Poison Sleep by T. A. Pratt Page A

the change of venue. Joshua hurried to her side, and she opened her mouth to warn him away, but it was too late. Sunlight reappeared. “What’s happening?” Joshua said, bewildered, and Marla felt an overwhelming desire to protect him. “You just vanished, and now…?”
    “I think we just accidentally hopped on a freight elevator to dreamland.”
    “Does this mean—I’m infected? Like you were afraid would happen?”
    “Well…” She gestured. “Not necessarily. Look at all the bits of trash scattered among the trees. I think anything that happened to be in the vicinity when the trees transitioned back to the dream world got swept up with them. Langford warned me that might happen.”
    “We’ll go
back,
though, right?” He shrugged out of his coat, and Marla followed suit.
    “I’ll get us back,” she said firmly. The trees began to shiver again, all of them, and Marla wondered how many segmented nasty things lived in this grove. “Better to move on, though. There’s stuff here that won’t succumb to your charms, I don’t think. Unless you’ve got a special rapport with monsters?”
    “Only people. Dogs don’t even like me.”
    “Come on,” Marla said, grabbing his hand—thrilled at the excuse to touch him—and pulled him away from the trees, toward cobblestoned hills.
    “Where are we going?”
    “Higher ground, so we can see…anything there is to see.” They went up the hill. Marla glanced nervously back at the grove, but whatever lived there seemed content to stay. “All right,” she said when they reached the hilltop, trying to figure out what the hell to do next.
    A decision that became even more complicated when she looked down the other side of the hill and saw a dozen ordinaries clutching one another, terrified. Men, women, and children, from the well dressed to the ragged, sat in a huddled mass beneath the burned remnants of a gazebo. “Oh, fuck,” Marla said, and one of the people—a woman in a nurse’s uniform—approached her, coming warily up the hill.
    “Who are you? I don’t remember you from the hospital.”
    “Hospital?” Marla said. None of the people down there looked particularly ill or hurt, just scared.
    The nurse frowned. “Yes, Felport General. That’s where we were.”
    Marla nodded slowly. “Did you, ah, happen to see a woman with light brown hair, kind of weird violet eyes…”
    The nurse began nodding. “She came into the waiting room, talking to herself, bothering people, grabbing their hands, and I went to talk to her…I think I fainted. I woke up here, and these others…they were all in the waiting room, too. What’s happening? Can you help us?”
    Marla wasn’t sure what to say. These were
ordinaries
. How could she begin to explain?
    Then Joshua stepped forward, and the nurse only had eyes for him. “It’s all right, dear,” he said gently. “We’ll help. Why don’t you introduce me to everyone?”
    “Joshua,” Marla said, questioningly.
    “I’ll keep them calm,” he said. “And you’ll figure out how to get us home. Yes?”
    Marla couldn’t disappoint him. “Of course.”
    Joshua went down among the people, and they all turned their faces toward him like flowers toward the sun. He was gentle, he was kind, he soothed them, he told them everything would be all right. In a few moments he had them laughing, telling their stories, smiling, convinced this was something like an adventure. Religions formed around people like him. He glanced up the hill at Marla, and she jumped a little, startled by the directness of his gaze. If she wasn’t careful, she’d become a worshipper, too. “I’ll be back,” she called, and went back down toward the orange grove.
    Escaping this dream world—let alone leading innocents back to Felport—wasn’t in Marla’s power, but she couldn’t let Joshua down, not after he’d proven himself. Now that she wasn’t in his immediate presence, his supernatural attractiveness was lessened, but she