1 On a hot day near the end of summer, Laura Hame sat with her father; her cousin, Rose; and her aunt Grace against the fern-fringed bank on a forest track. She watched as her uncle Chorley and the rest of the picnic party passed out of sight around the next bend. Chorley turned and waved before he disappeared. Laura stared at the empty, sun-splashed path. She saw black bush bees zipping back and forth through the air above the nettles and heard the muffled roar of Whynew Falls, where the rest of the party were headed. Laura and Rose; Lauras father, Tziga; and her aunt Grace were sitting under a sign. The sign read, CAUTION: you are now only100 yards from the border to the place. “The falls are loud today,” Tziga said. “It must have poured up in the hills.” They listened to the cascade pound and thump. Laura, who had never been allowed near the falls, tried to imagine how they would sound up close. Her father said, “Think how startled Chorley would be if one of these girls suddenly skipped up behind him.” Aunt Grace squinted at Lauras father. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Grace. Why dont we just get up and wander along that way?”
“Tziga!” Grace was shocked. Laura and Rose were too. The family had owned a summer house at nearby Sisters Beach for ten years, and at least once a year they would go with friends for a picnic up in the old beech forest. Every summer those who could would continue along the track to see the falls. And every summer the girls were forced to wait at the sign with their dreamhunter parents. Tziga Hame and Grace Tiebold couldnt go and view Whynew Falls themselves because, one hundred yards from the honest and accurate warning sign, they would cross an invisible border. They would walk out of the world of longitude and latitude, and into a place called simply the Place. Tziga and Grace could no more continue on to Whynew Falls than Lauras uncle Chorley could walk into the Place. Uncle Chorley, like almost everyone else, couldnt go there. Tziga and Grace were part of a tiny minority for whom the rules of the world were somewhat different.
“Come on, Grace,” said Tziga. “Why should we make the girls go through all the ceremony of a Try? Its only for the benefit of the Regulatory Body, so they can see their rules enforced. Why cant we just find out now, in a minute, in private?”
Rose wailed, “Its against the law!”
Tziga glanced at Rose, then looked back at Grace. He was a quiet man, self-contained, secretive evenbut his manner had changed. His face had. Laura thought that looking at him now was like peering into a furnaceits iron doors sprung open on fire. Her father was a small man. He was a mess, as usual, his shirt rumpled and grass-stained, his cream linen jacket knotted around his waist, his hat pushed back on his dark, springy hair. Lauras aunt Grace wasnt any better turned out. Both dreamhunters were thin, tanned, and dry-skinned, as all dreamhunters became over time. Rose was already taller than her spare and weathered mother. She was white and gold and vivid, like her father, Chorley, and like Chorleys sister, Lauras dead mother. Laura had, unfortunately, not inherited her mothers stature or coloring. She was little and dark, like her father. ButLaura thoughther father, though small and shabby, still had the aura belonging to all great dreamhunters. She liked to imagine that the aura was a residue of the dreams theyd carried. For when Tziga Hame and Grace Tiebold ventured into the Place, dreams were what they brought back with them. Dreams that were more forceful, coherent, and vivid than those supplied to all people by their sleeping brains. Dreams they could share with others. Dreams they could perform, could sell.
Lauras father was saying, “We were pioneers, Grace. You didnt ‘Try, you crept past the cairn beyond Doorhandle early one morning when there wasnt a soul on the road. Do you remember? That moment was all your own. There wasnt anyone standing by with a clipboard and contracts.”
Laura saw that her aunt had gone pale. Grace stood up. Laura thought Grace meant to walk away, back toward the road, to go off in a huff and put an end to Lauras fathers crazy talk. But then she saw Grace turn to look up the track toward the border.
Lauras heart gave a thump.
Her father got to his feet too.
Rose didnt move. She said, “Wait! What about our Try? Youve even bought us outfitsour hats with veils.”
“Rose thinks shes a debutante,” Lauras father said.
“I do not!” Rose jumped up. “All right, Ill go! Ill go now! Im not scared. I was only trying to follow the law. But if you dont care about it, why should I?”
“Good,” said Lauras father. He offered his hand to Laura. She looked at it, then took it and let him help her up. She busied herself brushing dry moss from her skirt. The others began to amble slowly along the path. Laura caught up with them and gave her hand to Rose, who took it and squeezed it tight. Roses hand was cold, much cooler than the air, which, even in the shade of the forest, was as marinated in heat as the open paddocks, the dusty roads, and the beaches of Coal Bay. Roses hand was chilly, her palm coated with sweat.
Around the first bend was another, very similar. The track was flanked by black beech trunks. The sun angled in and lit up bright green nettles and bronze shoots of supplejack.
“I guess we wont see the Place until were there,” said Rose.
“That is right,” Grace said. “Theres nothing to see. No line on the ground.”
Tziga said, “The border is around the next corner.”
They didnt slow, or hurry. Laura felt that their progress was almost stately. She felt as though she were being escorted up the aisle, or perhaps onto a scaffold.
She didnt want to know yet. It was too soon.
In two weeks Laura and Rose were due to Try. Any person who wanted to enter the Place for the first time had to do so under the eye of an organization called the Dream Regulatory Body. The Body had been set up ten years before. It employed rangersthose who could go into the Place but couldnt carry dreams out of itto patrol the uncanny territory and its borders. The dream parlors, salons, and palaces in which working dreamhunters performed had to obey laws enforced by the Regulatory Body and its powerful head, the Secretary of the Interior, Cas Doran. The parlors, salons, and palaces were businesses and had to have licenses. Dreamhunters, too, had to have licenses. A Try was the first step on the road to a license, and a livelihood.
The Body held two official Tries a yearone in early spring and one in late summer. Each Try found hundreds of teenagers lined up at the border. It wasnt compulsory to Try, but many did as soon as they were allowed, because dreams represented a guarantee of work and the possibility of wealth and fame. Any children who showed an inclinationvivid dreaming, night terrors, a tendency to sleepwalkwere thought, by hopeful families, to have a chance at the life. A dreamhunter or ranger in the family was another indicator of potential talent. More boys than girls Tried, since parents were more permissive with boys, and the candidates were, by and large, in their midteens. The earliest age of a Try was legally set at fifteen.
Rose and Laura