"It's funny you put it like that: the emotion of the memory." He taps an absentminded little rhythm with his fingertips on the old worn wood, an echo of the melody. "That's the piece I'm only starting to understand. The books don't go into it, but I've heard bits and pieces from Sleepers. The dream operated on dream-logic, on stuff inside your head— on someone's head."

His fingers go still.

"If it was little Julia running the show, back there, who and what runs it here? What's our guiding principle if it's not emotion, anymore? What happened to all the other kids with all their other doors?"

He has theories. Oh, he has theories to fill volumes and to fuel a war. But this boy has pieces for him he doesn't yet hold.