In the day, the people were good to him too. They looked and blinked and smiled, and when they spoke they met his eyes, and god that was good.
The second night, Toby dreamed of a house that was also a song, that played itself a thousand different ways as you walked through the rooms and fan your hands over the window sills, staring out at a moon like a crystal sphere, wreathed in the winking eyes of a thousand thousand stars, green and white and blue and red. And that was the second night.
The third night, Toby dreamed of a cup at the bottom of the ocean, and he had to sing the sirens to sleep to dive through the waters and recover it. The cup was a goblet shaped like an owl, and in the cup was the moon like a crystal sphere, and he drank it and woke up. And that was the third night.
The day following that dream, Toby was approached by a blond boy who played drums and wondered if Toby wanted to join his band. They got together in the boy's garage with a dour-looking girl who had hair like a shaggy chestnut horse and a base guitar that cried when she stroked it and another girl who was small and pale as a moon with eyes like chips of green glass and chunky cat-eye black glasses and hair like an oil spill. Their names were Jonah and Michigan and Jade, and Toby loved them the moment he saw them. And at the end of the evening, at the very tail end of the very last chord they could collectively create at a time like this, they were the Princes of Night Places and Toby was their crown prince, and they would get together tomorrow eve and jam some more.
The fourth night, Toby didn't sleep at all, but he dreamed of a series of stark white stars you could walk over and through, and he lay on his bed tossing the crystal Jareth had given him up in the air, watching it flash and catching it again, feeling like a cat with all of the toys in the world, feeling like the brightest of all the stars in his dream. And when he slept in class the next day, he dreamt, but he didn't remember what he dreamt, which was another kind of just plain Good. And that was the fourth night.
The fifth night, after he came home from his evening of creation with his new band and after he'd hugged his parents good-night, Toby dreamed of a great stone tower, run through with every kind of precious metal and jewel and ore. And all around the tower, every kind of bird roosted and rested and ruffled their wings and scuttled and preened in the windows and cupolas, but not one of them sang, nor screamed, nor called. So he taught them the languages that birds ought to know, and thought nothing of the great crystal sphere like an iridescent moon at the very top of the tower, for it was fitting that it be there, and by now, had it not, Toby would surely have missed it.
The sixth night, Toby dreamed of climbing ladders, of rising through skies on the fingers of great soft hands, of climbing through clouds and darknesses and nebulas to get to that bright crystal moon, which had followed him this far, and he wondered what it was, really, and why it was his to dream of-- if it was just a thing, or if there was a reason, something else and more and deeper? But when he woke, what he remberes was climbing, not any of the other stuff, and that was all right because the climbing felt just like flying. And there's nothing better, after all, than flying in dreams. And that was the sixth night.
The seventh night, Toby flew. He closed his eyes and savored the sush of sweet wind over his wild white wings, and trhe sky was his own and the night was his own. And that was the seventh night.
On the next day, his sister came home, quite unexpectedly, and that is when things changed again.