Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(58)

Farooq-Lane rescued him. “Actually, we’re in a hurry. We have to meet someone.”

He stood up with immediate relief.

Outside, at the car, as she pulled open the door, she said, “That was very polite of you. We can get them fixed after we find the Zed.”

His voice was brusque and impatient as he slid into the passenger seat. He said, “I don’t know if there will be time.”

Then they scoured the city for teapots. They went from junk shop to junk shop, and then from kitchen supply store to kitchen supply store, and then from craft shop to craft shop. None of them were right, but the ways they were wrong kept jogging Parsifal’s memory, giving him more and more clues to follow. It was Springfield. It was near an interstate. It was a neighborhood, not a shopping center.

It was the split-level house they were parked in front of.

It was an unassuming neighborhood, ramblers and split-levels with patchy but mowed lawns and no trees. MARY’S ODDS ’N’ ENDS, COME ON IN said a hand-painted sign by the driveway, with a little smiling flower painted beside it. It did not seem like the kind of place many people did come on in.

“No BMW,” Farooq-Lane said.

“Different person,” Parsifal replied.

“Was it dangerous? What you saw? Should we just go on in?”

Parsifal was already unbuckling his seat belt.

At the door, she was about to knock, but he pointed to another sign: JUST COME IN! with an illustration of a smiling coffee cup. Inside, they found a dim, low-ceilinged living room set up as a dowdy little craft shop, unassuming and appealing in its complete lack of ambition. Lumpy, bright teapots in rainbow colors lined the mantel with handwritten price tags. Lumpy, tall mugs gathered on shelves made from old crates. Unevenly knitted blankets in the same psychedelic colors as the pottery were draped over the back of a wicker sofa. The rug was eye-bleedingly bright and hand woven, and also had a price tag. Everything looked unusual, but not in a Zed sense. This was just some old lady’s hobby, she thought.

Parsifal let out a small little sigh. He didn’t say anything along with it, but nonetheless she felt she could interpret the meaning of it quite well. It was the sound of satisfaction, or rather, of release. Of a job done.

She followed his gaze. He was looking into the kitchen; a sliver of countertop was visible through the living room doorway. Just that sliver was enough to reveal a dream. She knew it was a dream because it broke her brain a little bit. The thing was not even really a dream object, it was just a collection of wild colors sitting on the counter. There were no logical words to describe it. It was not a thing that was wildly colored. It was just the concept of the colors themselves, balled up together on the counter. The colors themselves matched the crafts the Zed had made by ordinary, handcrafted means. They were all obviously a product of the same mind.

Farooq-Lane took a step closer. Beyond the dreamthing were sugar and flour canisters and other ordinary kitchen objects. The dream sat among them, a proud little art piece.

A dreamt art piece.

Both Parsifal and Farooq-Lane jumped as the sliding door from the backyard opened.

“You came on in!” said the newcomer happily.

She was very old. She was a soft, plump lady who’d dyed her white hair pink, and she was wearing very colorful lipstick, too. Her clothing matched the colors of the teapots and the thing on the counter. Farooq-Lane caught a glimpse of something in her mouth but wasn’t sur— She asked, “Did you make all this?”

“Everything in this house,” the old lady said. She reached for a bright canister on a bright end table. Farooq-Lane flinched as she removed the lid, but she only tipped the contents toward them in an offer.

“Don’t worry, they aren’t dog biscuits,” she said, and laughed merrily at herself. As she did, Farooq-Lane saw what she had glimpsed before. The woman had a false tooth, a molar way in the back. It was the same swirling collection of rainbows that the thing on the counter was. A dreamt false tooth.

She felt a surge of adrenaline. There was no thought immediately attached to it. Just that bubbling rush of warmth through her limbs. They’d found a Zed.

This was a person who took things from their dreams.

They’d done it.

The Zed shook the canister at Parsifal. “They’re biscotti I made yesterday.”

To Farooq-Lane’s shock, Parsifal accepted one, so she was required to as well.

“Have you seen anything you like?” the Zed asked as Parsifal took an experimental bite of the biscotti.

Farooq-Lane hadn’t, but she used some of her buyers’ fund from the Fairy Market to buy the rug. She didn’t know why she bought something. She panicked, she supposed. She had to do something. She picked the rug. She had half a thought the teapots would be breakable, although she didn’t know why that mattered since she didn’t intend on keeping whatever she bought.

“Another?” the Zed asked. Parsifal accepted another biscotti, making it officially the most Farooq-Lane had seen him eat in one sitting since they’d met. He didn’t say thank you, but the Zed smiled at him as sweetly as if he had, and said, “Better take one for the road.”

Back at the car, Parsifal ate the third cookie and watched Farooq-Lane wrestle the rug into the backseat.

Then the two of them sat there in the quiet car.

“She’s very old,” Parsifal said.