P.P.P.P.S. Don’t wake the third sleeper.
Do you think this is actually real?” Blue asked.
They sat between ascendant oaks under a stolen summer sky. Roots and rocks buckled up through the moist ground around them. The hazy air was nothing like the overcast fall chill they’d just left behind. They had longed for summer, and so Cabeswater had given them summer.
Richard Gansey III lay on his back, gazing up at the muzzy warm blue above the branches. Sprawled in his khakis and citrus-yellow V-neck sweater, he looked indolent, tossed, a sensuous heir to the forest around him. “What is real?”
Blue said, “Maybe we all come here and fall asleep and have the same dream.”
She knew it was not true, but it was both comforting and thrilling to imagine they were so connected, that Cabeswater represented something they all thought of when they closed their eyes.
“I know when I’m awake and when I’m asleep,” Ronan Lynch said. If everything around Gansey was soft-edged and organic, faded and homogenous, Ronan was sharp and dark and dissonant, standing out in stark relief from the woods.
Adam Parrish, curled over himself in a pair of battered, greasy coveralls, asked, “Do you?”
Ronan made an ugly sound of scorn or mirth. He was like Cabeswater: a maker of dreams. If he didn’t know the difference between waking and sleeping, it was because the difference didn’t matter to him.
“Maybe I dreamt you,” he said.
“Thanks for the straight teeth, then,” Adam replied.
Around them, Cabeswater hummed and muttered with life. Birds that didn’t exist outside the forest flapped overhead. Somewhere close by, water ran over rocks. The trees were grand and old, furred with moss and lichen. Perhaps it was because she knew the forest was sentient, but Blue thought it looked wise. If she let her mind wander far enough, she could almost feel the sensation of the forest listening to her. It was hard to explain; it was sort of like the feeling of someone hovering a hand just over your skin, not quite touching.
Adam had said, “We have to earn Cabeswater’s trust before we go into the cave.”
Blue didn’t understand what it meant for Adam to be so connected to the forest, to have promised to be its hands and eyes. She suspected that sometimes, Adam didn’t, either. But under his advice, the group had returned again and again to the forest, walking between the trees, exploring carefully, taking nothing. Walking around the cave that might hold both Glendower — and Maura.
Mom.
The note she’d left more than a month before had not indicated when she intended to return. It hadn’t indicated whether or not she intended to return at all. So it was impossible to tell if she was still gone because she was in trouble or because she didn’t want to come home. Did other people’s mothers vanish into holes in the ground during their midlife crises?
“I don’t dream,” Noah Czerny said. He was dead, so he probably didn’t sleep, either. “So I think it must be real.”
Real, but theirs, just theirs.
For a few more minutes, or hours, or days — what was time, here? — they lazed.
A little away from the group, Ronan’s younger brother, Matthew, nattered away to their mother, Aurora, happy for this visit. The two of them were golden-haired and angelic, both of them looking like inventions of this place. Blue longed to hate Aurora because of her origin — literally dreamt up by her husband — and because she had the attention span and intellectual prowess of a puppy. But the truth was that she was endlessly kind and upbeat, as compulsively lovable as her youngest son.
She wouldn’t abandon her daughter right before senior year.
The most infuriating part about Maura’s disappearance was that Blue didn’t know if she was supposed to be consumed by worry or anger. She vacillated wildly between the two, occasionally burning herself out and feeling nothing at all.
How could she do this to me now?
Blue lay her cheek against a boulder covered with warm moss, trying to keep her thoughts even and pleasant. The same ability that amplified clairvoyance also heightened Cabeswater’s strange magic, and she didn’t want to cause another earthquake or start a stampede.
Instead, she began a conversation with the trees.
She thought about birds singing — thought or wished or longed or dreamt. It was a thought turned on its side, a door left cracked in her mind. She was getting better at telling when she was doing it right.
A strange bird trilled high and off-key above her.
She thought-wished-longed-dreamt of leaves rustling.
Overhead, the trees shushed their leaves, forming vague, whispered words. Avide audimus.
She thought of a spring flower. A lily, blue, like her name.
A blue petal fell aimlessly into her hair. Another dropped onto the back of her hand, slipping down her wrist like a kiss.
Gansey’s eyes opened as petals landed lightly on his cheeks. As his lips parted, ever-wondering, a petal landed directly on his mouth. Adam craned his head back to watch the floral, fragrant rain drift down around them, slow-motion butterflies of blue.
Blue’s heart exploded with furious joy.
It’s real, it’s real, it’s real —
Ronan looked at Blue, eyes narrowed. She didn’t look away.
This was a game she sometimes played with Ronan Lynch: Who would look away first?
It was always a draw.
He had changed over the summer, and now Blue felt less unequal in the group. Not because she knew Ronan any better — but because she felt as if maybe Gansey and Adam now knew him less. He challenged them all to learn him again.
Gansey pushed himself up onto his elbows; petals tumbled from him as if he had been awoken from a long sleep. “Okay. I think it’s time. Lynch?”
Rising, Ronan went to stand starkly beside his mother and brother; Matthew, who had been waving his arms like a performing bear, stilled. Aurora petted Ronan’s hand, which Ronan permitted.
“Up,” he said to Matthew. “Time to go.”
Aurora smiled gently at her sons. She would stay here, in Cabeswater, doing whatever dreams did when no one was there to see them. It was unsurprising to Blue that she would fall into an instant sleep if she left the forest; it was impossible to imagine Aurora existing in the real world. More impossible still to imagine growing up with a mother like her.
My mother wouldn’t just leave forever. Right?
Ronan put his hands on either side of Matthew’s head, crushing the blond curls down, locking his brother’s gaze on his.
“Go wait in the car,” he said. “If we aren’t back by nine, call Blue’s house.”
Matthew’s expression was pleasant and unafraid. His eyes were the same color blue as Ronan’s but infinitely more innocent. “How will I know the number?”
Ronan continued to clasp his brother’s head. “Matthew. Focus. We talked about this. I want you to think. You tell me: How will you know the number?”
His younger brother laughed a little and patted his pocket. “Oh, right. It’s programmed in your phone. I remember now.”
“I’ll stay with him,” Noah offered at once.
“Chicken,” said Ronan ungratefully.
“Lynch,” said Gansey. “That’s a good idea, Noah, if you’re feeling up for it.”