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“I’ll take all the help I can get,” I say. “When do you want to start?”
“Now.” Asha lies down on a nearby cot. “I go first.”
Nodding approvingly, Bebe puts her into REM sleep, while I get comfortable on a nearby cot.
“See you later,” I tell everyone and eagerly jump into my sister’s dreams.
Chapter Twenty
As soon as I show up in my dream palace, I make my hair fiery, grab Pom, and teleport to the tower of sleepers.
“She looks just like you,” Pom says, flitting around as I lean over my sister.
“Want to come meet her?” I ask.
He turns purple and nods so vigorously I worry he might hurt his neck.
Smiling, I take his paw in my left hand and touch Asha’s wrist.
I stare around in confusion.
Instead of Asha’s dreams, I’m back in my dream palace lobby.
Or not.
The colors differ, my collection of impossible shapes isn’t here, but the basic layout is the same.
Also, Asha is here, gaping at Pom, who’s hovering over me.
“Where are we?” I ask her.
“I call this my dream castle,” she says proudly. “Now what the heck is that?” She points at Pom.
I hastily explain about Pom and then say, “Your castle looks just like my palace.”
“Your what?”
“The place I appear when I first go into the dream world of another person,” I say. “It’s also where I go when I realize I’m dreaming myself.”
She blinks. “It’s the same for me. I realized I was dreaming, remembered why, and waited for you here.”
I take a closer look at my surroundings.
Colors and shapes aside, every tile and every piece of marble is the same as in my dream palace. Up in the ceiling is the exact same mosaic depicting an archery-target-like mandala made out of multicolored glass.
The main difference is that she calls hers a castle.
“We must’ve designed this together as children.” I stroke Pom’s fur as he lands on my shoulder. “Before the memory loss.”
She hesitantly approaches and touches Pom’s ear. “It has to be that.”
“Does yours also have a tower of sleepers?” Pom asks, his huge lavender eyes glued to my sister. “And a memory gallery?”
I explain what those are, and Asha grins widely, then takes us to a clone of my tower of sleepers, only larger.
“That’s a lot of connections,” I say, examining the never-ending floors. “And they’re all asleep right now.”
“Those are my fellow Escapists,” she says.
Ah, right. She woke up ahead of schedule.
I take her to my tower of sleepers, and she can’t believe how alike they are, size aside.
I show her my memory gallery next, and she takes us to her version.
The paintings are obviously different, as are the memories they replay, but the layout of the room itself is the same. Ditto for the style of the frames and the floors.
“Can I experience some of your memories?” Asha asks shyly.
My pulse speeds up. “Can I see yours?”
She nods excitedly, and we spend a while sharing our best memories. I get to experience some truly amazing things—like giving birth and nursing a baby—as well as countless precious moments with Bebe.
“Thank you,” Asha says after she’s done with the last memory in my gallery, the one where I broke a vase that later turned out to have prints of both Asha’s and my hands. “I feel like I just got to know our mother.”
I pet Pom’s furry feet. “And seeing your memories made me feel like all those things had happened to me.”
Grinning, she makes her hair fiery to match mine. “Seems like being twins, our experiences are that much more compatible. Kojo and I experimented with this a bit, and when I saw some events from his point of view, it was jarring.”
“I’m not surprised,” Pom chimes in, his fur turning golden. “You have the same mannerisms, and the way you talk is the same. Even little things like your smiles are—”
“We’re monozygotic twins,” I say. “We have the same exact genes, and we lived together for the first few years of our lives. I’m surprised we’re not finishing—”
“Each other’s sentences,” Asha says with a wide grin.
Pom rolls his eyes with a melodramatic sigh. “Even what passes for your sense of humor is similar.”
I grab him by the feet and tickle his chin until he apologizes.
“He reminds me of Chloe,” Asha says with a grin.
“Oh yeah?” Ears turning a light shade of orange, Pom escapes from my clutches and lands at her feet. “Can I meet her?”
“She’d love that,” Asha says, grinning down at him. “But business first.”
“Right,” I say. “You’re supposed to be teaching me something I don’t know.”
She nods. “How about you tell me what you can already do?”
I start by explaining how I use my powers for therapy, and how I take jobs pulling out memories from people. I then tell her about my fight with the Nutcracker and what I’ve learned more recently—including how to unlock black windows, duplicate myself, enter dreams from a distance, and push people into REM sleep.
