Several blocks from Connor’s apartment, the city began to lose its shape. Buildings opened to the sky. Telephone poles tapered to tips no wider than a pencil. Cars were mere suggestions, sculptures of metal and rubber. This far away from the center of the dream, from its focal point, laws of sound and motion became fluid and flexible.

She was uneasy. She had the sense both of being observed and of total solitude. Every few minutes, she turned around, convinced she would find the monsters grinning raggedly at her. But there were only empty streets, increasingly undefined and undetailed, as though she were entering a drawing sketched by a toddler. Even the streets were changing, turning to a dark ink, sticky and difficult to step through.

“Mom?” She tested her voice and then paused, still, alert. Nothing. She called “Mom” a little louder and heard her own voice echo back, rolling off the planes of the empty city. She kept going, wondering whether at a certain point Connor’s dream would simply run out, would turn to the darkness of unconscious space and force her to turn around. Or maybe it would go on forever, just getting less and less convincing, until she was walking through a smudgy gray space where buildings were shells and the landscape existed only in silhouette.

Above her, the sky began to shrink—narrowing like water into a fine stream just before it pours down a drain. Simultaneously she realized she was no longer walking but climbing. The ground was now steeply pitched, and, furthermore, covered with a fine, blowing layer of sand—so much so that after a few feet she could hardly keep her balance and fell forward, gasping, driving her hands out to brace her fall.

She banged her knee, hard, even as her hands closed on something metal: the rung of a ladder. Twisting around, fighting a surge of dizziness, she saw that the road had somehow led her not out but up: up a sheer-sided tunnel embedded with a metal ladder. Sand continued to rain down on her shoulders and neck from above.

There was nowhere to go but up. She found a foothold and began climbing the ladder toward the small circular opening of sky above her. It was hot—lava-blast hot—and wet, like being inside a living body. She reached the end of the ladder, where the cascade of sand was even more constant, and hauled herself free of the tunnel. Her arms were shaking as she staggered to her feet.

She was in a desert. In front of her, in the direction of the low-hanging sun, stretching to the horizon, was sand, and more sand—soft ocean swells of it, baking in the heat. When she turned around, she saw that the pit from which she’d emerged wasn’t unique. There were thousands of holes, some gaping wide, some no larger than a human mouth, stretching toward the horizon. And even as she watched, she saw the sand shifting slightly, almost breathing, as new holes bubbled up and others collapsed.

“What the hell?” she said out loud. Her voice sounded small. When she peered over the lip of the pit from which she’d emerged, she could still see in the very distance—so small it was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope—the trembling silhouette of Connor’s Chicago skyline.

So what was this desert and all these pits? A new dream? No. She knew what it felt like when dreams changed. This was different. It was almost as if she’d climbed out of Connor’s dream.

But then where the hell was she?

With a growing sense of anxiety, she edged toward a different pit, testing her weight on the sand before she committed, worried that a hole might open up beneath her feet. Endlessly far below her, she could see the interior of an unfamiliar living room buried in its depths. At the bottom of the next pit was a scene of war, flashing momentarily into view before turning, abruptly, into a suburban barbecue.

The thought flashed: other dreams. Each of these pits—the endless quantity of them—contained dreams.

Just as quickly, though, she forced the idea from her mind. This must be Connor’s dream, all of it. The alternative didn’t make any sense.

Still, just to be safe, she took off her sweatshirt and tied it to the top rung of the ladder she’d climbed, leaving a bit of pink fabric visible in the sand. And as she set out across the desert, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was leaving Connor behind, and leaving behind her way out, too.

But she had seen a set of footsteps leading across the golden hills, dark as shadow, stalking off toward the unknown. A woman’s footsteps, she judged, from the size of them.

That meant her mother might have come this way.

The sand made it hard to walk, and soon she was sweating. She was dressed in the same leggings and T-shirt she was wearing in real life—an aspect of walking she had never fully understood, as if she carried an unshakable image of her own body with her, and couldn’t get rid of it. She moved parallel to the line of footsteps, keeping them in her sight—though increasingly, she wished she had stayed in the city and not ventured out this far. It felt like she’d been walking for hours already. Birds circled overhead, black spots against the clouded sky, and she was at first comforted by them. Harbingers. Then one swooped closer and she recognized its stringy neck, red as exposed muscle, and ugly, old-man face. A vulture. It seemed like a bad omen.

And suddenly she was furious. Furious that this was her life, her legacy, her curse. Furious that her mom had dragged her into this, had even given birth to her, when she was meant to spend her life fumbling through other people’s dreams, feeding on them.

“Mom!” she yelled. Nothing. Just the silent drift of the birds across the sky. Her mouth felt gritty with sand and dust. “Where are you?” She felt reckless and careless. She would almost welcome it if the monsters appeared and gave chase. At least it would mean she was getting closer.

As though in response, a soft wind rose, shifting the sands. Very faintly, she heard sounds of laughter.

Her anger was gone as quickly as it had come. She hurried forward, scrambling up a steep slope of golden sand, using her hands for purchase, and cursing as the ground shifted underneath her weight. The sounds of laughter and voices swelled; she heard the faint timpani jangle of music, too. At the top of the hill she stopped, panting a little, feeling her dream-lungs contract in her dream-body—all of it real, far too real.

Beneath her, cupped in a dip of land, was a long line of weathered caravans, like the old-fashioned kind she’d seen in history books about the settling of the American West—but wheelless. A fire was going in the sand, sending up a smoke that looked practically orange against the vivid sky, and dozens of people were laughing and milling around the makeshift camp, dressed in loose clothing. There were no horses, and for a moment Dea stood there, swiping at the sweat that stung her eyes, trying to make sense of how the caravans moved. Then she saw a bunch of enormous birds, some of them still yoked for service, feeding at a narrow trough, and realized that the caravans didn’t roll. They flew.

She was so stunned she forgot to conceal herself. One woman caught Dea’s eye and cried out. All at once, the whole group—at least thirty of them, Dea estimated—fell silent, turning in her direction, shading their eyes from the sun.

A bead of sweat moved like a finger down Dea’s spine. Finally, she couldn’t stand the silence. She cleared her throat. “I’m looking for my mother,” she said.

One of the members of the caravan came closer. Everyone else remained frozen, watching Dea. His skin was dark from sun, his bare arms roped with muscles, his black hair nearly to his jaw. He was about her age, she thought, and something about him was familiar, and set off an electric wave of anxiety, deep in her stomach.

“Where did you come from?” he asked, stopping when they were separated by about ten feet. Dea was glad. If he’d come any closer, she might have run.