“If anything were to happen to you . . .” He removes his glasses, sets them on the desk, and rubs his eyes. “Just don’t be out at night,” he says finally. “Especially this time of year.”
He looks so concerned for me that I want to pat his hand and assure him that I’m all right and I’ll never do anything dangerous again. I feel so wretched, sneaking out with his son and breaking into his library and stealing his book. I clasp my hands together in my lap and want to do something to make it all up to him.
So I offer him an olive branch in the form of a small confidence.
“Dr. Cliffton?” I say. “There’s something else I think you should know.”
He squints at me. Then he places his glasses back on his face, as if he’s putting on a coat of armor. “Go on.”
“Miles had a dream.”
Dr. Cliffton’s eyebrows shoot upward.
“Did he, now?” He sits back in his chair, and his fingertips meet one another, then separate so that he can pull at one of his eyebrows. He shifts into a different mode, as if changing gear: less paternal, more clinical.
“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.
