Chapter 2

But where was the Prism Building? In the courtyard outside the Stables, Juele looked around her. The building nearest the entrance to the Garrets had no name plate, and almost as soon as she began to look at it, the structure became a featureless cube of plain, white marble. No help there. She pored over her admission letter, hoping she had overlooked a map. Nothing. But the line of print in the letter noting the time of her symbology class was now in bold-faced type with three exclamation points at the end. She stopped a young man who was passing by.

"Is this the Prism Building?" she asked, pointing at the high, white square.

"No," he said, and went up the stairs. A section of wall opened up for him. He was swallowed up by the darkness within, and the door closed behind him. Juele ran up to look for a handle, but the door wouldn’t open for her. Not the right building, but she hadn’t asked which was the right one. She was off to a very bad start. Better ask someone else, quickly. Time was running away from her.

She spotted a woman teacher in a fluttering green smock cutting across the lawn of the quad.

"Excuse me," Juele began politely, trotting alongside her. "Where can I find the Prism Building?"

"On its foundation," the woman said, giving her a very brief glance. She frowned. "Or, it was this morning. Tch tch. I really couldn’t say. So sorry." She began to take longer strides and soon outdistanced Juele. The green smock disappeared under one of the brick archways.

Juele slowed down to a walk, discouraged. She knew about Unanswerable Question Dreams, but she’d never heard of Questionable Nonanswers. She must find someone to ask who made sense. She looked about, but the garden, which had been full of people when Rutaro had walked there with her, was empty. She was alone in it, holding her art box to herself. This was not an ordinary Frustration Dream. This was calculated.

"The place is testing me," she said, through gritted teeth, glaring around at the stone buildings. The windows looked like eyes, watching her curiously. "I do belong here, I do! It isn’t fair to expect me to find a place I’ve never seen without instructions or directions. There ought to be a map here. Close to here. If I don’t see one soon, I’ll have to create one out of real dreamstuff, and make reality match." She looked around her, wondering if the School would react to her threat or call her bluff. She could hardly manipulate her own form, let alone reality around her or that of anyone else. Her talent lay in illusion, but she hoped that the overmind of the School didn’t know that.

"Hi," said a dark-haired young man, coming up beside her. "You look lost. What are you trying to find?"

"The Prism Building," Juele said, thankfully. She showed him her letter. "Do you see? Room 306, three o’clock. I’m already late."

"Oh, that’s easy," he said, with a smile that showed even, white teeth like fence posts. "I’ll show you. Please follow me."

The young man crossed the quadrangle into the far corner and negotiated the twisting, winding passageways beyond with confidence. Juele ran beside him, clutching her art box and fretting over each second that passed. What an awful way to start her first day! The young man said nothing more. He must have noticed her preoccupied expression. How kind people were, she thought.

A huge herd of sheep, crying shrilly to one another, emerged from one of the archways and spread out onto the path in front of them, which immediately changed from packed gravel to rutted mud. Juele cringed, picturing the nuisance eating up more of her time. She was late enough as it was. Effortlessly, the young man took her hand and threaded between the sheep, fording the stream of gray, woolly backs almost as quickly as if there was nothing there. He even managed to avoid the sucking mud that pulled the shoes off other people caught in the midst of the flock. Juele was grateful for his expertise and tried to say so. Her voice was swallowed up by the stuttering wails of the sheep. In no time, they had passed the shepherd, an elderly man wearing a smock and carrying a crook. He touched his hand to his hat as they went by. Juele forced herself to smile at him, though she was very annoyed. It wasn’t his fault he was a nuisance. The sheep turned aside into a low, stone doorway, and the path dried up into a lane of close-set bricks. Juele trotted after her guide.

Two more turns through the labyrinth of archways, and the young man stopped at the foot of a flight of shallow, stone steps. At the top was a building made of pale gold stone that gleamed warmly in the sun. When a man in a flowing blue smock pulled open the door, rays of light shot off in every direction, striking rainbows off the walls and ground.

"Here we are," the young man said, cheerfully. "The Prism Building."

At last! "Thank the Sleepers," Juele said, with relief. "You’ve been so very kind." She ran up the steps and reached for the door handle. "Thank you," she said, turning back to smile at her guide.

But the young man had vanished. Where he had been standing was a glass-covered map on a pole painted white. Juele blinked. She didn’t know whether her guide had been real or the School had created him to help her. There wasn’t time to wonder about it. She was late for class.

The stairs in every flight seemed endlessly high as Juele ran up to the third floor. She looked down the expanse of polished brown tile at the facing rows of huge wooden doors. All the doors in the corridor were closed. Juele approached the first one with trepidation. The number plate said 306. She opened the door and stepped in. A woman in a rust-colored smock and three dozen students looked up from their books at her.

"May I help you?" the teacher said.

"I’m here for symbology class," Juele said.

"You want room 306," the woman said, pointing across the hallway.

"I thought this was 306," Juele said.

"No, this is 300," said the teacher. She smiled, but it was a dismissal. Embarrassed, Juele backed out and closed the door. She looked up at the number plate. It did say 300. She must have read it wrong. Hastily, she scurried across the hall. There, on the room opposite, was the number 306. Hurriedly, she flung the door open. Students sat in desks in five rows of five. Only one desk in the room was empty. Fortunately, it was nearest the exit. She slid into it. The thin, intense, dark-haired man in dark red at the head of the room looked at her quizzically.

"And who are you?"

"Juele," she said. "I’m in your class."

He went to his lectern and turned over a page in the tremendous, ancient-looking leather-bound ledger that lay there. "No, I don’t have a Juele listed. Could you be in the wrong period?"

"No, sir," she said, worriedly. The other twenty-four students were now looking at her. "My schedule said three o’clock in room 306. Symbology."

"But this is room 304," the man said, shaking his head. "And you’re late!"

"I saw 306 on the door," Juele said, feeling ridiculous.

"Did you?" the teacher asked. "You’d better hurry along."

How could she have made such a stupid mistake? Mortified, Juele picked up her box and fled out into the hallway. It had changed in the last few moments. Instead of a well-lit, wide passage, it had narrowed into a labyrinth. Juele ran from door to door in search of the correct room number. At a distance they all looked as if they said 306, but when she got closer, the numbers changed. 616. 803. 1412. As she passed them, the doors swung open. She kept peering back over her shoulder.

At the extreme end of the narrow corridor, she saw one last door. To get to it, she had to pass through an expanse of floor that was lit from all sides as if by spotlights. As she stepped into the light, disembodied voices shouted at her.

"She’s the one!"

"Look! There she goes!"

There was nowhere she could hide, no handy shadow she could dart into. Doggedly, Juele held her head up and ignored them, but felt her cheeks burn with shame. The door retreated from her, and the lighted area expanded as she walked, trying to pretend she couldn’t hear the catcalls. At last, the Shaming Voices faded, and the door stayed where it was.

She approached with trepidation and looked at the number plate. It had to be room 306. Clutching her art box to her ribs, she tried to approach the room quietly, so as to draw the least possible attention to herself. Behind the door, she could hear a voice droning on, but she was unable to understand what it was saying. But her footsteps on the floor sounded louder and louder, and the bronze knob turned in her hand with a banshee-like screech as the door swung open. Everyone in the room turned to look at her. Juele gulped, feeling her heart pounding, and forced herself to step inside. The door boomed shut behind her.

". . . the development of a coherent theme. You will establish a clear central image, and adorn it appropriately. . . ."

At the front of the room, a tall, austere-looking man with a beaky face, domed head, and deep-set, glowing eyes stopped talking and stared at her. Mr. Lightlow raised an interrogative eyebrow, which climbed halfway up his forehead like a hairy spider scaling a wall. His lip lifted, showing horsy front teeth.

"Yes? How may I help you?" he asked.

Juele remembered the letter in her hand and rushed to hand it to him. He took the paper in his knobby fingers. As she passed it to him, the glowing white page turned to a crumpled, stained, and much-folded scrap. He gave her a stern look over the top of his glasses and sucked in his lower lip under his considerable overbite to read. As he scanned the few lines, his mouth pursed disapprovingly.

Juele waited nervously, her heart pounding in her chest. The teacher was about the same age as her father, with the same gift for silent disapproval. The whole room seemed to be disappointed in her. On a shelf that ran all the way around the room were lines of potted plants. All their leaves drooped sadly, as if they hadn’t been watered recently and might not survive much longer. A canary in a cage near the big desk at the front of the room chirped faintly for water. The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the silence, then stopped still. If there had been a spotlight over Juele’s head, it could not have been more significant. Rutaro had warned her about the weight given to symbolism at the School. The air around her felt heavy with meaning. Everything told her that she was late. Much too late.

"Class begins at three, you are aware?" the teacher asked, breaking the silence, his eyebrow still plastered high on his forehead.

"Yes, sir."

"Ahem. Then you will not let this happen again."

"No, sir," Juele said, her voice shrinking as she wished she could. "I won’t." Mr. Lightlow’s eyebrow lowered. He waved his hand dismissively at her. Juele sidled back to an empty seat among the others and sat down. With a foot, she shoved her art box under her seat. Scraping along the floor, it squawked and brayed like a stubborn jackass, sticking out recalcitrant corners like feet to hinder her. Wait until I get you back to my room, she thought hotly, giving it a last kick. The other pupils tittered. The boy next to her cleared his throat, grinning down at his desktop, not looking at her. Juele sat with her chin bowed to her chest, abject, wishing herself invisible. The teacher cleared his throat, and continued his lecture where he had left off.

". . . And that’s the way I want it. The way it should be. Appropriate, as I said. No more, no less. Now, class," Mr. Lightlow said, abruptly finishing his previously sidelined train of thought. Evidently considering Juele punished enough, he opened a hand in her direction. "I’d like you to welcome our newest pupil. This is Jurrie Caffyne, she’s from Wondering."

Juele spoke up, her voice a tentative squeak. "Um, sir, my name’s Juele, and my town is Wandering."

"Well, you’d better catch it before it trips and hurts itself!" some wit hooted from the back of the room. Juele felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment.

The professor looked around, his eyes very sharp through the heavy lenses balanced on his nose, and focused upon the offender. The murmurs abated. "That’s enough, now. Treat her with the same respect you’d like to have shown you. We have great faith in her. The testers said she showed a good deal of promise. We’re counting on her to fulfill it, as we count on each of you."

By the expressions of pain and boredom on their faces, Juele assumed the others heard this speech frequently, probably with the arrival of every new pupil. She looked around hopefully at them, smiling. Many of the students gave her their noses in the air, some so loftily they were no longer attached to their faces, but she got a few friendly responses. That big, rangy girl in the back of the room looked nice, and so did the tawny-skinned boy beside her with curly eyelashes to match his curly black hair. Both of them had on smocks that were slightly worn-looking, sort of fashionably shabby. Was her gown too new? Juele was afraid it branded her a hopeless tyro. Subtly, she laid an illusion of wear on her garment, bleaching the dye out just a bit, showing a loose thread on a seam or two. There. She fit in better with her classmates. She glanced around hopefully to see if anyone noticed her making alterations.

Mr. Lightlow paid no attention to the byplay, and continued with his instructions. "Will everyone please open to section two, on page 43?"

Section two? Juele felt a surge of panic. Wasn’t this the first class of the term? Had the semester begun early? She had no book. There hadn’t been time for Rutaro to show her where to buy books. What had been in section one? She felt as if she was all at sea. The floor under her chair began to undulate, bobbing her about like a cork. Her stomach heaved a warning. The others giggled.

A heavy volume landed with a thump on the desk in front of her and opened itself to a page. Surprised, Juele glanced up. Mr. Lightlow, his eyebrow back where it belonged, hovered over her. He gave her a patient, kindly look and turned back to the class. Already the horsiness of his face was softening into something more human and approachable. Juele seized the book like a life preserver, and the room stopped rocking.

"Your assignment for this period: design a simple illusion, making use of one or two—no more, this is not a rummage sale—ornaments to indicate that you understood my lecture. Yesterday’s lecture," he said to Juele. "I don’t expect mind reading. You may review briefly." Juele seized the book and bent her head over the page. The title of the section was "Enhancing the Depth of Understanding." She began to read. The text wasn’t too obscure, but what really helped her to comprehend the lesson were the illustrations. A hand-colored woodcut on the next page showed a girl in a white bridal dress. Above her head was a wreath held by two doves, and at her feet was a pool. Juele could see small stones and a fish in the water, so the water was glass clear. The gown itself was very plain, though the classic design lost nothing for lacking adornment. Purity, Juele thought, fascinated. I see. The picture’s not really about the girl, it’s about what she stands for. So, what you’re looking at may not be what the illusion’s of. Juele felt a twinge as her mind stretched wide enough to encompass a deep concept like that. It seemed so simple, but so—so complex. She wondered if she was understanding it properly. Juele suffered a pang of doubt. Could this class be too advanced for her? Was her precious admission letter a passport to trouble and humiliation?

"Atmosphere, color, shape, everything must be appropriate to the symbol in question," the teacher said. Juele glanced up. He was pacing back and forth at the front of the room, as if by his energy and enthusiasm alone he could make his students absorb the concepts.

Some of them picked them up right away. Thought balloons rose over the their heads as they bent over their desks. Trained as they were to be visual thinkers, the students’ very thoughts were visible. Juele spotted what had to be more advanced pupils. The images over their heads were of the illusion that was taking shape between their hands on the workspaces before them. The pictures within the puffy bubbles changed rapidly, as the students tried to decide what image to concentrate on. Juele wondered if that happened to her when she was thinking. No one had ever mentioned it.

One by one, the desks—form following their function as work tables for students to learn upon—became pedestals and easels. The pupils reached for their own art boxes and began to draw colors out between their hands. Juele looked hastily away, not wanting to be accused of copying from her neighbors. Mr. Lightlow continued pacing, nodding encouragingly as each student’s thought balloon became a light bulb.

"If you don’t comprehend an image, then ask. If you still cannot get anything to take root in your mind, choose another concept. Better to work on something you don’t like quite as much than to make yourself ridiculous utilizing that which your audience knows more about than you. It’s so easy—we deal in abstracts every day. All you need to do is make one concept visible."

Juele felt his energy licking out from his mind like fire and starting to catch on in hers. Why, she could design an image like that, all symbols. It’d be easy. She’d draw . . . the Dreamland! Her desk, sensing her change in mind, tilted upward, growing a shelf just below eye level wide enough for a small illusion, say just a little bigger than her hands. She snatched up the ray of light that fell on the desktop and began to pick it apart for colors.

This would be easy, to show one thing representing another. She hoped her efforts would satisfy the teacher. Let’s see who else can figure out what I’m doing, she thought, mischievously. He’ll get it right away. I hope he won’t say I’m being too ambitious.

Now, how could she best depict her homeland? Juele fiddled with a cool strand of blue light while she thought. The central part of her image would be a portrait of King Byron, ruler of the Dreamland. The king represented his realm, didn’t he, so he ought to be a suitable symbol. Juele had never seen her sovereign in person, but his face was on every piece of currency in the kingdom. She slipped a handful of coins out of her pocket and squinted down at the bronze disks. All she had were small ones, only worth a pencil each, and the image was minute. Juele fingered them, choosing the one with the clearest-struck head. If only she’d been richer, she could have used a big coin, say a chicken, as a model. Or if she had better control of influence, she could make the coins larger, or change all the small ones into a bigger coin of their total value. With the talent she had, Juele could make an illusion of a bigger coin, but the likeness would still be only as good as her skill, and that was why she needed it as a model in the first place. Juele looked about her and thought of asking one of her neighbors for the loan of a coin, but quickly decided against interrupting anyone. To show any more vulnerability was to make herself the butt of jokes for the rest of her career here. No matter. She’d do the best she could with what she had.

There wasn’t enough light on her desk, so she rooted around in her art box for more, as well as for her palette and some preseparated colors. As a base for her piece, Juele fluffed up an imaginary pillow of cloud in pearly gray light shot through with threads of rainbows. She set her king-figure’s feet on it and made him face her as though she was looking down on the Dreamland from a height in the south. He was holding his arms out as if he was walking. King Byron had to look handsome, strong, and noble. Her mother, who had seen him once when he made a royal progress through Wandering before Juele was born, had always said that His Majesty was the very epitome of nobility. Her parents had deep respect for the monarchy and the Sleepers themselves. Juele imbued the image with appropriate reverence for her king and country.

Everything in the Dreamland seemed to come in sevens, to correspond with the number of Sleepers. Juele drew King Byron wearing seven garments, one for each of the seven Provinces; and a silver necktie to represent the great river Lullay. No, a scarf. A long scarf, with seven tassels, for each major tributary. And a belt made out of sharp stones, also in seven sections, for the ring of mountains that surrounded the land. Each of the garments had to be beautiful, and they had to fit together, but be distinctly different in style.

Let’s see, she thought playfully, the right boot for Swenyo, and the left for Wocabaht, and . . . and the hat for Celestia. After all, the king’s head was really in it. Juele grinned at her little joke. A symbol within a symbol that was really a symbol within a symbol. This was fun.

She made the garments fit the character of the provinces. The boot ought to be soft, but waterproof, because Swenyo contained the Sea of Dreams, one of the most interesting features on the map. She didn’t know a lot about Oneiros, but it was hot there, so instead of a glove, she made a gauntlet for the king’s left hand. It didn’t look particularly regal, so she studded the straps with gold studs and applied some mystic looking runes. By the same token, the trousers representing the warm climate in Somnus ought to be short pants, but she didn’t think that would be proper or dignified. Maybe she’d make the pants of silk. She used up quite a lot of light getting the sheen just right, but the result looked good, and very comfortable. The coat for Rem was easy. Rem was reputed to be full of fantastic creatures that existed nowhere else in the great Collective Unconscious. She could decorate that part to her heart’s content.

Now that the other students around her were at work on their own assignments they paid no attention to Juele. Freed from stinging remarks and odd glances, she could concentrate on what she was doing. She was aware of Mr. Lightlow passing among them, humming wordless approval under his breath.

"Mmm-hm. Mmm? Mmm-hm."

Juele started to hum to herself in counterpoint as she formed the coat on the figure’s torso. She embroidered the tunic front and back with vivid depictions of unicorns, dinosaurs, dragons, basilisks, elves, and camelopards. Juele wove little bits of color into the gauntlet of the glove that represented northwestern Elysia. The Wocabaht boot would be rakish and dashing, as she’d heard the denizens of the second province to be. She ought to put it on reversed, or inside out, to denote the backward character of the province. Well, the minds of the Wocabahters weren’t backward, but their seasons were. When it was summer everywhere else in the Dreamland, it was winter there, and vice versa. She tried turning the shoe around to face back-to-front and heard a little laughing trill. Derision from one of her classmates?

No, the sound had come from the canary. Juele looked up at the cage hanging near the teacher’s desk.

Though no one had approached it, the yellow bird sang brightly, gargling and splashing the water in its silver bowl. Its distress had all been an illusion, Juele thought, catching the teacher’s eye upon her. So the canary was an indicator of the teacher’s mood. That would be useful to know in future. She bent to work on her assignment.

The figure of the king was prettily bedecked, but stiff and lifeless. Concentrate, she chided herself. What were the other aspects one associated with the king? He was not only handsome, but charming. Using a very small tool, Juele tried to mold the face into a more regal, but attractive aspect than the portrait on the coin. She worried that she was spending too much time on the details and not enough on the symbols. The scarf was important. It had to be just the right color of blue-silver, and it had to start on his right shoulder, go one and a half times around his neck, and trail off down his back. And the belt mustn’t have a buckle. She had automatically put one in. The ring of the Mystery Mountains was unbroken, and she knew it. Clicking her tongue, she erased the clasp and joined the two front sections of rough rock together. She wondered if the image looked enough like the king. Well, she’d know if it was still handsome and noble-looking when it changed in the next wave of influence. If it kept its attributes, that would mean that the image echoed the real king, who was only just beyond the wall in the Castle of Dreams. Juele felt a pleasurable shiver. She’d heard stories of the royal family all her life, and it was a thrill to be so near them. She hoped she’d get to see them once in a while. Or, even, just once.

Juele shook her head in wonder. Only a day ago, she’d been a nobody in a small town. Now she was an accepted student in the finest school in the land, right there in Mnemosyne, not five minutes walk from the Castle of Dreams and the king and queen.

"I’d like to make an announcement, class," Mr. Lightlow said, circling about the last easel and coming to light on the front edge of his desk. "About Her Majesty, the Queen."

Juele felt as if the teacher had been listening to her very thoughts. She started, accidentally jostling her illusion and spoiling the edge of the cloud pedestal. Irritated at her own clumsiness, she fluffed out the gray mass and plumped it up again. She put her hands in her lap and focused all her attention on Mr. Lightlow. He smiled at her.

"As you may know, Her Royal Majesty, Queen Harmonia, takes a very personal interest in this School, and we are very proud of her patronage. Our School has already been engaged by the Crown to provide a number of new illusions to decorate the palace and other public spaces around Mnemosyne, to be unveiled at the beginning of our public gallery show. Some of these are already under way. Her Majesty has announced that she will be visiting the school next week, in advance of the gallery opening. Please be on your best behavior. Her Majesty has let it be known that she wants a portrait of herself made, with an eye toward having it displayed at the gallery, and thereafter hung in the queen’s private hall in the Castle of Dreams. On the day of her visit, she will choose one of our students to receive the commission as the artist."

The class chattered excitedly among themselves. Juele breathed a sigh of delight. Her mother had never seen the queen. Juele imagined Her Majesty to be tall and regal and beautiful, and possessed of every ideal characteristic. If the queen came into the classroom, perhaps Juele could manage a small image of her to enclose in her promised weekly letter home to her parents. But Her Majesty wanted a portrait of herself. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if she selected Juele as her artist? Juele heard laughter behind her and looked up above her head. There, in her thought balloon, was exactly that image, of Juele painting an image of a gorgeous, motherly woman in ermine and pearls. She blushed and waved an embarrassed hand to dispel it.

"As if you have a chance," the redheaded girl next to her hissed spitefully.

"Huh," grunted the heavyset girl in the back of the room. "As if any of us does." In embarrassment, other thought balloons around the room vanished. They’d had the same fantasy as Juele. "Most likely it’ll be one of Them."

"Them?" Juele whispered. "Who’s Them?"

"You don’t know who They are?" the black-haired girl on her right asked, wide-eyed with scorn. "Where did you come from, the moon?" Suddenly, Juele felt her chin seized by the grip of influence and forced to turn to face toward the head of the room, where Mr. Lightlow held their eyes.

"I have finished with my announcement. You may continue with your work. Thank you." The invisible finger and thumb let go, and Juele’s chin dropped.

Juele’s neighbor, also freed from mandatory attention, gave her a disgusted look through her eyelashes and bent over the colorful construction on her easel. Juele couldn’t tell what the image was supposed to represent, and she shook her head regretfully. It was difficult to come from the very top of her class at home to the very bottom here. She’d have to climb up all over again. It meant a lot of hard work. Juele wasn’t afraid of that, but she feared being unable to make friends among those who ought to be her peers. Was her neighbor a very advanced illusionist? What were the senior students like? The redheaded girl tossed her hair in an unconsciously impatient gesture, and Juele copied it.

She turned back to her easel, and poked at the image of the Dreamland king until she was satisfied that if she fiddled with it any more she would ruin it. She heard humming behind her, then a shadow fell across her desk. Juele looked up as Mr. Lightlow crouched down beside her chair.

"Uh, sir," she said. "I . . . I’m sorry, I guess I missed the first class session. I didn’t know. I was told that term didn’t begin until today."

"Terms are always ongoing at the School," the teacher said, as offhandedly as Rutaro might have done. "For you, term did begin today. Someone else’s may end tomorrow, or never. Barriers are largely an illusion, whether of time or matter. You missed nothing after you came in, did you?"

"I . . . I hope not," she said.

"Let’s see what you’ve absorbed, then." He fluttered his fingers at her to make way. Juele ceded the seat to him at the easel, and he sat down to have a closer look.

"Not bad for a first try, Juele," the teacher said, in a low voice, but not so low that the other kids near her couldn’t hear. A few of them were stretching their ears out to listen. "Your portrayal has a very suitable level of realism. It’s purely associative, of course. I’m curious: why did you use only one adornment? You could have featured two."

"One!" Juele exclaimed, almost indignantly. Look at all the detail, she nearly said, but stopped short of letting the words out of her mouth.

"Yes, one," Mr. Lightlow said. He took up a small beam of light and stripped away all but the red to use as a pointer. He tapped it against the base of Juele’s work. "Your only associative symbol is the cloud pedestal."

"What about the scarf-river and the mountain-belt?" Juele was rather proud of those. She had forgotten the pedestal. She’d come to think of it as simply the base on which her light sculpture rested. Of course, it stood for the intangible character of the Dreamland.

"Those are only characteristic features, like the garments," Mr. Lightlow said, tilting his head. "Plain as the nose on your face. That’s a feature, not an attribute. You couldn’t consider your nose indicative of your character, now could you? Unless you’re a nosy little meddler, and then it should stick out where it’d be obvious, eh? Surely you can see the difference." He tapped her nose with his forefinger for emphasis. Juele gave the teacher a hard look. None of her teachers at home would have criticized her so harshly. He dropped his hand and drummed a fingertip on her easel. "On the other hand, the pedestal displays a specific attribute of the Dreamland: its ethereality. I assume that’s what you mean to depict."

"Yes." She had been right; he hadn’t missed her meaning at all. Her sense of outrage faded quickly, and she became eager to explain. "I read in school that the king’s title is ‘His Ephemeral Majesty.’ I thought it would fit."

"That’s quite right, and it does. Well, you did quite nicely for a first attempt, really," the teacher said, picking up her sculpture on the flat of his hand and turning it this way and that. "Nice representation. Yes. The garments are a much better way to express the changeable nature of the provinces than representing them as parts of the body, since the Seven always exist, but they change as the Sleepers dreaming them change, as you or I would change our clothes. Yes, I like it."

"Thank you, sir."

Juele felt very pleased. Her teachers at home might have treated her with more respect, but this man’s approval meant something because, for once, she didn’t know more than he did. He was just in his critiques, and she could live with that. She relaxed.

"So, will it pass, sir?" she asked.

"Yes, it should," he said, handing the image back. "Keep going. Let’s see how it looks when it’s finished." Juele held her hands apart just far enough not to squeeze the work flat. An illusion might have no substance at all, but if one didn’t believe in its character, it didn’t exist properly. Mr. Lightlow nodded down at the little construct, then met Juele’s eyes. "But you need to study the terms we use, so you know the difference between an attribute and an ornament, for example."

"Yes, sir," Juele said.

"Idiot!" hissed the girl to her left. Juele pretended not to hear, spreading a skin-colored mask over her face to hide the angry blush she knew was rising. How was she supposed to know the meaning of terms before she had ever heard them? "Oh, look, you got the face wrong."

"What?" Juele asked, looking at her sculpture with alarm. "What did I get wrong?"

"He should look more stupid, dear," she said, with a feline grin.

"Don’t you think it takes a talent to run a kingdom?" Juele asked.

"No, dear, it’s easy," the girl said, languidly. "Everyone does what you tell them."

"If everyone did what I wanted, the Dreamland would be a far more beautiful place," the black-haired girl said.

"If you please! I applaud initiative, but I would prefer you draw within the set lines, you know," Mr. Lightlow said. Juele chuckled, but the students nearby groaned. Another time-worn joke. "In time, you’ll learn how to make a thing that represents an abstract concept. Without editorialization!"

Juele looked up at him. "I’m looking forward to it, sir."

The teacher looked at her face and smiled slowly, having evidently decided that she meant it. He raised his eyebrow at her, and, humming under his breath, passed on to the next student.

"Sucking up won’t help you pass," the blond boy behind her hissed under his breath. Juele looked around, and the young man made an ugly face. Mr. Lightlow’s humming turned to a sudden interrogative "Hmm—mm?" The boy gave her a cool, triumphant glance.

"Shut up, Cal," the heavyset girl in the back grunted at him, and glanced under her eyebrows at Juele. "Never mind."

"It’s impossible to please everyone," Juele said, with a friendly grin for her defender. Both girls looked at Cal, who curled his nostril. His assignment was so fuzzy that Juele couldn’t guess what it was. It dawned on her that Mr. Lightlow might have had the same trouble.

"And just what is that supposed to be?" the girl asked, peering forward over Cal’s shoulder.

"Something you’re completely unfamiliar with, Gretred," Cal said, haughtily. "Logic." But he leaned forward and stuck his elbows out around the sculpture, and his arms became a miniature embattled wall hiding it from her gaze. A couple of the other students within hearing snickered, and Juele grinned with them. Cal glared up at Juele, who turned around and went back to her own work. Someone, probably Cal, had painted a mustache on her king. She erased it, shaking her head, and continued pottering over details. A twitch to the sleeve here, a tug on the hem there . . .

The familiar sensation of passing influence welled up around her while she was fixing the color in the mountain belt. Warily, Juele held onto her desk and looked around, wondering what kind of changes the Sleepers were sending.

The wave came through from the front of the classroom. The canary’s chirp deepened to a rough squawk as the bird became a multicolored parrot on a perch. Mr. Lightlow’s very ordinary smock turned rainbow colors, his skin darkened, and he grew a pillbox-shaped hat on his head. The flow of energy was invisible, but as inexorable as the tide. Juele was used to the calm changes visited upon her small town. Here at the center of the kingdom, everything was more intense.

The invisible swell surged over her, raising the front of her easel several inches. The floor bulged itself up to a new level several inches higher than before. Juele grabbed for the desk, fearing the passing wave would buck her out of her seat. The desk’s smooth-sanded surface roughened to hewn planks. Juele’s hands, clinging to the edge, lengthened and deepened in color to a rich brown. The back of her easel levered up, followed by the forelegs, then the back legs of her stool, threatening to tip her off. Juele felt a thrill of fear. The students to either side of her stopped what they were doing and held on to their seats.

The table undulated energetically. Juele feared for the safety of her sculpture. When the swaying stopped, she examined her small work cautiously. Miraculously, it had remained intact. Though the garments had changed color and style, the king had stayed very kingly. Juele was pleased. So she had crafted a reasonably true image. On closer scrutiny, she discovered that a few details had changed in ways she didn’t like. The tunic seemed too long. She pursed her lips and tilted her head to and fro to give herself different angles of perspective. Well, maybe it wasn’t too long, but the collar and shoulders would have to be padded. Juele played with the image, winding and unwinding strands of light to see how it would look both ways.

* * *

The clock on the wall chimed five times. Juele looked up at it in amazement. The time had ticked by twice as fast as usual while she’d been absorbed in her work. Another wave of influence must have come through, too, for the teacher’s pet had returned to being a canary, and the students were all different colors and heights from when she’d last paid attention. Thoughtfully, she poked one more time at the cloud pedestal, then clenched her hands together. She was finished. She must do nothing else. Not bad for a first attempt, she thought definitely, admiring its symmetry and color with a critical eye. If she touched it again, she’d ruin it.

She opened her art box and carefully placed the image inside. The others around her began to gather up their things, stowing away their works in containers and pockets, between the pages of books, and under their hats. Their pieces were lovely and amazingly complex. Juele found it difficult to tell whether most of them were finished or unfinished. She looked down at her work, suddenly despairing of being able to design anything as brilliant as they had. But she vowed she would try. Perseverance had brought her here, and it would keep her here, no matter what. The warm feeling of happiness in just being at the school came back to her, and she shivered inwardly, enjoying it.

Packing away was finished, but no one moved. The class watched until Mr. Lightlow, again at the front of the room, nodded his head, then the noisy scramble for the door began. Juele stood up and shouldered her art box.

"Read chapter three for next time," the instructor called over the din. Juele picked up the big book and stowed it in the capacious pocket of her smock, where it folded down obligingly into the thickness of a pamphlet. Juele was grateful; that probably meant the book was to be a true help, not a hindrance. She hoped she would be able to absorb what it had to teach her.

As she filed out after the others, Mr. Lightlow closed one protuberant eye in a sly wink.