They had songs now, of ideas for songs; lots of them, and more all the time. They would be called things like Crystal Ball Moon, and Brown Eye Blue Eye and Forty-Five Degrees and Dream and Wish and Bargain and Gift and other things. The other things came out of all of their various dreams, and those were just the ones that were Toby's first and foremost.
It took a little convincing, but Karen was finally talked into letting them use the garage (in her words) even with Sarah coming. Mr. Williams helped.
"It's such a relief to see that the boy has friends, Karen," he said in his amiably practical way, "And they can't hang around that Jonah kid's house all the time. Speaking of which, as much time as Toby spends over there, it's about time that we met this Jonah and his friends, don't you think?"
"Well, I suppose..."
"Look, if it's dinner you're worried about, I'll cook." And he winked and smiled, and that was the end of that.
The Princes got together a little over half an hour before Mrs. Williams went to pick up Sarah from the airport, just as Mr. Williams started dinner. They held practices the same way always, a ritual well formed for being practiced less than a week.
The first thing they did was sit in a circle and tell each other their dreams, in order to collect song material for this night.
Toby told his dream first, and we already know what he dreamed of.
Jonah had dreamed about a black-eyed man in a black hat who offered him his heart's desire in return for his name and a pair of kid-skin gloves.
Michigan had dreamed of a white-haired woman with the face of a girl, who stood in a garden of roses who told her, quite matter-of-factly, that wishes did come true, and then she pricked her thumb on the pin in her hat and woke up.
And Jade had dreamed about sailing on a wide blue river in a beautiful glass boat carved to look like an owl, and a lot of singing, and she'd thought it was odd because owls can't swim and there was more, but she couldn't remember.
"And you were all in it, too," she said, but she couldn't remember what everyone was doing, and then the garage door opened to announce that Mrs. Williams and Sarah were home, home, home.
They started playing before Sarah got out of the car, and this was the song that they played:
And See
My
World
And be
My
Dream
Come and take my hand again,
Just as you dreamt it, only wait! There's more:
Come and ride down the roads you've not ridden before.
Through the Crystal shattered and betrayed,
I have kept my Words,
In the Heart of the World that You have made,
You miss
the
kiss
Of ashes and silk, of moonlight and lace?
You Never
Dream
Of what kisses might have touched your face?
Down the ways your wishes waltzed before
Could you love the creature, built of your own hands:
A man-faced monster of an monstrous man?
Through the Wakened Dream,
Through the Midnight made of Thirteen hours,
I have kept my heart,
For My Will Is As Strong as Yours.
The song was called the Worldshaper's Waltz, out loud, though Toby thought of it as Jareth's Lament. And he didn't mean to say that name to Sarah when she asked in her curious voice what the song was called, after she and Mr. And Mrs. Williams applauded when the band was done, but he did anyway.
"Jareth?" Said Mr. Williams, but Toby was looking at Sarah's face, and Sarah was looking right through him.
"A guy in a dream I had," Toby explained mumblingly, "All the songs we play are from our dreams, mostly."
He had told the Princes of Night Places about the sharp-toothed man with his crystals and his wishes, more or less. He had said it was only a thing in his dream, and he had left out the part about his sister, at length. So they were all nodding and grinning though the good sweat of a song well played, and then they launched into one of Jade's dreams, another dream-like waltz called Tumbling Over Ivory.
After that it was more practice like, with Sarah and the parents coming and going and telling them they really liked the music. Michigan and Jade and Jonah all told Toby that his sister was really pretty, and so intense, in the way that she looked at things. Toby knew that was just tonight. She was giving him that, I want to talk with you look, and she gave it to him all through the dinner break with the band, clearly not wanting to speak in front of them or in front of the parents. Toby just let himself be swept along on the tide of what was happening right before him. Things would follow in their natural course. Sarah's presence anchored the world, made it feel so disorientingly simple. He felt as if he were going to drift off dreaming any second, like it was okay and the world was okay, and if it wasn't, Sarah would make it so, honest to god.
This thought was his secret smile as they sat together later, up in his room after the Princes had gone home. Or rather, she sat and he stretched out on his bed, twirling his bedside crystal between his fingers and sharing the smile with Sarah, who looked at him, her eyes penetrating and revelatory.
"You guys are really good," she said, sitting in his computer chair, elbows on the knees of her jeans. She still dressed like a princess displaced in Urbania, only more so; poet blouse and jeans with velvet cuffs, long wavy hair tied back with a red velvet scunchie. She still looked like a princess too, and Toby's smile turned grinny.
"Thanks, though you said that already. Not bad for our fifth night of practice, huh?"
Sarah nodded. She looked like she was having trouble speaking, for a moment. Toby spoke instead.
"You never answered my letter. Did you even get it?"
"The last letter I got from you was over a year ago, Toby..." Sarah said slowly, "What did it say?"
"It doesn't really matter." He shrugged, tossing the crystal up and catching it again, as he had on the fourth night, "It's fixed now. And you know how with emotions... like when you're really depressed, you can't imagine ever being happy, and when you're happy, you know there was a time you were sad, but you just can't... process what it feels like?"
Sarah nodded, "Yes..."
"It's kind of like that. I don't know. It was really wierd. You know, I only started having dreams again a week ago?"
"A week ago?" Sarah stood up.
"Yeah, a week ago." Toby watched her with interest, "why?"
"Toby, you have to answer something, and this is very, very important, okay?" She tucked a few stray strands uncoralled by scunchie back behind her ears, and knelt beside the bed. She tried to fix Toby with her This is important! look, but the movements of the flying crystal, up and down like a reverse yo-yo in Toby's hands kept catching her eye. Whatever she had been going to ask died in her mouth, and she said instead, "Where did you get that?"
"From a man with two eyes, one brown one blue," Toby sang, after another song that was in his head, "He said I was a Goblin/ But I don't know if that's true. Oooh oooh ooh, what's a boy to... Hey!"
Before he could finish the verse, Sarah stretched up and snatched the crystal from the air, then hurled it against the wall, where it smashed into little glistening shards. The shards hit the ground and shattered further into sparkling dust, and the window flew open and the wind howled wild.
There were little gigglings in the room, the gibbering of things crawling out from the shadows, darting under the bed, whispering behind bookcases and computer consoles, watching.
What they watched was the unconcious body of a black-haired boy stretched out on the bed, eyes empty of everything save void, hands over his chest like sleeping beauty. There had been a girl in the room a moment ago who called herself Sarah Williams, but she wasn't there anymore. She wasn't what anyone would call anywhere.
And that was the eighth night.