Prologue

My abuela seemed an ancient thing in the dancing light of the hearth, her voice wreathed with depth and time as the cigarette smoke slinked around her grayed features.

We think of dreams as fleeting, empty masa sacks rustling about in the wind. Empty and weightless. We think we leave our dreams behind and the waking world is the only one that is real. But this is not true.

Dreams, you see, are but a different type of world. Here in the Loom, the world is woven together by cause and effect, its threads made of reason and rhyme. In the Undersleep, the threads are frayed and loose, and curl back around on themselves until time is of no matter. But it is real. As are its creatures.

No? You do not believe your abuelita? I will tell you the proof.

All of us, at one point or a dozen others, have sprung awake in the middle of the night, dripping cold and hearts thundering. But we find, sometimes, we can not remember. This is because the dreams were taken.

You see, Chaquita… What? Ah, yes, you are Nayra now. You are growing so fast.

You see… little Nayra, the creatures of the Undersleep need our dreams. They are the imagination that feeds their world, that gives it weight. They wait patiently for us to visit. They coax our imagination and help it ripen.

And then there are impatient creatures. They stop us from returning to the Loom with our dreams. Sometimes, they even cross the Shroud, the in-between land, and lurk while we daydream or reminisce. This is how we forget things.

They keep our imagination for themselves.

Chapter 1

It was one of those times.

I shot upright in my bed, threw back the sweat-soaked sheets. The overcast sky seeped through the window, washing my room in pale light and cleansing my mind of the dream.

I couldn’t remember.

It was the day, I told myself. Today we were going to bury her. Put her in a box and throw dirt over her like we did with Coco.

I remembered her words, when she used to help me recall the dreams.

Do not walk in this world yet. Part of you is still across the Shroud. Reach for it.

I closed my eyes, imagined myself in that world. But nothing around me had edges, like the reflection in the ripples of disturbed water.

I sighed, opened my eyes. My chest calmed, and only then did I notice a warm tingling on my leg. I kicked the sheets away to see the bruises – or burns – on my ankle, imprinted like a gnarled hand had tried to drag me through deep mud.