Not everyone dreamed. As a child, she'd been unable to understand the concept, as though it was something figurative that wasn't like people were describing: that they just couldn't describe it correctly enough. She'd asked her mother, and her mother had looked at her a little funny and said, "Not everyone remembers their dreams, baby girl. Tonight we'll put a piece of paper and a pencil by your bed, and as soon as you wake up, you write down one thing you dreamed about -- and then you'll remember." And they'd done that, so that when Corinna woke up the next morning, she grabbed for her piece of paper and her pencil --

But there hadn't been anything. And she knew there hadn't been anything. So she wrote down the first thing she thought of -- TREE -- and stared at the page awhile, satisfied with this. But there hadn't been any tree. There hadn't been anything. And she was so angry about it that she crumpled the paper right up and threw it in the wastebasket by her little glass vanity table. It was alright: her mom forgot to ask about the paper or the dream, and the incident was forgotten. But Corinna knew there hadn't been anything.

She didn't dream. It wasn't until later, much later, that she understood the truth, that she couldn't dream. The Dreamworld was closed to Corinna Grant. Elysion had sealed her out. Nehelenia could not dream on the white Earth, so Corinna Grant couldn't dream on the white Earth, either. She only slept; she would be awake, till suddenly she wasn't, and then she'd be asleep, till suddenly she wasn't, and time had passed. Each morning it was simply as though she'd lurched forward into the future. She slept lightly, and woke easily. She probably had REM cycles, she'd decided, after Wikipedia had told her that the human body couldn't survive without its REM cycles. She imagined it like a bike she was pedaling, a bike with gears that spun just as they ought to, but with no bike chain. It went nowhere, the pedals spinning uselessly underfoot while the wheels, detached, felt nothing.

No dreams came to her, and no nightmares. Her sleeping mind existed in total isolation, in a solitude that was, in some ways, peaceful. And though the solitude of her dreamless slumber went on and on, unchanged night by night, the peacefulness did not. It was broken -- abruptly broken into a million glittering shards that fell around her like a slow, irreversible snowfall.

It was not broken by a dream. Nehelenia could not dream in this place. But she could remember.

It was the laughing wizard who had attacked her, and so that was who she was fighting. He was -- or seemed to be -- a servant to the white moon princess, who stood idly by, spectating. "I could throw you off a building," the white moon princess was saying, charmed at the idea. "I could tie you up in spiderwebs. I could take from you everything you ever loved before, or ever might someday. And they would say: that was only fair. Because it is only fair. Why aren't you suffering -- ?" The wizard was toying with her, but she got a few good scratches in, for what pathetic showing those were worth. "Why do I have to suffer, and not you?" No, not toying -- he was -- waiting for something? Her heart was pounding up in her throat, ripping her voice raw when she breathed, when she tried to yell so hard that it seemed no sound would come out because she was too terrified. Her hand closed around the the little candelabra by her bed, and she swung it at his hooded scalp. It connected, but he was only stunned for a moment. Perhaps she wasn't very strong -- "Why?" the white moon princess still went on. "I help people. All I ever wanted was to be with my family, for people to live happily -- so you tell me, why is it -- "

He was stronger than she was, but she wasn't slow, was she? Somehow he'd gotten the candelabra out of her hands and into his own, somehow, and now he was swinging it at her instead -- she brought up her arm, and the metal struck pain down through her wrist and past her elbow, instead of her skull. She couldn't transform, he was staying too close for her to reach her compact in time -- staying too close so she couldn't transform, she realized. Nehelenia ducked, she stumbled backwards and nearly fell over the hem of her robe, and the wizard reached for her, his hands like mummified claws --

She reached for the greater power that slept bedded beneath her breastbone and didn't need a compact to call on it. There was nothing else, by now she was desperate, she was angry, and the energy blossomed over her into a long black dress, a delicate crescent moon staff, the floating wisps of pale violet wings. She had the kind of power she needed now, and she smiled, grimly, knowing she had won --

-- And then, hideously, so did the wizard. Her blood ran cold as a February winter.

The Marcasite Crystal glimmered into life under his hand, there at her chest as though she had called it. As though he had called it.

Her instinct was -- her instinct was -- she dropped the staff and lurched forward, wrenching both her hands around his throat, trying to crush his windpipe between her fingers. He gasped, hacking suddenly, plainly a little surprised -- whether by her reaction or by the strength in her grip. His hands recoiled immediately, his oxygen gone, and with wide, glowing blue eyes staring back at her in some unreadable expression, he reached up to grab at her wrists.

His hands were bigger than hers, but she held on, she didn't let go -- she squeezed tighter -- his face was bright red --

-- but she couldn't breathe. The air was gone, suddenly gone. In its place was a lance of icy coldness that shot straight through her chest, a vacuum that was sucking the oxygen straight from her faster than she could think. She looked down, her eyes wide with the reflected pain of the man in front of her --

A woman's hand, the white moon princess's hand, had reached through her back and come straight out the front of her rib cage, as though she were as intangible as a ghost. The wizard hadn't been trying to rip her hands away, not at all -- he'd been holding them pinned -- the princess's pale fingers closed around the Marcasite Crystal as Nehelenia, now, struggled to free her hands, struggled, still, to breathe, and couldn't. Then the hand was gone, the Crystal was gone, and oxygen rushed back in to fill the space; she gasped.

That suddenly, that abruptly -- they were gone. She fell to the floor, coughing, choking on air, now that she could breathe again. Her eyes and her throat stung. What had they done to her? What had they done?

Not everyone dreamed.

"Helen?" someone was saying. "Helen?"

But everyone woke.