I would travel thousands of miles—but in what direction? And how would I get so far? I pulled the old toy dog Lucas close. “Lucas,” I whispered. “Do you know what the worst part is? It’s no use thinking about it. The key’s not something that you can find if you look too hard for it. What should I do?” I must have fallen asleep at some point, because suddenly I was dreaming. In the dream I was walking down a staircase. Its steps alternated black and white. I still had Lucas in my arm. At first the steps seemed to be leading through nothingness, but then the nothingness dissolved into a fog. And then I saw that I was in the bowels of the palace. How confusing, I thought. In reality, I’m a bird sitting in a silver cage in the palace garden, and at the same time I’m in Paul and Ines’s and all the other people’s world, where I’m lying in bed and dreaming that I’m on a staircase in the Nameless One’s world.
