And so she stayed outside. Stood her ground and waited, the last time she would be able to give her help to the ones she loved.
They said your life flashed before your eyes when you died-but that hadn't happened to Hessika. She wondered if it was because she'd already passed out of the human realm once before. When her time to die had come the first time, she'd made the choice to stay a Dream Walker instead of ascending to the next plane. She just hadn't realized that this meant her time would be mostly spent in the dreamlands . . . and not on Earth.
And when she did go back to Echo Park, she could only affect small things, her changes so minimal that no one really seemed to notice them. The dreamlands were more malleable, but she found herself getting bored when she stayed there . . . and so she'd waited, counting the days until the last Dream Keeper was born. Only then would Hessika not be alone.
Decades had come and gone. There had been no one. Sometimes she'd see other Dream Walkers, but they were few and far between-and they were stuck in their own loop, barely even acknowledging her existence.
And then, one day, she came.
She was just a little thing, frightened and lonely. She'd lost her mother, the trauma so great it had caused her powers to manifest early, and so she'd come to Hessika long before she was ready. She'd already stopped talking by then and so they communicated in other ways. But Hessika remembered her small face with fondness-the large eyes full of wonder at the strange new world the little girl had stumbled upon in her dreams.
Hessika was Lizbeth's late-night companion, and, as such, she thought she'd done a decent job of balancing the cruelty of the mental facility where Lizbeth lived. She knew the girl suffered terribly during her waking hours, and so she tried to make their time together in the dreamlands light and fun.
And, finally, when the time was right and her brother, Weir, was old enough that he could help her, Hessika had entered his dreams and encouraged him to go and save his baby sister from her untenable prison. It hadn't been a hard sell. Even without her nudging, he'd already been thinking in that direction. But Hessika's visits had given him the confidence to take the leap and do it. After the first dream, he'd immediately gone and retained a lawyer.
Not that Weir had remembered their dream meetings. She'd made sure they stayed buried deep in his subconscious.
She'd done what she could for the girl. She'd loved her as best she could-Hessika had always been a good mother hen, keeping a warm nest ready for the damaged little chicks that invariably found their way to her-but the time had come to let Lizbeth go. To free her so she could accept her fate.
Lizbeth had no idea that she'd just begun to walk her path. That dreaming the last dream and bringing magic back to their world . . . well, it was just the beginning. She would find her way, Hessika was sure of it.
But so that Lizbeth and the others might continue their journey, Hessika knew she must end her time here. She must give up "the self," the identity known as Hessika, under which she'd labored for so long.
The crack of thunder that sounded in the distance made her realize the time for rumination was over. She lifted her hand to shade her eyes, saw the darkness building as it drew toward her. She knew she couldn't let it get her too easily. She had to put up a fight, had to make it work to claim her.
She wanted a change of venue-she'd never been a fan of Lizbeth's desert landscapes-and so she began to call up memories from her own childhood. The land of her people was rich with greenery, lush with waterways and tall grasses. As a small child, she'd wandered through the woods, the treetops closing in all around her, letting her pretend she was the only human being in the whole of the world.
She could hear the gurgle of the creek that ran behind her parents' property, smell the moldering woodland so full of decaying things that would be used to feed the next generation of plants and animals. She closed her eyes, letting the air heat up around her, sweat breaking out on her lip and under her arms.
When she opened her eyes again, the Red Chapel was still there, but now it was a large, rambling plantation that had gone to seed, reclaimed by the trailing fingers of the kudzu. Trees blocked out the powerful sun-in Hessika's memories, the land of her people was always bathed in warm afternoon light-but she could still feel the humidity in the air condensing on her skin. She looked down at her hands and was surprised to discover that the dreamlands had given her one final gift.
Her youth.
She'd always been tall, dwarfing her siblings and the other children she'd played with. Her parents didn't know why she'd been cursed with such height, but they'd tried to convince her that it was God's will. That it was a punishment for something she'd done, some crime she didn't remember committing. Sin follows you wherever you go, her mother would say.