smallestopener | Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

Ingress had a brilliant birthday. She’s eleven. Eleven is nearly grown up! It’s also the year when children in the stories she’s read come into their own. Adventures begin, schooling starts, worlds are saved… she can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Her party earlier was such fun. Door was almost nice to Puck; Ingress had worried a little about that after she invited him. But he was very nice and charming, and Tom was nice, too, and Puck helped Ingress steal lots of roses off the cake while Havelock talked to Tom and Door, and it was brilliant.

She ate far too much icing sugar, but Tom had the peppermint potion waiting for her when the party was over. She feels much better now. And she’s eleven!

It sounds so good in her head. Eleven, eleven, eleven.

She should have asked Mary to stay the night with her, she thinks, as she tosses and turns. She’s never going to fall asleep, even with staying up past her bedtime. Tom and Door insisted she go to bed after she started yawning. They can be so silly sometimes.

She tosses one more time, and she thinks, again, how impossible it will be to go to sleep tonight. Her eyelids flutter and close. It is not long before she’s deep in dreams.

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Lilly twists her head, her face lighting up as she sees Ingress.

"What up, sai?"

She pats a spot on the grass next to her.

"Come, sit. Uh, and ignore both Alain smoking and anything you might have heard me say in the last five minutes."

Ingress laughs and comes to sit down.

"I am eleven, you know. I think I can handle both."

Alain's eyebrows lift. "So old?" The tone is light, halfway between teasing and genuine surprise.

"Thee's grown for true. How are your tricks?"

Alain dreamed this dream a long time ago. For Ingress, he went to the clearing years ago; for him, in the waking world, Lilly is curled against his side, and Ingress is a little girl.

But in dreams, many things are possible, and few things are as surprising as they might be.

"Eleven?" Lilly tilts her head, briefly confused, but shrugs it off. In the dream, it makes perfect sense.

"What happens when you're eleven? Magic owls?"

She's pretty sure that's traditional on Tom's side of the family, at least. Well, magic owls or the start of a descent into madness, noselessness and killing sprees, but that's not their Tom and it's definitely not their Ingress.

"Sometimes," she says, running her fingers over the moss. It's so soft.

"In books, that's when adventures start."

But not from the books about Tom's side of the family. They aren't allowed in the House.

"When did yours start, Alain?"

She never thought about it, but he doesn't seem very old. When she was seven and eight, everyone seemed terribly old. As she sits across from him, she thinks that Alain isn't as old as Tom, and Tom is terribly old.

"Adventures?"

There's a slight lopsidedness to his smile, a private wryness, but that's all.

"I started training a moit younger than you, I wot, but I was fourteen when our fathers sent us on our first mission riding out. Fifteen when I passed my trial."

"At eleven I was still in lessoning, say true, and Bert and Ro the same. Thee's time yet by my warrant, if ka allows."

"I was eleven when I met Veronica Mars," Lilly says, smiling fondly. "And totally still in school, of course."

The smile changes to something a little more mischievous.

"But since I'm way more advanced in the adventure-having than 'lain here, I'd already started on mine. So you know, no need to hold back."

Ingress was right. Eleven is when everything starts. Or close to it.

"It's a little scary. And a little exciting."

"Oh aye."

His smile is faint and lopsided, and affectionate.

"But thee's ready for plenty."

"I guess I am, at that," she says, remembering the terrible dream battle by the lake.

A purple butterfly - normal-sized - flutters down and lands on her nose.

"Oh, I have to go. I think the butterflies will help me get to Megwyn. I'm glad you're here."

She waves at Alain and Lilly and then follows the butterfly. She reckons they'll do fine without her.

"There now, steady on," comes the cheerful admonishment from somewhere up ahead.

Susan Allgood, Susan Delgado-that-was, stands beside the beautiful white form of the Companion, brushing out her mane.

"Ye'll be free of twigs soon enough."

Ingress runs along the path. She knows that voice.

"Susan!"

"Ingress-soh!"

She sets the brush down on a nearby stump and whirls, golden hair flying around her as she beams a bright smile at the younger girl.

Susan's not nearly as old as Ingress remembers either. Why, she can't even be as old as Door.

But maybe that's how it always is in dreams.

"Oh, and you found Megwyn! I've been looking everywhere."

She's still some distance away, but in the beat of her heart, she's standing beside Megwyn, hugging her white neck. Then she reaches for Susan's hand.

"It's so good to see you."

"It's good to see thee too, dearling."

Susan squeezes her hand, and pats the Companion's neck.

"Ye've naught to worry for; I've been looking after her here."

"I knew I'd find her. I saw Alain, too. Oh, and Eddie and Charlie, and so many others. And there was a battle, and we won, but the butterflies went from one to many, and- Oh, I've missed you."

Ingress hugs Susan tightly. When she steps back, smiling, she feels something in her pocket. She reaches inside. It's not a slingshot or an apple or a charm. It feels cool against her palm. She pulls it out.

It's a gold coin.

"I still keep the coins for you."

"I've missed thee too," Susan tells her, "but thee'll find me -- all of us, do'ee ken? -- when it's time."

The glint of the coin reflects from the gold of her hair, and she looks down at it in surprise, then beams a smile back at Ingress.

"A madrina true, thee are. I knew ye'd be."

"I ken," she says.

The clearing. Further up and further in. The havens that wait.

They'll wait a good long time, she knows.

"I think we're going to a picnic," she says, smoothing Megwyn's mane. "Now that I've found Megwyn. Door said."

Purple butterflies appear in the air. One lands on Susan's head.

"You can't come, though, can you?"

She reaches up to brush her fingers lightly against the butterfly's wing. It flutters to her hand, and Susan shakes her head at Ingress.

"Say sorry, I do."

A beat, and a quick breath, and oh, but her smile is radiant.

"It were so good to see thee, Ingress, say true."

"I know. It's okay. I'll see you again. Maybe here."

She waves to Susan as she threads the fingers of her other hand through Megwyn's mane.

Then they walk on through the trees. Ingress giggles as her Companion sends thoughts to her. As the trees thin out, she can just make out the meadow beyond them.

"Oh, it's the meadow!"

Megwyn kneels so that Ingress can mount. They ride through the last of the trees, Ingress' hair blowing behind her with the bright, ancient sun on her face. It's the meadow! Their meadow, the meadow in London Below where her family's always gone.

And there, in the not so very far distance, is her family. Megwyn trots towards them, with Ingress waving and calling out.

"Ingress!" Door says brightly, lifting one hand to wave.

"I was wondering what was keeping you!"

"I knew you'd make it, little one," Tom says, offering her his hands to help her swing down from Megwyn's back.

"We're ready for the picnic. We saved you some cake."

"Can we go flying, too?" Ingress asks, looking around the meadow.

Gavroche and Clement are juggling bowling pins beside the rivulet of fresh water that flows to the Thames. 'Dora waves to her from the green blanket upon which she sits. She's taking food out of a giant wicker basket. And behind her, under the shade of a spreading chestnut tree, are three figures.

They step out into the sunlight.

"MUMMY!" Ingress yells, and she begins running. "DADDY! ARCH!"

She flings herself into their solid arms. She smells her father's cologne and feels her mother's soft lips kiss her forehead and hears Arch's ever present laugh, and she laughs and laughs as Tom and Door and Megwyn join the giant hug.

Embraced by her family in the ancient London sun, she floats up and up and...

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Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

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