The Next Morning
I woke up in my own bed.
Not dramatically. Not gasping or sitting bolt upright the way people wake up in movies when something has happened. I just opened my eyes and the ceiling was there, regular white ceiling, fan rotating at the medium setting, pale gray morning light coming through the gap in my curtains, and my regular pillow at its regular angle and my regular blanket pulled to my regular spot, and the little star projector on the shelf with its blue dots still going because I always forget to turn it off.
I lay there for a moment.
My first thought was that I needed to go to Solen's building for breakfast.
My second thought was that Solen's building did not exist.
My third thought was that I should check on whether the bridges were still glowing.
My fourth thought was that the bridges were not real.
I lay there while these thoughts sorted themselves out.
It took a while.
The room looked exactly like it had always looked. Posters on the wall. Pile of stuff on the desk that Mom had asked me to deal with three times. The laundry basket in the corner that had been full since approximately the beginning of summer. Rodrick's music was not audible from upstairs, which meant he was either asleep or not home.
I sat up.
I was wearing my cheese pajamas.
I looked at them for a moment. The button that had been missing since Day Two of the dream, the small white plastic one that had become a cultural artifact on a floating sky island, was back. Sitting in its place in the front of the pajama top. Right where it had always been.
I touched it.
Same button. Same plastic. Same size.
Never been anywhere.
I sat on the edge of my bed for a while and looked at my room.
Here is the thing about waking up from a dream that felt real. Your brain does not switch cleanly. There is a period, it might be a few minutes or it might be longer, where both things are true at the same time, where the dream and the waking are equally solid and equally present. The room is real. Also the island was real. Both of these things feel equally true until slowly, gradually, the waking wins.
I was in that period.
I knew I was home. I knew the island was not a real place I had been. I knew Solen and Vael and Feyn and the elder with the storm-lake wings were not real people I had met.
I also knew the weight of the cord in my pocket. The feel of the hum through the stone. The sound of everyone in the gathering space humming together after Rowley started the melody. The way Manny's hand had felt small and certain.
Both at once.
I let them both be there for a few minutes. I had learned that you could do that. Hold the good and the complicated at the same time without having to file them separately.
Then I realized that Rodrick was actually next to me and he was wearing his school clothes and backpack.
He looked at me said "you finally came to you senses. Hurry, you slept through all of summer vacation, get up!"
I quickly got up, told Rodrick to get out and started getting ready. For some odd reason, I kept smelling mango from Manny's room before I closed the door but who cares.
[SKETCH: Greg sitting on the edge of his bed at home, holding a shoelace with a carefully tied knot in it, looking at it with an expression that is not quite confusion and not quite recognition. His regular room surrounds him, posters and desk pile and all. The star projector on the shelf is still going. Through the gap in the curtains, regular gray morning light. Everything completely normal.]
THE END