Page 28 of Search for the Lost

“Fairies are unreliable.” Crispin took a bite of crumpet and looked a little self-satisfied.

“This one’s fictional. The whole story is fiction. But I’m pretty sure that this room is the nursery from Peter Pan. Which I don’t understand because the rest of this place seems pretty much Oz-ish.” He frowned. “Except for the parts that are Alice in Wonderland. Crispin, why are we in a mash-up of really old kids’ tales?” The idea made him feel especially unsettled. Fiction was supposed to stay where it belonged, which was not in his real life.

Crispin set the rest of the crumpet onto the bed, ignoring the crumbs on the duvet in a totally un-Crispinlike way, and handed Leo one of the thermoses. He spoke gently. “I don’t know. It likely has something to do with this being an unconnected world. My mother may have had an influence as well, although don’t ask me what she was hoping to achieve because I have no idea. I rarely do with her. And this all certainly has something to do with you, considering that all of these are stories from your world.” He brightened for a moment. “I’m a fan of Earthian literature, actually, even though I haven’t read as much of it as I’d like.”

Crispin’s reasoning made sense. Mostly. “But what are we supposed to do?”

Crispin shrugged. “Drink your eilqalaine-root juice. It’s only nice when it’s still warm. Then we’ll get some sleep, and when we wake up we’ll follow Cypher and try to solve my mother’s puzzle.”

“Without getting eaten, transformed, leashed, or otherwise harassed?” Leo spoke without any true hope.

It was Crispin’s turn to pat Leo’s leg. “Probably not. But we’ll see. Perhaps we’ll discover a simple solution and be back at the treehouse in time for lunch.”

The juice tasted exactly like mushrooms, with an aftertaste like bubblegum that had been chewed for too long. Leo drank it anyway.

They managed a lovely bath together, checking out each others’ new bodies, and then climbed into bed. Although it was huge—much bigger than the one at home—they cuddled together in the middle. Leo thought he heard a very faint voice whispering something about Cair Paravel and wardrobes, but before he could work out what that meant, he fell asleep.

9

Crispin

Crispin was usually an expert sleeper. Sleep came to him when it wouldn’t come to anyone else. When Sleep denied the hibernating hoarbear, it came to him. When hail pounded the roof of his treehouse, causing Minkis to run about in fear like a rabid rodent, Sleep came to him. And when Leopold snored loud enough to make the bed frame tremble, Sleep came to him.

Even when Nera, the goddess of the night herself—and a frequent houseguest of his mother’s—couldn’t get Sleep to come around, it came to him.

But tonight as he lay on the overly large bed, staring at the ceiling and wishing for the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness, Sleep had decided to abandon him.

It started innocently enough. After a particularly nice bath in a tub big enough for both Leo and Crispin and half of the Office of the Lost, they had climbed (and climbed) into bed, settling in under cool satin sheets and a thick woolen blanket, while Minkis —who had reappeared sometime between crumpets and bed—took refuge inside a plushy towel on a nearby chair. Sleep had seemed imminent.

Then his left foot—well, technically Leo’s left foot—began to itch. A quick reach and scratch solved the problem.

But then the sheets had gotten tangled, and the rustle and tussle of sorting them out scared poor Sleep off the bed and into a huddle in the far corner of the room.

Crispin tried to lure it back, lying as still as he could in the quiet room, the silence broken only by the groaning of the great trees outside the window, swaying in the wind. He was almost there when a tickling started at the back of his throat—Leo called it postnasal drip—and clearing his throat and trying to swallow broke the fragile connection he’d been making with his old friend Sleep.

At last he got the nasty phlegm ball down and turned onto his side, determined to lure Sleep out of its new hiding place under the bed.

Foot scratched, check.

Sheets arranged, check.

Post-nasal drip conquered, check.

Only now, someone was snoring.

Crispin roused from his almost-sleep, annoyed, only to realize that he was the culprit.

Of course I am. He was in Leo’s body, after all, and Leo loved a good snore. And what did Leo do when he couldn’t sleep? He got up and drank a glass of warm milk.

Crispin shuddered. He hated warm milk. Milk was meant to be served as nature intended, chilled with two medium-sized pieces of ice.

Still, maybe if he got up and left the room, Sleep would be lulled into a false sense of security and would climb up onto the comfortable bed. When he returned, Crispin could jump on it, wrestle it into submission, and finally get the good night’s rest he craved.

He slipped out of the bed and down, down to the floor, then padded into the sitting room, casting about for some distraction. His eyes fell upon the basket the dog had delivered, filled with half-eaten crumpets. The eilqalaine root juice was gone, but it had been replaced with additional bottles of… something.

He opened one and sniffed. It was definitely not milk, in the same way that dolphins are definitely not porpoises, or margarine is definitely not butter—which is to say that it sort of was. He took an experimental sip and decided it wasn’t half bad, especially if he followed it down with a bit of crumpet. In no time, he’d consumed the whole thing—the not-milk and the crumpet—and was feeling sated.

He stumbled back to the bedroom, and there it was. Just as he’d hoped, Sleep had cuddled with his pillow and was currently resting, unaware of its impending danger.