“Think only of the chair, not the rock. See it in your mind. Like a dream. Do you see it?”
“Yes,” Ling said.
“What does it look like?”
“It’s a red-and-gold throne fit for a queen.”
“I cannot wait to sit there,” Wai-Mae said, excited. “Now see the chair and concentrate.”
Ling kept her thoughts on the chair, but the harder she tried, the more it seemed to elude her. Shift, she thought, and Transform and Chair. But the rock remained a rock. Finally, Ling fell back in the grass, exhausted and angry. “I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t!” She pushed herself up and stalked off toward the forest.
Behind her, Wai-Mae’s voice took on a steely resolve. “Little Warrior: You can do this. I believe you can.”
“Just because you believe something can change doesn’t mean it will,” Ling snapped, feeling ashamed of her outburst but helpless to stop it.
Wai-Mae came to her side, offering a moth-eaten dandelion. “Here. Try something smaller. Turn this into a cricket.”
Ling glanced from the dandelion to the magnificent flowering dogwood Wai-Mae had managed to create. “This is hopeless,” she grumbled, but she took the dandelion from Wai-Mae anyway.
“Concentrate. You are too tight! You want too much control.”
“I do not!”
“You do too. Let it become something else. Allow the Qi to move through you like a breath. Think of the dandelion changing from the inside.”
“Atoms…” Ling murmured.
Ling took a deep breath and let it out. She did this twice more, and on the third time, she felt a small fluttering at the tips of her fingers that strengthened into a stronger, buzzing current that coursed up her arm and along her neck all the way to the top of her head. Frightened, Ling dropped the dandelion. But as she watched, the dandelion fluctuated wildly between two states, weed and insect, before settling back to dandelion.
“I almost did it,” Ling said, astonished. “It started to change.”
Wai-Mae grinned. “You see? Here, we are like Pangu, creating the heavens and earth, but even better, for we can make it as we wish it to be. My powers have gotten stronger each night I’ve been coming here. Perhaps if you come back tomorrow night and keep coming back as I have, then your power will grow, too.”
“Can you bring physical objects into this place?” Ling asked, excited. “Can you take something out of this dream world? Have you noticed anything interesting when the transformation occurs—a smell or a temperature change? Have you experimented?”
“Isn’t it enough that this world exists? That we can be everything here that we can’t be when we are awake?” Wai-Mae asked.
“No,” Ling said. “I want to know how it works.”
“I just want to be happy,” Wai-Mae said.
Three quick surges of light shot across the sky. Another, smaller spark rippled through the treetops, robbing the leaves there of color. Ling heard that same skin-crawling whine that had frightened her back in the station. The whine devolved into a death-rattle growl, then stopped.
“What was that?” Ling asked.
“Birds, perhaps?” Wai-Mae suggested.
“Didn’t sound like birds. Come on. I want to find out where it’s coming from.”
“Wait! Where are you going, Little Warrior?” Wai-Mae called, scrambling after Ling as she ran through the forest, searching for the source of the light and sound.
At the entrance to the tunnel, Ling stopped. The vast dark crackled with motes of staticky brightness. “It’s coming from there.”
Ling took a step forward. Wai-Mae grabbed her arm. Her eyes were wide. “You mustn’t go in there.”
“Why not?”
“That part of the dream isn’t safe.”
“What do you mean? Not safe how?” Ling asked.
“Can’t you feel it?” Wai-Mae backed away, trembling. “Ghosts.”
“I’ve spoken to plenty of ghosts on my walks. There’s nothing frightening about them.”
“You’re wrong.” Wai-Mae reached the fingers of one hand toward the tunnel, as if drawn to it. “I can feel this one sometimes in there. She… cries.”
“Why?”
“A broken promise. A very bad death,” Wai-Mae whispered, still staring into the dark. With a shudder, she turned away, hugging herself. “I’m frightened of that wicked place. If we do not trouble her, she won’t trouble us.”