I moved with a new fluidity. I could sense that I exerted force on the matter of which I was composed and that which surrounded me. Silently, behind the illusion of solidity, I observed causality as a witness. I tested it out by compressing the air below me so that I was walking above the ground. Next, I experimented with rolling this layer beneath me like a conveyer belt and I slid effortlessly across the ground without moving a muscle. I chortled and allowed reality to settle back to its lowest energy state. A subtle shockwave emanated outwards from me, as reality flattened out. I realised that the greater the force I exerted and the more I bent things around me to my will, the greater the backlash would be when I let it go again. This must have been what levelled the house. I resolved only to do it in dire need. I could see how Luke had bested me yesterday. He’d simply pushed down on space-time and forced me to slow down. We were living warp-drives!

When I arrived back at the house, I found Luke and Lara outside in the street. The gate was open and the dogs were running up and down the street, running after a ball. Lara stood with her arms crossed and lips pursed, staring at me as I approached. When I came closer, she ran to me and I bent down to hug her. I picked her up and turned around in a circle before I set her down again. She drew back and I could see that she had been crying.

“I should be angry with you!” she said. “I was so scared.”

I was sad that I had caused my baby sister to worry so much. She would have been beside herself, I knew. I silently thanked Luke. I’d not really been in control of what I was doing. I’d left Lara, the most precious thing in my world, alone with someone I hardly knew! I must have been mad.

Luke wandered over with a gobby ball in one hand. The dogs trotted after him. He turned and threw it down the road and the dogs soared after it. He wiped his hand off on his jeans and gave me a quick hug.

“I knew you had it in you.”

“Thanks for the push. I needed it.”

“Hey, no problem,” he said. “Alchemy 101 is my specialty.”

I chuckled.

“Would the two of you like to go now?” Lara asked.

I nodded at Luke and he went inside the gate. He emerged after a few moments with his pack and two others.

“I packed your stuff for you,” Lara said. “I think I’ve got everything I know you like.”

I shrugged. “I don’t need to take much away. Thanks, La.”

Lara and I took our packs from him and slipped them onto our shoulders. I whistled for the dogs to come. They came galloping over to us, Pasha with the ball in her mouth. Luke started off up the road and we followed after him. I threw the ball for the dogs and we made a game of our walk.

“So where are we going?” I asked.

“We need to get to a river.” Luke replied. “I can only open a gateway to the City from the banks of a river. Something nobody has been able to explain to me! I came here by way of a stream just over the hill.”

We made our way onto 2nd Avenue and walked down the hill. I peered down all the streets we passed, mentally making a checklist of all the demons in all the different streets and feeling that they were filmy and insubstantial—just monsters made out of sand and trash. A change had overcome my whole being. Lara, I suspected, would still have to return to this city and face her monster, but she needed time. She’d have all the time she needed and when she returned, she would know what to expect.

Luke didn’t ask me what had happened during the night, and neither did Lara. Lara, I guessed, could intuit that I’d had an encounter with Medusa. She was not ready to talk about it yet, but I would be able to provide some answers for her when she was. We walked most of the way in silence, keeping up the game of catch with the dogs. I said my goodbyes to the ghosts of old friends that had lived in this street or that as we passed by and I allowed myself to think of the happy memories I’d been shutting out. The sun shone warmly on my back and the sound of birds chirruping and the feel of a pleasant breeze made me slip into a nostalgic mood. I remembered how these Linden streets had looked during November—all littered with purple Jacaranda flowers. I smiled and let the sadness come. It was a soft feeling, and it melted away in the sunlight.

After a short walk, we reached the streamlet at the bottom of Rustenburg Road. Luke closed his eyes and after a moment, a shimmering, silvery whirlpool appeared about a foot above the trickling stream.

“We’re going to have quite a long walk ahead of us,” he said. “The stairs are very narrow and sometimes you might feel that there are eyes watching you. Don’t be afraid, those eyes are making sure you haven’t dragged anything nasty down the stairs from above-ground.”

He stepped through the whirlpool and the dogs jumped in after him. Lara climbed through and disappeared beyond sight.

I was about to follow her but instead I turned and looked out over Johannesburg once more. I had no desire ever to look upon her again. She’d taken everything from me and everything from Lara. She’d given me my life but she was an old lover and I knew all her tricks. She had a devious mind—I was no match for her. She would have taken me eventually, dragged me down into her bowels and churned me back up as a monster. Her secrets were deep in the earth and her acidic waters promised that this was not the town for free dreaming.

I wondered at the bulk of her dreams and let my heart travel downtown for a last look at the broken-windowed skyscrapers that had frightened me as a child, when our parents had driven us home through the city at night. I wondered at the sort of creatures that thrived in a place like this. I imagined I saw hundreds of thousands of eyes peering out at me from the shadows beneath the trees in the park across the way.

A murder of crows broke loose from a pylon nearby and screeched and flew off into the trees. I let my mind unclick the latch that held it fast, bolted in place and pinned to the city. I’d been like a cat that had been tied to a stick. In the future that stretched out in front of me lay the mysteries of Dreaming in the City. Nothing could have held me.

“You can’t have me,” I whispered, and climbed through the silver gateway and onto the stairway that would take me into a different story.

***

Tell us: Why do you think it is important that Shelby confronted her nightmares?