, statues of marble and colored glass towered high: a girl with flowers cascading from her mouth; a man whose eyes changed from blue to lavender with the shift of light. He held aloft a twisting snake carved from green travertine. A leaping fawn bore the face of a human child.

There were too many statues for me to count. Some gleamed with jets of water: half statue, half fountain.

A cry rose from the crowd. Curious, I turned toward the seething knot of people.

Not yet, said a small voice behind me.

I turned.

A little girl stood there, rich black hair flowing past her shoulders, her oval-shaped face somber and quiet, her mouth finely shaped, as though painted by a delicate brush, yet firmly pressed in worry. Her eyes were grass green in the sunlight.

Oh, I thought, My eyes are green.

Which was when I realized who stood before me.

You’re me, I told her. But I don’t understand. This is a dream of what is new. You are old.

She shook her head. You are old, she said. I am a child.

No, I mean … you have already happened.

She shrugged.

Am I in the past? I asked.

Yes, she said, but something new is about to happen.

I took a step toward the crowd, whose shouts grew louder. I glimpsed a glowing knife.

The black-haired girl caught my hand. You can’t, she said. You can’t let him see you.

Who?

The god.

I nearly told her that there were no gods, but this was a dream, and she was my younger self, so it seemed pointless and even rude to insist on reality.

Her hand tightened around mine. He cannot see you, she said. If he sees you, he will know you. He will take you.

Before I could ask her what she meant, she pulled me behind a statue. Wait, she said, until it is over.

What is? What is happening over there?

Murder.

A scream split the air. I wrenched free of the girl and out of our hiding place.

Many people in the crowd had glowing knives now. Their hands lifted and plunged. Little fires danced off the blades. I could see now, through the roiling mob of people, a creature at the center.

It had a vaguely human shape, but hands all over its naked body. They stretched open in pain. It was the same creature I had dreamed about when I was in the prison with Sid.

It screamed. It tried to snatch at people surrounding it, but the crowd lopped off the many hands and struck at the creature’s throat. Bright red spilled from its mouth and wounds, but it was not normal blood. It flowed like liquid flame, striped with pink, edged with orange.

The god’s blood poured onto the black-and-white pavement, and the creature’s screams faded to a whimper.

No one, said the girl by my side, has ever killed a god before.

When the fire-blood slowed to a trickle and then stopped, the crowd fled. The agora was empty now, save for the enormous mutilated carcass.

No one except the girl and I was there to see a duskwing, its cool gray feathers stammering at its sides, dip its beak in the blood.

It shifted before our eyes, wings painted with sudden scarlet. Its stubby, thin tail bloomed into long, soft, curling pink feathers. Its eyes winked like bright emerald chips.

That is the Elysium, I said.

She nodded. The gods’ bird, she said, and fell silent as it took flight, its scalloped-edged wings illuminated by the sun. It ribboned through the sky, dipping and weaving through the hot blue.

Tell me, the girl said. Do I grow up happy?

It seemed wrong to lie and cruel to tell the truth. I said, Not everyone needs to be happy.

Her firm mouth flattened to a line. She said, Yes, they do.

I was going to say that she was a child and so could not possibly understand how the world gets in the way of happiness. I was going to say that hoping to be happy is a kind of greed. It should be enough to feel safe.